10. This is Happening - LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem’s farewell album
is enriching, piercingly genuine, and inescapably sad. From the grooving purge of ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ to the resolutely confident, pertinently
titled closer ‘Home,’ there’s a pervasion of ending, of the realisation of
outgrowth. James Murphy and his human soundsystem came late to the party as
international Popstars, and their overwhelming popularity frightened them. They
appeal to millions because they’re countercultural with a brain. They rage
against both the machine and hipster twee but realise they do so in vain, and
that’s okay. In the end it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re content with
yourself. It’s a comforting thought, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to
have fun. They go out with a euphoric bang, with all the funkadelic
synthesisers and infectious beats they can muster. They’re my second favourite
band for a reason.
9. Channel Orange - Frank Ocean
When you hear the acclaim ‘genius
singer-songwriter’, you’d be forgiven for picturing a scruffy, chain-smoking
folk singer rather than a weedy, introverted R&B idiosyncrat. But Frank
Ocean is a genius singer-songwriter,
and this is coming from an initial sceptic. Dwelling under the
attention-drawing Hipster-Hop behemoth that is Odd Future, Ocean’s sensitivity,
humanity and talent could flourish in stark contrast with his groupmates.
Following on from his terrific debut, Nostalgia
Ultra, Channel Orange is an opus
of human emotion and social critique. As ambitious as it is, both thematically
and musically, it’s Ocean’s personal direction, his endearing modesty, which
really hits home. Robert Christgau summarises this elegant restraint better
than I ever could; ‘when he's the sole composer Ocean resists making a show of
himself—resists the dope hook, the smart tempo, the transcendent falsetto
itself.’ It’s the humbling easiness of his meditation which vindicates him.
8. Bon Iver, Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Okay, Justin Vernon didn’t
cathartically confine himself to self-imposed isolation in some backwater cabin
with a guitar, a pen, some paper, and presumably a fuck-ton of soup, but I
think Bon Iver is even better than For Emma. Vernon expanded the project by
inviting in external parties, but while horns and steel drums are introduced, the
record can’t be reduced to some pigeon-holing music industry cliché such as
‘natural progression’ or ‘sideways move’. As critic Josh Jackson agreeably observes, ‘it retains the beautiful melancholy of For Emma, but in nearly every way, it’s just more.’ As the title
itself intimates, it’s exactly the same, only it isn’t. For this is still
Vernon’s voice; the thunderous brass on ‘Perth’ or breezy horns on ‘Beth/Rest’
supplement his echoey waver and hazy guitar. Forgetting comparisons to previous
work, Bon Iver, Bon Iver triumphs as
an incandescently forlorn poem, illuminated in flowery synths, cryptic, moving
lyrics, and the most gorgeous harmonies you’ll hear this decade.
7. On The Impossible Past - The Menzingers
My favourite Punk album of the
decade, Greg Barnett’s lyrical pattern follows the Americana-glossed storytelling
of Brian Fallon and The Gaslight Anthem. But boy do they surpass it. I mean
sure, there’s still anecdotes about sitting glumly in Philadelphia bars,
sobbing over break-ups, and dancing like you don’t care, but there’s also the ominous
stench of mortality and excruciating reminiscence which drenches everything.
Whether it’s the jaw-dropping confessional ‘The Obituaries’-‘Cause I've cursed
my lonely memory with picture-perfect imagery’-or the impudent shrug of ‘I Can’t
Seem To Tell’-‘Remember the days when I had a conscience? Yeh me neither’-it’s
a gut-wrenchingly earnest work of admission. Death envelops the album,
especially in its assessment of memory; its illusoriness, its deceptive
falsehoods, and its aura of future possibility. It’s music of yearning
nostalgia and bitter remembrance, of hope and despair; a lyrical masterpiece, handsomely
augmented by aggressively emphatic riffs and soul-raising choruses.
6. Southeastern - Jason Isbell
What makes Southeastern a great album? At the time I made my end-of-year list
even, my favourite album of 2013? Is it the effectually sparse chordwork? Jason
Isbell’s graceful yet quietly booming vocals? It might be, but it’s probably
his conceit. For in each of his songs, Isbell adopts the persona of a
different, incredibly flawed American male, and opens up their humanity. He
plays an ex wife-beating alcoholic on ‘Live Oak,’ and a womaniser-turned-carer
for a dying woman on the incredible ‘Elephant.’ After exposing the fragility of
human relationships, existence and our arbitrary concepts of morality, he
concludes with a scathing indictment of first world problems on ‘Relatively
Easy,’ asserting that, essentially, we’re worried about the wrong stuff. It’s
soothing, tranquil, cold, jagged, tender, and indispensable. It’s simply one of
the best Folk records in a long, long time.
5. The Greatest Generation - The Wonder Years
I never had an Emo phase. I had an 80s phase instead. I
thought My Chemical Romance and 30 Seconds to Mars and Paramore and all that
undulated stud-belted angst was a bit silly. It’s only been in last two or
three years I’ve realised that there’s good and bad Emo in the same way there’s
good and bad British Indie; there’s a Wonder Years and Brand New for each MCR
and 30STM in the same way there’s a Bloc Party or Los Campesinos for every The
Enemy. Underneath the indubitably catchy riffs and driving one-liners of
Pop-Punk is a uniquely introverted, nostalgic, almost solipsistic voice. Some
of the best lyricists working today deal in the oft-vilified realm of Emo, and
possibly the best of all is The Wonder Years’s Dan Campbell. It’s
tried-and-tested territory; invocations of heartbreak during teenage summers,
confrontations with mortality in suburbs, but Campbell’s flair with
turn-of-phrase reveals a conflicted disposition which both demonises and
glorifies our ‘generation,’ and stresses the consequence of our adolescent
upbringing. Will we be the ones to destroy our world or save it? Campbell
doesn’t have answers, but he’s determined to find them in his, and our, past. The Greatest Generation is ultimately
about the most Emoey of things; that interminable, desperate search for an
identity. Campbell flirts with the frontier of the personal, national and
humanist identity, and their expected paradoxes, and that’s why it’s so
amazing. It’s about everything and absolutely nothing. One of the greatest
Pop-Punk albums of all-time; fuck it, it’s my favourite.
4. My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West
While it’s not quite my favourite
album of the past five years, in my honest opinion, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is one of the greatest artistic
statements of the decade so far. It is, essentially, Kanye’s pathological megalith,
appropriating him as a singular extreme of the human condition – pride,
insecurity, and the dangers of self-reflection. MBDTF depicts Kanye at his most alien and relatable, a living
personification of postmodernism’s headache, self-veneration, and complicitly
self-destruction; the emptiness of the dream of corporate Eden. With all this
heady subject matter, the most amazing thing is that Kanye appears entirely
self-aware, entirely transparent. Every track offers something different. The hostile, toxic ‘Monster’ (dat verse from Nicki tho), the
exhausted anxiety which props up the album’s opening and ending in ‘Who Will
Survive In America’ and ‘Lost In The World’; Justin Vernon’s ethereal wail the
impeccable companion in relaying this loneliness. In the indomitable, rumbling,
intricate centrepiece, the brilliant ‘Runaway’, Kanye breaks down and builds
himself up again arbitrated by the simplest, blandest piano chord. It’s the
best song he’s ever recorded. MBDTF works
as a thrilling, moving, terrifying essay on the inextricability of self-worship
and self-loathing.
3. Benji - Sun Kil Moon
I know it’s been out for less
than a year, but Benji is one of my
most treasured albums. A series of wistfully told excerpts from Mark Kozalek’s
weary, loosely fatalistic autobiography, accrue in one vividly sprawling canvas
of the inaccessibility of life. I’m not sure whether it’s the elegant
simplicity of the melodies, the sighing expectancy of Kozalek’s growl, or
the neutrality of the lyrics, but it touches me in ways the vast majority of
music can’t realise. Crackling with childhood nostalgia and a near-overbearing
sense of mortality, Benji’s existential
haughtiness is tempered by moving devotions to family and friends, and
genuinely funny and profound recollections about fame (‘Ben’s my Friend’) and
sex (‘Dogs’). The impassivity of the words is disarming at first, but it
implores a resounding universality; in Kozalek’s stories we find ourselves and
our own thoughts and emotions and passions and fears and sorrows and joys.
2. Celebration Rock - Japandroids
Celebration Rock is a fairly non-sequiturial album name; I mean
sure, it’s triumphant in a carefree, belligerently philanthropic sort of way,
but this celebration is more defiantly, spiritedly decadent, than just
flippantly decadent. ‘Mortally Urgent Celebration Rock’ would be a more
appropriate title. Japandroids aren’t focussed on Japandroids, and all its
synonyms of 30s mid-life crisis, anymore. Nah, now they’re obsessed with that
most gargantuan ubiquity of living, as well or as shittily as you possibly want.
Brian King implores that how you live is irrelevant to actually living. My
favourite song is LCD Soundsystem’s All
My Friends because it captures perfectly the transubstantiation of
friendship, experience and situational ephemerality, the best of active living.
This is an entire tracklist of that. Celebration
Rock, with its irreconcilable guitars, translucent drums and
unapologetically Punk-Pop ‘Woah Oh Ohs’ roars living with a resonant,
air-punching clarity.
1. Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City - Kendrick Lamar
Section.80 defines flawed masterpiece, a rambling mess invaded by
frequent flexes of utter genius. Good Kid
M.A.A.D. City is more rapt and lucid, a tightly woven narrative simmering
with ideas and emotions held together by Kendrick’s intensive musicality. His flow
and production is predictably immaculate, so we’ll move on from that. The
autobiography is one of the most common subsidiaries of the ‘Concept Album,’
with Pink Floyd’s groundbreaking The Wall
still holding rank as its definitive ideal. Somehow Good Kid feels more personal than even The Wall, more deep-rooted. The very title explicates the record’s
central dichotomy; the ‘good kid’ struggling in the ‘M.A.A.D. City’. The frayed
portrait of gang existence on ‘M.A.A.D. City’ and ‘The Art of Peer Pressure’ illustrate
a fragile boy desperately trying to survive in violent conditions. It’s powerfully
inventive, the transition in ‘M.A.A.D. City’ announced by the ‘WAKE YO’ PUNK
ASS UP’ soundbite a microcosm of Kendrick’s terrible epiphany. Conversely, the
album is peppered with familial warmth, humour and affection, whether it’s a
voicemail with his uncle yelling at him about a Dominos pizza or his mum warbling
a genuinely heart-warming plea to be better. Sure he raps about pussy on
‘Sherane,’ but only to convey teenage Kendrick’s self-conscious, perturbed
sexuality. Sure he raps about having bags of dolla on ‘Swimming Pools,’ but
only to express his anxiety over how extreme opulence will corrupt him.
‘Backseat Freestyle’ is ripping the absolute piss out of the Rap culture
teenage Kendrick adulated. That it’s a banger with the sultriest of beats is a
bonus. In ‘Real’ he croons that ‘none of that shit made me real.’ True that. It’s a celebration of the power of
family, music and self-empowerment, and a devastating subversion of the
frivolity of New-School Rap. Not only my favourite album of the decade so far,
but my favourite Hip-Hop album of all-time.
Songs
20. Ill Manors - Plan B
19. No Black Person is Ugly - Lil B
18. The Devil in my Bloodstream - The Wonder Years
17. Two Heavens - Death Grips
16. Dancing on my Own - Robyn
15. Pyramids - Frank Ocean
14. I Am Disappeared - Frank Turner
13. Your Love is Killing Me - Sharon Van Etten
12. M.A.A.D. City - Kendrick Lamar
11. Can't Do Without You - Caribou
10. Ya Hey - Vampire Weekend
9. Desire Lines - Deerhunter
8. Dance Yrself Clean - LCD Soundsystem
7. I'm Not Part of Me - Cloud Nothings
6. Werewolf - Fiona Apple
5. Calgary - Bon Iver
4. Midnight City - M83
3. Hold on We're Going Home - Drake
2. Runaway - Kanye West
1. The House That Heaven Built - Japandroids
