Kieran's Pretentious Crap: Favourite Albums and Songs of the Decade #40-31

Albums

40. Let England Shake - PJ Harvey

You don’t get more alternative than Paulie Jane Harvey. The critical darling’s previous discography like Rid of Me and Stories From The City were polluted with angsty internal monologues and 90s-bleak disillusionment, but Let England Shake is a completely different direction. It’s an album about war, a potentially heavy-handed subject in any medium, but Harvey is quaint enough to separate herself from lecturous ideologues and general enough that she transpires with a common universality; for every War of the Roses reference there’s another about the UN. Harvey utilises countryside imagery effectually to unsettle the abnormality of conflict, and the record passes with an ethereal, disquieting beauty.

39. Lost in the Dream - The War on Drugs

War on Drugs do to Pop-Rock what Fleet Foxes do to Country; they twist and mangle its traditional fundamentals into something defiant of genre and indefatigably wonderful. Lost in the Dream is an appropriate title, as its experience is that of gliding across a subconscious sunset, given flight by glazing guitars and a buoyant piano. When it’s not sailing you down a river of satin-silk melody it’s striding you forward with a sense of bass-guitar heavy resolve, that finding something inexplicable yet necessary is the objective of this utopia. I don’t really know what it’s about though. The lyrics are a bit contrived and blasé, but it’s a defect easily forgiven. It’s easy-listening for a post-internet age, a nuanced symphony of aural delights.

38. Section 80 - Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick’s first official release is disjointed, tonally abject, and ever so slightly portentous. It’s also a dramatic statement of the man’s godliness. He covers everything, and I mean everything. He’s got race, drugs, politics, sex, gender identities, love, death, solipsism, there’s even allusions to Emersonian transcendentalism. His wordplay is just as clever and expressive as you’d expect, his flow just as tight, controlled, lucid, and remarkably flighty. His production is impressively understated and sensitive for a rapper so early on in his career. Long before his infamous verse on Big Sean’s ‘Control’, Kendrick was instilling dread in his rivals. This wass a man announcing his arrival to the big time with an apocalyptic bang.

37. Matangi - MIA

Matangi received mixed reviews when it dropped in 2013. Let’s be honest, MIA being divisive is hardly a new trend. She reverts to the continent-hopping she exploited so successfully on Kala, both in terms of thematic context and in her ever-bizarre instrumentation and vocal cues. She doesn’t hold back either. In the first two minutes she’s reciting the names of countries to a frenzied beat, before continuing by declaring war on bankers. It’s an exhausting pace which never slows, except for the amiable ‘Come Walk With Me’ which asserts an unaffected, non-Brandesque commonality with the 99%. There isn’t a ‘Paper Planes’ level international colossus, but this a fierce, biting, charmingly wacky slice of counter-culture.

36. Plowing Into The Field of Love - Iceage

Iceage go even further left-field with Plowing, leaving behind the flaring post-punk of New Brigade and You’re Nothing for the pungent allure of stoner-infused acid-punk. It works incredibly well. Not only does Ronnenfelt’s voice suit the complementary melodies and layered backgrounds, but it consents them to bring further elements into play; say, piano, strings and brass. These additions never feel convoluted or trite, but serve to provide emotional heft to Ronnenfelt’s surprisingly touching confessions. He admits his ego has ballooned since Iceage’s unanticipated rise to popularity, and the awful implications he suffers as a result are imparted here. It’s startlingly powerful.

35. Acid Rap - Chance the Rapper

Have you ever heard anything so chill? Chance just doesn’t care about anything does he? Rhetorical questions are the mark of poor writing aren’t they? Chance’s flow is so irreverent to the point of appearing improvisational, as if he casts off each line with a shrug. He struts through the album with a garish boiler-room elegance, the couplet ‘riding around with my blunt on my lips/with the sun in my eyes and my gun on my hips,’ from ‘Pusha Man’ an effective synecdoche. There are psychosomatic insinuations but it’s unclear whether this is a drug-addled façade or heartfelt introspection. Not that it matters. If this summation is giving off the impression that it’s essentially an hour of a blissful narcotic haze then that’s because it is.

34. Have You Ever Done Something Evil? - Hallelujah The Hills

The latest of latecomers to this list, having just discovered Hallelujah the Hills two weeks before I started writing, thanks to a very small Columbian acquaintance. It’s one of the best Indie-Rock albums of the decade so far, a very urban sprawl of troubled post-adolescent bohemianism. So right up my street. There’s fervent riffs, big themes of being yourself, accepting your conditions and believing in the feasibility of self-improvement, and some of the best songwriting you’ll hear in a long time. It captures brilliantly the nonchalant minimalism of 90s Indie a la Pavement along with the precision and bearing of 00s Math Rockers like Interpol.

33. Settle - Disclosure

Possibly the most popular House album of the past five years, and justifiably so. Admittedly, House isn’t my forte, but I like to think I recognise a good Dance track when I hear one, and in this case Settle is full of them. It’s one of those rare albums where you can discuss it with a group of people and each person will have a distinct favourite song. Whether it’s the pounding bass of ‘When a Fire,’ London Grammar’s fragile moan on ‘Help Me Lose my Mind,’ the Deep-House groove of ‘You & Me,’ or the brain-melting dissonance on ‘Latch,’ (my personal pick) there’s frankly something for everyone. Finally, a Dance record which unites the Urban Outfitters clique and the Topman crowd.

32. Are We There - Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten’s testament to heartbreak is just about as gut-wrenching an experience you can have listening to music. Break-up albums are often protracted and self-involved, too absorbed in their own misery to open the door for the listener. Van Etten isn’t really any different, it’s still indubitably about her, and her alone. What’s unique is how immersed you are in her world. It’s her rules, her pain, but it drowns you in its emotional debilitation. She is paralysed by melancholy, and so are we consequently. It’s only when it’s over can you consider it affirming, the bittersweet closer ‘Every Time The Sun Comes Up’ embracing optimism and regret in equal measure.

31. RAP Music - Killer Mike

The spiritual successor to Public Enemy is the resolute Killer Mike. A champion of civil rights and political liberalism, his recent breakdown at a Run The Jewels gig over the Ferguson shooting ruling one of the most powerful moments in music in 2014. RAP Music is angry. Very angry. Every institution imaginable is in his sights; capitalism, the senate, the media, racial stereotyping, Republicans (of course), and above everything else, the police. Mike justly rages and rants against America with some airless beats and grubby synthesisers, but he knows it’s in vain. He takes solace in the only thing he can, his ‘true religion,’ rap music. A whirlwind.