Kieran's Pretentious Crap: Favourite Albums/Songs of the Decade #20-11

Albums

20. The Money Store - Death Grips

You could call Death Grips avant-garde; experimental; even progressive, but that’d be an artifice. Yip, they’re unique, but that’s not why people love them. They’re unabashedly, comprehensively mental. The Money Store is their most naturally commercial output, with some faint echoes of melody and traditional songwriting structures, but it’s still bonkers. The sultry bass of ‘Blackjack’, the flaring synths of ‘I’ve Seen Footage’, the manic paranoia of ‘Punk Weight’, the gleeful turpitude of climax ‘Hacker;’ it’s one hell of a journey. Nothing more to be said really.

19. Halcyon Digest - Deerhunter

The notorious eccentric Bradford Cox had been producing some of the most interesting Art-Rock of the noughties but 2010’s Halcyon Digest showed Deerhunter as something refined, complete, and eminent. Allegedly a chronicle of ‘queer’ familiarity, it charters various elements of factual and fictional gay experiences, from Art, and from Cox’s own understandings. It’s sweeping, documenting the fall from grace of a fashion designer into gay pornographer in ‘Helicopter,’ and the effervescent wheeze of ‘Sailing’ identifying a inimitable idea of inaccessibility. And it’s all done with the cleanest, most sophisticated compositional accompaniment. A record of comfort, for anyone who's ever struggled with loneliness. So everyone.

18. Carry on the Grudge - Jamie T

On Carry on the Grudge, Jamie Treays is evidently suffering from an early-life crisis. Post-adolescent disillusionment, even depression, is a topic barely touched upon in media, ostensibly because the idea that young, healthy people could be cynical and exasperated is ridiculous; what could we possibly be dissatisfied with? Treays gives a voice to this silent underground, one which is sophisticated, articulate and concerted. There’s still an undercurrent of juvenile hedonism. There’s still allusions to boozing and shagging, but he does so with a heavy heart. His songwriting is tighter and more focussed, and his lyrics more relatable for their protracted heft. It feels like Jamie’s first cohesive record, rather than a collection of great songs.

17. Modern Vampires of the City - Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend take their avant-garde Pop sensibilities into bold thematic territory in Modern Vampires, tackling actuality, religion, faith and the incomprehensibility of love; all in relation to the equivalence of an omniscient, omnipresent God. It approaches philosophy and theology with the excessive eagerness of an undergrad, but Ezra Koenig handles it with maturity and a pleasing dispassion. Alongside all this heavy speculating, their happy-go-lucky enthusiasm for music and artistic potential still resonates brightly. Furthermore, New York’s hipster prince Ezra Koenig proposes the idea that joy and sorrow are inextricable, the fun ‘Diane Young’ a weirdly apposite twin for the dystopian ‘Hudson.’ After all, all life is superimposed.

16. Hurry up, We're Dreaming - M83

I honestly doubt there is a more epically orchestrated Pop album than Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. M83’s Anthony Gonzalez has always had a flair for the melodramatic taste of the future, like a House-club Vangelis, but Hurry Up revealed a vastly improved songwriting style which added lyrical fusion, tempo and a structured pacing to the discharging canvas of synthesisers and guitars. From the majesty of ‘Midnight City’ (is there a more apt representation of our decade’s optimism and parochial narcissism?) to the hazy luridness of ‘Steve McQueen,’ there’s a definable emotional journey established for the hearer. Thankfully though, this is not at the expense of some of the most listenable soundscapes ever produced.

15. Present Tense - Wild Beasts

The Line of Best Fit called Present Tense ‘the most intelligent, involving and profound record since OK Computer'. A pretty bold claim. But it is fantastic. To my discredit, I’d always appreciated Wild Beasts more than I enjoyed them. To me they were talented and interesting, but the disharmony of Thorpe’s alto and Fleming’s lower register always recorded as a bit twee for my taste. Not on Present Tense. Within three minutes Thorpe sneers ‘don’t confuse me with someone who gives a fuck,’ setting the tone pretty well. There’s nothing twee here, just a satisfyingly direct, and immensely compelling, approach to the link between consciousness, sex, class politics and philosophy.

14. The Idler Wheel - Fiona Apple

The Idler Wheel is something special. The entire 45 minutes seems distilled from studio gentrifications and inauthentic overproductions. It’s positively putrid of reckless honesty. She has no pretensions of Popstar or cult Folk-hero; she herself simply remarks ‘what I am is what I am, and I does as I does.’ In manner with her sentiments her percussion is teasingly sparse and esoteric, a lot of bottle taps and boot clomps. And fittingly, her percussion is her piano’s solitary friend. That is, of course, except for her storyteller voice. Proudly defiant, yet shakingly insular, she pokes and prods at identifiable situations with alarming clarity considering they’re disguised in abstruse, provocative, and tender allegories.

13. Old - Danny Brown

‘They want that old Danny Brown/to bag up and sell a whole pound,’ Danny kindly explains to us on his title track. The title of the album itself is a dichotomy; it’s a reference of his diffidence towards the fans campaigning for a return to the smart meta-Hop of his discography pre-XXX, and also a reference of his, well, ageing. It’s productively solid across a variety of Rap angles and subgenres, exemplifying shrieking synths and rapturous kick-drums, selective sampling, and even an oddly chillwave undertone spills through on the existentially inquisitive ‘Lonely’ and ‘Float On.’ but it’s Brown’s poignant self-awareness, and willingness to mature and grow, that really appeals.

12. Bloom - Beach House

Beach House are the quintessential Dream-Pop band, and Bloom is them at their unparalleled finest. Their overtly synthesisers-circulated assembly caresses almost as serenely as Victoria Legrand’s angelic chorus. She speaks of ‘momentary bliss’ and ‘the moment when a memory aches,’ somehow fusing emotional entanglement and unflustered commentary. They’ve been criticised previously for being overproduced and frigidly clean, but I challenge anyone to not fall in love with the silk-coated sheets of Bloom’s melodies, their strikingly opulent sound evokes a very real sense of time and place-of joy, sadness, love-and the necessity to appreciate its transient splendour. For Beach House are obsessed with the progressive disintegration of everything, but also its eminent bloom.

11. RTJ2 - Run The Jewels

Petrifying, vitriolic, malevolent, misanthropic, and entertaining as hell, the second harvest from El-P and Killer Mike’s collaborative mind-fuck is superb. This time their target is ‘fuck boys,’ who I can only assume, based on their colourful descriptions, to mean absolutely everyone, ever. The beats and hooks are frantic, fraught and frighteningly filthy, the production is an onslaught of furious fun. The wordplay is even better, contaminated with some of the wittiest and most vile insults and boasts I’ve ever heard in a rap song. It’s indescribably tough to pick my favourite line, but I might have to settle with ‘you can run backwards naked through a field of dicks.’ This is Hip-Hop more violently splendid than you've ever heard it.