#3) being a fan of deerhunter in the year 2011

[yeats-infection]

deerhunter playing "nothing ever happened" at pitchfork festival 2011 with a lil interpolation of "land" by patti smith

[quarantineroulette]

20 Favorites from the 2010s

Happy New Year! I could only rescue 20 albums from the 2010s, there are the 20(ish - I doubled up on some) I would carry into the 2020s with me. May this act as your soundtrack on the lazy, hungover day that is January 1st. 

20) Rihanna: Anti-

19) The National: Sleep Well Beast. Still not the hugest The National fan, but I have huge respect for any band that can nearly bring drunken Irishmen to tears, which actually happened when we played “Dark Side of the Gym” in a bar last year. 

18) Leonard Cohen: You Want it Darker .

17) Ahnoni - Hopelessness .

16) Ariel Pink - Dedicated to Bobby Jameson . 13 weird pop gems that are all definitely #1 hits in some alternate, better reality. 

15) Omni - Deluxe . 

14) FFS - FFS . Funny, smart, and touching, this is the “feel good” album of the decade for me. It’s astonishing that Sparks are still doing new things this late into their career, and this is perhaps example #1 in an argument for why they should never stop. And has there ever been a better or more gleeful anthem for misanthropes than “Piss Off”?

13) Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!! / Ultraviolence 

12) Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition . More stressful than a Safdie Brothers film.

11) Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

10) David Bowie - Blackstar . I remember James telling me he almost woke me up in the middle of the night & said to me, “Maria, David Bowie died. What are we going to do?” I still don’t know what we’re doing. 

9) Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly / DAMN. We all know that pretty much everything Kendrick does is brilliant, but to choose just one, I’ll go with “HUMBLE.” and its video in particular. I C O N I C

8) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree . “Girl in Amber” = best Nick song of the 2010s. I won’t be discussing this further. 

7) Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel… . Raw, beautifully sparse, and far greater a risk than it ever needed to be. I can’t think of an album from the past decade that was more singular. 

6) Moonface - Julia with Blue Jeans On . “November 2011” is a Nick Cave-caliber love ballad, and the whole album sounds like it was composed by a deranged, fur-clad poet sitting in a room filled with frayed paperbacks and nothing else. 

5) The Antlers - Burst Apart . My tastes are suspect at times, but I honestly cannot believe this was excluded from the major end-of-decade music lists. Perhaps the trio’s most unique, mature, and consistent release. A respite from the trauma of Hospice but not yet at the same level of peace as Familiars, but heck, all three are fucking tremendous. 

4) Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent . I really don’t know what I can say about Protomartyr, because all my praise of them is so effusive that you won’t believe that any band could be so perfect. But guess, what, they are and Relatives in Descent is a flawless record. I don’t understand how Greg Ahee isn’t being praised to the heavens for his staggering guitar playing, and Joe Casey is of course an all-around great, a poet and genius frontman -- a brilliant concoction of Nick Cave, Mark E Smith, and woke, Midwestern Dad. 

3) Suede - Night Thoughts / The Blue Hour . I can tell you in absolute seriousness that Night Thoughts changed my life. It made me overcome fears, introduced me to new friends, and distracted me from the drudgery of everyday life. Sometimes I sing “I Don’t Know How to Reach You” to myself as I search for missing books at work, and nine times out of 10 this method somehow works. The Blue Hour wasn’t as pivotal to me, but albumwise it was even bolder and more ridiculous, so it’s still earned my eternal respect. It also partially led to me befriending one of my favorite authors, so flying many miles to see this band and be in the presence of my other fave woke Dad seems pretty well justified to me. There may have been more relevant records in the 2010s, but none were as personally significant to me as these, and that’s worth all the relevance in the world.  2) Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest . Any album with a song inspired by a Dennis Cooper short story is going to rate very highly on a list by me. That the song, “Helicopter,” also happens to be my favorite single of the 2010s is just a bonus. Holding a well-justified classic status means there’s little I can say about Halcyon that hasn’t already been said. These songs will live on long after we’re all dead, and future alien races will still be worshipping “Coronado” in all its sax-laden glory. Dark, dreamy brilliance. 

1) PJ Harvey - Let England Shake / The Hope Six Demolition Project . We all (hopefully) know that Let England Shake is a work of art, but where is the love for Hope Six? I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard anything quite like it, yet it sounds like a pure PJ record all the same: the bluesy-ness (here melded with saxes and martial drumming), the Flood co-production, PJ’s peerless vocals. Sometimes the songs take on the qualities of battle hymns yet carry a fierce and critical political undertones. Two records of bold, wholly unique protest music done with the focus and care that so much politlcal music - and politics in general - overlooks. And they somehow sound even better with each listen. If I have one wish for this new decade, it’s that everything will be more like this in every sense. And if we can’t have that, there will at least hopefully be another equally brilliant PJ record instead.