It's nearly the end of the decade, and like many others I've decided to compile a list of my favourite albums of the last ten years. Before the list, a couple of quick points. Firstly, this is not a critical list, it's a personal one. It is a list of the albums I've enjoyed the most or that remind me of something positive and nice. Secondly, this was harder than I thought - there were a few periods over the decade where I didn't listen to a whole lot of new music, and so probably missed out on some stone cold classics. Thirdly, when I started making this list in my head, I was horrified to learn that albums I thought of as being just a few years old were released well before 2010. Time flies as you get older, I guess. Finally, the only real rule I set myself was to include only one album per artist.
So here's the list. I've also made a YouTube playlist and a Spotify playlist of the best tracks from each one (where available).
40. Phoenix - Ti Amo (2017)
This is a great party album – and by that I mean it’s a great album to stick on at parties – there’s a familiarity about many of the tunes here, but not in a “wonder what they ripped off” kind of a way. I listened to this a lot when I was in my final year of Uni in 2018, and has remained a favourite ever since. Full of life and love, it's a really uplifting record and at a running time of 36 minutes over ten tracks, it's the perfect length and doesn't outstay its welcome.
Best track - J-Boy
Listen on Spotify
39. Parquet Courts - Wide Awake! (2018)
Maybe not their most celebrated album - but definitely their most absurd and probably their most fun. An old friend of mine once coined the term 'danceably alternative', and it's a descriptor that fits here. During the summer of 2018 I had gotten into the habit of walking to work, which took me around 38 minutes, or almost the exact length of this album. I challenge you to stick it on and not feel the urge to dance around.
Best track - Freebird II
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38. Sia - This Is Acting (2016)
I was torn between this album and 2014's 1000 Forms of Fear, but my wife Amanda said this was better, so that's what I've gone for. Sia was rarely off the stereo at many house parties I attended between 2015 and 2017, and I have a vivid memory of being in somebody's stone cold living room during the winter months while somebody drunkenly and persistently yelled from the corner of the room, "Alexa, play Sia, Cheap Thrills", and Alexa not having a clue what they were on about.
Best track - Cheap Thrills
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37. The National - High Violet (2010)
It’s almost a given that The National would feature on this list, there are not many men my age who haven't enjoyed at least some of their work. Personally I’ve dipped in and out over the years, and High Violet was probably the last National album that I really got into – I don’t have much in the way of critical platitudes to bestow on it but it reminds me of sitting in the dark playing video games in the living room of my old flat.
Best track - Bloodbuzz Ohio
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36. St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION (2017)
By this point in time, Annie Clark has become something of a force of nature. This is my favourite of her albums as St. Vincent, it's a great pop record even though it still feels raw - with uptempo hits as well as some really beautiful piano ballads. 'Happy Birthday, Johnny' is a particular stand out, with a melody that tries to remain positive in spite of the stark reality of the lyrics. 'Los Ageless' is great too, and will go down as something of a modern alt-pop classic.
Best track - Los Ageless
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35. John Grant - Queen of Denmark (2010)
John Grant has a voice like a mug of rich hot chocolate, a warm baritone so comforting that you can feel every word wrapping around you in a close embrace. His sense of humour is matched by his ability to tug on the heartstrings, and the production and arrangements are as lush as his vocals. Queen of Denmark is the perfect album to lift you when you’re down but also peg you back when high. Stick it on and sink into it.
Best Track - Sigourney Weaver
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34. American Football - 'LP3' (2019)
For the longest time, American Football reminded me a lot of Neutral Milk Hotel. They made a classic album that had already been out for years by the time I heard it, had critical praise lavished on them, and became something of a mythical entity with no sign of a follow-up. American Football’s second LP in 2016 came as something of a surprise then – almost two decades had passed since LP1 in 1999, with the band seemingly picking up where they left off. LP2 was the perfect companion to LP1, the follow-up that everyone wanted. In 2019 however they not only repeated the trick, they improved on it and then some. LP3 is a bold release, one of those albums that hasn’t been with us for all that long but feels like it might be with us forever.
Best track - Uncomfortably Numb (feat. Hayley Williams)
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33. Mogwai - RAVE TAPES (2014)
I might get kicked out of the country for this, but I can't claim to be a huge Mogwai fan and I don't know their catalogue nearly as well as I should. I mean, I own a copy of Come On Die Young but so does every Scottish indie fan of a certain age. RAVE TAPES really captured my imagination however - it is full of interesting loops and samples, including a haunting spoken word sample from a public information film warning against the dangers of communism ('Repelish'). I've also really enjoyed their soundtrack work, particularly their score for the Zidane film, but RAVE TAPES is a really solid piece of work.
Best track - Remurdered
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32. Dream Wife - Dream Wife (2018)
In my teenage years there was a clubnight my friends and I regularly attended – it was called Felt and run by a guy called Dave who I’m still pals with to this day. Felt was a great place for discovering music – there’s plenty of bands that I like now because I first heard Dave spinning their tunes at Felt. The last proper Felt clubnight was over a decade ago now (I think), but to this day I still occasionally hear bands and think “man if they were around in the Felt days they’d get played all the time”. For some reason, Dream Wife are one of those bands. Whether Dave likes them or not I have no idea, but bizarrely I am now reminded of those days whenever I listen to this album. It’s as good as a debut album you’ll hear.
Best track - Hey Heartbreaker
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31. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks (2010)
I feel like Ted Leo is vastly underrated in the realm of punk rock songwriting, several of the band's records are near flawless pieces of work (see Hearts of Oak from 2002 and Shake The Sheets from 2004). It was always going to be hard to follow those two classic albums however, and 2007's Living With The Living did not represent Ted Leo's best work. Thankfully The Brutalist Bricks was something of a return to form, even if it didn't quite hit the heady heights of the band's early 2000s output. To date there have been no more Pharmacists albums (although Ted himself has released some solo work), and it's not a bad album to wrap up the band's discography with, if it does prove to be their last one.
Best track - Bottled In Cork
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30. Zeus - Say Us (2010)
Zeus released their debut album on legendary Canadian label Arts & Crafts, home to acts such as Feist, Broken Social Scene, Gord Downie and Dan Mangan, which is how I think I first heard of them. This album is filled with catchy, sixties-influenced indie, perfect for a summers day, and reminds me in particular of the summer of 2010 when I was moving house.
Best track - The River By The Garden
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29. United Fruit - Fault Lines (2011)
United Fruit burst onto the Scottish alt/indie scene in the early part of the decade and were well known for their energetic live shows. They announced their arrival proper however with Fault Lines, which is as good a Scottish indie debut as you're likely to hear. I was lucky enough to see them live a few times around the album's release and I was always impressed with how effortless and mature their music sounded - you'd think they were fifteen year veterans, not a young band on their first LP. I revisited the album when compiling this list as it had been a few years since I had listened to it, and I was pleased that it was still as punchy and immediate as I remembered.
Best track - Go Away, Don't Leave Me Alone
Listen on Bandcamp
28. Gord Downie - Introduce Yerself (2017)
When Gord Downie died from brain cancer in 2017 I felt the loss almost as keenly as if I’d known the man in person. As lead singer and lyricist for The Tragically Hip, his words, music and voice played a huge part in my life, and the manner in which he passed seemed only to amplify it as a heartbreaking event. It went without notice here but Canada grieved for him en masse. Hundreds of thousands turned out to watch public screenings of the band's final concert. It was a huge moment. Introduce Yerself was released posthumously, and works as a beautiful epitaph – an album written about the people in his life, a snapshot of those who meant the most to him or who had a particular on him over the years. What a lovely thing to leave behind.
Best track - A Natural
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27. Dan Mangan - Oh Fortune (2011)
I forget how I first became aware of Canadian songwriter Dan Mangan - it may have been a recommendation from a friend but I honestly can't recall. The first album of his I truly loved was 2009's Nice, Nice, Very Nice, but Oh Fortune is probably his most ambitious and accomplished work. It is more expansive than it's predecessor while his gravelly voice works its way around his lyrics just as delicately as it had on previous releases.
Best track - Post-War Blues
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26. Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger In The Alps (2017)
Phoebe Bridgers could easily have appeared on this list three times with three different acts - the other two being her collab with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, Boygenius, who put out a brilliant EP in 2018, and Better Oblivion Community Centre, the band she formed in 2019with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes fame. It is her 2017 debut that deserves to be recognised however, a real songwriter's album. Bridgers is something of a prodigy, an indie darling, and was completely deserving of the accolades that came her way, and will likely keep coming.
Best track - Scott Street
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25. Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid (2010)
I was pretty late to the Janelle Monáe party but once I got there I was pretty much all in. I first came across her through her collaboration(s) with Grimes, and 2018s Dirty Computer was one of my favourite albums of that year. The ArchAndroid maybe pips it a little however, it’s a hugely accomplished debut and a concept album of impressive scope and ambition. Hell of a way to lay down a marker.
Best track - Tightrope (feat. Big Boi)
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24. Blind Pilot - We Are The Tide (2011)
"Blind Pilot" might be one of my favourite band names of all time, and We Are The Tide is a beautiful lilting folk-rock gem of an album. One of the strange things about memory is how wrong it can often be - We Are The Tide reminds me of a flat that I moved out of a whole year before it was even released, it was a surprise to learn it was released in 2011 and not the year before. I always feel that music is a great way of keeping memories alive, even if it gets it wrong sometimes.
Best track - Half Moon
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23. The Hazey Janes - The Winter That Was (2011)
It might seem a bit self indulgent to include an album that I personally appeared on, but I guarantee my contribution here was minimal at best and had no bearing on the quality of this album. The Hazey Janes are an enigmatic and richly talented band from Dundee, and have long been an integral part of the city's musical fabric. In 2010 I was lucky enough to be asked to be part of a choir which appeared on this album - we recorded the parts in a large church hall, and got to perform live with the group, on an admittedly tiny stage. Being even a small part of Dundee's recorded musical heritage was incredibly thrilling, but the album is great anyway and would merit inclusion anyway. Sublime indie-pop.
Best track - Girl in the Night
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22. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial (2016)
Car Seat Headrest are one of those bands that were always just ‘under the radar’ for me – I had been aware of Will Toledo’s Bandcamp releases and subsequent cult following for some time but I’ll admit it took me a while to fully get on board. This was the first Car Seat Headrest release that really got me, I thought 'Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales' was properly anthemic, causing me (and others) to draw comparisons with early Weezer - nerdy indie rock with big choruses. I was fully won over however when I saw them live in 2019, I wasn’t prepared for just how huge the band sounded and I got completely swept up in the moment. I feel like if I was about twenty years younger, Car Seat Headrest would have been as huge to me as another band who will appear further along this list.
Best track - Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales
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21. Kanye West - Yeezus (2013)
This was the first Kanye album I got into, which means I have always preferred it to his more celebrated works. It turns out that there are plenty of people who regard this as his best however, it's probably his weirdest and most experimental record. Kanye as an artist seems to be able to transition seamlessly from the sublime to the ridiculous, often in the space of the same song, but there's very little filler on Yeezus which is why I probably like it so much.
Best track - Black Skinhead
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20. Charli XCX - Pop2 (2017)
I’m still unclear on the difference between an album and a mixtape. Pop2 by Charli XCX is described as a mixtape but I think the lines have blurred somewhat. I might ruminate on this further but on the other hand I might just stop right here with the realisation that I am completely unqualified to discuss it further. Anyway, I love Charli XCX. I loved her when I first heard ‘I Love It’ on a TV ad. I loved her more when I first heard ‘Boom Clap’, and it was all solidified the first time I heard Pop 2. Charli feels like a force of nature. She’s the most interesting pop act in the UK right now, and her 2019 self-titled album is brilliant too.
Best track - Track 10
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19. Marmozets - Knowing What You Know Now (2018)
Something that I will always appreciate is a loud, relentless rock and roll album - the sort of record that barely lets up and fires riff after riff at you. Marmozets' second album does just that - the opening four tracks are positively breathless and the riffs are massive. It's kind of math-rock but not quite, with a production sheen that keeps everything tight but doesn't dilute the energy. In this sense it reminds of Foo Fighters' 1997 album The Colour and the Shape, radio-friendly choruses with loud guitars. Both albums were produced by Gil Norton, and he seems to have worked his magic in giving Marmozets a sense of authenticity to go with the big sound.
Best track - Habits
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18. Marilyn Manson - The Pale Emperor (2015)
Marilyn Manson was my favourite band as a teenager, but following the release of 2007's insipid Eat Me, Drink Me I stopped keeping tabs on his career, which seemed to be spiralling out of control as Manson had parted ways with all of the band mates that made albums like Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar essential listening in the late 1990s. Enter 2015 and an unexpected collaboration with Tyler Bates - better known for his film scores (Guardians of the Galaxy). Manson and Bates met on the set of Californication, the David Duchovny vehicle which was scored by Bates and featured Manson guest-starring as himself in a few episodes. The result is the stoner/goth/rock stomper I felt Manson always had in him somewhere. It's not perfect - it tails off towards the end, and some of Manson's lyrics come across like a teenager wrote them in red ink on the inside cover of a school book, but there's still more than enough here to eclipse the mediocrity of his more recent output. The renaissance continued in 2017 with Heaven Upside Down, not nearly as good as this album but still mostly quite listenable.
Best track - The Mephistopholes of Los Angeles
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17. Stella Donnelly - Beware of the Dogs (2019)
Stella Donnelly is an Australian singer-songwriter and Beware of the Dogs is her debut album. It is a wonderfully well put together collection of songs and probably my favourite of 2019. I got to see her live at Green Man Festival in Wales this summer, and was hugely impressed by her performance. She has a ton of charisma and has the musical chops to back it up too. Her lyrics in particular are very clever, addressing some very zeitgeisty topics with charm, wit, and where needed, solemnity.
Best track - Tricks
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16. Fat Goth - Mindless Crap (2010)
Fat Goth were mates of mine, and enjoyed an epic eight year run which all started with this, their first LP. As well as being good friends of mine, they were genuinely my favourite band for a while, following this album up with a couple of great EPs and eventually producing a few more accomplished long players once time and budget allowed. I've gone with Mindless Crap for this list due to its feral immediacy, wicked humour, obvious Beatles influence, and the fact that it was barely off my stereo for a long period of time.
Best track - Cheryl Hole
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15. Eels - Tomorrow Morning (2010)
Given their impact on my life, it would almost be weird for me to omit Eels from an album list covering such a long period of time, but the reality is that Eels' best work took place during the 90s and 00s, and it almost feels like a stretch to include one from the 10s. Almost, but not quite. Tomorrow Morning appeared almost as a breath of fresh air, something a little different from E and co. Casting aside the bluesy alt-rock of 2009's Hombre Lobo, and the bare bones heartbreak of End Times - also released in 2010 - Tomorrow Morning consists of stripped back electronic arrangements, and forms part of a neat little trilogy of LPs which culminated here, with the most optimistic album of the three.
Best track - That's Not Her Way
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14. Pensioner - Yearlings (2011)
Pensioner were an excellent Scottish math-rock combo who also happened to be made up of my friends and flatmates, so I was around for much of the writing and putting together of this fine collection of brilliantly named tunes. My proximity to its creation may suggest bias towards its inclusion on this list but it is an objectively great record, the fruition of a lot of hard work, and it filled me with immense pride for my mates. I was also lucky enough to tag along on many of their out of town gigs, which means this album holds an extra special place for me, it was a period of my life where every other weekend seemed like a big adventure and I loved every minute of it.
Best track - Annannannawiddecombe
Listen on Bandcamp ¦ Spotify
13. The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck (2011)
After years of building a cult following based off the back of very lo-fi recordings, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats kicked it up a notch and ditched the boom box for an actual recording studio. He also ditched the fictional characters and released several albums of deeply personal material, covering his addiction to intravenous methamphetamine (We Shall All Be Healed) and life with an abusive step-father (The Sunset Tree). More recent work tends to straddle the line between the real and the fictional however, as Darnielle solidified himself as the most prolific indie rock songwriter in America. Every new Mountain Goats album has something different to offer from its predecessors, and All Eternal's Deck is one of the finest works in a discography that now stretches to thirteen full length albums. It was tough including just one Mountain Goats album, with Beat The Champ (2015) and Goths (2017) also big favourites of mine.
Best track - Damn These Vampires
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12. Chris T-T & The Hoodrats - The Bear (2013)
After a twenty year career which saw him release ten albums, Chris T-T unexpectedly announced he was giving up his music career in 2017. As shocked and saddened as many were, it summed his work up perfectly - for he was an artist that always seemed in complete control of his words, his music, and his creative direction. The Bear is my favourite of his albums, a perfect slice of upbeat indie rock that deserved a far wider audience than it probably got.
Best track - A Beaten Drum
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11. Craig Finn - We All Want The Same Things (2017)
You know, there isn’t a Hold Steady album on this list but there could easily have been three Craig Finn albums, which doesn’t say much other than eventually the bands you love will stop making music that grabs you in the same way it did when you were in your early twenties. Is that because the music is less good? Or have your tastes changed? Circumstances being different doesn’t mean they are necessarily better or worse, only different. The Hold Steady were hugely important to me – they were a band that my friends and I all loved. But when I looked back through their discography I was somewhat surprised to see that they hadn’t released an album in this decade that I thought was all that good. 2019s Thrashing Thru The Passion is something of a return to form, but it still feels too fresh to include on this list. Thankfully, Craig Finn, The Hold Steady’s animated frontman and chief lyricist, has embarked on a fruitful solo career, and is producing LPs that are just as interesting as anything the Hold Steady put out in the mid-2000s, albeit with a different energy. This is the best of Finn’s solo output, and at its centerpoint is ‘God In Chicago’, one of the most beautiful pieces of rock songwriting I’ve ever heard and one of the most cinematic songs ever written, grand in narrative if not arrangement. If you only listen to one song from these forty albums, make sure it’s ‘God In Chicago’, and then maybe pour yourself a large drink.
Best track - God In Chicago (obviously)
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10. Soccer Mommy - Clean (2018)
I can relate a lot to Sophie Allison, aka Soccer Mommy. I have spent many hours recording sad songs about relationships in my bedroom, although I have never come close to putting together something as accomplished as this album. It is a classic ‘songwriters’ album, one where every lyric, every fingerpicked note, is chosen with great care.
Best track - Your Dog
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9. Withered Hand - New Gods (2014)
New Gods is one of those albums that keeps you completely hooked from start to finish. There's not a bad song on here, with every track offering something a bit different while still forming part of a coherent whole. Dan Willson's delicate vocals work their way around some wonderful melodies and arrangements, all with heartfelt sincerity underpinned by a wry sense of humour. It's an awesome record, and my favourite Scottish album of the decade.
Best track - Horseshoe
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8. Caroline Rose - LONER (2018)
Caroline Rose seems like she’d be a good laugh, and I think she’d be a really interesting person to spend some time with. LONER took me a few listens to really get into but once I started to appreciate its shape and style I fell in love with it. ‘Soul No 5’ is the catchy number, but there’s a great mix of character-based storytelling (‘Jeannie Becomes A Mom’) and satirical social commentary (‘Bikini’). Rose’s first album was an awkward alt-country effort, but on LONER she has let her quirky personality shine through and I’m really excited to see where she goes next.
Best track - Soul No. 5
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7. Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space (2015)
I've always been fascinated by space, ever since I was a little kid, and the Space Race between the US and the USSR has long been one of my favourite historical periods. It has fascinated and confused me in equal measures, and I've always been taken by the stories of the Space Shuttle program, and the Apollo moon landings which preceded it. I'm also a fan of melodic indie rock, as evidenced by most of this list, and so you can imagine my delight when these two interests were fused together in the most wonderful way. The Race For Space is a beautiful through history to the stars, historic soundbites sampled into contemporary arrangements, a quite wonderful achievement. The band followed it up with Every Valley, about the history of Welsh mining communities, before diving into another childhood passion of mine and surfacing with White Star Liner, an EP about the fabled RMS Titanic. If they continue making music about some of my most prominent interests, then I'll be eternally grateful.
Best track - Sputnik
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6. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear (2015)
Josh Tillman’s alter ego, Father John Misty, appears to have somewhat divided opinion in the years since he stepped out from behind the Fleet Foxes drumkit. I suppose I can understand why, the ego often overshadows the intent with Misty and high profile temper tantrums don’t often endear an artist to the undecided. I suppose I like Misty in the same way I liked Marilyn Manson back in the nineties. I was intrigued by the backstory, even though much of it is potentially fabricated or at least exaggerated – I loved the theatrical nature of Manson’s performances as much as I loved the music, and it’s the same with Misty. More than anything else however, the songwriting is just sublime. I could have included any of the four Misty albums on this list, and very nearly plumped for 2018s God's Favourite Customer. Honeybear, however, is an interesting fusion of man and the myth – personal songs about his own relationship with his wife are interspersed with anecdotes of his philandering – and it’s often hard to separate fact from fiction. Which I imagine is how he planned it in the first place.
Best track - Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)
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5. The Menzingers - After The Party (2017)
When The Menzingers released After The Party, I felt the same as I did around a decade earlier when The Hold Steady released Boys and Girls in America. The Hold Steady defined my mid-twenties - still looking for my place in the world, adding a literary spin to everything, and quoting Jack Kerouac while going about it. They were clever, and a great band to get in to if you're a young white dude who thinks he’s clever too. But it takes the passage of time to recognise these things, and it is not until we get a bit older that we can begin to see through the fronts we put on. In that sense, the uncomplicated melodies of the Menzingers are a great fit for those same white dudes a decade later. If The Hold Steady were fantasists, then The Menzingers are realists. They are every bit as literary-conscious as The Hold Steady, but maybe a bit more world-weary, a bit more pragmatic. We have been ground down by the sheer weight of existence over the last ten years or so and unbridled optimism has given way – following a financial crash and years of austerity – to a society more often looking down than up. None of which is to suggest that After The Party is a depressing album, far from it. It is full of reminders of the things that keep us going no matter what, such as friendships, relationships, and the odd Jack Kerouac reference. Above all, what I’ve chosen to take from this album is that it is possible to be acutely aware of how shite everything is without being completely consumed by it. Just because the party is over doesn’t mean there won’t be another one soon.
Best track - Lookers
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4. Japanese Breakfast - Soft Sounds From Another Planet (2017)
Few acts have captivated me over the last few years quite like Japanese Breakfast have. The project of singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner has evolved considerably since her debut Psychopomp and in 2017 she put out this album – an otherworldly-sounding collection of songs delivered with her trademark breathy vocals. The album has range however and feels like a journey through time and space, powered by soaring synths and well-placed guitar riffs. It has probably been one of my most played albums over the last few years and there’s new things to appreciate in it with each listen. I’ve followed Zauner’s career pretty closely – she has gone into filmmaking and has directed a couple of music videos – including that for ‘Boyish’ from this album. Following the viral success of an article she wrote about dealing with her Mother’s death and the Korean-American experience in general, she has been commissioned to write a memoir expanding on the article which I am really looking forward to.
Best track - Machinist
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3. Superorganism - Superorganism (2018)
Every so often an album comes along that takes you completely by surprise. A band appears as if from nowhere but suddenly seems everywhere, bringing with them an album of such sublime quality and weirdness that it feels like it wasn’t recorded in a studio, but put together in a laboratory by a caricature of a mad scientist, complete with comically oversized switches and lightbulbs. Instead, it’s an eight-piece ensemble fronted by a five foot tall Japanese-American woman (Orono Noguchi) whose laconic, cynical vocal delivery seems like an antithesis to the weird chamber-pop surrounding it. Every song on the album is infused with joy, not least the lead single ‘Everybody Wants To Be Famous’ – its three chords and repeated lyrics work so well and is pop songwriting at its best, and most simple.
Best track - Everybody Wants To Be Famous
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2. Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs (2015)
It's a cold winter morning in the library at uni and I've taken a gamble on a Spotify recommendation. All I wanted was some background music while I studied, something to drown out the bubbling chatter that surrounds me, and I wanted something I didn't know too well so as not to distract me. "Based on your listening habits", Spotify tells me, "you may enjoy this album, by Susanne Sundfor". Dear Reader, I enjoyed it so much that I barely got any work done that morning. After the first two tracks I was already finding my focus drifting into the music, but it was during track three, 'Fade Away', that I had to completely stop what I was doing. Sundfor's ethereal vocals were suddenly interrupted by a delightful synth solo introduced by the 'ding' of a typewriter reaching the end of a line. It's a wonderful piece of craftsmanship, and leads on to more wonderful arrangements - a brilliant combination of orchestral moodiness and electro beats. It's an album I am drawn to if I need to hear something comforting and familiar, and I don't meet many people who have listened to it and weren't almost immediately beguiled by it.
Best Track - Fade Away
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1. Grimes - Art Angels (2015)
It’s a Saturday evening, sometime in the year 2012, and my friend Paul has come round to mine for pre-drinks ahead of a night out. He’s sat at the computer in my room being a YouTube DJ as I finish getting ready - and nervously hoping his wandering cursor stays clear of the unmarked folder on my desktop – when he says “Have you ever heard of Grimes? Check this out.” The song he put on was ‘Genesis’, from Grimes’ breakthrough album, Visions. I stopped what I was doing to watch the video and was pretty captivated immediately. The song, with it’s almost unintelligible lyrics and subversive music video, was different from almost anything I’d ever heard before. I hastily downloaded a copy of the album from iTunes and enjoyed the heck out of it. When Art Angels was released in 2015 I had no idea what to expect but it quickly became one of my favourite albums. It’s hard though to find the words to describe just what I love about it. There’s not a bad track on the album and for the longest time it was my go-to LP for listening to in the car on a long-ish journey or kicking off a Saturday night at home. It is a versatile album with so much to discover, from picking out samples that only appear once in a track to learning that 'Kill v Maim' is Grimes’ re-telling of The Godfather, only Michael Corleone is now a shapeshifting gender-fluid space vampire. It sounds ridiculous, but somehow completely fits the song and it's done with complete earnestness. Making a mockery of the ridiculous wouldn't work, and simply isn't Grimes' style. There’s not a bad track on Art Angels and it is most definitely an album that demands repeat listens. When I started thinking about doing a list of my favourite albums of the decade I was pretty certain this would be my number one. It’s a special album, one that will stay with me for a very long time. Here's to the next ten years eh?
Best track - Kill v. Maim
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