The2010s is music journalism at its deepest and most thoughtful. In an era of instant reactions, hot takes and public relations disguised as criticism, we’ve tried to craft a site that moves at its own deliberate pace. We’ve interviewed Grammy winners, collected and dissected the best music of the last decade and garnered tens of thousands of listens on our podcast. Now, we’re asking for your support. Before you check out our recommendations, please go to our Patreon page and consider chipping in a few bucks. We’ve got perks from custom made playlists to behind the scenes content and are honored to have your support.
Dogsbody - Model/Actriz
My on going joke for Dogsbody is “somehow even more sexually repressed Nine Inch Nails.” And while that’s an icebreaker for NYC industrial psychos Model/Actriz, it undersells the monumental force they conjure and exude. Dogsbody ripples with uncomfortable, shuddering noise, guitars that sound threatened by icepicks, drums clattering down stairways, bass throbs that have more in common with richter scale rumbles than melody. And there’s the disturbing charisma of Cole Haden, his come-ons and meditations fluctuating wildly between half remembered murmurings and piercing screams. On single “Amaranth,” he slides into a gorgeous hook that flutters in his silvery high range before the song crashes back down into the abyss. If you feel a cult like fever, don’t worry, you’re not the only one.
Colours of the Air - Lawrence English and Loscil
My introduction to Aussie ambient curator Lawrence English came when he acted as the anchor to ambient prankster William Basinski. English brought the verve and the terror, Basinski provided the melody and eccentricity to 2018’s excellent Selva Oscura. But he may have found an even better partner in Pacific Northwest mistlord loscil. On Colours of Air, the duo strip, replicate, flip and decimate sound from a century old pipe organ in English’s hometown of Brisbane, conjuring remarkable moments from the ancient machine. Opener “Cyan” flitters about with silvery flecks of sound speckling the song, “Violet” thuds mightily thanks to the pumping air that shoots through the rhythm track. And there is the all encompassing “Black,” the album’s centerpiece and an early frontrunner for song of the year. Over nearly nine minutes, a creeping, welcoming warmth streams from English and loscil, their fingers coaxing out radiance.
Maps - billy woods and Kenny Segal
Here’s a short list of things billy woods will enjoy while he’s skipping soundcheck: sunsets from a parapet, spliffs that remind him of “Jamaican oranges that look like limes” and listening to Cam’ron in Bruge while flirting and calling it “diplomacy.” He’s got no time for the practice or the pantomime, he’s too busy living life. Maps, the second collab between woods and LA producer Kenny Segal strikes a more vibrant tone than their last, the shuddering Hiding Places. The duo chart a trek around the world, with shows from Brooklyn to Bratislava, woods the most vulnerable he’s ever been. This is a fine introduction to his thorny world. Still, he can’t help but go into doomsayer mode occasionally. Over a blossoming orchestra booming out like the shockwave from an IED, woods shouts his thesis: “I lied down like V.I. Lenin/ People don't want the truth, they want me to tell 'em grandma went to heaven.”
forest spirit, sun on your back - forest spirit, sun on your back
Distortion can hide a lot. From misplaced chords to tricksy vocals, it’s a common technique to put guitar squeal back into its amp and let the wash of feedback encase all imperfections. But, really good bands know how it can also accent pop excellence. Welcome forest spirit, sun on your back to the rarefied air of Dinosaur Jr. and Ovlov where waves of distortion are a hook’s best friend. From thrashing punk detours (“Crash!!!!!!!!! Burn!!!!!!!!”) wistful folk yarns (“Yerach ben yomo”) and a surprise turn into 5/4 pop perfection (“Out of Season”) forest spirit’s self-titled isn’t just the year’s best debut album, but brilliant on its own terms, no caveats, or distortion, needed to hide it.
Desire I Want to Turn Into You - Caroline Polachek
Caroline Polachek’s debut, Pang, was a reflection of a rich, overly intoxicating internal world. She watched the ripples through her own mind in flinching reaction of external stimuli. Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is only stimuli. A climaxed, maximalist pop wrecking ball, Desire has Polachek inhabiting the bodies and minds of centuries of divas, recasting herself in the leading role each time.
Seeking the Sources of Streams - Cicada
Sometimes you find a pretty album. And sometimes you find an album so beautiful you break down in tears. Taiwanese quartet Cicada play a heartfelt and heart wrenching style of chamber-folk, predicated on an gracious sense of restraint. Sly woodwinds, floating guitars, cascading pianos and graceful violins all egg each other on to become more gorgeous, more enthralling. Though many of these songs stretch out beyond the 9-minute mark, none of it feels overlong. If anything, it feels like life: so, so long and much too short. (Read our interview)
Yonder - Arbor Labor Union
Yonder; it’s over there somewhere. Or over when, either way, it’s just ‘round the corner. There’s a pleasantly surreal implication to Yonder, the word, and Yonder, the album. The same could be said for the merry band of rabble rousers who gesture you yonder. Atlanta guitar gardeners Arbor Labor Union play rapid psych country like the Grateful Dead with a stopwatch, ripping through post-punk flavored twang. There’s no Cheshire Cat smirk to their reality-bending notions, just a grin and a high dive into a labyrinth of intwining guitars and dime-turn tempo shifts. So, let’s follow them. Yonder.
Cyclamen - Nuria Graham
Núria Graham’s Cyclamen is a burst of beautiful, quirky charm. Graham tiptoes across jazz influences, folk musings and outright surrealism, all delivered with a bizarre smile. The cyclical motions of “The Catalyst” or “It’s Me, The Goldfish!” are gleaming puzzleboxes to unlock over dozens of listens, all while they worm into the subconscious.
A fate worse than home - Iravu
In HP Lovecraft’s The Outsider, madness comes from reflection, an understanding of the self. Iravu inverts the fear that made Lovecraft so detestable into acceptance. Through progressive, in all senses of the word, metal, Iravu soars through a sci-fi concept album that shreds with Van Halen-esque guitar solos over blistering drum fills. Acceptance through transcendence.
Gift from the Trees - Mammal Hands
The UK jazz scene seems split between the revelatory meditations of post-colonial diaspora, mixing ancestral music with post-bop cuts (Yazz Ahmed, Shabaka Hutchings) and a steely sect fusing electronic noodlings with cool, collected songs indebted to classical. Norwich outfit Mammal Hands is firmly in the second category, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they can’t be warm and expressive. Gift from the Trees, inspired by a stay in the forest of Wales, is as pastoral and grand as the finest ECM releases, Jordan Smart’s immaculate sax playing replicating bird song, the human voice, the rush of wind through the branches of evergreens. Gift from the Trees reaches the rare balance of sounding mystical, unknowable, while still being deeply familiar and welcoming.
Heller Tag - Conic Rose
The internet has wondered for years: who’s more dangerous, a jock that listens to jazz or a buff nerd? I’d like to add a second question: who’s sexier?
Berlin outfit Conic Rose are firmly in the former category, combining lo-fi beats, nu-jazz smoothness and a pinch of Radiohead-esque rock to give the songs a jagged edge. What’s remarkable about Heller Tag is how dexterous the album is. Adorable crooners like the title track are slotted next to pulsating workout fodder like “Gleisdreieck” and classical inspired summer jam “Chopin Rosé.” So who’s sexier? Heller Tag answers.
Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century - mui zyu
Somewhere, a wizard has a panic attack. It’s not an image that fantasy uses often. It feels too close to reality, the terror too mundane to grapple with. But mui zyu doesn’t just wrestle with it, she revels in it. On her solo debut Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century, the British-Hong Kong mastermind unwinds convoluted threads of electronica, warped pop and indie rock into an engrossing, disquieting journey through a fantasy world with all too real horrors. And we interviewed her about it!
Good Lies - Overmono
Distorted, sampled vocals take on an uncanny quality. They soar to impossible heights, sink to depths the throat could never conjure. Without a deft hand, they stray into the cold, calculating, disaffected. Overmono would never. The UK brother act has delivered a deep well of emotional outpouring in the guise of a dance record. Using swelling synths, jittering drum patterns and a sharp ear for undeniable hooks, Good Lies is as wistful as it is danceable, remembering lost connections on drunken nights just before the dawn rises. And the voices the duo plucks, stretches and refines begin to sound even more human, drawing out the most thrilling moments of heartbreak and epiphany from the samples.
L'Oiseau Magnifique by Alice
Considering my French lands somewhere between terrible and nonexistent, it’s easy to feel like I’m missing out on a joke. But the whackadoo majesty of three part harmonies over cheesy synths cannot be misunderstood. The Swiss trio Alice have delivered an album between Grimms Fairytales and a series of dirty inside jokes, all accented by the most charismatic voices of the year.
Limerence - Jessica Winter
There’s a theory that limerence, the onset of sudden, rushing, all consuming love, is a sort of push to get us out of the mundane. Nothing like someone suddenly carbonating your blood to get you out of a routine. For Jessica Winter, her boy toys aren’t the ones creating that obsession, she says as much in “Clutter” where her paramore does not spark joy. Instead, she seems to have fallen head over heels for pop music itself. Limerence is pop maximalism polished to a blinding shimmer. With hints of Charlie XCX and Gaga, but with a confidence all her own, Winter is the next diva in waiting if Limerence makes your blood rush like it did mine.
Dean Johnson is going to acting school. Though, based on the wistful charisma he dispenses across Nothing for Me, Please, he’s already aced the classes. Johnson’s homespun tales and folky detours are pleasant on a surface level, but hide depths of acidic wit, caustic enough to melt at the slightest touch.
Le Cri du Caire - Le Cri du Caire
The sounds of war are ugly, garish, brutal, final. The sounds of protest are the same, but beautiful as well. French-Egyptian jazz quartet Le Cri Du Caire creates the song of a slow riot, filtered through minimalist compositions and a stunning, star-making turn from lead singer Abdullah Miniawy. Miniawy is a prophet, an orphan, a country, all in a few bars of his wailing voice rising above the swirling noise below.
No Highs - Tim Hecker
The centerpiece of drone master Tim Hecker’s newest album is called “Anxiety” and uh–yeah it’s exactly that. No Highs signals a return to the frost cold electronics that dominated his early work (alongside his scoring gigs) with additional muscle. Thanks to saxophone wizard Colin Stetsons adding brutal strength to the proceedings, No Highs pulses, convulses and still keeps meticulous time, unfurling into the mist, daring us to follow it into the whiteout.
V - Unknown Mortal Orchestra
How Unknown Mortal Orchestra ended up being one of the most influential rock bands of the last decade probably leaves UMO baffled as the rest of us. Catchy, but insular, charismatic, but hermetic, UMO deflected outright hits by pairing singles with krautrock jams and spiraling drug trips between. But despite its runtime and penchant for instrumental jams, V might be the Portland outfit’s best yet. Ringleader Ruban Nielson’s fascination with the studio rats of the 1970s has yielded the strung out cousin of Todd Rundgren. While Rundgren painted in vibrant, pastel tones, Nielson wields his guitar for darker tones, caustic self-loathing paired with spiky solos and crushing sadness.
Agatha 2 - Kerkko Koskinen, Linda Fredriksson & UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra
As discussed elsewhere in this list, there’s smooth jazz that recalls a summer night with a glass of red wine in hand, a lover’s breath on your lips. Then there’s jazz that compels all listeners to rob a bank. Agatha 2 from the UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra certainly can be smooth, but in the same rakish way James Bond, Lupin the III or the Oceans gang are. There’s an impish quality to the suaveness, always teetering on the edge. With trappings of Romantic era chamber music, the Cowboy Bebop score, Agatha 2 aims to rescore an imaginary version of The Sting, gamblers, ramblers and madmen bursting from every corner.
Ψευδομένη - Ὁπλίτης
Backstory that isn’t backstory: Hoplites (or the Greek above) appears to be a one-man outfit based out of China, obsessed with an ancient Greek serpent cult. But mysterious backgrounds can only go so far (remember Ghost Bath?) you need tunes. And Hoplite has delivered a hellacious salvo to open the year. The album can generally be called black metal, but the albums it recalls have a lot less to do with its inherent sound and more with the emotions it brings up. The serpentine riffs that spiral inward over thunderous drums remind me of my own bafflement at Imperial Triumphant or Deathspell Omega and a smart decision to often eschew blast beasts and instead pummel the ears with an avalanche of more punk-ish drum work grounds even the most esoteric passages in a deliciously thrashy mood.
Mirage - Mohs.
Smooth as fresh silk, cool as the other side of the pillow. As opposed to the meditative qualities of Mammal Hands, Swiss jazz outfit mohs. has little interest in the more introspective forms of post-bop. Instead, like fellow central Europeans Conic Rose, their methodology comes from supreme confidence and tranquility. And they’ve earned that near arrogance with a record as sensuous and sensual as Mirage.
Sus Dog - Clark
So you were just hiding that perfect tenor this whole time?
Long tenured electronic producer Clark has unfurled wintery landscapes for well over two decades, but it’s just now that he’s added his voice to the mix. And it’s a stunning, completing addition to his thrumming work. Though Thom Yorke’s guest spot and producer credit might grab the headlines, it really can’t be stated how flawless Clark’s warm mewl comes across, even as he unleashes pounding, pulverizing beats like “Town Crank.” With a brilliant heel turn, Clark doesn’t just reprove his dance bonafides, but also submits a compelling testament as a stunning, fresh art pop voice.