The Monitor - Titus Andronicus (XL, 2010)
The expansive kegger-punk of Patrick Stickles' Titus Andronicus tends to revel in loneliness. Often raucous and downright moshable, the lyrical content reflects a man who has come to realize that the only way to get by on a rowdy Saturday night is to dull his senses with drugs and alcohol. While their first studio effort dealt with these neuroses head on, 2010's The Monitor took a more grandiose approach. Part Civil War historical fiction (a country torn asunder as metaphor), part autobiographical recounting of a life spent in the crippling boredom of small town misery, The Monitor seethes like a raw wound with frustration, embarrassment, and abject hate. It opens with a call to arms. This optimistic reframing of deviance as glory descends into laments about alcoholism and artistic stagnation. The album broods, but it also explodes in beautiful moments of catharsis. It's also surprisingly collaborative for such a personal work, and its culmination is a triumphant analysis and beautiful acceptance of a life spent fighting demons and accepting one's own faults. The Monitor finds a man, a band, stretching their legs, aiming for the fences, and firing on all cylinders. - Joey Duke
Mouth Moods - Neil Cicierega (Self-Released, 2011)
How can the entirety of the Internet be made into music? Even though nobody asked, Neil Cicierega sure has strived to provide an answer for the better part of this young century. Something of an online legend, Cicierega got his start at an early age, developing simple computer games with his programmer father in Boston. Later came Animutation and Newgrounds/YouTube classics Potter Puppet Pals and “Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny,” his first real brush with viral success. He continued combining his passions — music, humor, and Internet culture — by way of his Lemon Demon project, the most prolific of his creative aliases. But it is the music Cicierega has made under his own name that secured his place in our best-of-the-decade affair. His Mouth trilogy is a massive achievement, one that overshadows most other recent examples of comedy music, remix music, and mashup music. The meme cup truly runneth over, as Neil uses “All Star,” “One Week,” and “Semi-Charmed Life,” among hundreds of similarly so-bad-they’re-good, inside-joke Internet classics to pitch-perfect effect.
Neil’s third collection, 2017’s Mouth Moods, is his magnum opus. Catchy, bright, and addictive, it simply never falters. On it, he samples Nine Days’ “Absolutely (Story of a Girl),” Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” Foo Fighters’ “Best of You,” Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” and mashes them up with reliable tentpoles “One Week” and “All Star” to create a layered, hilarious, beautiful mix — and that’s all within the first minute of the album. Later, on the aptly titled “Annoyed Grunt,” Neil opens with a Larry King Live soundbite, which yields the Home Improvement theme song, which gives way to a brief duet between Disturbed’s “Down with the Sickness” and Annie Lennox’s “No More I Love You’s,” which of course requires the infamous drum fill from “In the Air Tonight.” Then, to throw us for a loop, he gives us Tim Allen’s confused grunt on top of Homer Simpson’s titular “D’oh!” on top of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime,” Korn’s “Freak on a Leash,” and Rammstein’s “Du Hast.” The track reaches a finale with an Austin Powers “Yeah, baby!” sample underneath Green Day’s “Basket Case” and Van Halen’s “Runnin’ with the Devil.” (I’m sure I missed something.) Best of all he takes Brian Johnson’s gargle-y shouts and drives them like a wooden stake into the chest of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”, on “AC/VC” as ambitious as it is insane.
If any of that sounds appealing, or unappealing, then Mouth Moods is the one for you. - BR/HM
Obsidian - Baths (Anticon, 2013)
Polluted skies make the prettiest sunsets. The toxic particulates reflect light in unnatural purples and reds, making ghastly, transfixing fireworks that poison and astound. That’s the best way to think about Baths Obsidian. Will Wiesenfeld made a majestic heelturn, from Baths’ bubbly debut Cerulean to this lead-heavy crush. Using the visual power of nature, Wiesenfeld aims, not for self-erasure but, self-obliteration. On “Miasma Sky” he coos “tall rock shelf are you maybe here to help me hurt myself?” The ocean growls like a starving beast, the pounding electronics babbling below like misfiring synapses.
But Obsidian is still a pop album, albeit through the lens of complete numbness. Hedonistic displays and baroque strings flow through “Ironworks,” bringing the fucked romanticism to the fore. Wiesenfeld eulogizes first love as “fail your maiden voyage” and follows in highlight “No Eyes” by screaming “And it is not a matter of if you mean it/ it is just a matter of come and fuck me.” It is ugliness realizing itself and wishing for destruction.
And that desire for devastation rears its head in Obsidian’s most vicious tracks. Few rock songs this decade could out muscle “Ossuary,” “Earth Death” or “Phaedra,” even with the heavenly chorus that floats above the industrial pulse. The eerie wonder of Boards of Canada and the fury of Nine Inch Nails are overwhelming, but maximalism was the only way Obsidian could exist. It is an exhausting listen, both for the emotional weariness and the rushing tempos. Its melodrama, beauty and depravity are all absolute. - NS
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Odd Blood - Yeasayer (Secretly Canadian, 2010)
Yeasayer’s Odd Blood is a pop record with mutated DNA. Sticky melodies bubble up from boiling basslines and thick, rubbery percussion. The fumes this music emanates are otherworldly. They burn your eyes and the inside of your nose, but somehow your stomach grumbles with a familiar hunger.
Prior to the release of Odd Blood in 2010, my only exposure to Yeasayer’s work had been through the apocalyptic anthem “2080” from their debut, All Hour Cymbals. The track is a Fleetwood Mac-esque tune tinged with an unmistakable sense of impending doom. The sonic landscape is hazy, a capitalist black hole forming out in the distance.
The sinister undercurrents of All Hour Cymbals are dialed up by a factor of ten on Odd Blood. “Love Me Girl” is a prime example of Yeasayer’s sonic evolution on their sophomore album. Swirling synthesizers circle around thumping kick drums. Shrill bird calls and animalistic squeals pop in and out, with distorted voices chanting the track’s refrain: “Nothing is wrong, what are you scared of?” The lyrics paint vocalist Anand Wilder as a paranoid lover desperately grasping onto the ragged edges of a disintegrating relationship, begging his partner, “squeeze me ‘til I can’t breathe”. It’s an ugly (and often deeply concealed) internal narrative, such that when it’s brought to the surface I feel uncomfortable after realizing how much I relate to it. Time and again on Odd Blood themes of alienation, paranoia, and destruction are weaved into memorable verses and choruses, like gristle stuck in between a couple of pearly whites (see “Madder Red”, “O.N.E.”, and “Mondegreen”).
My dad and I played this album to death in the car, but the times I felt most connected with it were with earbuds in my ears, sitting on the bus to high school. Predictably, during this time I was struggling with a host of personal insecurities. I would look into the mirror and see an acne-covered mess, a face that was morphing constantly. It was hard to love yourself in high school, but the right music could make it easier. Yeasayer revels in a sense of ugliness, uncertainty, and fear on Odd Blood while still managing to be unbearably catchy nearly 10 years later. The term “earworm” has never been more appropriate. With their recently announced breakup, Odd Blood feels all the sweeter, sourer and stickier. - BR
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Once I Was An Eagle - Laura Marling (Ribbon, 2013)
With two Mercury Prize nominations already lashed to her prow, English folk singer Laura Marling set sail in 2012 for her fourth record and discovered Once I Was An Eagle. On this stunning, intimate collection there are certainly standouts among the sixteen tracks—but to skip between only these songs would be the same as fast-traveling through The Oregon Trail.
Yet the journey is not outward. It is no greenhorn cartographer’s jaunt through the splendor of the Great Outdoors. It’s a hike inside. Imagine Walden Pond transported to some secluded Rocky Mountain aerie. Nested in the album’s dawnbreaker intro is Marling’s early morning of the soul, a four-song spiritual travelogue that follows a parabolic flight from divorce to isolation. On the fifth track, “Master Hunter,” pots bang and she rears her voluminous mane. By the closer, the affirmative “Saved These Words,” she has plunged into pensive precipices and soared on updrafts of self-reliance. The Yosemitic motifs, in the music and the lyrics, are potent and seamless, but they remain in service of this voyage of self-discovery and growth.
On this record, a personal meditation suffused with nature, Marling reflects on broken illusions and defies the pulls of gravity and defeat. Once I Was An Eagle never fails to enrapture me. The album has been called long-winded. That may be true. But a long wind blows through many sunless valleys, and over many vertiginous peaks, and sees much in its lifetime. - BP
Over the Garden Wall - The Blasting Company (Mondo, 2016)
And we journey into the unknown. But what will they be singing there to greet us? After listening and watching Over the Garden Wall, it’s still hard to explain. The Cartoon Network mini-series, turned cult classic to straight classic in a few short years, was a longing, autumnal elegy and tapestry of misremembered pasts. Flapper girls giggling along to shape note choirs, beastial operas ringing out over a jukebox, Chris Isaak smirking in the background. And The Blasting Company were our maestros, giddily skipping through time. - NS
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Peasant - Richard Dawson (Weird World, 2017)
After a belching opening of horns, Richard Dawson dives into a brutish, pugnacious look at life in the Kingdom of Bryneich. You can smell the dung, the blood and urine that stained the very air. There is an overwhelming sense of anxiety, a deep-seated need to escape.
And for that escape, he ascends into the ecstatic, but with the full, terrifying out-of-body power ecstasy holds. How else could you describe the Greek chorus gone torch-wielding mob in “Ogre” who chant and crow themselves into a frenzy; happy to sentence a man to death? Same goes for the seemingly polite conversation between townsfolk and a royal messenger on “Scientist,” which is soundtracked by a goddamn Iron Maiden gone Medieval guitar scratch. Is every note covered in dirt? How could it not be, but even there, in the muck, Dawson pulls beauty from the darkest corners of vileness.
Along with the various “miscreants, malingers, dastards and knaves” Dawson follows or possesses, the instruments fluttering around him take on personalities that cackle with energy. His guitar duets with his hovering falsetto, occasionally throwing in a sour note to mark its disagreement. Rhodri Davies’ harp is a spectral visitor haunting the sound and a whole mess of electronic, fuzzing sounds pop in and out like a malfunctioning teleporter is suddenly plopping a modern studio into our ancient setting.
All this is hinting that our very audience might be gently (or not so gently) pulling at the strings of fate. The villagers on “Scientist” have come across some strange contraption that has falling out of the sky, or time, or both. Visions dot our “Ogre”’s dreams of towers of silver piercing the sky, even as he strangles a goose to death. And someone, something, is always watching on. The violins, the harp, Dawson’s own hysteric yowls and coos beam in from somewhere ageless. A friendly cryptid hands a potato off to a luckless traveler, a monk carves the eyes out of a greedy would be robber, raiders from a different world fly in on flaming chariots. Strange, and wonderful, things are afoot.
- NS
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Piñata - Freddie Gibbs&Madlib (Madlib Invazion, 2014)
It’s better than Madvillainy. Just so we can nail our colors (and dignity) to the mast, let’s start there. Madlib’s iconic, abstract outing with MF Doom casts a long shadow on hip-hop, an essential touchstone for any wonky slice of rap post-2004. But Piñata—Piñata is just flawless. A common argument is excellence of experimentation vs excellence of distillation. Madvillainy is the former, Piñata the later. And Piñata does the gangsta, hardnosed rap of the golden age with a modern twist better than any album in the last two decades.
There were rumblings of Freddie Gibbs as Tupac reincarnated back during his midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik mixtape, but it took the dusty, psychedelic soul of Madlib to unlock his true potential. A partial concept album, Piñata follows a Gibbs getting out of jail, taking care of his baby momma and new kid while juggling a budding drug empire. And it’s every ounce as thrilling and cinematic as the Wire and Breaking Bad trappings would suggest. It’s Gibbs vs the World. And it isn’t by decision, it’s a straight KO in the first round. - NS
POST - Jeff Rosenstock (Quoteunquote, 2018)
Oh, the American malaise! How it crawls through our blood stream, the urban boredom is a shadow to be fought with. Jeff Rosenstock wakes the sleeping giant of antidisestablishmentarianism on "USA" in a slow-build rousing chant of monotonous discontent into an explosion of rowdy demands for a new horizon. Rosenstock makes it clear who makes it to the capitalist career ladder on "Yr Throat" and who gets choked in the process. Tallying up a shallow, restrictive worldview, "All This Useless Energy" denotes the futile grind and evaporated exertion as exasperating any hope for comfort or affection. Amidst the dizzying futility, "Powerlessness" frantically kicks in with a dose of mania itching at the rhythm, nervousness serving up strumming guitars and a quick-lipped Rosenstock naughtily rushing through his desires.
The second half of POST- offers a moment to catch your breath to lose yourself. In the tizzy of no strings attached relationships with fictional characters and their actors, Rosenstock reports with losing a sense of self through the emptiness of their love and their visual projections. Idolatry meets its bitter end here against Rosenstock on a piano making plans on getting away from it all.
Chugging along the post-modern battles, Rosenstock keeps the door open for future dreams and relationships on "Melba." The track builds into a rousing reconciliation for a past relationship that needed resuscitation. An admirable pursuit, albeit emotionally futile. "Beating My Head Against A Wall" addresses the self-immolating automatic response that follows after exerting beyond your means for the sake of others. "Let Them Win" offers the more visceral version of this concept with further lamentations and a final battle cry for the pop punk ages.
The album's stand-out track "9/10" reaches to us emotionally exhausted, yet with the sweetest melodies and lyrics in Rosenstock's arsenal. Frantically running around in and out of the zeitgeist zone, Rosenstock truthfully relishes sweet daydreams, stoned subway rides and minding his own business. It's briefly meta by design yet wholly earnest. The majority of times, it's promised you'll be thinking of each other; it's how Rosenstock has carried his listeners over the decades. - Zaine Mohammed
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Prom King - Skylar Spence (Carpark, 2015)
When it came time for me and my now-husband to design our wedding, the playlist for the ceremony and the songs for the DJ to spin on the dancefloor were arguably our most important consideration for the whole event. We're music nerds at heart and song selection is paramount. But when it came to deciding what to do with our processional song, it proved to be one of the easiest choices we ever made: "Fall Harder" by Skylar Spence.
Max Martin, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kesha, Robyn, and The 1975 have spent all decade working tirelessly to come up with the perfect pop album/single, but who knew it would come from the vaporwave kid who used to record as Saint Pepsi and is no longer able to use that name because of a cease & desist letter? Unquestionably one of the best pop records of the decade, the disco-pop fireworks show that Ryan DeRobertis gives us feels like a quantum leap above what he achieved as his old alter-ego. Now singing the songs himself, he uses a deep love of everything from Daft Punk to The Avalanches to craft a dance album made out of your favorite dance albums, Franksensteining it together with neon stitches. From the emotional tremolo-guitar lament "Affairs" to the dreamy mid-tempo instrumental "All I Want" to the rhythm guitar workout "I Can't Be Your Superman", DeRobertis crams so much joy and love into this 41-minute masterpiece that not a second feels wasted. Utterly feel-good, endlessly replayable, and absolutely in love with its own reflection, fans are now slowly learning just how special this Prom King is. - ES