“Queen of Hearts” - Fucked Up (Matador, 2011)
While it's not my favorite work in their catalogue, David Comes to Life is undeniably Fucked Up's Lawrence of Arabia. Massive in scope, grandiose in story, and constantly swinging for the fences. “Queen of Hearts” acts as an introduction to the titular character and the love of his life. Damian Abraham's usual bellows are complemented deftly by the soaring vocals of Cults' Madeline Follin, and what begins here unfurls into a saga the likes of which hasn't been heard since Zen Arcade. - JD
“RICKY” - Denzel Curry (Loma Vista, 2019)
An artist’s victory lap is supposed to be cased in luxury, and maybe a bit of apathy. If the bed of laurels is nice enough, why not take a nap on it? Not for Denzel Curry, who accrued one of the decade’s most impressive CVs. From his early features on Lil Ugly Mane’s Mister Thug Isolation to his commercial break through TA13OO, Curry was defined by a restless energy and a never-ending hunger to one up himself. His mostly freestyled ZUU was his decade closer and held his finest song, “RICKY.” Over a blistering 2 and a half minutes, Curry spits venom and honor in equal amounts. He shouts out his dad who took him to his first shows and the homies who supported him since the days of N64 and nostalgia. ZUU, as an album, was a tribute to the Vice City biting world of Florida rap, but “RICKY” was sheer triumph delivered to and for Curry’s friends and family. - NS
“Riding for the Feeling” - Bill Callahan (Drag City, 2011)
David Berman was a few weeks out from touring when he committed suicide. After disappearing from public life for 10 years, he’d put out a new album under the name Purple Mountains, a hint at his constant unraveling of Americana when he was leading his old band Silver Jews. Drag City, his longtime label, gave a touching eulogy, “we hang onto his every word, even as he is no longer able to continue the conversation.”
Bill Callahan had his own eulogy, but it was written before Berman passed. It was a wake for so many other things too. In 2019, Callahan’s shows would open with a song from his old friend, then play “Riding for the Feeling.” On its face, it’s a touring song. Callahan mumming how “rarely we see another one/ so close and so long” just him and a guitar before a bobbing mass of heads, listening, watching. He wonders if he should take questions, wants someone to ask, “who do you think you are?” just to wring the connection to its fullest. But as the song unspools over four simple chords, a meditation on the road becomes a reflection on everything else. “Riding for the feeling” is slurred over and over again until the syllables crash into each other, a smile creeping up his lips as he admits he’s just “riding for the riding,” long hours in the van just for the next show, long years in the mundane just for the next love, next friend, next explosion. In the end, it’s the search, a constant grasping for some form of connection or a new sensation.
But how the hell are you supposed to get that across in a song? A concert? A life? Berman did it. Did it often. Drag City claimed everything he did was “a recognition of seismic empathy beyond words” in disguise. Callahan rides those seismic waves wonderfully. “Would that have been a suitable goodbye?” Yeah Bill, I think it would be. - NS
“Second Song” - TV on the Radio (Interscope, 2011)
Nine Types of Light and its older brother, Dear Science, are companion pieces, flip sides of the same coin. Both envisioned techno-dystopias, both were filled with hooks, both clutching at agony and ecstasy. But TV on the Radio went all in for euphoria, whether illicit or natural, on Nine Types of Light and the opening track, “Second Song,” was as glorious as they ever got. The rapture, in all senses, promised by “Golden Age” was delivered. - NS
“Sherman is Connector” - Invalids (Friend of Mine, 2012)
Blink-182 reimagined as math-rock. Not in the juvenile humor sense that Blink brought to their sunshine punk, but the sheer energy sparking out of every chord. Invalids, originally made of two mathematical dorks sending impossibly complex rock tunes to each other, merged into some of the decade’s best providers of twinkly riffage. “Sherman is Connector” was their foundational song, a spastic burst of joy with enough color-filled notes to make a Guitar Hero champion short circuit. - NS
“The Shrine/An Argument” - Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop, 2011)
When I first heard “The Shrine/An Argument,” it was paired with the video, in the basement of a party. It was like seeing something that was only known by whispers, a tale that had to be shared or discovered in the night alone. The music video itself is an autumnal papercraft magnum opus, filled with shadowy creatures, amplifying the song’s mythlike build into a frightening and catastrophic vision of antler’d stags and dueling dragons. It works because it has the skeleton already built for it. It works because nothing else would have ever worked. Not for this song.
Everything about the allure of Helplessness Blues-era Fleet Foxes was an ethereal, woodsy darkness, like the stories you’d tell around a campfire. The baroque, nearly nine-minute long “The Shrine/An Argument” is the greatest example of this style, a sprawling epic on par with the more verbose of Joanna Newsom’s work, suffused with dark Americana.
The song covers two distinct movements, the first a paean to change and transition, as the ghostly choral voice of singer Robin Pecknold carries the listener through landscapes familiar to the Fleet Foxes, a wilderness of apple trees and longing, hopelessness and melancholy. It is a land of half-remembrances, apologies, and fountains, somewhere between history and fantasy, of copper pennies and long cold mornings.
The second movement, “The Argument”, is an instrumental battle of clarinets, performed by bandmember Morgan Henderson. It’s dissonant, discordant, cutting against the pianos and strings of the song. Following the somber, reverent march of “The Shrine,” “An Argument” is a winding and whiplash-inducing snarl, alien and angry, like the last green flash of the sun before setting.
That first time I heard it, down in the basement, it felt special. A couple people teared up. Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the number of drinks that we had downed by that time, but it felt magical. Magical like finding a secret that all your friends shared. Magical in the down-to-earth, good folk magic way, something you couldn’t quite understand but needed deeply, something alien and dark and wonderful. - DD
“Shutterbugg”- Big Boi (Def Jam, 2010)
It's strange how following the dissolution of OutKast, everyone was expecting Andre 3000 to be the next big thing in music, perpetually underrating the lyrical miracle that is Big Boi. Not only did Big Boi's true-and-proper solo debut album SIR LUSCIOUS LEFT FOOT: THE SON OF CHICO DUSTY blow away all expectations, his album still holds up nearly a decade after the fact. "Shutterbugg", the thunder banger of a lead single, uses vocoders, synth pads, and clap-bap Scott Storch (really?) beat to go hard on imagined haters and name-check everyone from Wu-Tang to UGK to the Geto Boys. Big Boi started the decade cleaning up and just continues to do so without anyone getting in his way. - ES
“Sleight of Hand with a Melting Key” - Širom (Glitterbeat, 2019)
This song is the reason we didn’t put genre tags down. Širom don’t make traditional Slovenian music. They don’t make traditional anything. The trio came from a slate of diverse backgrounds, playing in metal, punk and post-rock bands before deciding to expand into the world of the imaginary. “Sleight of Hand with a Melting Key,” their finest, can best be described as Steve Reich composes a folk opera. The minimalist themes are prevalent, the repetitious phrasing slowly evolving over the nearly quarter hour run time, running and flowing like the path of a river. - NS
“Slow Burn” - Kacey Musgraves (UMG, 2018)
Some songwriters know how to grab your attention before they even hit their first note. Kacey is one of those for me. The strummed chords in the intro to “Slow Burn” set the stage for an album defined by bittersweet reflection. Her lyricism is comforting in its simplicity. As “Slow Burn” progresses, you’re taken through a tour of a drifting mind. Seemingly unrelated thoughts flow together to paint a portrait of a woman trying to remind herself that things are going to be okay.
For the longest time, I couldn’t describe exactly why Golden Hour was such a formative record for me in 2018. Now, listening to “Slow Burn” for the 1000th time, I’ve realized that I desperately yearned for Kacey’s groundedness, her humility, and her ability to slow down. The latter end of this decade has been a complete disaster for me and a lot of other millennials. We’re reaching adulthood within political and ecological climates which work against us. It’s as if we’re chasing some invisible, ill-defined sense of security that may never come. With “Slow Burn”, Kacey gives us an open invitation to stop and “let the world turn”. I never regret joining her. - BR
“Solanine” - Rav (EXO, 2015)
So, you’ve hit rock bottom. The encompassing weight of depression, the sparking pain of anxiety and another mess of maladies have all combined to place a crown of numbness on your head. No social simulation, no uppers, downers, nostalgic recalls will shake you. It’s over.
Then the sun rises. The next day starts. People go to work. And you go on too.
This is “Solanine.” Depression has no proper climax, anxiety ain’t cinematic, it just is. There’s no montage to accompany either the long fall down or the grueling climb out. You just—live with all of it. And few rappers, few artists period, were able to grapple with that harsh reality like Rav. Though Beneath the Toxic Jungle copped samples from Anime, it actively refused any narrative arc, staying proudly, remarkably ambiguous. The jazzy, faded-pastoral beat on “Solanine” joins Rav’s apathetic flow, only broken by the sudden interjection of “this is what it feels like!” Only for a small voice to ask “right?” The syrupy, torpid confines of depression flow through every molecule of “Solanine,” even as the song’s snapping, laid-back flow stays catchy as hell. The song ends, but fades right into another meditation. The sun rises, the next day starts, and you, and Rav, go on. - NS