Tag: Beach House

The Best Albums of the 2010s

Arcade Fire, Japandroids, The National and St. Vincent make up some of my 10 favorites of the decade

I liked a lot of music before this decade, but the 2010s was the decade I actually started listening to it. This was the decade I developed a taste and really drilled down on what I liked. In the 2010s I saw just under 200 concerts (I have a running list). The previous decade I could count on two hands the number of shows I’d seen. This was the decade I got an iPod Classic, and I’ve made sure that device outlived when Apple ultimately discontinued it.

Though on many top 10 lists I’ve seen, some don’t even have a single rock record on them. Music is diverse and distinctive in a way movies and TV are less so. And maybe in the next decade I’ll be able to expand my horizons to genres I only dabbled with this decade.

So you’ll forgive me for not listing each of the most important pop, rap, country and metal stars of recent memory. You don’t need to come to me to read about why Kendrick Lamar is so great. Rather, these are the 50 albums and artists (I only picked one album per artist/band) that meant the most to me this decade, the ones that constantly soundtracked my life these last 10 years.

Continue reading “The Best Albums of the 2010s”

The Best Albums of 2018

“I’m so glad I came but I can’t wait to leave,” St. Vincent sings on “Slow Disco.” In two different remixed versions of her ghostly, neon-tinged anthem originally heard on last year’s “Masseduction,” she reveals both the rousing elation and haunting melancholy of the same line. My favorite version though is this year’s “Fast Slow Disco,” along with the accompanying music video. Annie Clark moshes among a rambunctious, sweaty mass of burly men dressed in leather and bondage in a gay club. She conveys a liberating celebration while acknowledging how fleeting the sensation can be. “Don’t it beat a slow dance to death?”

This is one of the songs that spoke to me the most this year, along with the arresting contrast of party rhythms and aggressive beats in the explosively topical “This is America” by Childish Gambino, and the enormous, rising wave when I heard Lady Gaga belt out “Shallow” in “A Star is Born.”

But “Fast Slow Disco” in particular made me think of my own concert going and listening this year. I still can’t think of a better feeling than hearing great music at a live show, but I’ve started to notice some of my fatigue. I listened to less new music this year, and I’m starting to be more selective in what concerts I spend my time and money. It could just be this year in music, in which the most important albums of the year were far more divided among critics, and the culture gravitated toward these often meme-worthy tracks and videos more so than a single artist or album.

Or it could be a sign of how my listening might look going forward. So this year, you’ll find a lot of my old favorites, all organized alphabetically, with the exception of my one big new discovery this year.  Continue reading “The Best Albums of 2018”

The Best Albums of 2012

Oh, I’m sorry. Did you expect me to write a list about movies? Well, it’s my blog and I can do what I want. And there’s no way I’m making a Top 10 list until I see “Django Unchained” on Christmas Day anyway, so you’re just going to have to wait.

But despite never having done one before, I really wanted to make a Top 10 list of my favorite albums of the year. I listened to more music, went to more concerts and read more music criticism this year than any year in the past, and likely several years combined. I wanted to share the music I’ve discovered this year, but I also wanted to test myself in writing about music, which as several friends have previously informed me, I shouldn’t be ashamed of.

Does that make me an expert? No. It’s almost a guarantee that a few of the albums I have here will appear on my list exclusively. Some of those that are universally loved don’t really come into my wheelhouse (for what it’s worth, I enjoyed “Channel Orange”), and although I listened to enough to make a decent list, I still have a long way to go.

Almost all of these albums are artists I discovered in the last year alone, ousting out albums by long time favorites like Bruce Springsteen, Jack White, The Killers, Silversun Pickups, Smashing Pumpkins, St. Vincent and David Byrne, Aerosmith (did you honestly listen to this? I didn’t), two by Neil Young and two (so far) by Green Day that didn’t register with me as strongly.

What I did come up with however shows that although I’m mostly a rock guy, I cling to music that is arty, dreamy, poppy and heavy. Hopefully next year I can claim to have a list as diverse. Continue reading “The Best Albums of 2012”