From 0349fd824cd36fb2bb57a5c6a7ee7aeda67f182a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: cassie Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2025 16:21:15 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] top ten --- .obsidian/workspace.json | 24 +-- .../posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md | 114 ++++++++++ public/css/main.css | 16 ++ public/index.xml | 7 + .../index.html | 196 ++++++++++++++++++ .../index.html | 112 ++++++++++ public/posts/untitled/index.html | 2 + themes/neverhungoveragain/assets/css/main.css | 16 ++ 8 files changed, 475 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) create mode 100644 content/posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md create mode 100644 public/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html create mode 100644 public/posts/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html diff --git a/.obsidian/workspace.json b/.obsidian/workspace.json index d765c22..50e233a 100644 --- a/.obsidian/workspace.json +++ b/.obsidian/workspace.json @@ -8,18 +8,18 @@ "type": "tabs", "children": [ { - "id": "7555e64643e8e1aa", + "id": "61b9ea0936754bde", "type": "leaf", "state": { "type": "markdown", "state": { - "file": "content/week-notes/030.md", + "file": "content/posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md", "mode": "source", "source": false, "backlinks": false }, "icon": "lucide-file", - "title": "030" + "title": "My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s" } } ] @@ -182,24 +182,25 @@ "obsidian-git:Open Git source control": false } }, - "active": "7555e64643e8e1aa", + "active": "61b9ea0936754bde", "lastOpenFiles": [ + "public/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html", + "public/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s", + "public/posts/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html", + "public/posts/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s", + "content/posts/an ode to gitsync.md", + "content/posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md", + "content/week-notes/030.md", "public/week-notes/30/index.html", "public/week-notes/30", "content/posts/Here’s What I Was Listening to in 2020.md", - "content/week-notes/030.md", "public/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2020/index.html", "public/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2020", "public/posts/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2020/index.html", "public/posts/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2020", "public/posts/heres-what-i-was-lis/index.html", - "public/posts/heres-what-i-was-lis", - "public/posts/page/9/index.html", - "public/posts/page/9", "content/posts/An Empty Promise to Blog More.md", - "public/tags/metsa/index.xml", "content/posts/Women in a Sea of Men.md", - "content/posts/an ode to gitsync.md", "content/week-notes/021.md", "content/week-notes/022.md", "content/week-notes/023.md", @@ -218,7 +219,6 @@ "content/posts/Canopies and Drapes.md", "content/posts/Princess Bubblegum & Marceline Still Just Almost Girlfriends.md", "content/posts/House of Leaves Appendix II-E, The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute Letters (May 8th, 1987).md", - "conflict-files-obsidian-git.md", - "content/posts/Intentional Listening.md" + "conflict-files-obsidian-git.md" ] } \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md b/content/posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..de1422b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s.md @@ -0,0 +1,114 @@ +--- +title: My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s +date: 2019-12-20 +url: my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s +tags: + - music +draft: false +--- +That I’m a big ol’ music weirdo should come as no surprise to anyone who has read [some](https://cassie.ink/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2015/) of my [previous](https://cassie.ink/revolutions/) writing [about](https://cassie.ink/canopies-and-drapes/) it. I have tracked just about all of my music listening to [last.fm](https://www.last.fm/user/wearebeautiful) since 2014, both to maintain a record and gather minute statistics about myself. + +I turned 16 in 2010, and my 25th birthday was this past November. The latter half of my adolescent identity formation therefore took place during this past decade, and the music I listened to during those years acted as a score, a signpost, a catharsis, a reflection. I’ve come to mark events in my life with the music I was listening to at the time. And having spent my teen years sitting in front of a computer listening to music at pretty much all times, I developed a pretty large collection. + +As with any post in this series, I do want to offer a few caveats and disclaimers. A lot of music came out this decade, by artists I love and by artists I haven’t discovered yet. I’m human. I haven’t heard it all. I track very few bands’ new releases, and instead seek out new albums as interest and whims guide me. So this list is limited to the music I actually listened to during these years and what music from that collection I consider influential on my personal taste or mindset. It’s very likely that, a few years from now, I’ll stumble upon an album released in 2013 that I absolutely love, just as I listened to and loved plenty of albums from before 2010. But this list will be limited to releases from the decade that I listened to a lot; I did briefly consider whether I would permit myself to include more than one album by the same artist, but as I narrowed down the possibilities, I found that was not an issue. I did not make any distinctions between full albums or EPs in my selection process either. +___ +## #10. Grimes, *Visions* (2012) +![Visions album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/visions.jpg#album) +For the record, I am deeply uncomfortable being a Grimes fan in 2019. But 2012 was a different time — or, more accurately, 2013, when I started listening to Grimes. + +A recurring theme through the albums on this list will be that they mark some kind of notable shift or change in my musical tastes. I’d classify Grimes as “weird shit,” especially early Grimes, which I was no stranger to prior to picking up _Visions_. But Grimes was a new kind of weird for me: in _Visions_ especially, the vocals and lyrics are at times abstracted and indistinct. They’re like another instrument, layered into wandering synthesizers and catchy beats. _Visions_ sports some genuine bops and poppy tunes, like “Genesis” and “Oblivion”, but there’s still a darkness there — there’s also angsty tracks that sound like they were composed and sang by some kind of sewer nymph reaching out to be heard, seen, loved, but whose voice cannot travel far enough (“Soft skin / I’ll have you be near my heart / until I feel human / soft skin, oh / You were never in love to begin with / So now I’m suffering”). Instead, that voice remains distant, reverberating from a far-off place. + +It’s really hard to recommend Grimes these days, as she’s now inextricably linked to Elon Musk in my brain. But _Visions_ is still my favorite album she’s put out, and it’s absolutely worth a listen, even if it’s probably bumping the speakers in the Cybertruck these days. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Skin”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R00Vu7Ag7s), [“Genesis”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WizNXQGBMEk), [“Ambrosia”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9MXj9nVjkk), [“Oblivion”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE), [“Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txcZix5caF0) +___ +## #9. Oberhofer, *Time Capsules II* (2011) +![Time Capsules II album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/timecapsules.jpg#album) +Of the albums on this list, _Time Capsules II_ is one of the most embedded in the a specific point in my life. I discovered Oberhofer when I rewatched a season one episode of *Broad City*, which featured their song “o0Oo0Oo.” This would have been in March or April of 2015 — which is also when I began dating my boyfriend, Joe. + +_Time Capsules II_ became an early soundtrack for our relationship. For our one month anniversary (yes, we were/are big nerds), I gave Joe two mixtapes, the first of many I’d create for him throughout our relationship — one called “You,” the other “Me.” On them, I tried to capture emotion in music, tell him through I was through the songs that spoke to me, and tell him how I felt about him through the songs that reminded me of him. Of the 29 tracks that spanned the two CDs, because I was still burning CDs in 2015, three were Oberhofer songs: “Homebro,” “o0Oo0Oo,” and “Away Frm U.” The opening guitar in “Away Frm U” still fills me with nostalgia. + +Detaching the album from my own memories, it’s a fairly by the books indie rock tracks and surf rock revival, with some fun hints of Animal Collective mixed in for good measure. It’s catchy enough to sing along to, with enough depth to sustain interest. It’s the music you play when you drive through your hometown at night. But it’s hard to separate my memories from the album like this because Oberhofer is the soundtrack backing our early days. When I think back on the decade, I think about my relationship with Joe in the later half of it. So this album really is a bit of a time capsule for me, too. + +**Favorite Tracks:”** [“Yr Face”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMGdn4ojxtA), [“Away Frm U”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z40oHofP3E), [“Haus”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKMDY3T9eiM), [“Homebro”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj_uKLk-dYM) +___ +## #8. Mac Miller, *Swimming* (2018) +![Swimming album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/swimming.jpg#album) +When Mac Miller’s death was announced in September of 2018, I knew hardly anything about him. I recognized the name and knew he was a rapper. I’d seen maybe a picture or two of him before, but I’d never heard any of his music. And yet, I was shaken by the announcement, for reasons I couldn’t fully comprehend. I read through pages and pages of folks pouring one out for another artist taken too young, grieving and despairing he never found the help he needed. I thought the only way to understand my reaction was to listen to his music — to pay my due to his passing, even if I’d never particularly connected with rap before (and, to the tell truth, hadn’t really tried). I downloaded his albums, skipped around, picked a few songs more or less at random, and rocked a playlist called “mac miller songs i think i like but idk.” + +Just as I was entranced by Miller’s death, I was fascinated with his music. It was something new to me, something entirely out of my comfort zone. But there was something compelling — there was a pain and an insight to his lyrics, a density to his production. Mac’s discography takes some defined turns and evolutions, jumping between the ambition and optimism of _Best Day Ever_ to the troubled, strung-out suicidal ideation on _Faces_. It was, at times, hard for me to understand or digest — except for _Swimming_. His last release was the most accessible to me; it was my gateway to Mac, to comprehending the life journey that led to the album’s creation and the tragedy of it being cut too short. I’m not sure _Swimming_ is my favorite Mac release — that might be _Macadelic_, or maybe _GO:OD AM_, or maybe _Faces_ — but it was a doorway for me to step through into Mac’s world. _Swimming_ was produced from years lived in scrutiny and pain, and Miller never shies away from expressing that on the album (“Well, I didn’t know what I was missing / Now I see a lil’ different / I was thinking too much / Got stuck in oblivion”). _Swimming_ is about walking on the pathway to peace but stumbling along the road. _Swimming_ taught me that you’ve got to jump in to swim. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Self Care”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsKT0s5J8ko), [“2009”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B3YwcjQ_bU), [“Perfecto”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbSuMV7ghm8), [“Jet Fuel”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnG7oL9Gg4o) +___ +## #7. How to Dress Well, *"What Is This Heart?"* (2014) +![What Is This Heart? album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/whatisthisheart.jpg#album) +I discovered How to Dress Well in late 2011, at a time when I was awfully depressed and feeling trapped in my life. The ambiance and desperation in Tom Krell’s debut album, _Love Remains_, spoke to me in that time. I spent a lot of time with “Ready for the World” on repeat. + +I also enjoyed How to Dress Well’s next release, _Total Loss_, as it refined their sound, but it didn’t grab me the way _Love Remains_ did, and so I was keen to see which direction their next release would take. + +_“What Is This Heart?”_ is closer, sonically, to _Total Loss_ than _Love Remains_, but it hit me. There’s a pure emotion to it that _Love Remains_ concealed under lo-fi beats and distorted vocals that sound like they were somehow produced off a VHS tape recording. _“What Is This Heart_?” is clear, honest, and beautiful. _“What Is This Heart?”_ dissolves the weight of older tracks like “Ready for the World” and “Cold Nites,” replacing it with a kind of airy lightness that doesn’t sacrifice depth. The album acts as an answer to its titular question — it’s How to Dress Well wearing their heart on their sleeve, bringing Tom Krell’s voice and lyrics to the center, no longer obfuscated by noise. The album’s bare-faced, earnest emotion is embodied on no track better than “Pour Cyril,” which retains some of the noisy, warbling reverb of How to Dress Well’s previous albums but mixes it with heartfelt strings and brass. There’s a heart to this album that is immensely vulnerable and is made all the more captivating for it. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Words I Don’t Remember”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbOCLEIKZOo), [“Childhood Faith in Love (Everything Must Change, Everything Must Stay the Same”](https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/childhood-faith-in-love-everything-must-change-everything-must-stay-the-same), [“Pour Cyril”](https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/pour-cyril), [“Face Again”](https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/face-again), [“Repeat Pleasure”](https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/repeat-pleasure) (and a special shout to [A.G. Cook’s remix of it](https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/repeat-pleasure-a-g-cook-remix)) +___ +## #6. The Peripheral Ones, *Chants* (2014) +![Chants album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/peripheral.jpg#album) +This album will be maybe the most idiosyncratic entry on this list. + +In something like 2008 or 2009, I found a band on Myspace (!) called The Middle Ones. They made [charming little acoustic songs](https://themiddleones.bandcamp.com/track/goodnight-song) that were very of their time and place and are still very good. I sang along to them (badly) for a few years, and then they became another relic of my music library that I’d revisit every now and then. + +Jump ahead to 2015, when I’m lurking on anorak for new music, and I see there’s a Middle Ones thread. I give some of the recent posts a read through and find [someone has shared a link to a Middle Ones cover album](https://anorakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2918&start=140#p235243). Enter The Peripheral Ones. + +I love these covers. I know it’s taboo to say, but sometimes I think I may love them more than the originals. _Chants_ is clearly a product of love and reverence for The Middle Ones, but it’s not afraid to experiment. Sometimes they’re covers with a new twist, as in “Young Explorer.” Other times, they include [a “lyrical interpolation” of Nicki Minaj’s “Superbass”](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/morningtime) or replace the original harmonica [with music from _The Legend of Zelda_](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/yeah-roy). _Chants_ is truly a special album to me — and it led me to other great projects by the members of The Peripheral Ones, namely Pigthe and Trust Fund. It is a goddamn shame that _Chants_ has less than 900 scrobbles on last.fm as of writing (and I account for around a third of them). Please do yourself a favor and listen to it. I may have conceived of this album review post as an excuse to shill for _Chants_. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Morningtime”](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/morningtime), [“Young Explorer”](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/young-explorer), [“Drops”](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/drops), [“After”](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/after) + +_Download_ Chants _for free via The Peripheral Ones on [Bandcamp](https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/)._ +___ +## #5. Pigthe, *every morning i wake up covered in blood* (2019) +![every morning i wake up covered in blood album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/coveredinblood.jpg#album) +Pigthe is the only artist to appear twice on my ranking for the decade, albeit under different names. Pigthe is also probably the most obscure shit to appear on this list, which keeps my hipster cred in tact. + +_every morning i wake up covered in blood_ seems, at times, to be a bizarre compilation. I don’t always know what to make of _every morning_. Sparse details are available about it online, or even about Pigthe in general. Of its nineteen total tracks, eight clock in at under a minute long on _every morning_. Four of those eight are under ten seconds. Scattered throughout are short, spoken word segments that are sometimes their own track (like “bad,” a nine second track whose complete lyrics read “The singing was boring and the lyrics were bad / The singing was boring and the song was bad”) or compete for attention over vocal tracks and strumming guitars in “JaneaneG++.” Other times, _every morning_ covers Mariah Carey in “Beautiful” or laments on the desperation and emptiness that follow from the economic alienation in late-stage capitalism in “Consumer Blues part ii” or composes a thirteen minute opus in “Not Enough // Not Good Enough.” But as impenetrable as _every morning i wake up covered in blood_ can sometimes feel, it speaks to me in a way I haven’t yet figured out or defined. It manages to be both catchy and intensely brooding at the many peaks of the album. It has stayed with me since its release a few months ago — and I think it will continue to stay with me for quite a bit longer. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Consumer Blues part ii”](https://music.pigthe.com/track/consumer-blues-part-ii), [“Every Morning I Wake Up Covered in Blood”](https://music.pigthe.com/track/every-morning-i-wake-up-covered-in-blood), [“Not Enough // Not Good Enough”](https://music.pigthe.com/track/not-enough-not-good-enough) + +_Download_ every morning i wake up covered in blood _for free via Pigthe on [Bandcamp](https://music.pigthe.com/album/every-morning-i-wake-up-covered-in-blood)._ +___ +## #4. Sylvan Esso, *Sylvan Esso* (2014) +![Sylvan Esso album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/sylvanesso.jpg#album) +_Sylvan Esso_ is a masterclass in grabbing your listener with the first track. + +Their self-titled debut album opens with the infectious, repeated “Hey mami / I know what you want, mami.” It builds with slow claps and layered voices until the beat drops in. The song’s lyrics might be about a woman getting catcalled in the street, but there’s a breeziness, an airiness to “Hey Mami.” It sort of spreads in your brain, and it sticks there for a long time. + +But as explosive and electronic as “Hey Mami” is, and many of the other tracks on the album, Sylvan Esso is also able to deliver a warmth when they pull back into muted beats and smooth, untouched vocals in “Coffee” or “Uncatena.” No song on _Sylvan Esso_ ever sounds forced, overproduced, or inorganic; it’s a wonderful fusion of beats and vocals. Sylvan Esso sounds like breathing in morning air with a twinkly piano in the background. _Sylvan Esso_ was a new, innovative sound when it first released, and no one has really come close to it since — aside from maybe their sophomore release. But _Sylvan Esso_ gets credit for being the first. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Hey Mami”](https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/hey-mami), [“Dress”](https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/dress), [“Dreamy Bruises”](https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/dreamy-bruises), [“Coffee”](https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/coffee-3) +___ +## #3. Los Campesinos!, *Sick Scenes* (2017) +![Sick Scenes album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/sickscenes.jpg#album) +Los Campesinos! are my favorite band, and they have been since their 2008 debut album, _Hold On Now, Youngster…_ What’s absolutely remarkable about Los Campesinos! — and what has enabled them to hold their throne for so long — is that every one of their releases evolves their sound then adds something new. There’s a growth and progression inside their discography to which few artists can compare and which they have continued into their 2017 release, _Sick Scenes_. + +There’s something sparse about _Sick Scenes_, which lies in stark contrast to their early discography and which I mean with the highest esteem. Consider, for example, the breakdown in “Got Stendhal’s,” when a lone guitar kicks in, then drums and vocals are slowly reintroduced. In the _Tweexcore_-era, this might have been a cacophony of instruments all trying to be heard over the other. If you listen to a track from _HONY_ then compare it to one from _Sick Scenes_, it’s hard to believe the same people were even remotely involved — and, indeed, much of their lineup has changed over the years, but they’ve kept true to their vision of being “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band.” In _Sick Scenes_, Los Campesinos! learn to pull back, to focus their sound into something deceptively simple. _Sick Scenes_ is Team Campesinos at their most refined and, I’m inclined to say, at their best. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Here’s To The Fourth Time!”](https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/here-s-to-the-fourth-time), [“Got Stendhal’s”](https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/got-stendhal-s), [“5 Flucloxacillin”](https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/5-flucloxacillin) +_Purchase_ Sick Scenes _in various formats starting at £7 on [Bandcamp](https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/album/sick-scenes)._ +___ +## #2. alt+J, *An Awesome Wave* (2012) +![An Awesome Wave album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/awesomewave.jpg#album) +2012 was a rough year for me. I graduated high school then, but the months leading up to it was the deepest depressions I’ve ever fallen into. I felt totally alienated from my immediate world and circle; I cared very little for my schoolwork or my friends or myself. I was ready to move onto college and start fresh, with new people and new passion — but I had to trudge through six more months of high school first. + +_An Awesome Wave_ released in May of 2012; I don’t know when I first discovered alt+J (through “Breezeblocks,” like everyone else on the planet), but I listened to them a _lot_ in the weeks leading up to, and into, my first semester of college — and just like college, _An Awesome Wave_ was something fresh. It was something new. To me, at least. And that’s precisely what I needed. It was a wave of relief — from my depression, and from months spent listening to “Hate for the Island” (from Los Campesinos!’s _Hello Sadness_) and Xiu Xiu’s _Dear God, I Hate Myself_ on repeat. (Not the healthiest choices, in retrospect.) + +In 2019, _An Awesome Wave_ has perhaps lost some of its fresh novelty; it was eclectic and experimental in 2012, but we’ve had years now of [folks spoofing alt+J’s sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlBskd3IaNw). I love it dearly still, perhaps for the sound memories it has left, the way that “Bloodflood” washes me over with calm, the way that “Something Good” is now forever attached to _Life is Strange_, one of my favorite games from the decade, the way I try to croon along (badly) with “Matilda.” The album has lost some of its neoteric magic seven years later; maybe it’s a nostalgia speaking, but I consider it a new classic. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Bloodflood”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv-zbP7lyjA), [“Something Good”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNYjOVo5IEw), [“Breezeblocks”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVeMiVU77wo) +___ +## #1. Stolen Jars, *Kept* (2015) +![Kept album cover](https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/kept.jpg#album) +I fell in love with Stolen Jars in the first time I heard the scattered din of percussion that opens the title track on _Kept_ — and while I’m about to describe that love in detail, I really recommend that you just [go ahead and hear it for yourself](https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/kept-2). + +To set the scene of my first contact with Stolen Jars, it was back when I worked at RadioShack; shifts were often dull as we waited out the days until the store closed. We ran a Pandora station on some rad speakers, but mostly I just zoned out or did homework. When I heard that percussion stumble on out, the song immediately grabbed me. I knew I had to hear more. + +Stolen Jars are not something entirely new or innovative, like some of my other entries on this list. Their music is accessible, even if it goes unnoticed by many. But what makes _Kept_ so entrancing is how ethereal it is. _Kept_ transports the listener to a dream-like state; there’s a warmth and a comfort to it, like being wrapped in a fluffy comforter and snoozing off into the clouds, otherworldly voices whispering that living takes time, asking to keep your hands close. There’s something organic yet mystical about _Kept_, something artful yet catchy, something pensive yet grounded. Their lyrics are often abstract (“some nights / when I’m alone / when I’m alone / I’ll look through faces of old occasions / of places, scattered now / on small plates painted / just to know them”), but they evoke sense memories embedded in the reflections of fleeting moments — of waking up to see your partner bathed in light, of the train whistle in your hometown, of golden memories of childhood games with friends. _Kept_ reaches into our reveries and holds tight to them. The songs are all light and air, space turned sonic. It’s a beautiful piece of art that consistently leaves me in awe. + +**Favorite Tracks:** [“Kept”](https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/kept-2), [“Another November”](https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/another-november), [“Wreaths Rakes”](https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/wreaths-rakes), [“Waves”](https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/waves) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/public/css/main.css b/public/css/main.css index ce28e00..17af060 100644 --- a/public/css/main.css +++ b/public/css/main.css @@ -358,6 +358,22 @@ nav ul { margin: auto; } +.page article img[src$='#album'] { + float: left; + width: 300px; + margin-right: 25px; +} + +@media only screen and (max-width: 700px) { + .page article img[src$='#album'] { + margin-right: 0; + margin-bottom: 25px; + width: 100%; + float: none; + } + +} + .page .audio { audio { diff --git a/public/index.xml b/public/index.xml index 6536c6e..fa3ebac 100644 --- a/public/index.xml +++ b/public/index.xml @@ -456,6 +456,13 @@ http://localhost:1313/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2020/ <p>It feels like most of my blog posts end up being about music. I’d like to pretend that this post is a piece of an annual tradition in which I review and analyze my listening patterns from the past year, but truth be told, I’ve <a href="https://cassie.ink/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2015/">only done this once before, in 2015</a>, and then <a href="https://cassie.ink/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/">kind of early in 2020, when I reviewed my favorite albums from the last ten years</a>. Truth is, I’d like this to be a tradition, a habit I develop, but I’ve had about as much success with that as I have with my resolution to exercise more regularly.</p> <p>I don’t need to explain that 2020 has been a unique year. If I put on my English major bullshitting hat, I can maybe postulate that I write about music in the years that music was especially important to me. In 2015, music was the backdrop of my first (and current) serious, long-term relationship. I exchanged stolen moments and mix CDs, so the music I was listening to at that time became a sense-memory trigger, a nostalgic sound that brought me back to first kisses and early butterflies. And when I wrote about my favorite albums released from 2010 to 2019, I was making sense of my teenage years — the music that comforted me, changed me, channeled me. It only seems natural then to write about the music in this weird, mixed up year, because quarantine has made a process that’s usually internal for me — listening to and thinking about music — more weighty, more important. I’ve had more time to focus on media like music because there’s not much else to do. I’m spending more time alone in front of my computer than any person normally should. My screen time (which means music time) this past year has probably rivalled the internet addiction of my teen years.</p> <p>I’ve also used these posts to discuss <em>how</em> I listen to music in some way. Sparked by the shutdown of Google Play Music, which was my preferred way to sync my massive music library to my phone, I moved over to Plex and the Plexamp mobile app. It thankfully offers excellent last.fm support, so I continued scrobbling there, but I didn’t set it up until a few weeks into my Plex journey — so a lot of play counts are probably lower than they should be. Still, the numbers paint an accurate picture, even if the exact details are muddy.</p> <p>That all said, let’s get to the wheat and away from the chaff. Here’s the list of music I was listening to in 2020 that wasn’t necessarily released in 2020.</p> <h2 id="mac-miller-1469-plays">Mac Miller (1469 plays)</h2> <blockquote> <p>Movin&rsquo; so fast the clock look slow</p> <p>Water my seeds &rsquo;til the flowers grow</p> <p>Love so much that my heart get broke</p> <p>I don&rsquo;t really know how the normal shit go</p> <p><em>– Mac Miller, &ldquo;Wings&rdquo;</em></p></blockquote> <p>When I <a href="https://cassie.ink/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/#swimming">wrote about <em>Swimming</em> last year</a>, I was cautious. I knew it was an important album and that it was a gateway for me. I knew there were some phenomenal tracks and impressive flows. A year later, I’m much more effusive in my praise (and critical of the songs I listed as the best — I did not appreciate “Wings” or “Dunno” as they deserve). I’ve moved from my “mac miller songs i think i like but idk” playlist to one titled “i need to listen to something other than mac miller,” partly at my boyfriend’s request, because I truly didn’t listen to much other than Easy Mac with the cheesy raps this year.</p> <p>Part of the appeal of Mac Miller’s music is the variation in his discography and skillset. His abstract jazz EP <em>You</em>, for example, is bookended by the experimental, depressive <em>Macadelic</em>, released eight months prior, and <em>Watching Movies with the Sound Off</em>, which is perhaps his strongest rap album released (rivaled perhaps by <em>GO:OD AM</em>, but that’s a conversation for folks who know way more about rap than me to debate). It’s unfortunate that Mac’s career lasted as little time as it did, cut short by his death in 2018, but he produced an incredible amount in that time — and much of it has yet to see the light of day. There are days I’m looking for early career Mac, the <em>Blue Slide Park</em> and <em>Best Day Ever</em> era, when the world was before him and he was ready (and excited to) conquer it; there are days when the smooth romanticism of <em>Circles</em> and <em>The Divine Feminine</em> are appealing; and there are days when I need the emotional catharsis of his more complicated releases, like <em>Faces</em> or <em>Swimming</em> — two very different releases, but releases that reflected on the complications of fame, depression, and addiction. It is remarkable that one artist who died so young gave the world so much.</p> <p>Unsurprisingly, my top track from this past year was by Mac: “God is Fair, Sexy Nasty (feat. Kendrick Lamar)” (65 plays) from 2016’s <em>The Divine Feminine</em>. I listened to this song on repeat on my drives to work (back when I was driving to work) in late-2019 into 2020. I memorized every line. The song is a beautiful marriage of the soulful elements of love and the physical side — the sexy and the nasty. It’s a tremendously fun song with layered production and samples, and while I skip it most of the time, the outro of Miller’s grandmother reflecting on her late husband is a goofy but earnest addition that, when considered among all of <em>TDF</em>, yearns for a long love, an old love, where one’s partner completes and complements them over decades of companionship (“We gon’ keep going ’til our bones both break / It’s the grown folk way”).</p> <p>I did dive into the unreleased leaked tracks by Mac this year, too. It’s a complicated, controversial subject, because it’s unclear whether these songs have been obtained through nefarious means, and friends of Mac’s have said that the leaks <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MacMiller/comments/iyfj37/an_end_to_the_music_request_thread_posting_leaks/">have made things difficult for the late rapper’s family</a>. But so many of these songs need to be heard — they show Mac at his most vulnerable in songs like the beautiful, tragic “Pure” (40 plays), where he raps a letter to himself, reflecting on his material success, drug use, and emotional health (“Everybody got opinions when you make millions / All God’s children, let me keep livin’ / I been keepin’ it real / I can’t sleep without pills … I been dealing with some problems, I been longing for your love / Crazy selfish doing drugs / Check off all of the above”).</p> <p>Everything about Mac’s music speaks to a need. A need, for him, to share the world in his head; to find his way out of the darkness. It’s difficult to reconcile the wound of his death; the leaks are a band aid, but there’s something bittersweet in hearing him spit about the addiction that killed him. I find ways to push that reminder out, but many of his songs are steeped in the awareness that his lifestyle would kill him (“Am I okay? / Fuck no / Just so nutso / I need to let the drugs go / I try to find heaven, I get high but never come close”). But we can at least appreciate the beauty he was able to put in the world when he was here. I sometimes feel guilty listening to songs like “Pure” because Mac may have never intended for anyone but him to hear them. It feels wrong to intrude on that, but as “Oracle” (12 plays) concludes, “the people need to hear the music.”</p> <p><strong>Top &amp; Notable Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F6zIO_QMTc">“God is Fair, Sexy Nasty (feat. Kendrick Lamar)”</a> (65 plays), “Do You Have a Destination?” (54 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuBrnShHuR0">“In the Air”</a> (47 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxufWf7dEcM">“Thoughts from a Balcony”</a> (44 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Lmk2k542k">“Dunno”</a> (41 plays), “Pure” (40 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3elAONl3jY">“Wedding”</a> (39 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O1qD95xnao">“Wings”</a> (28 plays)</p> <hr> <h2 id="martha-283-plays">Martha (283 plays)</h2> <p>It is no secret that I am an avid indie rock fan, and Martha was my sojourn in that world. When Bandcamp Fridays first started up, Martha offered their entire discography plus a bonus album of demos for a discounted price. I jumped on it purely on the knowledge that they had toured with Los Campesinos! a few years back. I was not disappointed. Martha’s music is uncomplicated fun, with the breathlessness and, at times, incoherency of early Cloud Nothings. They shine with absolute bops like <a href="https://marthadiy.bandcamp.com/track/clatty-harriet">“Clatty Harriet”</a> and the bright optimism of <a href="https://marthadiy.bandcamp.com/track/wrestlemania-viii">“Wrestlemania VIII”</a> (“It’s like a cloud was hanging over me until the day we texted for the first time / And the world just got a little brighter”) and <a href="https://marthadiy.bandcamp.com/track/six-men-getting-sick-six-times-mendable">“Six Men Getting Sick Six Times (Mendable)”</a> (“There’s a world outside where I feel so broken / But you make me feel mendable”).</p> <p>There’s an effortlessness and easy appeal to Martha’s music. It’s inoffensive, in a good way — you know exactly what you’ll get with Martha and they deliver on your every want and expectation. Martha is an easy recommendation to make because just about everyone will like Martha. Martha sounds like a fun group of friends got together to make fun indie rock. In 2020, I needed that.</p> <p><strong>Top &amp; Notable Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://marthadiy.bandcamp.com/track/1967-i-miss-you-im-lonely">“1967, I Miss You, I’m Lonely”</a> (17 plays), <a href="https://marthadiy.bandcamp.com/track/six-men-getting-sick-six-times-mendable">“Six Men Getting Sick Six Times (Mendable)”</a> (15 plays), <a href="https://marthadiy.bandcamp.com/track/clatty-harriet">“Clatty Harriet”</a> (13 plays), <a href="https://bsmrocks.bandcamp.com/track/heart-is-healing">“Heart is Healing”</a> (6 plays)</p> <hr> <h2 id="trust-fund-180-plays">Trust Fund (180 plays)</h2> <p>Trust Fund again lends itself to my love of indie rock. I’m pretty sure I also discovered them through the Los Campesinos! tour connection — but even before that, I began listening to The Peripheral Ones, a cover band for The Middle Ones that <a href="https://cassie.ink/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/#chants">I have previously evangelized</a>. The Peripheral Ones led me to Pigthe, who surprisingly did not chart in my top ten this year, and a month or so later, I started listening to Trust Fund. It wasn’t until a few years later that I learned that the mastermind behind Pigthe is also the guitarist in Trust Fund.</p> <p>Trust Fund therefore offers a similar sound to what I love in The Peripheral Ones: a bedroom rock group with an intimate yet catchy sound. I’m not sure when — if it was in 2020 at all, because time is an illusion — but at some point, I purchased Trust Fund’s entire discography, too, this time based off of my love of <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/track/cut-me-out">“Cut Me Out”</a> from <em>No one’s coming for us</em>. At some point this year, in my unsuccessful attempts to listen to more than just Mac Miller, I put my entire 97GB music library on shuffle to find some underappreciated gems. This turned up a few Trust Fund songs, which I placed on the aptly named “songs in my library that i genuinely have never heard” playlist. This included such gems as “we’re thirteen (and we’re drinking) and “Abundant” among a few others.</p> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2020/playlist.png" alt="&ldquo;songs in my library that i genuinely have never heard&rdquo;"></p> <p>The playlist ended up composed more of a Trust Fund shuffle than full music library, admittedly. While this anecdote maybe speaks more to my goblin-like hoarding of music than my fondness for Trust Fund, these are the kinds of connections and discoveries I live for. I love stumbling upon something new, something saved long ago that ended up becoming relevant again years later. Trust Fund did that, and they were able to stick more than a few songs and hooks in my head this year (“I’m alone in the house / and I’m freaking myself out again / I’m clapping my hands and I’m spinning my arms around”). They’re just <em>catchy</em>.</p> <p><strong>Top &amp; Notable Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/track/well-both-apologise">“we’ll both apologize”</a> (35 plays), <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/track/dreamers-stefano-guitar-demo">“Dreamers (Stefano Guitar Demo)”</a> (32 plays), <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/track/sadness-demo">“Sadness (demo)”</a> (32 plays), <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/track/were-thirteen-and-were-drinking">“we’re thirteen and we’re drinking”</a> (32 plays), <a href="https://trustfund.bandcamp.com/track/abundant">“Abundant”</a> (28 plays)</p> <hr> <h2 id="aether-175-plays">Aether (175 plays)</h2> <p>Aether is the moniker of Diego Chavez who, in brief, creates awesome downtempo hip-hop instrumentals. I first stumbled upon his music in 2013, when I scrobbled his album <em>Artifacts</em> (2008) an impressive 542 times. This was around the time that I was on the computer near constantly and liked downtempo hip-hop as my background working and writing music (shouts out to Emancipator and Little People, who also fall into this category). I more or less forgot completely about Aether until this year, when <a href="https://aether.bandcamp.com/track/caparra">“Caparra,”</a> an old favorite, popped up in a shuffle. I thought to myself, “why not find out what this guy has been up to in the last seven years?”</p> <p>As it turns out, he’s done a bit — Chavez has a <a href="https://soundcloud.com/aether">Soundcloud</a> where he occasionally posts tracks. But because I’m old now and don’t fully understand Soundcloud, I decided to snag his 2014 release, <em>Solace</em>. I was absolutely blown away by the title track (and first song on the album), and I listened to it on repeat for more than a while this year. The rest of the songs on the album are also great, but they blend together — which isn’t necessarily bad for working music. “Solace,” though, is the standout and deserves to have the album named after it. It’s incredible — the catchy, consistent beat, the abstract melodies, the skittering vocal sample all coalesce into a beautiful breakdown around the two-and-a-half-minute mark. It’s an absolute dream of a track that slowly builds then delivers.</p> <p><strong>Top &amp; Notable Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://aether.bandcamp.com/track/solace">“Solace”</a> (12 plays), <a href="https://aether.bandcamp.com/track/untouched">“Untouched”</a> (8 plays), <a href="https://aether.bandcamp.com/track/tomorrows-thief">“Tomorrow’s Thief”</a> (8 plays)</p> <hr> <h2 id="tokyo-police-club-131-plays">Tokyo Police Club (131 plays)</h2> <p>I was listening to Tokyo Police Club demos on my iPod Nano back in 2009 — that’s how far back my relationship with TPC stretches. Another indie darling, I’ve enjoyed the group for some time now, but they dropped off my radar for a few years. This past year, however, one of the many shows I re-binge-watched was <em>Gossip Girl</em>, which features “Bambi” in an episode. It has a delicious and catchy guitar riff that shines through the Chuck Bass melodrama, and I was pleased when I realized the song was by a band I already liked. I went back and downloaded 2010’s <em>Champ</em> after this discovery and kept it on play for a few weeks.</p> <p><em>Champ</em> is not a big departure from my past affairs with Tokyo Police Club — I was most familiar with <em>Elephant Shell</em>, which released two years prior. <em>Champ</em> features the same clean, catchy sound, but tightened up a bit. It retains the fun, catchy sound from <em>Elephant Shell</em> but matures and adds definition. Funnily enough, <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/tokyo-police-club/tokyo-police-club-announce-champ-anniversary/">the 10th anniversary edition was announced in early December</a> and will release in March of 2021. The list of bonus tracks is impressive — maybe <em>Champ</em> will make my list again next year.</p> <p><strong>Top &amp; Notable Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://tokyo-police-club.bandcamp.com/track/bambi">“Bambi”</a> (17 plays), <a href="https://tokyo-police-club.bandcamp.com/track/favourite-food">“Favourite Food”</a> (12 plays), <a href="https://tokyo-police-club.bandcamp.com/track/breakneck-speed">“Breakneck Speed”</a> (8 plays), <a href="https://tokyo-police-club.bandcamp.com/track/not-sick">“Not Sick”</a> (13 plays)</p> <hr> <h2 id="jean-dawson-104-plays">Jean Dawson (104 plays)</h2> <p>Jean Dawson is an artist who made me feel <em>old</em> this year.</p> <p>After seeing Dawson described as “glitch pop,” I knew I had to find his 2020 release, <em>Pixel Bath</em>. Unfortunately, Dawson is in this new artist milieu who seem to release their music only on streaming services and vinyl — so if you’re like me and avoid services like Spotify or Apple Music, you’ll be hard pressed to find a way to actually legitimately pay for a digital download. I forgive Dawson because it seems he is interpedently releasing music under his own label, but there are old people out there (me) who like to have digital copies of their music (me again).</p> <p>Anyway, Pixel Bath is a more recent addition to my library, but I’m loving it. It mixes so many different genres — hip-hop, rap, R&amp;B, powerpop, glitch pop (which is apparently a genre) — in a cascade of sounds and styles. It’s an absolute joy to listen to, with some stand out bangers like “POWER FREAKS” and “Policia.” The former is a favorite of mine, luring you in with a slow, repeated melody until it rushes in with high power, fast rhymes that reflect on the experience of young black men watched by the police. <em>Pixel Bath</em> is filled with unapologetic, boyish, raucous energy, like a paintball match that uses a Gameboy Color soundfont and speaks to Dawson’s experiences as a mixed-Black and Mexican teenager in the US. It’s an important album and a fun album.</p> <p><strong>Top &amp; Notable Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CB5BzBNKYY">“POWER FREAKS”</a> (20 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUWKZLxopCg">“Pyrotechnics”</a> (17 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elSZfsrjOxQ">“BRUISEBOY”</a> (12 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrLRpQCt1yI">“Policia”</a> (12 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3hYjI3UnEY">“Starface*”</a>(12 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoGhwUxSmTc">“Devilish”</a> (10 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYUiCP3eMAA">“CLEAR BONES”</a> (8 plays), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmPdsM6gyGw">“Triple Double (feat. A$AP ROCKY)”</a> (7 plays)</p> <hr> <h2 id="honorable-mentions">Honorable Mentions</h2> <p>Those were some of my top, new (to me) artists for the year, but there a few songs I would be remiss not to mention for my 2020 compilation.</p> <p><strong><a href="https://shypig.bandcamp.com/track/celine">&ldquo;celine&rdquo; by shypig</a> (56 plays)</strong></p> <p>This is one of the songs that I’m not totally sure <em>how</em> I found — I think it was from associated acts with Trust Fund and Pigthe — but I’m so glad I did. Unfortunately, there’s very little information to be found about shypig online — their Bandcamp bio helpfully explains that they are “a shy pig.” “celine” is a dark, mysterious, angsty track that absolutely rips. It haunted me for days, with its cryptic lyrics and obsessive atmosphere. It’s befitting of the <em>RIP everyone</em> album title, at least, and something about shypig’s elusive nature adds to the darkness of “celine.”</p> <p><strong>&ldquo;Get Away&rdquo; by The Internet (46 plays)</strong></p> <p>I found The Internet through Mac Miller, as they acted as his backing band for <em>Live from Space</em> — as a group, The Internet have released lots of smooth grooves befitting of a jazz lounge. Those tracks haven’t grabbed me, though I can appreciate them for what they are, but “Get Away,” particularly the version <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6j49uzPugA">from their Tiny Desk Concert</a>, is absolutely phenomenal. It’s simple and pared back compared to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z32HJ7PHnKY">the album release</a>, which allows The Internet to inject some of their typical groove into the dark beat of the original. Both are absolute bops, but the Tiny Desk version has a lightness and humor to it that I relished.</p> <p><strong>&ldquo;Ring Ring (feat. Clever)&rdquo; by Juice WRLD (17 plays)</strong></p> <p>Juice WRLD probably would have charted higher on my list if I’d started listening to him earlier in the year — he snuck into my library in mid-December, and I’ve been working my way through his discography since then. “Ring Ring” is a catchy jam that I keep returning to. Like with Mac Miller, Juice WRLD can be difficult to listen to — “Ring Ring” is a bittersweet song when considered in the context of Juice’s death, but I’ve found a way to shake that off and appreciate the music left behind, not the tragic cap on the end of it.</p> <p><strong>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll Believe in Anything&rdquo; by Wolf Parade (25 plays)</strong></p> <p>This is another song I’ve stumbled upon in a bizarre web of unintended musical connections. I found this song through reddit — some Ask Reddit thread I think where folks were recommending songs — and fell in love with it. But there was something familiar to the vocals — come to find that it was Spencer Krug, who originally recorded and released the song under his Sunset Rubdown moniker, a band I’ve been listening to for years. The Wolf Parade version is inarguably superior, as it’s a fully fleshed out track. “I’ll Believe in Anything” is a song about love — about keeping hope alive, about fighting for and finding happiness. It offered a lightness I scarcely found in 2020, a reminder of the things that keep me strong and the things that bond us all together. It’s a beautiful song.</p> <blockquote> <p>We&rsquo;ve both been very brave</p> <p>Walk around with both legs</p> <p>Fight the scary day</p> <p>We both pull tricks out of our sleeves</p> <p>But I&rsquo;ll believe in anything</p> <p>And you&rsquo;ll believe in anything</p> <p><em>– Wolf Parade, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll Believe in Anything&rdquo;</em></p></blockquote> + + My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s + http://localhost:1313/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/ + Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000 + http://localhost:1313/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/ + <p>That I’m a big ol’ music weirdo should come as no surprise to anyone who has read <a href="https://cassie.ink/heres-what-i-was-listening-to-in-2015/">some</a> of my <a href="https://cassie.ink/revolutions/">previous</a> writing <a href="https://cassie.ink/canopies-and-drapes/">about</a> it. I have tracked just about all of my music listening to <a href="https://www.last.fm/user/wearebeautiful">last.fm</a> since 2014, both to maintain a record and gather minute statistics about myself.</p> <p>I turned 16 in 2010, and my 25th birthday was this past November. The latter half of my adolescent identity formation therefore took place during this past decade, and the music I listened to during those years acted as a score, a signpost, a catharsis, a reflection. I’ve come to mark events in my life with the music I was listening to at the time. And having spent my teen years sitting in front of a computer listening to music at pretty much all times, I developed a pretty large collection.</p> <p>As with any post in this series, I do want to offer a few caveats and disclaimers. A lot of music came out this decade, by artists I love and by artists I haven’t discovered yet. I’m human. I haven’t heard it all. I track very few bands’ new releases, and instead seek out new albums as interest and whims guide me. So this list is limited to the music I actually listened to during these years and what music from that collection I consider influential on my personal taste or mindset. It’s very likely that, a few years from now, I’ll stumble upon an album released in 2013 that I absolutely love, just as I listened to and loved plenty of albums from before 2010. But this list will be limited to releases from the decade that I listened to a lot; I did briefly consider whether I would permit myself to include more than one album by the same artist, but as I narrowed down the possibilities, I found that was not an issue. I did not make any distinctions between full albums or EPs in my selection process either.</p> <hr> <h2 id="10-grimes-visions-2012">#10. Grimes, <em>Visions</em> (2012)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/visions.jpg#album" alt="Visions album cover"> For the record, I am deeply uncomfortable being a Grimes fan in 2019. But 2012 was a different time — or, more accurately, 2013, when I started listening to Grimes.</p> <p>A recurring theme through the albums on this list will be that they mark some kind of notable shift or change in my musical tastes. I’d classify Grimes as “weird shit,” especially early Grimes, which I was no stranger to prior to picking up <em>Visions</em>. But Grimes was a new kind of weird for me: in <em>Visions</em> especially, the vocals and lyrics are at times abstracted and indistinct. They’re like another instrument, layered into wandering synthesizers and catchy beats. <em>Visions</em> sports some genuine bops and poppy tunes, like “Genesis” and “Oblivion”, but there’s still a darkness there — there’s also angsty tracks that sound like they were composed and sang by some kind of sewer nymph reaching out to be heard, seen, loved, but whose voice cannot travel far enough (“Soft skin / I’ll have you be near my heart / until I feel human / soft skin, oh / You were never in love to begin with / So now I’m suffering”). Instead, that voice remains distant, reverberating from a far-off place.</p> <p>It’s really hard to recommend Grimes these days, as she’s now inextricably linked to Elon Musk in my brain. But <em>Visions</em> is still my favorite album she’s put out, and it’s absolutely worth a listen, even if it’s probably bumping the speakers in the Cybertruck these days.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R00Vu7Ag7s">“Skin”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WizNXQGBMEk">“Genesis”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9MXj9nVjkk">“Ambrosia”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtH68PJIQLE">“Oblivion”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txcZix5caF0">“Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment”</a></p> <hr> <h2 id="9-oberhofer-time-capsules-ii-2011">#9. Oberhofer, <em>Time Capsules II</em> (2011)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/timecapsules.jpg#album" alt="Time Capsules II album cover"> Of the albums on this list, <em>Time Capsules II</em> is one of the most embedded in the a specific point in my life. I discovered Oberhofer when I rewatched a season one episode of <em>Broad City</em>, which featured their song “o0Oo0Oo.” This would have been in March or April of 2015 — which is also when I began dating my boyfriend, Joe.</p> <p><em>Time Capsules II</em> became an early soundtrack for our relationship. For our one month anniversary (yes, we were/are big nerds), I gave Joe two mixtapes, the first of many I’d create for him throughout our relationship — one called “You,” the other “Me.” On them, I tried to capture emotion in music, tell him through I was through the songs that spoke to me, and tell him how I felt about him through the songs that reminded me of him. Of the 29 tracks that spanned the two CDs, because I was still burning CDs in 2015, three were Oberhofer songs: “Homebro,” “o0Oo0Oo,” and “Away Frm U.” The opening guitar in “Away Frm U” still fills me with nostalgia.</p> <p>Detaching the album from my own memories, it’s a fairly by the books indie rock tracks and surf rock revival, with some fun hints of Animal Collective mixed in for good measure. It’s catchy enough to sing along to, with enough depth to sustain interest. It’s the music you play when you drive through your hometown at night. But it’s hard to separate my memories from the album like this because Oberhofer is the soundtrack backing our early days. When I think back on the decade, I think about my relationship with Joe in the later half of it. So this album really is a bit of a time capsule for me, too.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:”</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMGdn4ojxtA">“Yr Face”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z40oHofP3E">“Away Frm U”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKMDY3T9eiM">“Haus”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj_uKLk-dYM">“Homebro”</a></p> <hr> <h2 id="8-mac-miller-swimming-2018">#8. Mac Miller, <em>Swimming</em> (2018)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/swimming.jpg#album" alt="Swimming album cover"> When Mac Miller’s death was announced in September of 2018, I knew hardly anything about him. I recognized the name and knew he was a rapper. I’d seen maybe a picture or two of him before, but I’d never heard any of his music. And yet, I was shaken by the announcement, for reasons I couldn’t fully comprehend. I read through pages and pages of folks pouring one out for another artist taken too young, grieving and despairing he never found the help he needed. I thought the only way to understand my reaction was to listen to his music — to pay my due to his passing, even if I’d never particularly connected with rap before (and, to the tell truth, hadn’t really tried). I downloaded his albums, skipped around, picked a few songs more or less at random, and rocked a playlist called “mac miller songs i think i like but idk.”</p> <p>Just as I was entranced by Miller’s death, I was fascinated with his music. It was something new to me, something entirely out of my comfort zone. But there was something compelling — there was a pain and an insight to his lyrics, a density to his production. Mac’s discography takes some defined turns and evolutions, jumping between the ambition and optimism of <em>Best Day Ever</em> to the troubled, strung-out suicidal ideation on <em>Faces</em>. It was, at times, hard for me to understand or digest — except for <em>Swimming</em>. His last release was the most accessible to me; it was my gateway to Mac, to comprehending the life journey that led to the album’s creation and the tragedy of it being cut too short. I’m not sure <em>Swimming</em> is my favorite Mac release — that might be <em>Macadelic</em>, or maybe <em>GO:OD AM</em>, or maybe <em>Faces</em> — but it was a doorway for me to step through into Mac’s world. <em>Swimming</em> was produced from years lived in scrutiny and pain, and Miller never shies away from expressing that on the album (“Well, I didn’t know what I was missing / Now I see a lil’ different / I was thinking too much / Got stuck in oblivion”). <em>Swimming</em> is about walking on the pathway to peace but stumbling along the road. <em>Swimming</em> taught me that you’ve got to jump in to swim.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsKT0s5J8ko">“Self Care”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B3YwcjQ_bU">“2009”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbSuMV7ghm8">“Perfecto”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnG7oL9Gg4o">“Jet Fuel”</a></p> <hr> <h2 id="7-how-to-dress-well--2014">#7. How to Dress Well, <em>&ldquo;What Is This Heart?&rdquo;</em> (2014)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/whatisthisheart.jpg#album" alt="What Is This Heart? album cover"> I discovered How to Dress Well in late 2011, at a time when I was awfully depressed and feeling trapped in my life. The ambiance and desperation in Tom Krell’s debut album, <em>Love Remains</em>, spoke to me in that time. I spent a lot of time with “Ready for the World” on repeat.</p> <p>I also enjoyed How to Dress Well’s next release, <em>Total Loss</em>, as it refined their sound, but it didn’t grab me the way <em>Love Remains</em> did, and so I was keen to see which direction their next release would take.</p> <p><em>“What Is This Heart?”</em> is closer, sonically, to <em>Total Loss</em> than <em>Love Remains</em>, but it hit me. There’s a pure emotion to it that <em>Love Remains</em> concealed under lo-fi beats and distorted vocals that sound like they were somehow produced off a VHS tape recording. <em>“What Is This Heart</em>?” is clear, honest, and beautiful. <em>“What Is This Heart?”</em> dissolves the weight of older tracks like “Ready for the World” and “Cold Nites,” replacing it with a kind of airy lightness that doesn’t sacrifice depth. The album acts as an answer to its titular question — it’s How to Dress Well wearing their heart on their sleeve, bringing Tom Krell’s voice and lyrics to the center, no longer obfuscated by noise. The album’s bare-faced, earnest emotion is embodied on no track better than “Pour Cyril,” which retains some of the noisy, warbling reverb of How to Dress Well’s previous albums but mixes it with heartfelt strings and brass. There’s a heart to this album that is immensely vulnerable and is made all the more captivating for it.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbOCLEIKZOo">“Words I Don’t Remember”</a>, <a href="https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/childhood-faith-in-love-everything-must-change-everything-must-stay-the-same">“Childhood Faith in Love (Everything Must Change, Everything Must Stay the Same”</a>, <a href="https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/pour-cyril">“Pour Cyril”</a>, <a href="https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/face-again">“Face Again”</a>, <a href="https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/repeat-pleasure">“Repeat Pleasure”</a> (and a special shout to <a href="https://howtodresswellmusic.bandcamp.com/track/repeat-pleasure-a-g-cook-remix">A.G. Cook’s remix of it</a>)</p> <hr> <h2 id="6-the-peripheral-ones-chants-2014">#6. The Peripheral Ones, <em>Chants</em> (2014)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/peripheral.jpg#album" alt="Chants album cover"> This album will be maybe the most idiosyncratic entry on this list.</p> <p>In something like 2008 or 2009, I found a band on Myspace (!) called The Middle Ones. They made <a href="https://themiddleones.bandcamp.com/track/goodnight-song">charming little acoustic songs</a> that were very of their time and place and are still very good. I sang along to them (badly) for a few years, and then they became another relic of my music library that I’d revisit every now and then.</p> <p>Jump ahead to 2015, when I’m lurking on anorak for new music, and I see there’s a Middle Ones thread. I give some of the recent posts a read through and find <a href="https://anorakforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&amp;t=2918&amp;start=140#p235243">someone has shared a link to a Middle Ones cover album</a>. Enter The Peripheral Ones.</p> <p>I love these covers. I know it’s taboo to say, but sometimes I think I may love them more than the originals. <em>Chants</em> is clearly a product of love and reverence for The Middle Ones, but it’s not afraid to experiment. Sometimes they’re covers with a new twist, as in “Young Explorer.” Other times, they include <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/morningtime">a “lyrical interpolation” of Nicki Minaj’s “Superbass”</a> or replace the original harmonica <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/yeah-roy">with music from <em>The Legend of Zelda</em></a>. <em>Chants</em> is truly a special album to me — and it led me to other great projects by the members of The Peripheral Ones, namely Pigthe and Trust Fund. It is a goddamn shame that <em>Chants</em> has less than 900 scrobbles on last.fm as of writing (and I account for around a third of them). Please do yourself a favor and listen to it. I may have conceived of this album review post as an excuse to shill for <em>Chants</em>.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/morningtime">“Morningtime”</a>, <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/young-explorer">“Young Explorer”</a>, <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/drops">“Drops”</a>, <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/track/after">“After”</a></p> <p><em>Download</em> Chants <em>for free via The Peripheral Ones on <a href="https://theperipheralones.bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a>.</em></p> <hr> <h2 id="5-pigthe-every-morning-i-wake-up-covered-in-blood-2019">#5. Pigthe, <em>every morning i wake up covered in blood</em> (2019)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/coveredinblood.jpg#album" alt="every morning i wake up covered in blood album cover"> Pigthe is the only artist to appear twice on my ranking for the decade, albeit under different names. Pigthe is also probably the most obscure shit to appear on this list, which keeps my hipster cred in tact.</p> <p><em>every morning i wake up covered in blood</em> seems, at times, to be a bizarre compilation. I don’t always know what to make of <em>every morning</em>. Sparse details are available about it online, or even about Pigthe in general. Of its nineteen total tracks, eight clock in at under a minute long on <em>every morning</em>. Four of those eight are under ten seconds. Scattered throughout are short, spoken word segments that are sometimes their own track (like “bad,” a nine second track whose complete lyrics read “The singing was boring and the lyrics were bad / The singing was boring and the song was bad”) or compete for attention over vocal tracks and strumming guitars in “JaneaneG++.” Other times, <em>every morning</em> covers Mariah Carey in “Beautiful” or laments on the desperation and emptiness that follow from the economic alienation in late-stage capitalism in “Consumer Blues part ii” or composes a thirteen minute opus in “Not Enough // Not Good Enough.” But as impenetrable as <em>every morning i wake up covered in blood</em> can sometimes feel, it speaks to me in a way I haven’t yet figured out or defined. It manages to be both catchy and intensely brooding at the many peaks of the album. It has stayed with me since its release a few months ago — and I think it will continue to stay with me for quite a bit longer.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://music.pigthe.com/track/consumer-blues-part-ii">“Consumer Blues part ii”</a>, <a href="https://music.pigthe.com/track/every-morning-i-wake-up-covered-in-blood">“Every Morning I Wake Up Covered in Blood”</a>, <a href="https://music.pigthe.com/track/not-enough-not-good-enough">“Not Enough // Not Good Enough”</a></p> <p><em>Download</em> every morning i wake up covered in blood <em>for free via Pigthe on <a href="https://music.pigthe.com/album/every-morning-i-wake-up-covered-in-blood">Bandcamp</a>.</em></p> <hr> <h2 id="4-sylvan-esso-sylvan-esso-2014">#4. Sylvan Esso, <em>Sylvan Esso</em> (2014)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/sylvanesso.jpg#album" alt="Sylvan Esso album cover"> <em>Sylvan Esso</em> is a masterclass in grabbing your listener with the first track.</p> <p>Their self-titled debut album opens with the infectious, repeated “Hey mami / I know what you want, mami.” It builds with slow claps and layered voices until the beat drops in. The song’s lyrics might be about a woman getting catcalled in the street, but there’s a breeziness, an airiness to “Hey Mami.” It sort of spreads in your brain, and it sticks there for a long time.</p> <p>But as explosive and electronic as “Hey Mami” is, and many of the other tracks on the album, Sylvan Esso is also able to deliver a warmth when they pull back into muted beats and smooth, untouched vocals in “Coffee” or “Uncatena.” No song on <em>Sylvan Esso</em> ever sounds forced, overproduced, or inorganic; it’s a wonderful fusion of beats and vocals. Sylvan Esso sounds like breathing in morning air with a twinkly piano in the background. <em>Sylvan Esso</em> was a new, innovative sound when it first released, and no one has really come close to it since — aside from maybe their sophomore release. But <em>Sylvan Esso</em> gets credit for being the first.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/hey-mami">“Hey Mami”</a>, <a href="https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/dress">“Dress”</a>, <a href="https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/dreamy-bruises">“Dreamy Bruises”</a>, <a href="https://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/track/coffee-3">“Coffee”</a></p> <hr> <h2 id="3-los-campesinos-sick-scenes-2017">#3. Los Campesinos!, <em>Sick Scenes</em> (2017)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/sickscenes.jpg#album" alt="Sick Scenes album cover"> Los Campesinos! are my favorite band, and they have been since their 2008 debut album, <em>Hold On Now, Youngster…</em> What’s absolutely remarkable about Los Campesinos! — and what has enabled them to hold their throne for so long — is that every one of their releases evolves their sound then adds something new. There’s a growth and progression inside their discography to which few artists can compare and which they have continued into their 2017 release, <em>Sick Scenes</em>.</p> <p>There’s something sparse about <em>Sick Scenes</em>, which lies in stark contrast to their early discography and which I mean with the highest esteem. Consider, for example, the breakdown in “Got Stendhal’s,” when a lone guitar kicks in, then drums and vocals are slowly reintroduced. In the <em>Tweexcore</em>-era, this might have been a cacophony of instruments all trying to be heard over the other. If you listen to a track from <em>HONY</em> then compare it to one from <em>Sick Scenes</em>, it’s hard to believe the same people were even remotely involved — and, indeed, much of their lineup has changed over the years, but they’ve kept true to their vision of being “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band.” In <em>Sick Scenes</em>, Los Campesinos! learn to pull back, to focus their sound into something deceptively simple. <em>Sick Scenes</em> is Team Campesinos at their most refined and, I’m inclined to say, at their best.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/here-s-to-the-fourth-time">“Here’s To The Fourth Time!”</a>, <a href="https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/got-stendhal-s">“Got Stendhal’s”</a>, <a href="https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/track/5-flucloxacillin">“5 Flucloxacillin”</a> <em>Purchase</em> Sick Scenes <em>in various formats starting at £7 on <a href="https://loscampesinos.bandcamp.com/album/sick-scenes">Bandcamp</a>.</em></p> <hr> <h2 id="2-altj-an-awesome-wave-2012">#2. alt+J, <em>An Awesome Wave</em> (2012)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/awesomewave.jpg#album" alt="An Awesome Wave album cover"> 2012 was a rough year for me. I graduated high school then, but the months leading up to it was the deepest depressions I’ve ever fallen into. I felt totally alienated from my immediate world and circle; I cared very little for my schoolwork or my friends or myself. I was ready to move onto college and start fresh, with new people and new passion — but I had to trudge through six more months of high school first.</p> <p><em>An Awesome Wave</em> released in May of 2012; I don’t know when I first discovered alt+J (through “Breezeblocks,” like everyone else on the planet), but I listened to them a <em>lot</em> in the weeks leading up to, and into, my first semester of college — and just like college, <em>An Awesome Wave</em> was something fresh. It was something new. To me, at least. And that’s precisely what I needed. It was a wave of relief — from my depression, and from months spent listening to “Hate for the Island” (from Los Campesinos!’s <em>Hello Sadness</em>) and Xiu Xiu’s <em>Dear God, I Hate Myself</em> on repeat. (Not the healthiest choices, in retrospect.)</p> <p>In 2019, <em>An Awesome Wave</em> has perhaps lost some of its fresh novelty; it was eclectic and experimental in 2012, but we’ve had years now of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlBskd3IaNw">folks spoofing alt+J’s sound</a>. I love it dearly still, perhaps for the sound memories it has left, the way that “Bloodflood” washes me over with calm, the way that “Something Good” is now forever attached to <em>Life is Strange</em>, one of my favorite games from the decade, the way I try to croon along (badly) with “Matilda.” The album has lost some of its neoteric magic seven years later; maybe it’s a nostalgia speaking, but I consider it a new classic.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv-zbP7lyjA">“Bloodflood”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNYjOVo5IEw">“Something Good”</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVeMiVU77wo">“Breezeblocks”</a></p> <hr> <h2 id="1-stolen-jars-kept-2015">#1. Stolen Jars, <em>Kept</em> (2015)</h2> <p><img src="https://cdn.cassie.ink/images/2019/kept.jpg#album" alt="Kept album cover"> I fell in love with Stolen Jars in the first time I heard the scattered din of percussion that opens the title track on <em>Kept</em> — and while I’m about to describe that love in detail, I really recommend that you just <a href="https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/kept-2">go ahead and hear it for yourself</a>.</p> <p>To set the scene of my first contact with Stolen Jars, it was back when I worked at RadioShack; shifts were often dull as we waited out the days until the store closed. We ran a Pandora station on some rad speakers, but mostly I just zoned out or did homework. When I heard that percussion stumble on out, the song immediately grabbed me. I knew I had to hear more.</p> <p>Stolen Jars are not something entirely new or innovative, like some of my other entries on this list. Their music is accessible, even if it goes unnoticed by many. But what makes <em>Kept</em> so entrancing is how ethereal it is. <em>Kept</em> transports the listener to a dream-like state; there’s a warmth and a comfort to it, like being wrapped in a fluffy comforter and snoozing off into the clouds, otherworldly voices whispering that living takes time, asking to keep your hands close. There’s something organic yet mystical about <em>Kept</em>, something artful yet catchy, something pensive yet grounded. Their lyrics are often abstract (“some nights / when I’m alone / when I’m alone / I’ll look through faces of old occasions / of places, scattered now / on small plates painted / just to know them”), but they evoke sense memories embedded in the reflections of fleeting moments — of waking up to see your partner bathed in light, of the train whistle in your hometown, of golden memories of childhood games with friends. <em>Kept</em> reaches into our reveries and holds tight to them. The songs are all light and air, space turned sonic. It’s a beautiful piece of art that consistently leaves me in awe.</p> <p><strong>Favorite Tracks:</strong> <a href="https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/kept-2">“Kept”</a>, <a href="https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/another-november">“Another November”</a>, <a href="https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/wreaths-rakes">“Wreaths Rakes”</a>, <a href="https://stolenjars.bandcamp.com/track/waves">“Waves”</a></p> + Women in a Sea of Men: The Representation of Women in The Curse of the Black Pearl http://localhost:1313/women-in-a-sea-of-men-the-representation-of-women-in-the-curse-of-the-black-pearl/ diff --git a/public/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html b/public/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0535db4 --- /dev/null +++ b/public/my-top-ten-albums-from-the-2010s/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,196 @@ + + + + + + + + + + + +My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s | cassie.ink + + + + + + + + + + + +
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My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s

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That I’m a big ol’ music weirdo should come as no surprise to anyone who has read some of my previous writing about it. I have tracked just about all of my music listening to last.fm since 2014, both to maintain a record and gather minute statistics about myself.

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I turned 16 in 2010, and my 25th birthday was this past November. The latter half of my adolescent identity formation therefore took place during this past decade, and the music I listened to during those years acted as a score, a signpost, a catharsis, a reflection. I’ve come to mark events in my life with the music I was listening to at the time. And having spent my teen years sitting in front of a computer listening to music at pretty much all times, I developed a pretty large collection.

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As with any post in this series, I do want to offer a few caveats and disclaimers. A lot of music came out this decade, by artists I love and by artists I haven’t discovered yet. I’m human. I haven’t heard it all. I track very few bands’ new releases, and instead seek out new albums as interest and whims guide me. So this list is limited to the music I actually listened to during these years and what music from that collection I consider influential on my personal taste or mindset. It’s very likely that, a few years from now, I’ll stumble upon an album released in 2013 that I absolutely love, just as I listened to and loved plenty of albums from before 2010. But this list will be limited to releases from the decade that I listened to a lot; I did briefly consider whether I would permit myself to include more than one album by the same artist, but as I narrowed down the possibilities, I found that was not an issue. I did not make any distinctions between full albums or EPs in my selection process either.

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#10. Grimes, Visions (2012)

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Visions album cover +For the record, I am deeply uncomfortable being a Grimes fan in 2019. But 2012 was a different time — or, more accurately, 2013, when I started listening to Grimes.

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A recurring theme through the albums on this list will be that they mark some kind of notable shift or change in my musical tastes. I’d classify Grimes as “weird shit,” especially early Grimes, which I was no stranger to prior to picking up Visions. But Grimes was a new kind of weird for me: in Visions especially, the vocals and lyrics are at times abstracted and indistinct. They’re like another instrument, layered into wandering synthesizers and catchy beats. Visions sports some genuine bops and poppy tunes, like “Genesis” and “Oblivion”, but there’s still a darkness there — there’s also angsty tracks that sound like they were composed and sang by some kind of sewer nymph reaching out to be heard, seen, loved, but whose voice cannot travel far enough (“Soft skin / I’ll have you be near my heart / until I feel human / soft skin, oh / You were never in love to begin with / So now I’m suffering”). Instead, that voice remains distant, reverberating from a far-off place.

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It’s really hard to recommend Grimes these days, as she’s now inextricably linked to Elon Musk in my brain. But Visions is still my favorite album she’s put out, and it’s absolutely worth a listen, even if it’s probably bumping the speakers in the Cybertruck these days.

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Favorite Tracks: “Skin”, “Genesis”, “Ambrosia”, “Oblivion”, “Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment”

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#9. Oberhofer, Time Capsules II (2011)

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Time Capsules II album cover +Of the albums on this list, Time Capsules II is one of the most embedded in the a specific point in my life. I discovered Oberhofer when I rewatched a season one episode of Broad City, which featured their song “o0Oo0Oo.” This would have been in March or April of 2015 — which is also when I began dating my boyfriend, Joe.

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Time Capsules II became an early soundtrack for our relationship. For our one month anniversary (yes, we were/are big nerds), I gave Joe two mixtapes, the first of many I’d create for him throughout our relationship — one called “You,” the other “Me.” On them, I tried to capture emotion in music, tell him through I was through the songs that spoke to me, and tell him how I felt about him through the songs that reminded me of him. Of the 29 tracks that spanned the two CDs, because I was still burning CDs in 2015, three were Oberhofer songs: “Homebro,” “o0Oo0Oo,” and “Away Frm U.” The opening guitar in “Away Frm U” still fills me with nostalgia.

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Detaching the album from my own memories, it’s a fairly by the books indie rock tracks and surf rock revival, with some fun hints of Animal Collective mixed in for good measure. It’s catchy enough to sing along to, with enough depth to sustain interest. It’s the music you play when you drive through your hometown at night. But it’s hard to separate my memories from the album like this because Oberhofer is the soundtrack backing our early days. When I think back on the decade, I think about my relationship with Joe in the later half of it. So this album really is a bit of a time capsule for me, too.

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Favorite Tracks:” “Yr Face”, “Away Frm U”, “Haus”, “Homebro”

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#8. Mac Miller, Swimming (2018)

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Swimming album cover +When Mac Miller’s death was announced in September of 2018, I knew hardly anything about him. I recognized the name and knew he was a rapper. I’d seen maybe a picture or two of him before, but I’d never heard any of his music. And yet, I was shaken by the announcement, for reasons I couldn’t fully comprehend. I read through pages and pages of folks pouring one out for another artist taken too young, grieving and despairing he never found the help he needed. I thought the only way to understand my reaction was to listen to his music — to pay my due to his passing, even if I’d never particularly connected with rap before (and, to the tell truth, hadn’t really tried). I downloaded his albums, skipped around, picked a few songs more or less at random, and rocked a playlist called “mac miller songs i think i like but idk.”

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Just as I was entranced by Miller’s death, I was fascinated with his music. It was something new to me, something entirely out of my comfort zone. But there was something compelling — there was a pain and an insight to his lyrics, a density to his production. Mac’s discography takes some defined turns and evolutions, jumping between the ambition and optimism of Best Day Ever to the troubled, strung-out suicidal ideation on Faces. It was, at times, hard for me to understand or digest — except for Swimming. His last release was the most accessible to me; it was my gateway to Mac, to comprehending the life journey that led to the album’s creation and the tragedy of it being cut too short. I’m not sure Swimming is my favorite Mac release — that might be Macadelic, or maybe GO:OD AM, or maybe Faces — but it was a doorway for me to step through into Mac’s world. Swimming was produced from years lived in scrutiny and pain, and Miller never shies away from expressing that on the album (“Well, I didn’t know what I was missing / Now I see a lil’ different / I was thinking too much / Got stuck in oblivion”). Swimming is about walking on the pathway to peace but stumbling along the road. Swimming taught me that you’ve got to jump in to swim.

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Favorite Tracks: “Self Care”, “2009”, “Perfecto”, “Jet Fuel”

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#7. How to Dress Well, “What Is This Heart?” (2014)

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What Is This Heart? album cover +I discovered How to Dress Well in late 2011, at a time when I was awfully depressed and feeling trapped in my life. The ambiance and desperation in Tom Krell’s debut album, Love Remains, spoke to me in that time. I spent a lot of time with “Ready for the World” on repeat.

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I also enjoyed How to Dress Well’s next release, Total Loss, as it refined their sound, but it didn’t grab me the way Love Remains did, and so I was keen to see which direction their next release would take.

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“What Is This Heart?” is closer, sonically, to Total Loss than Love Remains, but it hit me. There’s a pure emotion to it that Love Remains concealed under lo-fi beats and distorted vocals that sound like they were somehow produced off a VHS tape recording. “What Is This Heart?” is clear, honest, and beautiful. “What Is This Heart?” dissolves the weight of older tracks like “Ready for the World” and “Cold Nites,” replacing it with a kind of airy lightness that doesn’t sacrifice depth. The album acts as an answer to its titular question — it’s How to Dress Well wearing their heart on their sleeve, bringing Tom Krell’s voice and lyrics to the center, no longer obfuscated by noise. The album’s bare-faced, earnest emotion is embodied on no track better than “Pour Cyril,” which retains some of the noisy, warbling reverb of How to Dress Well’s previous albums but mixes it with heartfelt strings and brass. There’s a heart to this album that is immensely vulnerable and is made all the more captivating for it.

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Favorite Tracks: “Words I Don’t Remember”, “Childhood Faith in Love (Everything Must Change, Everything Must Stay the Same”, “Pour Cyril”, “Face Again”, “Repeat Pleasure” (and a special shout to A.G. Cook’s remix of it)

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#6. The Peripheral Ones, Chants (2014)

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Chants album cover +This album will be maybe the most idiosyncratic entry on this list.

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In something like 2008 or 2009, I found a band on Myspace (!) called The Middle Ones. They made charming little acoustic songs that were very of their time and place and are still very good. I sang along to them (badly) for a few years, and then they became another relic of my music library that I’d revisit every now and then.

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Jump ahead to 2015, when I’m lurking on anorak for new music, and I see there’s a Middle Ones thread. I give some of the recent posts a read through and find someone has shared a link to a Middle Ones cover album. Enter The Peripheral Ones.

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I love these covers. I know it’s taboo to say, but sometimes I think I may love them more than the originals. Chants is clearly a product of love and reverence for The Middle Ones, but it’s not afraid to experiment. Sometimes they’re covers with a new twist, as in “Young Explorer.” Other times, they include a “lyrical interpolation” of Nicki Minaj’s “Superbass” or replace the original harmonica with music from The Legend of Zelda. Chants is truly a special album to me — and it led me to other great projects by the members of The Peripheral Ones, namely Pigthe and Trust Fund. It is a goddamn shame that Chants has less than 900 scrobbles on last.fm as of writing (and I account for around a third of them). Please do yourself a favor and listen to it. I may have conceived of this album review post as an excuse to shill for Chants.

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Favorite Tracks: “Morningtime”, “Young Explorer”, “Drops”, “After”

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Download Chants for free via The Peripheral Ones on Bandcamp.

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#5. Pigthe, every morning i wake up covered in blood (2019)

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every morning i wake up covered in blood album cover +Pigthe is the only artist to appear twice on my ranking for the decade, albeit under different names. Pigthe is also probably the most obscure shit to appear on this list, which keeps my hipster cred in tact.

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every morning i wake up covered in blood seems, at times, to be a bizarre compilation. I don’t always know what to make of every morning. Sparse details are available about it online, or even about Pigthe in general. Of its nineteen total tracks, eight clock in at under a minute long on every morning. Four of those eight are under ten seconds. Scattered throughout are short, spoken word segments that are sometimes their own track (like “bad,” a nine second track whose complete lyrics read “The singing was boring and the lyrics were bad / The singing was boring and the song was bad”) or compete for attention over vocal tracks and strumming guitars in “JaneaneG++.” Other times, every morning covers Mariah Carey in “Beautiful” or laments on the desperation and emptiness that follow from the economic alienation in late-stage capitalism in “Consumer Blues part ii” or composes a thirteen minute opus in “Not Enough // Not Good Enough.” But as impenetrable as every morning i wake up covered in blood can sometimes feel, it speaks to me in a way I haven’t yet figured out or defined. It manages to be both catchy and intensely brooding at the many peaks of the album. It has stayed with me since its release a few months ago — and I think it will continue to stay with me for quite a bit longer.

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Favorite Tracks: “Consumer Blues part ii”, “Every Morning I Wake Up Covered in Blood”, “Not Enough // Not Good Enough”

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Download every morning i wake up covered in blood for free via Pigthe on Bandcamp.

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#4. Sylvan Esso, Sylvan Esso (2014)

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Sylvan Esso album cover +Sylvan Esso is a masterclass in grabbing your listener with the first track.

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Their self-titled debut album opens with the infectious, repeated “Hey mami / I know what you want, mami.” It builds with slow claps and layered voices until the beat drops in. The song’s lyrics might be about a woman getting catcalled in the street, but there’s a breeziness, an airiness to “Hey Mami.” It sort of spreads in your brain, and it sticks there for a long time.

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But as explosive and electronic as “Hey Mami” is, and many of the other tracks on the album, Sylvan Esso is also able to deliver a warmth when they pull back into muted beats and smooth, untouched vocals in “Coffee” or “Uncatena.” No song on Sylvan Esso ever sounds forced, overproduced, or inorganic; it’s a wonderful fusion of beats and vocals. Sylvan Esso sounds like breathing in morning air with a twinkly piano in the background. Sylvan Esso was a new, innovative sound when it first released, and no one has really come close to it since — aside from maybe their sophomore release. But Sylvan Esso gets credit for being the first.

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Favorite Tracks: “Hey Mami”, “Dress”, “Dreamy Bruises”, “Coffee”

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#3. Los Campesinos!, Sick Scenes (2017)

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Sick Scenes album cover +Los Campesinos! are my favorite band, and they have been since their 2008 debut album, Hold On Now, Youngster… What’s absolutely remarkable about Los Campesinos! — and what has enabled them to hold their throne for so long — is that every one of their releases evolves their sound then adds something new. There’s a growth and progression inside their discography to which few artists can compare and which they have continued into their 2017 release, Sick Scenes.

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There’s something sparse about Sick Scenes, which lies in stark contrast to their early discography and which I mean with the highest esteem. Consider, for example, the breakdown in “Got Stendhal’s,” when a lone guitar kicks in, then drums and vocals are slowly reintroduced. In the Tweexcore-era, this might have been a cacophony of instruments all trying to be heard over the other. If you listen to a track from HONY then compare it to one from Sick Scenes, it’s hard to believe the same people were even remotely involved — and, indeed, much of their lineup has changed over the years, but they’ve kept true to their vision of being “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band.” In Sick Scenes, Los Campesinos! learn to pull back, to focus their sound into something deceptively simple. Sick Scenes is Team Campesinos at their most refined and, I’m inclined to say, at their best.

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Favorite Tracks: “Here’s To The Fourth Time!”, “Got Stendhal’s”, “5 Flucloxacillin” +Purchase Sick Scenes in various formats starting at £7 on Bandcamp.

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#2. alt+J, An Awesome Wave (2012)

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An Awesome Wave album cover +2012 was a rough year for me. I graduated high school then, but the months leading up to it was the deepest depressions I’ve ever fallen into. I felt totally alienated from my immediate world and circle; I cared very little for my schoolwork or my friends or myself. I was ready to move onto college and start fresh, with new people and new passion — but I had to trudge through six more months of high school first.

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An Awesome Wave released in May of 2012; I don’t know when I first discovered alt+J (through “Breezeblocks,” like everyone else on the planet), but I listened to them a lot in the weeks leading up to, and into, my first semester of college — and just like college, An Awesome Wave was something fresh. It was something new. To me, at least. And that’s precisely what I needed. It was a wave of relief — from my depression, and from months spent listening to “Hate for the Island” (from Los Campesinos!’s Hello Sadness) and Xiu Xiu’s Dear God, I Hate Myself on repeat. (Not the healthiest choices, in retrospect.)

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In 2019, An Awesome Wave has perhaps lost some of its fresh novelty; it was eclectic and experimental in 2012, but we’ve had years now of folks spoofing alt+J’s sound. I love it dearly still, perhaps for the sound memories it has left, the way that “Bloodflood” washes me over with calm, the way that “Something Good” is now forever attached to Life is Strange, one of my favorite games from the decade, the way I try to croon along (badly) with “Matilda.” The album has lost some of its neoteric magic seven years later; maybe it’s a nostalgia speaking, but I consider it a new classic.

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Favorite Tracks: “Bloodflood”, “Something Good”, “Breezeblocks”

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#1. Stolen Jars, Kept (2015)

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Kept album cover +I fell in love with Stolen Jars in the first time I heard the scattered din of percussion that opens the title track on Kept — and while I’m about to describe that love in detail, I really recommend that you just go ahead and hear it for yourself.

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To set the scene of my first contact with Stolen Jars, it was back when I worked at RadioShack; shifts were often dull as we waited out the days until the store closed. We ran a Pandora station on some rad speakers, but mostly I just zoned out or did homework. When I heard that percussion stumble on out, the song immediately grabbed me. I knew I had to hear more.

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Stolen Jars are not something entirely new or innovative, like some of my other entries on this list. Their music is accessible, even if it goes unnoticed by many. But what makes Kept so entrancing is how ethereal it is. Kept transports the listener to a dream-like state; there’s a warmth and a comfort to it, like being wrapped in a fluffy comforter and snoozing off into the clouds, otherworldly voices whispering that living takes time, asking to keep your hands close. There’s something organic yet mystical about Kept, something artful yet catchy, something pensive yet grounded. Their lyrics are often abstract (“some nights / when I’m alone / when I’m alone / I’ll look through faces of old occasions / of places, scattered now / on small plates painted / just to know them”), but they evoke sense memories embedded in the reflections of fleeting moments — of waking up to see your partner bathed in light, of the train whistle in your hometown, of golden memories of childhood games with friends. Kept reaches into our reveries and holds tight to them. The songs are all light and air, space turned sonic. It’s a beautiful piece of art that consistently leaves me in awe.

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Favorite Tracks: “Kept”, “Another November”, “Wreaths Rakes”, “Waves”

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My Top Ten Albums from the 2010s

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