#22 - Beach Slang - The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us

Beach Slang - The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel Like Us 

Polyvinyl, 2015

Every once in a while an album just knocks you out. There’s the thrill of discovery, I talk about that ad nauseam in this list, but sometimes a record just gets you in the right place at the right time and all of a sudden you’re on the floor. The feeling this one gave me was the same one I felt when I heard The Exploding Hearts Guitar Romantic for the first time. Those guys weren’t reinventing the wheel, but their songs were pure, undiluted rock and roll joy (which is what made the majority of that band getting killed in a van accident one of the most heartbreaking tragedies on par with the Day the Music Died). What James Alex is doing here, it’s a lot of Replacements, it’s a little Big Star, it’s all lightning in a bottle. Pure punk anthems that grab you by the throat as often as they grab you by the heart. One thing I love about this album is the perfect sequencing of the first five songs. From the fist-pumping opener “Throwaways” which is the perfect thesis statement for what this album is (“It’s a dead-end town for trash like us/ But I’ve gotta full tank and a couple bucks”) to the “Here Comes a Regular” vibes of “Too Late to Die Young” that is one of those songs that is perfectly designed to finish the A-Side (my favorite songs of the 2010s list isn’t set in stone yet, but that one is a no-doubter). This music is just so damn earnest, and that’s so refreshing when so many bands are content to posture and play it cool. It’s a big reason why that modern post-punk stuff doesn’t do it for me, and why this throwback power-pop-punk-emo is the stuff I want to listen to forever.

#23 - AJJ - The Bible 2

AJJ - The Bible 2 

SideOneDummy, 2016

It sounds corny, but I don’t know if there’s another band that can play on the same wavelength as my soul as AJJ does. Their records feels so right to me, and I feel like I know them by heart the first time I listen to them. Listening to their records is the closest I’ll ever get to reading a self-help book. Though this album is full of darkness, but it’s also about overcoming that darkness and crawling out into the light (or at least accepting your fate). “No more shame, no more fear, no more dread” is an affirmation I still ascribe to and use like a mantra. The Bible 2 is a bigger album than AJJ had produced up until this point, and feels like the band maturing while still keeping that special, grungy thing that makes them special sacred. Sean Bonnette’s songs paint the world as a bit of a hellscape, but it’s a hellscape we have to do our best to live in, and we should try to make it the best hellscape on the block. One thing AJJ's music has helped me with is addressing my own personal issues with anxiety and depression (which hit hard when the thyroid cancer hit and never left) and seeking help managing them with medication and meditation instead of bottling them up and living with perpetual stress headaches. Not that any of that is explicit in the lyrics, but there's so many themes about confronting the ugliness of the world and ourselves that their music makes me feel more human than any other music.

Fun aside: Rosie was 2 when this came out and it was before she started demanding Disney Princess music or the UglyDolls soundtrack, and we listened to this one in the car a lot. Her singing along to the “I love you cuz I love you cuz I can” part from “Junkie Church” and “I saw white worms I saw white worms” part from “White Worms” is still one of the sweetest memories I have of her from that age.

#24 - Cheap Girls - Famous Graves

Cheap Girls - Famous Graves

Xtra Mile, 2014

There are a few albums on this list that are here by virtue of just being damn solid records. Not every album has to reinvent the wheel, upend a band’s sound, or innovate, and I feel like it’s important to remember that in a culture that is so saturated with stuff to consume, all of it fighting for your attention. Fortunately, since music requires so much less time investment to know if something is good opposed to a book, movie, or TV show, it’s easy to try out a lot of stuff. That’s how Cheap Girls Famous Graves ended up as one of my most listened to albums of the decade. I just never stopped playing this album, and it’s one I still like to put on when I need something to fill a silent void. There’s nothing fancy about this album. It’s pure indie rock with power pop leanings that I love by virtue of the list of bands they’ve been on tour with (The Hold Steady, Against Me!, AJJ, Joyce Manor, you can see why I like these guys). Famous Graves is a rock solid record, and it’s a shame it proved to be the band’s last as they split in 2017. Sometimes a band only gets 30 seconds to convince me that I should continue listening to them, and with Cheap Girls I needed all of 10 seconds to fully commit to the album. The opening to “Slow Nod” is my kind of music. Better yet, one of my favorite songs--the bonus track “7-8 Years”--didn’t even make the album! And that’s a crying shame because the lyric “So kick me in the kidneys really hard/ I’m gonna write my name in blood in the backyard” is an absolute killer.

#25 - Rooftop Vigilantes - Real Pony Glue

Rooftop Vigilantes - Real Pony Glue

Lovely Sea, 2011

I was never really a believer in local music until I saw Rooftop Vigilantes. They were the first band from Lawrence that was as good as any of the other bands I was listening to. In fact, they were better than a lot of the bands I was listening to. I would wager that the band’s 2009 debut--Carrot Atlas--is one of my Top 5 most played albums of all time. It was just mind-boggling that people I partied with made songs as blindingly catchy as anything from Guided by Voices’ greatest hits. Real Pony Glue was supposed to be the band’s breakout. They decamped to Baltimore to record with the legendary J. Robbins and...then no one wanted to release the album. Or something like that. Which was crazy, because it’s so good and there are at least 6 or 7 songs on this album that would be a regular band’s high watermark. If I remember correctly, the album was effectively self-released on cassette and that was the end of it. It’s the great indie rock injustice. Where Carrot Atlas sounded like a group of friends getting together to make some songs and having a rowdy good time, Real Pony Glue feels like the battening down of the hatches. Everything is tighter the second time around, the melodies are catchier, and even with a staggering 17 songs, I feel like I couldn’t hit the replay button fast enough. I only had an MP3 file of all the songs mashed together, and that was fine because even though there are so many standouts, it was like why not just listen to them all, you know?

#26 - Mark Mulcahy - Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You

Mark Mulcahy - Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You

Mezzotint, 2013

I was a big The Adventures of Pete & Pete fan when I was a kid, so I was aware of Polaris, but the idea that I would be fawning over the singer’s solo album 20 years later is one of those weird unfathomable serendipities that just happens. Despite hosting Alternative Flashback at KJHK for a semester, I didn’t know of Miracle Legion until listening to this album, which should have disqualified me from that job. Better late than never, I suppose, and this album opened me up to a whole wide world of A+ college rock. I might have already mentioned this on this list, but one of the most fun things about being a music fan is the weird circuitous way you go about finding new music. You’re essentially stumbling through the dark with your hands out and when you find magic, it’s like nothing else in the world. And it’s repeatable. It’s not like you find that one song and it’s all over, there’s a whole world of stuff out there to explore. An infinite number of rabbit holes to go down and obsess inside of. 

I came to Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You after reading about the tribute album that was coming out in his honor to raise money for his family after his wife’s death. So I expected this album to be mournful, but it’s surprisingly joyful and full of swagger. And then you get to “The Rabbit” and you feel your whole body seize up. It’s one of the most stunningly beautiful songs I’ve ever heard and a big reason why this one ranks so high.

#27 - Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

27. Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino 

Domino, 2018

I chronicled my love affair with Arctic Monkeys in a five-part piece on this blog many years back, and while I thoroughly loved Suck it and See and AM, upon learning the high-concept science fiction premise of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and the whisperings of its lounge-music vibe, I thought this might be where I got off. And wouldn’t you know it, it not only became my favorite Arctic Monkeys record and my favorite album of 2018. Considering how Alex Turner & company frequently defied my expectations throughout the decade, I can’t say that I’m surprised that I love this album so much. When I needed confidence for my interviews with Johnson County Library that spring, I listened to this album as I slicked back my hair, fake crooning to “Star Treatment.” I vividly remember singing along to the album IN ITS ENTIRETY on a family road trip to Colorado after being subjected to an hours worth of Taylor Swift. 

This is admittedly a goofy album (it is ostensibly about a resort on the moon, with a taqueria on the roof that was very well reviewed, receiving four stars out of five), but the way Turner sells it is essential and makes it cool. Beneath the silly artifice is a set of songs preoccupied by the screen addicted, consumerist dystopia we are currently trapped inside. Where AM was Arctic Monkeys by way of The Stones, Tranquility Base is Arctic Monkeys by way of Serge Gainsbourg. The guitars that are so pervasive on every other Arctic Monkeys album are almost entirely absent here. I don’t think the riskiness of that can be understated. This is a band effectively upending their sound to do something different and pulling it off with aplomb. I’m sure this album has its haters but I don’t think you can argue with the immaculate and innovative production or the wild ideas on display.

#28 - Bright Eyes - The People's Key

Bright Eyes - The People’s Key 

Saddle Creek, 2011

For the final Bright Eyes LP, Conor Oberst & Co stripped away the alt-country sound they had been working with (with great mainstream success, considering that I heard a reworked version of “First Day of My Life” in an insurance commercial the other day) since I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. In a way, The People’s Key feels like a natural progression that spans all the way back to Oberst’s bedroom recordings. Though I zoned out on Bright Eyes during Oberst’s “doing cocaine and dating Winona Rider” period, these songs feel like they are the product of having done some living and come out on the other side. Oberst dwells on spirituality in a way that really resonated with me in 2011. Rastafarianism, Celtic Paganism, and Buddhism all make appearances, and the overall effect is that of trying to feel at home in a world that is often cruel and unusual (“A snuff film on a jumbotron for all the world to see”). Also, it wouldn't be a Bright Eyes post if I didn't mention that I still own that original copy of Letting Off the Happiness with the screen printed cover that I bought at the Lawrence Antique Mall for $35. It's not as valuable as it was, but still in the $200 range, and I'm still terrified to sell it lest it becomes one of those highly sought after records that people drop megabank on years from now. This is all despite having kids who could destroy it in two seconds if they so chose. Alas.

#29 - Mixtapes - Ordinary Silence

Mixtapes - Ordinary Silence

No Sleep Records, 2013

Just give me that earnest, full-hearted pop-punk. Ordinary Silence was a Top 5 record for me in 2013 (which, in my humble opinion, was the best year of the decade for music given that 24% of the albums on this list were pulled from 2013), and it got there by virtue of being the album I listened to the most. I feel like this was playing on repeat that summer, and it was playing on repeat because the songs are just so damn catchy. I mean, this album has 14 songs on it, so if I’m this gaga over it it must be good right? One reason this works so well is that Maura Weaver and Ryan Rockwell split their vocal duties in a way that makes this much more dynamic than your average power chords and hooks music. I’m going through this album track by track trying to find a b-side and it’s just, “That’s a good one, that’s a good one, that’s a good one…” Mixtapes have this fighting spirit that is so captivating, and it’s a damn shame they went on hiatus a year after this album was released. I’m here for the next Mixtapes record whenever they want to release it.

#30 - John K. Samson - Provincial

John K. Samson - Provincial (2012)

Anti, 2012

The Weakerthans were my gateway drug that led me out of my punk rock exclusivity into indie rock’s warm embrace, and as such, John K. Samson is one of my guys. If not THE guy. He’s easily my favorite songwriter and this point in my life I have been a Weakerthans fan longer than I haven’t. His first solo album isn’t the most cohesive effort--it’s comprised of songs from two 7”s released in 2009 and 2010 with 6 brand new songs--but it’s an album I listened to obsessively. It’s also the album I put on at 4 in the morning when we drove to the hospital so that Jenny could give birth to Rosie. I knew it was an important moment, and the DJ in me had to find the right vibe, and I instinctively put on Provincial and didn’t give it a second thought. I knew it was right. Provincial is as good as everything else he has written (which is pretty much all on the same level which is “beyond extraordinary”) but there is a pair of connected songs in the middle of the album–”When I Write My Master’s Thesis” and “Letter in Icelandic From the Ninette San”--that always stop me in my tracks. Set a hundred years apart, “When I Write My Master’s Thesis” is a punchy pop tune about a grad student struggling to finish his Master’s thesis on the Ninette Sanatorium, and “Letter in the Icelandic from the Ninette San” is a melancholy tale told by a man dying of Tuberculosis in the sanatorium. Finding the little ways these songs connect is great, and it ties to the greater themes of connectedness to people, places, and cats named Virtute that dominate Samson’s songwriting.

#31 - The Menzingers - After the Party

The Menzingers - After the Party

Epitaph, 2017

On my library staff account I have an unfinished list called “Fist Pumping Anthem Music” that’s just this, Japandroids, and the Hold Steady. I have a lot of barely there lists that sound fun in my head but we just don’t have enough in the catalog to support it. But it’s there because if you put a gun to my head this is my favorite kind of music. Sing-a-long punk-tinged power-pop with big guitars and bigger hooks. The band first caught my attention with their very good 2014 album Rented World, and I feel like After the Party fulfills the promise you can hear on that album. Honestly the only issue I have with it, and the reason it’s not in the Top 20 is because it’s about 3 songs too long. Not that there are any real weak links here, it’s just when you’re getting into this kind of anthem rock the albums have to make you want to immediately throw them on again. You want them to leave you a little hungry, and this one doesn’t do that. But the first four songs are all unbeatable, and even though the album is damn long, the back half has all-timers like “Your Wild Years” and the title track. The real killer here though is “Lookers,” which if you don’t know what to do with that I don’t know how to help you. That’s a perfect song if there ever was one.