#12 - The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace is There

The Hotelier - Home, Like Noplace is There

Tiny Engines, 2014

The Emo Revival was big for me. Here we had a slew of bands making these big, sweeping songs, putting it all out there, and surpassing all of their heroes on the way up. Well, at least that’s what the Hotelier did with Home, Like Noplace is There. What makes this album so great is that it works an insane alchemy to sustains as perpetually fraught emotional state without ever letting up with enough variance to never wear you out. I listened to this album all through the summer of 2014 running on the poorly maintained walking path that circled our townhome community. I was not built for running, and after that summer I messed up my hamstring so bad I still have to stretch it for 5 minutes every morning, but running (read: jogging, poorly) to The Hotelier is one of my favorite memories from our time there trying to figure out what we were going to do. Their follow-up--2016’s Goodness--is a damn fine record, but I always felt like it was missing the extra gear that made Home, Like Noplace is There so special. This is one of those rare albums that demands to be listened to front-to-back each time out. Most of the songs can stand just fine on their own (“The Scope and All this Rebuilding,” “Your Deep Rest,” and “Housebroken” were all contenders on my favorite songs of the decade list), but they work so much better when listened to all together. 

#13 - AJJ - Christmas Island

AJJ - Christmas Island

SideOneDummy, 2014

2014 was a pretty momentous year for me, in that it was the year I became a dad. And somehow my favorite album from that year is one that opens with the line, “Open up your murder eyes and see the ugly world that spat you out.” There’s also a song about the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult, myriad references to Werner Hezog’s Bad Lieutenant 2: Port of Call New Orleans, and a showstopping ode to breaking down in tears watching a video installation of Linda Rondstadt. It’s an album that covers all of the ugliness of our everyday lives and always refuses to sugarcoat it. “I can’t handle astounding moments of beauty,” sings Sean Bonnette on “Linda Rondstadt,” “I think I like my pretty pretty ugly.” Bonnette’s ability to capture the human experience--the actual human experience, not the one we put on Instagram to show our family and friends, or whatever--is unflinching, and that has always been what has drawn me to AJJ. There’s a bit of truth-telling to the whole thing, and while things are frequently cynical and hopeless-feeling, Bonnette encourages us to soldier on. Or maybe not, I’m not sure, I always felt like this album was about surviving in spite of all of the horrible shit we have to live through both inside and outside of ourselves.

#14 - Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life

Japandroids - Near to the Wild Heart of Life

Polyvinyl, 2017

I’ll preface this by saying that we will talk about Celebration Rock later, but it’s important to know where this album stands in relation to that one. I still feel deep regret making Father John Misty’s Fear Fun my favorite album of 2012, not because it’s a bad album, but because that album doesn’t hold up nearly as well. Yes, this is in regard to a list that is essentially for myself, but man it haunts me. But the thing about year end lists--and a thing I’ve learned to live with--is that they present a true snapshot of what that year’s listening looked like. Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is another great example of an album that was my favorite in the moment, but has since been surpassed. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the staying power an album is going to have until you find yourself listening to it three years later and loving it more than you did in the first place.

The thing Japandroids have going against them is their dumb band name. It’s so bad, and even worse if you take into account how sublimely outstanding their music is. It’s a reason why I was hesitant to get into their debut Post-Nothing, and it might have contributed to a horribly misguided pan I wrote about one of their Lawrence shows in The Pitch. And lo, they overcame that because they write the purest, most white-hot anthem rock of their generation, and Near to the Wild Heart of Life is their most complete record. It’s an album about adventure. About leaving town, about missing home, and living life on the road. A classic tour album, sure, but done with Japandroids flair for brilliant hooks and even more brilliant fist-pumping anthems. What’s cool about Near to the Wild Heart of Life is that they shift gears a few times into quieter territory (by Japandroids standards, at least) which makes the album a different experience than Celebration Rock but one that is worth revisiting a thousand times over.

#15 - The Tallest Man on Earth - Dark Bird is Home

The Tallest Man on Earth - Dark Bird is Home

Dead Oceans, 2015

As I mentioned in the write-up for The Mountain Goats’ Beat the Champ, 2015 was a particularly rough year for me. My thyroid cancer diagnosis in January of that year thrust me into a dark spiral where all I thought about was dying, leaving my wife a widow, and leaving my 6-month-old baby girl fatherless. Even though the doctors assured me that thyroid cancer was very treatable, I didn’t trust them. And I was right! Because what was supposed to be a relatively simple treatment (Step 1: Remove Thyroid and any other affected tissue. Step 2: Take Radioactive Iodine. Step 3: Cured) ended up taking a thyroidectomy, two full treatments of Radioactive iodine, and a modified neck dissection that put me in the hospital for a week and left me looking like I was the victim of a Columbian Necktie. 

Radioactive iodine ablation therapy requires you to stay in isolation for a week, so I holed up in my old bedroom at my parents house. “This is ok!” I thought. “I’ll play video games and watch movies it’ll be ok.” Even though you’re not supposed to get sick, I got sick (it might have been that my old room was basically untouched and very dusty and could have just been allergies) and I was miserable for the first few days. But then I started feeling better, and I started listening to Dark Bird is Home a lot. It’s my favorite The Tallest Man on Earth record and that’s saying something because all of those albums are outstanding. Per Wikipedia, Kristian Matsson says this album was inspired by the death of a close family member and his divorce from his wife, and that helps explain the melancholy that runs through this album. It’s definitely the most lush of Matsson’s albums, and the most evocative. While the sparse recordings on Shallow Grave and The Wild Hunt, the orchestration on Dark Bird is Home elevates the songs and makes them almost otherworldly. I would sit out on the back patio in the morning drinking coffee and listening to this album, and I would feel the weight lift a little bit. I tried to imagine the radioactive iodine attacking the cancerous thyroid cells in my body, even though I was still dubious that this was the end of it. It certainly wasn’t the end, but when I took radioactive iodine again following my neck surgery in October, I brought Dark Bird is Home with me again, and again it was a huge help to my mental well-being.

The longlist for this list had THREE Tallest Man on Earth records on it, and while The Wild Hunt and There’s No Leaving Now are both rock-solid contenders, there’s an emotional depth to this one that isn’t necessarily lacking in the other two, but man this one just hits you in the gut. It’s a divorce record, but instead of the bitterness of Blood on the Tracks you get the heartbreaking sadness of acceptance. It’s more melancholy than any of the previous records, but never gets bogged down in sadness. Everything is just so measured, and it’s one of the things that makes Matsson such a compelling songwriter. His melodies, voice, and guitar work are all tremendous, but his songs portray a real point of view that you don’t get from lesser artists. There’s a vibe to these Tallest Man on Earth records that just feels like home.

#16 - Oso Oso - Basking in the Glow

Oso Oso - Basking in the Glow

Triple Crown, 2019

One concern about making these Best of the Decade lists is that you often haven’t even published the Best Of list for the year in which you are writing. Most of the albums on this list have the benefit of time. They’ve had time to sink in. They’ve had time to be replayed for two-hundredth spin. Some age like wine (although some go sour). However, I feel like the antidote to that is sometimes you just know. Like, when the chorus to Basking in the Glow’s second track “The View” hit I knew it was going to be on my Favorite Albums of 2019 list. When I heard the title track. I knew it was going to be in the Top 5. When I heard “A Morning Song” I knew it was going to be hard to topple that as Song of the Year. When the album was over I knew that my Favorite Albums of 2019 list might as well just be one album, because nothing else even came close. And some years are just like that. 2019 has been a relatively weak year with some really good stuff, but it’s no 2017, and it’s definitely no 2013 (which has FOUR albums in the Top 10). There are definitely albums from 2019 I’m going to miss, but I’m not sure if there are going to be any I’m going to want to shoehorn into this list, and especially not as this high on the list. That’s because Basking in the Glow is pretty much a perfect record. It’s definitely a perfect emo-revival record that nails those big emotions and adorns them with huge hooks that you catch yourself singing days/weeks/months after they gets implanted in your brain. Of this Emo Revival, there’s only one more album on this list above Basking in the Glow. Where that album (more on that at #9) trades in typical emo capital-E emotions (loss, heartbreak, grief, etc), Basking in the Glow is full of light. What if you took a genre typically reserved for spurned lovers and made an album full of songs about being in love? What if the good times never ended and you just appreciated every second? Basking in the Glow doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but Oso Oso frontman Jade Lilitri made the rare album where every single song sticks with you.

#17 - Yuck - Yuck

Yuck - Yuck 

Fat Possum, 2011

Summer of 2011 was the Summer of Listening to Yuck’s eponymous debut a thousand times. Jenny and I listened to this album and pretty much nothing else. The band took the best of the Alternative Rock greats, ran them through their British sensibilities and alarming ear for melody, and turned out one of the most blissful wall-to-wall indie rock records of the decade. It was a spectacular debut, and everything was great until frontman Daniel Blumberg left the band and everything went to hell. The group soldiered on without Blumberg and released the bloodless Glow & Behold in 2013 (I feel like my assessment of the album from 2013 holds up, and the title track definitely sounds like a mashup of the Teenage Fanclub songs “Guiding Star” and “December” and that is their TITLE TRACK woof) and the equally bloodless Stranger Things in 2016. They’re not terrible records, there are worse things you could listen to, but they were decidedly not Yuck. It’s not like Daniel Blumberg was the engine though, because his 2018 solo album Minus was about as boring as it gets. 

And yet, when everyone was together, they made Yuck, and no matter what happened after 2011, this album never gets old. The pure pop bliss of “Georgia,” the slow-burn showstopper “Shook Down,” the simple loveliness of “Suicide Policeman,” the Sonic Youth tinged freedom of “Get Away.” Strangely, for me it’s a record of moments. The songs are tremendous but each song has a particular moment where that sticks in my mind (the “you could be my destiny” part at the end of “Shook Down” and the guitar solo that follows is probably my Music Moment of the 2010s it’s so pure and perfect). It’s hard to listen to this album now and not be a little heartbroken at the squandered potential, but the sadness doesn’t last too long because hey, at least they made this one record, and at least it kicks a ton of ass, and I’ll still be listening to this when I’m old and it will remind me that this was the soundtrack to one of the best years of my waning youth.

#18 - The National - Trouble Will Find Me

The National - Trouble Will Find Me 

4AD, 2013

Talk about a slow burn. For me, this album may as well have come out in 2017. The group’s 2010 release High Violet had left me relatively cold (I’ve since warmed up to it) so Trouble Will Find Me didn’t make much of an impact on me beyond the single “Sea of Love” (which had a fantastic video based on a random YouTube video). When Sleep Well Beast got its hooks in me, I decided to revisit Trouble Will Find Me and slowly but surely it came very close to usurping Boxer as my favorite album in their catalog. One thing I really appreciate about Trouble Will Find Me is that it doesn’t sag in the middle. For a band this fussy and committed to musicianship, there is always the risk that things run out of gas in the back half of the album. And that’s precisely where Trouble Will Find Me’s best tracks are tucked away. “Graceless,” “I Need My Girl,” “Pink Rabbits,” all at Track 8 and beyond. That implies that Side A is a killer, and it absolutely is. “Sea of Love,” “I Should Live in Salt,” “Demons.” The National have since drawn out their sound into intriguing new realms, but their last couple of albums have sagged a bit, or needed a bit more editing to be all-timers (cut about 6 tracks from I Am Easy to Find and that album is in the Top 10 but misses entirely because the third track on that album is such a dud it annihilates all momentum). That’s the story of a band getting in their own way, but Trouble Will Find Me is a story of a band firing on all cylinders quietly churning out one of the most rewarding rock records of the decade.

#19 - Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse

Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse 

Atlantic, 2013

I have such a vivid memory of listening to this for the first time. We were living in Minneapolis and I was having a foot issue where the running had caused the joint on my right foot to become inflamed and made walking a nightmare. So I went out to Bloomington to a store that specializes in orthotics. It was a typical miserable cold February day where the highways were bleached with salt. It felt like the perfect landscape for my most anticipated album of the year. When the band came to the Twin Cities on tour in support of the album, I didn’t go. I could have gone. But these were the lean years. But honestly, were they really that lean? We could have gone. Why didn’t we go. “I’ll catch them next time,” I thought. Plenty of artists I love have committed suicide, but Scott Hutchison’s is one I still feel every single day. There’s a melancholy for Scott that never quite leaves my heart. I’m getting teary eyed even writing this. Not like I knew the guy, but the way he put himself out there in his songs you felt like he did. That is what made Frightened Rabbit so special. Scott sang to you of his deepest, darkest anxieties, loneliness, heartbreaks, hopelessness, perversions, and death fantasies and the result you felt like you weren’t alone because you felt some of the same things. It’s why the group’s breakout The Midnight Organ Fight got its own tribute album in 2019. That is an album that means so much to so many people, and I know all of those people have a little piece of their heart permanently broken. 

It took a while before I could listen to Frightened Rabbit. I listened to Scott’s last record--released under the Mastersystem moniker--and could barely get through it. It felt like an uncomfortable wake. “I can’t wait to end the day, most of the time,” he sings on “Proper Home.” “If the curtain dropped tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind.” And then there’s the last song, “Bird is Bored of Flying” which I listened to half drunk in tears on my back patio. I hadn’t listened to Pedestrian Verse since his death and it’s hard to listen to these later Frightened Rabbit albums without hearing someone suffering. Painting of a Panic Attack in particular is a brutal listen, and while Pedestrian Verse has some lines that stab at your heart (“There is something wrong with me” on “Dead Now” is one that still hits me) but for the most part this album does what every album but Painting of a Panic Attack does: It’s morose, it’s gloomy, but there’s always a thin glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel.

I haven’t had a space to verbalize how much this still hurts. Elliott Smith, David Foster Wallace, Jason Molina, and David Berman are all deaths that had a profound effect on me and still fill me with sadness, but Scott’s still feels like a tremendous weight and I can’t even imagine how it must feel for his loved ones. I just feel like his music did so much to help me as a person, that I wish there had been a way I could have helped him. The Midnight Organ Fight, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, and Pedestrian Verse are all albums that have made me feel less alone by virtue of someone being brave enough to talk about how it really feels to be a human being.

#20 - Destroyer - Kaputt

Destroyer - Kaputt 

Merge, 2011

Just when you think you can put your finger on Dan Bejar, he switches it up on you again. My worship of the man spans back to seeing that Destroyer was opening for The New Pornographers on the Twin Cinema tour and doing my due diligence to make sure I would at least know what I was getting into. That ended up being one of my all time favorite shows, and I was a Destroyer mark for life. At that point Streethawk: A Seduction was my favorite, and over the years my favorite Destroyer LP has shifted as much as their sound. This Night had a moment before Destroyer’s Rubies became one of my favorite albums of that decade. I got into Your Blues late, sometime between Trouble in Dreams and Kaputt. In terms of artistry, Kaputt feels like Bejar’s magnum opus. Where Trouble in Dreams continued on the baroque and verbose indie rock of Rubies, Kaputt blew it all up again and delivered an album of sprawling, synthed-out grooves that somehow felt like the truest form of Dan Bejar. What makes Kaputt so spectacular is how each song feels like an event, and yet this is one of the most cohesive albums of the decade. It’s an album that rewards each consecutive listen, and where your favorite song shifts from week to week. Although that last statement might not be true, since “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker” (written in collaboration with Walker herself) is likely the decade’s most brilliant and beautiful lyric sheet. That said, the title track is another close contender, but who is keeping score at this point? Bejar’s later Destroyer releases in the decade--Poison Season and ken--were both fine records but felt like they were living in the comedown of Kaputt. Yet that is not meant to imply that Bejar is cooked, as I suspect he’s recharging for another masterpiece in the 2020s.

#21 - Alex Lahey - I Love You Like a Brother

Alex Lahey - I Love You Like a Brother

Dead Oceans, 2017

In the write-up for AJJ’s The Bible 2 I talked about how Rosie used to let me listen to my music and now she refuses and forces me to listen to The UglyDolls Soundtrack (which is why Kelly Clarkson is one of my Top 5 Most Listened to Artists of the Decade on Spotify, which to be fair, is mostly by virtue of only really beginning to use Spotify this year, but still, blegh). HOWEVER, there is a caveat, and that is we can listen to my music, but only if it’s a girl singer and it’s relatively upbeat. This is how Kacey Musgraves and Alex Lahey also made that Top 5 Most Listened to Artists of the Decade Spotify list. Other favorites include Muncie Girls (whose Fixed Ideals was #51 on this list and required me to bust out my old college radio DJ tricks to edit songs for language on the fly), boygenius, Hop Along, and a few others. Alex Lahey’s debut LP though, that one was special. It brought Rosie so much joy, that my enjoyment of the album is tied to that. She knows all of the lyrics to most of the songs, and hearing her belt them out in the car and dance around to them in the house was pure joy. But it helps that this album is pure joy as well. It’s as confident a debut as you’re likely to find, and the songs, for the most part, are all outstanding (my only quibble with this album is that I wish it had a stronger closer as “There’s No Money” ends things on a down note). “Everyday’s the Weekend” and “I Haven’t Been Taking Care of My Self” are perfect power pop jams that are legit future classics and establish Lahey’s songwriting bonafides, but the murkier “Lotto in Reverse” and the melancholy “Backpack” show off her range and help balance out the killer indie rock tunes. Lahey’s 2019 followup--The Best of Luck Club--found Lahey pushing her sound (and showcasing her mad saxophone chops) and it’s evidence that that I Love You Like a Brother was only the beginning of her sure to be incredible career.