Arcade Fire's "Funeral" turns 10 years old this week, a neat, round number that immediately had me remembering how much I liked the album, and how important it's been for me as I and my taste in music have grown. "Funeral" is an album I consider "essential," being that it was integral to the way my listening developed and has remained one of my all-time favorites. Here's a list of others I consider in that same boat, in no particular order.
The National - Boxer (2007)
My first exposure to the band that would change not only my music taste but my life on the whole. An album wrought with emotion sung through an oaken baritone of an everyman, played by Matt Berninger. It contains 12 tracks that really never go above the speed limit, but are technically marvelous (see: Bryan Devendorf's drumming) with lyrics penned by a guy who sees the way we age and the conflicts of our lives the way we see them, but can express them in a way that never feels canned. This album and I have a strong emotional connection, and as a result it's one I can never be without.
Top tracks: "Brainy," "Fake Empire," "Mistaken For Strangers," "Apartment Story"
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema (2005)
I call this album the perfection of power pop when I reference it. It is everything that catchy, upbeat music should be: replete with hooks, harmony and memorable turns from every vocalist. Its closing track is one of the best album closers ever written. I can distinctly remember my freshman year RA at college dancing in his room to The Bleeding Heart Show, and hearing that track echo down our hallway was the instant my interest was piqued. My ears remain thankful for him and that.
Top tracks: "Use It," "Sing Me Spanish Techno," "Stacked Crooked"
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)
A critical darling and an album you've bound to have at least heard part of - even if accidentally - despite it never coming remotely close to radio play, "Aeroplane" remains divisive. It's not the easiest thing to listen to, given its vacillation between intensely lo-fi sound and rousing full-throatedness, brass section interludes and recurrent themes of death and semen and Anne Frank. But what made this album something special, even before Jeff Mangum turned into something of folklore with his reclusiveness, is the undeniable passion and emotion that can be not only be heard but felt behind every track. It can be overwhelming: the wails above the solo acoustic guitar in "Two-Headed Boy," the unstoppable rush of "Holland, 1945," and the building bull-rush of "Ghost" are all forces of reckoning. It might not click on the first listen, but the passage of time only solidifies what a unique and triumphant album this really is.
Top tracks: "Two-Headed Boy," "Holland, 1945," "Ghost," "Two-Headed Boy Part 2"
Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)
The impetus for trying to cobble this list, Funeral turns 10 years old this weekend. My first memories of this album are hearing it the congregation center of my (rather modern) church growing up. The space was thousands of square feet large and had a PA and sound board, and when myself and other members of the youth group that gathered there weekly would arrive, we'd pipe some music in through those speakers. And even back then in 2004, as I was beginning to wrap up my time in high school, I heard these songs that sounded massive, even in this huge space. None of it was lost on the transfer to headphones, either. Details emerged on closer listens, the story of familial death that permeated the experience for multiple band members around the time of writing and recording became integral and canon, transforming the album into one less about pure energy and more about the celebration of life and death, treasuring what's given. Arcade Fire are not this band anymore, but this is part of their sound that endures.
Top tracks: "Wake Up," "Rebellion (Lies)," "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)," "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest (2009)
What makes this album tough to pin down or describe is how ethereal it can feel, seemingly sung and played in a permanent haze. It's ambient but never wordless, sometimes bare but still somehow still filling both sides of your headphones. It's methodical and deliberate, saying what it has to say at its own pace and no faster. The uniqueness of the voices of dual vocalists Edward Droste and Daniel Rossen make them stick in your head; the particular, masterful drumming styles of Christopher Bear will make you struggle to tap your toes in rhythms you're used to; the multi-instrumentalist and harmonizing workings of Chris Taylor rarely take the forefront, but become more and more essential as the listens pile up. This album is meant for more patient listens, as it's nearly guaranteed to lose you if you aren't paying attention, but dedication will pay off in spades.
Top tracks: "Two Weeks," "While You Wait For the Others," "Foreground"
The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005)
Everything I ever wanted the Decemberists to be, I think, is best captured by this album. It's a beautiful mix of pastoral sounds and themes, leaning modern at times ("On the Bus Mall") and medieval at others ("Eli, the Barrow Boy"). Every track tells its own story, making this album some sort of musical Canterbury Tales; as individual compositions they can be heard separately, but together, they create a work that feels whole and cohesive. Your enjoyment of the band will come down to how you feel about Colin Meloy's distinctive vocals and his hyperliterate lyrics, and at that, your mileage may vary. For me, this is a collection of songs that embody a mood like few other albums I own.
Top tracks: "The Sporting Life," "The Engine Driver," "On the Bus Mall," "16 Military Wives"
Interpol - Turn On the Bright Lights (2002)
This is one of those "few other albums" just mentioned above. It's Interpol's debut full-length, a stunning piece of atmosphere, steadfast in its sound and message in a way many bands can't find a way to be until they're multiple albums deep. The lyrics won't wow you - and I doubt they're meant to - but the environment created by this music will feel singular and complete, in a "Darkness on the Edge of Town" kind of way (even if the musical aspect of the Springsteen reference is almost completely out of line here). Interpol have spent years trying to build off of this record, and the success has been sporadic, but nothing can crack this one.
Top tracks: "PDA," "Obstacle 1," "Untitled," "NYC"
Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
As a band, Radiohead are the ones largely responsible for me branching out from homogeneous alt-rock in the first place. This album wasn't the first of theirs I ever listened to, but it's come to be the full work I come back to most, just ahead of OK Computer. It was (and, in some ways, still is) so profoundly different from everything I had been listening to up to that point that I couldn't help but be mystified by it. What was making some of these sounds? Why is Thom Yorke falsetto-wailing so much? Why is there a random, ambient, instrumental track midway through? Moreover, how did all of it just seem to work in my brain? Flatly, this is music that can almost feel ugly, but I think that's actually the larger goal. A lot has been written about this album as a statement of the times, comprising the feeling surrounding uncertainties at the turn of the century. Whether it was true then or whether revisionist history has made it so, that's what it's certainly become. It alienated many fans who had come to associate a more traditional rock sound with Radiohead, but I was not among the crowd set in my ways via OKC or The Bends, and so I found myself pliable, open to the suggestion this album was trying to make: beauty is uncommon, and strict adherence to tradition will confine you.
Top tracks: "Optimistic," "Everything In Its Right Place," "Idioteque," "Morning Bell"
Honorable Mention
This is a brief list of recent albums that I love dearly but don't quite consider essential yet, though they may one day sit alongside the others above.
Beach House - Bloom
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Real Estate - Days
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
The Antlers - Hospice
Minus the Bear - Menos el Oso
The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt
Sharon Van Etten - Tramp
