2019: The Albums

My 40 favorite albums from the past year, A to Z.

2019: The Songs

Playlist

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2010-18: The Albums (102-1)

A list of 102 records from the past ~decade that I love. I didn't over-engineer these rankings or really go through with a fine-tooth comb, because I love all of these albums and didn't need to think too hard about including them all in the same group to begin with.

102

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma In Summer (2016)

101

School Of Seven Bells SVIIB (2016)

100

Telekinesis Ad Infinitum (2015)

99

Adult Jazz Gist Is (2014)

98

Girl Talk All Day (2010)
This one isn't on Spotify because it was released as a free album. You can get it here.

97

The Shins Port Of Morrow (2012)

96

Yeasayer Fragrant World (2012)

95

Young Galaxy Ultramarine (2013)

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The Horrors Skying (2011)

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The Districts Popular Manipulations (2017)

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Beach Slang The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us (2015)

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Weyes Blood Front Row Seat to Earth (2016)

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Sun Airway Soft Fall (2012)

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Bad Bad Hats Psychic Reader (2015)

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Soccer Mommy Clean (2018)

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Hospitality Hospitality (2012)

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The Antlers Familiars (2014)

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The Sun Days Album (2016)

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Vundabar Smell Smoke (2018)

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Mikal Cronin MCII (2013)

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Mac DeMarco 2 (2012)

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The Antlers Burst Apart (2011)

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Washed Out Paracosm (2013)

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Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti Before Today (2010)

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Waxahatchee Out in the Storm (2017)

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Yumi Zouma Willowbank (2017)

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St. Vincent St. Vincent (2014)

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Wye Oak Civilian (2011)

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Vampire Weekend Modern Vampires Of The City (2013)

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Hookworms Microshift (2018)

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Grimes Art Angels (2015)

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Phoebe Bridgers Stranger in the Alps (2017)

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Frightened Rabbit Pedestrian Verse (2013)

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Foals Holy Fire (2013)

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The Walkmen Heaven (2012)

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Car Seat Headrest Teens Of Denial (2016)

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Arctic Monkeys AM (2013)

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Cults Cults (2011)

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Typhoon Offerings (2018)

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Local Natives Hummingbird (2013)

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Sky Ferreira Night Time, My Time (2013)

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The New Pornographers Brill Bruisers (2014)

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The Weeknd House Of Balloons (2011)

Disc 1

59

Shearwater Jet Plane and Oxbow (2016)

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Sharon Van Etten Are We There (2014)

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Phosphorescent Muchacho (2013)

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M83 Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (2011)

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Alabama Shakes Sound & Color (2015)

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Angel Olsen My Woman (2016)

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The War On Drugs Lost in the Dream (2014)

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Tame Impala Lonerism (2012)

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Sigur Rós Kveikur (2013)

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Lorde Pure Heroine (2013)

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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever The French Press EP (2017)

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Kyle Craft Dolls of Highland (2016)

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Julien Baker Sprained Ankle (2015)

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Sharon Van Etten Tramp (2012)

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Frank Ocean channel ORANGE (2012)

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Janelle Monáe The Electric Lady (2013)

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Jessie Ware Tough Love (2014)

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Japanese Breakfast Soft Sounds From Another Planet (2017)

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Dirty Projectors Swing Lo Magellan (2012)

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Wye Oak Tween (2016)

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The Tallest Man On Earth The Wild Hunt (2010)

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Chairlift Something (2012)

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Lady Lamb the Beekeeper After (2015)

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Hooray for Earth True Loves (2011)

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Carly Rae Jepsen Emotion (2015)

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Radiohead A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

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Half Waif Lavender (2018)

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Everything Everything Arc (2013)

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boygenius boygenius (2018)

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Alvvays Alvvays (2014)

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Daughter Not to Disappear (2016)

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Purity Ring Shrines (2012)

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Jessie Ware Devotion (2012)

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Grizzly Bear Shields (2012)

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CHVRCHES The Bones Of What You Believe (2013)

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White Reaper The World's Best American Band (2017)

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Lucius Wildewoman (2013)

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Julien Baker Turn Out the Lights (2017)

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St. Lucia When the Night (2013)

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Everything Everything Get to Heaven (2015)

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Torres Torres (2013)

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White Reaper White Reaper Does It Again (2015)

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The National Trouble Will Find Me (2013)

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Slowdive Slowdive (2017)

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Pinegrove Cardinal (2016)

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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Hope Downs (2018)

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Bon Iver Bon Iver (2011)

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Bombay Bicycle Club So Long, See You Tomorrow (2014)

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Tame Impala Currents (2015)

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Real Estate Days (2011)

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Lucy Dacus Historian (2018)

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Low Double Negative (2018)

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Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues (2011)

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Japandroids Celebration Rock (2012)

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Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell (2015)

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Cymbals Eat Guitars Lose (2014)

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Arcade Fire The Suburbs (2010)

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Beach House Bloom (2012)

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The National High Violet (2010)

2010-2018: The Songs (547 Favorites)

Simply put, here's a post full of songs I really love plus a huge collection of other tracks I've enjoyed over the last 9+ years. Nothing is ranked; everyone is listed in alphabetical order, with an emphasis on variety. No artist or group shows up more than twice (save for things like Sufjan in a group project), and no album has more than one song represented.

A playlist of my 25 favorites is below, along with the bigger list for you to investigate as you like.

Thanks so much for reading these over the years. I hope you've found even one song you've really loved by visiting here.

 

10 Years After "Hospice," and the People We No Longer Are

This past weekend, I hopped a couple of subway trains east into Brooklyn to go to church. The church — the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights — was one I had never been to, representing a faith I did not subscribe to. Like countless others who'd come before me since its construction in 1844, I was going to this church to pay tribute and to make peace, and as I sat among a couple hundred fellow parishioners in its Gothic sanctuary, I readied myself to make an offering.

None of us was necessarily there to worship, or speak of deities or apocryphal lessons to carry with us as we eventually broke our huddle later, but we all came with a shared faith and, in my case, a need to reflect on the last 10 years, both to remember how we were and how far we've come.

What had pulled us all to that Brooklyn church on a Saturday night was the Antlers, the part-drone, part-post-rock outfit fronted by Peter Silberman that, like all of us sitting in the wooden pews that ached and groaned at every shift, had undergone a transformation of its own in the 10 years since releasing its benchmark third album, Hospice. Touring for the first time in nearly five years, and minus Hospice, Burst Apart, and Familiars collaborator Darby Cicci, this new version of the Antlers had reemerged to announce its transition into the future by acknowledging and making peace with its past.

That past is composed of more than just Hospice, but that album is the calling card by which the Antlers are largely known, the rare concept album that realizes all its ambitions, both narratively and emotionally. Hospice tells the story of an abusive relationship from the perspective of a hospice worker and a terminally-ill patient. It is still, at its most affecting moments, an overwhelming force of an album, with its themes of love, loss, and emotional trauma often interwoven and layered. Helping the cause is a ghostly, spectral set of production values that often leaned on reverb and drone, the same sounds that, when played live, doubtlessly played into Silberman's partial hearing loss; part of the impetus for the Antlers to take a break and for Silberman to put his quieter side on display with a solo album, 2017's Impermanence.

Something had to give. If the band were to continue and Silberman were to keep his hearing, the Antlers of old could no longer exist. Part of that was taken care of with Cicci's departure, sure, but no matter who surrounded Silberman, the band's louder days were long gone. And so Silberman and the rest of the re-imagined Antlers — original drummer Michael Lerner and newly-added guitarist-cum-opening-act Tim Mislock — have come back without the full force of reverb and drone that dominated the band's Hospice-era tours and the shows in the years thereafter, deciding instead to play Hospice in full, acoustically. The results are nothing short of stunning.

For all of the energy a sold-out arena can provide, I find nothing more powerful than a show that hold fast to reverence: Julien Baker in a pindrop-quiet Mercury Lounge; the National in a wood-floored multipurpose room in Cold Spring, NY; Lucius coming out to the middle of the floor at Terminal 5 to play an acoustic encore; are two of my fondest concert memories, not for the size of the crowds in attendance but for the intimacy of the shows put on. In that Brooklyn church pew, some four rows from the very back of the lower level, I found myself settling in to that same sweet spot I'd experienced in those other concert moments. Pared back to two guitars and a single snare drum, the songs of Hospice took on a new life. As soon as the album's first lyrics emerged from Silberman following the re-interpreted instrumental opening of "Prologue," the old idea of Hospice began to melt away.

The arrangements weren't complicated, nor did they need to be. SIlberman's voice, still as smooth as it was a decade ago, hit tremendous falsetto highs, and carried all the weight the songs' melodies demanded he carry. More a solemn command than an ethereal plea, as it was on the record, the pre-chorus croon of "let me do my job" on cathartic standout single "Sylvia" seemed to carry an extra edge: Nearly robbed of his livelihood by the scare of hearing loss, Silberman was back on stage to bat back the demons that had nearly cost him everything he'd earned in his musical career. Same goes for the incredible recreation of Sharon Van Etten's ghostly howls of "pull me out, dig me out" from "Thirteen" on through the triumphs of "don't ever let anyone tell you you deserve that" on the penultimate "Wake," all while Lerner's steady percussion and Mislock's supportive harmonies helped carry the day.

If I met the me of 10 years ago on the street, I probably wouldn't recognize him. I know I wouldn't like his clothes. I definitely wouldn't understand anything he'd talk about. But he's part of me just the same. And though Silberman and company probably don't associate themselves as strongly with Hospice as they once did, it's part of them just the same. The band and crowd inside First Unitarian that night gathered together to tip a cap to our younger selves before turning and walking off onto some new, hopefully brighter future.