Music albums of the 2010s

Contrary to popular belief, 2020 is the last year of the 2010s, not the first year of the 2020s. (The first year of the Common Era was AD/CE 1, not AD/CE 0; the last year of the Common Era’s first decade was AD/CE 10.)

So: this is a good time to publish some rankings.

Tonight, I offer my five favorite music albums of the 2010s. Bear in mind, I’ve hardly listened to anything new since 2013 or 2014.

2016’s Wildflower was an exception. I just couldn’t keep away from the Avalanches’ first album in sixteen years. (I’ve yet to listen to We Will Always Love You, released this month.)

Without further ado, here are the top five:

1. Destroyer, Kaputt (2011)
2. Grimes, Visions (2012)
3. Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (2013)
4. The Avalanches, Wildflower (2016)
5. Kendrick Lamar, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (2012)

Nothing very unknown or surprising here.

It’s not that I don’t listen to music any more: this year, I’ve averaged two hours per day on Spotify. It’s that I’ve been going back, again and again, to the well, the well being Julee Cruise.

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Wildflower

Another upset: the Welsh KO’d the Belgians. In their semifinal they’ll face the Portuguese, who’ve yet to win in 90 minutes.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On July 8 the Avalanches will put out their first album since, what, 2000? – and to my great delight the tracks released so far are distinctly like certain passages of Since I Left You.

Ignore for a moment the sounds, the samples, and consider how, structurally and rhythmically, the new tracks parallel the earlier ones.

“Subways” condenses “Close to You,” “Diner’s Only,” and “A Different Feeling”;

“Colours” is like “Electricity”;

and of course in many ways “Frankie Sinatra” is like “Frontier Psychiatrist.”

(All these tracks – old and new – are mid-album. We’ve yet to learn how Wildflower will start up or wind down.)

I don’t think these parallels are accidental (“Fr”-“S”; “Fr”-“Ps”). The Avalanches have been trying for sixteen years to make something that approximates the feel, the mood, that was so loved about Since I Left You, and this goal has proved most elusive. And so here and there they’re making the albums’ similarities extra-conspicuous.

The new tracks are quite good in themselves, but they also show how difficult it is to re-do what first was achieved with comparatively little effort. It is no small victory to copy, accurately, what was done by free association.