1. Bon Iver by Bon Iver
Bon Iver may be the most welcoming Album on my list, but it’s most certainly not the easiest to get into. The first time I was introduced to Justin Vernon’s sophomore effort, the entire piece floated by me like a lofty reverie, inoffensive and majestic, but lacking any punctuated moments or themes worth retaining. The more I listened however, bits began to stick out, little piles of dirt and gusts of wind to create the world implied by the geographical titling. There was the crashing, syncopated release halfway through “Perth” to build itself back up into a procellous triumph of snare drum and horn salutes. There was the hushed plea of magnificence (or lack thereof) Vernon proclaimed on “Holocene”, and his vocals shimmering and bouncing around the trickling piano on “Wash.” like sunlight on a tranquil stream. Before I knew it, Bon Iver had turned from a worn out map of Justin Vernon’s failures and regrets through a rose tinted lens to a veritable terrain of hope and beauty, the greatest of all of his made up locations, and one you’ll never want to leave.
2. James Blake by James Blake
“Unluck”, James Blake’s first track, begins with him emitting a single beam of thin sound through a heap of negative space until it gets vacuumed up into a supernova of static and collapses inward. In Blake’s world, the snuffing out is even more explosive than the combustion. The next step in the song is the addition of his voice, a gentle whispering falsetto, layered over a minimalist dubstep beat. The beams of sound grow thicker into a discomforting crescendo and Blake’s voice falls down the scale in autotune like each note is a new stair he’s tumbling down on the descent from grace. From then on, the album follows a similar pattern of simplicity with a mastery of tension and release at its core. Like Ian Curtis did for punk, Blake has taken dubstep, a genre based entirely on outward aggression and unbridled impulse, and flipped it inside out, focusing instead on internal calamity and anxiety. While his lyrics may mostly revolve around resignation (“The Wilhelm Scream”), rejection (“Why Won’t You Call Me?”) and general isolation, both imposed and self-designed (“I Never Learnt to Share”), there isn’t a grain of irony or whining present, proving that he is not only a talented songwriter, but a mature and honest one as well, reminding us that computers don’t need to distance us from passion and emotion in music, but can be used to bring us even closer.
3. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming by M83
Nostalgia is tricky. While the obvious goal seems simple (just make sure it’s similar enough to something done a thousand times before within a span of whatever years the target audience experienced their childhood/teenage years in), the real challenge is in making an album that not only evokes said nostalgia but also manages to remain relevant in whatever year it’s released. On Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Anthony Gonzalez has gone above and beyond that, even, by creating an album so timeless, so fraught with melancholic atmosphere, bubbling energy, and songs massive enough to fill a night sky emptied by the light of the city that it not only brings the listener back to their youth, but emphasizes the current experience of any younger generation enjoying it now, ensuring that it’ll be equally as nostalgic for the youth of today thirty years for now as it is for any other generation.
4. whokill by tUnE-yArDs
“I’m a new Kinda Woman, I’m a new kinda woman, I’m a don’t take shit from you kinda woman.” Merrill Garbus may wait until whokill’s last track “Killa” to make that claim, but it’s evident to the listener from the first second she bursts into the picture on opening track “My Country”. With a voice loud and commanding enough to speak for victims of police brutality (“Doorstep”), emotional abuse (“Powa”) or the oppressed anywhere (“Bizness”), she tramples through whokill’s ten tracks with bassist Nate Brenner and her armory of saxophone, percussion, loops and ukelele with such utter confidence it’s hard to imagine anyone even wanting to try and stand in her way. At times it may seem like Merrill is ready to break out into a panic stricken breakdown of her own, turning the tables on everyone who ever walked over the disadvantaged or abused their power, but rest assured, she‘s as wise as she is passionate, singing ““All my violence is here in the sound,” at one point in “Killa”. And with a voice like hers, that’s all she really needs to make a difference.
5. Strange Mercy by St. Vincent
If Marry Me was a teaser, and Actor a 50/50 split between Annie Clark’s girl-next-door image and her truly twisted underbelly, then Strange Mercy is the full-fledged realization of her ultimate maturity. While on Actor, Clark was more often than not the one in control, sinisterly manipulating her surroundings to her own advantage or merely causal whims, Strange Mercy leaves her the victim. The dental dam album artwork shows us a desperate gasp for freedom under sterile suffocation, hinting at a struggle for independence from one’s surroundings, left kneeling at the unpredictable mercy of something beyond us. Clark’s plucky melody and fervent guitar work slow down to a near drawl by just a little over halfway in for “Champagne Year” in which she laments “I make a living telling people what they want to hear. It’s not a killing, but it’s enough to keep the cobwebs clear.” With Strange Mercy, she’s given us exactly what we want to hear, but judging by it’s immensely warm welcome she’ll be the one to come out on top this time.
