Top 10 Albums of Decade: 2010-2019
I think a good way to tell if you are living your best life, one with treasured memories and new discoveries, then you have to ask yourself: was this decade better than the last? It stands to reason that if you are truly doing all you can, then wouldn’t time just get better and better? I posit this in the form of a question because I wanted to say: yes, this is inexorably true. But I can’t. it’s just not. I want it to be true, because then I can look at my own life, one that has increased in quality and satisfaction since 2010. But the terrible truth (my terrible truth) is that I am not always right. I am not always filled with sentimental profundities. And I do not have some gravitational pull.
For my own small slice of this life, yes, things were better than they have ever been. The decade shaped itself not necessarily at the immediate outset of this ten-year period, but close enough. The decade in it’s near-entirety for me began two years post-turnover. I made a concerted effort to change my life by revisiting old plans, incorporating new plans, and packing them all up across state lines. And the second that happened, in the early morning light, almost dozing off as a friend drove into Medford, parking at another friend's house, before exchanging driving duties once more (a seemingly insignificant pit stop, but one that I can dog-ear as some sort of celebratory finish line): my previous life had ended, and I would be better off because of it’s death by my own hands.
But for so many people outside of myself (of which I have learned, more literally than I should admit, that there are many) the decade is probably best seen as a sort of cancer, whose duplicating cells have mutated and denigrated an otherwise good and peaceful existence. Or maybe it is seen as a hedge-maze. One with impossibly high walls whose corners and dead-ends we are still trying to navigate through. Perhaps we will never find our way out, perhaps we never lived outside of it (certainly that’s the sense I get from those one generation below me).
Which brings me to a personal revelation from this decade (whether it’s because I turned 30 and then some, or because I have gladly hitched my train car to the most caring and understanding and genuine person I have ever met): empathy. I don’t remember thinking much about how other people felt through most of my twenties, as I am sure several people that have filtered through my life can attest to. And I still feel like I am learning, make no mistake. It’s not as if I woke up one day and started wondering about other people. It’s been a slow drip, something percolating in the background, things I’ve picked up from others. It’s a big reason why I say that this decade is much improved. I feel so embarrassed to talk about such a fundamental part of being human as if it’s this grand revelation I alone have discovered.
But something I have learned from people younger than me, people who have been growing up and trying to navigate a much different world than the one I grew up in, is that you don’t have to be perfect. Everybody has their own unique flaws and that’s okay and we are all out here together, trying to better ourselves one step at a time. Which, for the record, is a much more realistic take on individuality than the one I grew up with, one of impossible expectations and bottomless pits of guilt over every little thing that isn’t just so. But, anyway, here is to hoping that my empathy deepens, that I can open myself up more, that I have the discipline to be the person I wanted to be at the beginning of this decade. Hopefully learned a thing or two I wasn’t expecting.
On that note: can we talk about predators?
A massive, gaping black hole in this end of the decade list would be sort of the surprise release of the year: Science Fiction, the long awaited, much speculated album from Brand New. Released with little warning in 2017, it was 8 years coming, and god damn was I excited. What we got was something unexpected and challenging and memorable in the best possible way. Seriously, if you in it, you were fucking elated that we got such a dense, slow burn. It was kind of surreal to be listening to this album that fell from the sky, it seemed, only days after you even knew it actually existed. And “Desert”? This was going to be one of those songs that define a fucking generation of socio-political discourse, summed up so perfectly and darkly and powerfully; man, it was fucking true.
But those that are familiar with the story know that the elation would be short-lived. Without looking it up, it was something like only a couple months after the release there were allegations about Jesse Lacey grooming women, often underage, and adding them to his collection (a term I use here, without meaning it to be literal in any sense, though just as despicable). And it made sense, too: that was the thing. Maybe there were rumblings, maybe there was the occasional outspoken forum-frequenter. There were cryptic (at the time) lyrics from Lacey referencing veiled recollections of knowingly abusive interactions. Again, it all makes sense in hindsight, and we all dropped the ball.
And it made sense at the time, too, for the victims involved and for those in the know. For obsessive fans, of course they heard about it. Who else was lurking on the absolutepunk.net forums but obsessives? The victims, who tried to convince us all that the much-beloved messiah-lite organ grinder was indeed all that he appeared to be and more, they were once obsessives. They were once looking in from the outside before being scouted and intentionally plucked from obscurity, only to be buried once more, under the shrieking faith of blind bishops shouting, “HERETIC!” And nobody cared. We didn’t care at all. It was so much easier that way.
I say we because it’s all of our responsibilities to look out for one another. In whatever scene you’re in, all we have is each other. I wish that I didn’t feel the need to express these things and I wish that we were better than the fanatical, dogmatic characters some people saw us as. It’s been a relief, then, and an eye-opening experience seeing things change in a post-#MeToo scene. It’s still an awful feeling, especially because not having listened to Science Fiction in a long time (for this news cycle, at least) feels bittersweet. It’s something I want to do still, as bad as it might be (Is it bad? Is it not? Can we ever agree on that?), but also knowing that more people than ever have started to become active participants in making the world and the scene a better place feels worth it, truly.
And yes, in this specific way and in so, so many others, the world is still burning. It’s only a step towards some idealistic project. But for the first time in this decade, and in my entire life, things feel like they are changing for the better. People, including myself (as I mentioned before) are more willing to be empathetic. We are understanding things outside of ourselves for the first time and I just hope that it really is better late than not at all.
This list has taken a lot longer than expected. Partly due to the holidays and then an entire year down the drain, having just now found some respite. But also cause it was fucking hard, man. I haven’t struggled with my own opinions this much in some time. The same struggles abound this time around, including appeals to authority and avoiding the “obvious.” But I think I settled in on something good, something I can be happy with.
Of note, before I get into specifics, are a few nuggets of precious data about the distributions of these albums.
2012 was the year that had the most albums on my list, with three. Roughly 30% of my list comes from that year alone. This is followed by 2011 with two albums.
The first half of the decade is disproportionately heavier than the later half. EIGHT of my Top Ten + Honorable Mention came out between 2010 and 2014. (I’m always deathly afraid of musical tastes peaking, and so I hope that this was some kind of novelty. That or maybe I should let go of some stuff up in that brain of mine. Either/or.)
Of all 10 years in the decade, only 2016 and 2017 are not represented on my list. No idea why, but apparently those were more low-key years for me. Interestingly, four artists who appear on my list did release albums in either 2016 or 2017, but those obviously did not make the cut.
Two albums on my list would eventually be (at the time of this writing in 2020) their final releases.
And with that, I think I am done rambling, pointing, nodding to myself, and typing. I wish I had something more poetic to say, but this is an exercise as much as it is for fun, and exercise isn’t always pretty.
HONORABLE MENTION: Girlpool - Before The World Was Big [June 2nd, 2015]
Everything about Girlpool came as a surprise. I was at a Joyce Manor show (more on them later) and had every intention of listening to Girlpool, one of the opening bands, but never got around to it. No biggie. And I think most everyone there that night was on the same page, because when Girlpool took the stage and started their set, you can tell that nobody was ready for that. Nobody could be ready, I think, because while this album is good (read: great), it’s nothing, absolutely nothing like seeing these songs live. Just two people, two instruments, and harmonies.
And it was powerful. And we were all of us quiet. Something very new, and very different was happening. It was raw, sparse, and (like I said) surprising. I’m still not exactly sure how they produced something so big and expansive with so little. These are songs that play back in your head a thousand times bigger than they might appear. It’s the little touches of extra guitar flourishes, the hyper-catchy melodies, and the sharp, crystalline harmonies that add up to much more than they seem.
There is a naive youthful exuberance to this, but somehow with the crushing weight of the world on it. Like someone aging far beyond their years. Whether that’s just how young people are these days or it’s that sense we all have when we are young and new; that we’re so important. But that’s not to diminish this or put it down in any way. I mean to say that I feel and have felt the same thing. I wonder what my life would have been like if I had this album when I was 18. I’m glad that this is out there, for someone at that age, because I think there are a lot of people, kids, that could use this. I hope they cherish it, like it deserves to be cherished.
I could try to come up with more expressive ways to describe what Girlpool is like, what they do best, but I’m not good enough at that and it’s sort of futile anyway. Because if you don’t see them live, with a crowd just as struck as you, it’s not the same. I think it’ll end up being a memorable and transformative live experience. Something to brag about.
I think Joyce Manor was good that night. I really don’t remember anything else. And, for me, for how much I absolutely love Joyce Manor? That’s pretty impressive.
10. Wye Oak - Civilian [March 8th, 2011]
For an album that starts off with the busy noise of a crowd, people talking over each other, moving around, noise; this album is extraordinarily quiet and meditative. There are sections that get repetitive and slow; they get drone-y. It’s a sleepy album, which puzzles me as it is also an album that I return to often. Almost as much as albums higher on this list. There are a few words that music reviewers tend to use, that just sort of make me cringe every time I hear them. Perhaps because they’ve become so devalued and muddled. I’ve probably used a few already. But one that I’m trying to find a better alternative for applies here to Civilian: hypnotic. I don’t even know what that means but it sounds right.
Of note: Civilian is the most underrated guitar album of the decade, across all spectrums and subgenres. The amount of weight that is carried by this single guitar is astounding. It’s like extracting the essential nutrients from ingredients like vegetables and chicken to make a flavor-bomb stock. One whose product creates the vital and necessary foundation, without which the entire meal would be lacking. I’ve gone off the rails here, soup-wise, to such a degree that my original point appears lost and muddled. Simply put: this album shreds.
09. Wavves - King Of The Beach [August 3rd, 2010]
What a divisive band, and what a ballsy choice in the face of such criticism (whether warranted or not is irrelevant). Imagine cashing in lo-fi credibility (what the fuck ever that means, anyway) to produce a more polished and produced record. That the kind of things that end band trajectories, or create asterisks next to discographies. I mean, the first anyone heard of this album was “Post Acid'' which, in a not too distant parallel universe, could be a blink-182 song. Could you imagine the vitriol? This was before blink-182 had their coming-out-of-the-closet critics begrudgingly admit the band’s importance (only cause they said so, obviously). That’s a bit of a strawman but that’s what it felt like at the time on a Stereogum comments section.
Of course, “Post Acid'' was just a taste of the dense music and sounds on King of the Beach. At its core, it’s much more a psychedelic album than a blink-182 homage/rip-off/clone. It’s California sun synthesized in a studio, and blotted onto a small square of tye-dye printed paper. It’s a trip, get it?
Much more personally, in the decade that saw me leave sweltering Southern California about a year later, King of the Beach was at the time, and still remains my favorite way to celebrate the nostalgic and seafoam-tinted aspects of California that I grew up with. And in a tiny bit of irony, I just now realized that King of the Beach probably earned Wavves the title of the band whose cultural projection best encapsulates the Southern California aesthetic. A distinction previously held by blink-182.
08. Gouge Away - Burnt Sugar [September 28th, 2018]
In a similar fashion to Civilian, this is an album that I found myself coming back to again and again, desperate for just a drop of it’s sweet nectar. It’s an album that appears quite straightforward, but that’s because, I believe, what makes this album special are a lot of little things. You can throw this thing on and beat the shit out of each other, but I come back for the little things.
Christina Michelle is the most effortlessly angry vocalist I think I have ever heard. The bass is absolutely filthy and punchy, a real standout. In fact, the rhythm section of this album has so much character. Fuck, they all do. The riffs are creative and colorful. The compositions are unexpected and diverse, whether it’s the maddeningly catchy “Stray/Burnt Sugar” or the Sonic Youth inspired spoken word “Raw Blood” or the grungy, heavy, slow jam “Ghost.” Look, you know it’s fuckin good when I’m busting out the trite, hollow vocabulary of a secretly self-concious internent critic. Which, now that I have published this on my website, I have completed the circle and joined amongst it’s prestigious, catty ranks.
07. La Dispute - Wildlife [October 4th, 2011]
La Dispute released three albums this decade. And while I appreciate (but lack the intimacy with) Panorama , the choice here was only ever really going to be between Wildlife and Rooms of the House. The decision was difficult, but I went with the former.
Wildlife is just as much, if not more so, a collection of essays and short stories than it is a post-punk, spoken word(ish) album. Verbose and dense with images and ideas, I honestly don’t really know how to unpack this thing. The musical ideas are just as complex and varied as the vocals, though the latter tends to take up the largest amount of word count whenever I read or listen to media about the band.
And, like, kinda for a good reason. It’s by far the band’s most unique and defining feature, floating on the surface. I first heard “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” from a record label CD sampler in a friend’s Scion xB. And it was just immediate. It demanded my attention away from the conversation, whatever useless things we were discussing. I remember days or maybe weeks later, texting my friend and asking, “What was that song we listened to in your car?” Like, I was that vague with my question and he instantly knew exactly what I was talking about. It was unlike anything I have ever heard.
And Wildlife in totality is similar. It’s one of those pieces of art that I became obsessed with (like a later album on this list). And if you are willing to dig deep into this journey, you’ll find a lot to like and a lot to invest your time into. There are repeating themes and circumstances, sprawled across the 14 tracks and 58 minutes. Whether it’s “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” and it’s urgent rhythms and unusual guitar patterns. Or if it’s “King Park” and it’s heart wrenching and disturbing story, crescendoing to the most incredible, stunning ending; which translated into the single best live music experience I have ever been a part of.
06. Chumped - Teenage Retirement [November 18th, 2014]
This decade saw a strange little revival of pop-punk/emo/whatever bands, mostly in the indie scene. They were usually more artsy: guitar textures, poetry, deep and personal themes of loss. They were influenced more by the early to mid 90’s sound, than any of the explosion of popular bands that came during the mid-2000s. Bands like Modern Baseball, The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, The Hotelier, Pianos Become the Teeth, Hightide Hotel, and Sorority Noise.
Chumped came along during this time, but unlike the previous bands (and more) this one felt a little different. They had a more straightforward punk sound. They wrote songs about nostalgia, looking back on your youth, heartbreak, loving someone so deeply that when things inevitably fall apart you say, with firm belief, I will always carry a piece of that person with me forever. And how that usually is never true. Essentially, all the things the other bands did, but from a female perspective.
And also, let’s be clear, Teenage Retirement is the best album title out of all this little revival scene. Instead of being all mopey and sadboi like albums from the bulk of these male-dominated bands such as Joy, Departed or You’re Gonna Miss It All or Whenever, If Ever or Home, Like NoPlace Is There. By comparison, Teenage Retirement is just more fun. And it sounds way more fun, too. Most of the songs zip along at a much quicker pace. And rather than dwell on the cacophany of emotiove guitar feedback (so fuckin’ moody), they seem content to let the song play out itself.
Teenage Retirement is nonetheless a part of the scene (no offense) with songs about waiting all summer for love, holding on to the carefree days of youth, and leaving it all behind in your hometown that you’ve grown out of. But what I love about Chumped is that out of all these other bands, they feel so much more real. There’s no artifice. Teenage Retirement is more emotionally honest and true, and it does so by giving you these straightforward and pointed songs without the need to show off.
Not that there's anything wrong with showing off, even when it feels highly constructed. But what I remember the most is the things that feel true. And I love Teenage Retirement. I love that it feels kind of janky at times. I love that it takes a couple songs to really hit hard and find their groove. I love that for all the music that came out from this scene, or happening, or whatever you call it, it’s this album I remember the most.
05. The Chariot - One Wing [August 28th, 2012]
The Chariot is, in my view, a fairly concise art project. There is a real evolution to their work, though I would not say it is a long journey from conception to full realization. Rather, the evolution is incremental, over the course of only five albums from 2004 to 2012. The Chariot as a band is delightfully self-referential without becoming meta-textual in any recent sense of the word. Rather than references just for the sake of it, they come off as reimaginings, or recontextualizations, or advances in the ideas. All of this identity and journeying is expressed most purely in the band’s final, and best, album One Wing.
One Wing (and The Chariot as an art project in whole, something that feels so inseparable) is meticulously crafted spontaneity. Which is not to say that it feels constructed, or artificial in any way. But the band has made a name for itself from allowing the improvisations, inconsistencies, and inimitable functions of art, or depending on how you look at it, the breath of life itself. Listening to One Wing, it feels alive. Whether it is haphazard and incidental guitar feedbacks, or in a stunning finish to the album (and the entire career of The Chariot), the sounds of frontman Josh Scogin’s shaky breathing in between screams after the entirety of Charlie Chaplin’s infamous speech from The Great Dictator; little touches that would ordinarily be left on the cutting room floor.
What is most striking about One Wing is the unexpected. A few of my absolute favorite textures from this album: the repurposing of a previous verse from an earlier album into an acapella hymnal in “Your”, the Morricone influenced ending of “First” complete with horns and a motherfuckin’ bullwhip, and the shockingly solemn and beautiful piano track “Speak.” They come at you seemingly out of nowhere, and (certainly in my own first listen of this album) make you say oh shit, I guess they’re really doing this.
I could probably go on and on about One Wing and The Chariot but I think it is most artistically and intellectually honest to say you just have to experience it. All the most beautiful words I could ever come with cannot do it justice. It’s just something you have to feel. I will say this, though, in a bit of biased observation (more to come later): The Chariot has roots in a particular sect or scene of metalcore/emo hardcore music in the early 2000s, and like a handful of bands of that scene they have managed to transcend the label through the measureable pursuit of an artistic expression. I think I can say with some confidence that One Wing, along with the previous albums that comprise the journey to get there, has made The Chariot the only band of its peers to be purely, absolutely, and wholly successful.
04. The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation [May 14th, 2013]
What’s crazy is that The Wonder Years started as a joke. Just got together, essentially on a lark, and put out a few funny songs, thinking nothing of it. Years later (a decade or more?), they have become a massive influence on so many bands, spanning all kinds of genres. They are one of those rare bands that folks from everywhere can appreciate. And The Greatest Generation is their most important step into that role.
Spurred on, for the most part, by the passing of the lead singer’s great-grandfather, The Last Generation paints a very personal picture of living up to expectations you set for yourself, or those set for you by previous generations. I say “paint a picture” quite intentionally because to say it “tells a story,” I think is a little reductive. This album has shared DNA with rock operas, but lacks the singular narrative that something like, I dunno, Tommy does. Perhaps the term I am looking for is “loose concept album.” But that’s a loaded phrase, too.
It would be impossible to talk about this album without mentioning the last track “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral.” It’s a song that I have talked about extensively on a previous list. It’s something that holds great importance to me, personally. And I don’t need to get into that here, again. What bears repeating, however is what the track actually represents musically. See, throughout the album there are scene changes in the individual tracks. Perhaps not all, but a good majority. I mean scene changes by tempo shifts, new lyric passages, and different emotional and textural sounds. For the life of me, I can’t think of the term for it. But that’s okay, I’m not a fuckin’ expert, I’m just some guy.
The final track takes a lot of these shifts, as well as other verses, lines, and choruses from previous tracks and interpolates them into a sort of reprise at the very end, before tying everything together with a final verse. It feels very theatrical, in an otherwise straightforward album (minus some of those touches I mentioned before). Honestly, I thought I would have more to say about this album. It almost makes me question it’s place on the list. But then I remember that I really went to town the last time I wrote about this, so I don’t blame myself for being a little light on words. Soffice to say, this still remains my favorite album from a band that has grown more important in it’s scene and beyond, year after year.
03. Joyce Manor - Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired [April 14th, 2012]
This album is 13 minutes and 8 seconds long. Joyce Manor does what a lot of bands try to do in (surprisingly literally) a quarter of the time. Look: look at the rest of the albums on this list, before it and after it. I know this is a personal list, but just go with me on this one. Look at the rest of the albums on the list and see how 13 minutes and 8 seconds, when used with focus and intention and intuition, can compare favorably with (or better than) some of the best albums this entire decade.
I am aware of the general story of this album, and since this list is more about personal thoughts than straight up history, don’t take the following as gospel. Joyce Manor’s first album, a self-titled release in 2011, gained them some notoriety in power-pop/punk-pop/indie circles. Perhaps not as niche as that sounds like, but I digress. Eschewing this label and attention, they decided to pivot and blow up their sound. Almost to say, “We have one album. What if we aren’t a punk band or a pop band or whatever you want to say.” Which makes the usage of the Germs’ iconic symbol of a blue “O” all the more delicious.
What is contained within 13 minutes and 8 seconds actually feels a lot like a previous album on the list, The Chariot’s One Wing. There are noisy passages, touches of piano, some audio tracks from TV/movies, a cover song (though not from their own discography), and a feeling that this is expressing some desire to do more. Unlike One Wing, though, this album feels less like a perfect, crystalized expression of an artistic statement and more like a middle finger to anyone who expected them to be anything at all.
I know I keep bringing up the runtime of the album, but the legacy of Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired should be the content of the piece. That said, something that Joyce Manor does best (on subiquent releases as well) is pull the fucking plug when enough is enough. It’s not like these are all fast-tempo songs, either. But the ideas of each track feel so thoroughly expressed in something like 1-2 minutes. On other albums, by other bands, these songs would be double in length. Their passages would be repeated twice or thrice and in that repetition you would lose all the magic and beauty. Because these also aren’t half-baked ideas. The lead guitar line on “Bride of Usher,” meandering around the rhythm doesn’t feel like a digression at all. But at the same time, other tracks feel like they stepped into the studio and just ripped them out of the ether, dusting them off, and then calling it a day.
Perhaps my assessment of this album is way off-base. Perhaps I have misjudged or even mistaken the ideas behind this album. I think, though, that whatever I say is irrelevant. Just like whatever people more qualified to write about music say about it. I don’t think dissection does the album a service, actually, despite what I have (sort of) tried to do. What feels best to say is that Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired captures a musical expression that is beautiful and ephemeral.
02. PUP - Morbid Stuff [April 5th, 2019]
At the end of this decade, 2018 to be exact, I turned 30 and had to pass the torch (along with everyone else my age even though they may not want to admit it) to the younger, up and coming generation. Suddenly, I was not a part of the group of individuals people were talking about. millenials were replaced by zoomers, as nature dictates. And, fuck, what a legacy we leave behind to these poor kids. My god, I hope they rip our generation to shreds. Look, I think we’ve achieved a lot, and we were dealt a bad hand from the start (although I’m sure everyone thinks this way, as is our self-obsessed natures). But poking through the corpse of the millenial youth is not the crux of what I am trying to do.
Someone much smarter than me, someone whose life’s work is to study cultural shifts, will no doubt discover in the later half of this decade (perhaps even the later quarter) a change in point-of-view, from millennials to generation z. This includes, but is not limited to: a general existential malaise, extreme absurdity, and a lack of hope for the future (along with an increased awareness and emphasis on the present). The phrase “kids these days,” often a precursor to some condescending observation, ends quite differently for these new generations of kids. For example, one might say of my generation growing up, preceded by an annoying and smug humpf, “Kids these days don’t care about anything but themselves, trying to look as wild and fun as possible on the social media.” This is contrasted to nowadays where you more often hear, preceeded by an exasperatedd and shocked holy shit, “Kids these days are fucking depressed.”
It’s within this latter half of the decade that Morbid Stuff by Canadian punk band PUP emerges as the best album about being a young person in this new cultural and political landscape we find ourselves in. It is a party album to play at the end of the world, where you’re just trying to enjoy what little light you can find left. Which is not to say this is a happy album. Far, far from it. “Scorpion Hill” is absolutely heartbreaking, breathtakingly true and sad. There is a massive river of existential musings on the meaninglessness of modern life running through each track. It’s an album that feels like a party the same way that “crippling depression” has become a meme punchline.
For my own life, 2019 was sandwiched by Morbid Stuff; when I first heard it in April while in California and at the end of the year in October, when I was in Austin. Each time it meant something different. Each time it played itself out in a different way. Each time there was a track that I heard in a new way, or that got stuck in my head more than others. And it has continued to do this, another year later. I find that it’s one of those rare albums that just keeps giving, in unexpected ways.
I don’t know what the future holds, for PUP, this album, or any of us. But when I listen to Morbid Stuff, I am reminded that though I may share the same feelings as the younger generation does, I am most definitely and measurably no longer important. I know people who seem to struggle with this, who want to hold on as long as possible, or who haven’t yet realized that life has passed them by as it does to all of us eventually. For me, that’s just fine. I did a terrible job at the reigns of youth. I have more hope for this new generation than my own. And I say all of this, extolling the passing of the torch, while in my mind all I can picture is the meme that a zoomer must have made of a guy in a terrible Sonic the Hedgehog halloween costume that says, “I can run at the speed of light, but I can’t run from my crippling depression.”
01. mewithoutYou - Ten Stories [May 15th, 2012]
In my office, I have a small plastic cabinet. On that cabinet I keep a loose collection of books that are either related to my craft, or to me personally for future projects. There are also some evergreen books and materials there as well, such as bibles on dramatic writing and a book of fantasy poetry. My favorite piece of writing I have on this cabinet is the vinyl insert to mewithoutYou’s Ten Stories. So important is this album that I place the words, just a piece of this endeavor, alongside my go-to references for art and craft. It is a gorgeously illustrated lyric book, presenting each track as a mere piece in a wider story, which brings me to my completely biased and uninformed, though nonetheless fervent belief: Ten Stories is the single best piece of long-form narrative fiction in this decade.
And it’s like, how do I even go about proving that? I can’t do it mathematically. I’m not a music theory major, nor do I have the brain for it, aside from a novel interest in hearing people smarter than me talk. I could explain that Aaron Weiss is the most gifted, empathetic, and creative lyricist that I know. I can relay to you, the reader, whoever you are, that the music sounds meticulously crafted, with not a single note out of place; no true digressions or indulgences. I can point to an example of how this album uses a traditional band configuration to paint atmosphere in ways that some people fail to do with an entire orchestra. Then, they throw in the horns and the strings on top of that. I can even go through my vinyl insert and list all the ways that Ten Stories is densely packed with literary references, Biblical references, puns, and Hegel. For fucks sake it has talking animals, too.
And all of that would be true. But in another kind of truth, I have deeply personal reasons for loving this album. It became, by total happenstance, the soundtrack for the largest shift in my life, thus far. It was released and discovered mere months before my moving from equal parts beacy and high desert Southern California to the lush, rainy forests of Oregon; a topography that has been a transfixion of my mind for I could not say how long. (Although, this year in fact, I have discovered that my obsession and fascination with the forest might be directly related to the sights and sounds of Johto in Pokemon Gold. That’s a really weird reference to bring up, but I can’t deny it’s somber and wooded atmosphere must have had an effect on my 12 year old brain.)
The hooks (literal and metaphorical) of Ten Stories dug in deep right away, and I can pinpoint to three major reasons why. One, the first track, “February, 1878,” starts off the album with a bang, introducing mewithoutYou and Aaron Weiss’ signature vocal delivery (for me: literally for the first time) which is used sparsely and effectively in Ten Stories. Two, Aaron Weiss’ singing voice (used sparsely and differently in past albums) which sounds like a cross between Neil Young and, I cannot stress how serious I am and how much I deeply love it, Kermit the Frog. And three, the insanely and inhumanly catchy “Cardiff Giant.” By the fourth track, then, I was done for. And knowing now what beautiful treasures I would continue to find on that first listen and every susiquent one after, I never stood a fucking chance.
How could something like Ten Stories, and all it’s thoughtfulness and wonder, come out of five people’s brains? What circumstances in each of their lives led them to form a band, create music on album after album after album after album that led them here? And what circumstances in my own life, led me to this album at a pivotal time? From opposite sides of the country, and across (roughly) a generation of people what circumstances brought me to it, or it to me? At times I listen or think about Ten Stories and I marvel at the fact that, in this particular circumstance, how wonderfully coincidental life is, and how meaningful things can be as a result of such winding, random roads.