Aaron’s Best of the Decade: #15-11

#15 The Decemberists – Sons and Daughters
Album: The Crane Wife
Year: 2006

The Decemberists are an unpredictable band. Colin Meloy will give voice to any character, anytime (though with an obvious predilection towards all things maritime), and while his distinctive voice conjures a signature sound, each of their albums is a completely unique entity. I loved large parts of their first two studio albums, wrote off the third entirely (sorry, Picaresque fans, sea shanties just aren’t my bag), and fell head over heels for their fourth full-length. The Crane Wife moves from one intriguing art-rock statement to another with remarkable fluidity, but nothing comes close to the capper. Final track “Sons and Daughters” carries a simple refrain, though Meloy does dip into his vocabulary pouch and pull out the line, “We will arise from the bunkers / by land, by sea, by dirigible”. Dirigibles are sweet, and severely underused outside of the realm of steampunk. Someone, quick, write me a bad-ass steampunk story starring Colin Meloy as an intrepid, dirigible-piloting aviator/explorer/pirate/womanizer. Or, alternately, we could wait two more albums and he’ll probably write that song cycle himself. Regardless, this song deserves a legion of us swaying back and forth with lighters and cell phones in the air, acknowledging that it’s a god-damn anthem.

#14 Belle & Sebastian – Don’t Leave The Light On, Baby
Album: Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like A Peasant
Year: 2000

Scottish twee-pop deities Belle & Sebastian are at their best when they are, of all things, sultry. “Don’t Leave The Light On, Baby” is oh so slow, achingly slow, to the point where you should feel the need to turn it up a little bit louder and and stop multi-tasking until it has finished playing. It demands your attention, and in this day and age, it had better reward you for that.

The payoff is in all of the little flourishes – from the tender piano to the flurries of strings to the late-arriving, whispering percussion, and peaking at the 2:09 mark when something – I make no claims to understand what – arrives in the background and produces a subtle whine that shifts pitch from high to low with each verse. When singing the title phrase, surrounded by such carefully constructed atmosphere, Stuart Murdoch and Isobel Campbell have never been more wistfully well-matched.

#13 Animal Collective – My Girls
Album: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Year: 2009

As this is another track that made my 2009 year-end countdown, I’ll begin by quoting myself (I swear guys, it’s ironic, not lazy?):

“A lot has already been written about Animal Collective. Suffice to say, I had never truly fallen for one of their albums before this year, but Merriweather Post Paviliondid the trick. “My Girls” is the clear standout on an album of consistently mind-bending music, with tempo shifts and harmonies that should, by all rights, show the Grammy voters what a legitimately original take on pop music would sound like.”

I stand by these sentiments firmly. Animal Collective found a way to go accessible, but they gave up nothing in the process. In the larger context of the decade in music, this album and track will say a lot about the ability of an artistically pigeonholed band to refine their formula to its absolute apex, and thanks to the power of the blogosphere, to find an audience worthy of said effort.

#12 Kanye West – Love Lockdown
Album: 808s & Heartbreak
Year: 2008

Kanye West is a polarizing figure. Is he an asshole? Probably. Is he an egomaniac? Likely. Is he a lyrical wordsmith and the voice of a generation? Don’t bet against it. He is fantastic as a producer, sufficient as a rapper, and ambitious as a songwriter.

Kanye West is not a great singer, which is why 808s & Heartbreak, his homage to Thom Yorke‘s The Eraser and his personal tale of love’s woes, relies so heavily on auto-tune. I don’t like auto-tune, but as a crutch to allow Kanye to explore electronic song form, it’s a gamble I’m willing to accept. “Love Lockdown” is brilliant. Its minimalism in construction is a work of art, from the soft thump of the ever-present bass line to the voice-mirroring stabs of the keyboards. When the hip-hop classic 808 drum machine kicks in with a martial stomp, I’m already putty in the hands of Mr. West. He restrains his vocals to a very thin range, snowballing the minimalist effect, and when he briefly cuts loose, he lets distortion tear his voice apart before smoothing over the process once again. The song presents an image of his heartbreak where Kanye is almost in control, almost able to examine it coolly, but repression only goes so far and the raw, visceral pain is always threatening to poke out around the next corner.

#11 Radiohead – Everything In Its Right Place
Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

A song not so very different from the one directly above it on the list (I am going to get slaughtered for saying that), “Everything In Its Right Place” was the world’s introduction to New Radiohead. Old Radiohead was great, sure – The Bends was Brit-pop at its best and OK Computer took prog to places it had only dreamed of. New Radiohead tore down boundaries, dismembered genre, pissed on tradition, and made an album that pretty much represented an audiophile’s wet dream.

“Everything In Its Right Place” replaces Radiohead‘s guitar licks with the delicate, icy warble of a keyboard, takes Thom Yorke‘s voice and chops and distorts it almost past the point of retaining any humanity, and let drummer Phil Selway participate only through a muted tapping that is audible out of (one must assume) pity for antiquated roles of a traditional rock band. This is music for headphones, music for staring into the distance, music for enveloping yourself in a stream of liquid vocals and burbling synths and leaving everything else behind. It’s the year 2000, and Radiohead has officially left everything else behind.