Jeff's Top 30 Albums of the 2010s

This list started coming together late last summer, when I'd decided to give the ole blog a reboot.  I don't have a database of my album purchases per se, but I've manually digitized every purchased CD since the early 2010s, which makes it easy to sort by year.  Working from that, I then consulted the key year-end polls from the decade, just to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything.

That led to a working list of about 50-60 albums.  There were a handful that I knew would be at or near the top, but trying to delineate, say, between #25 and #26, was more of a chore.  When it came down to brass tacks, I went with the one that I listened to more often. 

Without further ado:

1. Drive-By Truckers: American Band
2. Kendrick Lamar: DAMN
3. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
4. Hamilton: Original Broadway Soundtrack
5. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
6. James McMurtry: Complicated Game
7. Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel
8. Beyonce: Lemonade
9. Counting Crows: Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation)
10. Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball
11. The National: Trouble Will Find Me
12. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
13. Drive-By Truckers: English Oceans
14. Alabama Shakes: Sound & Color
15. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: The Nashville Sound
16. Rosanne Cash: She Remembers Everything
17. Sleater-Kinney: No Cities to Love
18. Future Islands: Singles
19. Vampire Weekend: Father of the Bride
20. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly
21. Sufjan Stevens: Carrie and Lowell
22. Bettye Lavette: Things Have Changed
23. Jack White: Blunderbuss
24. John Hiatt: The Open Road
25. Angaleena Presley: American Middle Class
26. Old 97's: Most Messed Up
27. Blood Orange: Freetown Sound
28. The Highwomen: The Highwomen
29. David Bowie: Blackstar
30. Daft Punk: Random Access Memories

It's rare that a band's eleventh album is their best - hell, it's rare that bands exist long enough to record eleven albums.  But there's no other conclusion to reach than to go with DBT for the #1 spot.  English Oceans was a step forward for the band, particularly for Mike Cooley.  But American Band went well beyond that - a remarkably poignant, cogent and hard-hitting statement about the world, and far more political than anything they'd recorded before.

Some other quick thoughts:

- Without a doubt, Kendrick Lamar is the Artist of the Decade.   Good kid, m.A.A.d city just missed the cut, and there are many (at least one of my two sons, for example) who consider it his best.

- At the dawn of the decade, it would probably have been fair to say that the most unlikely type of album showing up on my list would be an Original Broadway Soundtrack.  But there's just no questioning the brilliance of Hamilton.  If you haven't seen it, by all means try to get there - wherever "there" might be.

- Pretty good decade for Vampire Weekend, especially when you consider that they took most of it off.  I was never sold on 2010's Contra, which always felt too fussy to me, but a lot of people think it's their best, and it's showing up on a lot of "Best of Decade" lists.  For me, Modern Vampires demonstrated a musical and lyrical depth that they're unlikely to top again.

- James McMurtry is proof that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree - the stories he tells on Complicated Game would fit right in on one of his father's story collections.

More to come...