Paste Magazine doesn’t care what I think

I love the December year-in-review rituals. Looking back at critics’ picks for the best music, books, and movies of the year, I’m usually reminded of a few gems I’d already forgotten, and prodded again to check out the ones I overlooked. And this year, we’ve got the bonus round: the best of the decade lists. These aren’t just a look back at great art; they’re also little time capsules. The past decade was an eventful one for me, with a huge amount of personal metamorphosis set against a backdrop of change, heartbreak, and new beginnings. So to make my selections for the best music of the last ten years is also to reflect on why some of those records were so important to me in the first place. The music stands alone, to be sure, but the context amplifies the bitter and the sweet in each.

I’m using Paste Magazine‘s list as my jumping-off place. Since the demise (in print) of No Depression, Paste has become perhaps my favorite newsstand source for good entertainment writing. In the print edition, they’ve picked the top 25; on the web, they’ve got a top 50 for your perusing (and listening!–you can stream every album from Paste’s site) pleasure.

While I’m happy to see the likes of Loretta Lynn (Van Lear Rose), Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (Once soundtrack), The Jayhawks (Rainy Day Music), Iron and Wine (Our Endless Numbered Days–though I would pick The Shepherd’s Dog, if it had to be just one. Genius, beautiful genius.), Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago), Drive By Truckers (Decoration Day), and Over the Rhine (Ohio) get places at the table in the longer web list, there are a few glaring omissions I’d like to rectify in the top 25.

We agree on quite a few–Sigur Rós (delicious, melodic, gibberish), Ryan Adams (I’m hoping one day they can combine his DNA with Rhett Miller’s from his Old 97′s days… I’d kidnap that baby and make it sing to me all day long.), Beck (Mellow Gold made me want to pat you on the head. Sea Change makes me want to kiss you on the mouth.), Gillian Welch (who wears a crown and carries a scepter, in my version of real life), The White Stripes (I can’t decide whether I want to break Jack White, or just break stuff with him…), Arcade Fire (holy moly, kids!), and Wilco (’nuff said) absolutely earned a spot on this list.

A few more–The Shins, The National, Josh Ritter, Spoon, The Avett Brothers–are good, but a little surprising for best of the decade accolades. But, then again, you probably have heard of most of the bands I really like, so clearly I’m underqualified to make these sorts of determinations. My obscure-taste-o-meter registers far too low to count with the cool kids.

I am surprised at the number of times I shrugged and said Meh–Vampire Weekend, The Decemberists, Bright Eyes, and Rufus Wainwright, I’m looking at you. (Do you hearing that quiet ripping sound? That’s me being stripped of my hipster credentials…)

And color me completely unsurprised, but it still chafed a little to see Sufjan Stevens in the #1 slot. Sure, he’s darling, and he plays the banjo, and he puts out nifty, ambitious concept albums, but I just don’t get all the fawning. And, really… when you title your songs things like, “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, ‘I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!’”, you just make me kinda want to punch you in the face.

So I’ll just chalk it up to Sujfan-koolaid-induced delusions when I consider all the fantastic music the good folks over at Paste forgot when cooking up this little list…

Old Crow Medicine Show / OCMS (2004) Remember the scene in High Fidelity when Barry is terrorizing the customer about not owning the Jesus and Mary Chain album? (“I can’t believe you don’t own this fucking record! That’s insane! Jesus!”) I think I said much those same words to my magazine when first reading this issue. People might have stared, but, really, there is no excuse for overlooking OCMS. With razor-sharp harmonies and foot-stomping beats, these fellas might be singlehandedly responsible for turning the cool kids on to some old-timey sounds. I first heard this record riding shotgun down a pass in the Colorado Rockies, after drowning my car in a creek outside Crested Butte. My traveling companion said something along the lines of, “You gotta hear this” and dialed in the last track. “Wagon Wheel” was a revelation. I made him play it twice, and my love affair with this band was a foregone conclusion.

Cat Power / You Are Free (2003). Low-key is hard to do well, and Cat Power is one who knows how. Christ, the woman added a horn section on her next album, and I somehow still felt like I was on morphine (but, you know, in a good way). I came across this record when I was housesitting for people with better taste in music than mine, and in the days before I owned a computer or an iPod (so “borrowing” it was not an option). It stayed with me until I bought my own copy a few years later. It’s good for bathtub listening, when the house is quiet. “Good Woman” is one of the simplest, most honest, soul-cracking songs I know.

Okkervil River / Black Sheep Boy (2005). I don’t know what they put in the water over there in Texas, but it’s good for growing songwriters. “A Stone” is yearning, perfect. “Black” is the happiest, spitting-mad song you’ll ever hear. Melancholic and euphoric–one of the few records that’s good for drinking and for bike riding.

Joe Henry / Fuse (1999). (Yeah, yeah… technically this is a 90′s record. But if Paste is counting from ’99, so am I. So there.) I first saw Joe Henry at an in-store show at the Record Exchange in Blacksburg, VA, in 1993 or so. I was at Tech for some academic bowl thing or another (it’s okay, you can laugh), and felt very cosmopolitan when I managed to find my way from campus to a record store in the booming metropolis of Blacksburg. At the time, I had very little idea what good music might be, but this man, those songs, that voice, those plaid pants… He caught my attention. His entire catalogue is impressive–melding country and jazz and synth and making something more out of those parts–but this remains my favorite. “Skin and Teeth” and “Like She Was a Hammer” are the sort of songs every weird girl wishes were written for her.

Neko Case / Furnace Room Lullaby (2000). Another one that inspired me to sternly query the magazine’s pages in public. How?! On?! Earth?! Do?! You?! Leave?! Out?! Neko?!?!?! Hearing Neko Case sing is a total-body experience, something you feel in your skin, your bones, your every cell. Neko’s voice is like touching your tongue to a 9-volt battery, like drinking Bowmore Darkest, like that first delicious stretch after you wake up on a day off. I would listen to this woman sing the phone book. After you listen to this record’s title track, you would too.

Ray LaMontagne / Trouble (2004). Ray’s songwriting would be enough on its own–the man can lay down some lines that will stop you cold. But it’s his voice that captured me from the first track of this record. He’s like a male version of Neko, chain-smoking, with a whiskey flask in one hand and lit sparklers in the other. When that gravelly, gruff, grey voice sings, “A man needs something he can hold on to / A nine-pound hammer, or a woman like you,” you might just swoon, too. Transfixing.

PJ Harvey / Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000). Ms Polly Jean has spent the last 15 years or so quietly proving that one does not actually have to have a cock out to rock out. “This Is Love” caused pictures to rattle off my apartment wall, once upon a time.

Were I to make a mix tape for myself (remember those?) to commemorate this decade, these folks would surely be on it. The case would be decorated with a sassafras leaf, cactus spines, a high-up and wide-open sunset, and dog hair. And I’d play it again on January 1, 2020, while I was planning the next one. It would still stand up–that’s how these things are.