020. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city (Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope) (2012)

The beginning of each new decade sees the stars that come to define it emerge sooner rather than later, and there can be no doubt that Kendrick Lamar will be viewed as one of the key musical forces of the fractious, tension-filled ‘10s. good kid, m.A.A.d city was his third release including mixtapes, but the first to get a traditional physical release, and allowed him to make the transition from next big thing to household name virtually overnight. Lamar may have been Dr. Dre’s protégé on his Aftermath label, but no amount of manufactured hype or financial help can ever explain why an album as singularly awesome as this becomes such a sensation. good kid, m.A.A.d city struck a perfect balance between underground and mainstream, between fearless exploration and accessibility, and a star was born.

The expansive, brooding soundscapes, characterised by deep, tight bass measures, languid, elongated beats and rhythms, offered a whole new take on the traditional West Coast sound – characterised by introspection and occasionally unsure of itself, rather than by the chest-puffing and sentimentalism often associated with the scene. Lamar’s bracing lyricism and unnervingly mature control of cadence and tone for someone so young made you see his world through his eyes. He offers an unflinching analysis of his teenage years in Compton, with the dangers of gang violence an ever-present theme, but it never comes off as preachy, self-pitying or hopelessly bleak, finding redemption in the face of hardship. Voicemail recordings of members of Lamar’s family crop up at various points, reinforcing that autobiographical feel. Even more cartoonish moments like ‘Backseat Freestyle’ come out with lines like “all my life I want money and power / respect my mind or die from lead shower”. The stunning, segmented denouement ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying Of Thirst’ was the cherry on a very tasty musical cake. (LISTEN)

019. Sampha – Process (Young Turks) (2017)

After 2010’s Sundanza and 2013’s Dual EPs, Sampha’s chills-inducing voice kept popping up in various collaborations – some notable tracks with SBTRKT, Jessie Ware, and then – a feature on Solange’s musical masterpiece A Seat At The Table. Sampha truly teased those fond of him with all the sporadic musical appearances, but waiting for what this tongue-wrapped-in-velvet singer would bring in his debut album Process was an exercise in both doubtful and hopeful patience – how good could it actually be? But brought he did, and it left a hefty dent in the musical landscape of 2017.

The winner of the Mercury Prize that year, Process was a carefully constructed, blissful musical retreat into a sonic world crafted by a knowledgeable hand. Exploring loss, anxiety, and his connection to the piano in his mother’s home, it was the perfect culmination of all the waiting years to show a fully formed musical face of the London artist. Shrouded in introspection, it spans neo-soul, R&B and electronica, and doesn’t shy from a choral sound, utilising generous vocal layers and tasteful synth choice. Sampha has again retreated to the liner notes of other musicians, but Process was a generous gift to fans of music that knows exactly how much to give and take. With its graceful duality of calm and unrest, Process was a balanced affair, celebrating exactly what it states – the process of creativity and one’s own formation. (AS) (LISTEN)

018. Wolf Alice – My Love Is Cool (Dirty Hit) (2015)

Two and a half years for a debut album is an absolute eternity in today’s rapidly changing music scene, with trends rising and falling and hype dissipating faster than ever before. So keeping the world waiting for My Love Is Cool for that long was immensely brave but ultimately rewarding for London quartet Wolf Alice, who produced nothing less than the best British guitar debut of the decade. Refreshingly free of the verse/chorus/verse mundanity of so much British indie, they played around with structure and genre to fantastic effect, producing all manner of curious tracks that would often change direction halfway through, covering a vast amount of influences in the process. But Ellie Rowsell and her group were no dilettantes, demonstrating an inherent understanding of all the genres on which they touched, with a self-awareness to all these multiple identities, a knowledge of all the great kinds of band they could be in the future.

My Love Is Cool often felt less like an album and more like a mixtape, with selections of highlights taken from lots of different types of great album. There was the grunge storm of ‘You’re A Germ’; the ‘10s arena indie vibe of ‘Lisbon’; the poppy riot-grrl leanings of ‘Fluffy’; the ‘90s retro of ‘Bros’; the shoegaze flamethrower of ‘Swallowtail’… truly bewildering, not to mention the balance between beauty and raw power in Rowsell’s performance, which was more than capable of bearing the heavy load of the music her bandmates wanted to create. Bands as instinctive and varied as Wolf Alice come along once in a generation, and My Love Is Cool could well be looked back upon in ten years’ time as the start of one of the greatest careers in indie. (LISTEN)

017. Foals – Total Life Forever (Transgressive / Sub Pop) (2010)

To draw an easy comparison between their career arc and the baby horses after which they’re named, Foals’ 2008 debut Antidotes sounded like a prodigiously talented yet immature group finding their feet and discovering for themselves what they could do. Two years later, the Oxford five-piece sounded much more comfortable in their own skin, looking to push themselves as far as their capabilities would allow (the band themselves cryptically described Total Life Forever as “like the dream of an eagle dying”). Where they had sounded introverted and angular, on show-stopping songs like ‘Spanish Sahara’, ‘Blue Blood’ and ‘Black Gold’ they sounded confident, sinewy and powerful, combining lyrical subtlety with a noise that’s capable of filling the biggest spaces. Happily, singer Yannis Philippakis had lost none of his artfulness and intelligence, cloaking his emotions with layers of imagery and subtext, so that Total Life Forever is always revealing new meanings after dozens of listens. (LISTEN)

016. Arctic Monkeys – AM (Domino) (2013)

Some albums are so immediately, earth-shakingly great that they make you totally reassess your viewpoint on a band. The amount of small-minded scepticism aimed at Arctic Monkeys ever since they broke through a decade ago, added to the pressure continually piled on their shoulder from those who wanted them to reinvent the wheel, would have made almost any band crumble under the pressure. But their fifth album was not only totally brilliant, beyond the reasonable expectations of even the most optimistic fan, it was better even than the debut album that had made their name. AM was the final move in a stylistic makeover that had taken Arctic Monkeys half a decade to execute. Finally, 2009’s difficult Humbug and 2011’s psychedelically tinged Suck It And See were put in their correct context, necessary steps on the road to taking complete ownership of their sound.

AM was a very different kind of masterpiece to Whatever People Say I Am…: no longer were they the loveable, prodigiously talented rogues of 2005, they were now a full-blown arena rock band, albeit an L.A. one instead of a Sheffield one. Huge, ringing Zeppelin and Sabbath-indebted riffs dovetailed neatly with Alex Turner’s imagery and storytelling on the first half, exemplified best on ‘Arabella’ and ‘Do I Wanna Know?’, which then leads into a well-judged suite of tracks that range from the weird balladry of ‘No. 1 Party Anthem’ and the louche, West Coast hip-hop-indebted ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’. They can now do no more to win over their detractors, but Arctic Monkeys will surely be remembered as one of the greats, once this fascinating career arc reaches its conclusion. We can only hope that that’s a long time away yet. (LISTEN)

015. Solange – A Seat At The Table (Saint / Columbia) (2016)

An intricate musical kaleidoscope, Solange’s A Seat At The Table is one that twists and turns with confidence and grace. Her stern eyes are watchful of those who dare look straight into them from upon the album cover, locks in clips, as if she’s getting ready, and we’re accidentally catching a glimpse of something very private. It’s vulnerable yet bridling with power and pride – all suggestive of the themes and the tone of the musical contents inside. ‘Cranes In The Sky’ and ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ being the first videos released, it was clear from the start that A Seat At The Table is going to be something exquisite and very different from Solange’s previous work.

The former a liberating track blossoming note-by-note and the latter a totally cool celebration of black excellence, they were illuminating insights into Solange’s third album, putting forward the seemingly perfectly constructed vision of an album much bigger than only a sum of its musical parts. The pastel visuals in harmony with the very deliberate, geometric choreography once again publicly solidified that Solange Knowles is a lot more than just a singer. Both rich and angelic, her voice confidently leads the way through this album, celebrating the strength, pride and vulnerability of the black female experience in America with musical compositions that haunt one, all pioneered by Solange herself.

A Seat At The Table was a slinky, shifting beast of an album, housing unforgettable groove and beauty in its fluid turn of melody that flows from track to track. With interludes of storytelling, individual hardship and hustle done by Solange’s mother Tina and father Matthew amongst many, it’s personal in a way it almost feels like eavesdropping on a story that’s bigger than you. Racing to number one in America, it’s an example of brilliant pop music. (AS) (LISTEN)

014. Tame Impala – Currents (Modular / Universal) (2015)

By now, Kevin Parker has established himself as not just a modern psychedelia wiz, but a master producer and pop songwriter. With a new album on the way in 2020, and many stints of producing for the likes of Mark Ronson, Lady Gaga, and Kanye West, to name a few since the release of Currents, it is interesting to look back on the album that truly established Parker as a key innovator in the world of production and songwriting today.

Dropping the guitar-led songwriting of the previous Tame Impala albums, Currents saw Parker embrace synthesizers and every imaginable frequency modulation as a musical tool. The results of which, astoundingly, manage to hit that perfect sweet spot between odd and trippy yet melodic and catchy. As far as lyricism is concerned, few albums have a thematic structure as consistent and as resonant years down the line from its release date as Currents. From the never-off-the-radio ‘The Less I Know The Better’, to my personal pick of song-that-best-uses-structure-to-reflect-its-theme (better category names welcome) ‘Let It Happen’, to a complete cover by Rihanna on her own critically acclaimed album ANTI, it’s difficult to imagie Currents not continuing being a cultural staple in not just psych-rock but music in general for a long time. (EW) (LISTEN)

013. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma (Warp Records) (2010)

Arguably the greatest musical auteur that the 2010s has known, Steven Ellison kicked off the new decade with the very finest of all of his wonderful albums as Flying Lotus. Triggered by the death of his mother, Cosmogramma was a sprawling, shifting yet concise amalgam of electronica, experimental, IDM and nu jazz, with its influences spanning everything from hip-hop and dub reggae to psychedelia and all loosely thematically linked by lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences and the sense of cosmic forces at work in everyday life. While unbelievably rich and dense in terms of musical detail, Cosmogramma stops short of coming across as information overload – or of complexity for complexity’s sake – because of Ellison’s expert eye for composition. Stunning moments like ‘Do The Astral Plane’, the space-bound jazz of ‘Arkestry’ and the spectral beauty of Thom Yorke’s guest spot on ‘…And The World Laughs With You’ all dovetailed neatly into each other, as in touch with the world of Sun Ra as that of J Dilla. It’s a work of art that’s unique and completely impervious to imitation, succeeding in every one of its ambitions that Ellison set for it. (LISTEN)

012. Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest (4AD) (2010)

The 2010s has been a vintage era for 4AD, yet the finest moment from its catalogue appeared virtually right at the start of the decade. In Halcyon Digest, Bradford Cox’s Deerhunter released their fifth and best studio album yet, dealing with “the way we re-write and edit our memories to be a digest version of what we want to remember, and how that’s kind of sad.” Hooking up with Ben H. Allen III, who would go on to produce some of the most popular indie records of the new decade so far, it contained as many radio-friendly pop-rock moments like ‘Memory Boy’ as sparse, elegaic art-rock ones like ‘Earthquake’, it demonstrated Cox’s eternal commitment to sonic exploration. (LISTEN)

011. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Ghosteen (2019)

Several elements went into the making of the curiously structured double-album Ghosteen – the “fever dreams” triggered by a bout of flu that Cave suffered last autumn; the Red Hand Files project over the last few years that brought down the barriers between fans and performer in a way that a mere social media presence simply couldn’t have done; and, of course, the horrifying death of Cave’s teenage son Arthur four years ago. Announced abruptly and released within just a couple of weeks, it consisted of eight shorter tracks in the first half and two much longer ones, connected by a short spoken-word section, making up the second.

All of this made for an immensely intricate album to unpack, one which required several deep dives to fully understand, but even a cursory first inspection revealed Ghosteen to be a warmer, more detailed and considered study of grief than the raw, numbed desolation of Skeleton Tree three years ago. It’s also a personal quest for meaning, about discovery of one’s place and purpose in the universe, and what it means to make an emotional and sincere connection in a world that sees individuals more atomised and alienated than at any point in human history.

While it was centred primarily around Cave’s lyrics, the musical backdrop in which they’re contextualised was equally central to Ghosteen’s mood of solace and understanding. Warren Ellis’ gauzy analogue synthesisers provide an otherworldly, sometimes difficult but entirely fitting backdrop for Cave’s streams of dream logic and repeated themes of love, loss and uneasy resolution. Expressed with an exquisite and profound humanity, of the kind that pop music is usually extremely ill-suited to communicate, Ghosteen was a quite staggering artistic achievement, and the most beautiful music that Nick Cave has ever made. (LISTEN)