The Student Playlist

Showcasing the Best New Music, Curating the Classics

The Top 200 Albums of the 2010s

100. SBTRKT – SBTRKT (Young Turks) (2011)

One word to describe this UK producer’s full-length debut would be “sexy”, or maybe “sensual”, if we’re trying to be more appropriate. On this R&B/electronica project, SBTRKT enlists Sampha, as well as other contributors such as Little Dragon, for vocal lines that seamlessly flow from seductive to contemplative and back again. Following in the vein of producers like James Blake and others indebted to the world of post-dubstep, SBTRKT employs thumping basslines, a moderate to excessive amount of reverb, and song structures that pull from electronica as well as R&B and pop to deliver one of the most cohesive and immediately appealing projects to come out from the genre. (EW) (LISTEN)

099. tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L (4AD) (2011)

Those who were ahead of the curve and experienced 2009’s Bird-Brains wouldn’t have been at all surprised that its follow-up would be a modern indie classic. tUnE-yArDs, the stage name of New England native Merrill Garbus, delivered a compelling and unique experience with her second album Whokill. Amid the clattering, homemade percussion loops and chaotic mess of bass guitar and field recordings that constituted its basic yet sturdy musical frame, Garbus gave a kind of alternative State of the Nation address, railing against economic inequality (“with my eyes open / how can I be happy?”) and national identity (“My country, ’tis of thee / Sweet land of liberty / How come I cannot see my future within your arms?”) that managed to be totally playful at the same time. Musically speaking, Whokill might be a fractured, constantly changing affair, but its uniting strand is the life-affirming power of its author’s idiosyncratic voice. Live, she was an impressive stage presence, often using streaks of face paint to denote the earthy, natural qualities of her music. Critics and the public responded to Garbus’s approach, as Whokill garnered universal praise and appeared near the top of virtually every end of year list going. (LISTEN)

098. Mitski – Puberty 2 (Dead Oceans) (2016)

The title Puberty 2 was appropriate for what was essentially an album full of excessively intense teenage emotion – all-consuming love, anger against the system, fear of failure, etc. Mitski handles all of these emotions with her signature touch of simple yet effective songwriting, effortlessly switching between what could qualify as a garage-punk anthem (‘My Body’s Made Of Crushed Little Stars’) and ballad (‘Thursday Girl’). (EW) (LISTEN)

097. Atlas Sound – Parallax (4AD) (2011)

Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound side-project doesn’t tend to get much time in sun, obscured as it often is by the mighty Deerhunter. But aside from being a consistent and confident-sounding collection, Parallax was a repository for some of Cox’s most immediately accessible songs ever such as ‘Te Amo’ and ‘Mona Lisa’, following immediately after the majestic success that was Halcyon Digest with his main band. He’s not recorded any Atlas Sound material since, making Parallax an interesting unexplored avenue, a glimpse of an alternate reality of Bradford Cox as a pop songwriter. (LISTEN)

096. Car Seat Headrest – Teens Of Denial (Matador) (2016)

Recording under the name of Car Seat Headrest, Virginia-based songwriter Will Toledo presented his 13th album (at the age of just 24!) as a full band project for the first time. Full of the DIY aesthetics that have made great indie records since time immemorial, Teens Of Denial brought Toledo to a nationwide audience, with television and festival appearances garnering him great acclaim. Despite it taking a comparatively long time for Toledo to find his comfort zone, his first proper (in a manner of speaking) studio debut landed him artist at the focal point of lyrically forlorn, distortion heavy genius. The interaction between his washed-out vocal and razor-sharp guitar riffs work together flawlessly in ragged, synchronised harmony. (LISTEN)

095. Alt-J – An Awesome Wave (Infectious) (2012)

Formed at the University of Leeds at the start of the decade, Alt-J’s intelligent and inventive blend of genres sent them from complete obscurity to the BRIT Awards in little under a year. An Awesome Wave was musical alchemy, finding true originality through splicing different kinds of seemingly irreconcilable disciplines when so many indie bands around that time were fumbling incompetently in the dark in search of the same thing. The unflattering tag ‘folktronica’, coined in response by the media to the album’s rampant Mercury win that year, belied the fact that Alt-J’s sparse and geometrically precise art rock was actually extremely accessible. The likes of ‘Tessellate’ and ‘Breezeblocks’ were addictive earworms, full-blown crowd pleasers, a feeling aided by Thom Green’s bizarre and smutty lyrics (“In your snatch fits pleasure, broom-shaped pleasure / deep, greedy and Googling every corner” goes ‘Fitzpleasure’). Its hugely anticipated follow-up This Is All Yours, while occasionally lacking in discipline, shot straight to No.1 in 2014, a vindication for the indie world that there was room for indie-pop genius in the public consciousness, given the correct platform. (LISTEN)

094. Mac DeMarco – 2 (Captured Tracks) (2012)

Countless parodic accounts of the Mac DeMarco look can be made from several of the well-known artefacts, whether it’s the waft of Viceroy or spotting a well-worn cap and a toothy grin. It’s all fun and games to try and replicate ‘the look’, but there’s no denying that the indie game was ripe with DeMarco imitators, and still is, to no avail for originality. The modern prince of jangly indie-rock has rolled out many a tune that sways in that DeMarco way, but 2 truly set the tone for many an indie record to come. A combination of his saccharine melodies with that signature guitar sound, 2 is a gem of generational indie rock. It houses a ridiculous amount of his most well-known hits, truly making his name as the ruler of the genre at the time, mastering that lazy musical gait amongst ingenious melodic writing and snappy lyrics. (AS) (LISTEN)

093. Arca – Mutant (Mute) (2015)

After being in huge demand for his visions for production while still a teenager, from FKA twigs to Kanye West, Alejandro Ghersi opted to travel even further down the rabbit hole on second solo album Mutant – indeed, it often seemed to exist outside of the continuum of pop altogether, sounding quite unlike anything else out there. Shivering, shuddering soundscapes of bass wobbles, electronic pulses, swirling chains of beats and post-dubstep sound effects characterise the record. (LISTEN)

092. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles II (Fiction / Lies / Last Gang) (2010)

Their fantastic first album was one of the most uncompromisingly singular visions for electronic music in quite some time, and on their second album Crystal Castles decided to excavate that rich seam even more extensively, presenting their inherently limited sonic palette as a gallery of various moods. Two singles highlighted the subtle change-up with CCII: ‘Doe Deer’ is an even more disgustingly degraded version of ‘Alice Practice’, while ‘Not In Love’ (later re-recorded as a single with The Cure’s Robert Smith) and ‘Baptism’ were moments of crystalline beauty that showed Crystal Castles to be capable of great emotional honesty. On the rougher songs, the over-revved distortion can’t disguise the melody, but on the quieter ones Ethan Kath takes care to let Alice Glass share the spotlight for her spectral, crumbling vocal parts. While it missed the wild mood swings of the first record, the kind that reflect Glass’s highly volatile onstage persona, it was of a greater consistency overall. The simple structures showed that Crystal Castles might conceivably be interpreted as a pop band, albeit a seriously fucked-up one. (LISTEN)

091. Swans – To Be Kind (Young God / Mute) (2014)

To Be Kind, the second of three back-to-back masterpieces for Michael Gira’s rebirthed Swans project in the new decade, turned out to be even more exhilarating and exhausting than The Seer two years previously. Gira’s compositions sounded like very little else on this earth, the long, droning riffs and layers of clanging percussion that unwound with the painstaking calculation of a piece of classical music, sharing more in common with musique concrète and obtuse art-house acts like Einsturzende Neubauten. ‘Just A Little Boy (For Chester Burnett)’ and, in particular, the imposing 34-minute ‘Bring The Sun / Toussaint L’Ouverture’, were like metallic structures subjected to white-hot heat and buckling under unbearable pressure, morphing slowly into something beyond mere music and tapping into man’s primal instincts. This was big music for small spaces. But, having utterly crushed everything in its path, Swans were careful to construct their own edifice in its place, Gira’s alternative vision for guitar music. Somehow, no other music sounds as good just after it’s finished. (LISTEN)

090. James Blake – The Colour In Anything (Polydor) (2016)

Throwing the kitchen sink at his third album The Colour In Anything and then releasing it quietly online with just seven hours’ notice was a typically modest and perverse thing to do, but it resonated with what we already knew about James Blake. Housing many of his finest moments to date, including a haunting collaboration with Justin Vernon, it was a vulnerable, prescient and deeply intimate album dealing with themes of technology and communication, both universal and personal. (LISTEN)

089. The Twilight Sad – It Won/t Be Like This All The Time (Rock Action) (2019)

Acclaimed for the raging catharsis of their live performances for a decade, The Twilight Sad had hitherto never truly matched the power of those displays on any of their albums. More restrained and with a greater emphasis on dynamics, It Won/t Be Like This All The Time finally delivered the human masterpiece they had always been capable of, informed in part by the tragic suicide of their close friend Scott Hutchison the year before. Their slate-grey, post-punk maelstroms are rendered in sharper detail and with greater emotional urgency, all culminated in the stunning closer ‘Videograms’. (LISTEN)

088. Bombay Bicycle Club – So Long, See You Tomorrow (Island) (2014)

Maintaining their ridiculously prodigious output rate, Bombay Bicycle Club released their fourth album in a little over five years. But that wasn’t what was most remarkable – it was the amount of fertile musical territory that they’d covered in the intervening time. In a way, So Long, See You Tomorrow was the pinnacle of everything they’d been building towards, picking up slivers of diverse musical inspiration hither and thither. It produced a euphoric adventure playground of a record, full of different ideas all executed with the same flair joy of experimentation. Eastern-flavoured tracks like ‘Luna’, the Sri Lankan drums of ‘Feel’, and the hypnotic effects produced with the rhythms of ‘Overdone’ and ‘Carry Me’… it’s hard to see where BBC could go from here. Doubtless, they’ll defy all our expectations and find some completely new place to make their nest next time. (LISTEN)

087. SOPHIE – Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides (Future Classic / Transgressive) (2018)

Glasgow raised producer SOPHIE has been quietly shaping and re-forming the pop of today, collaborating with artists like Charli XCX, Madonna and Vince Staples. Pushing a new aesthetic that scares and delights in its extremity and shape-shifting, SOPHIE’s well-known for the masterful scalpel that is her music. If the high pitches and metal clangs amongst the slip-and-slides of her compilation PRODUCT were a sound prominent amongst the circles of affiliates and signed artist of the London label PC Music, the ferocity of Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides outgrew it. An unapologetic work of art, it’s an exorcism and an orgy, a reconciliation and a party. Haunting in its use of voice and expert mixing of organic and synthetic sound, it narrates the diving deep into one’s insides, the intimacy, the excitement and the extremity of it all. It distorts, stretches, shatters, clangs and swims, floating up high just to crush you back down in a second. (AS) (LISTEN)

086. John Grant – Queen Of Denmark (Bella Union) (2010)

With the continued inability of his band The Czars to break through after a decade of trying, John Grant was in a state of deep depression by the end of the Noughties, struggling with drug and alcohol problems on top of his artistic frustration. Recovering with the help of indie-folk act Midlake, then writing and recording new songs with them, Queen Of Denmark was the remarkable result of this cathartic period. Built on the finest traditions of self-lacerating balladry, there was a sad yet unmistakable optimism at the core of tracks like ‘Where Dreams Go To Die’. It’s provided the platform for a brilliant career that continues today. (LISTEN)

085. Vince Staples – Summertime ’06 (ARTium / Blacksmith / Def Jam) (2015)

Coming of age is normally a big focus for many people, a universal rite of passage that’s been memorialised and analysed in countless films, books and albums. Vince Staples’ Summertime ‘06 album, the summer he described as being most impactful on his life and art, offered a different view on the concept cementing him as one of the more earnest voices in rap. With dark motifs and blunt phrasing tackling issues around gang violence and stigmatisation, Staples offered one of the hardest-hitting and emotionally impactful albums of the decade. (DA) (LISTEN)

084. Deafheaven – Sunbather (Deathwish) (2013)

Released in the summer of 2013 and remaining influential ever since, Sunbather was an all-too-rare example of a metal album that caught the attention of critics and fans outside of the genre. Built primarily on black metal traditions yet swelling to touch upon drone rock, shoegaze, post-rock and alternative rock sounds, emphasising the slower and more melodic parts as much as the raging, reverberating cacophony, Deafheaven’s lead singer George Clarke positioned himself at the centre of the storm. (LISTEN)

083. Childish Gambino – “Awaken, My Love!” (Glassnote) (2016)

Awaken, My Love! is idol worship at its finest. Donald Glover dials back the rap performances that made up the majority of his previous releases under the Childish Gambino moniker in favour of retreading and re-inventing old funk classics. Pulling heavily from the discography of Parliament/Funkadelic, Sly & The Family Stone and the likes, Glover managed to package it all up under a smooth and satisfying production and overall performance that displays his love and knowledge of the source material, resulting in his most enjoyable musical endeavour yet. (EW) (LISTEN)

082. Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory (Wichita / Carpark) (2012)

Cleveland’s indie rock songwriter Dylan Baldi had been recording as Cloud Nothings since the end of the Noughties, but the group’s much heavier third effort Attack On Memory was the first to include his live backing band on an actual album. Notably, it was also produced by the legendary Steve Albini at his own Electrical Audio studio in Chicago. The clattering drums and dirty, metallic guitar noises were all familiarly old-school, but its sense of bewilderment and ennui updated all these old reference points for the information-overload age. Crucially, Cloud Nothings didn’t completely jettison their power-pop sensibilities in the headlong rush towards all-out noise. To cap it all, Baldi’s primal scream therapy angst was the genuine, from-the-guts article whose power would have been enough to make Attack On Memory a very good record all by itself. Added to the abrasive, pummelling lo-fi onslaught of the music, which all sounds like it was done live in the studio, it made for an exceptional one. (LISTEN)

081. U.S. Girls – In A Poem Unlimited (4AD) (2018)

If rage and commentary on the ‘female condition’ is something you either identify with or find fascinating, Meghan Remy’s seventh studio album under the guise of U.S. Girls is quite the treat. An exploration of vintage and not so much (we see you, ‘Mad As Hell’ poking at Obama) narratives of womanhood, In A Poem Unlimited is a record grown from constant collaboration and careful nitpicking, resulting in a seamless musical beast, one that takes a while to shake off after taking it in properly. Gasping and sighing with lust and fuming from anger, it breathes in traces of historical (and not) patriarchy and female archetypes and exhales tracks so filled to the brim with musical excellence that it’s hard to detangle all of its threads, as it pushes on with unruly sophistication of its sexy sax and grieving guitars, a groove like no other in Remy’s voice. It’s a musical dagger of an album, a must for fans of musicianship and revenge fantasies. (AS) (LISTEN)

080. Foals – Holy Fire (Warner) (2013)

Having made the great leap forwards with the expanded horizons of Total Life Forever, Foals went for the jugular on their third album. Holy Fire saw Phillippakis and co. write their most accessible material to date while retaining the lush textures of its predecessor. ‘My Number’ was a bona fide indie-pop classic, but they also collided the grandiosity of TLF with some glacially calm moments of intimacy – the steel drum inflections of ‘Black Milk & Spiders’, the grungey chops of ‘Inhaler’, the slowly building crescendo of ‘Providence’ – it all felt like the culmination of a career’s work, so perfectly conceived and executed that it became hard to see how they can add or subtract from this sound to make it better. Holy Fire allowed Foals to step up to the big leagues, putting them in the frame for headliner status at Britain’s major festivals in the near future with a sound that’s capable of filling the biggest spaces. It was a resounding victory for reserve, modesty and intelligence in a British indie scene increasingly lacking in all three. (LISTEN)

079. Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell (Asthmatic Kitty) (2015)

Carrie & Lowell is the album equivalent of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It invites with its soft hummable melodies and lightweight ukulele strumming, only to slowly darken with each listen, overriding the seemingly innocent instrumental with grief-stricken imagery. Lines like “there’s only a shadow of me / As a matter of speaking, I’m dead”  (‘John My Beloved’) and songs like ‘4th Of July’ show how Sufjan’s lyrical style has matured over his lengthy and peculiar career, incorporating previously prevalent Americana imagery into an intimate story of loss, packing an unforgettable emotional potency. Airy, ghost-like in its vocal tone and layering, it builds with one traumatic childhood memory after another, the sound of a man dipping his toes into the afterlife and coming to terms with the death of his distant mother. (AS) (LISTEN)

078. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador) (2010)

When a prominent member of a band goes solo, it can be like a divorce. Nobody with emotional investment likes to admit it, but one side usually ‘wins the breakup’. But Kurt Vile’s split from The War On Drugs didn’t prevent both sides from pursuing spectacular careers. As denoted by the record’s grainy artwork, Smoke Ring For My Halo is a soundtrack to quiet, late night reflection – Vile himself said that the lyrical content was “just me and those thoughts you have late at night when nobody is around. It is more a feeling than a statement – a general wandering feeling.” The songs’ brittle, minimalist alt-folk structures, based mainly on loosely strummed acoustic guitar but embellished with snatches of strings, allowed Vile’s lyrics to flow like a train of thought, starting out in one place but ending somewhere completely different. It had hints of the widescreen sensibilities of classic American folk artists like Seeger and Fahey, but translated into a Californian bedsit apartment. (LISTEN)

077. Björk – Vulnicura (One Little Indian) (2015)

The virtuosity of Björk’s creativity is undeniable. Sculpting a new sonic world with every release, she’s an undeniable innovator with a thirst for unveiling the unknown. And sometimes, the well-known can be done in such a way that one is begged to reconsider everything they know about the topic. On Vulnicura, her ninth, we find her plunge into the black lake of heartbreak and dissolution, a topic common in pop, yet done in her hands, along with avant-garde genius Arca on production, it’s revelatory. It’s undeniably a tough listen – following the divorce with artist Matthew Barney, she was writing her first proper breakup album – but her sound is yet again a loaded gun, an experimental fusion of classical and electronica, part horror soundtrack part love ballad. Managing to be both threatening, grandiose and extremely vulnerable, it narrates the miniscule ways a long-term relationship falls apart, excavating every single twist and turn. (AS) (LISTEN)

076. Kamasi Washington – Heaven And Earth (Young Turks / Shoto Mas) (2018)

2015’s The Epic introduced almost a new kind of jazz – fearlessly ambitious and with little restraint, in the vein of jazz’s vast and storied history. There were heavenly choirs, 10-minute long tracks, and improvisational solos galore. Heaven And Earth in many ways is a continuation and refinement of what its predecessor started. Conceptually split into two halves, it’s virtuosic, political, immediate, and all in all an upstanding example of what modern jazz has to offer. (EW) (LISTEN)

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