Thursday – “No Answers”

Of all the brilliant progressions that so many mid-2000s alternative rock bands seemed to enjoy, Thursday might be one of the least talked about.  No Devolucion was a vast milestone on par with Thrice’s Vheissu.  It was the culmination of gradual evolution, a display of profound maturity that left listeners wanting Thursday now more than ever.  And then, just like that, they hung up the mic…thus creating an immense swan song that accomplished something rather rare – a band fashioning its best work as its very last; going out on top.

“No Answers” feels like the heart and soul of this magnum opus.  It’s powerful and poignant; an account of total isolation and hopelessness.  You can hear the despair in every word that escapes Geoff Rickly’s lips; even when the lyrics don’t read as overtly depressing, the way everything is so forlornly wailed makes it so.  Lines like “I can hear the ocean when I say your name” and the increasingly defeated repetitions of “No answers when you’re not around” make it the ultimate expression of loss and heartbreak.  It’s the equivalent of sitting alone in a dark room, jostling with your thoughts and finally deciding to just give up.  It’s nearly impossible to listen to the song and not feel deeply saddened by its message, an emotive feat that you don’t necessarily want to relate to as a listener…but when you need to, it will never let you down.

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Thrice – “Anthology”

While I consider Thrice to be mostly a band of the 00’s (not the 10’s), they still had plenty of quality material spill over into this decade.  Prior to their hiatus, 2011’s Major/Minor saw them release one of their heaviest and most pessimistic albums.  Kensrue spews hopeless-sounding laments across the course of the experience, such as “We are cowards and thieves, will we never turn to grieve the damage done”, “Our hearts are – they’re so deceitful, sick and filled with lies that lead to death”, or “Never see, never quake with rage at what we have become.”  It was a pretty jarring disruption to the Thrice we knew – the one that always kept an eye to the sky for that silver lining.

“Anthology” is one of the few glimpses of light that manages to shine through Major/Minor‘s gray, overtly bleak depiction of humanity.  It’s actually important that the album itself is so grim, because without that “Anthology” simply wouldn’t pack the same punch.  The guitars, which elsewhere are murky and dense, shift towards towering and resplendent; each deceptively complex riff injected with melody.  Kensrue sounds enlightened and clear-minded, as if his journey through Major/Minor saw him come out the other side with – if not answers – then a resolute sense of hope, and the reassurance that everything will indeed turn out okay in the end: “If we hold to our hope, then I know we can weather the storm.”  There may not be…

O’Brother – “Complicated End Times”

When I hear this absolute scorcher from O’Brother, a lot of thoughts race through my mind.  I feel the urgency of those opening electric riffs; all gnarly, distorted, and ugly.  I bask in the shadow of mystery cast by the more gently plucked strings, and Merrit’s vocals – wispy yet somehow completely in charge.  Then, I feel the explosiveness of the chorus – acute, compelling…not explicitly angry, although that clearly boils just beneath what’s audible.  It’s restrained.  The whole song feels like a city of people trying to brace their walls before they come pummeling inward, from some unidentified but clearly menacing external force of nature.   “Complicated End Times” might just be the most ominous alt-rock track I’ve ever heard.

Lyrically, it’s vague and untelling.  Merrit sings in abstract phrases, like “But you don’t know a thing about me, you want to snuff the fire out…” and “You’ll see I’ll be the paradigm.”  It could just as easily be a cryptic breakup song as one about the end of the world as we know it; there’s such a wide spectrum of interpretations.  The imprecise nature of the words are a perfect marriage for what O’Brother has constructed – a world, either personal or literal, that is falling apart.  The way the band perfected the soft-to-loud formula recalls Fire-era Thrice, although nothing there comes even remotely close to the intensity that this whole song emits – at a fever pitch – through every crack…

Frightened Rabbit – “Death Dream”

A still life is the last I will see of you
A painting of a panic attack

Scott Hutchison (Rest in Peace, 5/10/2018), was an inspiration to many as he battled the depression that would eventually take his life.  2008’s The Midnight Organ Fight is still seen as the benchmark for this band – and rightfully so.  It was the embodiment of being shattered, desperate, and needy; the monologue of an introvert trying to navigate his way through the most painful breakup of his life.  On ‘Floating in the Forth’, in which he imagines a suicide that he eventually carried out almost exactly 10 years later, he manages to pick himself up and – at least momentarily – conquer his depression, singing “And fully clothed, I float away (I’ll float away) / Down the Forth, into the sea / I think I’ll save suicide for another day.”  It is one of the most uplifting moments of personal triumph in the history of music.

Enter this decade, which saw the majority of Frightened Rabbit’s discography come to fruition: The Winter of Mixed Drinks (2010), Pedestrian Verse (2013), and Painting of a Panic Attack (2016).  The latter would prove to be Hutchison’s last album under the Frightened Rabbit moniker, and it has moments on it that still haunt me to this day.  At the forefront of those songs is “Death Dream”, where Hutchison recalls a dream in which he found a friend dead on the floor…

The Dear Hunter – “Waves”

Can a relatively conventional 4 minute alt-rock track really contend for song of the decade? Considering there is always something out there that’s more innovative, brilliant, and weird, I have to admit it is unusual.  However when you are as talented as The Dear Hunter is, any feat is made to look easy.  Effortless is as good of an adjective as any to describe their 2015 smash hit “Waves” – a track that combines all of your standard breakup cliches with a gorgeously bleak burial-at-sea metaphor.  As lead vocalist Casey Crescenzo passionately pleads “I can see the lighthouse”, it feels like bargaining, as images of waves knocking his ship sideways come more and more into focus.  It’s not your typical breakup song because The Dear Hunter is an atypically skilled bunch.  So when the experience wraps up with the utterance “I thought that I knew love, but it was just a wave crashing over us”, it feels all too easy to relate to.

It’s amusing to think that a band as eccentric as The Dear Hunter (who have composed an act in five parts and who also once wrote a 9-EP, 36-song collection) might see one of their most straightforward offerings ascend to the top of their entire discography.  “Waves” isn’t part of some grand scheme or concept, it’s just pure emotion set to the most sweeping melody that the band has ever written.  Sometimes, that’s all you need.

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Swans – “The Seer Returns”

The Seer is the stuff nightmares are made of.  From the witch-like incantations of “Lunacy” through the jarring discordance of “The Apostate”, it’s basically all dimensions of hell sprawled across an immersive two hour experience.  The 32 minute title track would have been an easy selection for one of the decade’s best songs, but when I think about the moments on this album that make me return, it has more to do with the digestible cuts: “Lunacy”, “The Wolf”, “Song for a Warrior”, et al.  “The Seer Returns” also benefits from rare accessibility on an album that is otherwise abrasive – however, it sacrifices nothing in terms of the pure evil that it’s able to conjure.

Thumping along to an addictingly villainous beat, Gira spews some ugly imagery that seems like nonsense upon initial inspection but actually makes a whole lot of sense if you pay it a careful listen.  Some of the lyrics are more cryptic (“Behind the veil of silver scars / There is a special inverted star”…”There’s a jagged deep crack in the crust of the earth, spreading from north to south / Put your light in my mouth”) while others are just grotesque (“I’m down here naked, there’s a hole in my chest / Both my arms are broken, pointing east and west”), but one of my favorite passages is both:  “Ahh, the mountains are crumbling / Ahh, the canyons are thundering / All the people are fucking / They’re…

The National – “Pink Rabbits”

Well…duh.  The National.  Has any band had a greater influence on our current decade? We’ve witnessed High Violet (2010), Trouble Will Find Me (2013), Sleep Well Beast (2017), and we’re about to get hit with one more dose of brilliance with 2019’s I Am Easy to Find.  So as obvious as it is that The National belong on this list, it’s far less certain what track best highlights why.

They’re a band of consistent excellence, and anyone who loves them knows that ranking their songs is futile.  Everyone seems to identify with a different track for personal reasons, and beyond just grabbing a single such as “Bloodbuzz Ohio” or “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” and calling it their most widely appealing, there’s few ways to objectively approach this.  So I won’t.

The thing is, “Pink Rabbits” still devastates me six years later.  The National are no strangers to forlorn, swaying melodies with downtrodden messages, but there’s something about this tune in particular that resonates with every emotional fiber in me.  It’s a breakup song; well yeah, sort of.  But it’s also about the sting of separation – which the narrator overcomes – only to be confronted by the same girl right as he was on the mend: “I was coming back from what seemed like a ruin / I couldn’t see you coming so far, I just turn around and there you are / I’m so surprised you want to dance with…

Gang of Youths – “Say Yes to Life”

Few modern bands are able to express the simplest of ideas with as much sincerity and passion as the Australian quintet Gang of Youths.  When frontman David Le’aupepe sings one of my all-time favorite lyrics, “And it’s strange, all the things that I’ve run from / Are the things that completeness could come from” on the slow-burning ‘Do Not Let Your Spirit Wane’, I see the twenty-year-old-me rejecting happiness at every turn, favoring a self-destructive lifestyle over accepting maturity and adulthood.  When he sings that he “feels everything” on ‘Fear and Trembling’, only to follow that up by admitting that he’s “terrified of loving” because he’s “terrified of pain”,  I feel the heartbreak in his voice and it makes me look inwards at my own insecurities.  Isn’t that the way all the best bands are?  They somehow put into words everything you’d write if you could, and then sing it plainly and beautifully.

Now, take that idea and multiply it on ‘Say Yes to Life’, possibly the most optimistic and affirming rock anthem to come out since Springsteen was still rollicking in his heyday.  Le’aupepe immediately reaches out to his listeners and engages them, putting himself in our shoes: “If I could reach out through the screen and give you something to believe in I would / But I’m with you in amongst the confusion.”  To quickly intensifying drumming, he spews messages of hope through his own obviously less-than-desirable experiences, eventually…

Benjamin Clementine – “Phantom Of Aleppoville”

Benjamin Clementine might be one of the most underappreciated artists of the decade.  Rising from a homeless musician in Paris to the winner of 2015’s Mercury Prize, Clementine recorded I Tell a Fly while traveling the world – from New York to London to Syria – and chronicling what he witnessed, be it sickening wealth, war-torn nations, or alarming poverty.  He’s as authentic as they come, and the combination of his own rough upbringing, along with his boots-on-the-ground mentality to seeing and incorporating world issues into his music, has afforded him a wealth of material worth playing about — and more importantly, worth hearing.

While I’d advise anyone to listen to both of Benjamin Clementine’s albums in full, the absolute pinnacle of his young career has to be ‘Phantom of Aleppoville.’   It ebbs and flows with a blend of grace and oddness that simply can’t be manufactured – and comes along ever so rarely. Spanning six and a half minutes, the song gradually builds up from intricate, trickling piano notes to more graceful and elegant ones. By the time the song is one minute in, the two styles intertwine and dance together playfully, and it sounds like we’re immersed in some eighteenth century classical masterpiece. Clementine’s avant-garde inclinations are on full display when ‘Phantom of Aleppoville’ changes course into militaristic drumming and unintelligible, tribal-sounding chants. The most stunning juncture comes a little more than halfway through, when the song falls into a lush, vocal-centric moment where…