Chris Coffey's (Holy Roman Army) albums of the decade
One of the saddest, angriest and most beautiful albums you'll ever hear. The thematic mixture of anticorporate rage and the erosion of a better society seems to make more sense the more the decade progresses. Visionary in every sense.
The most underrated band of their generation's greatest album. A fantastic mixture of melodic post-rock, campfire singalongs and uplifting brass, you can hear their influence (and band members) across any number of great canadian releases overthe last ten years.
How could you leave this album out? It seems to have been the only album to have dealt with, albeit obliquely, with one of the defining events of the decade. 'Ashes Of American Flags' will go down as one of the great elegies, one of many intricate gems on this record. I still get something different from it on every listen.
I listened to this fully through last weekend for the first time in ages and it floored me all over again. Like a weird, haunted dream of nineties dance music - a very good thing in my book. As cliched as it may seem, the best 4am night bus soundtrack of all time.
I remember the day i bought this wandering around dublin listening to it and getting into it more and more with every track. Then 'unspoken' came on and stopped me in my tracks. Just a simple piano loop and some beats, but it's a heartbreaker. Kieran Hebden is one of the true geniuses of the last decade.
I had the privilege of randomly buying this on import one week after it's Canadian release (in the good old pre-musical globalisation days when you bought stuff because you liked the cover) when i lived in Australia. I think it was the last time i've bought a record and fallen in love with it totally and felt like it was my little secret. I don't know if that's possible anymore, too much information these days. Even if they're lost to me now, it's still a magnificent record.
I could have chosen any one of the books albums, they're all amazing. One of the very few bands that can combine musical inventiveness, truly hilarious moments and a real sense of humanity. Their sugar club gig a few years ago was one of the loveliest I've ever been to.
In a decade increasingly dominated by the track, here is the album in all its glory. A totally singular vision which took me about ten listens to get into, it is a true work of art. Of all the arty-folky movement releases of the decade, this was the pinnacle by some distance.
Evidence, as if it were needed, that James Murphy can do everything. At the same time. And make it coherent. And wonderful. And cowbelly.
My favourite album by one of my favourite musicians. It shifts from the ethereal to the intimate, both lyrically and musically, with ease. Bjork remains the musician who can best marry the avant garde and accessible, a genius at work.
Other artist's top tens
All these lists were compiled into one Artist's top ten albums of the decade poll. But here are all the individual lists that went into it...
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