Kendrick Lamar, Sufjan Stevens, Villagers... the best albums marking their 10-year anniversaries
Clockwise from top left: Gilla Band's Holding Hands with Jamie; Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly; Sufjan Stevens' Carrie and Lowell; Jamie XX' In Colour.
In 2015, Ireland voted yes to marriage equality, a moment of joy and celebration that rippled far beyond our shores. Donald Trump officially announced in June that he’d be running for US president the following year - there was no way he’s win though, right!?!?
In November, tragedy struck in Paris with more than 130 people killed in co-ordinated terror attacks, including 90 at an Eagles of Death Metal gig at the Bataclan theatre.
Here are 10 albums that stood out.
Believe the hype. Girl Band (later to become Gilla Band), had been on the go since 2011, growing ever more esoteric and drawing admiring eyes at home and in the UK and US. Their debut album, which arrived this week 10 years ago, begins with 1.45 minutes of noise before Dara Kiely enters: “Got into a scrap with a pigeon.”
He repeats “chicken fillet roll” in the, er, chorus. Pears for Lunch finds him “watching Top Gear with my trousers down”. The album catches Kiely in the midst of a mental health crisis, which he writes through and manages to find the funny.
And is so funny. If the guitar tones could easily pass for industrial machinery, just go to the shop, like he does on the sensational and buy “some batshit bread and chocolate spread”. You can’t underplay Gilla Band’s influence on the current Irish rock scene. Grian Chatten told “They modernised Irish music massively.”
The cover of Kendrick’s third album would likely send Maga America into uproar if released now: A gang of young black men celebrating on the White House lawn, a judge flat on his back beneath them; power flipped, chaos and triumph in a single frame.
The Compton rapper already saw his music in widescreen (see 2012’s and this is his masterpiece. It’s sprawling, political, deeply personal, and adventurous, pulling in funk, jazz, and soul. Inspired by a visit to South Africa, fourth single Alright became its standout track, having soundtracked Black Lives Matter marches. He had supported Kanye West a couple years earlier but left no doubt: King Kendrick had made a modern masterpiece.
The seventh studio album by one of the greatest musicians of the century, is named after Sufjan Stevens’ late mother, who left the family when he was one, and her second husband. I first got into Sufjan through the Technicolor sprawl of (2010), so this was initially a shock: Gentle, hushed, intimate.
is like a lullaby, a child trying to make sense of things before concluding, “We’re all gonna die.” The world is a cruel place and Stevens makes you weep for it. Stevens is still trying to make sense of himself - for the 10th anniversary earlier this year, he told NPR: “I think this album is evidence of creative and artistic failure from my vantage point. I was trying to make sense of something that is senseless.”
A global festival headliner these days, Jamie xx helped usher in a rave sound that seeped into and reshaped indie and ‘alternative’ music.. Proving LCD Soundsystem’s maxim on - “I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables” - it was surprising to see one third of The xx, a band made for headphone-listening while curled up in bed (how ironic to hear lead singer Romy guesting on its best track, strike out as a superstar DJ.
Music aficionados can take joy in spotting the samples: and UK garage tucked into the shimmering production. is melancholic, euphoric, and nostalgic, then and moreso now.
It’s rather quaint to think of Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, as ‘just’ a musical artist. You might know her for her X account, where she asks questions like, “Which apocalypse is better?” while extolling an AI future; or maybe for her relationship with Elon Musk, with whom she has three children. In the first half of the 2010s, Grimes made lowkey pop music for the weirdos. “You never liked me anyway,” she sings on a bonafide banger, while is a cheerleader chant with bad intentions. Her fourth album and major-label debut, saw Grimes making her own universe.
“It took a little time to get where I wanted,” opines Conor O’Brien aka Villagers on the opening track of his third studio album. He had wanted Villagers to be an amorphous band, and is basically a solo album, written, recorded, and produced by O’Brien. Here he shears the metaphors he hid behind on to create full-blown love stories , Auden-esque elegies , and calls to action A simple, beautiful record.
With features on work by Flying Lotus, Thundercat, and Kendrick Lamar, saxophonist Kamasi Washington had been quietly making a name for himself. which lives up to its billing in every way, was his grand announcement. Across three discs and nearly three hours, Washington proved himself a force to be reckoned with. Big-band arrangements, cosmic improvisation, gospel, and funk feed into a sound that is both cinematic and spiritual. The 15-minute “ is all of this in microcosm. is an album to luxuriate in, to get lost in, and to be inspired by - a modern jazz landmark.
A pop album to make you feel 10ft tall but comforting you when you feel tiny. Carly Rae Jepson followed up global smash hit (1.7bn plays on YouTube) by pleading with her record label to let her write her own songs and work with the right collaborators. They included Sia, Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), Tegan & Sara, and Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend).
The bubblegum pop girl had become indie darling. The sax that opens the album on sounds like a clarion call. The best pop album of the year.
I don’t know if we ever got to the stage where people were calling Sydney guitarist and singer Courtney Barnett the voice of a generation, but it’s all there on her debut album. She says the opener, is the only one on the track that’s not about her life; as it is it’s a full-blown short story that envelops the listener. finds her making lattes to save money amid the housing crisis, while proves that a three-piece rock band is still the coolest.
A three-piece from Edinburgh who cut their teeth performing in clubs in their teens, Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole, and ‘G’ Hastings straddle a line between pop, soul, rap, and myriad other genres. Their music always sounds like it’s teetering on the edge, ready to explode - evident on the opener and the murky doo-wop of
Their debut album, had won the Mercury Prize the previous year, and on their second album, Young Fathers proved they weren’t just a one-off. Bold, unpredictable, and fiercely inventive, this is music that refuses to sit still.
Incapable of making a disappointing album, though it’s one you don’t necessarily return to often.
Four tracks have over a billion streams on Spotify. Try recalling any of them off the top of your head.
The album that made Kevin Parker a superstar and saw him collaborating with the likes of Beyoncé. Starts strong, but drifts into musak.
