My prayers while making my Best Albums of the Decade list, new Jessy Lanza music is here in 2020. “Lick In Heaven” is Lanza’s first new song since 2016 and guess what, she’s still an artist with no bad songs, or even ok songs in her discography. It’s all fire. This song is great with a chunky, carbonated beat and a buoyant, joyful vocal melody & delivery from Lanza. No news of a new album yet but trust me, if you know this blog at all, once that news you’ll be hearing about it from me.
The first edition of Recommended Albums of 2020 is a good one. SO many good records already this year. Long awaited new ones from Destroyer and Frances Quinlan graced us, plus newcomers (to me) like Andras and Ulla made some lovely electronic landscapes to fawn over. Many different things to like about this month’s music. Plus, February is already off to a great start, so get ready for that.
I’ve been a huge fan of “Bright Morning Stars” since Mountain Man covered it on their 2018 album Magic Ship. I’m getting through this new Bonny Light Horseman album today (supergroup feat. Anaïs Mitchell, Josh Kaufman and Eric D. Johnson) and was pleasantly surprised to hear another version here. It’s just as beautiful as always. Definitely seeming like this is gonna be a Recommended Album soon.
Somehow stumbled across this cool glitch/experimental electronic record from 1998, Nobukazu Takemura’s Scope. There are some tracks that are just way over my head, but songs like “Icefall”, “Kepler” and the song here “Tiddler” are pretty great. “Tiddler” sounds like it could be a lost town theme to a Super Nintendo or PS1 game, thanks to some similar sound fonts being present in those game soundtracks. This song is definitely an exception to the rest of the record, which is pretty high energy and glitch-heavy. I highly recommend the other two songs I listed, though!
It’s been a minute, but I’m back with more Best of the Decade content. This time it’s breaking down my 200 favorite songs of the decade, which was obviously no easy task. In my opinion, picking 200 albums was so much easier, since you have so many fewer choices to make. Picking 200 songs out of 200 albums, plus other albums from the decade… now that’s intense.
Here’s a stat breakdown for ya before we get into the meat of everything. Think back to my list of 200 albums. According to my iTunes, that’s 2,266 different songs. To listen to it all, it would take me roughly 6.4 days, which translates to about 9,216 minutes. And that’s just the 200 albums I narrowed down from the 500 albums I picked throughout the decade of making Top 50 Albums of the Year lists. Elsewhere, I made a playlist of all my favorite songs of the decade, spanning over 1,500 song selections. That’s roughly 190 hours, aka 6,540 minutes. There is obviously overlap between the two lists, but that’s definitely over 10,000 minutes of music I have to get through to pick my favorites. Now I’ve narrowed it down to 930 minutes, a cool 15.5-hour playlist. Easy peasy!
But enough of Mr. Professor up there, onto some arbitrary song ranking decisions. Below you’ll find 150 of my top favorite songs of the decade ordered in an alphabetical fashion, followed by a loose ranking of my 50 favorite songs of the decade. Things were moving around even on the day I put this out, so clearly just listen to everything listed here, or at least in the top 50.
Conveniently a Spotify playlist for all the songs listed here. The songs marked with a ** are not on Spotify and I’ve linked in the song name using elsewhere sources.
You better read more – I didn’t type all these words just for them to sit there!
Here’s something exciting. Bubbling newcomer duo Jockstrap just got picked up by Warp and put out this bomb new single “Acid”. My roommate (shout out to Dylan if you’re reading) has been telling me about this band for ages, so I’m glad they found a spot at a legendary label. According to Dylan, they’ve earned it. Shout out to Jockstrap!
Onto the music – it’s some dark, alternate universe pop music with chintzy sound effects but masterfully executed. I can potentially see them opening for a band like Guerilla Toss right now, but potentially overtaking them down the line if they put out a bomb single or two. Otherwise, get to know this band before the rest of the world does!
It’s here. The new Destroyer album Have We Met is OUT NOW via Merge and it’s splendid. I’ve been lucky enough to sit with the album for a while and early single “It Just Doesn’t Happen” has been my favorite song on the project since I heard it. What a brilliant melody and hook, plus the delivery of “you throw yourself down on the playground / skid to a halt on the runway / you cast a poisonous look to the sun / you know it doesn’t just happen to anyone” is a great chorus.
Bless this band.
Oops! This is very late. I still wanted to continue my streak and wouldn’t you know it, there were some pretty hot albums that came out in the cold of December. While most of the output seemed like it was major labels shuttling out pop star records to make it in time for the next GRAMMY cycle, others felt like they were sneakily squeaking out as the year ended. I wish I could find more to feature here, but even my usual wellsprings of discovery seemed to be dried up when it came to December. Either way, I’m happy with the selection I have here. Some relatively well-known (indie) artists, plus a newcomer to the blog Pedro Kastelijns. Radical stuff. No Warm Visions descriptions, just a quick blurb about the sound. As one does with December!
Burial – Tunes 2011-2019 [Hyperdub]
A collection of every Hyperdub-released Burial project from the 10s. Absolutely essential electronic music that every fan should have in their collection. Already featured in my favorite albums of the 10s.
Daniel Lopatin – Uncut Gems Original Motion Picture Soundtrack [Warp]
Oneohtrix Point Never-led journey through a glittering, shiny, anxious climb through altered states of reality. A vision that’s entranced by jewels and nothing more.
Duster – Duster [Muddguts]
Slowcore legends return for an unexpected new album and it’s great. Brutal distortion, hissing effects, disaffected vocal deliveries. Like they never even left.
Free Nationals – Free Nationals [OBE/Empire]
Criminally overlooked record tacked on at the end of last year. Total retro late 70s fonk throwback with a good selection of guest vocalists & emcees.
Julianna Barwick – Circumstance Synthesis [RVNG Intl.]
More delicate synthesis of new age keys + electronics with Barwick’s amazing, weightless vocals on top. What else could you need?
Kaytranada – BUBBA [RCA]
Another clinic in how to produce a record and mold songs around your guest stars. Not as summery as 99.9%, sounds a bit more club-focused. Lots of ultra-jams I can’t wait to bump this summer.
Pedro Kastelijns – Som das Luzis [Overseas Artists Recordings]
Warped, fisheye-lens Brazilian bedroom folk + rock tunes. Songs seem to degrade and reform as they progress. Packed with experimental gusto and bold psychedelic production.
To celebrate 10 years of Warm Visions / Combo Breaker Kid, I’ve compiled my 200 favorite albums of the 2010s. Not only that, but I’ve concocted “Warm Visions” descriptions and wrote blurbs about each record. I’m sure you can infer from that that this is a long post, so get your popcorn, get your cookie dough bites, get a cuppa tea in a nice insulated mug – you’re gonna be scrolling quite a bit.
This is a ranked list of 200 albums that’s chock full of personal gems, obvious premium indie biggos, landmark generational achievements and dark horses that most have forgotten about. I initially had a list of 100, but thought why not expand to 200? It’s my own damn blog and I have a lot of records I want to write about. Collectively all the preparation and execution adds up to nearly a year’s worth of work. Yes, that’s far too much time to be working on a Best Albums of the Decade post. I know this. But I had a lot of fun doing it, so that’s what matters.
The ranking is pretty fluid and shouldn’t mean much to you until you get to the Top 20 or so. Those are the true lifetime favorites. I was moving records around position-wise the day before this was released, so clearly the numbers don’t mean a whole lot. It’s just a snapshot of where I’m at right now. Who knows what my AOTD will be in five years. You should just listen everything I’ve listed here, regardless of ranking. I tried including streaming links for each record, but it turns out having 200 embedded YouTube videos in one post slows it down a bit. Instead, you can sample most of these in my massive Best Songs of 2010-2019 Spotify playlist! Sorry to those who don’t have Spotify, I’ll try and branch out this decade!
Thanks for reading and following along with this goofy blog for 10 years. Hope you enjoy.
Baby’s first 2020 post! We’ve been teased with singles from the upcoming Georgia full-length Seeking Thrills for what seems like the longest, and now on Jan 10th we’re finally getting our release. Every song out from it so far has been a HIT, including this most recent one, “24 Hours”. After seeing Georgia’s electric performance in NYC a few months ago, all I can think of is the jubilant, dancing crowd I was a part of and Georgia’s astonishment that it was all happening while listening to this new song. The song makes me feel good apart from those memories, but the combination really warms my heart and pumps me up to attack the rest of the day.
Warm Visions 