10.
Fiona Apple, ‘The Idler Wheel…,’ 2012
I made it to a dinner date
My teardrops seasoned every plate
I tried to dance but lost my nerve
I cramped up in the learning curveI’m a tulip in a cup
I stand no chance of growing up
I’m resigned to sail on through
In the wake of tales of you
I root for you, I love you
After a seven-year hiatus, Fiona Apple returned with her fourth studio album, The Idler Wheel…, following her critically acclaimed Extraordinary Machine. Each interview Apple gives and every song she creates serves as her own social media feed—a candid, unfiltered portrayal of what she decides to reveal at that moment, often without much reflection or regard for potential consequences. At its core, The Idler Wheel… is an exploration of the psyche, offering a non-linear narrative that dives into the cathartic realm of the human experience. The album, while not a traditional concept record, conveys a progression of emotional themes: internal conflict, desire, failed and succeeding relationships. Apple’s songwriting emphasizes the dichotomy between vulnerability and strength, a recurring motif throughout her discography. It is a personal yet universal reflection on adversity and resilience. This album captures the essence of Apple’s lyrical prowess, presenting themes of self-acceptance and battles against self-hate as one’s romances define the self. Such dualities are integrated seamlessly into Apple’s narrative style, showcasing a sophisticated evolution from her earlier work that often revolved around battling external adversities.
It’s that messiness that’s often made Apple’s work so rewarding, and The Idler Wheel is her most dense, distilled, and ambitious album. Whatever her creative process actually looks like, the idiosyncrasies of her songwriting only heighten the impression that she’s just winging it when she walks into the studio. The album’s opening track, Every Single Night, encapsulates the conflict inherent in Apple’s mind: “Every single night’s a fight with my brain,” a line that captures her personal torment and broken essence. The song Daredevil demonstrates Apple’s unique lyrical style, blending wild, scatterbrained exclamations with surprising moments of introspective clarity. Lyrics such as Look at me, I’m all the fishes in the sea, reflect Apple’s longing for attention in a chaotic world, while she simultaneously proffers reflective fortitude in lines like, “say I’m an airplane / and the gashes I got from my heartbreak / make the slots in the flaps upon my wing / and I use them to give me lift.”
The Idler Wheel… is distinguished by its sparse instrumental arrangement, a departure from the lush, heavily produced backdrop of her previous works. Collaborating with drummer Charley Drayton, Apple crafts a soundscape where every element has a deliberate, intentional role. The album’s sound is raw yet meticulously constructed, highlighted by unconventional percussion—thigh slaps, truck stomps, and the like—that adds an organic quality to the music. Every single waveform is pierced with purpose, from the muted heartbeat thumping through Valentine to the childlike plinks popping around the uncharacteristically optimistic Anything We Want to the chugging factory sounds that give Jonathan its uneasy rhythm. The stripped-down production allows Apple’s voice and piano to shine. The album is dominated by these elements along with some experimental touches, such as the looped vocals in Hot Knife. This approach makes the album feel intimate and direct, aligning with Apple’s unvarnished lyrical confessionals. This minimalist approach is akin to modern experimental theater or a Prohibition-era speakeasy, yet devoid of any artifice or pretense.
9.
Vampire Weekend, ‘Modern Vampires of the City,’ 2013
Wisdom’s a gift, but you’d trade it for youth
Age is an honor, it’s still not the truth
We saw the stars when they hid from the world
You cursed the sun when it stepped to your girl
Maybe she’s gone, and I can’t resurrect her
The truth is she doesn’t need me to protect her
We know the true death, the true way of all flesh
Everyone’s dying, but girl you’re not old yet
Vampire Weekend’s third studio album, Modern Vampires of the City, trades in the Africa-inspired giddiness of their first two records for a sound that’s distinctly innate and closer to the ear. At its heart, the album grapples with existential questions, weaving a tapestry of life, death, and spirituality. The title itself suggests a juxtaposition of ancient existential queries against a modern urban backdrop, underscoring the album’s thematic core. Ezra Koenig, the band’s lead vocalist, uses introspective lyricism to reflect on faith, time, and the search for meaning in a secular world. Songs like Unbelievers and Ya Hey illustrate the tension between spirituality and modernity, engaging listeners in deeper contemplation. The album explores growing up and facing adult responsibilities, themes that are a departure from the band’s earlier music centered on privileged youth. Tracks such as Hannah Hunt and Diane Young are emotionally complex, confronting mortality and the fleeting nature of youth. Koenig himself likened their first three albums to a bildungsroman, depicting life’s stages from naiveté to mature reflection.
Despite Koenig’s agnostic stance, the album is notable in its engagement with God. This recurring theme, particularly evident in Worship You and Everlasting Arms, builds toward a direct address in Ya Hey, highlighting the album’s God-haunted nature. Vampire Weekend’s message is one of collective understanding and betterment, and Modern Vampires of the City is the kind of album that’ll have you googling for Buddhist temples and Old Testament allusions at 3 a.m. while listening to reggae great Ras Michael. Though the record often traverses in darkness—the zipped-tight Finger Back alludes to historic atrocities and brutality while Hudson, easily the band’s bleakest track to date, imagines an apocalyptic Manhattan—there’s also hope here. The overarching themes are serious indeed, but you never feel like you’re being preached while listening to this album. Modern Vampires of the City doesn’t provide straightforward answers to the questions it raises but invites introspection. The lyrical prowess extends beyond existential musings, incorporating references to diverse cultural artifacts.
Modern Vampires of the City signifies Vampire Weekend’s sonic evolution. The band moves away from the eclectic, Afro-pop influences of their self-titled album and Contra to a more cohesive sound, characterized by an insular and refined production. According to Rostam Batmanglij, the album’s main producer, Modern Vampires carries a tension beneath its major-key structures, providing a darker undertone reflective of the contemporary world. The album is rich in musical variety yet maintains a deceptively breezy and lightweight vibe. This paradox is crucial to Vampire Weekend’s success, combining timeless pop simplicity with complex rhythms and melodies. The production style is not as audacious as its predecessors, using a limited instrumental palette of guitar, organ, harpsichord, and strategic samples to craft an intimate soundscape. Tracks like Hannah Hunt begin with the hiss of wind and some vague background chatter—the sounds of the every day—before it’s all quickly tuned out in favor of Batmanglij’s piano and bassist Chris Baio’s upright plucks. Rostam’s creative arrangements, Baio’s serpentine basslines, and Chris Tomson’s unobtrusive percussion meld seamlessly throughout the album, once again showcasing the band’s virtuosic craftsmanship.
In Santa Barbara, Hannah cried
“I miss those freezing beaches”
I walked into town to buy some kindling for the fire
Hannah tore the New York Times up into piecesIf I can’t trust you, then damn it, Hannah
There’s no future, there’s no answer
Though we live on the US dollar
You and me we got our own sense of time
8.
Kendrick Lamar, ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city,’ 2012
On his major-label debut, Kendrick raps like he’d been holding a breath his whole life. This is an album billed as “a short film by Kendrick Lamar,” where the coming-of-age story of a 17-year-old Lamar navigating the perilous social landscape of Compton and his tumultuous childhood. The acronym “m.A.A.d” has dual meanings—”My Angry Adolescence Divided” and “My Angel on Angel Dust”—capturing Lamar’s internal and external battles with his environment. Themes of violence, peer pressure, the horrors and comforts of his adolescence, troubled parenthood, and the struggle for personal integrity are prevalent throughout the album, and Kendrick shines as a lyrical virtuoso, crafting complex narratives that highlight the dichotomy of morality and vice.
The album opens with Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter’s Daughter, setting the stage for the story with a tale of youthful infatuation and the dangers it brings. The song is interrupted by the first of several voicemail recordings that delineate the album’s structure: Kendrick’s mother, rambling into his phone and pleading for him to return her car. Tracks The Art of Peer Pressure illustrates the allure and dangers of street life as well as the peer pressure Kendrick has to go through as a teenager, while Swimming Pools (Drank) delves into the seduction of alcohol as an escape from reality. Good Kid articulates the tension between maintaining innocence amidst chaos, reflecting on encounters with gang culture and racial profiling. m.A.A.d city, featuring MC Eiht, provides a relentless exploration of street violence with gripping urgency. Songs like Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst offer poignant reflections on mortality and redemption with Lamar ultimately finding solace in his faith and family. Kendrick’s acute knack for world-building brings these experiences to life, drawing listeners into a day riddled with violence, temptation, and reflection.
The album’s composition and production are equally compelling, blending traditional West Coast hip-hop with innovative sounds. Producers such as Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, and Pharrell Williams contribute to the album’s dynamic soundscapes, which range from the haunting tones of good kid to the frenetic energy of m.A.A.d city. Backseat Freestyle features a frenetic beat produced by Hit-Boy, which perfectly captures the youthful bravado and reckless ambition of a young Lamar. In contrast, Swimming Pools (Drank) employs a more subdued, atmospheric production that mirrors the introspective nature of the lyrics, which explore the dangers of alcohol abuse, backed by aquatic synth waves and a claustrophobic drum machine. The album’s dense, often lengthy tracks are interspersed with spurts of dialogue from friends and family, creating an air of intimacy reinforced by the hushed, watery beats. It’s self-consciously filmic, but in a different way from those other famous purveyors of cinematic rap, the Wu-Tang Clan. While RZA took his cues from movie trash, B movies, and samurai schlock, Lamar’s influences are more high-brow: His reluctant gangster in the sublime Art of Peer Pressure, for example, is reminiscent of De Niro’s world-weary mobster in Once Upon a Time in America. Kendrick has a kind of epic, religious iconography of his own, which suffuses a very personal album with a universal message of the redemptive power of faith and family. Through good kid, m.a.a.d city, we witness the emergence of the greatest hip-hop artist of this era.
7.
Daft Punk, ‘Random Access Memories,’ 2013
Random Access Memories, Daft Punk’s fourth and final studio album, stands as an homage to the sounds and production techniques of late 1970s and early 1980s American music, particularly from Los Angeles. Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) sought to explore themes of connection, transcendence, and the human experience by stripping back electronic elements in favor of live instrumentation. The album’s title, Random Access Memories, is a play on words, referencing both the random-access memory technology and the way human memories are stored. Daft Punk’s vision was to create an album experience reminiscent of ’70s studio works, recording at their best studios: Henson, Conway, and Capitol Studios in California, and Electric Lady Studios in New York City. With an intent to embrace a “west coast vibe,” Daft Punk aimed to convey a journey through music, akin to iconic records like Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.
The album opens with Give Life Back to Music, whose opening rush brings to mind “old” Daft Punk in Discovery, but then come percussive guitar strums courtesy of Nile Rodgers followed by orchestral surges. In a strictly technical sense, as far as capturing instruments on tape and mixing them so they are individually identifiable but still serve the arrangements, Random Access Memories is one of the best-engineered records in many years. Tracks like The Game of Love, Within, and Instant Crush—don’t make a huge impression initially but are best understood as part of a broader whole, delving into emotions of love, nostalgia, and longing. The Game of Love and Within are downtempo, slightly jazzy robotic souls, delivered in the kind of gorgeous vocoder that Daft Punk has perfected.
Giorgio by Moroder is a stunning piece of pop-prog that seems partly drawn from the groundbreaking producer’s experiments in long-form, epic disco. Moroder’s only contribution to the song is an interview that offers a thumbnail history of his life as a musician, one that recounts how he heard the sequenced Moog as the future of music. The construction of Giorgio by Moroder is masterful, moving from easygoing beats to a for-the-ages, chill-inducing synth line, to orchestral crashes, to a brilliantly goofy guitar solo. Touch, the record’s literal centerpiece, is telling that the songs featuring the two oldest and deepest influences on the record—Moroder and Paul Williams—are the most over-the-top. These pocket symphonies allow the duo to take their concerns to the furthest reaches of ambition—and good taste. Touch packs in a Cluster-field spacey intro, some show tune balladry, a 4/4 disco section complete with swing music trills, and a sky-scraping choir, all in service of a basic lyrical idea: “Love is the answer and you’ve got to hold on.” It’s strange, disorienting, and emotionally powerful, with a silliness that doesn’t undercut the deep feelings in the least. Random Access Memories is a bold and ambitious project that showcases Daft Punk’s ability to innovate and push the boundaries of music. By blending elements of disco, funk, and rock with modern production techniques, the duo has created an album that is both a tribute to the past and a statement for the future.