The biggest thing that has always stopped me from being successful as a writer is my inability to produce something when I don’t really feel inspired. When it comes to music, I have no idea how some of these people get themselves fired up to write about albums every single week when most music isn’t all that great. My laziness and inability to pretend to like things means that just getting me to throw a post together is something of an accomplishment, and I use it as a marker of success if anything is able to get me to care enough to write. Cold Beat is one of the only bands that consistently makes me want to throw a shout into the internet echo chamber in the hopes that someone will hear it.
It is difficult to discuss Hannah Lew’s band and not have it be through the lens of how underappreciated they are — I don’t even say “underrated” because they aren’t even rated. Genuinely no one talks about this band other than me. I might actually be their biggest fan, and maybe I should give up and accept that they just don’t appeal to other listeners because they’re all worse at appreciating music than I am. Their new song “Prism” makes me want to keep fighting, though.
This is from their upcoming album, Mother, written during Lew’s pregnancy, and it feels like a strong continuation from their previous album, Chaos By Invitation, which I lauded to a largely indifferent pseudo-audience. With few lyrics, there isn’t much to grab onto in terms of themes, but musically it is a distinct work from the band, who have really carved out their own space in all of these 80s synth pop acts. Cold Beat is still really into purposeful ambiguity — the lyrics aren’t telling the listener anything, but I still feel like there is a clear emotion and meaning to it and I’m always one listen away from figuring it out. Artists who can pull off that trick tend to be among my favorites, and it’s something Lew has shown a knack for even going back to her previous band, Grass Widow.
The ambiguity is part of what makes “Prism” addictive, along with its multiple repeating motorik grooves that are joined by some swirly synths that give it a celestial quality. The band is saying this album is trying to describe earth to a newborn, and the sounds here capture the ground and the sky, along with some of the wonders of looking up into space. Once again, Cold Beat have made a song that isn’t necessarily complicated on the surface and put in so many layers that keep revealing themselves. This is the work of a band in prime form, and Mother is instantly my most anticipated album of 2020.
The most polarizing character in wrestling right now is Orange Cassidy, a comedic character who performs in the ring as if he just woke up from a hangover and has no interest in anything that is going on. When he enters the ring, he lightly kicks his opponents in a parody of the typical “babyface fire-up” in wrestling, when the heroic character regains their strength and starts hitting all of their impactful moves. Fans react with ironic shock at Cassidy’s “brutal violence,” and it’s generally been a popular gimmick that taps into the type of ironic comedy and memes that are currently popular with the youths.
While Cassidy is a minor player in All Elite Wrestling, the upstart promotion that just began airing a weekly TV show called “Dynamite” a few weeks ago, I increasingly think he is the litmus test for potential fans of the company. AEW stormed onto the airwaves on TNT with a wave of momentum from fans who are fed up with WWE’s monopoly on large-scale American wrestling and its various frustrating creative and booking decisions. However, in a few weeks, AEW has lost hundreds of thousands of viewers as potential fans tuned in and lost interest. I’m one of those who has eventually tuned out, and Cassidy is emblematic of the reasons why.
It’s not that Orange Cassidy is necessarily unfunny — it’s that he represents a flaw in the core of AEW’s DNA that makes it impossible for me to enjoy it as a fan of wrestling. Even though wrestling is fake, I think it is at its best when it feels real and it taps into authentic emotions and makes people feel invested in the winner of the match. Maybe that sounds like a silly notion if you don’t watch wrestling, but think of it like any other form of entertainment. If you read or watch The Lord of Rings, of course you know that the world is fictitious, that hobbits and wizards and orcs don’t really exist. But it is still presented as a world with its own set of rules and logic, which combined with serious storytelling makes you still feel an attachment to the characters. Once you’ve suspended your disbelief in this way and gotten caught up in the world, storytelling moments like Gandalf’s “death” generate emotional reactions that are very real, even though he is a fictional character.
The massive problem I have with AEW that I haven’t really seen discussed much (most hardcore wrestling fans and critic types love this show) is that it has absolutely no suspension of disbelief, in part due to the comedic hijinks of a character like Orange Cassidy, whose entire gimmick and humor is based on knowing that what you’re watching isn’t real. But it goes beyond Cassidy: because the show is aimed at the young male wrestling fan who knows the ins and outs of wrestling shows, it plays constantly to that base with insider jokes and winks at the audience. The matches themselves don’t feel real either, even for the standards of pretend fighting — a lot of the matches in AEW are more like choreographed gymnastics displays, with the clear goal being to “put on a great match” instead of trying to win or hurt your opponent.
AEW’s champion, Chris Jericho, is one of wrestling’s greatest performers, but over the run of the show his character has become increasingly goofy and silly, with promos that more closely resemble bad SNL sketches or improv routines than the classic style of wrestling promo that I love. Instead of building conflicts based on emotion and real-life feelings, his segments are increasingly focused on props and jokes, and because he is funny, fans don’t desire to see him lose the way they should with a heel champion. Even when Jericho gets booed by the fans, it’s obvious that they’re playing along because “this is a good heel promo,” not because they actually hate the guy and want to see someone beat him.
Another potential star, Jon Moxley, left WWE right before the launch of AEW and talked a big game about how he was held back there creatively and was going to change wrestling once the shackles of the evil corporation were off him. What got me most excited about AEW was to see what this guy could do with more creative freedom and a chip on his shoulder. But it became apparent pretty quickly that he had no brilliant ideas: he just wanted to behave like a generic badass who walks through the crowd and loves violence while “wrestling” garbage deathmatches with contrived weapons that are in no way believable or entertaining, such has his indulgent, interminable match with Kenny Omega at their last pay-per-view. Moxley said he hated WWE’s “hokey shit,” but his match with Omega was the hokiest thing I’ve ever seen in wrestling with its use of mouse traps and other dumb weapons.
AEW’s women’s division has also been a massive problem, in part due to WWE having a monopoly on talent and in part due to AEW being run by a bunch of guys who don’t seem to care much about telling stories in the division. Its champion, Riho, weighs about 95 pounds and wins all of her matches with sneaky roll-ups. Undersized heroes will always be a thing in wrestling, but Riho doesn’t even seem to have a mean streak or a switch she can hit where she starts kicking ass. She’s portrayed as completely sweet and innocent, someone who would never hurt a fly, which is boring in a wrestling context where I want to experience some catharsis in a staged fight. So just the idea of this demure character being the best women’s wrestler in the company is another of the many things reminding you of how fake AEW is.
Further damaging AEW was WWE’s ruthless and frankly evil decision to put its “NXT” show head-to-head with AEW by switching to a two-hour cable format. And it’s formed an obvious contrast with AEW by taking itself seriously with high-level performers and a logical storytelling flow week-to-week. To me, the breakout star on NXT since its move to cable has been Rhea Ripley, and she has also served to expose many of AEW’s flaws. She is everything missing from AEW: a wrestler who is serious, has star power, looks and acts legit, and the fact that she’s a woman has only further turned a spotlight on the clown show that is the competition’s women’s division. While AEW’s champion barely looks like she could hold her own in a fight, Ripley gives off the vibe that she’s going to rip someone’s head off at any moment. There is intensity and emotion in Ripley’s performances, which are a far cry from the bland choreography in AEW. She’s now set to take on long-reigning women’s champion Shayna Baszler in a match that feels much bigger than anything AEW has offered.
Baszler is her own contrast to AEW and its champion. While Jericho has been putting on interminable promo segments that seek to “entertain” and make people laugh, even though he is a heel, Baszler is no fun whatsoever. She’s a mean, sadistic bully, and she’s held the title for so long and is so ruthless that fans are becoming desperate to see someone knock her off the mountain. And since NXT has an incredibly talented women’s division, fans get to speculate and hope that one of their favorites can be the one to dethrone Shayna. That’s just classic heel wrestling psychology, and that’s what I find fun in wrestling more than segments that are desperately trying to be clever. Even though the fans of NXT are aware of a lot of the behind-the-scenes information, they buy into Baszler because she is believable and serious, and everyone is emotionally invested in seeing who can beat her.
I feel a little bad for these opinions, because the truth is I wanted an alternative to WWE, and I like that AEW exists to push them a bit instead of letting them become complacent. At the same time, I’m not going to watch a show I don’t like because “it’s the right thing to do,” and I also don’t believe WWE is evil and AEW is some virtuous company when both are run by billionaires, who are all inherently horrible. For all of WWE’s faults, they still deliver storytelling that has more emotion and takes itself more seriously than AEW, which seems to lack the confidence to do anything without winking at you and reminding you that it’s all just for show. That might appeal to certain fans of irony and memes — the people who love Orange Cassidy — but it doesn’t speak to what I think pro wrestling can be.
By the end of the decade, Angel Olsen had established herself as a brilliant singer who often made music that I didn’t find incredibly interesting. On All Mirrors, she dropped the lo-fi pretensions and enveloped her voice in majestic orchestra and synth arrangements that took the drama in her songs to an entirely different level. This could have easily backfired but ended up being a revelation: Olsen’s songs fit the cinematic, stagey presentation, and her themes about the passing of time and growing up were conveyed not just in the lyrics, but in her growth as a musician. With full confidence in her ability, she unleashed a series of tracks that each showed a different side of her artistry, making this one of the decade’s strongest showcases of pure prodigious talent.
9. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012)
Fiona Apple albums have become rare events, with just two in the last 20 years, and it was easy to see why when listening to The Idler Wheel: this was music that required years of experience in order to live out its stories and craft all the endlessly quotable lyrics. Surrounded by her usual piano with some additional quirky sounds, this was a more spare album than her previous, Extraordinary Machine (which had a controversial squabble over its production), with the focus almost entirely on Apple’s peerless voice and lyrics. Her seeming complete disinterest in contemporary music and trends fueled the unique vibe of The IdlerWheel. These songs seemed to flow out of her organically without desperately trying to fit into a specific style, and it was all in her own singular voice and vocabulary.
8. Tamaryn – The Waves (2010)
It took me almost the entire decade to fully appreciate The Waves, which was released by Tamaryn in 2010 and immediately tossed into the “samey shoegaze revival” bin by most people. Over the years, though, this album separated from all the forgettable pretenders because of the perfect execution of its crystalline goth-rock sound and Tamaryn’s ability as a pop songwriter and singer. On songs like “Love Fade” and “Mild Confusion,” she synthesized almost 30 years worth of shoegaze, goth, and noisy rock while adding layers of emotion and personality with her distinct haunting vocals. The Waves was a masterclass of evocative sound, an album that seemed impossibly vast and fearlessly intimate at the same time.
7. Björk – Vulnicura (2015)
Vulnicura raises one of the foundational questions of these lists: is an album actually great if you never really want to listen to it? Björk turned the dissolution of a long-term partnership into epic, gorgeous, and miserable drama, bringing back the strings from Homogenic but replacing that album’s forward-thinking pop songs with formless, haunting reflections on the anger and loss she felt. While “Stonemilker” was a throwback to her more majestic, poppy side, the story of the album was how that trademark optimistic sound disappeared, culminating in the 10-minute long crater of despair “Black Lake.” This was not an album to throw on in the car or at a party (unless it was a really weird party), but as an experience and a window into the soul of one of the greatest artists of all time, it was a valuable, completely unique recording that was unrivaled in its emotional weight.
6. Emma Ruth Rundle – Marked For Death (2016)
One of the great stories of the decade was the steady artistic growth of Emma Ruth Rundle, who started her career by quietly churning out a series of intriguing albums as part of The Nocturnes, Marriages, and as a solo artist with records of ambient guitar and folk. On her astonishing breakthrough, Marked For Death, all of the skills she’d been honing felt like they crystalized at once, resulting in spellbinding songs that had as much intensity and feeling as any music I’ve heard. Befitting an artist who dabbled in shoegaze, metal, and folk, the songs on Marked for Death didn’t seem to belong to any genre but Rundles’ own. No one was all that close to this mix of gloomy, atmospheric guitar, impassioned vocals, and songwriting that balanced listenability and experimentation.
5. My Bloody Valentine – m b v (2013)
In maybe the last album release that will ever feel like a communal event, the once-impossible m b v abruptly dropped on My Bloody Valentine’s not-entirely-stable website as the band’s first album in 22 years. In the time since they made the classic Loveless, the band’s trademark shoegaze sound had died out and then come back to life in the form of numerous revival acts (some of whom have already been listed here), so it was hard to know what they could do that would feel vital. I still vividly remember hitting play on this, having no idea what to expect, and feeling the wash of relief and joy when the first notes of “She Found Now” hit and I realized it sounded like classic My Bloody Valentine. The following eight songs told the story of Kevin Shields’ long, probably frustrating journey making the album, with a mix of the classic sound and some songs that took the band somewhere new while staying faithful to what fans love about them. Most of all, it served as a reminder of Shields’ incredible talent: even with a ton of bands trying to sound like My Bloody Valentine, nothing sounded quite like m b v.
4. Emma Ruth Rundle – On Dark Horses (2018)
The giant leap of Marked for Death was always going to make it a tough album for Rundle to follow. But she managed to very narrowly top herself with On Dark Horses, which slightly broadened her sound with a wider range of collaborators and a slightly more traditional rock style that still didn’t really resemble anything else because of her unique musical background. The biggest leap on this album was in its lyrics, which felt more tangible and real than the sometimes vague and biblical words on Marked For Death, and there were even powerful moments of uplift in the gloomy fog created by her guitar. The quiet/loud structures and legitimate rock hooks on songs like “Dead Set Eyes” and “Light Song” gave On Dark Horses a sense of immediacy — Rundle’s songs were easy to get into, and her execution of them made me want to listen to them forever.
3. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake (2011)
PJ Harvey’s career is full of left turns, and on Let England Shake they all finally formed a circle. She combined the haunting ghostly sounds of WhiteChalk, the brutal intensity of Rid of Me, and the atmospheric beauty of Is This Desire? into a cohesive pastoral folk style that still felt new to her, and attached it to an album that explored the lasting effects of war in her native England. Not content to make simplistic “war is bad” screeds, Harvey went several steps deeper, portraying herself as a time traveler or a ghost who described the horrors in vivid detail while connecting them to her own life as someone who knows the history and wishes she could change it. The callbacks in the album’s sound (which included strategic samples of classic music) and the lyrics each told a complete story of how the past is always with us, even if we didn’t experience it ourselves.
2. Colleen Green – I Want to Grow Up (2015)
Already known for her ability to craft catchy pop-punk tunes that didn’t take themselves too seriously, Colleen Green put all of herself into I Want to Grow Up and created a defining tragicomedy for a certain type of stunted millennial. Green’s straight-forward songwriting and blasé attitude added a weird power to her bluntly honest and revealing lyrics, which varied between different shades of devastation in either their relatability, sadness or hilarity. “TV” might have been the most real love song of the decade and “Deeper Than Love” was the album’s emotional centerpiece, a jarring and uncomfortable exploration of Green’s anxieties and fear of intimacy set to an addictive drum machine groove. Folk singers get all the credit for “baring their souls” in their boring music, but most could never approach the authenticity and pathos of this brutally simple, fun rock album. Maybe the highest praise I can give I Want to Grow Up is that by the end of it, I knew exactly who Green was. In its own unambitious way, this was a masterpiece of character-driven comedic storytelling, like A Confederacy of Dunces with riffs.
1. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – The Kid (2017)
Albums like The Kid come along very rarely, and they remind me of why I listen to music: to hear different stories, to experience creative people in their element, and to experience something that sparks my imagination and makes me understand the world a little better. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s detailed modular synth compositions told a story of a life primarily through sound, evoking almost any emotion anyone could want from music. “An Intention” and the title track showed the early innocent moments of childhood when you open your eyes to the world, “In the World but Not of the World” portrayed the young adult feeling of questioning and surprising yourself, and its classic closing track, “To Feel Your Best,” was a profoundly moving conclusion about facing the end with a loved one. In between those major story moments, Smith’s constant playful experimentation on her synths had a magical, unjaded charm, with wonder and youthful spirit flowing out of every quirky sound. Smith’s artistry made me feel like a kid again, like I had just discovered something totally new that amazed me because it was so beyond the scope of my comprehension.
The Noise Made By People 