Thirteen to Know Me

@jamesmckz shared the following challenge on X earlier this month:

No cheating - your Quietus style Bakers Dozen. 13 albums (off the top of your head) to know you by. Not looking for a perfect list, looking for a list that you instantly regret posting because you then remember something else.

I approached my response largely as a list of albums that have meant something to me in my life — not necessarily what I’m actively listening to at the moment. Many of these albums I’ve not listened to much in years, but I consider them pivotal, essential listening for me.¹

• We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, Los Campesinos! - Los Campesinos! has been my favorite band since I was 13. I found them when I chanced upon “Death to Los Campesinos!” airing on mtvU; I spent the following few years obsessed, exploring their (at the time limited) discography and spiderwebbing through related acts (Slow Club, Xiu Xiu, Johnny Foreigner, Animal Collective — those often mentioned in the same breath or who dominated indie spaces at the time). WAB, WAD released when I was 14 years old and it marked me, as albums that release when you’re 14 do. LC!’s more recent releases receive more frequent plays for me these days, but WAB, WAD holds a special place: it’s brash and cheeky, blending the hyperactive indie pop of Hold On Now, Youngster… with the more mature, refined palates of what would come.
• Sick Scenes, Los Campesinos! - As of writing, Sick Scenes is LC!’s most recent, though not for long.² It’s probably my all-around favorite release of theirs; it retains their signature mix of smart-mouth lyrics and overly-affected melodrama but beautifully pulls back the instrumentation. Sick Scenes is almost sparse in places, evoking a maturity in sound that distinguishes it from some of their earlier discography.³ It feels like LC! for the adult me.
• Sylvan Esso, Sylvan Esso - I don’t remember how I found “Hey Mami,” but the moment I stumbled upon it, I remember thinking to myself, “This is all I’m about from now on.” It’s infectiously catchy, and Sylvan Esso has an incredibly organic vocals and groovy beats. I listened to the album on and off for years, different tracks holding special esteem at different moments of my life. More recently, I bought the album on vinyl, and it’s probably been the most played of my collection. It’s my go-to for a chill evening, for a pick me up, for sharing music with just about any friend who walks in.
• Swimming, Mac Miller - I came to Mac after he died, and by that I mean right after. I saw the headlines announcing his overdose and despite knowing hardly anything about him (and not really listening to rap), I was shaken. I dove into his discography, and since then, he’s become my second most-streamed artist of all time. I go back and forth with his discography — sometimes I’m obsessed with Faces, others Watching Movies with the Sound Off, lately GO:OD AM — but I always come back to Swimming. To me, it’s his most complete, most mature album.⁴ It’s a zero-skip album for me (except for maybe “Come Back to Earth” — it feels like an intro, not a song), which is rare, even among this list.
• Yeah So, Slow Club - In the throes of my early teen obsession with Los Campesinos!, Slow Club was a close number two. I spent the summer of 2008 chatting on AIM with an online friend and listening to scarcely anything else. We loved the same music and exchanged lyrics and obsessions back and forth. Yeah So takes me back to then, to friendship and simpler times.
• Silent Alarm, Bloc Party - I feel I have little to say about Silent Alarm, comparatively, other than it fucking rocks. To me, it’s still the best of Bloc Party’s releases, and it’s another album with virtually zero skips.
• Ys, Joanna Newsom - Ys is a juggernaut — absolutely critical listening. It’s deep and daunting, with writing that sets my English teacher brain alight. When I try to expose friends to Joanna, I play them my favorite portion of “Only Skin,” hoping to win them over with the phenomenal prosody and abstract, imaginative lyricism (“Awful atoll — / O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow! / Bawl bellow: / Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow / Toddle and roll / Teeth an impalpable bit of leather / while yarrow, heather and hollyhock awkwardly molt along the shore”), the jubilant and embattled refrain of “Being a woman, being a woman.” Joanna is an artist, and that artistry has grown and evolved since Ys, but Ys is pivotal.
• how i’m feeling now, Charli XCX - Charli is a more recent addition to my all-timers; I’ve still not really fully dived into her discography, but I love her rambunctious pop; to me, it’s the most successful (while still faithful) mainstream interpretation of the PC Music sound and ethos. how i’m feeling is the most consistent of Charli’s releases for me, and I first heard it shortly after its release, making it particularly timely, as an album primarily written and recorded during early days of the pandemic.
• Chants, The Peripheral Ones - This is the most esoteric of my bullshit. I made it a point in my teen years to find the most obscure music possible that was also somewhat listenable. That took me frequently to sites like purevolume and Myspace, where I looked for artists with small followings. I somehow stumbled upon The Middle Ones, and they became a relic of my music library that I’d revisit from time to time. In 2015, I saw someone shared a link to Chants, an album of Middle Ones covers, on the now-defunct anorak forums. I positively love these covers, which are clear products of love and reverence that still experiment and innovate.
• In Sickness & In Flames, The Front Bottoms - I don’t believe in the concept of guilty pleasures, but if I did, The Front Bottoms would be mine. I know they’re not good. I know Brian Sella can’t sing. But what else am I meant to do with lyrics like “You’ll always be my girlfriend / Even after we get married / And no matter how sad I am / I’ll try to make you happy”?
• Visions, Grimes - I am deeply uncomfortable calling myself a Grimes fan post-Elon (probably pre- too, if I’m being honest — Grimes has been on her bullshit for a long time). I was no stranger to weird shit when I started listening to Grimes, but Grimes was a new kind of weird bullshit for me. In Visions especially, the vocals and lyrics are at times abstracted and indistinct. They’re like another instrument, layered into wandering synthesizers and catchy beats. Visions is a huge, remarkable album made by a deeply problematic person. I’m allowed a few of those.
• An Awesome Wave, alt+J - When I think of albums that instantly transport me back to an era of my life, An Awesome Wave is up there. I listened to the record a bunch in my first year of college, a time where I was clawing out of the deepest depression of my life and beginning to figure out who I wanted to be. alt+J is passé, these days, but at the time, they were a fresh wave for me — musically and emotionally.
• Dear God, I Hate Myself, Xiu Xiu - By contrast, Xiu Xiu is what I was listening to when I was incredibly depressed and unhappy, to the point where I swore off of them for a few years as I tried to get to a better place, mentally. Dear God, I Hate Myself has crept itself back, but it’s another one that’s indicative and evocative of an era of my life that is etched in memory and that I am glad to have left behind.