My Decade in Music So Far: Nick Neyland

This week, Pitchfork shared lists featuring the best albums and tracks of the decade so far. We asked Pitchfork writers and editors to share a favorite song and album that didn't make the list, along with a music highlight and their personal Top 10s or 20s. Check back for more installments of My Decade in Music So Far.

The Fall: Your Future, Our Clutter [Domino]

Because every half-decade has at least one decent Fall album in it.

Liturgy: "Generation" [Thrill Jockey]

The manifesto wielding art-metal future I always hoped we were heading toward.

Musical Highlight of the Last Five Years: In 2012, I spent six weeks shuttling back and forth between a hospital on the Upper West Side and my apartment in Brooklyn. My son had been born in August, more than two months ahead of schedule, and was kept in an intensive care unit until he gained enough weight to be released. When I wasn’t sitting by his incubator—reading, singing, and talking to him—I was frantically trying to get our apartment ready for his arrival.

On the hour-long subway trips between home and hospital I’d block out the world with music, much of it instrumental. “Beautiful Son” by Peaking Lights was an exception to the rule, not just because of a literal interpretation of its lyrics, but also because it possessed a glazed-over quality that anesthetized me from the world for a while. I wanted to feel hope and escape while getting shunted around dirty commuter trains. This song more than delivered on both fronts.

“Beautiful Son” isn’t the best song of the past five years, perhaps not even the best song by Peaking Lights. For me it’s a reminder of how music that resonates is so often caught up in time, place, and circumstance—I listen to it now and I’m right back where I was in 2012, alone in a crowd, longing for things to turn out okay. It brings back the strong sense of displacement I felt, wandering through the world with barely a thought about anything else going on at the time. My son finally got out of the hospital on September 20th, my wife’s birthday, and that felt like a present. This song feels that way, too.

Favorite Albums of 2010-2014:

1. EMA: Past Life Martyred Saints
2. Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest
3. Swans: The Seer
4. Oneohtrix Point Never: Returnal
5. The Haxan Cloak: Excavation
6. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma
7. Peaking Lights: Lucifer
8. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: Before Today
9. Actress: R.I.P.
10. My Bloody Valentine: mbv
11. The Congos / Sun Araw / M. Geddes Gengras: Icon Give Thank
12. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
13. Andy Stott: Luxury Problems
14. Disclosure: Settle
15. Women: Public Strain
16. These New Puritans: Field of Reeds
17. Julia Holter: Ekstasis
18. Panda Bear: Tomboy
19. The Fall: Your Future Our Clutter
20. Carter Tutti Void: Transverse

Favorite Tracks of 2010-2014:

1. Gang Gang Dance: "Glass Jar"
2. Todd Terje: "Snooze 4 Love"
3. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti: "Round and Round"
4. Peaking Lights: "Beautiful Son"
5. Burial: "Come Down to Us"
6. Grimes: "Oblivion"
7. Girl Unit: "Wut"
8. My Bloody Valentine: "Only Tomorrow"
9. These New Puritans: "We Want War"
10. Crystal Castles: "Not in Love" [ft. Robert Smith]
11. Blawan: "Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage"
12. Carlos Giffoni: "Evidence"
13. Holly Herndon: "Fade"
14. Sophie: "Bipp"
15. Deerhunter: "Desire Lines"
16. Sleaford Mods: "Tied Up in Nottz"
17. Liturgy: "Generation"
18. Pete Swanson: "Life Ends at 30"
19. Thomas Fehlmann: "DFM"
20. Games: "Strawberry Skies" [ft. Laurel Halo]