My Decade in Music So Far: Jeremy D. Larson

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.

Shabazz Palaces: Black Up [Sub Pop]

It's Shabazz Palaces' world, we just haven't figured out how to live in it.

Joanna Newsom: "Baby Birch" [Drag City]

One of one hundred items Newsom mentions in the song is engine brakes. It's this menacing, faraway sound that bellows over quiet nights near a highway. I have tried, and it's still imprecise and unsharable exactly why this song continues to really affect me, and that's something, in 2014, I value most of all.

Musical Highlight of the Last Five Years: Almost getting the shit kicked out of me at a Neutral Milk Hotel show. The day after Yeezus leaked hearing it play out of almost every shop as I walked home from work, Zaireeka style. Watching an aging cover band close with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man" at tiny bar in Eau Claire at 1:45 a.m. realizing I'll never be more me than I was in that moment. Watching a Patti Smith concert and as she walks through the crowd—ignoring the advances of creepy aging hippies looking to touch her hair or get her to sign a CD in the middle of her set—she hones in on a little girl off to the side playing with her Nintendo DS, and she crouches down next to the girl, takes her Nintendo DS and puts it on the ground and whispers in the girl's ear for two straight minutes what I can only imagine are several small secrets of the universe. 

Favorite Albums of 2010-2014:

1. Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me
2. Frank Ocean: Channel Orange
3. Destroyer: Kaputt
4. Kanye West: Yeezus
5. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
6. Swans: The Seer
7. Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica
8. Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind
9. Robyn: Body Talk
10. Tame Impala: Lonerism
11. Titus Andronicus: The Monitor
12. Beach House: Teen Dream
13. 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
14. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up
15. Bill Callahan: Apocalypse
16. Drake: Take Care
17. EMA: Past Life Martyred Saints
18. tUnE-yArDs: w h o k i l l
19. Dawn of Midi: Dysnomia
20. Gorillaz: Plastic Beach

 Favorite Tracks of 2010-2014:

1. Joanna Newsom: "Baby Birch"
2. Robyn: "Call Your Girlfriend"
3. Destroyer: "Kaputt"
4. Bill Callahan: "Riding For The Feeling"
5. Drake: "Marvin's Room"
6. Bon Iver: "Holocene"
7. Titus Andronicus: "A More Perfect Union"
8. Kanye West: "Runaway" [ft. Pusha T]
9. Todd Terje: "Inspector Norse"
10. Frank Ocean: "Sweet Life"
11. Fiona Apple: Hot Knife
12. Cold Cave: "The Great Pan Is Dead"
13. Katy Perry: "Teenage Dream"
14. Mountain Goats: "High Hawk Season"
15. Sun Kil Moon: "I Watched the Film The Song Remains the Same"
16. Torche: "Kicking"
17. Tame Impala: "Apocalypse Dreams"
18. Death Grips: "I've Seen Footage"
19. Joanna Newsom: "Good Intentions Paving Company"
20. James Blake: "I Never Learnt to Share"