My Decade in Music So Far: Molly Beauchemin

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.

Lykke Li: Wounded Rhymes [Atlantic]

I think there’s an under-explored difference between the kind of sad, languorous indie pop that Lykke Li makes and the kind of sad, languorous indie pop that Lana Del Rey tries to make. All the vocal frys, the hiccupy-cute “I’m-not-too-sad-to-still-have-sex-with-you” metaphorical winks in Del Rey’s music suggest that her desire to revel in melancholy is just thinly-disguised character acting. I love Lykke Li, on the other hand, because she makes beautiful sad music that suggests she doesn’t want to be a spectacle. That’s the important difference between something like Wounded Rhymes and Ultraviolence: there are no grabby metaphors or ditzy embellishments on Wounded Rhymes. “Sadness is a Blessing” and “Rich Kids Blues” might sound like they could be Lana Del Rey song titles, but that’s where the comparison stops.

A few months ago, I sat in on Lykke Li’s studio performance at KEXP in Seattle, and even in front of our small group of ten she was shy, shrugging away from the camera so that it wouldn’t reveal her face. That’s the kind of beautiful vulnerability that authenticates Wounded Rhymes (even though she was performing material from the equally-good I Never Learn). When Lykke Li says something, she owns it.

Drake: “Headlines” [Cash Money/Young Money/Universal]

Shortly after I moved to New York I was given the experience of a lifetime: an international fashion house flew me to London to interview a supermodel, and no luxury was spared. Black car service, first class flights, five-star hotels, thousand dollar dinner tabs, world class chefs, and dom perignon. I took bubble baths in claw-foot tubs and ordered Lobster Benedict with black caviar from room service while wearing an Egyptian cotton bathrobe. Looking back, I still can't believe it: I was 22 years old and they put me up in a four-room suite at one of the nicest hotels in the world.

But here’s why I’m telling you this: most of us will never experience the kind of arrogant lifestyle Drake brags about in “Headlines”, but when I first arrived in London and opened the door to my hotel room, I caught a fleeting glimpse of it. I felt like I was in a movie. Even in the moment, I knew it would be brief, but I was incredibly thankful for the experience. So before I did anything I walked over to the iHome next to the king-sized bed and did something I’ll never forget: I put my iPhone in the dock and started playing “Headlines”. Then I climbed on top of the bed and started jumping up and down. 

Musical Highlight of the Last Five Years: 

Shortly after I graduated from college I was sent to Montreal to photograph a music festival where I listened exclusively to Grimes and Leonard Cohen during my free time. When I travel, I try to only listen to music by bands that are from whatever city I’m in at the time. When I’m in DC, I listen to Fugazi and D-Plan; when I’m in Chicago, its early Kanye, Wilco, and the Smashing Pumpkins. For some reason, it's really important for me to wander around a city at night knowing that the life and culture of streets in front of me inspired the music that I am listening to at the same time. So while in Montreal, after exhausting Grimes’ Visions and Cohen’s Songs From A Room, I decided to give Arcade Fire another try. 

A secret that I kept hidden in college was that I never liked Arcade Fire. I thought they were boring, and even despite my love of white-boy indie rock and dormitory malaise, The Suburbs never spoke to me. I was flabbergasted when they won the Grammy for Album of The Year. (I even endorsed the infamous “Who Is Arcade Fire” blog that gained traction in the fallout after their win.)

Flash forward to 2014, and Arcade Fire are one of my favorite bands. I might even argue that The Suburbs is one of the best indie rock records ever made. This is what made the difference: 

One night during my assignment in Montreal, I left a show in a residential neighborhood that was very dark and quiet, except for the light of a few corner streetlamps and the distant rumble of trains. The streets were totally empty except for me, and it was one of those warm summer nights, very graceful and still. I was listening to my iPod and trying to find a shortcut back to my hotel when suddenly I turned a corner and happened upon a giant church I had never seen before. It was sort of like rounding a corner and slamming into somebody on the sidewalk: I was affronted by this huge, imperial stone building that was absolutely beautiful, the way it towered up out of the sidewalk and imposed itself in the darkness. There were filigreed cornices and spires peeping out of the contiguous treetops, with small turrets and several towers sitting atop a huge set of double doors and a luxurious Chippendale stoop. And right as I saw it, Arcade Fire’s “Rococo” started to play.

Something about the combination of what I was looking at and what I was hearing made me feel like everything was happening in slow motion: my eyes were tracing the shapes of the regal edifice in front of me, there was a breeze rustling the leaves of nearby trees, and the song just poured into me as I craned my neck up towards the sky. Everything was somehow magnified, like I was watching this scene of myself from outside of myself. There’s a moment around 1:40 in the song when all the vocalists are chanting “Rococo, Rococo, RAH-coco,” that leads up to this ecstatic cymbal crash where the bass and drums finally kick in for this lovely, anthemic build. I felt that in such a huge way; everything was soaring. And then there were these throaty, harmonizing vocals that came in and kept the mix from boiling over, and when I heard that part of the song as I stood there alone in the street—this soothing "ahh ahhh ahhh"—it felt like something close to religion. I started crying because the music was just coursing through me so hard.  

And what I can’t forget, even as I reflect on this experience now, was the delicate balance of elation and self-loathing that I felt in this moment, because at some point during this experience I realized that the church I was staring at was built in the Rococo-style, and I was embarrassed. Rococo was a period of art and architectural-style that followed the Baroque era in 18th century Europe; I knew that because of a preppy scholasticism that heretofore defined my formal education. Realizing how and why I knew the double meaning of “Rococo” brought a gentle cascade of yuppie guilt, as if I was a walking cliche of exactly the kind of suburban ennui that Arcade Fire’s music is designed to agitate. “Let’s go downtown and watch the modern kids,” they sang. “They seem wild but they are so tame/ They’re moving towards you with their colors all the same."

Through a filter of lame indignity, I finally understood. Suddenly I was surfacing all these memories from my youth in suburban New England, remembering what it was like to be so potently curious about the meaning of my life, to feel like everyone around me was the same, to want something bigger, to want to be different, wanting to avoid that life, wanting to be somebody in the world. I was crying because the music made me feel like I wasn’t alone.  

That night, I listened to the rest of The Suburbs and loved it. But standing there in front of the church was the moment when I realized that good records are the ones you don’t have to work to find. If a record is truly great, it will find you.

Favorite Albums of 2010-2014:

1. Grimes: "Oblivion"
2. M83: "Midnight City"
3. Kanye West: "Dark Fantasy"
4. Arcade Fire: "We Used to Wait"
5. Japandroids: "The House That Heaven Built"
6. Cloud Nothings: "No Future/No Past"
7. LCD Soundsystem: "Pow Pow"
8. Drake: "Headlines"
9. Savages: "She Will"
10. Grimes: "Genesis"
11. Arcade Fire: "Rococo"
12. John Talabot: "Destiny" [ft. Pional]
13. Kanye West: "Power"
14. Kanye West: "I'm In It"
15. Deafheaven: "Dreamhouse"
16. James Blake: "Retrograde"
17. Lykke Li: "Gunshot"
18. Sharon Van Etten: "Serpents"
19. Savages: "Husbands"
20. Mac DeMarco: "Ode to Viceroy"

Favorite Tracks of 2010-2014:

1. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
2. Grimes: Visions
3. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
4. Japandroids: Celebration Rock
5. Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory
6. LCD Soundsystem: This Is Happening
7. Savages: Silence Yourself
8. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
9. Girls: Father, Son, Holy Ghost
10. Frank Ocean: Channel Orange
11. Drake: Take Care
12. James Blake: Overgrown
13. Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.A.A.d city
14. Lykke Li: Wounded Rhymes
15. Mac DeMarco: 2
16. M83: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
17. Sharon Van Etten: Tramp
18. John Talabot: ƒIN
19. Purity Ring: Shrines
20. Drake: Nothing Was the Same