My pick for "Artist of the Decade So Far"
When it came down to it, with seven AOTY-worthy releases since 2020, there could only ever by one choice for me.
Anyone following my writing over the last few weeks will know that I recently spent a couple weeks hiking and sightseeing with a guy who’s been my best friend since childhood. After hiking close to 100 miles along the length of Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England, from Newcastle upon Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west, we headed to London for three frenetic days of sightseeing. While I generally managed to stay on top of my Substack reading while walking in the north of England, I did fall quite far behind once we reached London as we were putting in 12-15 hour days (yes, ridiculous I know!) and not returning to the flat until way past my usual bedtime.
On Saturday as I boarded the 11-coach Pendolino—what passes for a high-speed passenger train in the UK—for my 4+ hour train journey back home from London, I was looking forward to significantly whittling down the burgeoning inbox in my Substack app. Little did I know that one of the first posts I opened (Kevin Alexander’s “What Are the Best Records of the Decade?”) would send me down a rabbit hole from which I’m only just emerging. Kevin’s post highlighted an excellent project in which he’d participated over on the 5-to-9 blog with six other music writers. Although I’ve not yet finished reading all of the categories (because of said rabbit hole and my desire to craft my own responses), what I’ve read so far is excellent and is definitely worth checking out. Rather than linking to the individual blog sections here, it’s probably easier for you to read Kevin’s post (embedded below) as he’s very conveniently linked to each of the sections.
Objective/Subjective? Quality/Quantity? Long-Awaited Return?
With picks like Taylor Swift (2 votes), Charli XCX, Fontaines D.C. and Little Simz, I got the sense that most of the writers were leaning heavily into a more objective view of “which artist has had the most significant impacts on the music scene or the culture?” And then—last but certainly not least—Kevin chimed in with his pick of Wussy, a group that’s been making music for close to twenty years but had released only one album this decade. I was intrigued that a band with only one album released since 2018 could have had such an impact on Kevin, but I could feel how much he connected with his pick when he wrote:
“Perhaps more than anything else, Wussy have helped me understand what it means to live here [the Midwest]. A part of the world where big cities like Minneapolis and Milwaukee collide with places where having a pickup means having to answer fewer questions, and there's no problem that can't be solved over a couple of cold drinks on a front porch.”
To be clear—in case you weren’t sure where I was going—I absolutely LOVE the rationale here. While I think musical legacy and impact on the culture are important, the music that I tend to listen to and, more importantly, fall in love with has to be something that MOVES me. That connection could come from a lyric, a melody, a gorgeous harmony, or in many cases something that just resonates for no apparent reason. But the calculus is the same: music is deeply personal for me and I can’t help but make my judgments on a subjective level.
After reading the panel’s Artist of the Decade picks, I decided was compelled to go through a similar exercise for my own edification. So, as the countryside whizzed past outside, I began analyzing my AOTY lists from 2020 onwards to see if I could pin down my favorite artist of the past five years. It became clear that, as outlined above, there was no objectivity here; while my AOTY lists do tend to have some natural overlap with music critic aggregators and sites, I quite often love albums that weren’t highly rated or dislike albums that were (I’m talking to you Fetch the Bolt Cutters).
With the objectivity vs. subjectivity question answered, it really came down to two questions: was I going for quality vs. quantity or was I going with a long-awaited album that checked all my boxes after a long layoff? In the latter category there were several obvious choices (sorted, high to low, by my preference):
The Cure - Songs of a Lost World (2024)
Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown (2024)
Beth Orton - Weather Alive (2022)
Natalie Merchant - Keep Your Courage (2023)
No matter how much I loved these albums—and it was extremely difficult not to just pick The Cure and call it a day—I felt that I needed there to be at least two albums this decade that really grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go (I guess there’s some objectivity there, right?). So I expanded my universe to artists that had released multiple albums that made my AOTY list (or, upon further reflection, should have). During that five year period from 2020, I ended up with seventeen multi-album artists with a total of 48 albums between them. There’s neither space nor time to list and discuss them all, but here are some of the highlights that I’d slot firmly into the “Honorable Mentions” category:
(2 albums) Lady Blackbird:
Black Acid Soul (2021)
Slang Spirituals (2024)
(2 albums) Metric:
Formentera (2022)
Formentera II (2023)
(2 albums) Bess Atwell:
Already, Always (2022)
Light Sleeper (2024)
(3 albums) Nation of Language:
Introduction, Presence (2020)
A Way Forward (2021)
Strange Disciple (2023)
(3 albums) A.A. Williams:
Forever Blue (2020)
Songs From Isolation (2021)
As The Moon Rests (2022)
(4 albums) Joan as Police Woman:
Cover Two (2020)
Live (2021)
The Solution is Restless (2021)
Lemons, Limes and Orchids (2024)
While I could make a convincing case for any of the above artists, by the time I’d finished compiling my list, it became obvious who the choice had to be: an artist who had released, in a couple guises, a total of nine albums (including a cover album, a rarities compilation, and a live album) since 2020. In hindsight, I’d argue that seven of these albums were worthy of inclusion on my AOTY lists. In reality, five actually made their way onto my lists, including two top 5 albums, one top 10 album, and two top 40 albums. After recognizing such a level of sustained musical excellence over the five year span, the ultimate answer felt like a no brainer to me.
To be clear, the entire process took up most of my train journey (hence, why I’m still waaay behind on my Substack reading), but it was well worth it for many reasons, not least of which was the exercise of going back and listening to all of these albums and reliving the joy they’d brought me over the last five years.
Please feel free to share the Joy with anyone else you know that loves music! Because, after all, sharing is caring, right?
The Winner: Eric D. Johnson
As mentioned above, since the start of the decade Eric D. Johnson has been responsible for, or involved with, seven releases that either made my AOTY list or were in the conversation. I first came across his primary outfit Fruit Bats in 2016 when their seventh album, Absolute Loser, was my fifth ranked release for the year. I had serendipitously been directed to the album by YouTube—before the enshittification, back when their algorithm used to feed me good recs—in the form of “Humbug Mountain Song”. Close to a decade of musical joy has now resulted from my hearing that song and I’m so grateful that it made its way onto my radar.
2020: Bonny Light Horseman’s debut album
Three weeks into 2020, Bonny Light Horseman released their self-titled debut album. By some accounts, the folk-centered collaboration between Johnson, Josh Kaufman and Anaïs Mitchell had its roots in their appearance at the 2018 Eaux Claires festival (although Johnson tells a slightly different story in his interview on the podcast Conversations With Dwyer). Thankfully, at some point the trio must have decided there was something magical going on and they decamped to the studio to record their debut. In what was, in hindsight, perhaps one of my more egregious under-rankings, that album came in as my 40th ranked album of the year. Looking back at my 2020 AOTY list now, this clearly should have been a top five album for me.
“Deep in Love” features a melody and chorus written by Johnson, who also provides vocals. Kaufman suggested the addition of traditional lyrics, found in the book “Folk Songs of Britain and Ireland” and apparently the entire song was recorded in a couple takes at 1 or 2 in the morning.
“The Roving”, the fourth track released from the album, is an absolute stunner and my favorite from the album. With lead vocals provided by the brilliant Anaïs Mitchell—less than a year removed from winning the best musical Tony for Hadestown—the song once again leans heavily into traditional folk lyrics. In a quote from The Wild Honey Pie, Johnson jokes, “These 500-year-old lyrics are so deeply applicable. ‘The Roving’ could be the plot of an ‘80s teen movie… How incredible is it that as humans we still just want to love and have sex and feel sad and fight?” It’s a gorgeous song.
Here’s a recording (not by me) of their November 2024 performance of the song at The Roundhouse in London, a concert I was lucky enough to attend. Johnson and Mitchell’s harmonies were simply breathtaking, both here and throughout the show.
Note: I haven’t covered the 2020 Fruit Bats album The Glory of Fruit Bats as I completely missed it at the time and have since learned that it was initially a 2016 RSD vinyl-only release that only made it to streaming platforms in 2020.
2021: Two Fruit Bats albums
In January 2022 , when Johnson posted an “unboxing” video in advance of the release of the upcoming Fruit Bats collection Sometimes A Cloud is Just A Cloud I commented: “Your music last year got me through some tough and dark days. Thank you!!” The music to which I was referring was The Pet Parade, an album that, in the pandemic-ravaged fever dream that was 2021, turned out to be a salve for my soul. I'd had a mental health breakdown in October that year involving thoughts of self-harm; thankfully I didn’t act on those thoughts and instead reached out and got the help that I needed. The Pet Parade (along with Still Corners’ The Last Exit and Marissa Nadler’s The Path of the Clouds) was one of the musical escapes that helped me hold on to some degree of sanity and serenity as my mental health declined.
As I listened to the album on the train on Saturday, it became clear to me why I had connected so deeply with it. I love Johnson’s writing and I remember feeling on several songs as if he’d peered directly into my soul and returned with the raw materials to craft something that spoke to the conflict roiling within, a war between overwhelming darkness and unremitting hope. I was at a place where I felt I could no longer believe and trust in my mind, whether from the unrelenting toxic messages I was hurling at myself, my intense sensitivity to criticism (both real and imagined), or the self-blaming refrain: “this isn’t that bad, just fucking suck it up and get on with life you sad sack piece of shit” (or other variations on that theme). To put it lightly, it wasn’t great. The following lines from “On the Avalon Stairs” seemed to perfectly capture that disorienting maelstrom of emotions:
So mystifying
When you're back from wandering
And finding once again
That you're hanging on for dear life
The family tendency
Of bruising easily
We all make vows to ourselves
Not to keep these things so close to our chests
But it's so hard to promise ourselves
That we won't lie to ourselves
The music, the songwriting and the singing are all sublime.
I can still so vividly recall the moments of comfort and joy this album delivered, piercing the suffocating veil of emotional and mental pain and overwhelm and providing moments of refuge and peace. As I listened to the album on Saturday, I found myself welling up with emotion, primarily a deep gratitude for making it through that shitshow of a year unharmed, unbroken, and alive. While I leaned heavily into self care, meditation and my 12-step recovery practices during this period, my rock, always and forever, was my wife Tina. Looking back now, while I don’t believe I was truly at risk of ending my life, I remember listening to ‘Here For Now, For You” and knowing that if things ever got that bad, she was the rock I could cling to for dear life.
And no, I never could conceive
How I could ever ever leave
You
You're my lamp
You're my raft
You're my lifeline
You're my lungs
You're my heart
You're my flashlight
Later in 2021, under his Fruit Bats moniker, Johnson released his full album reimagining of the Smashing Pumpkins' 1993 album “Siamese Dream”. Because of my own self-imposed, yet not fully defined—and inconsistently applied over the years—"rules", I didn't include the album on my AOTY list. Looking back now, I’m comfortable saying that it should've been firmly slotted within my top 15. The Pumpkins album was foundational musically for me in the early 90s; it turned me on to the band for the first time and opened me up to much more diversity in my listening habits. There’s not a rendition on here that I don’t like, but a couple do stand out, one of which is “Today”.
Writing about the album on Instagram, Johnson had this to say:
“In 1993, I was the prime age to be swept up in alternative radio. But truth be told, while I loved Nirvana and Jane's Addiction, in my heart I was still secretly wearing a hole in my cassette copy of Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits (1974-78). Somehow, Smashing Pumpkins spoke to all sides of me-angsty on the surface but really filled with a kind of Midwest mysticism that spoke directly to my 17-year-old-kid-from-Illinois brain. It's also the first tape I ever listened to while driving a long distance alone. I'm pretty sure my version of this album is based on subconscious memories of that drive. I played all the instruments on this. And no, of course I'm not going to be able to recreate Billy Corgan's crushing, epic guitar tone. Nor could I dream of touching Jimmy Chamberlin's floaty (yet ever-shredding) drumming. This version is all about hazy memories for me, and how Corgan's brilliant pop hooks can travel through time and exist in any possible instrumental configuration.”
I also loved Johnson’s take on “Mayonaise”:
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2022: Bonny Light Horseman returns
In October 2022, Johnson and the members of Bonny Light Horsemen were back with Rolling Golden Holy, my fourth ranked album of the year. The incurable romantic in me fell in love with some of these achingly beautiful tracks. Johnson's opening lead vocals on "Exile" ("Love, love, love / The beating of my heart / The winging of a dove/ When I'm in the dark / And you know I'd fly / Right into the eye of the hurricane for you") segue into a duet with Mitchell, their voices twining in a gorgeous two-part harmony.
On "Summer Dream" I can't help but be transfixed in the third verse of the song as Anaïs Mitchell, her voice captivating and full of regret and yearning, recalls love lost in summers gone:
What we left behind
When the tide went out
Just a fading line
Don't know why I trace it still sometime
Smell of rolled cigarette
And your hair when it was wet
Drippin' on the kitchen floor
Slippin' through the screen door
After Mitchell completes her third solo iteration of the chorus, the song reaches an almost transcendent level when Johnson joins the chorus, singing in the round with his plaintive wailing vocal echoing Mitchell's, a 30-second stretch of musical magic that regularly moves me to tears.
2023: Fruit Bats’ tenth full length arrives
Fruit Bats were back in 2023 with A River Running To Your Heart, a top 40 album for me that year. There are a couple standouts for me, both point of reference songs, the first of which, “Tacoma”, feels like a treatise on reminiscence and regret. The lyrics are gorgeous, setting the type of scene that quite often exists only in the mind’s eye. At times, when reminiscing, what might seem to be unattractive features (“the lingering blanket of cold clouds”, “the stink of the paper mill”) find themselves inextricably wrapped up in that whole mélange of the “things we miss”.
I might just go back to Tacoma
If it'll have me back
I miss the lingering blanket of cold clouds
And the moss in the sidewalk cracksYeah, I may go back to old Tacoma
If it opens its arms, I surely will
Back where the smell of the saltwater mingles
With the stink of the paper millI'm going back to where the mountains
Are old, but blew their time so I
I'll drag my body back, that's the only trouble
'Cause it is the only place that makes me feel alive
In discussing “Waking Up in Los Angeles”, the first single released from A River Running Through Your Heart, Johnson had this to say:
“This is a sad song masquerading as a happy one. Or maybe vice versa? This might be the first song I’ve written where the first verse is a disclaimer – and, yes, I am talking to YOU with this one. This is about spiritual homes, the geography of the heart, and waking up in a weird, hard world where the birds still sing.”
For me this is a quintessential Fruit Bats song, a solid mid-tempo indie pop/rock track with Johnson’s evocative lyrics, his trademark strumming, and the ever-present pristine vocals. As is so often the case on KEXP, the live performance below sounds so clean and immediate, perfectly showcasing Johnson’s warm tenor voice, a voice that always seems to shine more brightly live than in a studio.
2024: Fruit Bats live and a Bonny Light Horseman double album
In May 2024 Fruit Bats released a 20-track live album and while I generally don’t include compilations or live albums on my AOTY lists (those pesky rules again), Starry-eyed, in Stereo certainly warranted inclusion. But last year, with all of our travel, I just didn’t have the time, energy or inclination to pull together a full top 50 list, so I ended up with 30 AOTY picks. By the end of 2024 I’d also cooled quite significantly on the entire concept of ranking albums; it really began to feel like a fool’s errand as, on any given day, an album in the 20-30 range could easily feel like a top ten release. Having said all that, this live album is gorgeous and it would certainly have made the bottom 20 of my top 50.
I’ll take the opportunity to highlight the live version of a track from the 2019 album Gold Past Life, another top 40 album for me. Not only is it an incredible song, but the impeccable performance and sound quality on “A Lingering Love” makes it one of my favorites from this eminently listenable and no-skip live album.
After being blown away by the two previous Bonny Light Horseman albums, I didn’t expect to be granted the embarrassment of musical riches that arrived in the form of the double album Keep You on My Mind/See You Free released in June 2024. Once again, the songs are beautifully crafted and lovingly delivered with Johnson and Mitchell’s individual vocals and rich harmonies reminiscent at times of CSNY.
Not surprisingly for a double LP, there are probably half a dozen incredible highlights from this album, but I’ve managed to narrow it down to two of my favorites. Voiced almost entirely by Johnson, “I Know You Know” is decorated in the choruses by gentle vocal flourishes added by Mitchell and Kaufman. The tantalizingly brief snippets of three part harmony hint at what the trio is capable of vocally, particularly in a live setting.
“When I Was Younger”—probably my favorite track from the album—is another song on which Mitchell and Johnson provide individual vocals on alternating verses. After the second verse, voiced by Johnson, Josh Kaufman begins a brief but increasingly urgent guitar solo, building to a wordless wailing chorus with the two vocalists harmonizing in an almost primal manifestation of the joys and sadness of being an older person looking back at younger days. In a gorgeous coda, Johnson and Mitchell sing the final verse together in two part harmony, closing out the track beautifully.
Note: Johnson did have a third release in 2024, a six-track EP collaboration between Fruit Bats and TORRES. It’s not included here as it didn’t really grab me (surprising given my love for both artists).
Hopefully the thirteen tracks I’ve highlighted from these seven albums sufficiently capture the degree of love I have for Eric D. Johnson’s work over the course of this decade so far. For anyone that’s interested I’ve made a Spotify playlist of those songs here:
Let me know your thoughts . . .
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking with me as I know this has been a long post. Hopefully you enjoyed much, most, or all of what you heard here, but whether you loved or hated it—or anything in between—I’m always interested in your thoughts, so please hit me up in the comments.
Had you heard of Eric D. Johnson’s work with either of the bands discussed here?
Are you a fan of Fruit Bats or Bonny Light Horseman? If so, what are your favorite albums or songs ?
Last but not least, who would YOU vote as Artist of the Decade? And Why?
Thanks, as always, for being here!
Love, love, LOVE The Fruitbats and frequently play them on my radio show.
I would also throw Deer Tick into the mix.
What a lovely write-up, Mark! I have thought for decades that Eric D. Johnson is the most underrated or unsung artist around. I mean, he seems to be doing well for himself, so I won't feel bad for him, and his status allows me to go see him at more intimate venues, which is always a plus. But seeing his creative output laid out the way you express it here makes me probably have to agree with you on the artist of the decade question. I feel like you/we could have made that case for the past 2 or 3 decades. I actually didn't know about one of his Fruit Bats albums, so this was doubly great.
It's so funny about the Smashing Pumpkins cover album, as I heard him talk about that on a podcast recently (I can't remember which one) where he talked about his love for SP and Billy Corgan. I hope he does more cover albums, as not only is he a wonderful songwriter, but he's also a fabulous interpreter.
There's something about Eric's voice that seems to tap straight into some emotional core, he has no pretense or affectation. I feel similarly about Jason Lytle of Grandaddy. Even if Jason often adds effects to his voice, it's always to serve the song and the emotional truth.
I don't keep very good records of what my favorites of the past decade have been, and the task of trying to scan through the mess of the past decade to create a list like yours (it was nice to see Joan as Police Woman and Nation of Language in your short list), is a bit overwhelming.
But I'll spitball and say that I might pick King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard as band of the decade, simply because they have released so much music, that even if some albums are hit and miss, with 19 (!!!) releases since 2016, I could pick at least 8 of them that stand the test of time (albeit a shorter time, limiting to a decade) and which I still play on the regular.
I will be honest and admit that I found the original article a bit boring with all the picks that felt like pop-culture markers rather than truly musically innovative, standout releases/artists. But I did find it bold that Kevin picked Wussy! He introduced them to me and sold me on their greatness last year.