It used to take about twenty years for something to count as nostalgia. Now it takes about twenty minutes. A couple of the albums on this list of underrated gems from the 2010s came out in 2019, less than five years ago. But that was still pre-COVID, and it seems like they come from a different world.
Still, there are so many streaming services now that new music quickly eclipses anything from even two months ago. It's easy to forget albums from last year. Unless they are as great as the albums that follow.
Here then, are five rock albums from the last decade that charmed some critics and won some fans, but never got the recognition they really deserved. Some are punky and some are folky, but they are well worth checking out.
Five albums from the 2010s you should still be listening to
THE BRUTALIST BRICKS – TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS (2010)
Ted Leo has been cranking out high-octane guitar-based rock and roll for more than thirty years, through a half dozen different bands, in collaboration with Aimee Mann, and as a soloist. The Pharmacists provided his longest-lasting and most successful incarnation, and their final album, released in 2010, shows off everything that Leo does best.
He opens The Brutalist Bricks with zero-to-sixty pop rock (“The Mighty Sparrow”) and doesn’t let up for 45 minutes, through a pure punk banger (“Everything Gets Interrupted.”) OK – there’s actually one tiny blip of weirdness on the swampy acoustic “Tuberculoids Arrive in Hop” toward the end, but that merely puts the rest of album in better relief.
If you just listen to the guitar, which is easy to do, you’ll miss the highly politicized nature of Leo's songwriting. “Mourning in America” is a frenetic political warning. “Ativan Eyes” is a crunching political warning. Truth is, a lot of the tracks here serve as political warnings. You can buy into them or not. Because with the exception of “Tuberculoids…,” this entire album is just a pop guitar train you can ride for however long you like. There are earworms galore – especially the impossibly catchy “Bottled in Cork.” Only Ted Leo could turn the repeated line “We are born in despair” into a catchy pop anthem, as he does in “Woke Up Near Chelsea.”
The Pharmacists have not been active for quite some time as Leo has pursued other outlets. Maybe one day he will put the band back together (Butch Walker did it with Marvelous 3 out of the blue in 2023). If not, The Brutalist Bricks is a pretty strong way to make an exit.
THE NAVIGATOR – HOORAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF (2016)
When I first heard Alynda Segarra singing “Hungry Ghost,” I was immediately taken by a haunting quality that underpinned what was a fairly catchy tune. As soon as I was able to, I listened to the album it came from, The Navigator, credited to Segarra’s band Hooray for the Riff Raff.
I found that the initial impression was no fluke. There was a beauty that came from her blending of very traditional American folk rock with her Puerto Rican ancestry. But that concept of the “hungry ghost” was never too far removed from even the most upbeat songs. I felt like Bob Dylan’s Mr. Jones. There was something going on here, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
It turned out to be an ambitious, searching epic about where one comes from and where one is going. You don’t need to know the story arc of Segarra’s alter-ego protagonist who is making this journey throughout the 12 tracks of The Navigator. I certainly didn’t.
You can enjoy the eclectic mix of styles from Woody Guthrie to salsa, which never loses a sense of melody. You can enjoy Segarra’s assured vocals and the contributions – especially from multiple percussionists – that drive even the gentler tunes forward. But if you dig a little deeper, you will learn a great story – one that is worthy of graphic novels and stage production. In fact, last year, Segarra teamed up with playwright C. Julian Jimenez to do just that. Bring it to the stage that is.
Though the position Latin immigrants found themselves in back in 2016 was an obvious political influence on the way The Navigator was perceived (there is one specific reference to building a wall), this wasn’t simply a political statement for Segarra. It is a deeply personal document about the shared humanity of any group of people who find themselves moving. Toward something, or away from something, this is a universal message of the necessity of navigation in an increasingly unmoored world. You don’t have to be a Puerto Rican in the Bronx to recognize that truth.
HUMAN PERFORMANCE – PARQUET COURTS (2016)
Parquet Courts' steady rise up the tiers of post-punk stardom was temporarily halted by a lukewarm reaction to their hastily delivered 4th album Content Nausea in 2014. They remedied that under-produced record with Human Performance two years later. Reunited with the rhythm section that had been largely absent on the previous recording, Andrew Savage and Austin Brown build on the success of earlier albums Light Up Gold and Sunbathing Animal with their most eclectic and mature series of songs.
There are the inevitable Velvet Underground influences on quietly yearning of “Steady on My Mind” or the furious guitar workout that closes out “One Man No City.” And they can still serve up a grinding punk shrieker like “Paraphrased.” But now they are expanding into Beck-territory on “Captive of the Sun,” and a western-tinged Clash on the lovely “Berlin Got Blurry.”
And they can do driving, angry political rock on “Two Dead Cops” or the big emo pop anthem of the title track. And Savage, all of the thirty years old at the time, even references encroaching gray hairs on “Always.” With or without the bonus track “Already Dead,” which comes closest to recalling the early “Stoned and Starving Days,” this is a wide-ranging collection of first-rate songs effortlessly shifting between punk and emo and pop and plenty of the spaces in between.
Renewed after Human Performance, the Brooklyn quartet released the equally strong Wide Awake! In 2019, which rocked a little harder. 2021’s Sympathy for Life, influenced by Austin Brown’s involvement with The Loft in NYC, veers a bit dancier with drum machines taking a more prominent spot. It’s still pretty good, but I’ll take the genuine quirky energy of Human Performance.
DAYDREAM EXPLOSION – THE DOLLYROTS (2019)
If you saw a Dollyrots show prior to Kelly Ogden’s gig as morning host on Little Steven’s Underground Garage satellite radio show, you were there with a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings, rocking out to some of the fastest, most upbeat pop-punk you were likely to find. In recent years, though the music is still as high-octane as ever, the crowd is very different. It is filled with baby boomers, often accompanied by adult kids. They aren’t slam dancing, but they’re having a blast nonetheless.
Singer/bassist Ogden and her husband, guitarist Luis Cabezas have changed some too. That is very obvious on their 2019 album Daydream Explosion, their widest-ranging collect of rockers yet. In addition to outright bangers like “Animal,” “In Your Face,” and the magnificently sophomoric “I Know How to Party,” they offer sweet love songs (“Watching the Storm Go By”), jazzy seduction (“Flippy in My Red Dress”) and even a beautiful closer about the joys and mysteries of parenthood (“Daisy’s Song,” named for the daughter Daisy, who often joins them on stage with her older brother River.)
Yep, even the Dollyrots, who once snarkily boasted about how awesome they were or how Kelly could go all Jackie Chan on a cheater… even the Dollyrots could grow up. But as they prove on DayDream Explosion, they have managed to do it without losing one ounce of their pop punk pedigree.
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW – THE COATHANGERS (2019)
The Coathangers have always found cool ways of blending hardcore punk with pop, in much the same way that guitarist Julia Kugel’s higher, poppier voice finds cool ways to blend with drummer Stephanie Luke’s low-pitched growl. On their last album to date, The Devil You Know, they achieve that blend more seamlessly than on any other album in their thirteen years together. From the first track “Bimbo,” which combines Kugel’s sweet earworm melody with Luke’s insistent bridges, there is a maturity to their newest songs that moves them out of their hardcore high school roots, without losing any of their energy.
There may be nothing as screechy as “Johnny” from their early days, but the trio is still fully capable of pounding out an angry pop anthem like “F the NRA,” which plays like a less-affected version of “Pumped Up Kicks,” or the aggressive guitar punch of “Step Back.”
Kugel remains the primary vocalist, but Luke contributes a marvelous skittish blues number on the Faulkneresque “5 Farms,” and is a constant vocal counterweight. Whether it’s the oozing grunge of “Crimson Telephone” or the hypnotic vocal blending of “Stranger Danger,” the Coathangers know how to take songs to explosive conclusions. That applies to every song except the last – a haunting acoustic prayer called “Lithium.”
Immediately on the heels of The Devil You Know, the band confronted catastrophe when Kugel began having serious vocal struggles, which eventually led to her having to completely rebuild her voice. They have all been exploring other projects since then, but hopefully, the trio will reunite for more albums. It would be a shame to lose them just as they were hitting a new artistic maturity.