Peter Ferris's Top 5 Albums of the Decade
Peter Ferris is a part-time musician / full-time big pharma sellout. His “glory days” as president of Saint Joseph’s University’s music collective, 1851 Entertainment, are long gone. His time as a booker, promoter, and sound tech at Creep Records and a couple West Philly DIY spaces, including the Bath House and the Greenhouse, was merely another progression downward. He is now a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist in Space Donkey and the Moonbouncers, which goes to show he has learned absolutely nothing from his countless musical failures. Find him on IG at @petiewheaties.
D'Angelo - Black Messiah (2014)
You owe it to God the Sly and God the Prince, sure, but you gave us the New Testament of The Groove, God the D’Angelo. You have taken away the sins of false funketeers. Grant us dancing feet and bobbing heads straight through our next lifetimes. Praise be thy name for thine downright sexual chord voicings. Glory be to thy alien vocal harmonies. Thank you, O Precious Funkmaster, for dedicating your Body and Blood to another diverse and tasteful entry in a flawless discography that us mere mortals shall revere forever. And we thank thee eternally for being friends with Pino Palladino. In George Clinton’s name, we pray: AMEN.
Kali Uchis – Isolation (2018)
I shouldn’t have to sell you on an album that features Tyler, the Creator and Bootsy Collins on the same damn song. But if that’s not good enough, what if I told you that Kali’s hypnagogic worldview is pretty much my diet cure for anxiety? Isolation is a childlike, kaleidoscopic, time-travel fantasy piloted by the most inviting and unassuming musical genius of our time. Her melodic intuition is undeniable, but Uchis’ real superpower is her effortlessly cool approach to all she lays to tape. Seriously, if I had even .0000001% of her coolness, I’d donate my body to scientists so they could resuscitate the polar ice caps and delay our impending doom using whatever remains of me as an igloo shelter. So thank God Kali isn’t wasting her time of any of that and putting it towards amazing entertainment instead.
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
Throwing stacks of Benjamins out the windows of a one-way express train straight to the ninth circle of hell while chatting up Bill Gates on wealth inequality and race relations. Performing a seven-movement conceptual orchestra piece on the corporate exploitation of art from front to back, by yourself, to an empty room. Recalling that one really stupid thing you said in second grade that never seems to leave your mind (no matter how hard you and your therapist try), and sobbing uncontrollably over your traumatic memories in the backseat of a new Ferrari with two strippers under your wingspan. 10/10, five stars, A+; fuck it all. Anyone else remember when they first heard “Runaway”?
Orchards - S/T (2018)
There are so many terrible things going on in Orchards. Amateur production? Non-distinct vocal melodies? Lengthy, wandering improvisations over minimal hooks? The quiet verse / loud chorus trick? Definitely sounds like a half-baked jam band confined to your local drug dealer’s basement on a constant diet of La Croix and warped, scratchy Beatles records blasting through a Crosley 5-in-1. Yet Orchards is, indeed, the most dynamic, thrilling, and unpretentious guitar group I’ve heard in a long, long time. And this album slaps.
P.S.: To Orchards’ ten monthly Spotify listeners (fourteen if you count their current iteration, Mahwah), hit me up whenever, ‘cause y’all are automatically my friends.
Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012)
Yeah, you just wasted your time reading some stupid list my favorite album of the decade is a totally unoriginal selection that has probably topped, like, 15,683 other “best-ofs,” so go ahead and make the appropriate character judgement associated with other individuals who would make said selection while swiftly closing this page. I’m not going to act like I know shit, anyway. All I have to offer is that Kendrick Lamar is the best rapper of all time, and good kid, m.A.A.d city should have won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2012. A Pulitzer, ya say? Nah, where my dominoes at?!