1. Car Seat Headrest – Twin Fantasy (2011)

Artist’s age at release: 19

For those of you who read Pitchfork and had no prior knowledge of Car Seat Headrest as of 2018, you probably decided to check them out for the first time by virtue of the Best New Music tag Pitchfork awarded their newly-reimagined 2011 album, Twin Fantasy. I love the new version. I think it’s the sound of a talented songwriter retracing his steps with a level of maturity and technical arsenal that weren’t there before. But part of what makes the original so great even to this day is precisely the almost-complete lack of those two things. Underneath the ever-present din of cheap guitar feedback and lo-fi drums are Beach Boys-inflected vocal melodies and a sense of compositional freedom that would charm anyone who’s ever been excited about music, and Will Toledo’s Stephen Malkmus-esque lyrics capture the highs and lows of late adolescence with visual clarity, screaming about not wanting to have schizophrenia one moment before describing the dizzying scene of a school dance the next. I read somewhere that the name “Car Seat Headrest” originated at a time when Will would record his vocal parts inside a parked car at Walmart, and that only reaffirmed my belief that Twin Fantasy is the rare piece of music that transcends its technical shortcomings by not giving a fuck about them and choosing to focus on honest, creative expression instead.

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2. BADBADNOTGOOD – BBNG (2011)

Artist’s age at release: 20-21

“Alex, how do you feel about Giant Steps?” BBNG drummer Alexander Sowinski is asked at the tail end of the track “Outro / Glasper”, to which he replies “Fuck that shit, everyone’s played it, it’s fifty years old, it sounds like crap, write a new song.” The piece in question is, of course, the 1960 jazz standard by legendary saxophonist / bandleader John Coltrane. I think, more than any other genre, jazz suffers from rigid traditionalism and a romanticized past. They only serve to strip the genre of originality while bringing forth bastardized offspring that tragically find their way into an artisanal coffee shop’s evening playlist and are further disseminated by a gentleman whose stage name consists of the seventh alphabet. The above statement by Mr. Sowinski aptly demonstrates the average musically-inclined millennial’s disillusionment toward the current state of jazz, and combined with a university-level jazz education from Toronto’s Humber College, Sowinski and co. are more than equipped to actually do something about it. Their debut pay-what-you-want album, BBNG, was released in September 2011. It mostly consists of free-form jazz-hop covers ranging anywhere from the works of J Dilla to Gang Starr to Nas, as well as a breathtaking rendition of the Ocarina of Time soundtrack that remains to be my favorite in the tracklist. All throughout its 9 and a half-minute sprawl, BBNG weave in and out of a three-act structure with patience and grace. The first act sees keyboardist / Prophet ’08 tinkerer Matthew Tavares performing a beautifully subdued piano solo, accenting his notes at random and letting his chords sustain, producing an interesting kind of tension. The second act is when he’s joined by the rest of the band, with bassist Chester Hansen filling out the lower frequencies and Sowinski providing a suitably minimalist backdrop. The dynamic between these three is so concise and natural that one wouldn’t be remiss to think they communicate at a near-hive mind level. It’s the sort that is found in every notable jazz trio since 1958. Coasting down toward the final moments of act 2, they abruptly explode into act 3, heralded by Tavares’ anthemic leads before closing out on an extended semi-improvised jam. I’ve only just described one track. There are at least 8 more like it on this album.

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3. Earl Sweatshirt – Doris (2013)

Artist’s age at release: 19

Back when Odd Future was blowing up, I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on in the hip hop zeitgeist. Although, to be fair, this was 11th grade and hip hop wasn’t in my radar at all. Fast forward a year later, the video for Earl Sweatshirt’s “Hive” had just been released and I was already knee-deep in the genre by then (Madvillainy, Big K.R.I.T.’s mixtapes, and Run the Jewels were all I listened to that summer), so naturally I didn’t think twice before deciding to check it out. Having never listened to Earl’s previous material, I had no familiarity with the type of production he generally chose to rap over, but I was instantly enamored by the gritty undercurrent of “Hive”’s spacious beat almost as much as I was instantly impressed by Earl’s unbelievably dense flows, and before I even read the lyrics I was already sold on Doris just off of a couple lines that really caught my ear (I remember letting out an audible scream when he said “Desolate testaments, trying to stay Jekyll-ish/ But most ni**as Hyde and Brenda just stay pregnant/”). The album turned out to not only be a well-produced, well-sequenced, front-to-back banger, but also a viscerally powerful deep-dive into the (tortured) psyche of an artist whose pen is beyond his years and whose voice serves as a hip hop signpost for the 2010s. Highlights include: “Centurion”, in which Earl trades bars with another talented up-and-coming rapper by the (now-famous) name of Vince Staples, chronicling vivid tales of late-night shooters and meeting the maker twice while backed by hair-raising synth-strings that wouldn’t feel out of place in a David Lynch dream sequence, there’s also the BADBADNOTGOOD-produced “Hoarse”, in which every instrument is laced with a generous smattering of reverb, lending a church-sized atmosphere to Earl’s stream-of-consciousness raps, lastly, the self-produced “Chum” probably contains some of Earl’s most personal verses yet, recounting his days as a troubled youth who went from being on honor roll to vandalizing bicycle racks and finding solace amongst his would-be collaborators in Odd Future. Unfortunately, Odd Future are no more as far as 2018 is concerned, with its most talented members having already embarked on successful solo careers. Looking back, especially at Doris, I gotta be honest and say it’s inevitable.

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Great Music Made by <= 21 Year-Olds

Part II