LIST: Best Albums of the Decade (according to me)

     I remember vividly the last album I listened to before the 20th century came crashing down into a pile of rubble at the feet of a monster known as Y2K.  Just before my family headed to a friends’ house for a New Years’ party, I could be found lying on my bed, lights off, headphones on, discman spinning Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn… (cool). I don’t know what I was thinking about, but I do know that those songs were rotating in my head when I saw the ball drop and prayed the world’s computers didn’t crash and when I ran out onto the golf course behind my friends’ house to see fireworks light up the January sky.
     At some point earlier this year, I set out to document the decade in music as I have experienced it since the lights went out on the party that was 1999.  What follows are 35 albums that I believe were the best.  Many other albums I’ve heard were also good (and there are admittedly many great ones I never heard at all), but these albums have the unique characteristics of being ‘good' and are notable because they have somehow had an impact on my life.   All in all, I’ve found it’s been a pretty amazing decade for music, despite the fact that a great deal of my time was spent listening to bands that never existed in it (Pavement, Archers of Loaf, etc.).  I understand this list seems disjointed, inconsistent, and puzzling, but such is life, such was the decade. Soak up the circularity and enjoy. 

35. Demon Days: Gorillaz (2005)
I cannot think of any other group that mixes rock, R&B, hip hop, political commentary, and cartoons any better. Damon Albarn is somehow still an absolute genius. While I wasn't blown away with the ubiquitous lead single, "Feel Good Inc.," the rest of the album, including "Kids with Guns" and "DARE," are excellent. It's an admittedly over-the-top record, with choirs, guest musicians, etc, but it all feels justified when the songs are this good and the vague concept concerning the future of the planet/end of the world is this intriguing.


34. Fevers and Mirrors: Bright Eyes (2000)
I consider the ability to induce feelings of joy, fear, sadness, and nausea simultaneously to be very unique--but somehow this album evokes those feelings in me. I could barely listen to it at first because its haunting trembles troubled me, but as I listened more, I realized how good this album which focuses on clocks, calendars, and scales really is. The album is centered around forlorn frustration, yet once the hiss of childhood audio tapes and faux radio interviews die out and "A Song to Pass the Time" appears at the end of the album, there is a calm peace about the whole thing that so accurately captures adolescence it's frightening.


33. A Lesson in Crime: Tokyo Police Club (2006)
Yes, this is a 16-minute, 7-song EP, but I could not discount it considering the fact that it has been one of the discs I played most this decade. Though I enjoyed their debut full-length album released in 2008, I found this shorter, faster, looser release to be far superior. It is paranoid, shaky, and full of handclaps. In just a short EP, the band feels fully-formed and develops a buoyant sound that's unique and exciting.

32. Sea to Shining Sea: Love As Laughter (2001)
In my high school mind, the best way to find out about new bands was to mine a record label's website and listen to samples from all the bands on the label's roster.  For various reasons, the label I hung onto most strongly during that time was Sub Pop. I tried out a song from Love as Laughter (I think it was "Temptation Island") and quickly had to haul myself to some record store in Georgetown to find the record I often referred to as the 'pink album.' It's a roughly produced record that fuses driving rock, psychedelia, and scuzz into something I still can't help but want to listen to. This album has somehow achieved 'old standby' status in my mind.

31. The Meadowlands: The Wrens (2003)
This record is the music of frustration and a perfect album to listen to in the car.  Songs like "Happy" are constructed perfectly to build and release at just the right moment.  There is something in the honesty in these songs of heartache that most anybody could relate to. It is astonishingly engaging from the cricket chirps of "The House that Guilt Built" all the way to the wails over the piano of "This Is Not What You Had Planned," which is pretty exceptional for an hour-long album. They tell me a new Wrens record may appear in 2010, which would assuredly be a great start to the next decade.

30. Remember the Night Parties: Oxford Collapse (2006)
This band is another gem from the Sub Pop roster, whom I fortunately got to see before they broke up in 2009. The record fits very well with the second half of the decade for me, as its subject matter is indicative of the transition from youth to adulthood. They have a kind of angular throwback indie sound that I was oft longing for this decade. "Please Visit Your National Parks" would be for me one of the top 10 songs of the decade, easily.

29. Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?: The Unicorns (2003)
I cannot think of any band that had a aesthetic this decade similar to The Unicorns.  They had a mythical, mystical quality about them, which is fitting for a band named after a mysterious imaginary creature. It is difficult to walk the line between kitschy joke and dead-on seriousness as well as the band does on this album. Everything is jangly and weird and funny and almost childish, yet a lot of the songs focus on sickness, death, and, well, ghosts. Though I was put off by the band at first, once I 'got' it, I wasn't able to put it down.

28. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not: Arctic Monkeys (2006)
It would be easy to overlook this band as just an overhyped British dance rock band that basically writes songs about going out, drinking, and meeting girls. While much of that is still true, now that the dust has settled, it appears the songs really are incredibly strong and are able to weather whatever hype surrounded the album back then. Regardless of how I may look on the dancefloor, I can't help but want to be on one with the rocking danceable rhythms of this album. It has just just enough muscle and just enough cleverness to make it stand out amongst other British bands of similar form this decade.

27. Stephen Malkmus: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks (2001)
This is not a Pavement record, but it seems closer to one than any of the other S.M. + Jicks albums from this decade. Sure, S.M.'s lyrics focus more on narrative and the album doesn't twist and turn like you would expect a Pavement record to, but it's still S.M. and all the songs are still catchy and smart. The slowly drifting "Church on White" and lazy step of "Pink India" have fit so perfectly with the nascent warmth of spring that such time of year would now feel odd without them. I don't know if this was much of a step forward for my musical hero, but there must be something worthy in this album since I became overwhelmingly obsessed with it in 2001, 2004, and then again in 2009.

26. 100 Days, 100 Nights: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (2007)
This album sounds like it was recorded in another time. It could easily sit alongside some of the best Motown records of the 1960s and most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The songs have the classic funk/R&B instrumentation and passionate, soulful vocals from Sharon Jones. I saw this group in Finland (yes, Finland) and was blown away by Sharon Jones's stage presence (she is the female James Brown) and the massive size of the step-synchronized Dap-Kings. Much of that energy and spunk translates directly into this record, which I always find myself spinning more often than I think I would.

25. Merriweather Post Pavilion: Animal Collective (2009)

This will forever be remembered as the album that launched Animal Collective into the stratosphere. The leap can be heard in the scope of the album, which feels expanded out towards space. It's not a pop album, but songs like "My Girls" and "Summertime Clothes" are as accessible as almost anything the band had recorded before. It's incredible that a band can evolve so greatly, so quickly yet still retain the essence of what makes it unique. On MPP, the band quell a bit of their campfire singalong rage, but remain creative, forward-looking, and engaging.

24. Relationship of Command: At the Drive-In (2000)
Once upon a time, I wanted nothing more out of music than a cheap adrenaline rush that occasionally would compel me to throw shoes and/or pieces of furniture around my room. While such qualities could be found in many albums, only a few also made me want to listen when I was in a calmer state of mind. Relationship of Command, the major label debut and swansong of At the Drive-In, fits such a bill.  The record swirls and spins and forces itself into your ears, which I find fantastic. While I've enjoyed some Sparta and Mars Volta material this decade, I'd be much more pleased if they all dropped what they've been doing and got the old band back together again.

 
23. Gimme Fiction: Spoon (2005)
I could make the argument that Spoon has been the 'band of the decade.' All their albums have been incredibly solid and they have remained at the forefront of 'indie consciousness' from beginning to end. All this being said, I think Gimme Fiction is the best of the lot. All the best elements of the band are there: Britt Daniel's wispy white boy soul, dancing piano lines, towering and sinking melodies. The songs are all indefinably strong and passionate, from the punchiness of "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" to the pulsing and collapsing of "My Mathematical Mind." Gimme Fiction sounds, like very few albums this decade, like a hardworking, honest American band committed to perfecting its craft.

22. Circulatory System: Circulatory System (2001)
By the time I saw Circulatory System perform live, I was already a huge Olivia Tremor Control fan, but I hadn't heard much of Will Cullen Hart's post-OTC project. Their performance spun me around, blew my mind and prompted me to buy the band's self-titled debut after the show. Though in some ways more somber and spacey than the final OTC album Black Foliage, this record builds on that album in producing an expansive and muted psychedelic collage of sounds and words. Though most of the post-Elephant 6 world of this decade wasn't as exciting to me as the one that gave birth to it, I still found this album to keep the type of odd experimentation and melodic songcraft of the collective alive into this new century.

21. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below: OutKast (2003)
At the time, I probably concluded "Hey Ya!" would be the best song of the decade (and maybe it is), but there really are a lot of other amazing songs on this double album.  It is frankly enormous--really two separate albums, one orchestrated by Andre 3000 and the other by Big Boi. They are both chock full of hits, hysterical interludes, head-scratching experimentation, and danceable beats with nods to just about any and every musical style imaginable. OutKast have always been able to mold their propensity for the bizarre into something accessible, and nowhere is that more evident than on this release. 

20. Mclusky Do Dallas: Mclusky (2002)
This is one of the most hilariously vitriolic albums I've ever heard. It has the up-tempo catchiness of a Pixies record and an astute mix of over-the-top aggression and bouncing melody. The songs are all pretty short, loud, and quite possibly capable of ripping your face off. "To Hell With Good Intentions" is a prime example of what makes the album so great: it is lyrically ridiculous, it is hostile, it explodes and crashes with no regard for human life.

19. The Moon & Antarctica: Modest Mouse (2000)
The Moon & Antarctica is the perfect title for this album: it is dripping with darkness, cold, isolation. It's still the same old bending, discomforting Modest Mouse, but more subdued, looking up to the sky instead of to the west.  The album is a bit of a rollercoaster, drifting from joy and exuberance to anger to deflation.  Thematically, the songs are connected by outer space and reflections on troubling issues of life and death. The contrast and connection between consecutive songs like "Dark Center of the Universe" and "Perfect Disguise" are stunning and artfully done and are indicative of the mastery on this album of song placement and the utilization of all parts to form a complete whole.

18. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed: Los Campesinos! (2008)
I admit this album is short, and relatively recent, but with just their second release, Los Campesinos! were able to refine and perfect their unique sound. Everything is bouncy and jangly and pulling in a million different directions, with violins, xylophones, chimes, and keyboards ringing alongside the standard guitar, drums and bass. Lyrically, there are few bands who have been able to smartly capture the frustration of love lost and the spinning of dying youth as well as Los Campesinos!. "Ways to Make It Through the Wall" and "Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1" are explosive and comforting and get my blood pumping and feet tingling. I can't ask a lot more of my music than that.

17. Broom: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (2005)
One of my first experiences with SSLYBY came via a YouTube video for the song "Pangaea," which features a tour of the band's neighborhood in Missouri through the eyes of a toy brontosaurus. I was immediately hooked by the modesty and seeming innocence of this band in its visual representation and sound. The album is simple and far from earthshattering, but it does contain extremely well-constructed indie pop songs that sound appropriate in almost any setting. There's a kind of hand-in-pockets, shrugged shoulders aesthetic about the band which I appreciate. "I Am Warm and Powerful" would certainly be in any top 10 list of songs I could make for this decade, as it perfectly captures the band's sound and focus on lazy youthful confusion.

16. Rated R: Queens of the Stone Age (2000)
I have never been able to adequately explain to anyone what 'stoner rock' really means. The few times I've used the phrase, I imagine people thought I was talking about 'jam' music a la Grateful Dead and their progeny. QOTSA are a far shout from that type of music, and just a few seconds of "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" should resolve any confusion. The music on Rated R is heavy, driving, and seems to come in and out of focus with every breath. While the band did benefit from Dave Grohl's adroit drumwork on their next album, Songs for the Deaf, I think this album better captures what I like about the band in terms of piecing together aggression, melody, and fuzz. The appearance by Mark Lanegan's vocals on "In the Fade" solidifies this album as complete and epic.

15. Transatlanticism: Death Cab for Cutie (2003) 
An earlier version of myself would have likely been aghast that this band would be considered in my top 800 albums of the decade. I readily admit I used Death Cab as a whipping boy for wimpy, bland indie rock that seemed to be especially prevalent in the earlier parts of this decade. However, once I actually sat and listened, this album, along with We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, actually began to make sense to me. I started to see the beauty in restraint and the skill Ben Gibbard was able to employ in capturing mood and moment. The band owns the top two most-played songs on my iTunes and I am as likely to think of "The New Year" or "Expo '86" when I look back on the 'college years' as any two songs, as hard as that may be for me to admit.

14. Sonic Nurse: Sonic Youth (2004)
This actually is the only album from 2004 on the list, which is somewhat surprising. While I obviously really liked Murray Street, I found myself listening to this album a lot more over the course of the decade. It feels more like a complete Sonic Youth album than its predecessor, balancing Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, and Thurston Moore numbers along with pop culture references and timely political commentary that I had come to appreciate in SY's repertoire.  It is much more rough-around-the-edges and confident effort from the band than Murray Street. The album artwork is stunning and its songs solidified the fact that the band was able to create exciting material more than two decades after its inception.

13. Is This It: The Strokes (2001)
Perhaps this is unfair, but I think if The Strokes had been able to hold my attention beyond this album, Is This It would probably be rated much higher. Today, they have been in my eyes a one-trick pony. This album, however, does what a lot of people say it does in capturing the style and music of the times with great precision and ease. The songs are all laid back and cool, yet they are well-formed and enjoyable to listen to. They created a hype around the New York scene and injected a good deal of excitement about the potential of indie rock music in the new millennium. It is really difficult to imagine this decade without this album.

12. The Body, The Blood, The Machine: The Thermals (2006)
I really liked the first two albums from the Thermals, but it was not until this one came out that I realized they were what I would consider to be a 'great' band.  Their songs grew in sophistication and complexity and the subject matter they tackled got deeper and more political. The songs really capture a lot of the confusion over the growing wave of religious fervor in the American political landscape during the decade. The album is aggressive, fast, full of religious imagery, and contains the penchant for melody and sing-along lyricism that I had appreciate in earlier Thermals works.

11. The Argument: Fugazi (2001)
Sometime in 2003 I think it was, I declared this to be, far and away, the best album of the decade thus far. While I've cooled on it a bit since then, I still believe it's an incredible album. It is, like most Fugazi releases, an ambitious foray into progressive hard rock with a decidedly social and political slant. The band still has a lot of important things to say and they are able to do so in an assertive and engaging manner. If this happens to be the last Fugazi album, it would be fitting since it fully captures the strength of the band in melding post-punk, angular guitar rock, and thought-provoking lyrics.

10. Oui: The Sea and Cake (2000)
This is an album and a band that I would have likely never come across if it weren't for my uncle. He recommended this record one day when I was in high school and there have been few stretches since that time that I haven't listened to it. For that age, it was not what I typically listened to: it was understated, it was calming, the vocals were delivered almost as a comforting whisper. It has always felt appropriate on a sunny, spring morning or on a lazy afternoon of lounging. It took me a long time to fully understand what was so great about it and how delicate music and nonsensical lyrics could be awe-inspiring works of art. Learning to like this album was akin to admitting that gentle breezes are better than strong winds.

9. Since I Left You: The Avalanches (2000)
I bought this album on a whim in high school and have never regretted that decision.  This album is maddening, pieces falling from all directions to form some type of frightening collage of a night of dancing/staying home alone/counting hours in an insane asylum. It's incredible how well the album fits the confusion and inundation of sounds so prevalent in this decade, considering how it came out at its very beginning. Though many have tried, I haven't heard any recording since so effortlessly mash together disparate sources into a complete and captivating picture.

8. Kid A: Radiohead (2000) 
Because it has been listed time and again as the 'album of the decade,' I almost didn't include it here. However, it's been impossible for me find a way to leave it off. Thinking back to when I first heard it, I remember believing I was listening to the most 'advanced,' boundary-pushing sounds out there. Granted, my knowledge of music back then was greatly limited, I still feel like it holds up after almost a decade as being a daring and stunning masterpiece. It was a departure in some ways from OK Computer, but it was also a great leap forward. The album is moody and internal and somehow encapsulates a lot of the uneasiness about modern life.


7. Microcastle: Deerhunter (2008)
I do not buy the argument that several years must pass before an album can be considered 'great.' I cannot say that I will feel the same way about this album in five years' time, but I do know that right now, it is one of the best records I've ever heard. It seamlessly melds the best of some of my favorite bands like the Beach Boys and My Bloody Valentine in its exploration into melody and noise. It is a record to me that sounds important, begs to be listened to repeatedly, yet it possesses a type of forlorn modesty. The emotional and sonic purging in songs like album closer "Twilight at Carbon Lake" are downright stunning.  All in all, it's the record I was hoping I'd hear this decade even if I didn't realize it.
 
6. You Forgot It In People: Broken Social Scene (2002)
This album to me represents my idea of Canada (which makes sense, since about half that country's population has at some time been a member). It was odd how it came into my life--I acquired mp3s of the songs in a piecemeal fashion, eventually realizing that it formed a complete and near-flawless album. I would describe it as 'epic,' not only in its massive sound, but in the way that listening to it is like going on a journey rather than listening to a collection of 'really good' songs. Listening to this album whole is like having an experience. The guitar sound is gargantuan and deep. Though the songs appear to be extremely disparate in form and function at first blush, they all work together to create a spherical whole. You Forgot It In People would likely also get my vote for best album title this decade, and it somehow fits the record's content perfectly.

5. Agaetis Byrjun: Sigur Ros (2000)
I don't believe I have ever listened to this album while anyone else was around. I don't think I've ever played it in my car (which is where I like to listen to most music).  Something about this record makes me want to be alone in my room (usually in the dark). It is unlike anything I've ever heard before, and I have an inadequate vocabulary to accurately describe it. There are no recognizable words (I don't speak Hopelandic), no catchy melodies, no propelling beats, yet it somehow possesses everything it needs. It is a dark, enigmatic mass in my mind that is always revealing something new and puzzling. It adeptly displays the how music can express what cannot be shown through words and images.

4. Veckatimest: Grizzly Bear (2009)
Though it was released only months ago, this album latched onto my ears and has not let go since.  While Yellow House was good, this record builds upward from that album's understated elements to construct a fully-formed picture of place and time. The harmonies are gorgeous, the sounds expand and contract with incredible force, and the songs are complex without being overbearing. Listening to this album while winding through the fog in Bar Harbor, Maine this past summer somehow made it all make sense to me. There is something dark, yet calming about this album. It fully captures for me the end of the decade in terms of artistic pop expression and the height of indie music becoming mainstream in the album's impressive run on the Billboard charts.

3. Source Tags & Codes: ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead (2002)
In terms of complete spins on my stereo, this album would probably win for being played the most times this decade. I bought it at some music shop in Alexandria in high school and have had a hard time putting it down since.  Every note, hiss, and yell on this album seems to be in the right place.  It is difficult to meticulously and perfectly orchestrate 11 songs, yet make them feel and sound as if they were totally spontaneous and organic. Like in most of the albums near the top of this list, there is an incredible range of emotion and volume on this album.  Several tracks grow from intense quiet to later explode into waves of crashes and booms. A great deal of this band's image has been tarnished by sub-par subsequent releases, but this album still to me seems to be breathing and living and haunting me, which is part of why I think it's so great.
 
2. White Blood Cells: The White Stripes (2001)
As one of the most 'important' indie rock albums of the last 10 years, White Blood Cells blew the roof off the 'rock revival' taking place at the beginning of the decade and took the White Stripes' popularity to new and unexpected heights.  The album has an incredible balance, matching hard, bluesy rock numbers with equally compelling gentle ballads and country stomp. It also doesn't hurt to have one of the greatest album openers of all time in "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" which, in a few short seconds, convinced me at the time that they were the greatest band in the world. This album, hearkening back to what I like best about 'rock music,' made this band an undying obsession for me for most of the first half of this decade.

1. Strawberry Jam: Animal Collective (2007)
It has all come down to this, down to peacebones and fireworks once again. I had been eagerly awaiting this album, having become obsessed with Feels and having seen the band play a few months before in Asheville.  Strawberry Jam greatly exceeded my lofty expectations at the time and somehow still does. It incorporates everything I dig about Animal Collective--a kind of primal rage, bizarre bubbly sounds that require second and third listens to fully take in, as well as an incredible understanding of captivating melody. Some of the songs are terrifying and maddening, while others are more reflective and reserved. There is any incredible amount of depth and breadth for a 9-song, 43 minute album. In my hypothetical top-10 songs of the decade, "Fireworks" would be, far and away, number one. I really can't say a lot more about this album, but it definitely opened my eyes and defines to me what was great about music in this nameless decade. 

GUEST: Zack's 50 Best Albums of the Decade

1. Sept 10, 2007 Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam - It is a time-tested creed of my life that I originally hate the things I eventually come to hold in highest regard, and when the walls you've put up are finally shattered by the blistering light of truth, well, I'd like to think that's the feeling of being moved.
2. Sept 14, 2004 The Arcade Fire - Funeral - It seems to me that this album is as close as the last decade got to approaching the kind of mysteries that Neutral Milk Hotel explored, but more than that, it stands without peer as the most emotionally engaging musical expression of the decade.

3. Jul 1, 2003 Sufjan Stevens - Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State - Old-fashioned yet breathtakingly all-encompassing, this album showed the world Sufjan Stevens' weird and undeniable vignettes which paint stunning midwestern scenes with art-school brushes.
4. Oct 21, 2003 The Shins - Chutes too Narrow - On first listen I thought, this is the kind of band Superchunk wanted to mature into; several years later, I think James Mercer is the best pure pop songwriter of the new millennium.
5. Jul 3, 2006 TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain - What a weird band to get so popular, and what a driven, rhythmic section for a band composed of so many weird noises -- TV on the Radio sound like the future of music in the same way OK Computer did, and I can't think of a better compliment than that.
6. Oct 3, 2006 The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America - Sure, Craig Finn occasionally gets lost in histrionics and borderline misogyny, but his lexicon evokes hard-won wisdom in a way that's been missing in rock since Elliot Smith passed.
7. May 21, 2002 The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts - The Neutral Milk Hotel comparisons are fair, but one of the pitfalls of being reviewed by rock critics is being compared to previous bands, and, lord knows, there aren't very many better bands to be compared to.
8. Feb 7, 2006 Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit - Not the complete reinvention some reviews made it out to be, The Life Pursuit is to 70s pop what If You're Feeling Sinister was to 60s folk, and if not quite as devastatingly affecting as their earlier masterpiece, it should certainly cement Belle & Sebastian as the best pop band of their kind, and makes a convincing case for their being one of the best bands of their time.
9. Jun 5, 2001 Radiohead - Amnesiac - I don't imagine history will ever be so kind as to vindicate my assertion that Amnesiac, although released second, is the more impressive album, but its weirdness runs deeper and seems more honest, less an observation of the technological overload of our decade, more of a beast staring out as us from within.
10. Apr 6, 2004 Of Montreal - Satanic Panic in the Attic - Kevin Barnes has gradually gone from a manic last outpost for the Elephant 6 collective's best moments to an insane person, and along the way has created several near-perfect albums, this being the best of them.
11. May 2, 2006 Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming - With so many manically fused musical ideas and observations about "things that have to die so that other things can stay alive", Spencer Krug seems poised to claim the indie rock throne his Northwestern mentor Isaac Brock once occupied.
12. Sep 26, 2000 The Microphones - The Glow, Pt. 2 - Humble without being twee, loud without ever rocking, confused and crystal clear, Phil Elvirum beautifully compresses not his influences, from the Beach Boys to Robert Pollard to the best of Elephant 6, into a postmodern gem that is rivaled by few.
13. Feb 21, 2006 Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies - A rich, opulent listen full of dense intertextuality and expansively produced songs; if an album can be said to be Port-like, this would be the one.
14. Oct 15, 2002 Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People - A collective from Canada that pulls their disparate strands into a cohesive, unified whole to manage one of the most melodically compelling records of the decade.
15. Sept 13, 2005 Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft - If scoring were done based solely on the sheer number of ideas crammed into a sonic context, this album might take first prize, and since that's a big part of how I rate albums, this one scores pretty high.
16. Mar 16, 2004 Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans - One thing I learned in college is that intensely intellectual people can have religious faith as well; likewise can one craft spiritual music without sounding like Switchfoot, and I can think of no more capable hands for the project than the prodigiously talented Sufjan Stevens
17. Aug 23, 2005 The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema - Twin Cinema explores the sheer force of the pop hook in all its glory, succeeding massively, and creating one of the most colorful, sunny records of the decade.
18. Jan 23, 2007 The Shins - Wincing the Night Away - Not by any means worse than the bands first two albums, but markedly more experimental, and if some immediacy is sacrificed for craft and surprise, both albums are unrepentant beacons in a tired indie-pop world.
19. Sep 9, 2003 British Sea Power - The Decline of British Sea Power - Miles beyond the Joy Division knockoffs they got lumped in with, British Sea Power are so much weirder, more musical, and energetic, that it's pointless to categorize them as post-punk revival instead of just one of the best bands of the decade.
20. Feb 19, 2008 Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel - Bradford Cox may wind up being as prolific as anyone since Bob Pollard, with a range just as diverse, but he constructs his hooks in the architecture of experimentality, and with albums like this, he stands out as one of the most singular and evocative musical voices of the decade.
21. Sep 8, 2009 Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs - The first roll of pounding drums on opener "Here to Fall" will hook you immediately, and they're clearly banking on it because from there the band delves into progressively weirder echoes of their myriad stylistic diversions, breathtaking in sheer sweep.
22. Mar 22, 2005 The Decemberists - Picaresque - If the 2000s will be remembered as the decade where rock musicians turned their focus outward following the excess of the slobbering 90s, Colin Meloy is the decided admiral of the fleet, and if kitsch occasionally creeps into the arrangements, what part of American musical theater hasn't traditionally been affected with pomp and good-natured ostentation?
23. Apr 19, 2005 Caribou - The Milk of Human Kindness - If Radiohead's significant contribution to music is their passion play casting technology as the Romans, then Dan Snaith creates the sound of someone making friends with technology, making an ally of surprising warmth out of its metal coils.
24. Aug 20, 2002 Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights - However history might remember this band, their debut album is a work of such poignant emotional depth and class that it should shine through the negativity associated with their over-hype.
25. Sep 9, 2003 My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves - That they seem so usual compared to the bulk of 2000s rock music, the bands' hollow-sounding take on rock'n'roll classicism is what sets them apart and makes them so much fun.
26. Feb 20, 2001 Spoon - Girls Can Tell - Spoon, from their inception have always been the indie band that weren't because they were too busy playing Pete Townsend-inspired riffs to care much about making a lot of noise or being really really aloof -- they've still got dad's clothes, and that's alright.
27. Feb 22, 2002 Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out - The subtle, wraith-like tone poems that glide from this album are as beautiful as somnambulent atmospheric pieces, but carry a weight and affect to which songs this gentle have no right.
28. Jun 13, 2000 Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica - Modest Mouse have calmed down considerably since their 1997 explosion of an album, and if they contemplate things with a more rational attitude, they spare none of the existential subject matter, and begin their transition into the band that essentially broke 2000s indie rock to the mainstream.
29. Feb 3, 2004 The Walkmen - Bows + Arows - Throughout their history The Walkmen have been occasionally boring, sloppy, and borderline self-parodic, but this album is a near-perfect distillation of all they stand for musically and probably some profundities they didn't intend.
30. Jul 13, 2004 The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat - Overflowing with creative energy, this bother-sister duo are staggeringly inventive throughout the thirteen tracks of this album.
31. Mar 9, 2004 Destroyer - Your Blues - The most flamboyant component of the divisive Your Blues is also its best, cheeseball synths and all, and there's no shame in that because theatricality is the arena in which Destroyer thrives.
32. Jul 5, 2005 Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise - Swiftly, Stevens penned three of the greatest albums of the decade, and if this one loses points it's only for being a bit long in the tooth here and there.

33. Jul 3, 2001 The White Stripes - White Blood Cells - The most exciting, in the moment album this duo has cut features a mold of their simplistic sound with first-rate songwriting, for a rewarding, consistent listen.
34. Oct 7, 2003 The Books - The Lemon of Pink - The Schoenberg of experimental music, The Books compose music out of acoustic guitars, samples, digital cut-and-pasting, and probably a good amount of theory that they don't much explain, and while that sounds, on paper, like it could put you to sleep, this is music that needs to be marveled at, not overanalyzed.
35. May 22, 2001 Whiskeytown - Pneumonia - Before Wilco, Whiskeytown released this gem of genre-hopping pop songs to bust out of their alt-country designation, and while Ryan Adams never produced the perfect album everyone was routing for, Pneumonia is as close as he could reasonable be expected to get.
36. Jun 23, 2009 Dinosaur Jr. - Farm - In case anyone was wondering what separated the original lineup of Dinosaur Jr. from J's rotating cast of musicians through the 90s, it's that Lou Barlow and Murph are one of the great rhythm sections of all time, and here the band sounds heavier and more confident than ever.
37. May 23, 2006 Mission of Burma - The Obliterati - If there's one thing the 2000s have proven it's that guys pushing fifty can rock as hard as they did twenty years prior; now Mission of Burma have proven that even tinnitus is no longer an excuse, and I heard that in response, dads around the world are picking up guitars, hoping to become the next Roger Miller.
38. Sep 25, 2007 Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog - Sam Beem brightens his originally homogenized sound with inventive arrangements and grows in a musically satisfying way.
39. Jul 10, 2007 Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - When the 1990s wanted to call them the next Pixies, Spoon reacted with by producing albums with such consistency and anglophilism throughout the 2000s that they sound downright classicist, influenced by the Clash and Billy Joel more than post-punk and this album shows them in fine form, crafting some of the best uptempo ballads of their career.
40. May 24, 2005 Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth - If at points on this album Malkmus sounds genuinely unhinged, its probably because Face the Truth marks the first time in his career that he's making music so screwy even he can't seem to wrap his considerable intellect around it.

41. Jun 4, 2002 Deerhoof - Reveille - There is an undefined genre characterized by noisy, rhythmically haphazard groups fronted by Asian girls singing nonsense, and amongst such groups Deerhoof surely stand as the most impressive example.
42. Feb 11, 2003 Stars - Heart - I'm sick of pretending there isn't a respository of cheesy romanticism in me (I think, somewhere in the left ventricle), and this album satisfies that gushy impulse with the best of 'em.
43. Aug 19, 2003 Guided by Voices - Earthquake Glue - Robert Pollard is the most obvious genius in rock music but refuses to let anyone see it for a whole album; if there was ever an artist who needed to be considered for the sun-like brilliance of his entire catalog, it is Pollard, but as far as individual albums go, Earthquake Glue is his best in this millennium.
44. May 23, 2006 Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That - Few people would proudly bear the moniker "soft rock" and fewer still could make it a compelling listen; that Phoenix succeed makes this album one of the most impressive in mainstream music.
45. Sep 18, 2007 Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends - Always full of surprises, Les Savy Fav here go for a set of more thought-out songs, wedding their characteristic surprises into the kinds of songs most bands would deal with the devil to write.
46. Sep 11, 2001 Beulah - The Coast is Never Clear - People thought this album a bit of a letdown when it first came out, but that was in 2001 when everybody was waiting for the next Pavement; instead, The Coast is Never Clear is an actually sunny album with some wry twists that make it an indie pop classic.
47. May 4, 2004 The Reigning Sound - Too Much Guitar - Easily the album least likely to on this list, but their conflation of noise-rock and garage revivalism is too hot to pass over.
48. Apr 23, 2003 Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - As with all the music I've come to adore, I had a hell of a time getting into Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, mainly just going along with my firends' opinions because I assumed there was something there I wasn't seeing; my thoughts now are that the album isn't showy or dynamic or the life-changing event some have insisted it should be, but it is graceful, complete, and assiduous, and marked by a subtle but self-assured poetry that won't ever blow your mind, but will give you pause now and then.
49. Feb 6, 2007 Deerhunter - Cryptograms - The real shocker isn't that nobody criticized this band for ripping off The Fall, but that these perversely damaged songs are engaging in their active efforts at alienation and cries out for affection.
Sep 11, 2001 The Moldy Peaches - The Moldy Peaches - I know this album pretty much blows, but I had to give the cabosse award to someone, and I can think of no band who would like that better or would have done more to earn it.

GUEST: Chris's Top 15 Albums of the Decade

Hello internet, hi hello konnichiwa.  So Carrington asked me to do this best albums of the 00s list under the assumption that I have good taste in music, and I’m kind of worried that it may not reflect such an assumption in practice.  It’s going to include the stuff I liked the most over the course of the decade, weighed on some subjective sliding scale balancing how much I liked it at the time and how much I like it now.  Also, before you start reading, you should know that this list will not contain any Radiohead.  I just never got into Radiohead.  Sorry.

Oh, and I hope this doesn’t look too much like the Pitchfork list.

Alright, let’s get into it: 

15)  Silversun Pickups – Carnavas

Usually I care a lot about a rock band’s lyrics.  After a few listens I can sing along with most of the album.  Not so much at times with Silversun Pickups, maybe because they don’t always make a lot of sense, but it’s actually not a problem at all.  They get the atmospheric rock thing down very well, and the basslines and hooks are tight enough to just groove along with even without the vocals.  And I actually think it’s pretty clever when they do the minute-long outro in “Dream at Tempo 119” only to burst back in with another verse beginning with “I couldn’t end it there.”  I need a little more time to really evaluate this one, I think, but it’s definitely quite a solid rock album if you’re into that kind of thing.

14)  The Blood Brothers – Burn, Piano Island, Burn

In all honesty, I would probably hate these guys if I hadn’t seen them live before hearing the record.  Whatever freaky nightmare world Piano Island is located in is probably home to a lot of the kids that shop at Hot Topic, and the back-and-forth vocals kind of sound like all those Hot Topic kids screeching in unison.  But it’s somehow really catchy.  I don’t know what the word for it is.  Raw, maybe?  Yeah, let’s go with raw.  They also have a song that I’m fairly certain is loosely based on one of my favorite short stories (“The Salesman Denver Max,” based on Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”), so props for that.

13)  Minus The Bear – Highly Refined Pirates

Minus The Bear’s kind of a one-trick pony, but that’s not such a bad thing if it’s a good trick.  Guitarist Dave Knudsen’s two-hand tapping guitar technique really drives the band, and I think his skills are best displayed on Highly Refined Pirates, an album about racing yachts and bumming around in Paris and various other key elements of living the good life.   They’re not popular in many circles for basically coming off as a bunch of frat douches, which might not be too far from the truth, but what can I say?  I dig the aesthetic they’re workin’ on.

12)  Junior Senior – Hey Hey My My Yo Yo

So a skinny straight guy and a fat gay guy walk into a bar in Denmark.  Then a funk band comes from somewhere and they all ROCK YOUR DAMN FACE OFF.  Yeah, look, I know it’s not smart music or anything with lines like “Hello darlin’/pardon my French/we been lookin for a guy with a monkey wrench/Talkin’ trash/into a can/onto a record/and then you can dance.”  But sometimes you just gotta dance, right?

11)  Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala

I wonder what they put in the water in Scandinavia to make everyone so happy despite the gross weather.  There’s a weird unbridled joy in most of Jens Lekman’s music, replete with sweeping harps and jazzy basslines and goofy barbershop quartet backup vocals, even when he’s singing ostensibly sad songs like “I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You” and “If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This).”  Dude carries a certain naiveté about him that’s kind of disarming and pretty great to listen to.  Can’t wait to see what the Swedish boy wonder does next.

10)  Junior Boys – Last Exit

I actually feel pretty weird about putting this so high on the list, but it really is an amazing album.  It’s atmospheric without being boring, occasionally danceable, and always has a mysterious and sort of ethereal quality to it.  It’s perfect night driving music.  My favorite electronic album of the past 10 years for sure.  Why didn’t these guys get in the UPS commercials instead of the Postal Service?  Don’t you realize you’re just giving publicity to the competition???

9)   Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – The Tyranny of Distance

Ted Leo is pretty much what every musician should try to be, I think.  Consistently excellent live shows, pretty frequent album releases, and on top of his game when it comes to the issues.  Dude’s a consummate professional.  And he did a Halloween show as Glenn Danzig, playing only Misfits/Danzig songs and not breaking character the entire time.  Seriously, how do you not love that?  Anyway, it’s hard to pick a favorite between this and Hearts of Oak for this spot, but I have to give Tyranny the edge because I think the guitar work is just a little more interesting.  One of the few legit guitar masters in indie rock, that Ted Leo.

On a semi-related note, there’s something that’s always bugged me about the Pitchfork review of the Ted Leo album Shake the Sheets, which did not make this list.  The reviewer says, “You find yourself strangely aggravated by Leo's characteristic punk-scat; especially unforgivable is a Jacko-like "shebooyah" in "Walking to Do".  Aoyama and Shibuya are places in Japan and I’m 98% certain that is what Ted Leo is talking about in this particular song.  EARN YOURSELF SOME GEOGRAPHY, PFM.

8)   Cursive - Domestica

Screeching, discordant guitars and much wailing and gnashing of teeth about a relationship that apparently involved a lot of screeching, discord, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.  David Byrne once said that the worse someone sings, the easier it is to believe what they’re saying, so it’s pretty easy to take Tim Kasher seriously on this album as he’s tears apart the power dynamics and other foundations of, well, everyone’s relationships, I guess.  I sometimes feel a little ripped off by albums that are only 9 tracks long, but I think it works here.  Spending any more time with Sweetie and Pretty Baby would be too much.  Maybe that’s where they went wrong in the first place.

Fun story, Kasher was incredibly drunk while performing one particular Cat’s Cradle show and referred to The Blood Brothers (the openers that night) as “The Blood Buddies.”  This is still hilarious to me.

7)   Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV

Alright, so maybe this is a little shameful, but just shut up about it okay?  I just really dig any band who will shamelessly bust out riffs that sound completely stolen from Rush or Iron Maiden, and Coheed delivers these in spades!  I think this is probably my favorite album of theirs because Claudio Sanchez finally learned to stop sounding like a girl at all times and the big Willing Well series at the end is a pretty epic little chunk of proggy goodness culminating in some kind of bizarre steel guitar-fueled hoedown.  I could really give a shit about the associated sci-fi comic books and all that, I’m just in it for the movie trailer-approved catchy faux-metal riff bonanza.  And if that’s not good enough for you well you can just KISS MY GRITS, SALLY.

6)   The Wrens – The Meadowlands

When you have that first big high school/college breakup, this is the kind of album you need to have on hand to help you wallow in your misery.  In that respect, I guess it’s kind of like a modern-day Pet Sounds, except with fewer harmonies.  Aside from the couple songs about touring with your band, the whole album is just a big parade of misery and bitterness that somehow never becomes overbearing.  Additionally 13 Months in 6 Minutes may be the saddest song ever written.  There’s so much helplessness and despair and disappointment contained in that song that it’s really just impossible for me not to listen to it multiple times, secretly hoping that our narrator hero will figure something out the second time through.  About a minute from the end, there’s a big crescendo that changes the whole mood of the song, and it’s just enough to give you a little hope that he’s sprinting to the airport to stop his dream girl from getting on the plane after saying goodbye for what he knows will be the last time.  He never does, but you get the sense he’s come to terms with it.  Yeah, maybe it’s not romantic, but it’s real at least.

5)   Andre Nickatina – Conversation with a Devil

This is my favorite hip hop album of all time.  Almost certainly not the best, but my favorite.  In case you are not familiar with Mr. Nickatina, well, don’t feel too bad because I still am not either.  He’s a San Francisco Bay Area rapper who makes a ton of records and a lot of them aren’t all that well-made.  He might be big in San Francisco, but I’m not even clear on that.  But Conversation with a Devil, man… there’s just something about it.  It’s like rooting for the ragtag group of misfits in Mighty Ducks or something. 

The album is apparently the soundtrack to a movie he made that’s kind of a Scarface knockoff, and it kinda follows the general plot of: guy sells a lot of drugs and has a pretty sweet time doing it, gets set up by his friend and goes to jail, does some time and gets out of the drug game.  It seems to me the album conveys the point better than the movie would, though.  Andre Nickatina doesn’t really have a powerful rap voice, but somehow it fits with his lyrical style, which is somehow braggadocios but still down to earth.  The beats are unusually melodic, perfectly produced, and have instrumentation ranging from minimal, fuzzy bass to acoustic guitar arpeggios to bagpipes.  It’s unlike any hip hop record I’ve heard before or since.  And by the end of the record, you feel like you know this guy—just an everyday dude telling his story.  I mean, look at that album art.  You think Jay-Z would even put that on one of his mixtapes?

4)   Jon Brion – Meaningless

Jon Brion is mostly known for being a producer and for scoring Charlie Kaufman films and I Heart Huckabees these days, but this is about as close to a perfect pop album as you’re gonna find.  It’s funny, catchy, and has a little bit of that ol’ emotional resonance to boot.  “Walking Through Walls” also has the absolute most cheerful way to say “motherfucker” in recent memory.  I that contend you could play it on the radio – who could be offended?  Some PopMatters reviewer named David Medsker called this the Album of the Decade back when it came out in 2001.  Turns out he might be right.

3)   The Mountain Goats – We Shall All Be Healed

I’m one of those people who always liked John Darnielle better with a band and decent production value instead of a 4-track recorder droning away in the background.  If you are also one of these people, this is the album for you!  Cotton and Palmcorder Yajna are two of my all-time favorite lyrical songs, but there really isn’t a weak one on the whole album.  It’s kind of weird to see The Mountain Goats live and watch John cheerfully recount his days as a junkie in his Mitch-Hedberg-on-Ecstacy banter style before playing any of these songs, but I think that’s part of the charm of it maybe.  The guy can make you smile as he’s making you feel about the stickpins in the cotton that he left in the top drawer.  Poor little fellers.

BONUS FUN FACT:  I once tried to write a short story based on the song Against Pollution, about a liquor store clerk who shoots a would-be robber in the face, but eventually decided against it because I felt like I didn’t know enough about liquor stores or shooting people in the face.

2)   The Avalanches – Since I Left You 
There are some albums that you should really only listen to straight through, and I think this TOE-TAPPIN’, HEAD BOBBIN’ CLASSIC is one of them.  I have a hard time separating the tracks from one another in my head (aside from Frontier Psychiatrist, which is really a monster unto itself), and I think that’s the real strength of The Avalanches – so many little disparate parts combine to form a thing so cohesive you can’t even tell where one track ends and another begins.  If you’ve never heard their Australian Breezeblock mixes, do yourself a favor and check those out—it’s the best we have until they decide to put out another proper album. 

1)      Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica

My freshman and sophomore years of high school, I was really into pop punk.  The Ataris, The Vandals, all that stuff.  I forgot where I actually heard of Modest Mouse in the first place, but this album was the catalyst for my interest in the broader “indie rock” genre and is really responsible for a lot of my musical taste from 2001 onward.  So like, 95% of the rest of the stuff on this list.  When all you’ve been exposed to musically is Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Loggins, and the Warped Tour crowd, a song like The Stars Are Projectors is pretty mindblowing.  Nearly ten years later, and it’s still just as good.  Which is to say, really, really, really good.

It's the End of the World as We Know It (...or is it?)

      It’s odd to have spent nearly 10 years within the confines of a ‘decade’ and still not know what to call it.  The ‘aughts,’ the ‘naughties,’ the ‘2000s,’ et cetera have all proven to be ill-fitting monikers for a period that has kicked off a new century and a new millennium. It’s strange that no nickname has caught on considering how modern media outlets have become so adept at naming things that within hours a label can become wholly inextricable from the original event (see ‘Balloon Boy’). Perhaps we are just living in completely indefinable times.  Well, whatever you want to call January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009, one thing I know for sure is that it is almost over.  While this period has provided some majorly negative events (September 11, 2001, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the recession, etc.), it hasn’t been all bad.  All told, it’s been a pretty interesting time to have gone through high school, college, and the beginnings of my post-graduate life, thanks in large part to the internet explosion (not sure how the universe could have existed before Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, College Humor, et al.)

     Seeing as the change from 2k9 to 2k10 will be sort of a momentous occasion, it seems to be an appropriate time to quantify and qualify some of what happened in these last 10 years.   I figure there is no better way to make sense of it all than to do countdowns of some of things that helped define the decade. (The Rolling Stones and Pitchforks of the world should not have a monopoly on the list-making business, after all).  Starting later today (hopefully), and intermittently thereafter, I will post lists about this decade’s best music and (ideally) other things from friends and myself.  At this time of year when everything seems to be moving at a dizzying pace, it’s important to slow down and reflect for a minute about what has been going on while you’ve been busy updating your Facebook status. So, please enjoy.