Favorite Albums of the Decade #49-1

Funny... I'm always going on about how "indie rock" is what people should listen to, but three of my top five records don't even qualify for the label. Typical of me to be so contradictory, I know. I want to repeat the disclaimer:


The first thing you should know, should already know, is that I probably have bad taste. Party because, though indie rocker's rock is what speaks to me the deepest, I like a wide range of songs. Everyone I know hates a different half of the music I like.

This is not an intellectual "best of 00's" list. This list has no narrative. It is both rational and irrational. This list is me having to admit to myself what I really listened to, what music really mattered to me. It was a painful process to make this list. I promised myself that it would be embarrassing, that it would have to be embarrassing if it was going to be truthful. Oh believe you me, it is embarrassing.

You know what bands don't make a single appearance on my list? Radiohead, Wilco, and The Flaming Lips. The sad truth is, I just didn't care about those bands. I admire them (well, the last two) but they never spoke to me like they did everyone else. If I were to make an all-time 00's list, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots would be on here.

But this list is about the stuff I sang along to on midnight drives when nobody else was listening. Abandon hope all ye who enter here...


49. Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
48. RJD2 – Since We Last Spoke

47. The Hives – Veni Vidi Vicious - At some point The Hives got written-off as too gimmicky, or too mainstream, or too silly. That's too bad because in many ways they were more appropriate saviors of rock n' roll than the White Stripes or The Strokes.

46. The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike!
45. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart

44. Dashboard Confessional – The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most - Most Dashboard deserves scorn, but I think this record was sincere in its sadness.

43. The Killers – Sam’s Town - I love this record more than anyone I know except for my ex-boss at Entertainment Tonight. I maintain that the songwriting on Sam's Town is outstanding.

42. Ozma – Spending Time on the Borderline
41. Dan the Automator – Wanna Buy a Monkey?
40. The Mudkids - Upward
39. The White Stripes – Icky Thump
38. The Movies – Based on a True Story

37. The Natural Disasters – Last Night In LA - One of the Great Overlooked LA Records since I started blogging. It's so gutty, so emotional, and so very much about the same world that I see through my own eyes; every second of the record rings true.

36. Craft Club – Craft Club

35. William Shatner – Has Been - A work of fucking art. What Ben Folds and William Shatner accomplished on Has Been was a more thorough, more enlightening, more interesting deconstruction of pop than anything Pitchfork has ever praised. (Jarvis Cocker, Aimee Man, Henry Rollins, and Nick Hornby all appear on the album) On "I Can't Get Behind That," when Shatner exclaimed in contempt "The Colonel is breakdancing!" I realized that Folds and Shatner may have understood 21st century America in that moment better than anyone.

34. Coheed & Cambria – In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 - I'm a sucker for concept albums, especially concept albums with science fiction themes. I fall into the "Likes Geddy Lee's Voice" column. I like it when bands rock out. That's a perfect recipe for an album I listened to way more than it probably deserved.

33. The Mae Shi - Heartbeeps - This was the first Mae Shi album I owned. I think it's a great starter. "I was born in a magazine" is one of my all-time favorite lyrics.

32. Film School – Hideout
31. Eskimohunter – The Fast-Trak Holy Symphony
30. Flogging Molly – Swagger
29. The Mae Shi - HLLLYH
28. Ben Folds – Rockin’ the Suburbs
27. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Hearts of Oak

26. The Royal Tennenbaums – Soundtrack - My all-time favorite soundtrack. The contrast between the punk rock and Mark Mothersbaugh's whimsical-but-pained score is inspired.

25. The Airborne Toxic Event – The Airborne Toxic Event - A few tracks on this album don't age as well as I thought they might, and it's hard for anyone to feel as moved by "Sometime Around Midnight" as much as they were moved before they heard it 10,000 times. But I will always go to bat for this one as a terrific "epic indie rock" record. It was the soundtrack of some of the best times of my life thus far, too.

24. Taking Back Sunday – Tell All Your Friends - That's right! Taking Back Sunday in my Top 25! Whatchagonnadoaboutit?! I stumbled on this record in the brief period when I was taking Pro Tools classes and thought I might be a sound engineer; I first listened to it through a pair of AKG studio cans. I am prepared to call Tell All Your Friends the best produced album of the decade. I sounds incredible, still. I also found this record when I was in my Ozma phase, so I had a soft spot for dual-vocalist bands. Lastly, I've talked to tons of locals who secretly profess fondness for this record. So I don't feel so bad about including it.

23. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Shake the Sheets - I'm oft told I'm wrong for liking Shake the Sheets more than Hearts of Oak. I get sick of Leo's voice on Hearts of Oak. Not so here. "Counting Down the Hours" is my favorite Leo song, and "Me and Mia" is in my top 5.

22. Tenacious D – Tenacious D - Jack Black gives an incredible performance on this album. Most the time he's singing nonsense, but the songs still swell with emotion. It's a "joke" record, but there are some very serious rock songs contained within.

21. Weezer - Maladroit - Of all the post-Pinkerton Weezer, Maladroit ages the best. Probably because, save for a couple radio singles, it is the third and last ROCK album that Weezer made. Rivers Cuomo invented his Faux Rock God persona on this album and I wish he'd stuck with that instead of the Sensitive Pop Star identity he's had for the last three records.

20. The Underground Railroad to Candyland – Bird Roughs - A masterpiece of San Pedro punk. This record is leaking liquid energy at the seams and is over before you know it. It's lyrically strong, musically interesting. I wish I could list it higher.

19. The Mae Shi – Terrorbird - My favorite Mae Shi album. I can't really compare Jon Gray and Ezra Buchla, but I was introduced to the band when Buchla held the mic and his weird, near-suicidal bent on music -- those angular and unsettling punk songs -- are how I best remember the band. (Regardless of which vocalist was singing them) "Takoma the Dolphin is AWOL" is one of my all-time favorite songs.

18. Rademacher – Stunts - Heartbreakingly gorgeous.

17. The Mezzanine Owls – Slingshot Echoes - Also heartbreakingly gorgeous.

16. The Henry Clay People – For Cheap or For Free - What I Hope Rock Sounds Like In 2010.

15. Gorillaz – Gorillaz - I don't like Demon Days and that's because Danger Mouse is for fucking plebes. Dan the Automator is what makes Gorillaz work for me. When this record came out there was nothing else out there that sounded quite like it.

14. Atmosphere – Sad Clown Bad Dub II - I first discovered Slug through friends in the late 90's. We used to listen to Atmosphere in my basement while we shot pool in high school. In late 2000 / early 2001 I went down to Bloomington to see them live and it was one of the best shows of my life. The Sad Clown Bad Dub series discs are homemade comps that the band would make and sell for gas money on tour, and I bought this one. One of 500 made. It is lyrically sublime. And by the way, all the "kids" and "hoodrats" The Hold Steady sings about are the people who were at Atmosphere and Rhymesayers shows in Minneapolis.

13. Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Like Bad News - I like all the "wrong" Modest Mouse records. Never mind the hipster snobs, this is one of the great mainstream break-out albums of the decade. Think of it this way: the people buying Owl City today were buying Modest Mouse five years ago. Don't you miss those days?

12. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells - Other White Stripes albums are smarter and more challenging, but this one is the last time Jack White's emotional expression was unquestionably sincere. "The Same Boy You've Always Known" is a long way from "Rag and Bone".

11. Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies - I got into Flogging Molly before Hot Topic did; I had a friend who was in drum corps and knew the band's drummer was in the same corps he'd been in. He turned me onto the band for the drumming. (And being of Irish descent myself made me an easy target.) I didn't have a lot of drunken nights in college, but almost every one ended with a roomful of dorks singing along to the first seven tracks on this album.

10. Silversun Pickups – Carnavas - This probably doesn't need explaining. I don't usually like nonsensical or "poetic imagery" lyrics, but Aubert makes them have concrete emotional meaning. "Common Reactor" picks me up more than any other song.

9. The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow - Another "wrong album" entry, I know, but I find this record much more accessible than Oh Inverted World. If you called "Saint Simon" the Best Song of the Decade I would have no rebuttal argument prepared.

8. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – The Tyranny of Distance - It's an indie rock masterpiece. When I want to measure how wayward indie music has gone, I listen to this album to calibrate. It's sincere, it's furious, it's beautiful, it's noisy. Ted Leo's catalog after this point is worthy, but it's never so pure.

7. The White Stripes - Elephant - Honestly, I think a case can be made for every single White Stripes album as being their best. "Ball and a Biscuit" is my favorite White Stripes song though, which is what pushes this one over White Blood Cells for me. It's just so fucking cool. And that's why I think The White Stripes are the Rock Band of the Decade. The Strokes might be hip for a time period, but the White Stripes make eternally cool music.

6. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday - My greatest music sin of the decade was resisting The Hold Steady for so long. They have a stupid band name and when ten people in the course of a month tell me I "just have to listen" to a stupidly named band, I almost always shut them out entirely. Local music manager and publicist Dane Sundseth finally forced the pill down my throat and I am forever grateful. Usually rock n' roll ceases to be such once it becomes "cinematic". (At which point it becomes prog or pop) But Separation Sunday is cinematic rock n' roll. No small feat.

5. The Strokes – Is This It? - On my "Best" albums of the decade list, this would be #1. I wish the credit could be given to people who aren't douchebags, but the fact is that Is This It? pulled rock music out of the mud in the minds of all the people (like me) who never should have stopped listening to rock music. And eight and a half years later, it still sounds just as fresh and exciting as the first time I listened to it. Sometimes when you listen to certain records you recall various sensations. Me, I see / hear / smell / taste / touch everything about the year this record came out every time I hear it.

4. Deltron 3030 – Deltron 3030 - With appologies to Raekwon and the GZA, Deltron 3030 is the most cinematic concept hip-hop album I've listened to. That's it's a science-fiction concept album makes it all the more suited for me. Any time somebody asks me "What's happening?" my instinctive response is always "I keep my dreadlocks in a napkin ring, I rap and sing." This record is so rich and dense with sounds of all manner and kind, I still find new things to hear nine years later.

3. Beck – Sea Change -The best break-up album of all time. I can only listen to it if I need to cry my eyes out. Otherwise, it ruins my day.

2. The Arcade Fire – Funeral - I've noticed it's been chic to downgrade Funeral, but I think we have to judge albums in part on how we felt when we first heard them. When I heard Funeral, I foresaw a bright future in music. I'm not sure if what followed The Arcade Fire lived-up to the promise. But Funeral remains a beautifully expressed album. Its sound and structure mirror its place in music history; the background vocals on "Wake Up" sound like the whole indie music world coming out of a tunnel and seeing the light. Remember when The Arcade Fire opened their Coachella set with that song? My knees buckled and my eyes streamed tears.

1. Grandaddy - Sumday - For my money, Sophtware Slump is too mechanical and it goes without saying I don't share Jason Lytle's take on technology and society. But Sumday, oof. When I lay alone at night and stare at the ceiling, when I fear what all men fear, that I'll be revealed to the world as a total fraud, I hear the songs from this record in the black space between my two ears. Sumday is hospice care for the soul. You're going to die, but at least somebody is going to hold your hand and walk you down to the river.