Irascibility makes the world go round

Top Five Albums of the Decade

So Eric D. just asked me for a top five list of albums from 2000-2009.  It was actually harder than I thought and the list I came up with after a browse through my iTunes library was different from what I expected.  Here’s two versions:

Artistically best/most significant for me:

TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Radiohead - Kid A

Arcade Fire - Funeral

Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News

Interesting…pretty much all indie rock albums.  All of them pushed things around in my head.  TV on the Radio is still the most artistically impressive band I think I’ve ever heard, and their debut album (along with the Young Liars EP) still gets me viscerally in a way no other album can.  Sufjan is brilliant, and while I think Illinois has some chaff in it, the album, when taken as a whole, is quite an experience.  In Rochester, I had the good fortune to see a group of Eastman students perform the album in its entirety live, which was a whole different kind of experience and still one of my favorite concerts ever.  Kid A was the first album I really feel that I owned.  I listened to that, internalized it, and it changed what I thought about music.  I think everyone has an album like that, where it makes you realize what else is possible.  I go back now and it’s not necessarily as enjoyable, but it still feels just as significant.  Arcade Fire gets a lot of hype, and it’s not all as deserved as the hyperbole, but the orchestration on that album worked remarkably well.  And the Modest Mouse album (out of all of their albums) was one that I listened to a lot during one of my more tumultuous periods in college, and it still holds a lot of pleasant (and potent) memories for me.

So here’s another version of the list, a lot harder to write.  The five most listenable or most enjoyable albums:

Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass

Futureheads - S/T

Man Man - Six Demon Bag

Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans

TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes

TV on the Radio appears again, which isn’t really a surprise given the high esteem in which I hold them.  Aesop Rock is just fun, surreal, clever hip-hop, and it raises a lot of good memories because it was the first hip-hop that my brother really imposed on me and I really grew to enjoy it.  We went to see him live, and while the concert was a little disappointing, singing along to ‘Pigs’ with Jay was a riot.  The Futureheads album is probably the most fun out of all of these, and that’s the default “drive around blasting music in the summer” disc for me.  Man Man is hard to describe, but that’s probably my favorite iPod album.  It’s punchy, intoxicating and epically bizarre and it makes things seem slightly askew in the world, which is more true to form than I sometimes wish.  And finally the Sufjan album is a quieter, more personal album than the bombast of Illinois.  It’s heavily inspired by his Christianity, but not in a way that’s immediately apparent.  There’s a slight hush over that album, similar to the way you lower your voice to a whisper when you enter a church, and it fits seamlessly with the toned-down instrumentation overall.

Now this list would change dramatically if you asked me again in a few days, so here’s a few other discs that could easily have made the cut:

Animal Collective - Feels (great artistically, fun to listen to, but there’s a big lull in the middle of the album that can be hard to get through)

Dresden Dolls - S/T (cabaret piano/drum punk, great theatricality and clever lyrics, local band, but a few of the songs feel like they’re trying a bit too hard.  Still great fun)

Panda Bear - Person Pitch (meandering, almost sounds like Brian Wilson at times, if Brian Wilson dabbled in psychadelica and was less interested in pop than using the sounds of pop for other purposes entirely)

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (they write great songs, but for some reason this album just doesn’t take the leap for me.  I’m not even sure it’s top ten, and I’m not sure why, because I like it a lot)

Dodo’s - Visiter (Jay pointed out how percussive these guys are, and it’s another case of brilliant songwriting and great melodies.  This was my major album last summer, and it’s another ideal driving album)

Radiohead - In Rainbows (Eric and I were just discussing this.  Radiohead can write singles, they just choose not to.  This is the closest they’ve come since the Bends, although like my Dad, I think that Nude is one of the weakest tracks they’ve ever written.  But 15 Step and Jigsaw Falling Into Place are skittish and dancable, and I think they can be counted among the best songs Radiohead has ever written)

The Hood Internet mixtapes (mash-ups of generally popular hip-hop and generally less popular indie rock.  They have some clever juxtapositions, and it never ceases to amaze me how much more interesting the melodies these guys choose are than the production on the original tracks.)

So there you have it.  Going back over this, it’s interesting that Jay recommended at least six of these albums or artists to me.  Six of them I acquired or learned about because of the radio station at the U. of R. (including some that Jay told me about).  Probably five of them can be considered indie rock cornerstones, while a few others are minor classics.  And then a few are just outliers.

Anyway, feel free to post your own list in the comments.  This has been a remarkable way to waste the last half hour, but ruminating at 2 AM is always fun, even if it’s not productive in the traditional sense.