Top 25 Albums of the Decade

My girlfriend recently challenged me to compile my picks for the top 25 albums of the decade. I accepted the challenge and decided to share them all with you. This is not to suggest they are the 25 'best' albums of the decade (whatever that means), so I've accompanied each pick with a mini-justification of why I think this album/artist deserves a spot on the list. So here's to liberation from the first decade of the 2000s. Enjoy!

1) Tom Waits, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (2006)

This three-disc retrospective/rarities/B-sides album was my introduction to Tom Waits, but I figure that one can enter at any point in the game with him and be blown away by what they hear. The three discs are subtitled Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. The one that hooked me was the Bawler track "Long Way Home," but the Brawler track "Road to Peace" is the best song about war I've ever heard. And that Bastard song "The Pontiac" is just about the coolest thing I've ever heard.

2) Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

This is an album that I didn't really want to like; it treaded a little too close to emo for me, especially with the lead singer's quaky, sensitive voice. But in the end, I think it's one of my top 10 albums of all time. Every song is perfect, every lyric is perfect, and every emotion feels real. When he sings in "Another Travelin' Song," "I'll fight like hell to hide that I've given up," I think he tapped into an emotion that isn't expressed all that often in song.

3) Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine (2005)

I was one of the fans waiting with bated breath for this albums release (it came six years after her previous album, nine years after her debut), and it was not in vain. Fiona Apple's music has a certain love-it-or-hate-it aesthetic, and I absolutely love her deep voice and fluid vocal style. The lines to her songs never sound like they're being recited, and they never sound boring. It sounds like she creates each line's melody to match the meaning of her words and I've never heard anybody else do that before. When she sings, "A voice once stentorian is now again meek and muffled," in the song "Oh Well," the gentle tremor in her voice tells you exactly what she means.

4) Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (2005)

I got into Sufjan Stevens fairly recently and only really listened to this album for the first time last year but I was floored by it immediately. His song titles are the most interesting on any album . . . ever. This album is about Illinois; populated by the people, the places and the events of this colourful state. This album is also populated by Stevens's interesting vocal style, odd instrumental arrangements and vocal layering techniques that make you wonder whether he had the entire state behind him at certain points. These techniques are incredibly executed, especially on songs such as "Come on! Feel the Illinoise!" and "The Man of Metropolis Steals our Hearts."

5) Silver Hearts, Our Precious City (2004)

The 'precious city' mentioned in the title is Peterborough, where I grew up and from where the Silver Hearts originate. They also used to play every Wednesday at the Montreal House, which became one of my favourite watering holes in Peterborough. Their music is gregarious, funny, irreverent, serious and erratic. With (sometimes) 13 members in the band, it's easy to see how things could get so complex, but they made beautiful music together. "O Heavenly Salvation" would give me goose bumps and serious theological thoughts and then immediately afterwards catch myself when "Wow! Look at Jesus Go" would come on, and I'd reprimand myself for letting a bunch of goofs make me seriously reconsider my theistic leanings.

6) Decemberists, The Crane Wife (2006)

This was another album that I initially didn't want to like. Something about the lead singer's voice made me uneasy, but by the time I got halfway through the album and I realized it would end soon, I had found that his voice lent itself to the songs far better than any other singer's would. The songs are all so different from each other, but the band flows so seamlessly between them  -- almost reminiscent of siblings who look like night and day but you just know they're related. "The Shankill Butchers" is one of the creepiest songs I've ever heard.

7) Pearl Jam, Lost Dogs (2003)

As a double-disc collection of rarities and unreleased songs spanning their whole career, I wasn't expecting too much; too many bands have used this ploy as a cash-grab when they have nothing better to release. Unfortunately, the unreleased songs from this great amorphous entity known as Pearl Jam are better then anything else they've done in the past decade. It seems to me that the stuff that was released throughout the years on studio albums (well, since Yield) has been watered-down music created for the record companies, whereas this collection was for the fans, who knew what Pearl Jam was capable of. If songs like "Hitchhiker" and "Education" had been released on the album Binaural as they quite possibly could have been, it may have let me keep the faith in Pearl Jam a bit longer.

8) Joanna Newsom, Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

I didn't know what to think of Joanna Newsom the first time I heard "Sprout and the Bean"; she has a very unusual style of singing. But I loved the video (which was how I was introduced to the song), so I kept listening. By the first chorus, I was hooked. It's absolutely entrancing, the way her fingers glide over the harp and/or piano, filling the rest of the spectrum below her chirping voice. She sings of beautiful, almost mystical, things, and her music fits the bill perfectly. I still have no idea what "Inflammatory Writ" is about, but I don't care. I absolutely love it.

9) Cooper Temple Clause, Kick up the Fire, and Let the Flames Break Loose (2003)

I spontaneously bought this album after reading an album review I had found in the paper. I can't remember what they said about it, but it was enough to make me want to buy it without hearing any of the songs or even knowing what their sound was. As it turns out, I can't even describe what their sound is even after listening to this album 47,000 times. Sometimes they remind me of Radiohead, sometimes Oasis (he has a very similar voice), and sometimes the Strokes. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of any of those bands, so it's still a bit of a mystery as to why I'm drawn to this album so much. The song "Talking to a Brick Wall" is just astounding.

10) Elliot Smith, From a Basement on the Hill (2004)

This was the first album I heard by Elliot Smith, which is a shame because it was released posthumously. My first impression was just how unapologetically Beatle-y it was -- not in a bad way, just in a way I had never heard before. He was able to infuse his influences into his music to create something truly unique. Later on I found his earlier stuff and really dug it, but this album in particular seems to be unmistakably more Lennon-esque than anything else he did. "Twilight" still makes me teary-eyed when I hear it, and I'm not sure if it's because it's a truly beautiful and sad song, or if it's because the man who wrote these lyrics eventually ended his own life and you can hear the pain in his voice.

11) Nine Inch Nails, The Slip (2008)

I used to listen to NIN way back when but hadn't heard anything from them since "The Perfect Drug" (my fault, not theirs). It seems Trent Reznor has been extremely prolific in recent years. They released The Slip on their website for free without any prior advertising or publicity. Apparently Trent Reznor wrote, upon digital release of the album, "this one's on me." How cool is that? Reason enough to be on this list, but it's also a great album and one that immediately reminded me of why I liked these guys in the first place. Who knew metal could be as inventive as it is in the song "Echoplex"?

12) Beck, Sea Change (2002)

I've always found Beck's slower, more introspective music his strong point. He obviously has a great ear for beats and arrangements and while I can appreciate those things, his understated efforts like Sea Change and Mutations have always struck home for me. After innumerable listens to this album I still can't pick stand-out tracks. The songs "Guess I'm Doing Fine" and "Lost Cause" paint Beck in a more human light then anything else he's done. With this album he really laid himself bare and sang about the most honest subject possible: himself.

13) Blonde Redhead, Misery is a Butterfly (2004)

I knew nothing about Blonde Redhead when I bought this album on a whim in 2004, but its weirdness immediately captivated me. I found out recently that a lot of the songs are about the female lead singer's accident -- falling off a horse -- which put some of them in context. The haunting feeling of "Anticipation" along with Kazu Makino's vocals sends chills down my spine.

14) Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator) (2001)

I had heard Gillian Welch on the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou; she was the lesser known of the three female vocalists featured on that disc (the other two being Emmylou Harris and Alison Kraus), and all I knew about her was that she was the one with the deep voice. Little did I know she was also the one that could create an engrossing album encompassing topics as diverse as Elvis Presley's death, the clay that stuck on her shoes growing up, and the sinking of the Titanic.

15) Veruca Salt, Resolver (2000)

Even though a few miss on this album, there are more than enough 'right-ons' to include it in this list. Resolver was written and recorded by Louise Post after her bandmate (and best friend) Nina Gordon left (apparently the result of a fight to end all fights between the two ladies). Not only this, Louise had recently been dumped by her boyfriend, Dave Grohl (of the Foo Fighters). And you thought she was pissed off on the previous Veruca Salt albums? As you may have been able to gather from these little reviews, I'm a big fan of honest emotion in music and this is one angry record, an exercise in catharsis you might say. Louise exorcises all of the demons that she'd been harbouring and by the end of "Hellraiser" (the last song on the album), you feel emotionally spent but much better.

16) Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker (2000)

I dated a girl who loved Ryan Adams beyond any earthly bounds, so needless to say I didn't like him very much. Things ended between us, and I still think it was because there was a chance that she might end up with Mr. Tragic Hero. I was expecting a call from her when Ryan announced his engagement to Mandy Moore but apparently she's waiting that relationship out. Anyway, when I finally heard this album, I started to understand the depth of her loyalty to him -- not that I excuse it. He is equally bruised and shielded, shy and cocky, hurt and hurtful. I don't know how he pulls it off but he makes you forgive him for being an asshole on a song like "Call Me on Your Way Back Home."

17) eels, Blinking Lights and other Revelations (2005)

This album got me through the break-up of the aforementioned Ryan Adams lover. It is a double-album pastiche of life, love, family, hurt, joy and God, and I think it is absolutely brilliant. This album has a little bit of everything, and although it doesn't flow as seamlessly as some other eclectic albums, I don't think it's supposed to. The abrupt style shifts are quite indicative of life itself. Also, the cheesiness of some of the songs turned me off in the beginning, but eventually I realized that they were supposed to be cheesy. An example is the song "Hey Man (Now you're Really Living)," in which he outlines all of the great and terrible things that can happen in life and how they're all just signs that you're a human being (put to a synth beat). "Railroad Man" is an all-time favourite of mine.

18) Damien Rice, O (2002)

I don't know that much about Damien Rice, but this album is incredible. Every song has this burning intensity, a breakdown inherent with every chord change it seems. His voice conveys the emotion behind every syllable uttered throughout the disc. "Cheers Darlin'" still gets stuck in my head for days . . . not that I'm complaining.

19) Gorillaz, self-titled (2001)

I recently revisited this album to see if it struck the same chord in me as when I first heard it, and I was amazed at how much I remembered from it. I apparently listened to this more than I thought. This electronic type of music is not really my area, so I'm not really sure how to justify it being on this list, other than just the fact that I really enjoyed it. The single "Clint Eastwood" was the one that got me first, but after a sampling of songs like "5/4", "Slow Country," and "Gravity," you really get a feeling that these guys maybe were just a little ahead of the curve in 2001. You also get the sense listening to this that they're having a good time and that just makes me enjoy it even more.

20) Ani Difranco, Revelling/Reckoning (2001)

Another brilliant double-disc that is 'double' in more ways than one. One disc is subtitled Revelling and the other is Reckoning, and they truly show the extremes of Ani's personality. But in another way, it is literally and metaphorically the halfway point between the intensely raw Dilate (1996) and the overtly nurturing Red Letter Year (2008). On this album, Ani revels in the joy she finds in her relationships and yet rails against the unfairness sometimes inherent in them. Unfortunately she is seen as some angry feminist by a lot of people, but with this album she paints herself as a truly unique human being -- anger and joy expressed with equal intensity. She deftly describes the consequences of 'unthinkable choices' in metaphor with the song "School Night," and it tears me apart every time I hear it.

21) Black Crowes, Lions (2001)

The feedback-fuelled false start at the beginning of the album, "Midnight from the Inside Out," eventually kicks in like some kind of a second coming of Zeppelin, but as soon as Chris Robinson starts screeching you know it's undoubtedly the Black Crowes. I was never a big fan of their earlier stuff (my favourite album up until this point was a relatively ignored release called Amorica), but this album served to reinvent them somewhat. I'm not sure if it ever really caught on or if they got the recognition (I think) they deserve for this album, but at least they gave it a hell of a try.

22) Martha Wainwright, I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too (2008)

Aside from an incredibly gorgeous album cover, this remains an album that, initially, seems contrived and full of pop singles just begging to be played on the radio but, upon further inspection, has a lot more to say. In it, she examines the complex relationships she has with her father, her mother, her brother, pretty much any person that is a significant influence in her life. Hearing her distinctive wail and off-beat delivery over a tinny drum machine in "Jesus and Mary" is enthralling, and, though I have no idea who the "Jimi" is in her song of the same name, her repetition of the words "It takes up so much time, and it makes up for nothing" entirely conveys the bitterness she felt at such a waste of time (with him? for him?).

23) Amy Millan, Honey from the Tombs (2006)

A distinctly more folky feel than the stuff Amy Millan (one half of the band Stars) had done previously, her voice lent itself beautifully to this shift in style. Her lyrics (mostly about whiskey and traveling) also lend themselves to this style of alt-country/folk music. The harmonies in her songs are beautiful and heartfelt, and she really tells a story with her words without sounding clichéd, something that is more difficult to do than most people realize. This album is mostly about loss (and dealing with it through whiskey and traveling) and is communicated incredibly effectively with songs like "Baby I" and "Blue in Yr Eye."

24) The Dandy Warhols, 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia (2000)

With their break-out hit "Bohemian Like You," The Dandy Warhols garnered a lot of radio play, but I'm curious to know how many people listened to this album in its entirety, as I'm sure it was intentioned. Each song bleeds into the next very fluidly, and the seamless intermingling of styles is beautiful, especially between "Get Off" and "Sleep."

25) Rock Plaza Central, Are We Not Horses (2006/2007)

I went to see this East coast band play at Irene's and bought the album on the spot. I was obsessed with it for about a month; it's all I listened to. I was also reading a lot of existential philosophy and drinking a lot of whiskey. "If we're not horses, what are we then?..." For some reason that line of thought really got to me at the time. It's kind of lost on me now, but it certainly did affect me at the time; I can't ignore that fact. That being said, I'm not really sure what they're trying to say with this album, but they merge many different styles with the lead singer's warbly voice being the only constant between songs. "Anthem for the Already Defeated" gives the listener a strange and somewhat gruesome (also strangely Jewish) picture of what defeat looks like.

26) Bonus Pick; eels, El Hombre Lobo (2009)

I couldn't leave off a concept album about a werewolf experiencing various types of desire. The eels decided to follow up their double-disc odyssey of musings on life and love with this. Naturally. And this is why I love them. The quiet desperation of "The Longing" followed by the raw power of "Fresh Blood" is a match made in heaven.

* Honourable Mention; Guns N' Roses, Chinese Democracy (2008)

For just releasing a damn album this decade.

Related:

Kris Millett on Chinese Democracy.

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