Top Albums of the Aughts, Part Two

I give you Part Two of Jon Schwartz's Top 100 Albums of the last decade:

50. The Arcade Fire – Funeral
49. Sufjan Stevens – Come On Feel The Illinoise!
48. Radiohead – Amnesiac
47. The Essex Green – The Long Goodbye
46. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
45. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
44. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
43. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
42. As Tall As Lions – You Can’t Take It With You
41. Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs
40. Albert Hammond, Jr. – Yours to Keep
39. The Impossible Shapes – Horus
38. Andrew Bird – Andrew Bird’s Mysterious Production of Eggs
37. The Magic Numbers – Those The Brokes
36. Beck – Sea Change
35. Other Lives – Other Lives
34. Foals – Antidotes
33. The Black Keys – Rubber Factory
32. Islands – Arm’s Way
31. Sigur Rós – ( )
30. Doves – Some Cities
29. Espers – Espers II
28. The Unicorns – Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?
27. Sondre Lerche – Phantom Punch
26. The Decemberists – Picaresque
25. Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
24. The Impossible Shapes – We Like It Wild
23. The Decemberists – Castaways and Cutouts
22. Built to Spill – Ancient Melodies of the Future
21. The Postal Service – Give Up
20. The Bird and the Bee – The Bird and the Bee
19. Badly Drawn Boy – Hour of the Bewilderbeast
18. Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism
17. The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
16. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
15. South – You Are Here
14. The Helio Sequence – Keep Your Eyes Ahead
13. Bell X1 – Flock
12. Andrew Bird – The Swimming Hour
11. Radiohead – In Rainbows

Jon has offered some commentary on his Top Ten Albums of the Aughts:

10. Espers – Espers, particularly on their 2004 debut album, have a timeless sound. At the time I discovered Espers my freshman year of college, I was very into 60’s rock. This album felt like it could have been a lost relic of the British Psychedelic Folk era. But while bands like Fairport Convention thrived on whimsical ballads, Espers found a niche 40 years later on the much darker side of folk. I’ve heard Espers described as “creepy” and “off-putting,” but when I hear this album I can’t help but be absorbed in its swirling, otherworldly melodies that wrap around the listener like a fleece blanket on a November night. All of the elements of a classic folk album are present: delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios, gentle male/female vocal harmonies, but this album portrays a darker world than the classics of the genre.

9. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns I only heard about this band a couple of weeks ago, in fact right in the middle of compiling this list. The fact that they shot all the way into my top ten speaks volumes about how absolutely addictive this band is. I dare you to listen to this album all the way through and not want to play it again right away. The songs are short and sweet. The arrangements are minimal and the theatrics basically nonexistent. It’s so easy to call this band the new Neutral Milk Hotel, but it just feels so true. The emotional depth in these songs is so immediately compelling, and the production so gritty and lo-fi. They just might be the next big thing. And by “big” I mean indie big, not MTV big.

8. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes If Espers is a smoky attic lit by candlelight, then Fleet Foxes are a rustic cabin in the mountains. This album makes me think of standing on a mountain top looking out over a vast, green, hilly landscape. The harmonies on this album can be so thick, and the reverb so heavy, it feels like a bunch of people making music for the sheer joy of it, and whoever happens to pass by, they’d throw them an instrument and tell them to join in. That’s not to say this album is mindless fun—far from it. The harmonies are complex, and the song writing very compelling. It feels instantly classic and yet a breath of fresh air at the same time.

7. Sigur Rós – Takk… Listening to Sigur Rós can be like your radio accidentally picking up signals from an alien planet. If you see them play live, you would see that they are indeed using human musical instruments, but it sometimes doesn’t sound like it. On their previous releases, it was often more about setting a mood than getting a point across. Over the years, though, the band has grown as songwriters and on Takk… Sigur Rós shows that they can write pop songs. It doesn’t exactly sound like your everyday radio pop, but on songs like “Hoppípolla” and “Sæglópur,” Sigur Rós showed they could be catchy while still being just as enigmatic as ever. The classic Sigur Rós melancholy is still here, but the band has definitely expanded their repertoire to include a more childlike playfulness on this album.

6. The Decemberists – Her Majesty the Decemberists The Decemberists are everything that’s great about indie-pop. They’re smart, they’re quirky, they’re catchy. Colin Meloy loves to throw $10 words around, and while you don’t always know what he’s talking about, you’re just thankful that he’ll never rhyme “love” with “above” or “heart” with “apart.” You can tell Meloy cares about crafting great songs. He declares every word as if it matters. The songs [move] from introspective (“Red Right Ankle”), to infectious (“Billy Liar”), to tongue-in-cheek dramatic (“Shanty for Arethusa”). Meloy and the gang have a knack for creating songs where the lyrics and music would be strong on their own, and yet don’t take anything away from one another when combined.

5. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky Wilco has seen it all. From bar band obscurity, to indie darlings, to critical sensation, and now they’re being sold in Starbucks and played in car commercials. After the irresistible indie-country hooks of Summerteeth, Wilco decided to take a turn for the weird on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which ended up being a battle with the record company to even release, and ultimately became one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade. So why isn’t Yankee Hotel Foxtrot #5 you might be asking? Well, because this is my list, and I absolutely adore Sky Blue Sky. It’s one of those albums that feels absolutely timeless. The songs are emotionally rich and catchy at the same time. The thing I love most about this album is that the songs feel alive, and not Frampton Comes Alive kind of alive. I mean it feels like they flow effortlessly from Wilco’s minds and instruments. Almost every song on the album takes an unexpected turn at some point, and it doesn’t feel as meandering as their 2004 album A Ghost is Born. It feels extremely succinct and yet unpredictable at the same time.

4. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief I have listened to this album more than any other album. Why was I so obsessed with it and why does it still continue to thrill me years later? Radiohead have always been pushing the envelope of what music is and can be. They’ve evolved from album to album unlike any other band I’ve ever heard. So after the out-there experimental soundscapes of the Kid A/Amnesiac era, old school fans were looking forward to Hail to the Thief as Radiohead’s return to rock. And they were disappointed. It’s true there are more guitars on Hail to the Thief than on Kid A or Amnesiac, but it doesn’t sound anything like OK Computer and that’s what a lot of people were hoping for. Hoping for a new Radiohead album to sound anything like an old one is like hoping for Haley Joel Osment to still be seeing dead people. If all of Radiohead’s preceding albums were them branching out and trying to find their place in the world, Hail to the Thief is them finding it.

3. As Tall As Lions – As Tall As Lions As Tall as Lions just rocks. It’s hard for me to describe what it is I like so much about this album, which is why I’m not a music critic. But you’re still reading this for some reason, so I guess I should give you something. I would describe them as bombastic arena rock meets sweet emotive vocals meets anthemic melodicism. The Mars Volta meets Jeff Buckley meets Radiohead. The vocals soar, the drums are crisp and punchy, the guitars knock you on your ass. But it’s not mindless butt-rock. This is big, over the top rock with heart…and soul. If you want to remind yourself what it is about music that you love in the first place, listen to this album.

2. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – The Dust of Retreat This album can be a little depressing. But it’s a sweet sort of depressing. A real gaze-at-the-stars-on-your-back kind of album. It a little country/folk/rock with a hefty dose of achingly melodic tunes. Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s (what a mouthful!) simply craft amazing, well written songs. Songs I love to sing along to. It’s hard to imagine that I will ever get tired of this album. Listening to it is like hanging out with a good friend. We’re gonna be friends for a while.

1. Radiohead – Kid A What is there left to say about Kid A? This album tops every other best-of-the-decade list out there. So I guess I agree with the critics about something. Kid A was possibly one of the most anticipated albums of all time. It had been three years since they released OK Computer, one of the best selling and most critically acclaimed albums of the 90’s. From the moment the electronic keyboard swooshes through your ears and directly into your brain, it’s apparent that Radiohead is up to something completely different. They brought electronica into the mainstream, and perhaps more importantly, brought electronica into rock. Kid A paints a picture of a desolate, cold world, where computers control humans. It’s the kind of album that only comes around once a generation, if you’re lucky. Kid A is most certainly the Dark Side of the Moon of my generation. It’s a front-to-back masterpiece without a single wasted note.

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Thanks for the recommendations and insight, Jon! Truth is, I'm not nearly as voracious a music consumer, buyer, or downloader as you are, so the idea of coming up with such an extensive list to me is mind-bending. Thanks for putting it together!

I do have a few additions. Admittedly any list that you or I would create would be heavily, if not exclusively, biased toward the broad category of "indie/alternative." Neither of us mention huge pop, hip hop, country or other genre acts of the '00s, which certainly merit, and have merited plenty of attention elsewhere. Off the cuff, that list would probably include Outkast, Kanye West, and Dixie Chicks among countless others.

But as they say, "Write what you know," and so, I give you a very short short list of indie-ish albums I think Jon (and you all) should check out as representative of the best of the Aughts. In no particular order:

The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree and Tallahassee
Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
Sloan - Never Hear the End of It
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
New Pornographers - Electric Version

Honorable mention: The Magnetic Fields album 69 Love Songs was released in the 11th hour of 1999, and therefore can't technically be included in this list. But just as the Pixies' late-80s albums defined post-punk indie rock in the '90s, so did Magnetic Fields usher in the Aughts with Love Songs.

~~Fin~~