Top 10 Albums of the Oughts

Since Pitchfork is coming up with all of these decade-ending “Top _____ of the 2000s” lists (with certainly more to come), a couple of my friends and I decided to come up with our own list: our personal Top 10 albums of the 2000’s.

In order to decide my final top 10, I made a quick list of the albums from 2000-2009 that I will happily listen to ad infinitum, and ended up with exactly 35 albums to choose from. From there, the top 4 came together fairly easily. But then picking out 6 more to fill out the top 10 that are better than the rest — that was WAY more difficult.

1. Radiohead – Kid A
2. Radiohead – Amnesiac
3. Beck – Sea Change
4. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
5. Animal Collective – Feels
6. Sigur Rós – með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
7. Arcade Fire – Funeral
8. Modest Mouse – The Moon and Antarctica
9. Walkmen – You & Me
10. The Postal Service – Give Up*

#9 and #10 were by far the most difficult numbers to pick on the list. Really, all of the albums below are tied for #9. Here’s the rest of the top 35, in alphabetical order:

• Battles – Mirrored
• Bobby Bare Jr. – Young Criminal’s Starvation League
• Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
• Cake – Comfort Eagle
• Death Cab for Cutie – The Photo Album
• The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
• Dismemberment Plan – Change
• The Knife – Deep Cuts
• Long Winters – The Worst You Can Do Is Harm
• Mates of State – Our Constant Concern
• Menomena – Friend and Foe
• My Morning Jacket – Z
• Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
• Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
• Passion Pit – Manners
• Radiohead – In Rainbows
• Damien Rice – O
• Tim Seely – Funeral Music
• Sigur Rós – ágætis byrjun
• Spoon – Kill the Moonlight
• Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
• Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts of the Great Highway
• John Vanderslice – Life And Death Of An American Fourtracker
• We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
• White Stripes – White Blood Cells

I’ve decided an album needs at least 1.5 years of listening time to prove its mettle, so I’ll be revisiting this list in a couple years to see if some of 2009’s albums should be moved up or removed from the list (namely, Passion Pit or the Decemberists’ albums, both of which I very much love right now).

Another interesting point: if you believe the hype around what Thom Yorke told Believer magazine, “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again,” then this would be the last decade ever that we will be able to create such a list. I’m biased, for sure (see #1 & #2 on my list above), but, just like when the band offered In Rainbows for free, and how that was viewed as trend setting, I believe Radiohead is leading the charge for the death of the full-length album.

I have mixed feelings about the potential death of the full-length. On the one hand, I love a good album. I buy albums, not songs. And I like to listen to albums, not songs. But as I grow older and arguably wiser, I am finally able to admit to myself that I’ve listened to a lot of shit over the years. All the filler that comes with a full-length album, between the 1 or 2 hits, could, for the most part, go away.

I think, like the death of printed material (newspapers, magazines, books), this will only serve to elevate the preciousness of an album. Most recording artists will make singles or EPs — collections of 3-5 songs they know are really great, without the need to extend it to a full 45 minute album. But I guess (hope) that, when a Jeff Mangum or a Prince come along, they won’t be deterred from making another seminal full-length album.

* Update: Thanks to Josh Mauldin for pointing out that the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs came out in 1999. I’ve replaced it in the top 10 with the Postal Service’s Give Up.