10. Funeral by Arcade Fire I have to be up front, I still have no idea what half of the lyrics on this CD are. And I'm a lyrics person. That should speak volumes for the type of music that Arcade Fire make. This CD is more dense than a Joseph Conrad novel. With as many as 15 different musicians credited with recording various instruments for this CD there's not a dull moment on the CD. That also gives credit to its playback value. Five years after it's been released, I'm still not bored with it. And one day I'll figure out what the heck the lyrics are. Hopefully that won't ruin it for me. Favorite songs: Neighborhood One (Tunnels); Wake Up; Rebellion (Lies)

9. Creek Drank the Cradle by Iron and Wine Sam Beam is without a doubt the most beautiful song-writer on this list. And I don't mean in the physical sense, although he does have a pretty great beard going. The songs on this album are so fragile and delicate. His almost whisperish singing is complimented by primarily a finger-picked guitar and banjo as he rolls out lush and complex themes overtop. His fingers move faster than any other gutiarist's in the same genre (and in all genres, excluding black-metal). And he is my answer to anyone who says that lyricists aren't poets, because his lyrics would hold up against WH Auden's pound for pound. Favorite songs: Faded From Winter; Upward over the Mountain; Muddy Hymnal

8. Twin Cinemas by the New Pornographers Yes, I hate this band's name. That said they've released four albums this decade and those four albums could all take this spot. It's perfect, fully-realized power-pop. Three of the top song-writers- Carl Newman, Dan Bejar, and Neko Case- all share vocal duties to give these songs the extra depth. I'm also a sucker for bands with both male and female singers. I first listened to this CD because it has a song on it called "Sing Me Spanish Techno." The song was not nearly as asinine as the title suggests. That's got to be a point for Carl Newman. Every song on this CD (and on this list from here on out) is a perfect song. Favorite songs: Bleeding Heart Show; Sing Me Spanish Techno; Stacked Crooked

Best of the Decade Cont.

15. Is This It? by the Strokes Do I need to say that this album is cool? Cause it is. Just listening to it makes you feel cool. I'm listening to it right now and I want to mess up my hair and throw a tv out of a 7th story hotel window just because. The fact that they released this a few weeks after 9/11 and had to take a song called "New York City Cops" off of the record just adds to the badassery. Casablancas said that his goal with the Strokes was to take "underground music and make it mainstream" and he achieved that more than any band of this decade. I mean...I don't care? Favorite songs: Barely Legal; Last Night; Trying Your Luck

14. You Forgot it in People by Broken Social Scene I couldn't leave an album featuring a song like "Lover's Spit" off. Especially by a supergroup that throughout their 9 year existance has featured musicians such as Amy Millan, Emily Haines, Feist, Kevin Drew, and Jason Collett. The band is a music theory nerd's dream as they play with time signatures and go in and out of key changes in addition to playing with the various fun noises that a guitar can make. This album is great for when you want to listen to smart music. Favorite songs: Lover's Spit; Anthem's for a Seventeen Year Old Girl; Stars and Sons


13. Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? by the Unicorns Okay, this list is venturing into weird territory. I think in retrospect the fact that this album is my 13th favorite of the decade says a lot more about this decade than I originally thought. This is an odd album filled with odd, morbid, pop songs about dying. While synths and guitars are the main instruments, a variety of other instruments take on key roles including what I assume is a pan flute (intro to "Sea Ghost"). This is one of my favorite albums because it's a funny CD full of catchy songs that have teeth. A lot of catchy songs are sugary and paper thin, but the melodies on this album have grit and are far more aggressive than the twee-pop that dominates this list. Favorite Songs: Sea Ghost; Jellybones; Les Os

12. The Mysterious Production of Eggs by Andrew Bird This Andrew Bird album sounds like what Sufjan Stevens would sound like if he had grown up in a New York City apartment with a mom that curated art for the Met and he used a violin instead of a banjo. I don't know where Andrew Bird grew up, but that's the best explanation I can give. I have a fear of throwing the word "genius" around, but if I was ever going to use it, this would be the time. He plays with words like one would expect of a post-modern poet (also fits "formaldehyde" and "fratricide" into the same verse without it sounding forced, which is pretty impressive). It also has the strongest first half of maybe any CD ever. Favorite songs: Sovay; A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left; Fake Palindromes

11. Her Majesty (the Decemberists) by the Decemberists It was exceedingly difficult to choose which Decemberists album I was going to put on this list because all of their albums are pretty much equally strong. Picking one over the others is like picking your favorite contestant in a VH1 reality show, except better in every single possible way. In the end I have to go with this album simply because when I looked at the plays this album has about 3 times as many plays as any other one for some reason. I am going to say that's because it's a more hopeful album than their recent out put and I'm not always in the mood for an epic rock story. Favorite songs: Red Right Ankle; The Gymnast, High Above the Ground; Chimbley Sweep

Best of the Decade Pt. 4

Tha Carter 3 by Lil Wayne This album might get the award for weirdest album cover. I never want to see a baby with facial tattoos. Ever. This is the CD that really got me into hip-hop and pop music and realize it's not all bad. Lil Wayne is clever. Super clever. His concepts are kind of a mess (I'm not even sure he has concepts?) but line for line he has the best lyrics in hip-hop. There was also some innovative material on this CD. Every hip-hop artist in the world is trying to copy "A Milli" now.


Put Your Ghost to Rest by Kevin Devine Kevin Devine is hard to pin down. He's a singer-songwriter but he sounds different from the majority of people pegged with that title some how. His lyrics sound slightly less literate and his songs are more simplistic. That doesn't stop his music from being witty and smart though. "Burning City Smoking" is an ambitious song about people's social apathy that cuts straight to the heart. This CD is mostly just him and an acoustic guitar with other instruments dispersed sparsely throughout the album.

The '59 Sound by the Gaslight Anthem This CD came out of nowhere: a band from New Brunswick that had released a CD a couple years previously that just sort of fizzled out suddenly became critical darlings of the music media. It's hard to ignore the Springsteen reference, but I never really got into Springsteen and this was one of my favorite albums of 2008 (and the decade). It's just unlike most of what's around today, but it sounds like a lot of bands today. They strive to be a band from the 50s but have an unmistakable 00's influence.

January Releases

After a month hiatus I'm back to striving for productivity. Here are some albums that came out this month!

Transference by Spoon Spoon have swagger, that much is obvious. And this album doesn't back down from that claim. Aside from the trademark bark of Britt Daniel, the thing that has set Spoon apart is they are a thoughtful band in terms of production. That shines through on this CD as every album evokes an almost physical response of being hit or dropped or a myriad of other reactions. RIYL: The Broken West, Phoenix, straight up rock music

Favorites at Play by Joy Electric Electropop covers of songs by artists as diverse as Paramore and the Swell Season. 30 minutes of fun songs that are almost all completely reworked on the instrumental side of it. It's not cheezy techno either, there's deliberateness in the direction that the songs take you. Recommended if you've ever wanted to hear an electronic music veteran rework Feist's 1234.

Contra by Vampire Weekend You know the few songs on Vampire Weekend's debut that you actually thought were clever and catchy? You know how they were so few and far between on the album , and although you had to press skip 5 times to get to the next listenable song you saw promise in the band to mature in to something great? You were wrong. This CD isn't bad, it's just really boring and exclusionary (despite it's stellar sales so far). It's music made by over privileged intellectual kids for kids getting economics degrees from Harvard. RIYL: Music about cultural drinks, talking about your summer home in the Hamptons, reading Howard Zinn books recreationally

Romance is Boring by Los Campesinos! This CD is a bratty sort of guitar pop. It's a noisy affair taking a cynical look at love and other pop-rock cornerstones, i.e. the song title "A Heat Rash In The Shape Of The Show Me State Or, Letters From Me To Charlotte" smugly poking fun at Sufjan Stevens' song titles. As hyper-(over the top)-intellectual Contra is, this seems like a cynical bands response to it. It's an urgent yelp of a CD representative of kids who don't know what they want to grow up yet just having fun. RIYL: Pretty Girls Make Graves, the Wombats, wistful chaos

Best of 2009

at least in dying you don't have to deal with new wave for a second time

7. For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver This album starts and ends with two of the best songs of the decade. And in between them there are some more of the best songs of the decade. I'm not entirely sure how a man of Justin Vernon's stature can get his voice so high, but it reaches a haunting height frequently throughout the 9 tracks of this CD. This is probably the most mellow album that anyone could ever aspire to release, but it also holds a sense of desperate sadness throughout in a way that not many people could get across. Favorite songs: Flume; Skinny Love; Re: Stacks

6. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" was the first song that ever really got me interested in making unconventional noises with a guitar. The sounds aren't even that unconventional, but they were a broad step out from the alt-country umbrella they had been pinned with on the first 3 CDs they had released. This sort of experimental side of a band that has such strong roots in alt-country is a main reason why Wilco is one of my favorite bands ever. Part of the reason this Wilco CD stands out against the others is the story behind it though. The story that has been told a million times: Wilco was signed to Reprise Records (a Warner Bros imprint), Reprise didn't want to put it out so Wilco released it online to critical acclaim, Nonesuch Records (another Warner Bros imprint) heard the album and decided they wanted to put it out. This has become sort of the benchmark for the cluelessness of major record labels. Favorite songs: I am Trying to Break Your Heart; Jesus, Etc.; Heavy Metal Drummer

5. The Photo Album by Death Cab for Cutie I don't understand the power that this album has over me. I listen to it at least weekly, and every time I listen to it my reaction is always a surprised "dang, this album is really good." Maybe it's because Transatlanticism and Plans are both much more accesible but this album is much stronger than the other two. Ben Gibbard's lyrics find a perfect balance between overt and poetic and the songs are much more guitar driven than the songs of Death Cab's two better known albums. As a lyric person, these songs pull me headfirst into the stories, to the point where by the end of the song my feelings are indistinguishable from Gibbard's. It helps that I don't think guitarist Chris Walla had complete control over the production yet. Favorite songs: Styrofoam Plates; Why You'd Want to Live Here; Blacking Out the Friction

4. Separation Sunday by the Hold Steady Chances are if you're familiar with everything on this list you've been waiting for me to like an album that has teeth. This album has teeth. If every band could pull off grit like the Hold Steady pull off grit I would never put down my overdrive pedal. Craig Finn creates the biggest dichotomy between frontman and the genre of music that he fronts that I've ever heard of. Craig Finn is, without hyperbole, a poet. He can share more in one 3 minute song than most artists can share in an entire album. Add this to the fact that his albums all seem to have concepts and follow story archs and you get these fascinating insights into the life of some Minneapolis hoodrats and other mischievous ne'er do wells (I'm totally giving myself bonus points for using mischievous ne'er do wells in a sentence). Craig Finn sings in a cadence more like a rambling story than singing, but it weaves in with the rest of his bar band perfectly. Favorite songs: Your Little Hoodrat Friend; Multitude of Casualties; How a Resurrection Really Feels

Well I ranted about random CDs for long enough. Now we're getting to the meat of my end of the decade list, the ranked stuff. I guess I should put a disclaimer on it, as these are just rough rankings. Aside from like, the top 5 rankings are soft and on any given day I could like one album more than the other. That said...

20. The Life Pursuit by Belle and Sebastian This is an unpopular pick for Belle and Sebastian's best album of the decade but man, this album is good. Just try to listen to it and not be happy. At least half of this album gives me the unquenchable urge to get off my butt and dance around in a field of daisies with puppies at my feet. Murdoch and his band felt like a cohesive unit for the first time as a band and as a result they penned some of the most amazing pop songs of this decade. Favorite songs: Another Sunny Day, the Blues are Still Blue, Sukie in the Graveyard

19. Kid A by Radiohead I know, I hear the gasps now that Radiohead is so low on the list. No, they won't be making the list again either. I can say without a doubt that Radiohead are the most important band of the decade, but man I have to be in a very specific mood to like them. This CD is amazing but I've probably only listened to it all the way through like 10 times in my life. It's creative. It's challenging. It's dense. A bit like Heart of Darkness, actually. Favorite songs: How to Disappear Completely; Morning Bell; Idioteque

18. Set Yourself on Fire by Stars Everyone has heard "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" and that song is amazing. It captures a moment in time, an extremely specific feeling, more perfectly than maybe any other song this decade. And that's a microcosm of the entire album. Each song is a specific moment in time, preserved with lush orchestration with Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan weaving intricate stories over top. This CD works as an album and as a collection of singles, which is rare. Favorite songs: Your Ex-Lover is Dead; Calender Girl; One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead)

17. Fevers and Mirrors by Bright Eyes God this album is sad. This is a hopeless album. It's an album for when you're first girlfriend just broke up with you or your dog dies or you're just a miserable person. This all probably sounds disparaging, but if you've ever just been completely and wholly sad you know that there's not a lot of music that resonates or that you want to hear, but this album will ALWAYS be that album for me. It goes without saying that Oberst is at least one of the top three lyricists currently writing songs, and this CD is the first one where he really found his legs and got the music to match his strong writing and wavering voice. Favorite songs: Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh; Something Vague; The Calender Hung Itself

16. Numbers and Mumbles by Say Hi to Your Mom There could be some bias working into this pick. It's got 100% solid songs rife with tongue-in-cheek lyrics that I love, but circumstances lead this to be one of my favorite albums ever. This was essentially the only album when I switched high schools. In the mornings, at lunch, after school, when I didn't know anyone this CD is what was pumping through my headphones. And it fit. Eric Elbogen writes very nerdy, introverted songs that resonate with the loser new kid. But he's also hilarious, and these are also great great great songs. Favorite songs: Super; Let's Talk About Spaceships; Pop Music of the Future