A good friend of mine, Adam the guitar genius from the band Foxes! has asked me to come up with a list of my favourite albums released in the decade that is just about to end. It is so tough but immensely enjoyable to allow ourselves a few nerdie hours thinking through this.
Are the the best albums or are the the ones that you played the most? I went for a compromise and, after much bullying from another good friend, I finally got round to appreciated Radiohead’s Kid A after spending the decade sneering at it.
There is a heavy proportion of Indie music but that, maybe is just the circle I move in and, nostalgia for certain times has dictated that some of them had to be here no matter if other albums were in all probability greater in musical terms…who is to say!
I “discovered” trance music during the Naughties too so I just had to include one from Above & Beyond and, if some of the other masters of this genre had been a bit more “album conscious” I might have included more.
I also hesitated about how I would order them….by preferance, alphabetically or chronologically. The latent librarian in me loves these problems but the amateur historian one out and I went for date-order – the cowardly way out.
If you wonder why I haven’t included the new album by my favourite band, Foxes! – well it is finished but they haven’t let me hear it yet – so sorry guys, you didn’t make it time.
Here they are then, my favourites, and one thing is for sure, if you listen to them all you will be having one helluva a musical treat.
The Delgados – The Great Eastern (2000)
Radiohead – Kid A (2000)
Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (2000)
The Strokes – Is This It (2001)
Sparklehorse – It’s A Wonderful Life (2001)
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)
Cloudead – 10 (2004)
Hal – Hal (2004)
Kanye West – The College Dropout (2004)
Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)
Seth Lakeman – Kitty Jay (2004)
Sufjan Stevens – Illinoise (2005)
Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)
The Killers – Sam’s Town (2006)
Good Shoes – Think Before You Speak (2006)
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006)
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam (2007)
Ocean Lab – Sirens of the Sea (2008)
MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (2008)