My Favorite Albums of the Decade (##11-20)
Here’s the next installment of my favorite albums of the decade. Sorry for the lengthy delay between the first two posts and this one – holidays, job interviews, blah blah blah.
Anyway, expect the final 10 sometime between now and January.
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#20: The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday (2005) I love The Hold Steady, and I doubt that they’ll ever release anything that I dislike, but I also have a feeling that they’ll never again reach the same heights as they did with Separation Sunday. The stories of Hallelujah, Gideon, et al. were still fresh; the band itself was still young enough to relate to its characters and the dirt and confusion of their lives; and we all still thought that Franz’s moustache was ironic. Their followup albums have been excellent, but to me this marks the last album where the band was truly the "best bar band in the world." |
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#19: The Delgados, Universal Audio (2004) Sadly, I didn’t get into The Delgados until this, the final album of their career. And when the band hit New York during its final ever US tour, I was stuck working in Japan. And when, miracle upon miracle, they actually came to Tokyo while I was there, they played a club in Shibuya where shows started at 7pm – two hours before I got out of work. But while I never got a chance to see the band, this album became the soundtrack to my time in Japan, and I can’t listen to it without thinking of shitty banks, Don Quixote, the 42nd floor bar, or David Brent. And, no, I don’t expect anyone to know what I’m talking about. |
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#18: Silversun Pickups, Carnavas (2006) |
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#17: The Rural Alberta Advantage, Hometowns (2008) Kinda funny to think that this album didn’t even make my top 10 for 2008, though to my credit I did caveat its placement by saying that, if I’d had more time to listen to it, I’d likely have put it in my top 5 for the year. Looking back now, there’s a good chance it might have been #1. More than a year later, I still listen to the album every few days, and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. Can’t wait to hear album number two. |
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#16: The Twilight Singers, Powder Burns (2007) The Twilight Singers have put out several excellent records since forming in the late 90′s (around the time of the demise of Greg Dulli’s prior band, The Afghan Whigs), but to me, this was the first album that reached the same level of the Whigs’ earlier work. It’s huge sounding, emotional, and absolutely devastating. Its sole downside (IMO) is that it’s a tad over-produced, but not so much that it makes it anything other than an incredible album. |
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#15: Interpol, Turn On The Bright Lights (2002) I’ll admit, I haven’t listened to this album in a couple of years. Not because it’s not a fantastic album. It is. But if I had to guess, I’d say that’s because of what this album has come to stand for to me — even though it didn’t come out until 2002, this album, more than any other, reminds me of what it was like to live in New York during and after 9/11. It’s dark; it’s moody; it’s the musical equivalent of the detachment from normalcy that I (and many others) were feeling then. Yet there’s a resiliency to the music, something akin to hope bubbling up beneath the darkness, that was exactly what we were looking for at that time. It truly was the perfect album for 2002. And maybe that’s why I have such a hard time listening to it now. |
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#14: Lightspeed Champion, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge (2008) I still can’t believe this album came from one of the guys behind Test Icicles. To go from that band’s spazzy noise-punk to the perfect Americana pop of Falling Off The Lavender Bridge – and to do so in less than two years – is just astounding. Pitchfork described the album as a mix of Brit pop and country-rock, and that pretty much hits the nail on the head, although it fails to impart the absolute beauty – and the emotional core – of these songs. I have no idea how Dev possibly follows up this album, though I suppose we’ll know soon enough, when Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You comes out in February. |
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#13: The Frames, For The Birds (2001) The album that first introduced me to my favorite "active" band in the world. (I sure hope those quotation marks aren’t necessary much longer.) It’s also far and away the best album that the band has released, combining many of the band’s best songs ("What Happens When The Heart Just Stops", "Headlong", "Santa Maria", etc) with incredible production from Steve Albini. Whereas much of the Frames’ recorded output suffers for its failure to capture the essence of the songs that the band brings out in a live setting, For The Birds succeeds precisely because it doesn’t even try. Instead, it turns the dials down and lets the songs speak for themselves. And do they ever. |
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#12: And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Source Tags and Codes (2002) |
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#11: The National, Alligator (2005) |