1. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica

The date is December 17, 2004. I am 13 years old. During a period where I was bedridden due to debilitating back pain, I have reached my trembling, nervous hands into the world of music. One of the first things they grasped was Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News (an album that deservedly earned a place on this list as well). I fell in love immediately: Traditional verse-chorus-verse structures abandoned? Catchy guitar playing? And…trumpets? What brazen oddity! Naturally, I wanted more, and debated using my limited funds to purchase another Modest Mouse album that seemed promising, the one that rests on the top space of this list.

At this point, 2004 had been the hardest year of my life. It was about to get much harder.

My parents were divorced, and the arrangement was that we saw my father Tuesdays and Thursdays and on alternate weekends. Due to the car accident which rendered me crippled, he had been unable to see me and my brother for smaller and smaller increments of time and on fewer days. For many years he had been trapped in a whirlpool of prescription drugs and alcoholism, and this was the day we all found that he had finally been pulled under, once and for all. My mother answers the phone at 10 PM. Uneasy horror spreads across her face as the call continues and when she hangs up, she turns to my brother and me and says, “Boys, this is the hardest thing I will ever have to tell you. Your father is dead.”

At this point-I don’t even really know why-I felt the need to buy The Moon and Antarctica. Maybe I could control this one thing. Maybe this one thing could bring peace, halt the deafening silence bursting from the front of my head to the back. That night, it did not. But in the weeks, months and years to come, I found it to be necessary and significant in a way that no piece of art had or ever will be able to match again.

I tell you this background not to illicit sympathy, or to say that my personal connection to this album is the reason that it is deemed album of the past ten years and my personal favorite album of all time. Quite the contrary.

The extraordinary thing here is that The Moon and Antarctica would still be #1 even if none of this had ever happened to me.

This is an album crafted by man and infused with the blood of specters. One does not consider the instruments or the songwriting while listening to this album. Those thoughts occur afterwords. When listening to The Moon and Antarctica, the experience is that of oneness, of every plucked string and enunciation forming a perfect whole that sweeps over the listener as a wave of moondust. Breaking the album down into a song-by-song basis is impossible even as each song stands on its own and makes its mark in a way that completes the listening experience. Each note is a fiber made to create a blanket that covers the earth yet warms you as though you were the only living thing in existence.

The Moon and Antarctica, in the end, is a treatise on the hypocrisy, greed, malice and sloth of the living man, and how all of these things cease to matter once the vaguest hint of perspective comes into play. We travel from assertions of good and of higher power that renders human worries irrelevant (“3rd Planet” and “Gravity Rides Everything”), wander through confused philosophizing (“The Stars are Projectors”) and end, curiously enough, with bitterness and rage (“Life Like Weeds”, “What People are Made Of”). The message couldn’t be clearer: Isaac Brock leaves the album knowing less than he did when he started it, and the listener is implicated in this crime of obfuscation. Yet the listener cannot help but agree with the songs, whether they espouse bitter common truths (“Well it took a lot of work to be the ass I am/And I’m real damn sure that anyone can equally, easily, fuck you over”) or ruminations on the banality of typical communication (“All this talking all the time and the air fills up, up, up until there’s nothing left to breathe, up until there’s nothing left to speak, up until the data parts in space”). We are all to blame, and if realizing that won’t solve everything, it’ll certainly be a step in the right direction.

I suppose that’s the most impressive thing about The Moon and Antarctica. Modest Mouse, throughout their career, have had a tendency to make you acknowledge parts of yourself you didn’t know were there, acknowledge truths that you didn’t know were real. Therefore, unlike many other masterpieces, The Moon and Antarctica is not exceptional for its introspection. Rather than take pieces of from inside itself and display them, it removes them from the listener, gently but firmly, and tells you, “See here. This is what you think, even if you didn’t think it. This is what you feel, even if you didn’t feel it. And this is what you know, even if you don’t know it.”

In other words, Isaac Brock writes, sings and plays his guitar. Jeremiah Green drums. Eric Judy plays his bass. And somewhere, during all of this, you learned. You discovered.

Art can do no greater.

-CJ

2. The Antlers - Hospice

I was in a state of emotional stagnation earlier on in the year, feeling bored and not particularly inclined to feel either happy or sad to any noticeable degree. If it's not too cliché to say so, I was numb. I then listened to Hospice and it all came back. I started feeling again simply because of this music. Hospice is so incredibly depressing and well executed that it becomes hard to listen to, despite being melodically and texturally flawless. It's evocative in the truest sense.

One of the reasons that The Antlers manage to be so emotionally striking is their undeniable authenticity. And truly, authenticty is such a vital part of their emotional impact because of how connected the music is to the songwriter and band. You can feel their personal emotions seeping through. Because The Antlers manage to make otherwise interesting and distinctive sound elements they use (i.e, shoegaze tones, pop melodies) as a secondary, instead of primary focus of their music, the listener can really focus on the songwriting and what the songs are actually trying to get across - the songwriting holds up the music, not vice-versa. The band tie in textural elements frequently found in post rock and shoegaze soundscaping, and integrates them with more conventional songwriting and vocal deliveries, in a way that doesn’t simply sound like an amalgamation of different influences. In other words, The Antlers define their own sound by having evolved far beyond the process of extracting elements from other bands and utilizing them for aesthetic appeal.

Hospice also seamlessly integrates the lyrical content and narrative with the instrumentation. Although there is no sampling used on the album, the sounds themselves is enough to evoke imagery directly correlated to the lyrical content. On the second track, Kettering, the melancholy is instantly established far before you hear any lyrics, starting with minimal upright piano playing, and whispery and strained singing fluctuating in and out of falsetto. Directly after the lines “And I didn't believe them when they told me that there was no saving you”, a cathartic burst of synthesizer drone, a marching band snare beat, and airy reverberated vocals permeate auditory space. Although Kettering is a common example of using pronounced instrumentation to accent a lyrical point, it’s to be noted that The Antlers are the absolute masters of this craft, and tonality is perfectly matched with entire songs, evoking the cold sterility of hospital rooms with synthesizer melodies that recall an electrocardiogram, background tones that sound like the hums of a ventilation system, and guitars and pianos that guide the more ambient elements into the catastrophic mental states that Hospice exemplifies.

This may sound like a limited critique of what we consider the number two album of the decade, but at the same time, with these two elements I’ve described of The Antlers, it’s hard to not realize how distinctively brilliant they are when compared to the rest of the music that has come out in the decade. Watching someone die and feeling a part of you die inside is something that can’t be described in text, and if it could, a musical form to convey such a thing wouldn’t be necessary. The Antlers do something strange to the listener that I can’t even place in words; it’s not merely depressing listening session, it’s almost a completely different experience.

-Adrian

3. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Expanding and brightening the grim apocalyptic visions of their first album F#A (infinity), Lift Your Skinny Fists stretches out comfortably into what was once firmly prog rock turf—a double album consisting of only four songs (well, “suites,” more like)—and manages to make all eighty some odd minutes count.

After the heavily ironic and snarky pastiche of the ‘90s, Godspeed ushered in a once-promising new era with one of the most grandiose, emotionally resonant and dramatically ambitious pieces of ear cinema ever made. Regardless of what you think of this Canadian mini-orchestra’s anarcho/Marxist/anti-capitalist views, the main statement of this album is rejection of a cold and cynical modern world—taking the place of lyrics are audio snapshots of preachers at the height of religious fervor, an old man reminiscing about Coney Island’s lost grandeur, and schoolchildren singing in French framed by glorious sweeps of strings, guitar, and horns backed by thundering drums. From the opening fade-in of “Storm” to the cosmic choir of heavenly drones finishing the album, this is BIG music and totally unapologetic about that fact, with crescendos that will make you fall apart sobbing, shaking your fist at the sky and everything in between and if you’re not cranking this to volumes normally reserved for B-52’s on takeoff, you’re doing it wrong.

However, details are not lost in the volume or instrumental density and Godspeed know how to employ each and every instrument for maximum effect—take for example, the few sad, droning piano notes accompanying a distant squelched voice at the end of “Storm”; a swell of mournful violin underscoring a crazed preacher and the screaming guitar lead that takes the crescendo of “Static” to Olympic heights; the Krautrock-like drumming accompanying the guitar and string turmoil at the end of “Sleep”; the rustic, Floydian melody in the middle of “Antennas to Heaven”… I could go on and on, and the band pulls all this off without a hint of pretention, detractors be damned.

Simply put, a more epic album does not exist in this decade, or most others for that matter. This is music for the last concert hall on Earth.

-Stephen

4. Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

If there’s a worse thing to be than a teenager in love I couldn’t possibly fathom what it might be. You have nothing to compare this with. This is the first time this is happening and nobody is quite sure what to do. Your girlfriend doesn’t understand you, she might not even like you that much, and even the most sage adults are so far removed from the situation that they might as well be trying to tell a raccoon how to adjust brake rotors if God forbid you come to one with a legitimate problem.

This is the case for most people: You’re dropped into the deep end of the pool and told to swim or drown in self-importance. Some will be lucky. Some will have a partner that is attracted to them, and that attraction may even be mutual. They might legitimately care about what’s happening with you and you may have an investment in their problems. You may be surrounded by wise friends who have nothing but the best interests in mind for the both of you, and who like both of you, and would go to the ends of the earth for you if they thought they could help something in the relationship in anyway.

You’ll fuck this all up anyway because you’ll still think you’re doing something wrong. There’s no getting around that. Whatever you do it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You could care for this person more than anyone has ever cared about anything but you won’t want to show it, and if you do it’ll come out as anger or maybe some weird form of lust because this isn’t something that has come out of you before and it’s not something the other person has experienced before from a firsthand basis, and it will kill them, it may only kill them for a moment but there will come a time when you have to show what you really think and whether those feelings are positive or negative your favorite person in the whole wide world will be dead by the end of the night.

Drugs won’t help too much, alcohol less so. They might for a minute but it’ll come back a hundred times worse. Of course you know this now, but you didn’t know it then, and even though you watched all the same movies that everyone else did you think it’ll be different for you, you think you’ll have some ace up your sleeve that’ll allow you to get over all this garbage with whiskey and a keenly adjusted sense of humor. And when the puke hits the wall for the first time that’ll be when you realize it, that you’re no better than anyone else, there’s nothing special about your heartbreak or your precious little feelings and there’s nobody who can help you. The only person who can help you now is you and you can’t even hold your liquor. You can’t even hold onto a simple feeling without it spilling out all over the place and the absolute last person on earth you want to be around is yourself. He’d help if you’d just talk to him, but you won’t. That guy’s a real prick.

And the worst part is that you think you’ll be ready for this when it happens again, and again, and again. You’re wearing chainmail and they’re flying bombers, you’ve got a stake in the race and they own the stadium. Somewhere, buried deep in the back of your head, you understand that everyone’s heart is bigger than everyone else’s and that self-cannibalization is the only sure path to understanding that nothing went wrong because nothing was right in the first place, but she smells nice and looks soft and just like you, she cannot fathom all the calculations she never made, and just like you she will not realize that her problems are universal, and that if there is one thing true about a universal problem it is undoubtedly and unstoppably unsolvable.

If you’re a regular person, all of this takes about six years from the ages of thirteen through nineteen to figure out and experience. If you’re Los Campesinos, it takes about thirty two minutes and ten seconds.

-CJ

5. Radiohead - In Rainbows

How come I end up where I started? To say Radiohead was a band with something to say would be to make a fine understatement. These five fine men were obsessed with it. They fought the world. They planted their standard in the ground and lashed out against consumerism. Against alienation, against coldness. They stood for moving mountains, they stood for pushing things forward. They raised flag against the news, against the false sense of order, against the yuppies networking. Against everything that is broken. Their metaphors grew with their scope, their conviction. They crafted car crashes, sinking ships, ice ages. Aliens hoping to get out, star crossed lovers climbing out the window. Math equations that didn't add up. They predicted the apocalypse.

And the sun rose. And the sun set. And its on again, off again. And years passed. And they're still here. And every day they get out of bed and take a crap and hope to find something to eat. They did not understand what it is they did wrong. And the world is still the world. Ten years after the car crash and begging to be pulled out alive. Ten years with computers and coldness and #1 records and legions of hipster devotees and the world was still the world. Despite everything they had to say. How come I end up where I started?

And I guess they're stuck. And so what is there big to say anymore? How come they ended up where they started? The same. They don't know what to say anymore. They don't know if there was anything to say in the first place. This goes around, it's on again, off again. In Rainbows is simple. In rainbows is circular, it begs for climax, for crescendo, and it doesn't come, because as far as Radiohead can tell - it just doesn't come. So fuck it. So give it away for free. So they look at their lives and they look at their wives and girlfriends and say, look, the world hasn't changed, my life hasn't changed from it. But you can change my life. You're all I need. You're all I need. They wrote love songs because love had more to say than car crashes. Because your eyes move me. Because I do not want to be your friend, I JUST WANT TO BE your lover. And thats the truth of the matter. Thats more true than any grandiose metaphor. Because the beat just goes round and round, so you might as well come on and let it out. Because they thought they had it in them, but no. They're stuck. We're stuck. I am stuck. And there's no real reason.

-Stuart

6. The National - Boxer

It’s extraordinarily rare to hear a melancholy album that can be described as “likable”. In doing so The National made Boxer one of the defining albums of the decade and created something that’s close to impossible to argue with.

Many have compared Matt Berringer to Ian Curtis, vocally, and the same have made the observation that the album’s ethos is similar to that of many in the drearier strand of college-rock from the ‘80s. But what these distinctions miss is that Boxer is an album that could not have been made in any other decade. It wouldn’t have made sense in any other context. Isolation, now more than it’s ever been, is as much of a cultural staple as Mom and apple pie, and while many artists and albums have touched on this, none of them have so thoroughly committed themselves to the idea as The National.

Certainly, the key is less in the delivery than in the engine that runs the music itself. James Murphy and Arcade Fire have built their careers trying to make loneliness seem fashionable. The main difference is that with The National, that suave, pleading heartbreak isn’t the point, but merely a side effect. Berringer never takes his eye off the ball. He presents these feelings as being sexy and cool not because they are, but because as long as they’re going to be around anyway they might as well sound nice. It makes for a crushing dichotomy: What you hear on Boxer are fountains of rage and confusion being explained but never quite understood, controlled but never comforted. As quiet as it may be, it proves to be the perfect album to lose one’s mind to.

None of these thematic elements would amount to anything if the music itself sounded like garbage. Without question, half of this album’s success lies in the orchestration and drums. There’s no grandeur to the backing orchestra-it is there simply because the music could not be communicated any other way. Likewise, Brian Devendorf’s drumming is commanding but never overblown, only taking center stage when it’s necessary for the music. For all its moving parts, Boxer is an album of musical utilitarianism. It is dark and it is lush, but less as an expression of emotion and more as a statement of fact.

Boxer, then, is the Great American Tragedy for the modern age. It is a cocktail party where everyone is carrying a loaded gun, a series of paradoxes raised as questions but never answered, leaving you to wonder why the more you look at your problems the less you understand them and how trust can really be possible if you never really know anyone, ever. These canyons between us exist, and The National makes no pretenses about trying to build bridges between them. But they might stop you before you fall in.

-CJ

7. Electric Wizard - Dopethone

In ways the front cover of Electric Wizard's third album gives exactly the correct impression of it's continents. Black and white, loosely rendered, a devil smoking from a bong. The cover does not beat around the bush, it's blunt, in every scene of the word. The music found within delivers on all the promises. Electric Wizard craft some of the heaviest, swirling dark doom metal ever created, and they focus themselves mostly on the subjects of death, destruction, and heavy heavy pot smoking. If there was ever an album to get baked and destroyed to, this is it.

On the other hand there is something about this album that almost makes you want to scrap the cover all together. Call it a red herring. As every repeating riff makes you see red you think the cover should have been darker. As Jus Oborn's voice distorts further and further into violence you think the whole cover should have been covered in black, it should have been much much angrier.

And there in lies what must be the miracle of Dopethrone - it is full of contradictions that are simultaneously true. It is a fun album and it is a violently powerful album. It is an album with an incredibly singular sound, yet it is instantly accessible. It's an album to bang your head along with but it will also drown you.

Perhaps I just love it so much because it borders on so many other things that peak my interest. It's the most passionately angry thing around without devolving into noise, and by god it must be the most destructively repetitive thing this side of the minimal spectrum. Perhaps its the sound, so unique and direct that even friends of mine who seek only abstract beauty demand right away to know who made these sounds tearing up my speakers. But I don't suspect that's it. I think it's because - contrary to most metal music where I'm just in it for the fun, the epicness - when Jus Oborn shouts "I. Don't Care. The World. Means Nothing." my god I believe him. I feel every ounce of his words. This is not a game for these people, it's not fun. And through everything else that has to be why this album has such a hold on Everyone who hears it.

It makes you want to tear the world down.

-Stuart

8. Wolf Parade - Apologies to Queen Mary

Although the bands that spawned from the Canadian indie explosion of the early 2000’s didn’t intentionally set their focus on how quirky or odd their overall sound turned out, it ended up being one of the trademarks of the movement. That being said, Wolf Parade stood out because of their ability to combine their own eccentricity with actual substance. Loosely overdriven guitar and synth lines, chugging rhythms, and passionate yet hardened vocal deliveries yield an aural and thematic sound rooted deeply in reality. Completely relevant to the observation and failures of both personal and social struggles, Apologies contains nothing ethereal or otherworldly to diminish the directness and purity of Wolf Parades delivery. In conjunction, their instrumentation and timbre is formulated around incredible pop songwriting that generates another level of depth along with the more immediately noticeable stylistic flairs.

Every song on this album is substantial contribution to the album as a whole, and every song has enough diversity to really capture the interest of the listener. ‘You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son’ opens the album, instantly showcases the style that Wolf Parade is known for: a thumping rhythmic pattern starts the song off, complemented by carnivalistic piano playing after a few measures. Vocals that recall some twisted variation of the yodel, and the snarls of a drunken man, sound out in perfect harmony. Eventually, dirty guitar chords permeate the mix, which eventually bursts into noise and segues into the next song seamlessly. Already, the obvious trademarks to their distinctive sound display themselves within the first few minutes.

The distinction between Wolf Parade and other odd & quirky indie bands is not only their ability to showcase such a style but to fortify it with genuinely strong base songwriting (songs that could still display a formidable structure even when played with just an acoustic guitar or piano), and thematically consistent lyrical content, despite there being two lyricists. Because of their fundamentally solid songwriting, the songs manage to be incredibly direct and cohesive despite the frenzied nature of their sound.

The feelings are dark, and the deliveries imply impassioned individuals on the brink of admitting defeat- but Krug and Boeckner march forward regardless, not because there is hope, but because there just might be something worth marching forward for. In ‘Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts’, Krug belts the lines ‘So I got a plan / It's the best that I can do / Now we'll say it's in God's hands / But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does he?’, only to be followed by ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ where Krugs unrelenting delivery once again exemplifies a lack of control with passionate desperation, despite understanding the limitations of his own actions. ‘This Heart’s on Fire’, ends the album, appropriately titled and delivered.

The only comparison I’d like to make to another band is to Modest Mouse, and only a philosophical one at that: Apologies contains a practically unrivaled directness, unhinged and borderline-maniacal vocal delivery, songs that are incredible on their own yet enhanced by the order the album, and unmistakable and distinctive instrumentation. Sound wise, despite Isaac Brock producing most of the album, they are dissimilar- Wolf Parade sounds like Wolf Parade, and their madness and genius are their own. Disregard comparisons to Wolf Parades contemporaries such as The Arcade Fire, or Frog Eyes. Dynamic, brutal, passionate and dark, Apologies to the Queen Mary takes baroque pop and morphs it into their own incredibly eloquent yet crazed form.

-Adrian

9. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

It's not lost on many people that the first line of Arctic Monkeys' first album begins "Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment" and though of course the song goes on to describe the projected outlook for a crazy evening - ending up with you drunk texting fluid love poetry to an unwitting and unreceptive girl - the line has also always stood for Arctic Monkeys' view on what had happened to them thus far. You see by January of 2006 Arctic Monkeys' were the biggest band in England.

A bit odd for a band writing tales about a normal guy, drunk, alone in a bar at 3 0'clock, professing his love via the most impersonal and desolate of mediums? They thought so too. And with serving up the quickest selling debut in English history and being called by more than one source the next Beatles, Alex Turner and co found themselves increasingly uncomfortable.

You see, Arctic Monkeys' main premise is that they hate people. They hate people. They hate your lies and your scorn, your cynicism and your callousness, your advanced capacity for flat out faking. They hate you to levels that would normally stick them in with Elliott Smith level recluses, Minor Threat level moralists, or even Nirvana level violent outcasts - and yet. And yet Alex Turner didn't want to have to live those lifestyles, alone in his room. People are awful, he thinks, this is not going to change. This is not going to change. Not with all the angry bedroom sitting I could ever do. So I might as well get drunk, I might as well go out and dance, you know, fuck all this shit I intend to get laid.

Most of Whatever People Say I Am is spent in the back of clubs, angry at the rubbish band, furious at the large white wine drinking crowd pretending this band is the peak of art, worried blind about the girl he's trying to pull and the quantity of fluid he's consumed and WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE PUT ON SOMETHING WITH A DESCENT FUCKING BEAT SO WE CAN DANCE?

Surly this did a lot for a fifteen year-old newly faced with an unfair and unconcerned social system. It became my bible. I was angry. Surly it becomes even more relevant as I get older, as I emerge into a world of clubs and concert halls and alcohol. As my libido slowly begins to override my principals. I am angry. At fourteen Arctic Monkeys asked for instruments for their birthdays, five years before. At nineteen, five years later, Arctic Monkeys were the biggest band in England. So at fourteen me and my friends asked for instruments for our birthdays, at nineteen we have no money, with every ounce in our bodies dedicated to music. All Arctic Monkeys to blame and thank.

In January of 2006 England exploded, heralding a new age of anger and guitars that never actually came about. Alex Turner always looked incredibly off put when on stage. He could not believe the amount of people shouting lyrics he wrote. They stood and played their instruments and did not put on a show. Don't believe they hype, they seemed to say. Whatever people think I am, that's what I'm not.

-Stuart

10. Battles - Mirrored

A quirky pop sensibility, electronic experimentation, and brainy math rock all collide in unique and interesting ways in this, Battles’ first full-length record. Which is about what’d you expect of a supergroup made up of personnel from Don Caballero, Helmet and Lynx loosely fronted by an avante-garde electronic composer from Boston, but from that starting point shit just goes wild—outside of John Stanier’s trademark metronomic precision behind the drumkit and Tyondai Braxton’s oddly endearing Chipmunks-on-acid vox, it’s almost impossible to discern who is playing what. Guitars sound like keyboards, keyboards sound like guitars, samples pop in and out of the mix and all of them loop and pulse and bounce within the framework of a bizarre yet muscular robot funk that recalls King Crimson and Talking Heads filtered through Kraftwerk and modern IDM.

The chirpy, winding instrumentation of the first track “Race: In” serves as a nice intro before laying into the epic stomp of “Atlas,” an instant anthem that is as infectious as it weird with a bizarre Tyondai warble for a chorus (“Sing this hook”) and Stanier setting up the gradually evolving groove that drives the whole machine, the whole band tight as a fist. After the short “Ddiamondd” follows “Tonto,” a track that is as guarded and reflective as “Altas” was bouncy—a spiraling electronic melody intercut with dissonant yet spare guitar and a seemingly static, robotic swing that again mutates and shifts underfoot. As it slowly stretches out, ending on one sustained note fading into silence after seven minutes you’d wish it last longer so you could figure out its sublime intricacies.

And the palette only gets more varied from there. “Leyendecker” features more electronic chortling over a somewhat more ominous soundscape of moody bass and beefy industrial drums, worlds away from the giddy clockwork of “Rainbow” (which oddly features the only vocals on the album that don’t sound filtered); the atmospheric oddity of “Bad Trails” that sounds like Brian Eno circa-Another Green World stepped into the studio for a little while; and the jumpy math rock mania of “Tij.”

Regardless of the labels you slap on Battles, this is some of the most vivid and engaging rock you will hear in the ‘00s, the sound of innovation with a sense of fun and none of the clueless SRS BUSINESS vibe that grounds most things deemed “progressive.” And you can even dance to it. Sorta. That alone makes it worth more than a stack of Mars Volta albums.

-Steven

Styrofoam Boots' Decade List 2000-2009, Part 9

(100-91) (90-81) (80-71) (70-61) (60-51) (50-41) (40-31) (30-21) (20-11)

20. At The Drive-In – Relationship of Command

Before splintering off to form Sparta and The Mars Volta, At The Drive-In seemed poised to take over the world with its final release, Relationship of Command. Catchy enough to woo the MTV circuit while containing all the technical complexity and cerebral stream-of-consciousness wordplay to enthrall the prog cognoscenti, At The Drive-In's magnum opus also kept themselves from alienating their hardcore punk base by retaining their Black Flag-esque energy, effectively forming a Venn diagram of listeners that shouldn't have been possible in the early '00s. And hey, if Iggy Pop thinks it's good enough to lend his voice to, you know you've got something special on your hands. -CJ

19. Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News

Major label blah blah sellout blah blah one hit wonder blah blah blah Kids’ Bop. Yeah I’ve heard it all before, and after spending a few hours digesting this album I remain resolutely unconvinced by all the backlash (that would be more appropriate for the album after this). If anything the mainstream came to Modest Mouse, not the other way around. As such songs like “Bukowski” and “Ocean Breathes Salty” still retain all the disaffection and bottom-of-a-bottle existentialism that defines Isaac Brock’s best efforts and would’ve fit perfectly on Lonesome Crowded West—except the music and production quality are just a little brighter this go-round with horns and other backing instruments as a reminder of where the extra money went. And “Bury Me with It” is one of their greatest jolts of neurotic energy since “Doin’ the Cockroach.” I suspect Good News would’ve placed higher on this list if it didn’t have to share real estate with its stellar predecessor. -Stephen

18. Death Cab For Cutie - We Have The Facts and We’re Voting Yes

Did I mention that Death Cab For Cutie sucks? Because Death Cab For Cutie sucks. Their mix of self indulgent sentimentality, nostalgia, over-blown yet mild mopiness, it's disgusting. It is. So why is this album so far up here? Because it's amazing in every way. Because instead of quiet sadness we get quiet desperation, we get calm determination, we get smoldering fire, we get anger. We get songs about sharing cigarettes in the hallway and cursing ex's and doomed highways set over the absolute best instrumentations this side of Explosions In The Sky. It's just beautiful. -Stuart

17. Japandroids - Post-Nothing

Post Nothing is obviously a high energy garage-rock two-piece type of album, so what’s the difference between Post Nothing and other albums of the same style? Post Nothing sounds triple-extra fucking fat as hell. The density of the production and the tones (Brian King uses several amps to achieve a multilayered guitar sound), and even the way the vocals are sung together under deliciously warm overdrive makes the music resonate loudly. Post Nothing in theory doesn’t do anything new: Japandroids sing about being young and energetic, but they get the point across in such an individualized way that isn’t based around channeling an emotion through a set formula, something that lots of music focusing on particular emotions seem to do (i.e punk). “I don’t want to worry about dying; I just want to worry about those sunshine girls”. -Adrain

16. The Velvet Teen - Cum Laude!

The Velvet Teen's particular brand of noise rock sets it's self apart in such a great number of ways. Their heavy distorted synth over the torrent that is Casey Deitz behind a drum set sounds so like hardcore punk subjected to weeks of harsh radiation. You FEEL this music, it moves you. It comes down on you. -Stuart

15. The Mountain Goats – Tallahassee

Truth be told I’m a newbie to the Goats, and this is the only album of theirs I’ve heard straight through, so I can’t make any comparisons to the rest of their oeuvre. But I can say this—a more devastating portrait of toxic relationships and domestic trauma hasn’t been recorded since Lou Reed’s Berlin. John Darnielle’s lilting vocal and softly contemplative, mostly acoustic music does nothing to soften the brutal imagery of a self-destructive couple on the verge of an alcohol-fueled final collapse, and the black-as-coal humor sprinkled within “International Small Arms Traffic Blues,” “Games Shows Touch Our Lives” and—yes—“No Children” makes a fitting partner for the absolutely cutting and poetic desperation, angst and ultimately bittersweet redemption reflected throughout. Doesn’t come with a handle of whiskey and a Greyhound ticket, but it should. -Stephen

14. The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

When one thinks of synth-based music, "tender" is not often the first word that comes to mind. Yet that's one of the only accurate ways to describe Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips' finest work and an early benchmark for both indie rock and electronica this decade. Wayne Coyne lays himself completely bare here as he finds past loves and cyborgs from space to be equally worthy foes and explores every heartfelt subject with an honesty that never becomes whiny or tiresome. Michael Ivins and Steve Dzord are also at their peak when it comes to musicianship, creating jaw-droppingly intricate and utterly overwhelming portraits of joy and crushing despair alike, creating the perfect sonic road for Coyne's vocals to travel down. It's an album that's as perfect for finding new love as it is for dealing with unbearable heartbreak-possibly, in that regard, the best since Abbey Road 35 years before. -CJ

13. Tool – Lateralus

Lateralus is a Gothic cathedral positioned on the plateaus of Mars, an aural infection that enters the ears and coasts through the blood. It takes heavy metal intensity and shadows it in a Floydian cosmic smoke circa A Saucerful of Secrets, creating an album that is as perfect for the mosh pit as it is for the meditation chamber. Tool creates a bleak landscape here, borrowing liberally from Krautrock and slamming those elements until they fit into a modern alt-metal template, bashing a square peg into a round hole until it fit so well that you'd think psychedelia had always always sounded like this, always mined that pit in your stomach for all it's worth like this album does. But it didn't. Only Lateralus did that, and whether you loved it or loathed it, Tool created one of the most unforgettable albums of all time. -CJ

12. The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2

The Glow Pt 2. is The Microphones most acclaimed work up to date, and rightfully so. Raw acoustic guitar tones, soft boyish vocals that are executed without sounding overtly sensitive or conceited, in combination with out of tune upright pianos and blasts of loud and triumphant instrumental passages (including the occasional analog electronics) are amongst a few of the elements that constitute and distinguish the evocative singer-songwriter-song-soundscapes by Phil Elverum. -Adrian

11. Gorillaz – Demon Days

My friend Parker will swear that Demon Days is this generation's White Album, and he might not be that far off. This dark and crazy album shifts styles like congress switches parties, without ever coming off as a gimmick or forced in any way. And all of them are ounces of pop genius. From the cry of "Are They Turning Us In To Monsters?" to the kick of Dare, every moment is brilliantly produced and frighteningly catchy. This album is as wonderful as it is evil. -Stuart

Styrofoam Boots' Decade List 2000-2009, Part 8

(100-91) (90-81) (80-71) (70-61) (60-51) (50-41) (40-31) (30-21) (20-11)

30. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
"We just want to emote 'til we're dead. I know we'd suffer for fashion. Or, whatever." starts the greatest masterpiece and personification of the Indie-psych scene. Kevin Barnes was a hipster in all the wrong ways. As that line perfectly demonstrates, he balances a dense passion for indulging and over-expressing every menial feeling, with a near-unbreakable apathy. This seeming paradox makes him and the thousands of 2007 Williamsburgcore hipsters some of the worst and douchiest people to have ever lived. AND YET. This album makes you empathize with them. In Keven Barnes' honesty, and his huge talent for fun catchy melodies to put over his words you start to think maybe all hipsters are just manic depressant over-thinkers, split between trying to feel their pain and trying to drink and fuck and party to avoid it completely. And in the free associative droning love cry of "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" I can't hate him. And that's something. -Stuart

29. Mastodon- Leviathan

All three people reading this should know that this was my personal choice for #1. No, not #1 metal album, #1 of the decade. While I can easily understand why it didn’t make it there, no other band has revitalized my interest in a genre like Mastodon has. Oh sure, there were metal bands I liked, but I considered them lone exceptions in a sea of boring death metal and goofy symphonic cheese. From the first iconic riff of “Blood & Thunder” to the churning fourteen-minute opus “Hearts Alive,” Leviathan imparted the same feelings of awe I got from listening to Metallica and Kyuss the first time as a teenager. This is metal for everybody, ditching all the questionable excesses that usually mire the genre and replacing them with sheer power, hook-filled songwriting, Brann Dailor’s Keith Moon-like performance and Moby Dick references (Herman Melville has never sounded so badass). If you haven’t heard this yet, what are you waiting for? -Stephen

28. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Broom
Broom is poppy indie rock done right. Compare the melodies and instrumentation in Broom to most other indie pop bands and the distinction is made clear. Include partially improvised outros and home production, and an incredible freshness is presented to the sound. When I hear Broom, It feels as if I’ve gone for a bike ride in the morning while the dew is still fresh, minutes after having woken up in a beautiful dusty and old residential home in Portland, Oregon. Other feelings arise despite the supposed gorgeousness of my surroundings as well: loneliness and melancholy tinged with a little bit of awkwardness that every indie man should feel whilst listening to this album. I digress… Broom is beautiful. -Adrian

27. Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein

I don't know if you've noticed but we don't write all that much about Hip-Hop, and I in particular have yet to write one word concerning it. You see, though I have a strong appreciation for the genre and a few of its players I just generally don't feel like I know enough about it to make critical comments - I can't tell you how often I've been pissed off at someone shooting off about indie after listening to only the Decemberists. So why am I confident putting The Cold Vein this high up the list? Because I can't Imagine a better Hip-Hop record coming out in the last ten years. Because every beat of this album pulses with anger and fierce violent confidence and abrasive poetry. Because it makes me want to scrap everything I know for a dozen hoodies and start digging through crates looking for lost cuts of young angry men with quick mouths and words that cut. This album makes everything else look foolish. -Stuart

26. Hella – Hold Your Horse Is

Sounding more like Don Caballero than Don Cab Mk. 2 does—and with only two people at that—Hella have brought the jagged compositions and neurotic technicality of ‘90s math rock into the 21st century, give or take a few crack and meth benders. Spencer Seim’s guitarwork wanders from pointillist odd time anti-riffing to Nintendo bleeps and bloops, while Zach Hill’s drumming is simply MANIACAL. One listen to “Biblical Violence” will make all aspiring musicians dejectedly snap their sticks in half, set them on fire and shuffle away from the still-burning cinders heads lowered in defeat. Rivaled only by Lightning Bolt in the 2000-2009 “Musical Duo Most Likely to Ruin Your Shit” category. -Stephen

25. No Age – Nouns

In ways this album shook the ground of the indie scene proving No Age to be the leader in an aggressive (though short lived) new wave of punk. Which is not to say it sounds at all like anything coming out of '77, nor anything really that had come before. Trading off heavy rockers and atmospheric head-fucks, this albums has a serious way off seeping into your mind, of getting to you. It makes you want to start a movement. -Stuart

24. Owls – Owls

As the reinvented version of Cap’n Jazz, Owls displays an epic deviation from its roots. Signature off kilter Tim Kinsella vocals, with the addition of in-tune melodic passages, and incredibly intricate and sinewy guitar work that doesn’t recall the sound of any other preexisting instrument (let alone a guitar) are the two most immediately noticeable elements. In addition to the drums played with a jazz like tact and precision end up creating a sound completely unlike Cap’n Jazz, or anything else for that matter. It’s hard to digest, but then you realize it’s not solely experimental: the actual structures of the songs are incredibly solid even with the combination of the oddest musicianship. How can you explain a sound that is dissimilar to everything you’ve heard prior? -Adrian

23. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Jeff Tweedy may have kicked his drug habit and turned into indie’s leading practitioner of boring dad rock, but at one point Wilco was almost slated to become Radiohead’s (better) American counterpart—a band that used subtle electronic and ambient elements to challenge the bounds of a genre (alt-country) without having to raise the volume level or forsake the excellent songwriting that defined Tweedy’s career since his Uncle Tupelo days. “Jesus etc.,” “Poor Places,” and “Ashes of American Flags” are elegant exercises in how to make a ballad resonant and wholly lacking in cliché, and the opener “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” is the single best Wilco song ever recorded, full stop. That they drop in the single-ready jangly pop of “Pot Kettle Black” and “Heavy Metal Drummer” is just a nice bonus. -Stephen

22. Spoon – Gimme Fiction

Most rock bands have to make it clear in the lyrics in order for the listener to understand that the song they're listening to is about sex. With Spoon, the sexuality is implicit: the guitar, the piano and Britt Daniel's voice all tell you that the song is about fucking without you having to process a single word. Gimme Fiction is the band's masterwork, laying these sultry undertones in everything from the rhythms to the cover art and injecting even the screeching, feedback laden guitar solos of "The Beast and Dragon, Adored" and "Sister Jack" with an air of sexual mystery. Spoon pulls out all their tricks for this album, becoming sensual but never soft and jagged without being fully abrasive, all the while keeping an air of Art Deco class that would make any GQ editor fumble for his thesaurus. With Gimme Fiction, Spoon reinvented musical cool for the 21st century, and the world is still trying to keep up. -CJ

21. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

What can be said about the brilliance of Person Pitch? What can it be compared to? The Beach Boys? Maybe if put through a blender and pored over a sugar cube into acid spiked absinthe. It's too rhythm-centric to be called catchy, almost too circular to even be called songs, but too innocently enjoyable to be called anything else. In fact, its far too experimental to be considered accessible, and far too immediately accessible and beautiful and catchy to be really considered experimental. I can't place this album, after listening to it hundreds and hundreds of times over the last three years, and that speaks volumes. It's experimental that hits everyone, everyone in the heart. And that is something I dare you to find elsewhere. -Stuart

Styrofoam Boots' Decade List 2000-2009, Part 7

(100-91) (90-81) (80-71) (70-61) (60-51) (50-41) 40-31 (30-21) (20-11)

40. Toe - My Idle Plot On a Vague Anxiety

Although one may be tempted to compare Toe to their contemporaries such as American Football, Ghosts & Vodka, Pele, or Explosions in the Sky, Toe sounds undeniably distinct for the niche (somewhere along the lines of post-rock and math-rock) genre that they play. Their overall sound is incredibly open and raw, with clean and syncopated guitar and bass melodies in conjunction with torrential jazz and math rock influenced drumming. Although there is nothing abrasive or particularly overwhelming about The Book, never before have I heard the dynamics of a song utilized so effectively, even without the reliance of traditional verse-to-crescendo structure found so common in post rock these days. This sense of expansiveness in their playing is attributed heavily to their drummer, who actually writes distinct and memorable percussion that happens to be extraordinarily technical as well. Add some Rhodes, Vibes, and glitches, and you get the instrumental music you've always wanted to hear but could never find. If you're into post rock, but are tired of its dependence on crescendos, you should check this out. If you're into math rock, but are tired of its emphasis on technicality and dissonance, you should also check this out. If you're into expressive, interesting, truthful and raw-sounding music... I'll just go ahead and say that Toe is one of my top recommendations of all time. -Adrian

39. Animal Collective - Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished

I think I always had an idea in my head, a platonic segment of sound that sprang to mind anytime anyone mentioned "experimental rock", and something that I had been looking for as long as I had been looking for experimental rock. Which is to say, Spirit They're Gone is the experimental album I had always wanted to hear. It's almost painfully inaccessible in all the right and inconsistent and unpredictable ways. It dark and sad and steeped sometimes in feedback, sometimes in crashing drums, sometimes in quietness. It's passionate and violent and beautiful. It's absolutely like nothing they, or anyone else for that matter, have done since. -Stuart

38. The Angelic Process- Weighing Souls with Sand

In the flood of mid to late ’00 “post-metal” bands that tried with varying degrees of success to combine elements of shoegaze and post-rock with thunderous distortion, in 2007 a little-known two-man band came out of nowhere and dropped a record that quietly obliterated most of the competition. Then guitarist/vocalist and main songwriter Kris Angylus suffered debilitating injury in an accident and committed suicide, leaving a damn-near perfect and completely untainted legacy in Weighing Souls with Sand. From eerie ambience to sunken dirges to parts that sound like the war march of ancient gods all suspended within a thick layer of gauzy fuzz and every second of it epic, this album singlehandedly coins quite possibly the coolest subgenre name ever—DOOMGAZE. -Stephen

37. Explosions in the Sky - How Strange, Innocence

How Strange, Innocence is the soundtrack to an arctic winter, with all the imagery and emotions that usually encompass it: feelings of desolation, glimmers of hope, and blasts of light during the sunrise… a visual album if you may. Lush reverbs over melodious note runs and tremolo picked guitars, drums that alternate between the force of a marching band to the tact of a classical percussionist, and occasionally bass that provides a low end rumble to the treble-saturated sound create this post rock 4-piece that enabled such a sound permeate into the mainstream, at least somewhat. Within its grandiosity there is honesty. -Adrian

36. The Music Tapes – The Music Tapes for Clouds And Tornadoes

The Music Tapes weave a kind of experimentalism that is hard to define mostly because it generates a mood completely unlike most music in the genre. Its dense joyous structure doesn't quiet create the twee enthusiasm of their friends the Apples In Stereo nor does it drift close to the fuzzed directness of Julian Kostner's former employer Neutral Milk Hotel. I've tried without the faintest success to describe what this music does for a person before, so I won't try again, but the feeling this creates is magic. -Stuart

35. Queens of the Stone Age – Songs For the Deaf

Though often labeled as "hard rock"-and it's a label I won't disagree with-Queens of the Stone Age have always shot with the ferocity of a heavy metal band, and on Songs For the Deaf they focused that vicious energy into a masterpiece of radio-friendly heavy rock. From the piercing "A Song For the Dead"(which features some of Dave Grohl's best drumming) to the doomy "God is in the Radio" to instant classic "No One Knows", QOtSA pack the album full of anthems from Hell, each one more memorable than the last. Though the concept of sliding fake radio commercials into each song bespeaks a less clever version of "The Who Sell Out", you'll be air guitaring with such intensity that you'll hardly have time to notice. That's right-the guitar in this album is so awesome that it makes sound [even when you're strumming the air itself](brackets should be italicized). Songs For the Deaf is an album that belongs in any red-blooded rock and roll fan's collection. -CJ

34. Converge- Jane Doe

This is the singular album that catapulted Converge from being the definitive East Coast metalcore band to one of the best metal bands in the world. Although they’ve had a string of great releases since this one, none have matched Jane Doe’s incredible cathartic intensity. About 90% of this album is dedicated to tearing your fucking face off and the other 10% is searing, hateful, heart-wrenching buildup, all of it led by Jacob Bannon’s utterly inhuman shriek and the twisted metal distortion of guitarists Kurt Ballou and Aaron Dalbec. And all that is just windup before the eleven-minute title track comes along to finish you off. Jaw, meet floor. -Stephen

33. Isis- Oceanic

Yes, two ocean-themed metal albums on the same list, but Leviathan and Oceanic couldn’t be more different. Instead of drawing from any existing literary themes, Isis models their opus on the deadly mystique and consuming power of the ocean itself, with long stretches of moody keyboards and hypnotic guitar balanced by movements of momentous riffs that crash down on you like a tsunami, as perfectly established by eight-minute opener “The Beginning & The End.” Every drawn out wail and indiscernible savage bark from vocalist Aaron Turner adds to the overall effect, his pipes echoing across the vast soundscapes portrayed. This album redefines “heavy” in a way no one else has since Neurosis’ Through Silver In Blood, and even manages to outdo that monstrous post-metal work on its own terms. -Stephen

32. The White Stripes – Elephant

Every time we unwittingly stumble upon a Stripes' album we had not known previously, in our passionate new burst of enthusiasm at the contents we begin to recommend it with no reservations and these recommendations always end with one thing "I think it's even better than Elephant". But now with all six major albums stored away in our memories and our cd shelves something has become undeniably clear: we use this meter because Nothing is better than Elephant. Jack White discography be damned, the world be damned, Nothing - full stop - is better than Elephant. From the battle cry of the opening track to the harsh screech of Black Math to the light chant of The Air Near My Fingers, from the light teasing and innuendo of Well It's True That We Love One Another to the fuck everyone tell them to get out we'll have sex on the floor passion soaked blues churn of Ball and Biscuit that threatened to turn him into a guitar god, Nothing Is Better Than Elephant. -Stuart

31. Cynic – Traced in Air

Cosmic.
Violent.
Gorgeous.
Necessary.

-CJ

Styrofoam Boots' Decade List 2000-2009, Part 6

(100-91) (90-81) (80-71) (70-61) (60-51) 50-41 (40-31) (30-21) (20-11)

50. Baroness- Blue Album

While often overshadowed by that other art/prog/sludge metal band from Georgia, Baroness have carved their own distinct niche by taking one of Mastodon’s downplayed elements—guitarwork—and going full bore with it. There are enough brilliantly played twin six-string passages on here to make the combined members of Thin Lizzy, Allman Brothers and Iron Maiden sprout a collective boner, all without a single tacky neo-classical arpeggio. Songs like “The Sweetest Curse” and “A Horse Named Golgatha” effortlessly cram in tons of melodic hooks while not sacrificing an ounce of craft or complexity, making Blue Record a Garden of Eden for all lovers of the anthem and beard-stroking critic types alike. -Stephen

49. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

This is Animal Collective’s most straight forward album ever: Basic chord structures and verse chorus verse progressions, with catchy melodies and harmonies. The distinction that is made from AC and just any other pop band is how they utilize these structures to make something totally distinct. Heavy electronic bass heavy percussion, 3-dimensional reverb sounds, samples that sound like birds and blips, a whole bunch of other strange sounds, and odd tones and tonal repetition under a very distinct but reverb saturated mix constitute the most polished rendition of AC so far.

-Adrian

48. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

The Hold Steady has always had an air of wistful melancholy around even their most rollicking party songs, and on Stay Positive they more or less give up on trying to party. It’s a wise move: Stay Positive is their most consistent, and thoughtful, album, focusing mainly on the futility of trying to grow in an environment that keeps pushing you down. There’s nothing quite like looking in front of you and realizing you can’t move forward, and Craig Finn captures that sentiment with wit and wry bitterness on nearly every song. Displacement and disaffection are some of the hardest emotions to understand, and while Stay Positive doesn’t offer any solutions, you’ll know at least somebody gets it. -CJ

47. Portishead – Third

Somewhere just under a decade after the genre and era defining group broke up they reunited and reliesed thier best album. No joke. Rediculous? Perhaps. And about the only think you can usualy count against when reunions occur, but it happened none the less. Portishead started with cool and infinete indie-kid (the dress-only-in-black self-serious 90's kind) detachment on Dummy, moved through the harsher anger and egotism of the self titled effort and now, imporbably, took another right turn and landed on directness and honesty. Its hard to not get caught up in Beth Gibbsons as she desprately aserts "did you know when you lost?" or confidantly, harshly questeions herself over the glitchy, woozy electronics. Add in the hardcore churn of Machine Gun and the minimalistic Uke ballad of Deep Water and you've got an album that blends incense intelligence and intense enjoyment more than anything that has come before. -Stuart

46. El-P- I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

A big step up from the already solid Fantastic Damage, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead sees hip-hop producer par excellence (and greatly improved MC) El-P unleashing his expanded paranoid visions of a dark post-Patriot Act future on a staid, materialistic and brick-stupid mainstream rap scene. Having the good sense to spike the usual roster of Def Jux cameos with oddball picks like Cat Power and Trent Reznor without watering down his unique sonic signature (bangin’ ear candy beats that walk a line between Bomb Squad, old industrial and Aphex Twin) doesn’t hurt. And “Up All Night” and “Habeas Corpses” just to name two are thick with some of the most razor-edged sarcasm and political statements since Immortal Technique’s Volume 2. -Stephen

45. Boris – Akuma No Uta

Arriving a couple of years before Boris’ mainstream (or at least, american indie) breakthrough and fellow Best of the 2000s peer Pink, Akuma no Uta slams headfirst through the wall dividing drone doom and hard rock and creates a masterpiece amid the destruction. That isn’t to say Boris has lost their experimental edge-the first 10 minutes(about a quarter of the entire album) is taken up by a wave of fuzzy guitar feedback. But then it moves into “Ibitsu” and “Furi”, two songs that fuse Melvins-esque grunginess with the rhythm and speed of early hardcore punk. And while the album does slow down eventually, that volcanic energy doesn’t relent for a minute as Boris packs in sludgy hook after booming drumline and proves that the spirit of rock and roll is alive and well, even at its most avant-garde. -CJ

44. Coldplay – Parachutes

Parachutes has the distinctive Coldplay sound everybody is familiar with, with the exception of a few fundamental differences: the songs are structurally dynamic, the vocals are honest and expressive, and the production literally sounds golden. Although the album has an atmospheric quality about it, it stays very firmly rooted to the ground emotionally, which when juxtaposed, creates a very cathartic and powerful sound. I don’t experience synesthesia, but Parachutes has brought me as close as I’ve ever been. Parachutes is Coldplay’s Pinkerton. -Adrian

43. The Sword – Gods of the Earth

“Hipster metal” became the bullshit-du-jour of genre labels during the mid and late ‘00s, an odious phrase designed to abase metal bands who appealed to people not interested in surfing through endless black metal demo tapes in order to find a decent guitar riff. Well, if this stuff is for hipsters, than buy me a scarf and toss me a PBR, because Gods of the Earth was bar none one of the best metal albums of the ‘00s. Featuring head-pounding riffs and a propulsive energy that could drag even the sternest concertgoer into a mosh pit, The Sword created an album that was as an appropriate soundtrack for a swashbuckling adventure, as much as it was for a bong party. From slow, doomy battle anthems like “How Heavy This Axe” and “The Black River” to the stampeding “Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians”, Gods of the Earth is packed with enough stoney, sword-swinging goodness to last you a full warrior’s quest through Hyboria…or at least to satisfy your primal man urges for the 48 minute runtime. -CJ

42. McLusky- Do Dallas

Picking up right where Jesus Lizard and The Pixies left off and injecting a welcome dose of Bon Scott-esque irreverence, this Welsh trio easily rocked harder than any stale Epitaph punk band, and with ten times the wit. It’s impossible not to love a band that titles its frenetic lead-off song “Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues,” or comes up with lyrics like “Our band is bigger than your band/ we take more drugs than a touring funk band.” Albini’s raw hawburger production does nothing to dilute the inherent hitmaking capacity of “To Hell with Good Intentions” and “Whoyouknow,” and “Fuck This Band” is a perfectly placed and hilarious breather in the midst of the redlining sonics and unrelenting attitude. In a world of bleary-eyed whingy indie, it’s a crying shame a band this badass split up. -Stephen


41. Agalloch- The Mantle

When descriptions for Agalloch are offered by people generally in the know, I’ve heard this Northwest Pacific band referred to several times as black metal with the edges sanded off. But that does absolutely no justice to what these guys actually do, which is to make music for vast wintry panoramas underneath foggy, steel-gray skies. Haughm’s rasping voice flows within a tapestry of chiming and silvery (that’s a word isn’t it?) guitars coated in delay and reverb, martial drumming, bowed upright bass and Native American percussion. Song lengths stretch for over nine minutes yet never overstay their welcome, and while the mood is downcast and weary it never gets oppressive. Think Opeth without the quiet/loud switch and a great deal more finesse and patience. Few metal albums deserve the sobriquet “beautiful.” This is one of them. -Stephen