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November 7, 2009
TOP 50 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE - HONORABLE MENTION
Hi everyone.
I'm back.
I'm returning to you so I can participate in these addictive "Best of the Decade" lists. As anyone who knows me knows, I's all about the lists. I have lists of my favorite condiments (1. Horseradish), favorite kitchen appliances (4. Crock Pot), favorite kinds of 7-Up (1. Cherry), favorite moments in the Cosby Show (6. When Christopher Plummer shows up and starts quoting "Julius Caesar.")
So it's a natural that this rarely read, slightly disreputable blog is a forum for that.
The ots did not have the significant, paradigm-shifting breakthroughs of the 90s - no spiritual equivalents of Nirvana or Pavement. The bands who did shift paradigms in the 90s and survived through Y2K were some of the more productive acts out there: Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Wilco. But there's nothing about, for instance, TV on the Radio or The Strokes who shook foundations the way any number of bands were doing at any point while Val Kilmer was still a big movie star and THE SIMPSONS was still good.
What's to blame? CD Burning? Napster? Metallica? MTV? Youtube? Online Radio? XM Radio? Eminem? The on-going saga of CHINESE DEMOCRACY? George W. Bush? Record Labels? The idiots in the Dandy Warhols?
In 1988, NWA released perhaps the most incendiary cultural documentary of my lifetime, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON. And whatever you want to say about the Generation X moniker, there were a lot of mission statements coming out. In 2009, we've waded through the administration of one of the hated figures from a counter-cultural perspective, and what is the defining document that's been produced from the music world? AMERICAN IDIOT? HAIL TO THE THIEF? Those stupid "Vote Kerry" compilations that come out in 2004? I imagine there's more of a narrative in hip-hop, but I'm so ignorant of it that I'll just leave that to the chroniclers who know more than me.
But even if there's not a lot to define the decade - nothing like grunge to kick things off and the independent revolution to close it, as in the 90s - I still found 50 albums that I really, really like. I'm not going to attempt to define these in some kind of dashing aesthetic terminology. I really don't care if the organs in Arcade Fire albums offers a dissonance that keeps them from reaching transcendence, for instance. That stuff is out there, and I can't write it. So mainly I'm going to tell you why I like these albums. They will get, I suppose, progressively more enthusiastic.
And you'll be able to see right away that either I missed a lot or a lot missed me: hip-hop, House Music, The White Stripes, Indie Dance, the Fleet Foxes, the highs and lows of Kanye West's musical genius/terrible personality. There will be (probably) two kinds of respondents - those who find me esoteric and those who find me laughably predictable because my tastes so commonly mirror everyone else's.
I'll publish ten at a time. I'll work on my 50-41, but in the meantime, here's the honorable mention:
51. Bishop Allen, The Broken String
52. My Morning Jacket, Z
53. Iron & Wine w/ Calexico, In the Reins
54. The Shins, Oh Inverted World
55. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
56. Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
57. The Walkmen, Bows & Arrows
58. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
59. Guns n Roses, Chinese Democracy
60. Bruce Springsteen, Magic
61. Clem Snide, The Ghost of Fashion
62. Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
63. British Sea Power, Open Season
64. Weezer, The Red Album
65. Sufjan Stevens, Seven Swans
66. Calexico, Garden Ruin
67. The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
68. Mason Jennings, Boneclouds
69. The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema
70. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nocturama
71. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, And No More Shall We Part
72. Spoon, Kill The Moonlight
73. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
74. Destroyer, Your Blues
75. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youths, Bloodthirsty Babes
| By Andytown | 11:36 AM
Comments
umm, so how exactly can you determine who the honorable mentions are if you don't know who comes before them??
Posted by: cf at November 7, 2009 5:33 PM
oh, and would you consider your cheese grater to be your number one kitchen "appliance"??
Posted by: cf at November 7, 2009 5:35 PM
HOORAY!!!!!!!!! thanks for the update. i'm truly crap at making lists, but i do love to read them. i'll be interested to see who makes your actual top fifty.... and i will say, if i were to make a list of this sort, seven swans would most definitely be on the real list.
Posted by: bethan at November 7, 2009 11:55 PM