Category Archives: Best of the decade

10.Band: Sufjan StevensAlbum: Ilinois It’s hard not to be repetitive when I’ve already outlined why I like Sufjan Stevens. Illinois is better than Michigan. The crazy arranged stuff is more fun, the subtle beauty is more subtle. “Chicago” is just such an amazing song, with Stevens’ voice taking center stage. — It’s hard to defend […]

20.Band: MastodonAlbum: Leviathan And so it began. My relationship with Mastodon began with an album that used a classic American novel as a metaphor for the band’s trials and tribulations. It’s a pretty stupid novelty, but I love the idea of music based on books. So, when I saw the furied whale album cover at, […]

30.Band: BattlesAlbum: Mirrored As previously written, Mirrored is the sound of the future, for worse or for (mostly) better. (Album preview here.) 29.Band: BeckAlbum: Sea Change Once of two Beck records to be on the RS 500 list (440), Sea Change still makes me cry. “End of the Day” was part of a terribly difficult […]

40.Band: PinbackAlbum: Blue Screen Life As mentioned in the bit about the Raconteurs, this list is often a romp through my life story since Jan. 1, 2000 (and mostly since May 2003, my college graduation). Thhe deeper I go into the list, the more I find the records that soundtracked my daily existance: The Metro, […]

50.Band: WaleAlbum: The Mixtape About Nothing In making the list, I said I wasn’t going to put any mixtapes on this list — Lil Wayne would’ve been a bigger presence, for sure — but I just couldn’t put a list of great music of the 2000s without this record. Living here in DC, Wale is a […]

60.Band: OutkastAlbum: The Love Below/Speakerboxx OK, complete honesty here: I don’t love Outkast. More and more I think they fit my Kanye West/Lil Wayne theory of white journalists liking hip hop: it’s graded on a certain curve. The dudes in OutKast are, essentially, hipsters (not unlike Common, see below) and journalists fancy them more than, […]

70.Band: Tara Jane O’NeilAlbum: Peregrine I admit I’m too much of a slave to my own tastes. TJO is an early musical crush of mine and I saw her touring this record in college. The “City in the North”/”City in the South” diad is beautiful and TJO’s voice sounds as delicate and pretty as it […]

The series continues after the jump. 80.Band: The DonnasAlbum: Spend the Night I make no secret that I believe the Internet to be mankind’s greatest invention. One of its many great contributions to humanity and society at large is that the notion — probably fostered by media in the 1990s — of musical taste being […]

90. Band: Nelly Album: Country Grammar There’s something invariably important about the music that soundtracks our existence. In writing up this list, I knew I had to put Country Grammar on here somewhere; I’m not even close to OK as to the placement of this record here at 90. It’s not that I love Country […]

Introduction here. I’m starting to use jumps, as the LaLa.com previews are messing with load times. 100. Band: The Flaming LipsAlbum: Embryonic The Flaming Lips’ latest album is less focused than others the band has released, but far less cutesy or maniacal. The band’s other efforts from the decade are nice, but sound forced and, […]