When Eggs and I first talked about doing a "Best of the Decade" list, I thought it would be easy. I’ve been writing best of lists for the past five or six years, and I usually finish them in a day, two tops. I thought this would be that, gimme a week I’ll give you a list. Nuh uh. Nope. Not even close. I had no idea what I would be up against, and knowing what I know now, this might not have been one of the better ideas I’ve had in my life. It was nearly impossible. It’s been almost a month in the making, and I still don’t think I’ve done a job adequate enough to fully capture what I think about the past ten years. Can you really remember what music meant to you in 2000? 2001? 2006? Think about your life then compared to now. Like, what? How do I do that? Well here you have it. Nights of no sleep, tons and tons of beer, a few dozen handfuls of what I hope were legal pills, and a shit load of anxiety. I’ve tried to rate the following albums using a method that makes sense in a kinda sorta way. The records on this list were judged (as objectively as possible) on (1) how they have stood up over time, (2) how I think they will continue to stand up over time, (3) what they meant to the culture in which they stood and now stand, (4) how well they have furthered the conversation of what music says about its listeners and non-listeners (which is why there will never ever be a country record on any list you’ll ever read, hopefully), (5) how well they have changed the music that came after them, and (6) their musical repeatability; that is, do I crave listening to them if they’ve been put away for a good amount of time. Oh and (7) how little they resemble a jam-band record. I’m probably wrong on almost all of them, and the past month or so has more than likely been a huge waste of my time and energy, but at least I had an excuse to listen to the music that means everything to me. I hope you enjoy.

My "Best of the Decade" List can be found after the jump

Words by Brandon "Tofu Scramble" Hernsberger

50. Polyphonic Spree, Together We’re Heavy (2004)

Playing church rock for the non-believer, Polyphonic Spree formed a cult of personality (the personality of any number of happy emoticons) for a few years that allowed audiences to revel in the space of sheer joy. Together We’re Heavy makes your heart beat fast and faster with its sharp and altogether un-ironic (hipster says huh?) lyrics about love and unquestionable happiness. A more pleasurable album won’t ever leave your speakers.

49. Bjork, Vespertine (2001)

Bjork does more with less than almost any artist I can think of--amazingly interesting yet not all that great a voice and a very intelligent use of orchestral arrangements. That’s it. Her lyrics are nothing much to speak of, her own musical gifts are only semi-gifted, and her persona is overtly and pretty boringly contrived. The reason she makes it onto a best of the decade list is because Vespertine is almost unsurpassed in its moments of beauty. It finds itself serendipitously existent in the meaning of perfect place perfect time. It’s Bjork’s most important contribution to music, and it works with every listen.

48. Matt and Kim, Grand (2009)

Try this: get on a bicycle and make sure it’s winter time and dark and then put your ipod on and then say to yourself man it’d be nice to smile right now and then turn on song one of Grand. Your bike will go thanks bro.

47. Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism (2003)

It pains me to put Transatlanticism on this list, mostly because Death Cab is the one band that represents what happens when once proud artists give their careers over to Hot Topic. It pains me because I’ve grown to so resent these guys based on the shittiness of the music they produced after this album that I can’t listen to them anymore. But really there is no denying that Transatlanticism was seminal in the growth of indie music, and on it are songs that show how simple love really is, and how the opposite of simple losing love inevitably becomes.

46. Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals (2007)

There is no such thing as Yeasayer if that one day hadn’t happened when Avey Tare and Panda Bear from Animal Collective listened to the Talking Heads in their headphones and then got some drums and said fuck it, let’s bang it out. All Hour Cymbals gets better every time you listen to it. Every. Time. Which means at least two things: (1) if I had done this list in a week it might have made its way into the top ten, and (2) it has the potential to the be the greatest album of all time. It really does.

45. New Pornographers, Mass Romantic (2000)

Neko Case had no where to go but down from here. She shines with her big and melodramatic voice that sings no belts songs that make you go phew, we still have music to smile to. And next to the perpetually happy AC Newman and the perpetually glum-faced Dan Bejar, Case works here as the perfect go-between, telling the guys I’ll take it from here. Mass Romantic makes me wish for ten years ago, when these great singular talents weren’t yet singular. New Pornographers, we hardly knew ya.

44. Okkervil River, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone you See (2002)

Probably the most forgotten record in the catalog of this alt.country/folk-gaze cum punk indie outfit from Austin, Don’t Fall in Love is overburdeningly sad but then not really all that sad. It’s literarily complicated, but then sorta simple to understand. It’s profound in its creative ways to be philosophically forgettable--all of which add up to an album that confounds the mind of any listener. It’s something and it’s nothing at the same time, and each song will line the memory of your mind even if you can’t remember why. It’s brilliant.

43. Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005)

Thanks be to Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock for putting Spencer Krug and Dan Boekner in a room together then saying you have three weeks to make a record: go. They did, and Apologies to the Queen Mary is what we got. It’s astounding to think this album was made in such a short time--the breadth of lyrical meaning here is hard to describe. Krug turns silver gold no matter the lack of polish, and next to the forcefullness of Boekner’s muted screamability, this is an album that will last decades.

42. The Decemberists, Picaresque (2005)

The album that made the Decemberists a household name in the halls of graduate schools across the country, with songs so varied and so dense that it takes years to understand the import they’ve had on the evolution of indie music. It’s a pre-modernist tome clipped from the mind of a postmodern revolutionary who likely watches whales swim by as he reaches for his Chai, nuzzled softly beneath the pages of his Sunday New York Times on his deck in Portland. Colin Meloy lives in the 21st-century with a 19th-century mindset, and Picaresque is the glorious result of being able to make sense of that.

41. Conor Oberst, Conor Oberst (2008)

The reinvention of an indie rock god, Conor Oberst is one of the simpler albums on this list, and on it you’ll find a singer coming down from the mountaintop of a success he never asked for--the songs sound like a deep breath after a punch drunk fight with your ex that had been going on for years. It’s a relief of an album that carries no anxiety and little angst. It’s Oberst at his most accessible, and most joyful.

40. TV on the Radio, Dear Science (2008)

It’s weird to continue reading about TV on the Radio as an “art-rock” band (mostly because what band isn’t an art rock band? What’s music? Not art?), fraught with the trappings of a place (Brooklyn) that holds certain expectations about what you can and can’t do as musicians, those expectations couched in the context of staying true to some sort of hipster vibe that gives definition to your music. In that way, TV on the Radio is a band beholden to their audience to extend the feeling of being what they already are: mostly white. Which TV on the Radio isn’t, and is why their music is so consistently interesting--they are the opposite of almost everything you think they are. Except if you think they’re great.

39. Smog, Dongs of Sevotion (2000)

Bill Callahan understands death, and he seems almost dead-set on making us all come to terms with the terror of our own mortality. Far and away Smog’s most compelling, if not most accessible, record to date, Dongs of Sevotion is one of those albums that stays with you for years, and even when you’re not listening to it, forces you to consider how you’re living your life.

38. John Vanderslice, Pixel Revolt (2005)

Try finding a more courageous (no, ballsy) artist than one who, four years after the events of 9/11, writes a record that not only questions what it should mean to you as an American, but goes so far as to question whether or not it was actually a good thing. John Vanderslice does that on Pixel Revolt, and because of that, carved a place for himself in the conversation of songwriters who matter.

37. Tom Waits, Orphans (2006)

How can anyone possibly be expected to sum up in a few sentences the sprawling beauty of a three disk set of music by the man who is the living personification of a just lit cigarette in the morning? Tom Waits became relevant again with Orphans, and listening to it will make you think he never went away.

36. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House (2006)

With Yellow House, Grizzly Bear made it okay again to put your ear close to the speaker if only to hear each note that wasn’t there. They write music to make you ponder what your life could be if you’d only just sit there thinking about the meaning of quietude.

35. Mountain Goats, Tallahassee (2002)

John Darnielle has made a name for himself writing short snippety songs that allow the audience to delve into the intricate sadness of his life growing up. Tallahassee has songs that stand up next to any postmodern self-explorations of self. “No Children” is one of those that will force you to re-examine any relationship you might be considering.

34. David Dondero, The Transient (2002)

Dondero seems so disinterested in shaping for himself a rock star identity that it’s sort of confusing, because based on a record like this one he could be far more popularly recognizable than he is. But we’re all better because of it--Dondero can regularly be seen popping up here and there in your neighborhood dive bar, crooning audiences with songs that talk about Scrabble. This is a gem of an album that almost no one knows exists.

33. Tilly and the Wall, Wild Like Children (2004)

Made tap-pop a thing. No percussion, only tap shoes, this record was instrumental in bringing dance music into the consciousness of audiences. Thanks to Conor Oberst for first dating a few of these musicians (maybe all of them?), and then allowing them to showcase their energy in such a new and interesting way.

32. Bright Eyes, Lifted (2002)

Lifted finds Conor Oberst at his most politically savvy, allying the ideas of growing up privileged in a Midwestern family with parents who had wavering morals, and a brother who didn’t understand his own success, with what it really means to vote knowing that social distress would never apply to you. It’s the saddest album Bright Eyes ever wrote, and one that saw Oberst consciously make the shift into the realm of switching his gaze from a non-existent God to a non-existent girl.

31. Antony and the Jonhnsons, I Am a Bird Now (2005)

It’s an album about the male/female dialectic and how it translates into the speakers of mainstream audiences. Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Boy George, and Devendra Banhart all lent their time to Antony’s second full-length, an album so beautifully arranged that it might just make you remember how unimportant sexuality is when listening to art this good.

30. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

It’s hard to put into context how great, and how altogether important Flaming Lips are to the balance of power in indie music. Musicians over the age of 40 don’t see themselves next to the parade of twenty-somethings making their way on and off lists like this every year. But with Yoshimi Wayne Coyne and company made it clear that they don’t plan on stopping their creative/incredibly weird stylings anytime soon.

29. Dogs Die in Hot Cars, Please Describe Yourself (2004)

Another one of those albums that got so overlooked by critics and audiences that it baffles me how people look at themselves in the mirror every morning. Not only a record by a band with probably the coolest name in the history of music, but one that questions celebrity worship better than most books written on the subject. It never ever gets old, and it begs you to listen to it on different levels--the one level that forces thoughtful introspection on the power of lyrical originality, and the other level that forces only smiles and wavy arms.

28. Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)

I know what you’re thinking--this album should be way higher than # 28. And I see your point, but going back to listen to Funeral made me go meh, it’s pretty good. I mean, yeah, it’s really really good; but I think it got lost in its own critical acclaim (kind of like almost every Radiohead record, egads!) and became a product of the self-styled momentum of those who claimed it was more important than it actually was. I hasten to say this record will be forgotten in like five years, but as of now it still makes the top half of the decade (well, close enough). Check back soon. Seriously, though, I think it’s great.

27. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (2008)

There’s not really much to say about the debut album from Fleet Foxes (remember that time they played Walter’s? Good god) that hasn’t already been said. They make beautiful music that is impossible not to love, and they have voices that make having your voice or my voice seem stupid. I worry that their next record can only be worse than this one, because this one is that good.

26. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (2008)

It’s bourgeois rock (bourgerock?) that made it hip again to put pennies in your loafers while forgetting about your white guilt, but at the same time a very timely and smart record. Vampire Weekend had a groundswell of publicity before this album even got released, and luckily the hype was warranted rather than NME contrived Arctic Monkeys style bullshit. Every song on this self-titled first-release could have been (and almost was) a Youtube thumbs up hit, and gave us the knowledge that if nothing else, going to an Ivy League University teaches you how to look good in pink. But really, the album’s terrific.

25. Los Campesinos, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (2008)

I’ve made a pact to myself that I will never ever be friends with someone who doesn’t, upon first listen, start dancing to Los Campesinos. It’s true, I have. Which means that my real friends dance to songs about vomiting in Mexican restaurants and being too pretty for their own good so now are gonna be sad and say fuck, my life is horrible because that mirror looks so so good. But Los Campesinos makes you want to. They write songs so catchy that you almost forget they’re about some of the most depressing things you can put in a song and still have people willing to listen, which is what makes We Are Beautiful so interesting, and quite original.

24. Of Montreal, Skeletal Lamping (2008)

Kevin Barnes is far ahead of his years in marrying the ideas of music and stage performance, and if you only listen to Skeletal Lamping and never have the chance to see Of Montreal live, you’ll be missing something. But as a studio album, it is by far their best, furthering Barnes’ celebrity as a kinda cross-dressing lyrical virtuoso who can somehow make intellectual sense of completely selling out to a cow killing conglomerate as a way to further his career because it’s really what you want. Don Draper couldn’t say it any better. The record is touching and scary and sexual to the point of my god did he really say that, wanna have sex now? and literary and familial and religious and anti-religious and almost everything else. Its sublimation is its genius.

23. The National, Boxer (2007)

Lead singer Matt Berninger is a modern-day Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields), and not just because both men have syrupy baritone voices that carry a feeling of singer versus song--but more in the way that both write condescending break-up songs that are supposed to make the one doing the breaking up the victim. And they work, brilliantly. Boxer was one of those records that took listeners by storm and became the soundtrack to an entire year. At the same time, though, it’s an album that could be the soundtrack to any year, ever.

22. Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)

You know that whole story about when Bob Dylan went electric and because of it the face of music was suddenly different? Yeah, it’s stupid. When Conor Oberst released Digital Ash the same day he released his country record (the incredibly overrated I’m Wide Awake it’s Morning), indie music found itself in a very dubious position--having to negotiate within its own ranks the question of genres within genre. Indie electronic, indie dance, indie hip-hop, indie country, indie punk--they all owe their own individual successes to this one album. Suck on that, old man Dylan.

21. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

To make hip-hop relevant to white youth is an extremely difficult task, and Eminem didn’t do it. He did something much more important with The Marshall Mathers LP. He made hip-hop relevant to a culture where race is becoming less and less so. Rap music now touches all reaches of listenership, and that had never been done before. The Beastie Boys almost did it, but their music never seemed quite real--it always felt like a parody of hip-hop, almost like an uber-intelligent version of Weird Al. But Eminem has done it, and he’s done it in the most interesting way possible--never asking for credit, which makes it seem all the more genuine. I could make a case for this album to be # 1.

20. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on a Hill (2004)

The record that made people ignore the fact that there’s a difference between loneliness and suicide (you’re an ass-hole, CSI Miami), From a Basement is an album about what it means to feel profound levels of despair even while surrounded by dozens of friends. Despite the fact that Elliott Smith didn’t kill himself (he was murdered, though I figured that much was already agreed upon, but I don’t think I’m right about that anymore); it doesn’t much matter as it relates to this beautiful album. It should be enjoyed from a primal level of emotional attachment to a detached version of the saddest moments of your life.

19. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest (2009)

The re-emergence of extreme amounts of four-tracked lo-fi might seem like it’s been around for a very long time, but until Grizzly Bear made it popular again (like what, four years ago maybe?), it was done in very small doses, and largely ignored by audiences and critics alike. It’s everywhere now, including on commercials for laundry detergent (which is kind of a good thing if you ask me). Veckatimest does it best.

18. Band of Horses, Cease to Begin (2007)

Thanks to the soul sucking make you wanna kill anyone from England or Ireland (until you remember the Cranberries are from Ireland and then you’re like, take a deep breath, it’s gonna be ok) capabilities of bands like Coldplay and U2, arena rock type songs should mostly be left for your ex’s dog to eat (I’d say your own dog, but your own dog deserves better); but then along comes Band of Horses--a band so vocally big that they could easily carry the headliner spot of festival X--to make us all re-imagine what it means to be an arena rock band in this era. Cease to Begin is so consistently strong that it could well be called the countrified version of Ok Computer. “Cigarettes, Wedding Bands” will make you never want to get married, ever. Listen to it to be set free.

17. Lil’ Wayne, Tha Carter III (2008)

No artist since Run DMC has reinforced the idea that truly great hip-hop must ally ideas of place, space, and music. Lil’ Wayne is New Orleans as Run DMC was Hollis, Queens. Hip-hop has irrevocable ties to urbanity, and before Wayne showed us that once again, it was an idea that seemed to have been forgotten, or at least ignored. Jay Z pretends to be New York City, but his is a city of sky-scraper mirrored privilege; Lil’ Wayne is raw in a way that few before him were. He makes it almost a necessity to study hip-hop again as not just a type of music, but as a cultural way of living. Tha Carter III brings us a Wayne who seems to have come to terms with the responsibility of speaking for a city hit hard by political indifference and class warfare that many people hoped would have forever remained hidden.

16. White Stripes, Elephant (2003)

The White Stripes are one of the two or three most culturally important American bands of all time. They are our Radiohead, and it’s a shame they don’t get recognized as such. It’s hard to pick which album to include on this list, because they should all be allowed to sit firmly toward the top of any type of list, regardless of the year. What makes the White Stripes so important (and so endlessly fantastic) is that they transcend time like no band before them, singing songs that are impossible to date--and music is definitely not supposed to do that. Just about any White Stripes song can act as the music to the daily act of living in a world where technology is quickly becoming deified, and connection is slipping into the void of connection, what’s connection? Its American-ness lies in its anti-Radiohead qualities: minimalist guitars and even more minimalist drums, songs that celebrate the simplicities of existence completely unconcerned with the large and mostly abstract problems that plague the minds of most musicians. “I Just Don’t Know What to do with Myself,” “In the Cold, Cold Night,” “I Want to be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart,” and “The Hardest Button to Button” are songs that need no explanation outside their own titles. White Stripes create music about you and me and us--the kinds of songs that make you remember what the word “life” actually means.

15. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam (2007)

The album that made Animal Collective Animal Collective finds the band at by far their most accessible, welcoming fans who might have once thought all they did was write nine minute or two minute songs about how much better they are at using their Mac laptops than you. “For Reverend Green” is one of the greatest songs of all time. “Peacebone,” too.

14. Clap your Hands Say Yeah, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (2005)

CYHSY are the forbearers of postmodern DIY, creating for themselves a buzz using only what the internet allows (which, let’s face it, is a shit load). They didn’t sign a record deal, never ever ever toured, and mailed records from a house they shared in Philadelphia--records, it turned out, that were great. What can a band do to promote themselves by themselves that Clap Your Hands didn’t do first? Don’t know.

13. Beirut, The Flying Club Cup (2007)

Zach Condon makes me want to kill myself sometimes the guy’s such a goddamn prodigy. The level of musical mastery Condon has shown over the course of his short career is staggering, and The Flying Club Cup sees him at his most evolutionarily yeah he’s so much better than me at everything. With help from the Grizzly Bears, Beirut has produced a record far better than anything I ever imagined they could. Songs as varying as Albuquerque (where Condon’s from) and Paris (where Condon thinks he’s from), The Flying Club Cup will punch you in the face baguette style.

12. Radiohead, Kid A (2000)

I sort of left this out of the top ten out of principle, just so I wouldn’t look like every other Radiohead shill lining the dead pages of your favorite music magazine; but mostly they’re right--it’s amazing, and I’ll never live long enough to fully understand what makes it so amazing. “Everything in its Right Place,” “The National Anthem,” “How to Disappear Completely,” and “Idioteque” are some of the most important (and best) songs of the past twenty-five years. It’s a record that will live forever.

11. Bright Eyes, Cassadega (2007)

It’s a suicide album. Every single song can and should be traced to Conor Oberst’s genuine feelings of death the months and perhaps years before releasing Cassadega. Oberst had by this time been crowned the god of indie music (deserved or undeserved, it doesn’t matter) and clearly wanted nothing to do with the title. Cassadega should be listened to as a set of songs sung by a man who had produced artistic artifacts at an extraordinary level for over a decade, and now found himself in the precarious position of regret. He had no life outside his art, and this is the record that ended it all for Bright Eyes. They have since broken up (or close to it, at least), and Oberst is off doing other things now, singing mostly simple songs about hammocks and girls who dream in Spanish.. Cassadega is the end of the the political Oberst, the end of the “next Dylan” pseudo-poet with designs on musical importance.. He did in a way kill himself with this album, leaving a wake of brilliance behind him. As a whole, Cassadega contains a narrative arc of jumping out of a moving train to land in a graveyard fitted with a coffin marked boy genius sitting next to a pile of money-lined dirt (which should be taken literally). The songs are terse and anxious; the characters void of personality, chock full of hate. Much more so than anything Elliott Smith ever wrote, Cassadega was almost the end of a musician who gave us his life, and was lucky enough to have taught us the indifference with which to give it back.

10. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (2008)

Whenever I listen to For Emma I’m like, I wonder if Justin Vernon sings instead of talks; I wonder if he takes ten, twelve showers a day so he can justify saying yeah I sing in the shower, why do you ask? His voice is so hauntingly beautiful that you get lost in it as to forget that words mean stuff. It would be easy for Vernon to produce records that are void of substantive lyrics, but the reason For Emma makes the top ten albums of the decade is because of its perfect integration of lyrics and voice to make an unforgettably intelligent and mellifluous album that may not be matched in the next five decades. The triumvirate of “The Wolves (Act I and II),” “Blindsided,” and “Creature Fear” is the perfect climax to an almost perfect album, and “Re: Stacks” ranks as my #1 all time last song on any album ever made. If I could include the EP Blood Bank to go along with For Emma (though I don’t see why I couldn’t), this would rank in my top three.

9. Two Gallants, What the Toll Tells (2006)

Named after a story from James Joyce’s The Dubliners, Two Gallants write songs that sound very similar to how I imagine it felt to wake up the day after the Civil War ended when it finally hit the southerner--shit, slavery is wrong. They’re from a different time, and they are unapologetic for their use of dialogic games that could have been played with Henry David Thoreau, trying to convince him to drink bathtub gin and talk about girls. Adam Stephens is a remarkable songwriter, erudite in everything from the Spanish Armada to the art graffiti on the Golden Gate Bridge, while Tyson Vogel is a freak talent on drums, perfectly complementing with sticks the abrasion that is a Two Gallants anti-chorus. “If you got a throat I got a knife,” basically says it all about what it means to be Two Gallants; and oddly enough is the line reportedly used by Houston Police Officer Gabriel Rodriguez when he attacked Stephens and Vogel and then tazed a 14-year old boy at Walters in 2006. Zing, Rodriguez, zing.

8. Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer (2009)

As silly and self-serving as it is to say someone is too smart for their own good, Spencer Krug just might be. He has seemingly spent his entire career trying to allow his music to catch up to the over-abundance of intellectual bouncy balls flying around in his brain. Krug makes a shit load of music, taking part in at least three (I think it’s four, though) other bands (the most recognizable of which, Wolf Parade, was seen earlier on this list), but somehow all of the records he’s been a part of have been lacking the one thing that makes Dragonslayer one of the top two best albums of 2009--cohesion. It seemed before that Krug was searching for something to tie his songs together, but what he was searching for became more distant with each try (his most confounding record, Random Spirit Lover, preceded Dragonslayer by only two years). But Krug has found what he’s been looking for (what was he looking for, you ask? How to make intellectual sense of loss), and it makes for an almost perfect set of eight songs. They range from the sad and ephemeral (“Idiot Heart”) to the prequel-able (“You Go On Ahead”) to the historically myopic (“Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Oh”); and they all make up an album that, though only recently released, will remain unforgettable.

7. Sigur Ros, ( ) (2002)

There is no band more original than Sigur Ros. Not one. And there is no record more original than ( ), for the obvious fact that it was written in a made-up language with an adorable name, Hopelandic, and can therefore be about anything at any time with the ability to be about something else entirely when the writers of it decide they’re bored with the old story, because who’s gonna tell them they’re wrong. Sigur Ros has found maybe the only loophole possible to isolate musician from critic--there is no possible way for me or anyone else to judge what the lyrics say, because they don’t say anything. Literally. They say nothing, because before the songs were written the songs could not have existed. Think about that. A made up language put into a record made up of two equal halves (represented by the parentheses, first half second half). We do know that the first half is more upbeat and almost poppy while the second half is consciously morose, almost negating whatever it is the first half means. The record makes it this high on the list for the beauty of the sound, the timelessness of lead singer Jonsi’s voice, and especially the brilliance that Sigur Ros displayed when making a record using the power of language in the purest sense possible--language that is understood by only the speaker. It forces the listener to listen to the music and forget about their own hang-ups as they relate to how bands put lyrics together. Sigur Ros has the secret.

6. The Decemberists, The Crane Wife (2006)

Probably the only thing wrong with The Crane Wife is that it turned The Decemberists from a geeky band who read big books and sing about what whale ribs can tell you about the state of your soul into a band concerned with creating interesting concept albums that rival other concept bands (can’t think of any right now, though the first thing that popped into my mind was a laser light show I saw in tenth grade) that confuse people into thinking the band is smarter than they actually are because hey, their songs are twelve minutes long and have no chorus, they must be smart. Well, the Decemberists are not a concept band and The Crane Wife is not a concept album. It is a record based partly on a Japanese folk-tale and partly on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but that only partly matters (and even if it mattered more, still not really a concept). What is most important about The Crane Wife is that it put leading man Colin Meloy firmly at the forefront of smarty pants songwriters more concerned with the narrative of what it means to be a wandering luddite with a seafaring fetish than with the narrative of what it means to be a rock star. The Decemberists have spawned many artists with ambitions of being able to read books real books, but since none of them can match Meloy’s fecund ability to capture the essence of storytelling set to indie guitar, none of them really matter as do the Decemberists; and with The Crane Wife, Meloy and company have out written maybe 90% of the canon of Western Literature. Hey Hemingway, think you know something about whales or big fish or whatever? Fuck off.

5. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)

Like almost no band in the indie era, Animal Collective sets standards of what is acceptable in sound rock. People say they are psychedelic, but they are not psychedelic. People say they are jam-infused, but they are not jam-infused. People say they make jungle-jumps, but they do not make jungle-jumps. Or they do, I don’t know. They play with noise in ways Sonic Youth might if Sonic Youth wasn’t already tied into constructing songs that privilege the electric guitar instead of the computer. Animal Collective is perhaps the first American band (nods, Radiohead) to rely almost exclusively on the limitless opportunities afforded them by technology, which is to say Animal Collective is in no danger of becoming irrelevant. Merriweather, their first record since the effusive and necessary Strawberry Jam, can be listened to as a set of eleven disparate songs, each singular in motive, or as a series of interconnected and sometimes guttural musical flashes of light, taken together to form one sonic blast of hyperintelligence. “In the Flowers,” “My Girls,” “Summertime Clothes,” “Lion in a Coma,” and “Brother Sport” are some of the most memorable songs of the decade lest the year lest one record; and what Animal Collective has given us with Merriweather Post Pavilion is an album that will, without question, make some sort of top albums of the half-century and century and beyond list. It can’t be measured; it outdoes the definition of list.?

4. Sun Kil Moon, Ghosts of the Great Highway (2003)

Without question the most overlooked album of the decade, and perhaps one of the most overlooked albums of my lifetime. The quietly prolific Mark Kozelek has given us the quantifiably breathless definition of beauty with Ghosts, a mood setting record that sounds precisely like the impossibility of love couched in the transcendence of hope--it takes the listener to a place musicians only dream about--inside the sinewy colors of emotional non-thought. It’s an album that forces you to think about the mortality of your own relationships, and sometimes makes you want to destroy them for the simple fact that crying feels somehow necessary when the record spins Sun. At the same time, Kozelek writes some of the most consistently interesting and inspired lyrics, giving all of his albums the layers necessary to speak to a range of listeners who bring with them certain expectations and certainly a range of stories with which to continue seeking plot points through music that spans time.

3. Desaparecidos, Read Music/Speak Spanish (2002)

It’s Conor Oberst’s kinda sorta alter-ego, but not really. It’s another band that sounds a lot like Bright Eyes, but WAY more pissed off. Read Music/Speak Spanish is a political record in the truest sense. It’s a tome on capitalism, the hope for some sort of people-run idea of quasi-Marxism with no leader other than perhaps the mom and pop from your favorite mom and pop store, the demise of the corner coffee shop, and perhaps most importantly--it’s about how Oberst sees Omaha, NE turning into something unrecognizable to the band, a city full of chain stores and zombified consumers unattached to the community in which Oberst grew up. For some reason this record gets left off the catalog of Oberst’s best, but it shouldn’t. It rivals the best literary rhetoric of Guthrie or Dylan or the Clash or any of the other politicos of the past, and it was written when Oberst was only 21. In a vain not unlike Neutral Milk Hotel, Desaparecidos disbanded after releasing this record, and we’re better for it. Nothing could have been timelier than a political record ignorant of 9/11 written by a literary savant unconcerned with his own iconic place in the pantheon of brilliant and important songwriters. An almost flawless record in any measurable category--this album should have brought an end to the idea of political disagreement.

2. Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica (2000)

Maybe the most gorgeously sublime album ever written, Modest Mouse has, with The Moon and Antarctica, blue-printed for all time how to integrate seamlessly instruments and lyrics that act as lyrics that aren’t really there. It was the perfect way to kick off a decade that would follow it by trying to copy it. Much like Neutral Milk Hotel, Modest Mouse is one of those bands that gets better the more they stay away. Not to say that the albums that came after this one weren’t great, but Antarctica was so far ahead of its time that it is impossible to top it. It exists in a different world than do most of the other albums on this list, so it’s hard to compare to anything at all. Each song can and should be listened to on repeat and then repeat repeat repeat for the simple fact that they each tell of a life lived with no thought given to the idea that beauty inevitably ends. It is impossible to catch and explain the emotional magnitude that surrounds each note and each word on each song, but that’s what the album calls for. It’s confusing in its simplicity, and I almost want to say that it deserves a list all its own. “3rd Planet” gets my vote for best opening song on any album made in my lifetime, and the songs that follow it give it its weight in the refined grace of perfection.

1. Bright Eyes, Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Fevers and Mirrors is, and I say this without a trace of hyperbole, the most important cultural document of the past fifty years. I could go into a laundry list of reasons why this is so (spanning anywhere from 200-1,000 pages), but the most important reason is simple: it is the record that launched a thousand indies. Not indie in the independent sense, but indie in the sense that we know it now--the overly saturated genre of music unrelated to the indies of the past (no Pixies stuff here, it’s straight marketing). It gave us Pitchfork, and it gave us political and social apathy; which is to say it gave us our modern day music rating system, and it gave us how to perfect looking aesthetically abstract. Is there any record that could come in higher? Conor Oberst’s triumph--the album is perfectly layered with anger (“The Calendar Hung Itself”), sadness (“Haligh, Haligh”), longing (“Arienette”), acceptance (“Sunrise, Sunset”), and fuck-you, I’ve moved on levity (“An Attempt to Tip the Scales”). It’s a record that will not be surpassed in your lifetime, unless it’s surpassed by Oberst. Ninety percent of the albums that preceded Fevers and Mirrors on this list couldn’t have happened without it--which may sound a bit far-fetched, but to consider what this record did to a genre that didn’t really exist until it was released (appropriately enough it came out in 2000, making the past decade the decade of indie--seems obvious these days) is to consider the impossible. Fevers and Mirrors is our generation’s whatever Beatles record you think is important enough to be number one on a list such as this. It gave life to a life that was lifeless the day before. Number two on this list is not even close.