In no particular order, and purely my opinion rather than any attempt to capture a moment:
1) Radiohead, Kid A
2) Belle & Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress
3) Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4) Fugazi, The Argument
5) Langley Schools Music Project, Innocence & Despair
6) The Aislers Set, How I Learned To Write Backwards
7) New Pornographers, The Electric Version
8) Tibi Lubin, I Don’t See You As A Dead Girl
9) Slumber Party, Psychedelicate
10) Radiohead, Amnesiac
I will probably think of a bunch more as soon as I hit “publish,” but I think these are pretty solid contenders, especially 1 through 5 and 10.
The fact that so many of these records came out in the early part of the decade tells you something about how my priorities have shifted. In 2000, I was still the record collecting indie kid I’d been since my college years. Around 2004, things changed: a move to the Midwest, law school, kids, bar exam, a scary spell of joblessness/unemployment followed by a period of nonstop work (welcome to my current life). Even if none of that had happened, I think I’d still find it hard to categorize the last few years in terms of “albums;” in fact, I wonder if that’s becoming an antiquated notion. Over the past couple of years, for instance, there have been individual songs that could easily compete for all-time favorites: Vivian Girls’ “Where Do You Run To,” The XX’s “Crystalised,” Grass Widow’s “Celebrate the Mundane” and “To Where,” a whole slew of songs by Dum Dum Girls. But none of them have struck me as album artists, at least not yet. I’ll hopefully have more to say on 2009 in the next couple of weeks.
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