Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 100 to 91

Disclaimer:

This isn't a definitive list of the best records of the decade, it's not possible for one person to compile something like that. You can only talk about what you've heard, about what's set itself as a figment of your recent past. In this case, my recent past is 2000 to 2009, and here is the music that's either followed or led me through it.

You'll notice lots of records from 2007, that's the year I really learned to love new and predominantly American music. I don't think any other country (bar Sweden) comes close to it for the sheer range of styles and artists.

Here's the Spotify playlist so you can listen for yourself.

Most of it is probably wrong:

100: Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (2001)

'A Place for My Head' was brilliant. At 15, you're still a child. There was enough fantasy and nu-metal to go around for a solid group of chums. This was a record for mid-teens with a diminishing sense of violent angst that goes-with growing up in South London. It's also a strangely sexless record.


99: Radiohead - Kid A (2000)

I remember this being an event for older people. I was still playing N64. It only hit it in 2005, and sadly, it was Tom Cruise that lit this one up. Radiohead are enormous, but perhaps it's their ambition that swells their fanbase between so many different people. You can tell they're doing something right when some people still don't like The Bends. It's depressing, apparently.


98: Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36 (2007)

'The most meticulous music' is how a friend described minimal techno, and it's true. This is almost cinematic in its strange, microcosmic attention to detail. Nothing is more satisfying than a Ricky Villalobos kick. Villalobos's music sounds to me like a tapestry, he sows the tiniest things together and they bloom into something else entirely when realised as a whole.


97: El Guincho - Alegranza (2007)

El Guincho borders on irritable/addictive, but like a good rash it clears itself up and can be beamed back upon in hindsight as a worthy stoicism. It's also the closest anyone has come to matching Madvillainy or Person Pitch for sampling skills. 'Palmitos Park' is danceable and beautiful.


96: Findlay Brown - Separated by the Sea (2006)

This is an underrated record that seemed never to get an American release. Separated by the Sea was a five-star affair in the Guardian, and though you often find Dave Simpson handing out 4-stars like Pizza Hut flyers, The GDN are generally right about the fivers. 'Green Pram' and 'Come Home' do the sad, folkish job. Polished stuff.


95: I'm from Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends (2006)

OK, MASSIVE band (numerically) but succint pop music to sing along to for months. However strange the Blogotheque videos of the lead singer orchestrating timid diners in a Spanish restaurant into a rendition of 'Tree House' are.


94: The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? (2003)

It's a good question, actually. 'Tuff Ghost' does it for me here, there's something irrepressibly itchy about these songs, as if they're all about to fall over.


93: Kria Brekkan & Avey Tare - Pullhair Rubyeye (in reverse) (2007)

Mark Richardson at Pitchfork panned this (the original, unreversed version) but you know he just went home, loaded the thing into Logic and turned it upside down. But he was right, these are lovely, simple folk songs, why reverse them?


92: Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If... (2007)

Kevin Drew doesn't do himself any favours with cock-rock performances at the Shepherd's Bush Empire minus the imperative female contigent of BSS, but this is a super album that probably has gone unnoticed by people who'd actually probably generally really like it.


91: Death from Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine (2004)

These were sensational at Reading in 2005. Sadly, now You're a Woman, I'm a failing solo project/bland electro nipper. 'Little Girl' is one of the best songs of the 2000s.