The Long Winters, When I Pretend to Fall (2003)
I believe I mentioned my affinity for albums that take several different styles and meld them into a seamless whole. When I Pretend to Fall is one such, blending basic indie rock with folkier sounds, the "traditional" sound of "Bride and Bridle" (which always reminds me of songs like "Gallows Pole"), an acoustic number ("It'll Be a Breeze") and more piano-driven tracks like "Nora," which defy obvious categorization. The album is astonishingly good - in spite of its tangential connection to one-hit wonder Harvey Danger, it never drew much notice - and has multiple songs that could and/or should have been big pop hits, such as "The Sound of Coming Down," "Blue Diamonds" and "Prom Night at Hater High," to name just three. Every track is outstanding front to back; there are few albums on which I'm unsure of my favorite track, but my answer for this one probably changes every time I hear it. Unsurprisingly, the band hasn't been able to duplicate When I Pretend to Fall; the only successive LP, 2006's Putting the Days to Bed, was good but not great.
I believe I mentioned my affinity for albums that take several different styles and meld them into a seamless whole. When I Pretend to Fall is one such, blending basic indie rock with folkier sounds, the "traditional" sound of "Bride and Bridle" (which always reminds me of songs like "Gallows Pole"), an acoustic number ("It'll Be a Breeze") and more piano-driven tracks like "Nora," which defy obvious categorization. The album is astonishingly good - in spite of its tangential connection to one-hit wonder Harvey Danger, it never drew much notice - and has multiple songs that could and/or should have been big pop hits, such as "The Sound of Coming Down," "Blue Diamonds" and "Prom Night at Hater High," to name just three. Every track is outstanding front to back; there are few albums on which I'm unsure of my favorite track, but my answer for this one probably changes every time I hear it. Unsurprisingly, the band hasn't been able to duplicate When I Pretend to Fall; the only successive LP, 2006's Putting the Days to Bed, was good but not great.
#9
Sufjan Stevens, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State (2003)
Sufjan Stevens basically came out of nowhere with 2003's Michigan album - prior to that, his only records were A Sun Came and Enjoy Your Rabbit, two rather strange concept albums. Michigan, of course, is itself basically a concept album, but one that, like his later Illinois, holds together on every level - tonally, conceptually, emotionally. "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" is the track everyone knows now (thanks to its use on The O.C. of all places), but the album is full of moments like that - on "Romulus," "Sleeping Bear, Sault Ste Marie," "Vito's Ordination Song," and everything else. Stevens' first great album is at once an ode and an elegy to his home state, and it is constantly moving, gorgeous and haunting.
#8
Snow Patrol, Final Straw (2004)
Snow Patrol's first two albums aren't bad, but they gave very little hint of the explosion that was to come, starting with their best album, Final Straw. Along with much of the best of British pop/rock from the last two decades, Final Straw finds Snow Patrol taking small-scale, emotional human issues and blowing them out into virtual arena rock. "How to Be Dead" is about a couple's fight, while "Grazed Knees" finds the band exploring the aftermath of another such confrontation. The singer in "Chocolate" is confessing to infidelity, while "Spitting Games" is about an unrequited schoolyard crush. "Run," my favorite track on the album, is a song sung from one parting lover to another. Much rock music is about such relatively mundane topics, of course, but it's the way the band brings them to you that makes all the difference. Snow Patrol's songs on Final Straw are fabulous and lush, with compulsively singable choruses and the elevation of their everyday topics into full-throated anthems. And at quieter moments, the emotion is in full swing on tracks like "Same." The best art, to me, encourages identification, and even if you can't relate to every single topic on Final Straw, the connection is always there.
#7
The Decemberists, The Crane Wife (2006)
Categorizing the Decemberists is a bit of a challenge. Are they "art rock," or just archaic? Or are they just eclectic? Frontman Colin Meloy brings together folk, rock and pop, along with something of an old-time sensibility, and his masterwork is The Crane Wife, a quasi-concept album based around an old Japanese folk tale. The album's opener, "The Crane Wife 3," is actually the third part of the story as the name suggests, but it's the best track on the album and not 11 minutes long like "The Crane Wife 1 & 2," which can actually be found near the album's back. The order isn't the issue - it's Meloy's haunting lyrics and melodies, which are sublime. The rest of the album is just as good, sometimes pairing upbeat music with downbeat lyrics, such as the Romeo and Juliet-like story in "O Valencia!" A song like "Shankill Butchers" is deliciously menacing, and the album's closer, "Sons and Daughters," is a delightful bit of folk-pop. The album marked the Decemberists' jump to a major label, and with their beautiful story-songs, they certainly made the most of it.
#6
The New Pornographers, Challengers (2007)
Deciding on my favorite New Pornographers album seemed tough at first, but ultimately it wasn't that close. The first four tracks of this album - "My Rights Versus Yours," "All the Old Showstoppers," the title track, and Dan Bejar's "Myriad Harbour" - are right there with any four-song stretch of the decade, particularly when it comes to kicking off an album. Things stay just as good, with tracks like "Failsafe," "Unguided," "Go Places," the delicate, moving "Adventures in Solitude" and Bejar's "Hey Jude"-like closer "The Spirit of Giving." Even as they expand and diversify, the New Pornographers are losing none of their ability to produce killer records. Four years after Electric Version, the sound is almost totally different, but the album is even better. The emotional connections have grown stronger - "Challengers" is probably their best song ever on that front - and Neko Case is even better used on songs like that one and "Go Places" than she has been belting out songs like "Letter from an Occupant." We can only hope that the upward trend continues on the expected 2010 album.
#5
The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow (2003)
Fortunately for the Shins, the hype from "New Slang" didn't hit critical mass until the release of Garden State in 2004, and by that point they'd already put out their second album. Who knows whether it would have mattered, of course, since it's hard to imagine an album this good being thrown off by accident. At just under 34 minutes, it kind of has to be perfect - fortunately, it is. I don't even know how to explain this album if you haven't heard it - just know that there isn't a second that's out of place. It can go from mellower tracks like "Kissing the Lipless" and "Saint Simon" to more rocking tracks like "So Says I" and "Fighting in a Sack" without missing a beat, and the two best tracks might be the slower "Young Pilgrims" and "Pink Bullets." It's hard for me to imagine you disliking this album if you liked any of the other albums in the top 20, so if you haven't heard it... get on it.
#4
The Essex Green, Cannibal Sea (2006)
The Essex Green might have the lowest name recognition of any artist on this list, but it didn't stop them coming up with one of the best albums. Singers Sasha Bell and Chris Ziter pretty much alternate tracks, but the sound hangs completely together, jangling pop in the style of the late 60s and early 70s. "Uniform" and "Elsinore" are my favorite tracks, but the whole thing is a lush mixture of gorgeous vocals and perfectly compact melodies. I could listen to this album over and over again. That the band isn't more famous - and that they seem to be on hiatus and could possibly never produce a follow-up - is more than a little disappointing. In fact, they're so dang non-famous I can't even find a suitable video to put here... so, Google them, I guess. Dammit.
#3
Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy (2005)
This album just continues to grow on me. No one ever accused Will Sheff of not liking to put together concept albums, but this is certainly his masterpiece of the form. The album opens with a cover of an older folk song that shares its title, but it immediately spins much deeper. The raw, dark emotions are rarely far from the surface - "For Real," the album's first original song, contains lines like "I really miss what really did exist when I held your throat so tight," while "Black" finds the singer urging a female friend (their exact relationship is unclear) to "wreck his [her ex-boyfriend or -husband's] life the way that he wrecked yours." The emotions aren't all so dark - on "A King and A Queen," Sheff's character pines for a woman he knows he can't have, but still pledges to "lie by your side for sublime centuries, until we crumble to dust when we're crushed by a single sunbeam." Morbid, perhaps, but delicately sung and touching nonetheless. The album's best song is the epic "So Come Back, I Am Waiting," which takes the themes from the rest of the album and runs them together, as the album's title character informs the object of his affection that he is "calmly waiting to make you my lamb." The album's thematic success, its emotion, its blending of rather poetic lyrics with outstanding music, all mark it as easily one of the very best of the decade, if not of all time.
#2
Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism (2003)
This one also gets my vote as favorite album cover of the decade. We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes is a good album, but there wasn't a lot of warning that Death Cab were going to put out an album like this in 2003. (By the way, check out the dates on the rest of the top ten. 2003 was a pretty good year in music, right?) Yet the album bounces from one indie classic to another, all centered around the titanic eight-minute title track. As with Final Straw, Transatlanticism harnesses basic emotions and mundane moments and, yoking them to perfect melodies, turns them loose. "Passenger Seat" is about someone being driven home, for crying out loud, yet it's one of the most beautiful songs of this or any decade. The acid of "The Sound of Settling" and "Tiny Vessels" is contrasted by the hurt of "Title and Registration" and "A Lack of Color." And on tracks like "The New Year" and "We Looked Like Giants," Death Cab shows they can bust out the rock whenever they feel like it. Swap out the slightly weak "Death of an Interior Decorator" and this could have been #1. It's the perfect mix of music and meaning.
#1
Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (2005)
The very definition of a concept album, Sufjan Stevens' Illinois hangs together far better than it has any right to - which is to say, perfectly. A collage of songs with both very direct and very indirect connections to the titular state, Illinois is a combination of ambitious folk-pop, stories and character sketches that nod at the best of Ben Folds and other artists for whom such lyrics are the bread and butter, and an overarching theme that at once makes no sense and all the sense in the world. A nearly seven-minute Vince Guaraldi sound-alike about the Columbian Exposition and a visitation from the ghost of Carl Sandburg fits perfectly next to an instrumental piece about the Black Hawk War, or a song about being stung by a wasp along the Mississippi River, or a quiet, haunting six-minute acoustic track about a girlfriend dying of bone cancer. Stevens' work can be challenging at times, but he has an ear for melody and a knack for lyrical composition, and if you're willing to take the risk of joining him on the journey, you may just find that, somehow, no one ever covered the state better. Maybe the lack of a serious follow-up is owed to the near-impossibility of topping this album - since 2005, Stevens has released only The Avalanche - basically just an appendix to Illinois - an album of Christmas songs and, just this year, the instrumental work The BQE. While it's clear by now that he never was actually going to make an album for all 50 states, considering how good the two he made were, we can at least hope that he takes another crack at it. But I can understand why he might not want to. Albums like Illinois only come around... oh, maybe once a decade.
The very definition of a concept album, Sufjan Stevens' Illinois hangs together far better than it has any right to - which is to say, perfectly. A collage of songs with both very direct and very indirect connections to the titular state, Illinois is a combination of ambitious folk-pop, stories and character sketches that nod at the best of Ben Folds and other artists for whom such lyrics are the bread and butter, and an overarching theme that at once makes no sense and all the sense in the world. A nearly seven-minute Vince Guaraldi sound-alike about the Columbian Exposition and a visitation from the ghost of Carl Sandburg fits perfectly next to an instrumental piece about the Black Hawk War, or a song about being stung by a wasp along the Mississippi River, or a quiet, haunting six-minute acoustic track about a girlfriend dying of bone cancer. Stevens' work can be challenging at times, but he has an ear for melody and a knack for lyrical composition, and if you're willing to take the risk of joining him on the journey, you may just find that, somehow, no one ever covered the state better. Maybe the lack of a serious follow-up is owed to the near-impossibility of topping this album - since 2005, Stevens has released only The Avalanche - basically just an appendix to Illinois - an album of Christmas songs and, just this year, the instrumental work The BQE. While it's clear by now that he never was actually going to make an album for all 50 states, considering how good the two he made were, we can at least hope that he takes another crack at it. But I can understand why he might not want to. Albums like Illinois only come around... oh, maybe once a decade.
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