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[  Honorables .. 100-91 .. 90-81 .. 80-71 .. 70-61 .. 60-51 .. 50-41 .. 40-31 .. 30-21 .. 20-11 .. 10-1  ]




RADIOHEAD: In Rainbows (2007): It's not Kid A. It's not OK Computer. It's better? Um, no not really, but that doesn’t mean it’s not great in its own way. Radiohead's first record since 2005's underrated Hail to the Thief was their best in almost a decade, and the third masterpiece of their career. Of course, that last point is a bit divisive, and In Rainbows sometimes suffers when put up to the standard of the band’s aforementioned classics. Paranoia and fear color the musical margins of Kid A and the cryptic, lyrical content of OK Computer, while Rainbows features an honest-to-god love song ("All I Need," which Thom Yorke croons with aching falsetto), and a sample of cheering kids on militaristic opener "15 Steps." The sinewy "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" shimmers and shutters, as pensive as anything Radiohead have recorded, but with a surprising sense of contentment that differentiates it from their similar material; "Faust Arp" is the most baroque and maybe the most beautiful song the band has ever put to record; and "House of Cards" floats by with a soulful romanticism that wouldn't have felt in its right place on Kid. That's a testament to what In Rainbows really is: a prism of a record that reflects and refracts all the styles from their previous albums through the more mature and accomplished compositional sense they've built up over two decades of experimentation and refinement. SCM




THE AVALANCHES: Since I Left You (2000): Some things are impossible to recreate, and Since I Left You—the only full-length album by Australian group The Avalanches—is a perfect example. The record’s inimitability has much to do with its style, a combination of live percussion and guitars with what is estimated by the band to be an astounding 3,500 samples. But it possesses another distinct element, one linked more to the attitude and ambition of its creators during its inception than execution of the music itself. Initially, the duo of Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann hadn’t intended these songs to have a wide release, so there was no concern for copyright restrictions and therefore there were few records kept of which samples were used and where. As such, it’s a miracle the album had a proper release at all. And the the way in which the Avalanches combine and present these bits of sound is just as remarkable as the sheer amount of them, which is what makes the record as effective as it is fascinating. There’s so much involved in the music that it should feel fractured, yet it coalesces marvelously into surprisingly emotional, energetic highlights like the trippy funk of “Frontier Psychiatrist,” the techno-inspired “Dominoes” and the celebratory pop title track that kicks off the record. The style and approach of Since I Left You has inspired many, but it remains unique not only because it was the first of its kind, but because no one has created something so masterful and revelatory since. Even the Avalanches themselves haven’t dared follow it up. CN




WILLIAM BASINSKI: The Disintegration Loops I-IV (2003): Ambient music—in all its various forms, many of which have taken their rightful place on this list—oftentimes relies on context to further enhance the listening experience. But The Disintegration Loops, William Basinski's haunting paean to the horrors of 9/11, took on its own, unexpectedly unique aura when the veteran sound artist and pioneering tape processor went about the laborious task of transferring many of his old loops from analogue to digital. And it was this very process—wherein the tapes literally disintegrated with each spin of the reel—that eerily coincided with the attacks of September 11th, 2001, simultaneously soundtracking the destruction of Manhattan while reifying in their new form an elegy to the declining Western civilization. Spread across four CDs, and with the inherent capacity to transform just about any static surrounding, The Disintegration Loops remains arguably the greatest piece of process music ever recorded: reels of sound so achingly beautiful that they’ve managed to turn a nightmare in our past into something truly transcendent. JC




THE BOOKS: The Lemon of Pink (2006): The Lemon of Pink, the second and best album from the enigmatic electro-acoustic sound-collage duo The Books, occupies the unique position as a warm, inviting and altogether human set of ideas refracted through a lens of technology-dependent techniques. Nevertheless, we find an odd sense of comfort in its disorienting experiments and a transportive quality rare among albums of this kind. And compared to an equally impressive debut (2002's Thought for Food), The Lemon of Pink feels a few degrees more personal, as the duo of Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong use far more vocal samples while being careful to never concede the delicate ratio of rickety instrumentation to laptop manipulation. And yet, as evidenced by their follow-up, 2005's Lost and Safe, this quickly evolving song-craft could just as easily send them careening a bit too close to the middle. What we’re left with, then, is The Lemon of Pink, an album that mines the most interesting ideas from two of the most fertile minds to come out of the early-Aughts laptop scene. But what makes this band and this album in particular so special is the beating heart at its center, a wobbling, trembling little thing with enough blood-flow to send the mind racing. And that disorienting quality somehow ripples forth from their album names to their vividly worded song titles, which, together with the music itself, instantly secured a permanent place in our collective consciousness. JC




OUTKAST: Stankonia (2000): To say that Outkast’s Stankonia occupies a unique place in the hip-hop canon of the 2000s is an understatement; there’s simply no other record, from any decade, that feels like this one. Just as it could be argued that nearly every experimental rock album of the last ten years reached for the same creativity and innovation as Radiohead’s Kid A, I’d argue that Stankonia has remained hip-hop’s most prevalent touchstone of the decade, and that no subsequent record has matched its unique achievement. Stankonia is nearly impossible to classify; it draws heavily from rock, soul, and funk, with songs that cover the gamut of moods from the weird to the funny to the politically insightful to the downright prophetic. One song finds the pimp and the poet—Outkast’s duo of Big Boi and Andre 3000—bragging about their exploits in the bedroom and the next finds them bringing our society to its knees with a biting social critique. And perhaps it’s this strange mix of sounds and subjects that make Stankonia so memorable and arguably just as shocking ten years on from its initial release. It’s a sprawling, complex mess, one that’s every bit as intelligent as any record released in the last ten years. And it still managed to produce some of the most influential singles of the decade: “Ms. Jackson,” “So Fresh, So Clean,” and the eerily (now) topical “B.O.B.” Stankonia is a rare record and this is something its increasingly solo-oriented creators seem to realize; there may never be another full-length album collaboration between Big Boi and Andre 3000, and Stankonia reveals the magnitude of that loss. GB




BOREDOMS: Vision Creation Newsun (2000): Released in a limited edition box-set in Japan in the summer of 1999, but not available Stateside until the new millennium, Boredoms' majestic tribal-trance classic Vision Creation Newsun tied a bow on the evolution of a mindset that was birthed as far back as 1993 and Super Roots 3. And from there on out, this kraut-jammed, minimalist-leaning, sun-worshipping percussive explosion would morph and mutate over the course of the next two Super Roots entries (and then, most empathically, with 1995's towering Super Ae) before the Osaka out-rock legends finally cracked the sky and reached the heavens with Vision Creation Newsun—just as the millennium was about to turn. Little did we know that this was the last we'd hear from the band in album format, since as of now the group still hasn't attempted to properly follow up VCN (though an official comeback is said to be in the works). Perhaps the band knew so at the time, since, if nothing else, the intervening years have only proven that there's really nowhere to go from here. And by outlining a trajectory from their post-No Wave, out-rock beginnings to these hypnotizing, future-charting, naturalistic drum-circle jams, Vision Creation Newsun feels like the logical conclusion to a journey that no one could ever have seen coming. JC




CLIPSE: Hell Hath No Fury (2006): Hell hath no fury like a coke-dealing rap duo scorned. If two of the decade's other great hip-hop albums were borne of celebration (Late Registration and The Blueprint, both basking in immense critical and commercial success) this one is the product of anger and frustration. By 2006, the Clipse were rapidly losing their commercial relevance despite a critically acclaimed (and excellent) series of mixtapes. Not since their debut, 2002's Lord Willin', had brothers Pusha T and Malice produced a proper album—and by extension a charting single. Their sophomore LP gestated and suffered release delays due to Jive Records dicking them around, and in the interim it was scrapped and replaced with the dark head-nodder that is Hell Hath No Fury. Like Willin', this record is a product of the collaboration between Clipse and their favorite producers, The Neptunes, but unlike their debut, Hell Hath is heavy on, well, heaviness. "It's like tryin' to fly but they clippin' your wings," growls Malice on "We Got It for Cheap (Intro)," and that chip on the brothers' collective shoulder is felt throughout. But so is their immersion in the dope game, which has always defined the "coke rap" they excel at. "Mr. Me Too" gets a lot of milage (as do most of the tracks here) off of the Neptunes' minimal, bass heavy beat, but its Pusha and Malice's intricate tales of "Pyrex Turs turned into Covali furs" that compel us in the same way Scorsese and DePalma visions of the aggrandized gangster lifestyle do. That's always been the Clipse's greatest skill: if they aren't the most lyrical dudes, they sure know how to tell a riveting, gritty story, and they do so from experience. "I'm at your door, your eyes are like 'why are you here,'" Pusha drawls on “Chinese New Year,” “mask on face, glock in hand,” and he summons an image just about as vivid as any auteur could frame. SCM




TV on the RADIO: Return to Cookie Mountain (2006): It was 2006. The political landscape was dire. The war on terrorism was a joke and ‘freedom’ was a hollow word that was anything but enduring. Many were wondering: Where do we go from here? How can this turn out okay? And where can we find a place to plant our hesitant hopes? It's this anxiety, mixed with jaded optimism, that TV on the Radio nailed in Return to Cookie Mountain, an album cum time capsule holding a dissenting zeitgeist. A bundle of idiosyncratic rock and roll with a conscience, Cookie Mountain is at once cathartic and consequential. Sans expected obligatory slogans, the album, instead, is an earnest examination of humanity buried beneath layers of musical ingenuity. Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe, who share vocals on almost every track, fuel the songs like fans to the fire. The “ennui unbridled” that the swaying “I Was a Lover” criticizes is certainly not theirs, but they mournfully include themselves in the crime nonetheless: “But we’re sleepwalking through this trial, and it’s really a crime it’s really a crime it’s really a crime.” Its staggered beat and lazy synth-horn open the album like an emotional plea. Although many of the 15 tracks are lyrically contemplative, none neglects the importance of cutting a groove, be it submissive or driving. However, it’s the more forceful moments on Cookie Mountain that grab you by the collar and ask you to take action, even if it's just moving your body. “Playhouses” and “Blues From Down Here” bubble up like boogie-woogies on electric crank, and “Wolf Like Me,” with its hard-hitting beats, fuzzy guitar and word-slinging, is enough to turn a whole room of fans into animals. Cookie Mountain was a perfect pitch for the moment, but, more importantly, it's a fervent rock beacon that will be howling forever. KS




THE NATIONAL: Boxer (2007): After a number of releases comprised mostly of rage-addled guitar rock, the ever-dour gents of The National emerged from the New York shadows in 2007 with a comparatively restrained but nevertheless intensely focused set of dread-fueled mood music. After years of intense maturation—and with oftentimes stunning individual results, particularly with the suddenly rather beloved Alligator—Boxer found the band re-aligning their priorities. As if fully formed from inception, this now totally synchronized quintet found the confidence to foreground restraint over angst, killing the listener slowly with their signature dead-stare focus. As a result, we get opener “Fake Empire,” which almost plays like a telegraphed display of impending fireworks--until you realize that (save for galvanizing lead single “Mistaken for Strangers”) the band's chosen to play it close to the vest for a very specific reason. Those demons which seemingly haunt the cobweb-shrouded corners of their sound are the fuel to the National's creative fire, and by holding tight to every last vestige of anxiety, the group is carefully documenting a very specialized routine of exorcism. The power of Boxer, therefore, may not yet be fully realized, but as the prominent trends of crossover indie continue to fall by the wayside, the National will be left standing with this monument to shadow-treading heartache. JC




BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE: You Forgot It In People (2003): They've since become the most substantial of Canadian indie-rock supergroups, but when they released their seminal sophomore album, You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene felt more like the world's most happy accident. After an underwhelming, predominantly instrumental debut album that had more in common with the era's dwindling post-rock scene (not surprising, with members spending time in bands such as Do Make Say Think and Stars, among others), Broken Social Scene leader Kevin Drew took to wedding atmospheric studio embellishments with insistent 1990s indie-rock guitars and modest male-female pop gestures. And the resulting album still manages to sound totally familiar yet completely unique among its many imitators. You Forgot It In People not only crystallized the modern “indie-rock” sound, it also made formidable underground names out of Drew, Brendan Canty, Emily Haines, and, of course, Leslie Feist, whose stunning performance on centerpiece “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” is arguably the greatest breakthrough vocal showcase of the decade. And despite the fact that it was these 13 individual songs that made this the best album of an already strong 2003, its immense stature and stranglehold on the contemporary underground music scene is perhaps its greatest legacy, as it continues to cement itself into the American music canon with every passing day. JC




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