My Top 10 Albums of the '00s

The A.V. Club is doing it, and it was a bit of a shock to find that I only know two of their top 50 albums. So here is my Top 10, in chronological order. I limited it to one album per artist, otherwise it would be all Something for Kate and the Finn family. If your beloved album is not on the list, it may well be because I don't know it. Don't get angry, post your top 10 in the comments.


Powderfinger - Odyssey Number Five
Universal, 2000

How a band from the jungly wilderness that is Brisbane could come up with an album so beautifully grey and urban is astounding.
It's rocky, but not as rocky as the wanky, forced-sounding Vulture Street (2003). Mournfully elegant, it has more in common with the much later Dream Days at the Hotel Existence (2007). It was difficult to choose between and Odyssey and Dream Days, but the former seems to have more complexity and a bit more soul (maybe).

Best tracks: "Waiting for the Sun", "The Metre", "Up and Down and Back Again"


Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Parlophone, 2003

I sometimes feel that only Radiohead remembers that electronic music was invented to create sounds no one had ever heard before. Following the experimentations of Kid A and Amnesiac that began the decade, and are pretty amazing in their own right, Hail to the Thief gives us a strange, 21st Century rock 'n' roll that no one had ever heard before...or has really since.

Best tracks: "There There", "A Punchup at a Wedding", "Scatterbrain"


Deep Purple - Bananas
EMI, 2003

Deep Purple is the only band I know in which constant line-up change over the years has helped it immensely. Every album that has followed the replacement of even one band member has been excellent (and then the quality deteriorates until they replace someone else). Their first album of their fifth decade proved this is still very true. If you get the chance to see Deep Purple live, take it. They haven't been this good since 1974.

Best tracks: "Walk On", "Doing it Tonight", "Contact Lost"


Something for Kate - The Official Fiction
Murmur, 2003

Echolalia, The Official Fiction, and Desert Lights were three of the best albums of the decade. But I made myself choose, and despite having listened to the shit out of all of them, The Official Fiction is the one that still manages to surprise me the most and occasionally it even still gives me goosebumps. If I were to rank these 10 albums, The Official Fiction would easily be Number 1. There's so much pain behind the music - Paul Dempsey's struggles with depression made into music. The Offical Fiction is SFK's most personal album to date, and that may be party why after recording this album Dempsey had a particularly rough couple of years.

Best tracks: "Best Weapon", "Déjà Vu", "Asleep at the Wheel"


Little Birdy - BigBigLove
Virgin/EMI, 2004

These days new bands that tap into a need for good old-fashioned rock 'n' roll seem to do pretty well, at least in Australia (but if the White Stripes went back in time to the late '60s their music wouldn't be that out of place). Little Birdy avoids the fate of (perhaps) cynically derivative, one-album wonder, Jet, by being a lot more original and a lot more distinctive. BigBigLove has a big heart on the cover and the album bursts with exuberance, Katy Steele's rough, Chrissie Amphlett-like, amazingly expressive voice adds so much power to every song.

Best tracks: "Excited", "Come On Little Heartbreaker", "Close to You"


Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Rough Trade, 2006

A friend gave me 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister my first semester at Brown, and it was kind of will-blow-away-in-the-wind, hipster music, but it was nice and quirky, and whatever. My subsequent purchase of The Life Pursuit was rousing proof that the band had come a LONG way in ten years. I still can't figure out what all those band members actually DO, but the sound is so much richer - like, eargasmically so. It's plugged in, with catchy songs, rockin' basslines, and excellent production. When I went to London I walked around Mornington Crescent humming the song.

Best tracks: "Another Sunny Day", "The Blues Are Still Blue", "Sukie in the Graveyard"


Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium
Warner Bros., 2006

RHCP is still making albums? was my first question. And, you know, I liked them, but they'd never been my favourite band or anything. Then I bought this album and still can't stop listening to it. Flea does some amazing things with his bass guitar, and John Frusciante seems to be the only guitarist these days doing great solos, however short and sweet they might be. But more than anything the album is just packed full of great songwriting. My interest was sustained over a double album with barely a dull moment - something not even the White Album can claim.

Best tracks: "Snow (Hey Oh)", "Wet Sand", "Hard to Concentrate"


Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
Helium 3/Warner Bros., 2006

After Black Holes and Revelations, all those people who falsely claimed that Muse was just a second-rate Radiohead promptly shut up. It was as though for years we had been staring at a structure half-buried in the earth and calling it Muse, only to witness it burst out of the ground and reveal itself to be the grandiose electronica anthem pop leviathan it was all along, before launching itself into space at maximum warp, leaving far behind it any stylistic similarity that might have invited the comparison with Radiohead. And then the radio played the crap out of "Star Light" and "Supermassive Black Hole."

Best tracks: "Star Light", "Map of the Problematique", "Knights of Cydonia"


The Killers - Sam's Town
Island/Vertigo, 2006

Because that is the question, isn't it? Not actually which 12 albums you would want to take with you to a desert island, because then you'd want a good range and, you know, a power source. The question's really about what are the albums that you just can't live without? If I didn't listen to Sam's Town every few months I'd go crazy. 2008's Day and Age is a bit too poppy for my taste, and their debut Hot Fuss is a bit too What the Kids Are Listening To These Days. At least it was in 2005. Between aged pop and youthful exuberance lies this flawless record. I still don't really understand what it's about, but who cares? It's the music that counts.

Best tracks: "When You Were Young", "For Reasons Unknown", "Read My Mind"


Crowded House - Time on Earth
Capitol, 2007

I was in America visiting colleges when I found out, via text message from my then-girlfriend, that former Crowded House drummer Paul Hester had hung himself from a tree. The one thing I didn't expect Neil Finn to do in response was to reform Crowded House. The resulting Time on Earth is very clearly centred around Neil and others mourning the death of their friend. It's a beautifully dark and bare album; one which takes many successive listens to warm up to you. Neil is still the only old person I know of whose albums are still hotly anticipated and can top charts, and a big reason is how much his songwriting has evolved over the years. Time on Earth has a lot more in common with Neil's solo albums than the Crowded House albums of the '90s, leading one to perhaps wonder why Crowded House's name is on there, and whether it is Crowded House without Paul Hester. I think the idea of the band reforming to mourn Paul is what's most important, and questioning what it means to be without Paul is exactly what Neil wants his listeners to do.

Best tracks: "Don't Stop Now", "Pour le Monde", "Even a Child"