66. My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me The Workhorse
(Asthmatic Kitty, 2006)
As far as I can tell from other critics’ lists, a lot of pretty young women made a lot of pretentious chamber pop and indie rock albums in the past decade that I haven’t heard. I ended up stumbling upon this one, though, because I saw My Brightest Diamond live and was pleasantly surprised to find out that she made a dark dramatic guitar album that actually rocks pretty hard.

67. T.I. - King
(Grand Hustle/Atlantic Records, 2006)
It may not be his breakthrough album (Trap Muzik) or his best-selling album (Paper Trail), but King nonetheless represents the absolute apex of T.I.’s career, the moment when he seemed to be at the center of the entire hip hop world, not just the south, and it felt completely justified. By leaving behind the bland crossover experiments of Urban Legend behind, he managed to cross over even bigger, with one colossal banger after another, and kind of a rare miracle when a big bloated 75-minute statement of dominance makes for a great rap album too. Even that Pharrell/Common song is kinda dope, against all odds.



68. Blink 182 - Blink 182
(Geffen, 2003)
Lots of pop punk goofballs started taking themselves seriously this decade and abandoning the qualities that made them popular in the first place, and some of them ended up with big boring blockbusters in the process (this is the part where I say fuck nu-Green Day). But Blink 182, in their awkward growing pains, led by the indulgences of the kind of brilliant drummer Travis Barker, ended up with something a little more interesting than anything they made as an efficient teen anthem-producing machine, extravagantly produced and well played but as hardheaded and adolescent as ever. Plus it was nice that Tom DeLonge got out one last great song, “Always,” before aliens started eating his brain or whatever made him do all that Angels & Airwaves stuff.

69. Robin Thicke - Something Else
(Star Trak/Interscope Records, 2008)
Almost everything I said about #92, John Legend’s Once Again, applies here too: R&B singer with a big acoustic hit decides to follow it up with an eclectic and old-fashioned album full of confident genre experiments that ends up hanging together really well as an album. Thicke’s even doing a more contemporary, hip hop-influenced album afterwards, just like Legend. He doesn’t do much new on Something Else, but he does all of it well: disco funk, quiet storm, haunting blues, bossa nova, driving rock, even the obligatory Lil Wayne collab.

70. Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album
(Barsuk Records, 2001)
I don’t really believe in guilt as a motivating factor for listening to music or not listening to it, whether it’s guilty pleasures or indie guilt, but I have to admit that Death Cab is the one band I’m most embarrassed to have on this list. I thought they were overall pretty corny at the beginning of the decade just as I do now, but they happened to make a pretty enjoyable album the one year that a friend of mine tried to sell me on them hardcore and they toured with one of my favorite bands, the Dismemberment Plan (really odd now to think that they were at one point at the same level of popularity to co-headline with Death Cab). It’s also the only album they made with a drummer with any sense of forward momentum, and there’s a nice variation of tempos and sounds to keep it out of total indie sadsack territory and make the more droll lyrical touches come across well. I never thought being a more bookish Built To Spill seemed like a really bankable niche, and if anything their music has gotten less hooky as they’ve become rock radio mainstays, but hey, if it works for them.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 09, 2009 at 1:29 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.