1. Ted Leo/Pharmacists - The Tyranny Of Distance
(Lookout! Records, 2001)
I had the top 3 slots on this list pretty much decided almost 5 years ago, but I moved some stuff around and eventually made this my #1, in part because this is the most personal choice I could’ve put at the top. This is the album I most identify with sophomore year of college, the year I met my wife, and I put “Biomusicology” on my first mixtape for her, took her to about a dozen Pharmacists shows, and a couple months ago when I drove her to the hospital to give birth to our son, The Tyranny Of Distance was in the car CD player. It feels a little silly to put a vaguely retro-minded power pop album at the top of the Christmas tree representing a decade full of so many new ideas, but sometimes it just feels really good to hear someone writing great new songs in a traditional mode, and Ted Leo takes a lot of elements of my favorite bookish singer-songwriters in the Elvis Costello lineage and combines it with hard rock and punk influences pretty gracefully. I don’t believe in the idea of a ‘perfect’ album, and there are definitely some wasted moments (mostly involving most of the tracks drawing out long sustain/feedback notes at the end), but I love every track on here, even the lesser songs like “My Vien Ilin” and “Stove By A Whale” have some amazing outro guitar part that makes it an essential part of the album.

2. Jay-Z - The Blueprint
(Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam Records, 2001)
As boring and perfunctory as it feels to call this the best rap album of the decade, sometimes the canon is right. I already defended The Dyansty as the origin of The Blueprint’s blueprint and a great album in its own right, and expressed my annoyance at how twisted most critics have gotten Jay’s catalog, but I can’t go so far as to front on The Blueprint’s consistency, it’s just a killer album, even the few songs that aren’t considered classics, like “All I Need,” are pretty fucking dope, and as tired of “Izzo” as I am, I will never get tired of “Renegade” or “Heart of the City” or “Hola Hovito” or “Song Cry” or “U Don’t Know.”



3. Sonic Youth - Murray Street
(Geffen Records, 2002)
Sonic Youth were my favorite band for pretty much the entirety of my teenage years, even toward the end of them when 2000’s NYC Ghosts & Flowers somewhat shook my faith. And then, the year I turned 20, they made the album that pretty much ensured that they’d be my favorite band for the rest of my life. “Rain On Tin” would definitely be the first entry on my short list for best song of the decade, and while in many ways that song is the centerpiece that the other 6 tracks hang on, it’s still kind of amazing how perfect and compact this collection is, expanding on the hippie jam vibe of “Wildflower Soul” while setting up the template for the three other great albums they’ve made since then.

4. Spymob - Sitting Around Keeping Score
(Star Trak/Ruthless Records, 2004)
Like most people, if they ever heard of Spymob, the first I ever heard of them was when they were hired as the backing band for N*E*R*D’s In Search Of, and generally speaking, being the token rock band on a rap label is usually not a good look for anyone involved (what up, Fuzzbubble). I laughed when I read that their lead single, “It Gets Me Going,” was written from the perspective of a dog, but then I realized that the song was catchy as hell. Then my friend Jeff sent me a promo, in 2003 about a year before the album was eventually released, and I realized that these guys are just brilliant, one song after another of perfect observational pop, Steely Dan with a modern rock sheen. So many of the most played songs in my iTunes library are on this album.

5. Kenna - New Sacred Cow
(Star Trak Records, 2003)
Fun fact: there are three albums released by Star Trak Records on the list (this, Spymob and Robin Thicke), and Pharrell didn’t produce or sing or play a note on any of them. Here, though, Chad Hugo was involved, showing that he had an ear for drum patterns and synth tones well out of the range of the Neptunes’ goofy funk style, while assisting a talented singer-songwriter to make the decade’s greatest, most oddly trunk-rattling synth pop album. Sonically this album is just incredible, I love almost every little sound and tone on it.

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