THE PUSHING PAPER TOP 100 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: PART ONE

The time has come. After months of deliberation, the committee of one has finally pieced everything together, if only because I kind of want to get this thing over with. Despite the fact that the decade hasn’t ended yet, and that I’m sure I’ll want to re-order things as soon as the list is published, the world can wait no longer. Hopefully I won’t regret putting this up prior to the release of Till the Casket Drops next week, but it’s not like Clipse didn’t end up all over my list anyway. Hopefully they’ll understand.

Okay, so Part One is as simple as it gets. These albums don’t really have any sort of connotations for me other than my enjoyment of them; they’re just albums that I liked a lot. With that being their primary distinction, obviously some of these albums came close to not making the list, but I did listen to all of them a lot, and I’m pleased to say that there isn’t any filler here.

100. Krallice — Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009)

99. Baroness — Blue Record (2009)

I’m starting this list with two cop-out rankings just to get them out of the way. Both of these albums are just-released follow-ups to terrific debuts by relatively new metal bands. It hasn’t been long enough to fully absorb either of these albums yet — especially the Krallice one, which clocks in at 77 minutes — but I’ve heard enough to know that in due time I’ll like them more than some of the albums currently ranked above them. (I told you decade lists were stupid.)

98. Farben — Textstar (2002)

97. Spiritualized — Songs in A&E (2008)

96. Pitbull — Rebelution (2009)

95. Nachtmystium — Instinct: Decay (2006)

94. Jay-Z — The Black Album (2003)

93. Phoenix — Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)

Me: Nuke Arizona?

Phoenix: We don’t know. Gotta nuke somethin’.

92. Boris — Akuma No Uta (2005)

91. Burial — s/t (2006)

90. Nadja — Thaumogenesis (2007)

89. Heartbreak — Lies (2008)

Here’s a great album that as far as I can tell garnered senselessly minimal attention from the non-dance crowd. Hell, it may not have garnered any attention from the dance crowd either, since I’m not really tuned into that world. Lies is the most menacingly cheesy dance record I’ve ever heard. (The album cover perfectly conveys the album’s overall sound.) I say, why listen to New York hipster music that’s just trying to sound like Italo when Heartbreak is faithfully churning out the real thing?

88. Broken Social Scene — You Forgot It In People (2003)

Admittedly, nothing on this album is even 10% as good as The Hood Internet’s mash-up of some BSS song and R. Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt,” but these songs have held up really well.

87. Stephen Malkmus — s/t (2001)

86. The Go! Team — Thunder, Lightning, Strike (2004)

85. Junior Senior — Hey Hey My My Yo Yo (2005)

This record is living proof that even in the internet era physical distribution still matters, because the two-year-plus delay of this record’s release in America is the only reason I can think of that pretty much no one paid attention to this album, especially since everyone I know who’d ever heard “Move Your Feet” loved it. What was most frustrating for me about this whole ordeal was that Hey Hey My My Yo Yo was even better than D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat. And now Junior Senior is gone forever. The lesson, of course, is that life is cruel and unfair.  At the very least, just do yourself a favor and listen to “I Like Music,” one of the happiest songs of all-time.

84. Nine Inch Nails — The Slip (2008)

No part of me is embarrassed about this. If you ever liked Nine Inch Nails at all and didn’t give The Slip a chance because it’s been fifteen years since The Downward Spiral, then shame on you. I, for one, am thankful that I grew up in a world where little kids were listening to fucked up shit like “March of the Pigs,” and I’m also thankful that Trent Reznor has somehow remained creatively viable.

83. Colour Haze — All (2008)

82. Les Savy Fav — Let’s Stay Friends (2007)

This album to me is a perfect template of how a band — particularly a band that made its name on the insanity of its live shows — should age. That’s not to say that Les Savy Fav have completely mellowed out, but what Let’s Stay Friends lacks in spastic spontaneity, it replaces with better songwriting. Prior to this album, there weren’t many LSF songs you could whistle while on a stroll without sounding like a whacked out bird. Yet no song on Let’s Stay Friends sounds like it came from any other band. To me, this is truly impressive.

81. Super Furry Animals — Rings Around the World (2001)

80. Electric Wizard — Let Us Prey (2002)