I thought the 2nd part of my albums of the decade write-up, which at this point is several thousand words longer than the answer my friend Nik was looking for, would be more upbeat in tone than part one and I still think it might be but it won’t start out that way. It’s also not shorter…but I’m sure you’ll be bored at work at some point this week.

Something about breakup albums or albums written immediately following a breakup seems to push musicians to stretch artistically. Indie pop band The Format made a colossal leap from their first album Interventions and Lullabies to their sophomore release Dog Problems. It’s sort of hard for me to describe Dog Problems for people familiar with my sometimes dreary musical taste because for the most part I think it’s just sticky pop. Which is a genre I’ve always liked but rarely spoken about in public. Maybe I should just say it’s the music that Charlie Brown and the gang would bob their heads to if they got a little older and started having sex.  On Dog Problems lead singer Nate Reuss makes no bones about completely spazzing out over his ex-girlfriend (he actually continues his spaz fest on the debut album of the band he started after The Format disbanded, Fun!). Like a lot of really good pop from the past whether it’s the Cardigans, the Supremes, or the Temptations there are boisterous melodies whose sugar seems purposefully constructed to contrast the forlorn lyrics.

My favorite track on this album is “I’m Actual”. I particularly like the chorus:

Can we take the next hour and talk about me? Talk about me, oh we’ll talk about me

Talk about me, and we’ll only talk about me.

Can we please take this hour and talk about me? And my hatred for corporate magazines

You know they don’t speak to me. The irony is they won’t speak with me.

Now I love this chorus for a few reasons. 1. Because over the years I’ve known countless women who claim to love conversation but really only love to hear themselves talk (occasionally with you in the immediate vicinity). I don’t mind listening but it’s nice to be allowed to speak from time to time 2. Because the words in the chorus are only tangentially related to what the song is about. So many songs are plagued by the same thing bad movies and plays are, too much exposition. To merely say exactly what you mean is a lot less artful and in the end less interesting than using subtext or some other kind of device even just a simple metaphor. This song is about finding a “Dear John” letter from your girlfriend but the chorus is about finally being allowed to speak. Or at least asking to. The last line and a half alludes to the fact the Format could not get airplay or press despite actually selling albums. The name of the band “The Format” is actually a knock on the penchant for mainstream radio to only play cookie cutter 3:30 minute songs. An odd choice for a band so undeniably pop.

The highlights of this album aside from “I’m Actual” are the title track Dog Problems whose beats and melody highlight the band’s love of sixties pop and the Beatles in particular (it had a killer sock puppet video), “Oceans” which deals with loss and Agoraphobia (the latter of which I can sometimes relate to), and the I’m over you but not really song “If Work Permits”. Though I gotta say I also love “Snails”, “Inches and Falling”, “Time Bomb”, “Dead End” and “She doesn’t get it”. The thing about this album is that it gets break ups so perfect it’s hard to not feel some connection to almost every song even if you’ve never been in the situation being described.

The chorus to “Inches and Falling” for example reminds of the manner in which a number of my good friends, who shall remain nameless (if not tagless), have approached relationships in the past, most are better now:

“I love love.  I love being in love. I don’t care what it does to me. These pills are fine to pass the time til I find my new drug. Then, we’ll take our chances. We’ll last a month. We’ll never speak again. I love being in love.”

Not much I can add to that. Though I can say I do prefer actually falling for someone as opposed to merely dating women that I “appreciate” even if we “appreciate” each other nightly I’ve never been a fan of using the word love lightly or quickly. The first line of “Time Bomb” captures the weak conviction of the newly dumped: “Starting out I’m staring over. I’m gonna sleep-e-eep with the next person I meet.” Dog Problems continues in that vein for a bit, when Reuss sings “I’m finding flaws in everyone I’ve reached the point where all I want is to sleep around in hopes that I will catch back up” before he breaks down and asks “Was it worth it when you slept with him?”

“If Work Permits” ends the album and it’s only mildly bitter refrain echos the oft had late term realization of all of those pregnant with self-doubt after an unwanted breakup:

“Sometimes when sailors are sailing they think twice about where they’re anchoring. And I think I could make better use of my time on land.”

Obvious conclusions are sometimes the hardest to come to in matters of the heart but with a few weeks, months and I guess sometimes as much as a few years we look back and see…how fucking stupid we used to be. I think I have a few me’s too look back at…

The Helio Sequence’s Keep Your Eyes Ahead might be my favorite album of the 2nd half of the decade . The first song on the Album “Lately” is a great exercise in subtext and an ingenious way to admit that yeah you do miss someone terribly and think of them daily by saying the exact opposite.  It starts:

“Lately I don’t think of you at all or wonder what you’re up to or how you’re getting on”

And continues:

“I never lay awake at night staring in my bed. And I don’t think about your face or anything you said.

I don’t break down when someone says your name. Or twist my mind in circles wondering which of us to blame.”

There is a coldness in lead singer Brandon Summers delivery on this song and on this entire album that was not present in previous Helio Sequence albums on which he occasionally sang/screamed at the edge of his vocal range. According to some news stories I read around the time the album came out he’d almost permanently lost his voice due to whiskey and dehydraton following the end of a relationship. The change to a more controlled means of vocal delivery put the focus on the instrumentation and lyrics, which I think are amazing. The instrumentation has always been simple guitaist/vocalist and drummer/synthesizer. Summers was reportedly listening to a lot of Dylan from the 1960’s (my favorite Dylan decade) before he penned this album and that influence is apparent specifically in tracks like “Can’t Say No” when he speaks of “Desolate dreamers with heads caught up in the sway” and “Obstinate eaters of organized ignorance making up rules for the mute and the willing”. It is also evident in the acoustic tracks “Shed Your Love” and “No Regrets”.

The sparse “Shed Your Love”, the sonically beautiful “You Can Come to Me” and practically every track on this album have all at some point been on repeat in my itunes.

However, “Hallelujah” is easily my favorite song on this album. I joke about it as a Hallelujah song for agnostics, atheists or just lovers of logic. Though I have to admit I have a more immediate emotional connection to this song. I started having migraines daily in 2007 and later (much later) learned that I have some form of nerve damage. It took a ludicrous amount of doctors and steps to come to this conclusion and I left most offices frustrated and probably in the wrong mood to be behind the wheel of a car. The refrain from Hallelujah basically said it all for me, “We don’t want answers anyway!”. I think I got pretty close to thinking I was crazy because the most frequent answer I’d get from doctors was that nothing was wrong with me. It was bittersweet when I finally got a different answer but it was better than feeling strange and being in pain for no reason. The lyrics:

“And we go a day not believe in god the grays skies fell we felt the pressure drop.

And we were were feeling down. Some eyes were looking down at us.

The souls that made the call. The judge what when they spoke said not at all.

The words that came made not a sound. A mouth said not a sound at all.

Like Sheldon said we wrote a book and rearranged the signs and forms to look like something understood. Like something we had seen before.

And waiting pent, save, sad and look. Up to the stars and counting all the suns and all the moons.

How sad it was that we could not believe. And everyone who believes and everyone who believes and they said.

We all said Hallelujah

We all said Hallelujah

And everyone move around with ease and everyone fell right to their knees and then.

We all said Hallelujah.

We don’t want answers anyway!”

Can’t properly communicate how much I love this song.

“No Regrets” the song that ends the album is a more direct and all acoustic ditty that once again espouses the “seize the day” sentiment, looks toward the grave and the end of a relationship.

Well, I lived my whole life

When I saw your face, sayin’ “Please don’t leave me now.”

Well, I cry a lot

When I see your face, sayin’ “Please now leave me down.

And when that sun sets. I’ll have no regrets

I’ll walk out that door. I’ll shed all my faith

And I wont shed a tear

It’s a great song and hope to end an album with and I suppose it would be a great way to end a life.

During the first part of this decade The Walkmen were my constant companions. No album more than “Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone” captures the watery sound and endless supply of angst evident in almost every song the band has ever released. Nothing around the time so completely captured my mood.  In the opening track “They’re Winning” the theme of disaffected youth and the angry young man tone is set.

They’re winning…and no it’s not fair but what is?

I’m giving up hope I’ve stood in line so many times. How could I…do it all again?

We’re starting…to run out of steam. Fall to our knees.

The headaches and worrying and crying and bills to pay. How could they…keep it up so long?

“They’re Winning”, the title track “Everyone who Pretended to Like me is Gone”, “Revenge Wears No Wristwatch”, “Stop Talking” and my favorite, the song that sucked me in through a Volkawagen commercial, “We’ve Been Had” are all once again about realizing what the status quo is, seeing what it takes to get there (whatever we’ve been sold by whoever) and telling it/them to fuck off.  The chorus of “Revenge Wears No Wristwatch” snidely remarks, “I’ve heard it allll before. I’ve had it upppp to hear” and even claims “this kind of lifestyle doesn’t work, I’m trying something else for a change, for a change.”

I have to admit “We’ve Been Had” encourages some of my more unhealthy contrarian tendencies but they are the ones I prefer. The song begins:

“I’m a modern guy I don’t CARE much for the go go or the retro. Images I see SO…often. Telling me to KEEP trying.

Maybe you’ll get here SOMEDAY. Keep up the work and OK. I close the book on them right there.

I see myself change as the days change OVER.

I hear the songs and the words don’t change. I write them out of a book right there.”

The chorus continues:

“We’ve been had. YOU SAY it’s over. Sometimes I’m just HAPPY I’m older. We’ve been had. I KNOW it’s over somehow it got easy to laugh out loud.”

The jagged manner in which lead singer Hamilton Leithauser stresses and unstresses certain syllables when he sings the first few parts of the chorus creates a nice tension that contrasts the simple piano melody repeated throughout the song. The point where Hamilton sings that he’s “happy” he’s older really hit home to me because the older I get the more “older” means “less of an idiot”. I always prefer to look back and laugh at youthful excesses as opposed to looking back and regretting taking a chance.

The one song on this album that veers a little off The Walkmen’s disaffected bent and gets sentimental instead is “Rue the Day” which could’ve been written about a chance not taken. The story of the song is about being reintroduced to someone you lost touch with somewhere down the line with whom you never got quite as close as you easily could and probably should have been. Suddenly you realize how much you missed them while simultaneously mourning a missed opportunity. Of course all of this reflection about the past in Rue the Day at the end of the album may be a result of the apparent dissatisfaction with the present apparent in the tracks leading up to it.

I think this song could have also been titled “Home for Xmas Break”, “In a Bar on Xmas Eve” or “In the Old Neighborhood”. Through the course of the song Leihauser becomes more honest and sentimental maybe aided by a few spirits in his glass. Towards the start of the song he sings:

“We both laughed cause we’d been friends since long before we met today. But I never thought of you one single day”

But then quickly admits:

“I’d be lying if I said you name never…came up as I’d be thinking of just how I’d like to cash my days in now.

And all I ever do is think of yesterday, man it’s hard to stand up straight.”

And finally devolves into:

“There’s a memory calling. Calling way too loud and way too strong.

Twisting all the bad things into good.

I’m a lucky guy now. But I never know it t’il it’s gone”

Once again. Carpe Diem.

When Broken Social Scene released  ”You Forgot It In People” with only the title of the album they instantly crystalized something that had been unformed but gnawing at my mind in the years after 9/11. Around that time there seemed to be this rebirth in America of our belief in each other….if in each other you meant born and raised in America and White or Black or Asian or Hispanic…but if you were muslim you’d have to prove yourself. In short there seemed be a resurgence of a belief in “us” but a silent death of our belief in “others”. Basically, we forgot it in people. I don’t believe people are intrinsically good or bad but we are all born with a kind of neutral but nevertheless electric capacity. Our genetics, our environment and more and more the constant flow of images and information that we are routinely barraged with can push us towards altruism or genocide. We all exist in that expansive gray area between the Mahatma and Hitler. “You Forgot It In People” is the first of two Canadian albums that I will mention that helped me remake my American ego.

Now this choice may have been influenced by the fact that seeing Broken Social Scene (the entire band present, Stars and Feist were playing Lolla as well and Emily and the guys from Metric showed up despite having just come off a European tour) at Lollapalooza in Chicago in 2006 was one of the best concert experiences of my life…even though they had a short set whose encore was nixed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

There are a number of standout tracks including “Stars and Sons” where Kevin Drew wonders how long his family line will exist after he’s gone. One of my favorites is “Almost Crimes” whose frantic back and forth and the nonsensical lyrics fired off by Drew and Feist create a panicked almost apocalyptic feeling that crescendoes when Feist sings, “We’ve got love and hate. It’s the only way. We’ve got love and hate. It’s the only way!” The song ends with the enthusiastically screamed “I think it almost CRIIIIIIIME” which is repeated three times before Feist and Drew sing “I think it’s almost time”. I’ve always been into the energy of this song, never been exactly sure what it is about but the anticipatory phrasing of the last line always makes me think of sleepless night before the first day of school or that feeling you get before you make a decision that you know will change your life. It’s exciting and scary but you just can’t wait until it starts.

“Anthems for a 17 year old girl”, “Cause=Time” and “Lover’s Spit”. There’s a eclectic energy throughout each song probably aided by the frequent shuffling of lead singers, musical arrangements, tempos and song types.

“Anthems for a 17 year old girl” is probably the fan favorite even though it is the song that is the most bastardized live. I’ve seen it with all of the women who originally sung it at Lollapalooza which rocked but it simply did not work when Drew sang it himself at The Orpheum or Sunset Junction. It is a song that longs for the nostalgia of childhood “used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.”

“Cause=Time” was the song that sucked me in through an odd video for the song that I caught on MTV2’s subterranean. It’s still one of my BSS favorites. Once again an us vs. them scenario is voiced in the chorus:

And they all want to love the cause

They all need to be the cause

They all want to dream a cause

They all need to fuck the cause

In the vocal bridge Drew spells it out.

“You’ve got it all and it’s pretty good but I seem to be in disbelief”

Basically rejecting whatever the accepted norm is. I gotta like.

Lastly, I love the somewhat strange but still effective call to arms in the otherwise lumbering sex ballad “Lover’s Spit”. The song is basically about making out and oral sex but the chorus suddenly and bold claims, “It’s time. That we. Grow old and do some shit.” You can only help but think “Fuck Yeah!” before you rush off and find someone to fuck. But after you do I don’t know you stop complaining about the way things are and start actually doing something about it.

Gotta thank Coachella for always helping me discover new music and for hooking me up with tickets. I had to cut part of the legendary Coachella 2004 short because I had to drive back to LA and hop on a plane to Cape Cod for the Air National Guard. But what I did get to see, besides Radiohead, The PIxies et. al.,  I have often described as an aural orgasm. Now, I know what you’re thinking all properly achieved orgasms have a fairly pronounced auditory component (ha ha, I love nerdspeak) but this one started and ended with music. Of course I’m talking about the whiskey soaked rock blues of the Black Keys. I was leisurely walking towards the main stage unsuccessfully trying to find my friends (a practice I’ve more or less left to chance at recent Coachellas) but was stopped in my tracks when I heard the snare roll that starts off the song “Set You Free” from the album Thickfreakness quickly shift into guitar that seemed to be writhing in paroxysms of ecstasy. From there Dan Auerbach shot off words like a shotgun:

You Hold On / To Love that’s gone.

Run a Mile / To see him smile.

But you don’t know he’s door to door / Playing you / For the fool.

Let him go!

Walk out the door!

And come to me!

I’m gonna set you free!

It was an instantaneous conversion. I completely forgot who I was looking for and got sucked into the heat drenched mojave tent for 45 minutes of relentless rock n’ roll. Patrick Carney is probably my favorite current drummer besides Benjamin Weikel of the Helio Sequence and his sweaty snare pounding at times seemed to lead the song even more than Auerbach’s ferocious guitar. Sort of hard trying to nail down just one Black Keys album The Big Come up is classic but Thickfreakness is the album where “Set You Free” lives and their sound expanded dramatically with Attack and Release…. in the end I think Rubber Factory is the album that stuck we me the most and is the most complete example of the Black Keys’ sound. It starts with “When the Lights Go Out” which has been used in all sort of commercials and shows

Track two, “10am Automatic”, which is all about…a lady of the night who is ill-equipped to function during the day is possibly my favorite. It starts:

“What about the night/ Makes you change?

Oh from sweet/To deranged?”

I love the classic rock n’ roll swagger of Dan Auerbach and I really think “10am Automatic” has such a fucking sweet classic simple chorus…I was mystified that this song and album didn’t elevate this band beyond the critical/ dirty bearded hipster appreciation that they have enjoyed since the start to full mainstream recognition. The chorus is simply:

“You’ve got pains.

Like an Addict

10am automatic”

Beyond that song that I could shower love on forever  and ever another one of my favorites is the slower ballad, “The Lengths” which starts:

“Tell me where you’re going? / What is going wrong?

Felt you leaving / Before you’d even gone.

Hold me now / Never ever / hold me again

No more talk / Could take me from this / Pain I’m in”

I love it when a male musician can mix an assured masculinity with an open vulnerability. Another favorite on this album is the Kinks cover “Act Nice and Gentle” which is so completely transformed that it sounds like a Black Keys original. With each album and EP it seems as if the music just pours out of the Black Keys. They are in constant orbit of my 4-5 favorite artists.

When I went to Coachella in 2005 I didn’t know anything about Arcade Fire. But, I had been disappointed by friend’s enthusiasm for bands in the past and I was still trying to shake the conviction that if people really liked bad music it was because something was wrong with them either inside or upstairs. I finally shook this naive notion when I met a bunch of people (won’t mention any names) in a short period of time who had incredible taste in music and actually exposed me to some good stuff but who turned out to be huge douchebags or otherwise worthless individuals. We all relate to music in different ways…but the best music and art can transcend our individualized notions so that we feel/know that other people listening to the same music or standing next to us at a concert are feeling the same thing.

I’m not sure if Arcade Fire had me from the first song at Coachella but I know that when I heard the first few notes of “Wake Up” my heart began to beat faster. When what felt like the entire Palm Springs area started singing along to the appropriately (for a religious experience) wordless chorus I was sure that the sky would open and we’d all be raptured away to some place where that song was playing all the time. That didn’t happen. But I was singing/mumbling/yelling along by the time the song ended with Win Butler screaming. “You better look out below!” I’ve had a few concert experiences with which I can compare to that show, but not many.

Once I got back from Coachella I picked up Funeral and it has stuck with me since then. If fellow Canadians Broken Social Scene had identified what we Americans had forgotten at the start of the 21st century Arcade Fire did an incredible job of helping us remember. In an oddly worded call to arms in “Power Out” lead singer Win Butlers sings about just that “thing” but for him it’s electric(boogie oogie oogie):

“And the power’s out in the heart of man. Take it from your heart. And put it in your Hand.

And there’s something wrong in the heart of man. Take it from your heart and put it in your hand”

It’s sad but fitting that the many members of the band were dealing with great personal loss around the time of the album’s release. Each song has an otherworldly glow. In America of course we were in the midst of what seemed like a decade long funeral following 9/11 and to avoid criticism the Bush administration made sure we did not forget it. “Wake Up” my favorite song on the album (The Walkmen and Dr. Dog also had great songs called “Wake Up” around the same time) plainly recommends that we ignore those authority figures loading us up with priceless advice:

“Something. Filled up. My heart. With nothing. Someone told me not to cry.

Now that. I’m older. My heart’s colder. And I can see that it’s a lie”

Later he implores us directly.

“Children, WAKE UP! Hold your stick up. Before they turn the summer into dusts.

If the children don’t grow up. Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up

We’re just a million little gods causing rainstorms. Turning every good thing to rust

I guess we’ll just have to adjust”

“I guess we’ll just have to adjust” was the best advice I could have received at the time. But the way that its sung and worked into the already melancholy melody of the chorus made it clear that any adjustment made in whatever form or context would not be easy.

“Lies” more directly addresses/implores us to abandon the thoughts and feelings instilled by patriarchal upbringing, he sings, “People say that you’ll die. Faster than without water. But we know it’s just a lie. Scare your son to scare your daughter”. This line in particular made me think of what my mom and many friends mom’s used to say when I was growing up that being that if your friends were doing drugs then they were not your friends. I always laugh at how near to friendsless I would have been at many points if this were true.

“Lies” and “Neighborhood #3 Power Out” Arcade Fire defined the moment in which we Americans and in the current multinational/global state perhaps North Americans found ourselves. We’d eaten lies after being traumatized by the death of our identify (Naomi Kelin/The Shock Doctrine, look it up!) and as a result the “power” in our hearts was defused.

The album ends with “In the Backseat” another direct and unyielding glance towards the grave through the open mourning of someone who is already sleeping. The chorus sung softly by Régine Chassagne is one of those rare combinations of words and music that successfully defines life itself:

I like the peace

In the backseat

I don’t have to drive

I don’t have to speak

I can watch the countryside

Alice died

In the night

I’ve been learning to drive

My whole life

I’ve been learning

Oh, Norah!

The first half of the chorus speaks of those moments in which we slip into auto-pilot/cruise control as a safety mechanism. It is in the second part, specifically when she speaks of learning to drive, where the whole range of human existence could comfortably fit. Life is about learning to drive…or maybe it’s an automobile lease. Either way this album helped me get back on track and if I was forced to pick just one album that really defined and stuck me with the entire decade this would be it.

Animal Collective without a doubt has to be the band that captivated me the most for the 2nd half of the decade. I got into them after seeing the video for “Who Could Win A Rabbit” off of their album Sung Tongs in 2005 and seeing them at Coachella in 2006. I was tempted to include only one album of theirs in this list but there were two that defined two distinct types of longing I felt during that period. The first was the more than appropriately titled Feels. I can’t think of an album this decade besides the Strokes’ “Is This It?” that nailed the title more effectively. Feels is not about a breakup or  a get together it’s about it all…every up and down is rendered in aurally ecstatic detail, much more so and much less electronicly than 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Standout Tracks are “Grass”, “Did You See The Words”, “Banshee Beat” and “The Purple Bottle”. “Grass” captures all the giddy joy of puppy love. The love in this song is definitely time-stamped somewhere 13-17 as the adolescent/ fall of eden lyrics elude to in the bridge:

“What’s with all the changes since the time I was aware? It’s like the apple eating people that we once were aren’t there.”

It ends with the blind exclamations common in those…preliminary infatuations:

“would you like to see me often though you dont need to see me often, cause i’d like to see you often though i dont need to see you often”

“Did You See the Words” finds joy in every step of a relationship or going from relationship to relationship. The song is sung with the same joy whether speaking in the present moment (“Because its messy yes this mess is MINE!”), dreaming about a possible future for the relationship and realying heavily on alliteration or nostalgically thinking about past lovers and past complications.

Do the elderly couples still kiss and hug and grab their big wrinkly skin so tough wrinkly wrink wrink wrinkly rough….oh oh ohhh

Did you see the words you know, give me rabbies bring you babbies at the hospital

Violent ends with friends that go. I kissed a few in sticky shoes our cartoon show is broken.

The incredible “The Purple Bottle” is all about being surprised and in some ways knocked on your ass by a crush.  There’s a point where you think (or wish) that you are too old for such things but I can relate to the surprise that’s all I’ll say. The words are delivered in a incessant but somehow familiar staccato. It starts:

“I’ve got a big big big heartbeat yeah. I think you are sweetest thing —I wear a coat of feelings and they are loud.

I’ve been having good days. Think we are the right age to start our own peculiar ways”

Towards end of the song surprise and astonishment is fleshed out further:

“Got a crush high thought I crushed all I could. Thought I I crushed all I can then I touched your hand.

Crush high don’t want it stop. Because stories of your brother make my crush high pop.

And you couldn’t really know cause it was in my toes…And somehow I wondered where that crush high’d go.

Got a crush high so I go and take some pills cause I can’t do all of of do’s and STILL FEEL ILL

You get that Woahhhhh! You get that Woahhhhh!  You get that Woahhhhh!  You get that Woahhhhh!”

Towards the end of the album there’s a bit of a comedown but not without some form of comfort. “Banshee Beat” is all about being replaced and getting over it. The most frequent refrain is all about looking at your options: “So I duck out go down to find the swimming poooool”. I guess it could be taken as a “there’s more fish in the sea” for the urban-to-suburbanite. But I think the point that struck me the most in this song specifically when I feel like shit for any reason is:

“But I don’t wish that I was dead no a very old friend on mine once said. Either way you look at you have your fits I have my fits but feeling is gooooood”

“Feeling is gooood” is the one most simplistic yet effective to ways to define the human condition I’ve ever heard. There are fits of bad sometimes extended ones but the good feelings always seem to make up for them.

I’d love to talk about “Turn into Something” the last track on Feels but this is getting long and Strawberry Jam is by far my favorite Animal Collective album. Though not a concept album per se Strawberry Jam is all about wanting to be a kid again. The title itself makes me recall preteen family reunions or mornings at my grandmother’s house in Alabama in the Summer when she’d wake me up with breakfast and I’d have absolutely nothing planned all day afterwards. Of course the album starts with the track “Peacebone” whose chorus warns that:

” an obsession with the past is like a kiiiiiid fllying.

just a few things are related to the old tiiiiime.

when we did believe in magic and we didn’t die.

It’s not my words that you should follow it’s your inside.”

Look back sure, but don’t get stuck. Even so in track two the reminiscing continues as “Unsolved Mysteries” starts:

“Oh look at me. That sweet boy’s plea. His mother cried my child’s tied his laces.

Why must we move on from such happy lawns into nostalgia’s palms and feed on the traces?”

My favorite tracks besides these are “For Reverend Green”, “Fireworks” “Cuckoo Cuckoo” and “Derek”. The  verses in “For Reverend Green” stay firmly rooted in the present (“From one moment to a next”)  but whether you’re “reading in the papers to know what’s best” or one of “a thousand wasted Brooklyners all depressed” you look enviously towards children in the chorus:

A running child’s bloody with burning knees

A careless child’s money flew in the trees

A camping child’s happy with winter’s freeze

A lucky child don’t know how lucky she is

Youth is wasted on the young. blah blah blah. Ha. ”Fireworks” is about just that. I remember watching the fireworks with my family each 4th of July. The chorus of the song sings of the longing for these lost family moments.

“What’s the day? What you doing? How’s your mood? How’s that song?”

Man it passes right by me. It’s behind me. Now it’s gone.

I can’t lift you up my mind is tired. It’s family beaches I desire.

Sacred Nights where we watch the fireworks. Frightened babies poo.

They got two! flashing eyes their colored why they make me feel.

That I’m only all I see some times.”

“Cuckoo, Cuckoo” is the death song on this album but in this instance it is not the last track. In this song the “narrator” is speaking from beyond the grave. The first actually audible words (after a few fleeting “I lost my boy’s”) are “the king and I died. he came floating past my eyes. he was singing his song. Life was good but death’s all wrong.” Of course immediately following the death chant/funeral dirge, which I guess is emerging as a hallmark of really great albums(or Daniel’s opinion of great albums) is Derek a song about new life. At the start of the song Avey Tare is telling his new born child about the dog, Derek, he had growing up and how at times he was not a very good pet owner:

“Had a white and blackish sheltie had a name when we first got him

Should have taken better care of him but he had it ok”

He continues:

“Derek never woke up at night

And in the morning he’s ready to go

And he never had a voice like you

To scream with when he wanted something

I should have been so much more willing

To help out with all the things

That a dog like you needed”

After Avey admits all of the faults he had when he was supposed to take care of his dog as a child the song and the album (which is wholly obsessed with childhood) ends with him touchingly reassuring his own newborn child.

What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you?

See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you?

See inside. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I.

You can count. You can count. You can count. You can count. You can count. You can count. You can count. You can count.

When you count. When you count. When you count. When you count. When you count. When you count. When you count. When you count.

Count on me. Count on me. Count on me. Count on me. Count on me. Count on me. Count on me. Count on me.

What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you?

See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you? See when you?

See inside. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I. Of me I.

Notable omissions to this list are Modest Mouse both because The Moon and Antartica though classic wasn’t the album of my decade, nor was Good News For People Who Love Bad News (though if older Modest Mouse fans get beyond the singles that album is classic too). We Were Dead Before The Ship Sank  was the Modest Mouse album that stuck with me. Mostly because of “Missed the Boat”, “March Into The Sea” and “Parting of the Sensory” but there are any number of great tracks to choose from on that album. I will say Modest Mouse did make it “alright” for indie bands to make money with “Gravity Rides Everything” from The Moon and Antartica which appeared in a Toyota or Honda commercial early in the decade. They basically set the blueprint for indie success in a decade in which it would become common for everyone to have your album months before it’s release date and when album sales would completely be written off as a means for up and coming bands to make money.

Another notable omission is Metric. Yeah, I know more Canadians but Emily Haines has a knack for just saying shit that needs to be said…and she’s hot. She also hung out forever after her solo show at the Viper Room. Her band was actually looking for a party…on the one unfortunate night when I didn’t know of anything going on. But the problem with Metric is that there was no album that captivated me on a consistent basis. And even though Emily would only cop to “Old World Underground” and”Live It Out” that night outside the Viper Room I never set down to listen to Metric without listening to a mix of those two albums and “Grow Up and Blow Away” ( their actual debut  which she called “every fanboy’s wet dream”). The song “Soft Rock Star” from Grow Up… deserved to be on Old World but, whatever. Thier recent release Fantasies was good stuff but if forced to choose I’d have to go with Live It Out. Metric is the band I’ve seen the most this past decade, with Beck being a close 2nd, and I’ve never been disappointed.

LCD Soundsystem was a surprise. My friend Brian mentioned that after becoming well acquainted with “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” but little else of LCD the impressive fully realized artist that appeared on Sound of Silver came as a bit of a shock. I could not agree more.

“All My Friends” will be a song that defines this decade for me forever. Probably because specifically in Los Angeles we are constantly at odds with our jobs (or career trajectory) and our friends and lovers. Sometimes losing touch with what  we ourselves believe to be most important. We “spend the first fives years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again”. Of course all of this back and forth “comes apart like it does in bad films”. And James Murphy goes on to tell us how we will get old, life will step in and we will lose touch no matter hard we try. It like many of the Flaming Lips best songs is an ode to now. This moment. Even so, you can feel years fade away with every monotone guitar pluck and pound on the piano.

“Someone Great” is another seminal song that captures the feeling of losing someone close as an adult. I think this song might have been in my head when I went to my family reunion in 2009. It was the first I’d been to since 1991 and all I could see amongst the the many familiar faces were the ones that were missing. Some of whom had been large parts of the early part of my life growing up. I wish my family lived closer. The only thing that could have made this album better is if “Trials and Tribulations” was on it.

Another omission is the Futureheads. I criticized my friend Brian for choosing the band’s debut for his list rather than their sophomore release News and Tributes but when I sat down to think about it I found that neither album seemed quite complete to me. Though he might be right about the debut just because of the variety of musicianship displayed on that album despite most songs being under three minutes. Hope they have  a breakthrough in the future. Along the same lines for me are The Thermals who hit a creative stride with The Body, The Blood, The Machine a politically aggressive nerd pop punk album and created one of my favorite singles of the decade with “No Culture Icons” from their album Fucking A! but may have missed the mark for me with the album Now We See.

Hot Chip gets better with each album and they have an unparalleled live show for dance bands. Alexis Taylor’s lyrics are sharp funny and their grooves are funky. “No Fit Shape” from The Warning could have been my theme song for a few years. “Ready for the Floor” from Made in The Dark is one of the most infectious tracks of the decade and “Playboy” and “Just Like We (Breakdown)” are under-appreciated classics from Coming on Strong. I expect incredible things from this band in the future.

Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine was extraordinary but I think that the wait and all of the hoopla about the album being shelved might have inflated it’s value in my mind. I’ve been a Fiona fan forever but “Oh Well”, “Extraordinary Machine”, “Waltz” and “Better Version of Me” are some of the best songs she’s ever written. She popped in on a Jon Brion show recently and still displayed all of that sexy shy wary charm she’s always had while belting out jazz standards with Brion and John Paul Jones.

Really wanted to put the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin on this list but it was released in 1999. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War With The Mystics were good but The Soft Bulletin was such a classic album it still outshines them. “Waiting for Superman” and “The Spiderbite Song” and “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” are highlights but, wow. The album completely redefined who the Flaming Lips were. I caught them with Robyn Hitchcock and IQU at Music Against Brain Degeneration at the Palace, now Avalon in 1999 or 2000. I think they were the first band I saw to incorporate a gong into their live set and of course later incorporated the ball that Wayne Coyne rolled around in starting in 2004, maybe at Coachella. “The Spiderbite Song” is one of the most beautifully eloquent expressions of friendship I’ve ever heard and even though I didn’t include a Flaming Lips album in this incredibly long list I have to at least mention it last. It starts simply:

“When you got that spiderbite on your hand. I thought we would have to break up the band.

To lose your arm would surely upset your brain. The poison then would reach your heart from a vein”

Then the chorus, which only becomes more profound with each iteration, kicks in:

I was glad that it didn’t destroy you.

How sad that would be.

Cause if it destroyed you.

It would destroy me-e.

There are a few more scenarios in which Wayne Coyne expresses relief that his friend survived but at the end of the song he gets to the heart of the matter.

“When you fell in love it was so sweet.

So devoted completely swept off your feet.

Love is the greatest thing a heart can know.

But the hole that it leaves in its absence can make you feel…so….low.

And I was glad that it didn’t destroy you.

How sad that would be.

Cause if it destroyed you.

It would destroy me-e.”

My friend Nik asked me my favorite album of the decade and this is the first of two sets of words to come out as a result. It’s long and it’s only part one. I’d skip it if you don’t value my musical opinion.

This might be a bit autobiographical but I can’t help it, it’s music. There are a number of these albums that I may have actually missed when they were hyped, popular or even just current. My musical obliviousness was either because of one of many of life’s little trials and tribulations I’ve soldiered through this decade or some form of drunkeness or debauchery. Before you start to read if you know me you know I listen to rock mostly sometimes folk, electronic, hip-hop but mostly rock so don’t feign surprise.

Let me jump right in at the start. For any calendar snobs I’m including the year 2000 because I’m writing this in the year 2009. In the first few years of the 00’s a number of albums that shaped my decade (hence their inclusion in this list) were released. The Strokes released Is This It?, Badly Drawn Boy Released The Hour of Bewilderbeast, Modest Mouse released The Moon and Antartica and Ryan Adams released Heartbreaker. Kid A was also released this year but Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows all had more personal affect on me. And I’ve been a Radiohead so long and they are so ingrained in my musical DNA that talking about them almost seems like self-aggrandizement.

So, down to timing. When the Strokes released Is This It? They might as well have been releasing music in a vacuum. Because in the realm of mainstream music (which this album instantly was thanks to music industry connections and despite the Strokes undying indie cred) there was little to nothing worth listening to at the time. The title track was well-timed for those of us who may have been feeling musically malnutritioned. The title itself was even a bit more appropriate for me. At the time I had just finished my undergraduate degree at USC, and ended a year and a half long internship at New Line Cinema/Fine Line Features and was on my way…to a record streak of unemployment and student loan phone call dogging. Every Track on Is This It? felt like it was about my own personal disappointment. Life was progressing much slower than the movie previews had made it seem like it would. From “Is this It?” where Julian Casablancas languidly almost drunkenly sings about lying to get back to a chick’s apartment only to get there and end up too pooped to pop to the hit single “Last Night” where he screams about a nebulous emotion that girlfriends and spaceships just don’t get, every track is soaked in disappointment and dissatisfaction. In “New York City Cops” he sings of mutated trajectories in the “rise to the bottom of the meaning of life”, in what seems to be a favorite amongst Strokes fans “Someday” there is even in a tinge of personal dissatisfaction when Casablancas croons “You say you wanna stand by my side, darling your head’s not right”. The last track “Take It or Leave It” (perfect title and near perfect album bookend) even warns, “He’s gonna let you down”. Who is he? I don’t know but you’ve probably met him.  My favorite track on this album for a number of different reasons is “Barely Legal”. I was hooked from the start:

“I didn’t take no shortcuts

I spent the money that I saved up

Ah momma running out of luck

And like my sister don’t give a fuck”

Aside from experiencing an unprecedented streak of bad luck at the start of this century I think what really sold me on these lines and partially on this song was the part about Julian and his sister not giving a fuck. I think the fact that my sister and I don’t often (uh…give a fuck) is well documented in the annals of our family history and frequently confusing for strangers. But that’s true for quite a few members of my extended family. I can’t say how many random strangers and uninterested friends I forced this album on but I can say I do not regret doing so. Won’t talk about all the historical significance, enough magazines and blogs have ranked this as their album of the decade or in the top two and I am writing more about what I felt than what history saw, it’s good simple pop. Well constructed songs, no unneeded flourishes. No further explanation needed. The Strokes don’t disappoint live.

Forward or rather sideways. Around the same time, maybe a year before Badly Drawn Boy, Damon Gough, released his debut album The Hour of Bewilderbeast. It’s a sprawling meandering, at some points seemingly stream-of-consciousness album that I was notified about by my friend Dave Merson-Hess (who also told me to check out Modest Mouse and Pavement @ Coachella in 1999, so I suppose he knows a thing or two). We’d both enjoyed the Badly Drawn Boy Track, “Nursery Rhyme”, on the UNKLE album Psyence Fiction(1998). That track was much more rock so I was surprised and a little disappointed when I heard the Cello in the first half-second of “The Shining”, the first track on The Hour of Bewilderbeast. By the second half second I was sold but tried not to show it. “The Shining” still stands as one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard in any year or decade and in many a particularly infatuated moment it has been used to muse about a number of different women. Some of whose names I’m sure I’ve forgotten. It’s amazing how much emotional heft you can give to a song by adding strings or more appropriately a string. I will concede that orchestral arrangements on pop songs have become cliched but a single violin or cello jumbled up with guitar, bass, drums, drum machine, synthesizer, mac laptop, theremin or whatever passes for an instrument these days still adds feeling. “Magic in the Air” definitely rivals “The Shining” for its simple beauty but my favorite track of the album and possibly the most popular is “Once Around the Block”. I think I love every word in this song but my favorite few are from the last verse:

“Trying to ourtun your fear, you’re running to lose. Heart on your sleeve and your soul in your shoes.”

No life lessons here but anything that you don’t have at least some fear about is likely to be banal, disappointing, or just plain not worth doing. At the end of this album there is the once again appropriately titled final track “Epitaph”. I have this tendency for liking songs wherein it seems like the songwriter just took another look towards the grave which is what Badly Drawn Boy does here. Of course, he is also merely looking towards the end of the album. The lyrics that send this selection of songs off are apt either way:

“Please don’t leave me. Wanting more. I hope you never die. There’s no need to say why. Just promise that you’ll try…”

A little heartbreaking that he had little children sing along at the end but definitely pounds the “Seize the Day!” sentiment home.

I didn’t get into Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker (another [solo] debut) until I was in recovery mode from a woman I never should have gone out with (stole her from a guy, another guy stole her from me around ‘03 but the album was released in 2000). I’ve heard Ryan Adams say he doesn’t even like country. He’s crazy. This album may never have reached mainstream country radio (or Pop radio) but it is a country classic even if he is not a country artist. I can’t start without talking about “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)” because I think it may be the song I’ve listened to most this decade. For anyone tempted to feel sorry for me think of it this way, the older I get the more consistently happy or maybe not happy but less triflin’ I have become so as this song has aged it’s only become more appropriate for me. Each verse is short and simple a man or woman does you bad you do them wrong, then you get high. But in the chorus you reflect:

“Oh one day when you’re looking back, you were young and man you were sad. When you’re young you get sad, when you’re YOUNG!”

It’s almost sounds like he’s nostalgic for lost melancholy when it’s sung. I thought it was a hidden track on the Faces album “Ooh, la la” the first time I heard it and it is very reminiscent of that song. Possibly because when we are young many of us, especially the ones that enjoy music and art, live our lives habitually affected. There isn’t a single thing that happens that we do not have an emotional response to. As we grow older instead of fighting and feeling our way through life and all of the things we find unfair we find our way around these things or else avoid them altogether building personal fallout shelters instead. I assume this is why you have to peel away some women in layers to get to the good stuff. Particularly the smart ladies in Los Angeles. Of course the lyrics of another track, “Come Pick Me Up”, might explain why keeping it hid might be good advice.

“Screw all my friends behind my back, with a smile on your face. And then do it again.”

We’ve all been on one or both sides of that equation.

In 2001 Rufus Wainwright released his sophomore album, Poses. If the Ryan Adams song mentioned above was my most listened to song this decade Poses was by far the most listened to album. It is an opulent mess. Many are familiar with the songs “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” and “California” where Rufus sings about everything thing he likes being a somewhat bad for him and about California being so wonderful he needs to sleep in . But the real standout beauty on this album starts at track three, the title track, Poses. It’s shell is based on the Classical song Roses (the piano melody and gradual entrance of each instrument/counter melody) but inside the song is all about being fucked up either by the end of a relationship or by a desperate need to define oneself (trendy) and partying a bit too much more or less. I found out before Rufus played at Coachella in 07? that he struggled with a Meth addiction for many years. Might have gotten it’s start around this time. This album was written at the Chelsea Hotel. The chorus of “Poses” warns about indulging in too much of something:

“And you said watch my head about it. My head about it. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. No…kidding”.

I always think of this album as a cautionary guide to your twenties. Throughout the album Rufus wears his academia on in sleeve, speaking first of the yellow walls at the start of “Poses” (The Great Gatsby most likely, Daisy), dropping E. M. Forster in “Greek Song” (Where Angels Fear to Tread),  and Thomas Mann(Tadzio, Tadzio) and Grey Gardens in “Grey Gardens”. In later albums he abandons some of the literary name dropping perhaps because he learned, as a lot of us do in our twenties (some others much later), that there is a cliche difference between the learning we receive in school and what we learn by living and at some point failing. With a wink the very gay Rufus also did a cover of his father the very straight Loudon Wainwright III’s song “One Man Guy” that turned out incredible. I try not to listen to it too much because it only encourages my all too nomadic lifestyle. He ends the album with a rumination on death on “In a Graveyard”. A funeral comes to mind with a crowd assembled to celebrate the life of a perhaps prematurely dead friend or lover,

“Worldly sounds of endless warring were, for just a moment, silent stars. Worldly boundaries of dying were, for just a moment, never ours. All was new. Just as the black horizons blue”.

Death is always an opportunity for renewal I suppose. This year has given us more than enough fuel to remake ourselves. Rufus is great live.

A friend of mine Beata, who as a lawyer admits to knowing little to nothing of “cool” music these days, first alerted me to Bright Eyes but it took me quite some time to jump in. Conor Obrest wasn’t hyped beyond comprehension at that point but he was well-known amongst music junkies and musicians. The thing that I’d hear most often was the word “poser”. After a while I realized that this label was only being applied to the man and not the music. To this day many of the people who would label themselves as definitively NOT Bright Eyes fans have never listened to a track. I’d challenge anyone who values really good songwriting to listen to “Lift or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground” and not love or at least be able to appreciate multiple songs. It like many classic albums is probably a song too long. I would lop off “Don’t Know When But A Change is Gonna Come” both because I usually skip that song and the fact that Sam Cooke has a song with a similar title that is infinitely better. That being said from the whiny and angry proclamations made at the start in the “The Big Picture” to acceptance/critique of a marionette type of poser status in False Advertising (“On to a stage I was pushed, with my sorrow well rehearsed”) Conor Obrest displays an inviable amount of lyrical skill and musicianship. On “Lover I Don’t Have To Love” his versatility is on display. Sung in a higher pitch and a nastier baseline and portions would seem right at home on a Prince album,

“I want a lover I don’t have to love I want a girl who’s to sad to give a fuck”.

The beat of “Lover…” offered a glimpse of things to come down the line on Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. My favorite on this album is probably “Nothing Gets Crossed Out”. The title is easy to relate to but so are the circumstances referenced in the song,

“fell under the weight of a school boy crush, start carrying her books and doing lots of drugs”

“heads a carousel of pictures, the spinning never stops”

“I know I should be brave but I’m just too afraid of all this change.”

There is even a point in the song where one could argue he references the shocked stasis that America was trapped in the years shortly after 9/11, “working on the record seems pointless now if the world ends who’s gonna hear it?”.  As the song closes with an appropriate flourish Obrest asks for what we all are looking for either because of our programming by the media, the hormones in our food, or because of that deep well of human longing stored in our collective unconscious:

“So when I’m lost in a crowd, I hope that you’ll pick me out. How I long to be found. The grass grew high I laid down. Now I wait for a hand to lift me up help me stand I’ve been laying so long don’t wanna lay here no more.”

“Lifted…” ends with the sprawling “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves” which tackles everything from lowering your goals, disappointing your parents and nearly dying, to distrusting corporate media and protesting war. It is an end to what I see as an early Magnum Opus for Bright Eyes and an album that really comes in handy if you need to get some shit out. I’ve heard people say that Conor Obrest isn’t old or worldly enough to say many of the things that he has said on his early albums. The frequent accusation is that “he thinks he’s Dylan”. I always laugh at this because Dylan was admittedly, and this admission partially after being exposed, a poser by any subcultural definition. Beyond that much of what Dylan said that was “controversial” he said when he was young. I think we all realize as we age that the older we get the more of what we offer of ourselves to the world is filtered. To gain an edge, not to offend, to win a heart or to prevent heartache. If we can’t count on the young to speak up and state the obvious…then we are fucked. We can look to those people who are too old to care anymore but are unlikely to get anything more than safe answers from the middle-aged. I do not think Conor Obrest is Dylan or anything close but he is easily one of the best songwriters of our era. Obviously, he’s not for everybody but he is talented and “Lift or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground” is amazing.

Sufjan Stevens is another one of the my favorite songwriters of the decade. But there’s a lot about Sufjan Stevens that I cannot relate to. I am not a fan of the midwest, I am not white and he is a hell of a lot more Holy than I am. However, his album Illinois is all about what it took pains for me (and sometimes I feel America) to learn this past decade, humility. In one of many somber classics “Chicago” alone Sufjan says ” I made a lot of mistakes” what seems like a billion times. I could understand why some might be turned off by Sufjan Steven’s delivery because at times when he sings it seems like he is perpetually apologizing. But his songs are so expertly paced and arranged that if you are not drawn in at the start you’ll likely be reeled in by the plaintive plucking of an acoustic guitar or swelling strings towards the end.

My favorite tracks aside from “Chicago” are “Come on! Feel the Illinoise!”, “Casimir Pulaski Day “and “Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother”. There is a point in “Casimir Pulaski Day” that sums up the entire album for me. The song’s title comes from a holiday dedicated to a revolutionary war hero celebrated where else but Illinois. The story of the song involves a friend with whom Sufjan had some adolescent level of intimacy who dies of cancer on Casimir Pulaski Day. The song ends with the following lyrics:

In the morning when you finally go

And the nurse runs in with her head held low

And the cardinal hits the window

In the morning in the winter shade

On the first of March, on the holiday

I thought I saw you breathing

All the glory that the Lord has made

And the complications when I see His face

In the morning in the window

All the glory when He took our place

But He took my shoulders and He shook my face

And He takes and He takes and He takes

The last line in particular “And He takes and He takes and He takes” is for me one of those music moments that define classic songs.

I usually use Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” as an example of what I mean by these “moments” because people usually look at me like I’m crazy. Towards the end of the song Otis says “got to got na na na” and in that barely decipherable exclamation you can really feel what the song is about. Namely, the need to the keep your woman’s spirits up and show her that you love her because she’s poor and you’re poor and the only thing you have to offer is yourself. Try a little tenderness and she’ll forget all of her “waiting” and “anticipating”  and she won’t care that she has to wear “that same old shaggy dress”. In the context of being black and living in the 60’s there’s a whole lot of other shit you’d have to reassure her about. But, I really do think that all of that love and anguish is communicated in maybe even just “na na na”.

Back to Sufjan, it’s not the words per se that  convey the moment in “Casimir Pulaski Day”  because he merely repeats the same thing three times. It’s a combination of the words and the humble way in which they are delivered. Of course in my take on this song He is either “God” or “the cold hand of the universe”. Either way there is an acknowledgement of helplessness in those lines that some people take their entire lives to realize or acknowledge if they ever do. Of course immediately after this the harmonizing voices and the horns kick in proving that there can still be beauty despite all of this inevitable doom.

The last part of my albums of the decade is probably gonna be shorter and probably much happier too. Thanks if you made it this far….