Favorite Albums of 2000-2009: Intro

I know that I'm 1.25 years too late, but I am finally to share with you, friends, an ordered list of my favorite albums of last decade (2000-09). I followed a strategic, tedious, insane and incredibly nerdy process to finalize this list. It took me a very long time, and there were several drafts and revisions. But, I finally have it.

My original plan was to go all out and create a top 100 list of the decade. However, this ended up being too much for one man, and after having set a top 25, it was getting impossible to put the remaining albums in any sort of order that I was confident in or that made sense to me.

So, instead, I settled on a relatively low number: a top 25 list. I'm going to try and make this relatively painless for those of my friends who actually still care about this by spreading it all out over several blog posts. I will reveal and talk about only five albums from the list at a time (and in order), at whatever pace works for me. Maybe this will take two weeks. Maybe this will take a month or two.

First, here is a list of albums from the 2000-09 decade that I hated to leave off the top 25 list. All of these would have easily been in my top 100 list, and were definitely in the running for any sort of top 50. These are my favorite albums from last decade that didn't quite reach the same caliber as my top 25, but are still incredible enough that they deserve to be mentioned:

- Floating World - Anathallo (Artist Friendship, 2006)

- Strawberry Jam - Animal Collective (Domino, 2007)

- Mare Vitalis - The Appleseed Cast (Deep Elm, 2000)

- Relationship of Command - At the Drive-In (Grand Royal, 2000)

- The Unsustainable Lifestyle - Beauty Pill (Dischord, 2004)

- Vespertine - Bjork (Elektra, 2001)

- Domestica - Cursive (Saddle Creek, 2000)

- The Ugly Organ - Cursive (Saddle Creek, 2003)

- Offend Maggie - Deerhoof (Kill Rock Stars, 2008)

- Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. - Deerhunter (Kranky, 2008)

- Destroyer's Rubies - Destroyer (Merge, 2006)

- Bitte Orca - Dirty Projectors (Domino, 2009)

- The Forms - The Forms (Threespheres, 2007)

- The Trial of the Century - French Kicks (Startime, 2004)

- The Medicine - The Jazz June (Initial, 2000)

- Oh You're So Silent Jens - Jens Lekman (Secretly Canadian, 2005)

- We, the Vehicles - Maritime (Flameshovel, 2006)

- Twin Cinema - The New Pornographers (Matador, 2005)

- Neon Golden - The Notwist (City Slang, 2002)

- Owls - Owls (Jade Tree, 2001)

- Person Pitch - Panda Bear (Paw Tracks, 2007)

- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix (Glassnote, 2009)

- No Kill No Beep Beep - Q and Not U (Dischord, 2000)

- Hail to the Thief - Radiohead (Capitol, 2003)

- Real Estate - Real Estate (Woodsist, 2009)

- One Bedroom - The Sea and Cake (Thrill Jockey, 2003)

- Everybody - The Sea and Cake (Thrill Jockey, 2008)

- Car Alarm - The Sea and Cake (Thrill Jockey, 2008)

- Chutes Too Narrow - The Shins (Sub Pop, 2003)

- Dead Reckoning - Small Brown Bike (No Idea, 2001)

- Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon (Merge, 2007)

- Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State - Sufjan Stevens (Asthmatic Kitty/Sounds Familyre, 2003)

- Come On Feel the Illinoise - Sufjan Stevens (Asthmatic Kitty, 2005)

- Return to Cookie Mountain - TV on the Radio (Interscope, 2006)

- Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (XL, 2008)

- You & Me - The Walkmen (Gigantic, 2008)

- Elephant Eyelash - Why? (Anticon, 2005)

- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco (Nonesuch, 2002)

- Summer Sun - Yo La Tengo (Matador, 2003)

- Taxis - Zoos of Berlin (self-released, 2009)