Ruzkin’s Ten Best Albums of the Decade

We're almost at the end of the decade! Congratulations for making it this far! 2010-2019 is going to be a crazy ten years, just like all the ones before. We'll be real excited going into it and sick to death of it by the end, as we always are.

(Yes, I know that the new decade doesn't really begin until 2011... but I couldn't wait another year for this list.)

In the meantime, I thought I'd take a look back on my personal ten best albums of the decade. These are the cd's - one each year - that captured me the most and sparked my imagination. These are the ten I'll keep in my heart for all time. I want to share these albums with my kids, and their kids, and (if I end up living to 100) their kids afterward.

Whenever I think back to the noughties, and conjure up images of the times I shared with loved ones, these albums will be providing the backing track.

Enjoy.

2000: The Avalanches - Since I Left You

Melbourne electronica group The Avalanches released their first and last album in November 2000 and pretty much defined the joy and freedom of summer break for an entire generation of young Australians. Assembled from (reportedly) over 3500 vinyl samples, Since I Left You is gloriously carefree and absurdly complex, taking listeners through a sixty minute continuous mix of musical styles, joyous highs and aching breakdowns. It leaves you wanting to dance and kiss and never leave the beach. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Runners Up: A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms
For a Maynard James Keenan side project, Mer De Noms had a lot of heart and beauty. Hints of metal in a mostly haunting, tragic album. Very listenable.
At The Drive In - Relationship of Command
Who let these people hold guitars? Who allowed them a microphone? Who got them so angry? Can't sing, can't play, but the energy, my GOD, THE ENERGY! Crazy fun. The cd grows on me with every listen.

2001: Tool - Lateralus

Some people got really angry at Tool for changing from a no-bullshit heavy rock band into a progressive arty-farty heavy rock band when they released Lateralus. I think it was the best move they ever made. Lateralus is incredibly intelligent (songs about Jungian psychology and Tibetan reincarnation with lyrics constructed according to the Fibonacci sequence!) without sacrificing any of the bone-shattering musical force of their previous albums. This was the moment when 90's rock grew up. I still find new complexity in Lateralus today.

Runners Up: System of a Down - Toxicity
Kring Krong Krangggggg! Middle-eastern influenced metal with a message AND a catchy chorus! Smashing good fun, eh chaps?
Muse - Origin of Symmetry
Their second best album (after Absolution), Origin of Symmetry was hardcore and headbanging in all the right places while still being lyrically and instrumentally ingenious.

2002: The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

2002 may have been the worst year for music since 1997. The radio was saturated with Linkin Park and Hoobastank, and even Metacritic lists the "best" album of '02 as Original Pirate Material, which was the unfortunate result of what happens when a team of scientists teach a chav the alphabet. But there was one album which stuck in my head - maybe because it was bizarre, or bold enough to be lighthearted and bouncy in a year where everyone was moaning about the terrible darkness in their teenage souls. Yoshimi was all about whimsy and naivety and truth, and it reminded us that love isn't just for the old, and that death can sometimes be a celebration, and that sexy karate-ninjas battling giant pink robots is AWESOME.
No runner-up, this year was shite.

2003: The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium
The first time I listened to Deloused I was left feeling like I'd been assaulted. My ears hurt, my brain hurt, and I had no idea what I'd just spent the last hour doing. So I listened again, just to make sure. And then again. Deloused is a discordant sonic blasphemy that gradually reveals melodies tucked away inside melodies inside more melodies. Try to take in the big picture and it's overwhelming. Focus on the little details and soon you'll be swept away by this hyper-real prog-rock epic.

Runners Up: Katatonia - Viva Emptiness
Katatonia used to be a death metal band, but then the lead singer developed a throat nodule and had to learn to sing like regular people. The result - dark, heavy instrumentals, beautiful (near operatic) vocals, and songs like mini-stories about all sorts of love and tragedy. So good!
Muse - Absolution
A rock symphony that married Queen to Led Zep to Pink Floyd. Exciting, immaculate, an objectively better album than Deloused... maybe the best of the decade. I just like Deloused a wee bit more.

2004: Juno Reactor - Labyrinth

Juno Reactor are what would happen if you took a helicopter out over the unexplored reaches of South America around 500AD and dropped a bunch of synthesizers onto Calakmul for the Maya to play with. Their beats are stomping great drums, their instrumentals all woodwinds and strings pushed to snapping, and the only vocals are impassioned chants of religious righteousness. Overlay this all with some middle-eastern inspired synth and you have music to commit blood sacrifice to. Juno Reactor have provided the soundtrack to pretty much every cyberpunk movie of the last decade. No surprises there.

Runner Up: Ayreon - The Human Equation
A double-length concept album in the vein of Tommy, where a man in a coma sings to his many personalities while trying to wake up. Lyrically clunky, but many musical styles on show and some great hooks.

2005: Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel The Illinoise

How can I explain how this album makes me feel? Do I have to dance, or cry, or run through cornfields in a pretty blue skirt? Sufjan Stevens is beautiful, pure and simple. Illinoise is one man's love letter to the state of Illinois - the people, the politics, the architecture. It's sometimes bluegrass, sometimes gospel, sometimes folk rock, sometimes jazz. The instrumentals are incredibly simple but are woven together so skillfully that it's almost impossible to believe that the album is the work of just one man. I want "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" played at my funeral.

Runners Up: Pendulum - Hold Your Colour
UNGH. This cd came out of nowhere and blew me away with its relentless beats, clever hooks and increasingly complex song construction. Drum & Bass for clever folk. The song "Hold Your Colour", with over 150 plays on my ipod, is one of my faves of all time. OF ALL TIME.

Shpongle - Nothing Lasts... But Nothing Is Lost
Shpongle really are the undisputed kings of psy-trance. They take instrumentals from every country on earth and mash them together into a bombastic electronic celebration of world culture. Now, if only Shpongle and The Avalanches could make a baby...

2006: The Beatles - Love

Oh, come on. It's the GODDAMN BEATLES. All their best songs collected, remastered, remixed, recombined into a magical eighty minutes. 26 songs built from 130 Beatles tracks, including this gorgeous version of Strawberry Fields, which contains:

...an acoustic demo of "Strawberry Fields Forever", the orchestral section from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", the solo piano from "In My Life", the brass included in "Penny Lane", the cello and harpsicord arrangement from "Piggies" and the coda of "Hello, Goodbye".

The day the Beatles stop being pure magic is the day you can set me out to pasture.

Runner Up: BT - This Binary Universe
BT usually writes club-techno anthems, but this cd of electronic lullabies for his daughter was so technically complex and beautiful that certain chords and phrases have become a part of my life. "The Antikythera Mechanism" brought me to tears once. Hits all the right places.

2007: Coheed and Cambria - No World for Tomorrow

Coheed have been one of my fave bands for years, and their second album In Keeping Secrets is note-perfect, but their third album was such a monumental letdown that I was prepared to write them off. Then No World was released, and everything was right again. Coheed combine stomping riffs with some very delicate acoustic guitar work, and even though lead singer Claudio sounds like a five-year-old girl he still hits all the right notes. No World was good on the first listen, even better on the tenth. Frenetic highs, comforting lows... this album was constructed so well that I can't get it out of my head.

Runners Up: Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
What happens when you let a talented beat-poet team up with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor? A rap album that isn't so much rap as heavy industrial poetry MAGIC. Also, the best cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday ever.
Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet
If I'd discovered this album earlier it'd be my pick of 2007 instead of No World For Tomorrow. Fear of a Blank Planet is about alienation, loss of identity, and how we've abandoned the youngest generation to the new media. Only six tracks, but every one is a rock-solid arse-bruiser. Absolute classic.

2008: Pendulum - In Silico

First, Pendulum were a metal band. Then, in 2005, they released Hold Your Colour, a drum and bass album which blew the ceiling off clubs all over the world. Then, in 2008, they became metal again. Sort of. In Silico is a metal band playing drum&bass with multiple guitars and storming drums instead of a turntable. It's loud, it's catchy, it's exciting. Did it make as big an impact on my life as Hold Your Colour? Probably not. But I've listened to the album all through just over 85 times now, which must say SOMETHING. In fact, I'm going to go listen to The Tempest right goddamn now.
No runner up, I'm still digesting 2008.

2009: Karnivool - Sound Awake
Oh. My. God.
Karnivool are a Perth based progressive metal band that blew me away in 2005 with their debut album Themata, a 50 minute explosion of melodic metal craziness. It was catchy and up-tempo and angry and even though it leaned towards the poppy in places, I loved it to death.
Then Sound Awake came along and made all of that redundant.
Sound Awake is such a progression in lyrical and musical maturity over Themata that I can hardly believe it's the same band. Themata was full of great hooks but Sound Awake is "an album of lures", where every composition leads to the unexpected. Some of the tracks have enough in them for three or four typical rock songs, and the album as a whole flows seamlessly. But what hit me the most was the change in anger.
Yeah, I like my metal, which means I like my music angry. But so much metal is full of that impotent immature scream-at-the-world anger, full of machismo but accomplishing nil. Themata was packed with it. Sound Awake, on the other hand, is laced with very adult anger. The sort you feel when you have a friend in dire circumstances but you're unable to help. Or when you're faced with something insurmountable but you're pushed to try anyway. Or when you lose a loved one and you can't understand why you don't feel sad.
I lost a friend to suicide in mid 2009, and listened to Sound Awake for the first time only a few hours later. Perhaps that's why it dug into me so strongly - because I was feeling that same indescribable anger, the sort that doesn't want to break things but rather break itself. The sort of anger that doesn't need to be shouted but can be whispered.
Sound Awake is deep and layered and adult and exciting and heart-breaking all in one. It's my last best album of the year, and I have a feeling that it'll stay with me forever.
No runners up. None needed.

What a way to see this thing out
What a way to lay this burden down
What a way to see this sorrow
What a way to see this one out

Hello, hollow halo

Have a great December, a kick-arse Christmas and NYE, and bring on 2010.