The Top 50 Albums of the 2000s: 20-16

20 | LALI PUNA Faking the Books
Morr Music, 2004

VIDEO | “Faking the Books”

I discovered them while on tour in Germany in 2002, but largely because I read a magazine interview with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood in which he essentially called Lali Puna the greatest band on the planet. “Every time I play the record to someone, they fall in love with the music and I simply have to let them have it,” he said. “Coward that I am, I’m on my fourth copy now.” That’s not so much hyperbole as it is a truism, by the way; this shit is brilliant.

19 | ELECTRIC PRESIDENT Electric President
Morr Music, 2006

DOWNLOAD | “Insomnia”

If you believe Wikipedia, Ben Cooper and Alex Kane — the songwriting partners that make up Electric President — wrote three albums within the first six months of meeting each other. (That’s not completely unfathomable considering how much free music Cooper gives away on his own site, including an entirely free album earlier this year under the name Patients.) That said, this self-titled introduction to the band is the kind of epic debut that successfully captures and translates that initial wave of inspiration; it’s a seamless mix of analog pop and digital tricknology that would have been pretty damn arrogant had they not totally pulled it off. That a record so ambitious and carefully executed came from a bedroom studio wonderfully demonstrates how, at some point in the 2000s, the game totally changed.

18 | FIONA APPLE Extraordinary Machine
Epic/Sony Music, 2005

VIDEO | “Oh Well” (Live)

Extraordinary Machine stood a good chance of being eclipsed by its extraordinary story, in which Fiona Apple — she, of that infamous MTV award-show freak-out in which she proudly proclaimed, “This world is bullshit!” — became a major-label freedom-fighter, a critic’s darling, and the only singer-songwriter ever to scrap an entire album recorded and arranged by someone as seriously amazing as Jon Brion. But the album, gratefully, wasn’t as much good as it was great; a perfectly acceptable excuse, in fact, for only releasing three albums in the last fourteen years. It all comes together during “Oh Well,” which features the most gruelingly irritated vocal performance from a woman this decade. Whoever the hell she spent her “wasted unconditional love” on is, unarguably, an asshole.

17 | DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Transatlanticism
Barsuk, 2003

DOWNLOAD | “Title And Registration” (Original Version)

About a year before Transatlanticism came out, my old band played with Death Cab in a what I recall was a very large and well-lit room in Virginia. It was the first time that I realized how far they’d come — from an Up Records–inspired Northwest indie rock band to the anthemic gold-selling pop group they somehow became. With this record, Ben Gibbard perfected the connection between awkward sentiment and literary-styled lyricism in a way that neither Chris Martin nor Bono have ever really figured out; his structure and technique more novel-like — with its returning themes and careful syntax — than album-like. It’s one of the best albums of the decade because, most of the time, you’d rather give the dude a hug than ask him why he was so obsessed with car-related metaphors.

16 | CLIPSE Lord Willin’
Star Trak, 2002

VIDEO | “Grindin’”

I just listened to “Grindin’” for roughly the 732nd time in my life and I’m still finding cocaine metaphors that I missed the first 731 times. It’s just that complex. Lord Willin’ is such a searing capsule of Virginia street life and drug-hustling that even if it were all one seriously well-orchestrated lie — and many have tried, unsuccessfully, to poke holes in Clipse’s story — it would be studied for years as an unparalleled work of fiction. The fact is, as far as sheer rap lyricism goes, Malice and Pusha have no considerable rivals, and for that alone, this is the hip-hop record of the decade. Indeed, I’m really happy for you, Jay-Z — and I’mma let you retire — but this might prove to be one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time.