The Top 50 Albums of the 2000s: 15-11

15 | SIGUR RÓS Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
XL, 2008

VIDEO | “Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur”

Before Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Rós were ambient and ambitious and occasionally abstruse, but rarely ever — for lack of a better word — rocking. Ten seconds into the near-primal percussive drive of “Gobbledigook,” however, and this absence is corrected; for the next 56 minutes, Sigur Rós are decisively liberated. In the same way that I didn’t realize that Fabrizio Moretti never used crash cymbals on the first Strokes record until he used them on the third, it never occurred to me how dynamic Sigur Rós would become if they gave the drums an actual beating. The addition of this rhythmic element, of course, didn’t signal the end of the serenely epic songwriting model that hooked us, but added a dimension we didn’t even know we wanted.

14 | LOWGOLD Just Backwards of Square
Nude, 2001

DOWNLOAD | “In Amber”

Lowgold’s debut album was heralded by many as a return to form for Nude Records — the famed British indie label best known for spawning Suede. This would have been fantastic news had that excitement lasted longer than six months when, in spite of a minor U.K. radio hit, the band’s label suddenly folded and Just Backwards of Square was essentially abandoned. Since then, the band have jumped from label to languishing label, releasing a handful of the decade’s best music to a modest fanbase that somehow developed above all the industry bullshit. “In Amber” is the song that introduced and sold me to this album — its elegiac approach lending unintended irony to the lyrical hook, “Graced with which that we deserve.”

13 | JAMES YUILL Turning Down Water For Air
Moshi Moshi, 2008

VIDEO | “No Pins Allowed”

James Yuill’s first album, The Vanilla Disc, was a pleasant but mostly antiseptic record that regrettably lived up to its name. So it was somewhat of a revelation that — having seemingly discovered acid house and Ableton Live at the same time — Yuill could go on to craft an album so dense with synchronized pop sensibility and forward-thinking underground aesthetics. (Add to this a canny ability to take sides whenever the song calls for a decision.) For his part, Yuill himself is self-deprecatingly mindful of the careful balance he’s trying to strike: Before performing an instrumental acid track for an encore here in Brooklyn, he untethered himself from an acoustic guitar and stepped up the microphone. “Let’s make some house music,” he laughed. “Playing guitar is for geeks.”

12 | BLOC PARTY A Weekend In The City
Vice, 2007

DOWNLOAD | “Kreuzberg”

A Weekend In The City was technically a commercial success, but the critical response at the time lacked the drop-everything urgency of their debut. Which is kind of bizarre considering how, in retrospect, this is the most realized and innovative Bloc Party album we’ve ever seen. If Silent Alarm sounded like four dudes plugged into their amps and Intimacy sounded like four laptops plugged into a powerstrip, Weekend was an integrated snapshot of a band — and their surrounding culture — in flux. They were in between cities, in between technologies, and for singer Kele Okereke, in between sexual identities. (“I Still Remember” became the catalyst for his coming out in the UK Guardian.) The beauty in this kind of chaos may have eluded us from the ground, but the aerial view is kind of astonishing.

11 | RYAN ADAMS Love Is Hell
Lost Highway, 2004

VIDEO | “This House is Not For Sale” (Live on Later with Jools Holland)

I realize it’s controversial to say that Love Is Hell is a better record than Heartbreaker. (Spoiler: Heartbreaker is not in the top ten.) But it is. Ryan Adams was certainly convincing as a punk-turned-country artist, but Heartbreaker, quite frankly, reads as repressed — the sound of an artist fettered to only one aspect of his identity. (The album begins with an in-studio argument about Morrissey that segues into a song called “To Be Young” that, in no way, sounds like it was written by a 25-year-old.) Love Is Hell, by contrast, is more of a paean to turning 30: the loss, the fear, the foolish optimism that might inspire us to believe that the words to “Wonderwall” actually mean something outside of their necessity to rhyme. It’s also the first time Ryan surrendered an album to the inevitable pasticcio of someone so prolific, tossing the “alt-country” and “rock ‘n’ roll” models in favor of one satisfyingly idiosyncratic — but authentic — character.