The Top 50 Albums of the 2000s: 10-6

10 | CREEPER LAGOON Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday
Dreamworks, 2001

DOWNLOAD | “Wrecking Ball”

Of all the bands on this list, Creeper Lagoon probably went the shortest distance between next-big-thing and never-heard-of-them. Their debut album, I Become Small and Go, was released by the Dust Brothers’ Nickelbag imprint at the height of their Beck-bestowed industry cachet — translating into a requisite ’90s bidding war that culminated with the band signing to Dreamworks in 2000. Take Back the Universe and Give Me Yesterday, having made no career-killing left turns, should have been the band’s breakthrough album — its first single, “Wrecking Ball,” set a new bar for what a smart indie rock radio song might sound like in the oughties — but as was too often the case with major label signings of their day, Dreamworks shrugged its shoulders and washed their hands of Creeper Lagoon soon after its release. It’s like they captured the zeitgeist and everyone missed it.

9 | ROBYN Robyn
Konichiwa/Cherrytree/Interscope, 2005/2008

VIDEO | “Who’s That Girl”

The first words uttered on Robyn’s self-titled album: “You wanna rumble in my jungle? I’ll take you on.” That’s pretty much the story of a record so resilient its international shelf-life never seemed to expire. It’s also a good mantra for the artist behind such a record, who — rather than continue on the radio-friendly trajectory of a former teen pop artist — bought out her own contract from BMG to release it herself. But the real wonder lies in the album itself, which is quite arguably the most forward-thinking pure pop album of the decade. As long as Kelly Clarkson keeps eschewing The Knife for that dude from OneRepublic, Robyn need not look over her shoulder.

8 | TRAVIS The Man Who
Independiente/Epic, 2000

VIDEO | “Writing To Reach You”

Had Travis ended their run with Good Feeling, they would have been forever known as that band that had the audacity to call a song “All I Want to Do is Rock.” (Sadly, it did not.) Instead, The Man Who became that ever-elusive perfect second album — mature, but not matronly; artistic, but accessible; serious, but not surly. Everything from the album art to the string of brilliant music videos this album spawned so perfectly served this vision that many of us were convinced that Travis had the potential to become the next truly significant British pop band. So what stopped them dead in their tracks? A passable, but somewhat unremarkable follow-up, The Invisible Band, spells out their ruin: Travis discovered Americana.

7 | RUFUS WAINWRIGHT Want One
Dreamworks, 2003

VIDEO | “Go or Go Ahead” (Live)

It’s probably not the most auspicious album launch when your work is hailed as a “musical chronicle that delves into a 30-year-old musician’s dark forays into crystal meth addiction and anonymous sex,” but there’s no sense in dressing Want One up in some sort of feel-good drag. It’s about all that, of course, and more — like surviving in a post-9/11 New York City or being abandoned as a child. It’s a story that begins by saying, “I think I’m doin’ fine,” and ends with Rufus Wainwright taking his father down in a fistfight. It would be a tragedy on the theater stage, but as a pop record, it’s a well-fought trial. There is a reason he is wearing armor on the sleeve.

6 | MARK HOLLIS Mark Hollis
Polydor, (Reissue) 2000

DOWNLOAD | “Westward Bound”

For one reason or another, most people don’t realize that Talk Talk released two more albums following The Colour of Spring — the first of which, Spirit of Eden, actually compelled their record label to sue them for not being commercially satisfactory. “It’s the sound of an artist being given the keys to the kingdom and returning with art,” recalled Creation founder Alan McGee, ”yet upon completion it was seen as utter commercial suicide — as if Duran Duran had released a krautrock, free jazz, gospel album after Notorious.” Mark Hollis’s first and only solo album follows in this unconventional direction, but carefully edits some of the grandeur of his earlier attempts; it is unabashedly minimalist, equally indebted to John Cage as is it is to John Lennon. Regrettably, it’s also his final testament: Hollis has since retired and wholly disappeared — the inadvertent J.D. Salinger of synth-pop.