Ek's Top 100 Albums of the '10s: #50-26

Well, it is time to move a little further down the list of my favorite albums this decade. We're through the bottom half of the top 100, but now we're going to slow down a bit to give the top half the attention it deserves.

I've realized, however, that the worst part of lists like these are all of the glaring omissions, so before I go any further, I'm going to give a bonus mini-list of the Top 5 Bands That I Probably Should Have Gotten Into But Didn't This Decade:

1. Radiohead: Not only are they on the top of this list; they're definitely on the top of my personal "Oh my God, I can't believe you aren't into them" list from any decade. Time and priorities were definitely a factor in my not following all bands on these lists, but I'll try to give some other rationales as well. In this case, I got turned off by the overwhelming consensus among their fans that they (1) would always be an indie band at heart (which was obviously not true) and (2) were one of the greatest and most influential rock bands ever (even when their more groundbreaking work was too new to have influenced anyone). The band didn't help by having the highest degree of British self-importance and refusal to accept criticism since Led Zeppelin. On the other hand, I realized when I went through my Pandora phase that they were coming up with a lot of bands I do like, and a lot of their music was actually good. Maybe not good enough to justify their off-putting arrogance, but then again, they aren't really any worse than Zeppelin in that respect. Or Axl Rose. Or Dave Mustaine. Or John Fogerty. Maybe I should give them a shot.

2. Tool: They should be right up my alley as one of the top prog-metal bands ever, and of what I've heard, they have several good songs and at least a handful of great ones. They seem to have an overwhelming aura of negativity and anti-religiousness that has kept me from really wanting to get to them, although there are tons of bands I listen to despite the fact that I don't agree with their politics, religion, and/or philosophy. Part of the problem for me is that they actually come off as anti-God, rather than just criticizing the Church, the latter of which I don't have a problem with (Christians should constantly be thinking about how to make the institutional Church better, and part of that process is listening to and respecting valid outside criticism. Unlike Radiohead.). I haven't listened to them enough to really analyze their lyrics, so if I'm wrong about this, someone let me know.

3. AFI: They are one of those rare really nice stories of a band that paid their dues for a really long time and eventually got huge. Some of their stuff I've heard I've loved; some of it doesn't do that much for me. I don't have a real rationale for missing them this decade other than that every time I've been about to pick up Sing the Sorrow, there's some other album that I'm more interested in or is on sale.

4. Wilco: This is the only band on the list that I've actually seen live (thanks James!), and I have to say they put on a really good show. They are also established local heroes, and in some ways that fact that they haven't become national household names to the same extent as Kanye West, Rise Against, Fall Out Boy, or The Smashing Pumpkins makes them that much more beloved here. I feel like a bad Chicagoan for not listening to them often. The thing is, a lot of their studio stuff I've heard is just kind of boring. Since music is ultimately entertainment, I'd rather be scared, offended, frustrated, or depressed by something I listen to than bored.

5. Rap/Hip-Hop and Country: Look, I like rock music. I won't apologize to anyone for that. That said, on this whole list of 100, there's one country/bluegrass album and one rap album. Even though I won't promise to change my tastes, I have to acknowledge that there are those whole other genres out there, and that they include "songs about real life, with stories you can relate to and words you can understand."

Now that that is out of the way, I can continue to move on with the list:

50. The Killers - Hot Fuss ('04): I'd consider this album to be this decade's equivalent of Pearl Jam's Ten. This is high praise for an album that only came it at #50, but the similarities are there: both were debut albums from relatively unknown bands, both became overnight successes without really having time to figure out how to handle it well, and, although neither really created a new genre of music, both were able to combine an older style of music with recent developments to create a sound that blew away everything else on the radio. Both then were copied to the extent that they couldn't really maintain their sound on their next album while remaining original - Pearl Jam's Vs. and Vitalogy are textbook examples of how a band can expand their sound without abandoning it, and the next two Killers albums...well, they weren't, which is why Pearl Jam is our generation's Rolling Stones and the Killers are less than a decade away from playing County Fairs. Still, that shouldn't take away from how good this album was.

49. Saves the Day - Under the Boards ('07): Remember when I said it is better for a band to depress me than bore me? Well, this is one of the most depressing albums of the decade, and it doesn't help that the follow-up album, which was supposed to tell the redemptive portion of the trilogy, has become the Chinese Democracy of emo. So what's so great about it? Saves the Day had previously established themselves as a band capable of playing a lot of different styles well, pulling off '70s era punk on their early albums, art-pop on In Reverie, and melodic pop-rock punk on Sound the Alarm and Stay What You Are. However, this is the only time where they've managed to put so many different styles together on the same album - I had actually been under the impression that rock bands agreed to stop doing this some time in the early '80s. In fact, I'd put this in the same category as Vs. and Vitalogy were in the last entry - they really push the limits of their sound in multiple directions, but they never stop sounding like Saves the Day. Now put out another album already.

48. Dragonforce - Inhuman Rampage ('05)

47. Black Tide - Light From Above ('08): When I was a little kid in the '80s, the metal genre was dominated by spandex-wearing glam rock bands that had vocalists with immense range, guitarists who could shred, an innate sense of fun, and almost no ability to put an interesting or unpredictable song together. These bands traced their lineage back to Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden, but weren't really talented enough to write songs that enabled them to rival such giants. Then the Metallica, Megadeth, and others blew everybody away and the era of thrash metal began. Metal bands started to focus on dark, lengthy, compositional pieces and shied away from compromising for mass appeal; eventually, many bands in the genre even gave up on traditional singing for cookie monster vocals. Songs about drinking, sex, and rock and roll were out, songs about war, insanity, and conspiracy theories were in.

All of this was all well and good, except that, somewhere along the way, people gradually forgot that metal was supposed to be fun. Dragonforce's biggest achievement, apart from playing faster and more ridiculously than anyone else, and breaking Joel Zumaya's arm, was helping people remember that, and Black Tide gets bonus points for proving that you can make metal fun without trying to bring back the spotty legacy of hair metal. Oh, and more bonus points for making the best album by high school students since Frogstomp. While I'm here, I also have to mention that "Warriors of Time" has earned its place on the list of songs that frequently have their intros cut by radio and in other public settings even though the intro is one of the coolest parts of the song. I hate it when they do that.

46. Dashboard Confessional - The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most ('01): Yes, there is something a little bit lame and pathetic about a guy in his mid-20s writing songs about high school relationships. And yes, the over-the-top sensitive guy routine is at least as obnoxious as the over-the-top alpha male routine. But it is impossible to deny that every song on this disc is well-crafted musically and lyrically, and it is rare to find anything this personal from a band that would eventually make it big, or, for that matter, from any band (at least in 2001). You have to approach this album the same way you approach Rambo II - just enjoy it and try to bear in mind that at the time it came out, nothing in it was cliche.

45. System of a Down - Toxicity ('01): I know I just berated Heavy Metal for taking itself too seriously from the late '80s to early '00s, and this album is a prime example, but I can look past that for an album that seethes with anger without ever losing its overriding sense of melody and musicianship, and that has two or three great riffs on every song, even though I wouldn't call it a "guitar album" in the traditional sense.

44. Shai Hulud - Misanthropy Pure ('08): I don't like hardcore vocals, and I rarely like heavy metal songs that don't have significant instrumental breaks, but in this case, it doesn't matter. There are more tempo and time signature changes in all of the songs here than there are on most prog rock albums, and they somehow manage to keep it from ever becoming unlistenable.

43. Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures ('09): This gets my pick for the best "disappointing but still good" album of the decade. The Queens of the Stone Age sound seemed to take over, which is unfortunate since they're my least favorite of the three big-name parent bands involved. Ultimately, they wound up somewhere between '70s guitar rock and '00s stoner rock, but I'm pretty sure aficionados of either will like this album, although people who wanted it to sound like the next Zeppelin or Foo Fighters album will be let down. On a positive note, every song on this album is different, but there's still an overall sound bringing them all together. So far I've liked it more with each listen, meaning it could probably move up a few spots if and when I ever revisit this list.

42. Underoath - They're Only Chasing Safety ('04): The "Life, the Universe, and Everything" position goes to the best work from a band that managed to be both intensely brutal and easy to listen to, sometimes on the same song. Definitely a "gateway album" for hardcore.

41. Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album ('01): There hasn't been anyone else I know of since Bob Dylan that has this kind of ability to put enough emotion for a feature-length movie into less than forty minutes of music. In this case, it only took one year for the best lyricist of the decade to emerge. While musically this isn't a flat-out amazing album, it is solid, and the band manages to match the tone of the lyrics well.

40. The Get Up Kids - Guilt Show ('04): Part of me almost wishes they don't put out a post-reunion album since this one was such a great farewell. A small part of me.

39. Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs ('03): Exhibit A in the case that Pearl Jam was tanking, Vince Carter-like, due to ongoing problems with their label and/or ticketmaster. A collection of B-sides and unreleased material that ranks with their best albums will do that, as the argument that they simply lost their sound or their ability to write good songs is shot down here. This also puts Pearl Jam into the discussion when considering all-time great bands - all of the greatest bands of the classic rock era played all sorts of different styles of music, which is part of the reason I dislike the heavy specialization of bands in the current era. Even as a fan, I can't really say Pearl Jam's catalog was all that diverse prior to this album. Here, though, you get to here Pearl Jam doing things you don't expect from them, like using harmonized vocal layering, playing instrumentals, using singers other than Vedder (which is a plus since non-PJ fans can then understand the lyrics!), playing surf rock, playing soundscapes, and playing acoustic folk. They even manage to capture the sound of The Who (who they had always cited as an influence, but never sounded much like) well on "Black, Red, and Yellow." The only downside is a handful of the stronger songs on it (like "Dead Man" and "Yellow Ledbetter") had been floating around for years before this came out, but there was more than enough to like among the more obscure or totally unreleased material.

38. John Mayer - Room For Squares ('01): As with Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, you have to remember what this album was like when it came out, back when there was nothing obnoxious or frustrating about Mayer, and instead just a great acoustic rock album with a ton of great songs. I think half of the problem is that he's been miscast as a "guitar legend" when he really is more of a singer/songwriter who also happens to be an above-average guitar player. That's not really his fault. That said, I'm still holding out hope that he'll start his version of Derek and the Dominoes with Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

37. Further Seems Forever - How to Start a Fire ('03): This album grew on me once I got used to the fact that it wasn't The Moon Is Down. In some ways, Jason Gleason replacing Chris Carrabba was like Steve Young taking over for Joe Montana - both were perfectly capable in their own respects, and actually brought some things to the table that their predecessors didn't, but they really had no chance to ever be quite as beloved or iconic. (I should mention that, even though Hide Nothing was my lowest-rated FSF album, Jon Bunch deserves a better comparison than Elvis Grbac.) In Gleason's case, he was a hell of a vocalist (as evidenced by their cover of Bye Bye Bye in which the vocals sound as good or better than on the N'Sync version), but his lyrics rarely if ever made any sense, not to mention that he apparently didn't get along with the rest of the band at all. Still, the guitar layering on this album is great, and "The Sound," "A Blank Page Empire," and "I Am" are some of FSF's best songs. We're now well into the albums I very strongly recommend.

36. Sunny Day Real Estate - Rising Tide ('00): I know it isn't considered their best album by most, and it even got made fun of in emogame, but I get to avoid comparing it to their earlier work since it happened in a different decade. Sometimes it is nice to make the rules.

35. Stairwell - The Sounds of Change ('01): I'm not sure which is more fun: listening to the vocal harmonies and interplay or listening to the guitar harmonies and interplay. This album is so good, Girden thought it had to be their Greatest Hits album when it came out. The bad news for Stairwell's career is that it pretty much is.

34. Brand New - The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me ('06): A 54-minute album that doesn't remotely feel too long. Plus, Eric once described it as the soundtrack to his life (or something like that). This album also proves that just because bands had long since stopped trying to do anything new and interesting with the grunge sound, it doesn't mean there weren't interesting possibilities still left out there.

33. The Mars Volta - Amputechture ('06): The intro and outro tracks are kind of boring, but there's such a feast of prog rock in between that I don't even care. I can't really even describe Tetragrammaton and Day of the Baphomets adequately, and Asilos Magdalena expands the acoustic side of the band beautifully, even if they can't quite resist putting weird feedback and effects in at the end of it.

32. Rise Against - The Sufferer & The Witness ('06): The punk scene was already thriving in the first half of this decade, then Rise Against gave it the one thing it was missing: a really good punk band that wasn't a holdover from the '90s and didn't need to be qualified with something like "emo punk" or "pop punk."

31. Circa Survive - On Letting Go ('07): There's definitely a shortage of vocalists that can sing in the upper register without sounding whiny, but this band has one, and in addition, they just sound better together than most other bands do.

30. Flobots - Fight With Tools ('07): This is the album that made me realized that I actually don't dislike rap at all; I dislike overproduced music. By contrast, this album has great live instrumentation, and is even an innovative lineup by featuring a cello in a rock group (it works, by the way). They might come off a little preachy with their politics, but at least it is earnest and makes you think, and frankly, rap works way better with some kind of social or political message behind it anyway.

29. U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind ('00): Spawned more legitimate radio hits than most bands have in their entire career, in fact, I'm not sure if any of the songs on this album weren't hits. It also helped to make 2001-02 the (school) Year of Bono at Wheaton College and probably many other places. Let's face it, it is impressive for a band to say they are "reapplying for the job of best band in the world" and actually back up their talk (unlike Roberto Luongo). Thanks to this album, U2 would eventually join Dethklok among bands that are also among the world's largest economies.

28. Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism ('03): If The Photo Album marked Gibbard's emergence as one of rock's best lyricists, this is the album that established it fully for him, and for that matter, the band continued to develop their sound instrumentally into something that not only complemented the lyrics but would be worth listening to for its own sake. I know I've said the middle of the album drags a little bit in the past, but that's a minor flaw.

27. Rhapsody - Symphony of Enchanted Lands Vol. II: The Dark Secret ('04): I know we frequently use the term "epic" to describe a rock album, but it is pretty rare that a rock album actually also is part of an original fantasy epic. Since no musical interpretation of a fantasy epic is complete without a full orchestra, operatic vocals, choirs, lengthy guitar solos (including, but not limited to, guitar duels against orchestra instruments), and Christopher Lee, all of those are thrown in as well. At this point, you're probably already thinking "wow, that sounds awesome," or "wow, that sounds terrible," so further description from me isn't needed.

26. Margot & the Nuclear So And So's - The Dust of Retreat ('06): There are two approaches to putting a band together - one is to get a drummer, bassist, one or two guitar players, and a singer in some order and start practicing. The other is to just get everyone you'd want to be in a band with that plays something, figure out what everyone plays, and have that be your lineup. The second approach results in more creative and interesting bands, and, as you'd expect, is almost never used. Well, kudos to these guys for putting together a lineup with bass, drums, electric and acoustic guitar, but also a keyboardist, violinist, trumpet, and percussionist. To make matters better, no three of them looked like they really should have been in the same band together. While you might expect a lineup like this to come up with intricate, compositional, heavily produced work, they actually somehow managed to keep their songs simple and likable without making it feel like any of the band members weren't involved. Their disjointed look and lineup also helped them enjoy a one-year run as the most fun obscure band to see live, crushing forever the myth that bands should have a unified "look." Based on Wikipedia, they've since gone to a more stripped down, traditional lineup. In a related story, nobody I know liked their subsequent albums.

That's it for now. Later, I'll return with #25-11, then the top ten. Have a nice summer everyone.