Whatever happened to the death of the album? The download was supposed to consign LPs to the dustbin of history. Instead, we would graze iTunes for tracks we liked then happily press shuffle on our MP3 players.
Yet lists for the best of the past decade are dominated by albums, proving they remain valid biggest possible statement for an artist to make.
Looking back over the past 10 years, certain songs as well as some albums stick in the mind. So, doffing my cap to the digital times, my own list is a hybrid of the most memorable albums and tracks.
Arcade Funeral – Funeral
Can any album sum up a contrary decade that lived under the shadow of global terrorism, ecological catastrophe and financial meltdown, yet was stil full of infantile behaviour? This lot came closest, at least on the impending doom front. It was not just the deaths of close relatives that they captured, but the end of innocence and a lot more besides. Yet somehow they turned their grief into some of the times’ most life-affirming music.
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Worth mentioning for You Look Good On The Dancefloor alone, but the Arctics gave songwriting a new lease of life. Their razor-sharp vignettes gave us snapshots of life’s grim, prolix verities that remain unequalled since.
The Libertines – Up The Bracket
At the time, this was the gang we all wanted to join. Carl Barat and Pete Doherty cocked a snook at an increasingly corporate live scene, playing in front rooms and cancelling gigs at short notice whenever the latter was banged up. In between, they provided guitar pop with scuzzy glamour and a hint of personal insurrection.
Freelance Hellraiser – Stroke Of Genius
Gotta have The Strokes, the band that launched a thousand wish-they-weres in tight keks and battered Converse. The New Yorkers’ monied insouciance made their debut Is This It? a classic in its own right, but this bootleg mash-up with Christina Aguilera is a perfect fantasy pairing and set the scene for more fusions to come.
Outkast – Hey Ya
Is hip hop dead? Can’t think of a rap album from that noughties that has compelled me to listen all the way through. Even Kanye’s best work comes with too much filler (and this, too, comes from a sprawling double album), yet the genre continues to set the tone for much black music – and not just the self-aggrandising swagger that has seeped into r’n’b. This is not hip hop, just the best dance-pop tune since Deelite’s Groove Is In The Heart.
Elbow (ft a cast of thousands) – One Fine Day
This brings to mind two key facets of the noughties, both concerned with the levelling out of the relationship between stars and fans. We are now more likely to see them as equals, so why should a band’s most ardent supporters not appear on their signature tracks, as this Glasto crowd do here. The unassuming gang from Bury also typify how quiet artists have found their own place in the hectic digital village, alongside the folkie set, dubstep’s shadowy innovators and introspective singer songwriters.
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
Despite – or maybe because of - the easy access to digital production, one of the key sounds of recent years has been that log cabin aesthetic of Bon Iver and Alela Diane. Nowhere is it better encapsulated, though, than in these sumptuous harmonies that evoke the northwestern US wilderness, while apparently being recorded in downtown Seattle.
The Knife – The Knife
Brittle synth lines coming out of a warm, inky darkness; the often icy, sometimes fraught vocals of Karin Dreijer Andersson, the woman now better known as Fever Ray. This is the one critic’s choice that has failed to reach mainstream recognition, yet the frisson of its Scandinavian chill and enigmatic emotional depths, tower above Robyn and Lykke Li.
James Yorkston – Moving Up Country
I thought by using Elbow as an archetype for quiet artists, I might avoid having to pick a folk artist, but Yorkie’s debut album is so perfect. It has the intimate feel of a fireside session, mixing deeply personal lyrics (St Patrick has him lying in bed with a girl thinking about an ex) and communal musicianship (the salt-shaker percussion that pops up occasionally).
The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Look, mama, I invented a whole new riff. Jack and Meg White have released at least two indispensable albums this decade – White Blood Cells and Elephant – but while Fell In Love With A Girl and Hotel Yorba reminded us of the pleasures of rock’s primal beat, this jawdropping tour-de-force cements the giddying joys of the spaces inbetween.
