- Top 50 albums of the decade (40-31)
40 Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
Bat For Lashes really stepped up her production game by taking her ideas from her independently recorded first album and putting them to life via a major label studio backing. Atmospheric, dark but dreamy describes this live album that she really encapsulates with her live shows.
39 The Radio Dept. – Lesser Matters
An album has always gotten airplay over the last couple of years. At first I dismissed them as too dissimilar to Broken Social Scene, but after heavier listening there is a distinct definition; mainly due to the use of their noisy distorted synths on a lot of their tracks.
38 Digitalism – Idealism
Dirty electronic house music with an Indie feel. This showed how to do the crossover thing without sounding like an Industrial car crash.
37 Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See It
A proper soul boy sounding album without clinging onto overplayed techniques. Ronson should take note of Saadiq’s execution.
36 Kings Of Leon – Because Of The Times
This album showed that the Kings were definitely progressing with their songwriting ability. Lots of shouting, pretty hard chords and catchy riffs a plenty. They execute progression without cutting off their fan base whilst opening it up to a whole new crowd. That is a pretty impressive thing to do.
35 The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die
Pretty late into the decade The Prodigy stopped trying to ignore what made them good in the first place, and cobbled in all their past influences to churn out a high energy balls out sample fest album.
34 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell
Moody, noisy and pretty trashy this isn’t the most immediate album to get. But once you get it, you cannot stop playing it.
33 The Reindeer Section – Son Of Evil Reindeer
This album provides a true listening experience by putting together songs that are crafted together to work in unison. This is one of those albums to listen to whilst watch the world go by.
32 Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight
Country/Indie as I call it has really stepped its game up. With slight twinges leaning towards country/folk sounds, but structured in an indie way is a beautiful mixture of two ideas, retaining classic sounds but structure together in a much more interesting way. However this album really steps up from their previously releases, which just feel short of the mark.
31 The Postal Service – Give Up
With such a mishmash of styles this album almost doesn’t work… but for some reason it does. This long distant concept album enables a mixture of styles to present itself some beautiful electronic music sung with some highly bleak lyrics.
