Albums 2000-2009: 10-1

Albums 2000-2009: 20-11

One thing that this batch of albums share is that more than half of them are extremely loud.

Albums 2000-2009: 30-21

Barry has his decade list posted (finally) (pot/kettle/black), so if you want a look at a genuinely nuanced selection, check out his top 30 of the '00s (about a third of which I'm familiar with).

Albums 2000-2009: 40-31

Albums 2000-2009: 50-41

Albums 2000-2009: Preamble

Let me get an immediate caveat out of the way. The following words should never be attributed to my list: comprehensive; permanent; canonic. I've narrowed my list down to a favorite fifty albums that I feel reasonably solid about, but I've been tinkering with the both the rankings and with the stragglers at its bottom. Which is to say that, despite the months that I've put into this little exercise (and yes, months -- I started reassessing in November up to (and certainly through) this writing), the complete list still isn't solidified, nor will it ever be, because list-making of this sort is a slow-motion snapshot of taste. And taste isn't static, it evolves and is informed by whatever your current circumstances are; something that I never "got" before suddenly makes sense because of a fleeting mood that might never return again. I guess that deals with the permanent caveat.

The comprehensive caveat. For only a brief time was I ever an active music seeker at a professional level. That commitment wasn't sustainable for me, and it didn't last, clearly. In fact, since that time, the amount of energy that I devote to finding new bands and new genres has quickly dissipated to almost nothing by 2009. Don't get me wrong, I listen to music nearly every day, and even continue to buy CDs (yes, I'm one of those), except what I bought was exclusively from artists that I've been into since 2007 or before, which means that recent critical darlings are a big void for me. Part of getting old, I guess, and at an earlier point in my life, I'd have been upset or disappointed at myself for getting complacent, but now, I can't be bothered about it. (If Barry is in the same boat, I see no reason to feel ashamed.)

Similarly, my listening has always been somewhat haphazard, where I get into something more or less randomly, or on a whim, rather than as a result of some directed listening project, like, "I really ought to check out XYZ scene" (which probably describes a lot of music experiences). However, that haphazardness stands a good chance of not providing the momentum to continue along that artist's work or their genre, so that in my listening universe, they become this bubble floating disconnectedly in space.

In any case (clumsy transition to canon caveat), certain critical favorites have never been anything I'm interested in (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, hip hop that's more about the emceeing than the production (i.e. Timbaland or bust)). Also: don't expect any Radiohead. "Influential" or "important" doesn't make me appreciate an album that just doesn't press any of my buttons. What's more, my taste has really gotten simple: I like music that has any combination of textured arrangements, nice melodies, auditory space, and female singing. (This formulation yields a lot of post-rock and psych rock and noisy indie/indie pop bands.)

So: what follows in the coming weeks is a list of albums that I liked in late 2009/early 2010, no more, no less.

TV rating: The Wire - "Boys of Summer"

Everyone's Doing Decade Lists, Film Version

1. Wall-E
   So Tati-esque -- the use of minimal sound to create heart-aching loneliness. I love you, little robot.
2. Legally Blonde
   The best live-action American film this decade. Read some Lacan to find out why, muah haha hah hahah.
3. Batman Begins/The Dark Knight
   I would marry Batman.
4. Spirited Away
   An opulent menagerie of gods, with some of the most potent film-making I've had the pleasure of crying to.
5. Ratatouille
   The moment when SPOILER Anton Ego flashes back to childhood END SPOILER is unbeatable.
6. Children of Men
   I try to remain skeptical about displays of technical virtuosity (polite term for indulgent wank, which itself is less polite term I use for "acting"), but damn if all of Alfonso Cuarón's single-take set pieces didn't draw me into the visceral Bourne-style dystopia.
7. Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
   Movies have taught me one thing: my true love is a Frenchwoman (ok, Francophone-woman) with chic brown hair. She alights like an apparition once a decade into the light and shadows of film. In the '90s, her name was Valentine Dussault; she reappeared as Amélie Poulain in 2001.
8. The Incredibles
   Wall-E and Ratatouille are in a class by themselves -- but being the best of the rest of Pixar's oeuvre is no small potatoes.
9. Bend It Like Beckham
   Girl power forever!
10. Secretary
    A sado-masochistic fairy tale whose main character is named Lee. How can I not go for it?

Conclusions: I am a 12-year-old girl. Michael Caine is the actor of the decade.

Indie rating: Goldfrapp - "Fly Me Away"

Noughties TV Poll, I Love Everything Edition

ILE did a poll of TV for this decade, and I've reproduced my results below (if you're curious about the complete results), along with some comments I wrote for a select few programs (which, unfortunately, didn't crack the top 50):

1. The Wire
2. 30 Rock
3. Doctor Who
4. Freaks and Geeks
5. Sports Night
6. Justice League Unlimited
7. Generation Kill
8. America's Next Top Model
   For about six ineffable seasons, ANTM was the realization of reality tv's full potential. It created a world that bore only passing resemblance to ours, interested only in gazing on itself and reproducing itself, in which the rules were dictated by an increasingly megalomaniacal autocrat, where vain, silly, catty, usually dense, often fame-craving girls who pliantly follow these rules while in their spare time blowing up petty trivia into world-combusting spectacles all so that they can win something that has barely any real-world value, except the real-world value is us watching the self-contained, self-perpetuating inanity being driven to the limits of tolerance where, magically, it becomes absurd and dramatically engrossing all at once. A surreal masterpiece.
9. Bones
10. Friday Night Lights
11. Teen Titans
12. So You Think You Can Dance
13. Project Runway
14. Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
    This is a show that underachieved for most of its run, but somehow managed to keep me watching. I don't know if they were banking on the attractiveness of its stars or the built-in fanbase, but I just kept being strung along by its aimless and convoluted narrative, bored all the while. Then almost overnight (in actuality, the transition between the first and second seasons) it turned into a mercilessly bold piece of sci-fi which sharpened all the dangling plot threads (excuse the mixed metaphors, they work in a scif-fi context, see?) and made all that time I wasted watching it instantly worth it, and it even became an engrossing (and weird) family drama, with guns.
15. State of Play
    I watched it a month or so ago, and I couldn't help but think that this is how the last season of The Wire should've played -- the same narrative density, the same shorthand dialogue, the same, droll gallows humor used to push against the tedium/inanity found in a given profession, and the same weight of institutional self-interest that individuals run into. Also: the endings for both are kind of stupid.
16. Da Ali G Show
17. Survivor
18. Undeclared
19. Lost
20. The Amazing Race
21. The West Wing
22. The Simpsons
23. Veronica Mars
24. Battlestar Galactica
25. Futurama

Looking back at my ballot, a few things to note.

First, if you look closely, you'll notice I put Sports Night and The Simpsons on there, even if their 2000s output was marginal. See, I went by a simple criterion for picking my top 25 -- if I loved the show and it had any episodes this decade, I put it on there. This poll was hardly rigorous or definitive and I wanted to rep shows that mean a lot to me, so there. And, my vote for The Simpsons was something of a lifetime achievement award.

Second, I'd probably switch Freaks and Geeks with Doctor Who if I were to redo my ballot; F&G had the benefit of such concentrated awesomeness that from its first episode to its last, it never had a poor episode. It certainly doesn't have any episodes about Victorian werewolves or Daleks in Depression-era Manhattan. But man, Who delivered some astonishing sci-fi gigantism, so this doesn't rate as a heinous decision.

Third, I ranked The West Wing too high -- within the last few years, I rewatched seasons 1 and 2 and thought they were both much more cloying than I remembered. (Caveat: a lot of shows don't fare terribly well on second viewings -- which is why Veronica Mars ended up so low; The Wire even suffered after I watched it again but is so unlike anything else in terms of content and quality that it's still my favorite program by far.)

Indie rating: Isis – "Carry"