Surprisingly to nobody, in the end I couldn’t steer clear of the “best of the decade” chat that is dominating the blogosphere at the moment. Last time around, of course, there wasn’t a “blogosphere” – and I wasn’t really listening to music at all! This decade has seen my rebirth as a music fan and so, in a way, perhaps every album I call “special” or “personal” or “favourite” is could belong in this list – whatever nickname we ultimately give this decade. Personally, I’m more interested to see what trendy buzzword we come up with for the next one!

Kudos to Kate, for inspiring me with her similarly themed post on Facebook.

10. Jesse Malin: The Fine Art of Self Destruction
2002, One Little Indian
Let’s not kid ourselves: I wouldn’t have picked up Jesse Malin’s debut if it didn’t have that little sticker on the case indicating that it was produced by one Ryan Adams. It’s not as if it had much else going for it: a simple cover image with a moody young man, with bad hair and a strange-sounding name, glowering from a New York subway platform; earnest-sounding one-word song titles like “Downliner” and “Solitaire” and “Brooklyn”. Even the title, now, seems a little pretentious – but at the time it struck just the right note of melodrama to catch my imagination. You all know how this story ends – even this screenname you’ve all gotten to know me by is a lyric, if a pretty cheesy one, from track 2. You don’t analyse these lyrics like poetry though – it might be over-earnest rock and roll, but Malin is the last of the true believers.
If you download one track, make it: “Downliner”
BUY: The Fine Art of Self Destruction at Amazon.co.uk

9. Marah: 20,000 Streets Under The Sky
2004, Munich
I never got to see Marah the way they were supposed to be seen. I had tickets once, sure, but it was after Serge had left anyway and it wouldn’t have been cool to stand there while I was still bleeding from the hospital. By all accounts, it was a sight. These songs, these bands, these nights: this is where the real me feels at her most at home. Dave Bielanko writes from the same place as the sparse, frost-covered cities I love and his “murder ballad”, “Body”, sends shivers down my spine and carries me to a place not too far from here, but certainly far above: a freezing rooftop somewhere in the rain where I can watch the world go about its nighttime business while not fully a part of it.
If you download one track, make it: “Body”
BUY: 20,000 Streets Under The Sky at Amazon.co.uk

8. Matthew Ryan: Matthew Ryan vs. the Silver State
2008, Pinnacle
Matthew Ryan: a classic case of a label rep doing their job properly, as I’d never heard of him before a copy of this album popped the door. One of those voices that feels as if it’s been with you forever, coupled with earnest, poetic lyrics and stripped-down arrangements. This is an album for those dark evenings when the company of a good record matters most.
If you download one track, make it: “Dulce Et Decorum Est”
BUY: Matthew Ryan vs The Silver State at Amazon.co.uk

7. Death Cab For Cutie: We Have The Facts and We’re Voting Yes
2000, Barsuk
I guess it’s in my nature to root for the underdog, but that’s not the reason why my favourite Death Cab album is the one from before they went all OC-ish. I adore Transatlanticism and the like with every fibre of my being, but We Have The Facts represents Gibbard’s songwriting at its stripped-down and most cynical finest and the music is fuzzy, fumbling and sometimes frenetic.
If you download one track, make it: “Title Track”
BUY: We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes at Amazon.co.uk

6. Paul Westerberg: Stereo
2003, Vagrant
One of my favourite (sadly no longer updated) websites was Ruined Music, which published essays from contributors on the songs they could no longer listen to – and they were mostly to do with ex-partners. I seem to have escaped relatively unscathed from the post-breakup purging of the music collection, but I suspect that were Jay and I to split I’d be in big trouble. I bought my first album by this one-time Replacement in Swordfish in Birmingham on my first weekend in the Midlands, as a souvenir of sorts. It wasn’t as lo-fi, heart-meltingly beautiful as much of this one though: that came later.
If you download one track, make it: “No Place For You”
BUY: Stereo at Amazon.co.uk

5. Lucero: Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers
2005, Liberty and Lament
It was Jay, too, who introduced me to Lucero – with their Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers. This is an album born of the highways of the band’s native Tennessee, and as somebody who has had the privilege of being to able to listen to it full-pelt along those very highways I can testify to its power and promise and rage and romance. There’s at once a wildness and an honesty to this record that few bands can match. One of those rare albums I love every single song on.
If you download one track, make it: “She’s Just That Kind Of Girl”
BUY: REBELS, ROGUES, & SWORN BROTHERS at Amazon.co.uk

4. The Mountain Goats: All Hail West Texas
2002, Emperor Jones
It’s with The Mountain Goats that this task I’ve set myself, to only list one album per act in my Top 40, really falls down. See, if I could only take one Mountain Goats album to a desert island, or whatever, it would be one of Darnielle’s more epic-sounding concept albums: Tallahassee or The Sunset Tree perhaps. But it’s on this earlier collection, the last to be recorded on John Darnielle’s old boombox, that so many of my favourites lie – along with my heart.
If you download one track, make it: “Source Decay”
BUY: All Hail West Texas at Amazon.co.uk

3. The National: Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers
2003, Talitres
The National have a track record of albums that seep under your skin slowly – whose nuances you fall for almost without realising. But while Alligator and Boxer get all the acclaim, there’s something about their predecessor that comes across as more desperate, more urgent, more raw. There have been nights, all introspective and scribbling tiny notes to myself in the margins, that I have suspected that this bleak, beautiful and bitter album is the only one I will ever need. Matt Berninger’s deep vocals are the early morning whisper of a lover you will never see again, the sound of a curious intimacy between strangers. I haven’t grown tired of this band since the day I fell for them, and the promised 2010 release is my next year’s most anticipated.
If you download one track, make it: “Lucky You”
BUY: Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers at Amazon.co.uk

2. Ryan Adams: Heartbreaker
2000, Bloodshot
QUELLE SURPRISE PART UN: Heartbreaker wasn’t “my” Ryan Adams album, not at first, although over time it has come to mean the most to me as well as being the album most readily acknowledged as his best work. Nothing has ever really come close to matching this debut in terms of fragile beauty and brilliance – the work of a wide-eyed, mischievous miserabilist who doesn’t really exist anymore. There’s a whiskey-soaked maudlin to this album it wouldn’t be fair for a sober and happily married – if not quite sensible, not yet – Ryan to try to emulate as if he were still the scruffy boy carrying that titular heartbreak, but it doesn’t make this any less as close to musical perfection as it gets in my little world.
If you download one track, make it: “Come Pick Me Up”
BUY: Heartbreaker at Amazon.co.uk

1. The Hold Steady: Separation Sunday
2005, Frenchkiss
QUELLE SURPRISE PART DEUX: There are so many reasons why The Hold Steady are my favourite contemporary band. Their infectious, energetic stage presence, the fact that they’re these five guys who were never and will never be “cool”. And the lyrics; god, the lyrics. It’s trouble, redemption and my own residual Catholic guilt. It’s how different the city looks at three in the morning. It’s clever, druggy, messy, teenaged, literary. And the first time I heard this album’s closing track, I couldn’t stop crying.
If you download one track, make it: “Banging Camp”
BUY: Separation Sunday at Amazon.co.uk

Aaaaaand… we’re done. You know, I feel like I should have some big conclusion to draw here but the truth is, as I’ve said before, this was the decade of my “musical awakening”. That this list couldn’t include “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”, or “Blood on The Tracks”, or “Strangers’ Almanac”, or “Born To Run” is nothing but the most arbitrary trick of numbers. Still, technicalities won’t kill the music bloggers’ propensity for lists – tune in next week for 2008 Revisited, before 2009′s own send-off.

And it goes without saying I’d love to see where our lists overlap, so please feel free to share your links in the comments!

NOTE: Album title links almost always take you via my referrer page on Amazon.co.uk. I’m trying to save up for Christmas, so help a blogger out and pick up a fantastic album into the bargain!