my favorite albums of 2000's

This list doesn't mean anything except that I loved these albums because they integrated themselves into my life like living beings, and sometimes they acted as stronger friends to me than my actual friends in the way they listened to the silent yearning and raging of my heart and body, like we were connected by some invisible magnetic thread, and the way they spoke to me and for me when I had no power to use my own voice to sing. It's been a really hectic 10 years! So fuck Pitchfork and Rolling Stone and Spin and Fader and NME. These ten albums mattered most to me.*

*Honorable mentions: The Libertines: The Libertines, Myths of the Near Future: Klaxons, Oracular Spectacular: MGMT, Fever to Tell: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amnesiac: Radiohead, The Marshall Mathers LP: Eminem and anything else recorded by the 10 acts below.

10. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse, 2006

I'm surprised too. But the more time I spend with this album the more I feel like Amy Winehouse knows what she's talking about, even a little bit more than Pete Doherty and The Libertines who she kicked out of my top 10. A song like "Love is a Losing Game" perfectly describes the futility in trying to find a trustworthy and permanent partner. "Five story fire as you came/Love is a losing game" means you can find yourself floored by a man and want to start new with him and give it your all (like, know, meeting the love of your life in a frat house basement) but ultimately you will wind up alone and heartbroken again (4 years later). "Back to Black" is a beautiful, bittersweet reminder to watch your own back in the dirty dealings of love and sex because everyone's out for himself in this world. You should be too.

9. We All Belong, Dr. Dog, 2007/Takers and Leavers EP, Dr. Dog, 2006

Dr. Dog opened for The Raconteurs on tour in 2006, and I kinda fell in love with them due solely to the fact that Toby Leaman looks like a short hipster version of my favorite professor and the gut-wrenching, Bob Dylan-leaning Beatness of "Die Die Die," quite possibly one of the best songs ever written.

8. '07, The Virgins, 2007/Self-Taught Learner, Lissie Trullie, 2009

I highly prefer The Virgins' EP to their full-length debut because Donald Cumming's the kind of boy who deserves to keep it simple and dirty. He does better with his sinus infection vocals and rough, homemade 8-track production. (He does best naked in photos by Ryan McGinley or on stage in telephone-patterned red skintight leggings.) Songs like "Fernando Pando" and "Radio Christiane" made me feel at home in a big city like New York, and seeing the Virgins as much as possible from NYE 07 to the present has helped me to love this place more than any other. Not to mention, Donald's kinda my dream man, after Julian Casablancas, of course.

I put Lissy Trullie into the same position because she's friends with the band, and I found her thru loving The Virgins. In reverse, though, I like her full-length better than her demos because she collabs with everyone's favorite crack addict Adam Green on a poignant cover of "Just a Friend" and she includes the song that got me into her, "You Bleed You." Also "Don't to Do" was pretty much my anthem during my break-up over this past summer, and I love love love Lissy's man fashion-influenced style.

7. Little Joy, Little Joy, 2008

Fabulous Moretti doesn't let us down with his "solo"-ish debut with Rodrigo Amarante and gf Binki Shapiro. Songs like "With Strangers" and "Play the Part," with their quiet acceptance of failure and sadness, made me feel okay this summer when I ate anxiety for breakfast and swallowed disappointment like anti-depressants (in lieu of health insurance and its over-medicating benefits.) "Unattainable" sung by Binki with her innocent, assured voice makes me want to love a man that deserves it. Out of all the Strokes' solo/side efforts, Fab and Little Joy take the cake.

6. Album, Girls, 2009

I can't help it; I'm obsessed. I listen to this one non-stop because it's so damn good. Christopher Owens could come into my apartment and stay for 56 weeks without paying rent, or I would cook casseroles for him and leave them outside in a dog house beside baggies of weed that I personally bought (shock!) and sew him a delux set of sheets and pillows so he could sleep all day long. Or he could curl up in my bed in a ratty thrift-store sweater knitted circa 1972 and sing with his Elvis Costello croon into my ear all night. I don't do drugs, but I'd drop a Valium or 2 with him and let him cry over my naked body all night long. Some people say sex is the motivation behind all creative endeavors, and I kind believe it because Owens and his band mate JR White made this awesome awesome awesome sunshine-in-hell breakup album on pills of all kinds, and you know a breakup hangover is really just the sick realization that you'll never get to fuck that girl (or boy) again. This album makes me happy that I'm sad and sad that I'm happy in spite of myself. It's like the record that spins me round, round, baby, right round, like a record baby round, right round, round, which must explain why this sucker's been on repeat since I bought it.

5. Friends of Mine, Adam Green, 2003

I've sung his praises on this blog before. The guy's the sad song writing maestro, and with his unpredictable antics he puts on one of the most entertaining and ridiculous live shows. Adam Green, I bow to you. Your drug-addled craziness belies your musical seriousness and talent. But if you can write a song like "Bungee" that has become an actual component of my soul I will follow you down whatever roads your music takes you for the rest of my life.

4. The New Fellas, The Cribs, 2005

The Cribs came to me by accident; I'm pretty sure I found them while cyber-stalking Misshapes protege Jackson Pollis, aka Kids Meal while I was living in Tremont. I fell in love with their bad vocals (especially Ryan Jarman's) and lo-fi-ish production. "I'm Alright Me" became my nihilistic anthem and made me feel okay when I over-imbibed and over-caffeinated and didn't care and didn't sleep. Seeing the Cribs for the first time made me fall in love for life, and with each album they've grown consistently, showing that hard work pays off and bad teeth and bad hair and bad fashion in general make for the output of some damn fine songs about living young and fast in a tour van.

3. Favourite Worst Nightmare, Arctic Monkeys, 2007

They might be young and they might have been hyped up the wazoo in 2006, but Alex Turner can write inner anger better than anyone I've yet to find (except for Kurt Cobain.) His relentless use of Matt Helders' immaculate and powerful drumming over atmospheric guitars and 1950's obscure rock song loops make music so haunting and potent and dangerous that you just want to stab yourself in the face. I hold anger in my body for years, and it takes me a long time to get over anything, so to have this album confirm the rightness of such an unhealthy and wrong harboring of negativity makes me feel like it's a little bit okay, or at least like I'm in good, hot company. "Do Me a Favour" and "505" make me die a little bit every time, and when I finally make my movie (you know, a neo-New Wave crazy train semi-autobiographical coming of age flick featuring a blonde with a chic haircut and black-lined blue eyes) the music from this album will pretty much take over the entire soundtrack.

2. White Blood Cells, The White Stripes, 2001

Jack White's a force of fucking nature, and I could listen to this album for the rest of my life. "The Union Forever" starts with a flippant, fuck-you guitar riff and says, "It can't be love, for there is no true love." How true, Jackie, how true. The song then devolves into a grunge-tastic, bitter, slightly out-of-control reinterpretation of Citizen Kane... Egomaniacs must love each other, I guess, and Orson Welles and Jack White will surely meet each other in Hell or wherever geniuses go when they die.

1. Room on Fire, The Strokes, 2003

Duh! What did you expect? Oh, yeah. Is This It? Like every other countdown on the planet. Well I'm no first album lover. I like sophomore efforts, and while Is This It? changed my life and personality and goals and dreams (I stopped worshipping fuck face Billy Corgan's melodrama and traded it in for sleek, magnetic structure; I let my neurotic nature and demands fly; I decided I would one day move to New York City and make out with drunken bed-headed dirty boys; I would see the Strokes LIVE ONE DAY) Room on Fire solidified all that. When Julian Casablancas wrote "12:51" he wrote the perfect pop song. When he wrote "Under Control" he wrote the song of my life. When he wrote "I Can't Win" he wrote about the failings every artist faces at the hands of his own worst enemy: himself. Some people say that they like all music and all songs and all things, but I'm the kind of girl who loves ALWAYS one of whatever it is the best, and Room on Fire is not only my favorite album of The Aughts, it's also my desert island album, one of my best friends, and pretty much the only thing that can make me close my eyes and sob for sheer amazement and gratitude when I'm not absolutely wasted. So thank you, Jules and Co. for this little gem. You've made my decade and life worth living, and that's a cliche and an overstatement (classic Brittany hyperbole) but it's also very true (classic Brittany doesn't lie.)