The Best Albums Of My Decade: By Less Lee Moore

10. The Joel Plaskett Emergency, Down At The Khyber (2001)

The very first music I heard from Joel Plaskett and still my favorite (although Ashtray Rock is a close second). Although there is much Big Star and Led Zeppelin damage, make no mistake: this near-perfect album is wonderfully, unrepentantly Canadian.

9. TV Eyes, Softcore and assorted singles (2002- 2003)

A perfect storm of post punk and new wave from Jason Falkner, Roger Manning, and Brian Reitzell, it’s sort of like the Dukes Of Stratosphear for those of us born in the 70s. Although never properly or officially released in the US until 2008, bootlegs started popping up on the ‘net around 2002 and put any and every electroclash and retro revivalist poseur band to immediate shame. . . and still do.

8. Sloan, Action Pact (2003)

The first part of the decade was all about Sloan for me, signifying a sea change in my personal life and inspiring my eventual move to Canada. After the dismal, disappointing Pretty Together, this album was a blissful reminder of why I fell in love with Sloan (and Canada) in the first place.

7. OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and Idlewild (2003 and 2006)

I realize I am including three albums as one entry, but it’s impossible to choose. Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx is the superior album in the double opus from OutKast, although in terms of genre-bending and forward-thinking, Andre 3000’s The Love Below cannot be ignored. Idlewild fused the best of both worlds and then upped the ante by including nearly every style of popular music from the last half-century. And they turned it into a movie musical.

6. Elliott Smith, Figure 8 (2000)

I first heard Elliott Smith on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack and had a gut feeling that his haunting, beautiful music was going to be my own next big thing. Figure 8 was irrefutable proof that my hunch was right. I listened to Elliott Smith almost constantly for the next few years, during times of both utter heartbreak and great happiness, only stopping after his suicide in 2003 when it just became too painful to confront music’s indelible loss.

5. Air, 10,000 Hz. Legend (2001)

Part spooky prog rock and part French pop whimsy, this album takes the creepy, addictive vibe of Air’s “Sexy Boy” single and intensifies it a thousand fold. Air created excellent songs before and after this release, but none that coalesced into such a magnificent, cohesive, and still-compelling whole from beginning to end.

4. Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master (2007)

My gateway drug to Electric Six and all their genius and insanity, the band who involuntarily composed my life’s soundtrack for the last two years. This album—along with its ludicrous and arrogant title—exemplifies the reasons why. E6 can be poignant, postmodern, and political, but also funny and raunchy as hell, and danceable as fuck.

3. Various Artists, Breakfast On Pluto official and unofficial soundtrack (2005)

Breakfast On Pluto is one of the most inspiring and personally significant movies I’ve ever seen. And since music played a huge role in the life of the main character, the eternal optimist and outsider Patrick “Kitten” Braden, the soundtrack has become equally inspiring and significant to my own life.

2. Sparks, Hello Young Lovers (2006)

I was crazy for Sparks before this release, but I was unprepared for the sheer brilliance of this album and by how much crazier for them I would soon become. Sparks are among the most unsung, unheralded geniuses of the last four decades and have brought more joy into my life than I could ever hope to convey in words.

1. Foetus, Love and Damp (2005 and 2006)

The rebirth of Foetus, if you will, started with 2001’s Flow, a marvelous album indeed, but by no means an indication of the distilled genius of Love. I include Damp, though it came out later, because I listened to the two back to back for much of 2007 and they are forever fused in my mind: the soundtrack to a descent into desperation and the crawling out afterwards.

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