If the 80s and 90s saw music fragmenting into hundreds of tiny subcultures the 00s offered a way out – in part by destroying the very music industry machinery that encouraged such fragmentation. File sharing may have killed music but it also saved it by letting people hear thousands of songs they never would have been exposed to.It also freed musicians like M.I.A., Radiohead, and Girl Talk to make music that was as boundary-less as their audience.

Here they are, my pick for the 100 best albums of the last decade:

Best of the 00s 100-76

Best of the 00s 75-51

Best of the 00s 50-26

Best of the 00s 25-1

Sky Saxon of the Seeds, who died in 2009

So the 00’s come to an end with a whimper, not a bang. These 25 albums were all great but I’d be lying if I told you that there was another 25 I was anguished about leaving off the list. Even so Dylan, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Raekwon, Monsters of Folk, Talbot Tagora and M. Ward all just missed the cut – to name a few. It was a dismal year for hip-hop but the likes of Wale and Kid Cudi give hope to the future. Merge records celebrated their twentieth anniversary while venerable Touch and Go announced their imminent closing.

Here without further ado, were my favorite 25 albums of the year:

1. Girls – Album
Get over the disappointment that Girls doesn’t even have any girls in the band and you’ll find that the duo of JR White and Christopher Owens have crafted an exquisitely detailed album that slides comfortably into the slot marked “Indie Rock” without becoming a slave to the genre’s tropes. It’s like Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted run through a gloriously filter of Smiths sensibility.

2. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
It may seem like Neko Case has been wrapping her considerable lungpower around the same seam of country tinged alt-Americana for several albums now. She’s so consistent and subtle in the ways she moves her craft forward from record-to-record that it can be heard to realize how much she’s progressed until you compare this to her earliest works. Her country twang has been leavened into a sweeping epic atmospheric sensibility underpinned by a sly sense of humor. Little flourishes color each song and her cover of Spark’s “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth” shows how unique her sound has become.

3. Thermals - Now We Can See
A concept album about death? Major bummer dude, and pretentious as hell. Yet The Thermals pull it off with the best album of their career, a considerable feat considering the breakthrough that was 2006’s The Body, The Blood, The Machine. This is the kind of melodic, intelligent, heartfelt punk that Green Day wishes they could write.

4. Future of The Left – Travels With Myself and Another
When the perpetually cross Welshmen in McLusky decided to call it a day, few thought that they would return in all but name and bassist but plus two members from the equally defunct Jarcrew. Yet return they have, with a brace of abrasively melodic post punk on this, their second album. All the snarkiness remains, abetted by pogo-worthy choruses and clever wordplay.

5. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
After spending most of the decade perfecting their neo-psych chops and expanding their audience Flaming Lips take a hard left into Krautrock territory with Can in particular serving as a touchstone for a sprawling bass heavy album. There are moments that recall PiL’s classic Metal Box/Second Edition as well, minus Johnny Rotten.

6. Japandroids – Post-Nothing

Japandroids are the best kind of bubblegum lo-fi – chiming squalling guitars plus killer songs recorded with punch and definition enough to not obscure the fun. Anthems abound from “Wet Hair” to the magnificent “The Boys are Leaving Town.”

7. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear’s debut was praised (perhaps overly) for it’s Brooklynite take on the pastoral sound sweeping indie circles so it’s a treat to find the follow-up bettering it’s predecessor in every way. The influences du jour are still there – as with Animal Collective a Beach Boys streak tempered by a touch of freak folk and out-and-out experimentation. The arrangements are less dry than before, with a marvelous command of build and release all of which sets off a remarkable set of songs. A triumph.

8. Surf City – Surf City (EP)
As their name implies Surf City has a touch of classic surf rock to them, but it’s by way of The Pixies, spiked with the Cure’s romantic melodicism and a dash of good old fashioned fuzz. The sheer enthusiasm of the songs and the performances is infectious – just try not to bop along.

9. Abe Vigoda – Reviver
Not the aged actor from Barney Miller, these art punks have flown under the radar successfully enough to avoid a lawsuit – so far. That may not last because as cool as last year’s Skeleton full-length was, this EP is better – song after great song. Like No Age this isn’t quite lo-fi enough to count as the mannered sludge passed off by Times New Viking but it has a raw immediate quality with songs that can come off like Grizzly Bear’s hard-rocking little brothers.

10. Sonic Youth – The Eternal
Sonic Youth’s return to indiedom may be a tad less satisfying than their last Geffen album, Rather Ripped, but it’s their rockingest album since 1992’s Dirty. It’s chock full of Johnny Thunders asides and nods to The Stooges as well as the bands trademarked sideways riffs and alternate tunings. Of course it’s the tight, focused songs that elevate this to the top tier of their ever-growing canon, plus the novelty of hearing them attempt something like vocal harmony and interplay on many songs, another new wrinkle for these vets.

11. Dan Deacon – Bromst
As interesting as Dan Deacon has been in the past, he’s always undercut his songs with skronky dissonance and over-syncopation that make listening a challenge for many (me included). On Bromst he lightens the stew just enough to still be distinctive but also highlight his rhythmic inventiveness and control of texture and pacing resulting in his best record yet.

12. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
Animal Collective keeps edging closer and closer to melody while always underpinning what they do with a sense of playfulness and anything-goes studio arrangements. Their off-kilter sensibility gets it’s fullest expression to date here on a record that finds room for paeans to fatherhood and family life amongst the close-knit harmonies, circular rhythmic pulsing, and unexpected side turns. The Beach Boys are a touchstone but only if Brain Wilson had been able to channel his madness completely and musically, had embraced the chaos equally with the melody. A true stunner.

13. AC Newman - Get Guilty
While New Porngraphers have begun to sound a bit overstuffed on recent releases bandleader Carl Newman brings things back down to the basics on Get Guilty, his best work since the Porno’s Twin Cinema. It’s not that he does anything new here, it’s that he does his schtick with expertise. If powerpop full of big meaty choruses and thundering drums is your deal then sign right up.

14. Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications
The louche former Pulp frontman gets in touch with his guitar-heavy side and brings noisemeister Steve Albini to man the control board. The result is lean and mean and full of horny tongue-in-cheek single-entendres like “Caucasian Blues” (in which he laments being hung like a white man) and the utterly brilliant “I Never said I Was Deep.”

15. Atlas Sound - Logos

Nealy shelved after an early version leaked last year, the latest album from Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox has thankfully seen the light of day and it’s as good as anything by his increasingly notable day band. Noah Lennox from Animal Collective guests on the awesome “Walkabout” and there is a certain shared sensibility but Atlas Sound is skewed less towards rhythm circularity and more towards chewy hooks and strumming guitars.

16. St. Vincent – Actor
Like Neko Case and Spoon’s Britt Daniel, Annie Clark (who is St. Vincent for all intents and purposes) is a thinking person’s pin-up, as glorious for their art as for their looks. Her background in Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestra, The Polyphonic Spree, and Sufjan Steven’s band give a pretty good idea of her take on music – a sort of Kate Bush as guitar slinger. On Actor she has the songs to pull it off, sounding like early solo Peter Gabriel if he had roped Thurston Moore into playing guitar for him.

17. Mos Def – The Ecstatic
In a lousy year for hip-hop it was good to welcome Mos Def back with a first-rate album after years of tossed off efforts. Sounding more vital than he has in years over a set of clever engrossing beats and soundscapes it’s a reminder of how great rap can be when it’s not subject to rote rhyming and mega-sales expectations. The cherry on top is a great guest verse by Slick Rick.

18. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
The Jesus and Mary Chain have much to answer for in the last few years but inspiring a band as fun and freewheeling as this one is nothing to feel bad about. To be fair The Smiths and a fair sampling of other late 80s British indie rock can also be detected here but the attack is as fresh as a naughty schoolkid. It all sounds new to them and they write and play their damn bleeding hearts out, which almost is enough to forgive their unfortunate band moniker.

19. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Callahan may no longer operate under the name Smog but he still has the same laconic delivery, insinuatingly dry songwriting, and command of melody. This time he’s backed with the richest instrumentation of his career with pianos and french horns and the likes standing ready to aid and abet but never overwhelm. In fact his use of space is more strategic than ever letting every violin or bell register like a thunderclap.

20. Polvo - In Prism
An unexpected comeback, Polvo was saddled during their early 90s heyday with the mathrock label and while their riffing is angular and their song structures can be architectural they have always had a warmth and humor that transcended the genre. They’ve also had Ash Bowie (who went on to play guitar in Helium) as a secret weapon, a guitarist with a knack for wringing melody out of sometimes dissonant patterns. Welcome back.

21. Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
For all the initial talk about this being a departure for the band it came as a bit of a letdown to hear that they actually sounded like… Franz Ferdinand. Repeated listens proved that the band had moved the game forward subtly, primarily by centering every song around the rhythm section. This is no bad thing as Franz bassist Bob Hardy and drummer Paul Thomson are one of the best in rock. On “Lucid Dreams” they do extend past the 8-minute mark (though the earlier, tighter version may be superior) and hints of T. Rex and Bowie still surface through the dancefloor. Undeniably catchy ass-shaking.

22. Kurt Vile – Childish Prodigy
The name is a tip-off that that Vile is a throwback to the theatrical self-mythologizing of 70s punk as it edged into glam. Ballads jostle with fuzzed out Iggy-esque rockers but there is always a twist instrumentally or lyrically to make it sound fresh rather than a guy living in the sounds of the past. Each successive song cements that Vile is a talent to watch.

23. Mika Miko – We Be Xuxa
The world surely needs more femme punk and Mika Miko are as good as it gets. Synthesizing sources as varied as The Raincoats, The Descendents, and Agent Orange makes for an album that pogos as much as it thrashes and that’s a damn good thing. It’s a short sharp shock of an album with room for detours like the mid-period Replacements-like jape “Turkey Sandwich.”

24. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
While the band name The Very Best makes this sound like a compilation of some sort, what’s being sampled here by the production team Radioclit and singer Esau Mwamwaya is the very essence of music from around the world. Appropriately they are joined by a member of Vampire Weekend and M.I.A., a handy guide to the globe spanning beats and melodies found within. An audacious follow-up to last year’s jawdropping mixtape.

25. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Wilco studiously avoid making the same album twice, so it’s not surprising that the new one was met with a mixed reception. They also vary their approach from song to song to the extent that “Bull Black Nova”, a droning drama that I love, has been denounced by several friends as the worst track on the album. Whereas the last record served up gloriously tangled guitar lines in the guise of classic LA rock, this one puts the screws to triple AAA radio but still finds time for a straight ahead ballad like “You and I”.

Here’s a short excerpt from a low budget ‘abandoned’ cable doc on DeLorean. Not only are the production values porn-esque, the voiceover has a certain Ron Jeremy-esque feel. Ew.

Rolling Stone claims to have cracked Radiohead’s code, and they didn’t need Robert Graysmith to do it. The venerable music pub has been peering at the cryptic messages on the band’s website and have suggested that the release date for their eagerly awaited seventh album will be March 10th (in the UK new music comes out on Mondays, unlike the U.S. which does it on Tuesdays). No word yet on a label for the band, which is free of their contract with Parlophone/Capitol. Below is an example of one of their coded images:

Girls marvelous debut album is reminiscent of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted in how it transmutes standard indie sounds into something irresistibly their own through sheer talent and force of will.

49. Outkast – Stankonia

Outkast spent much of the decade bidding to be the new Prince, or at least Andre 3000 did. They nearly got there with the massive “Hey Ya” single but it’s on this record that they are at their most consistent from song to song.

48. Eels – Souljacker

Not beloved by most Eels fans or detractors Souljacker found Eels frontman E hiding behind a Taliban beard (soon to become a standard hipster accessory) and a toy poodle, and brandishing a never before heard yen for feedback and rocking out. It’s his toughest and leanest album and to my mind one of his best.

47.  Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco’s bruising experience with their record label and the subsequent internet release of this album, their best, followed by a proper in store release is a capsule story of what was wrong with the record industry and why the Internet was right to destroy it. It’s also a damn fine record.

46. Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele

Ghostface’s most unhinged means that it’s also his best – sheer pleasure and off centered rhymes from beginning to end.

45. Pulp – We Love Life

Pulp’s last album was also a marvel of great songwriting and arrangements from the chugging strings on “Trees” to the brilliant jokes on “Bad Cover Version” (check out the video that the morons at their record company won’t let me embed because it might, you know, promote the album).

44. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

The Pornos vary their sound and experiment more on their third album, with some of their most stunning results. Thankfully fuller arrangements don’t blunt the bands drive (as the follow-up record would) and only highlight the energy.

43. Cake – Comfort Eagle

It can be argued that the basics elements of any Cake album are essentially the same – killer rhythm section, horns for color, a bandleader whopping to exhort his colleagues. Yet here it all comes together on their best set of songs, from the one about Rick James doing the singer’s girlfriend in a kidney-shaped pool to the one about how pretty people don’t get cancer.

42. Green Day – American Idiot

Green Day was lucky to have the masters of their new album stolen. Lucky because it forced them to reinvent themselves on the fly, digging out of their pop-punk rut to deliver an angry Bush-bashing Who-loving concept album that magnificently rocked over 2004.

41. Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped

Sonic Youth closed out their long tenure on Geffen records (they were the ones who had convinced Nirvana to sign) with their best record since the early 90s, a concise, swinging statement of purpose that contained some of their prettiest guitar lines and poppiest melodies as if to say “If you can’t figure out how to market this, you don’t deserve to have it.”

40. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Kevin Barnes’ band Of Montreal found it’s full flowering after his marriage hit the rocks in Norway, leading to this throbbing thumping album that channels Prince by way of Neutral Milk Hotel. A wild rewarding ride.

39. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective spent the decade as an art band on the cusp of greatness, transmuting elements as wildly varied as The Beach Boys, jam bands, primitivism, and glitch-pop into their own unique stew. Finally they delivered this brilliant album that seems to find ways to port hooks and melodic elements through the backdoor.

38. The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America

By all rights Craig Finn’s post-Lifter Puller band should have flamed out after their sarcastic debut but against all logic they keep getting better and better, writing songs with more depth and playing past the E-Street band comparisons to find their own sound beginning with this subtle devastator of a record.

37. Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights

Paul Bank’s nasal drone earned him unwanted comparisons to Joy Division’s late Ian Curtis, a burden few bands would want to try to live up to. A good listen to their debut however showed a band that married the late 70s moves of fellow NYers the Strokes with a lean and lithe rhythmic attack to flesh out their tales of louche romance and empty city streets.

36. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Neko Case hit her stride on this record, filling out her songs with fuller arrangements and a sound that defies easy categorization. As always above all is her glorious honeyed voice drawing the listener in.

35. Justice – Cross

The best pure dance feast of the decade, Justice took up the mantle of such fine 90s acts as Propellorheads, Fatboy Slim, and Daft Punk and created an album the equal of the best of their forebears.

34. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP

Eminem followed up his hit debut by expanding and deepening his themes, most notably the blurring of fact and fiction that so fueled the ire of his critics. His prickly (and prick-y) intelligence animate even the harshest of these songs, as does his devilish sense of humor.

33. The Fiery Furnaces – EP

It’s fitting that one of the most interesting and frustrating bands of the era would have a compilation of odds and ends as their best and most listenable album. Starting as an actual brother and sister duo in the mold of The White Stripes they did a radical shift with the multilayered intricate song sites of Blueberry Boat and never turned back. EP’s songs reflect both eras and are often more tuneful than anything else they’ve done, avoiding the overstuffed left-turns that can sometimes sink their other records.

32. Radiohead – In Rainbows

In Rainbows got as much attention for being released online without a record label as a name-your-own-price download (quite successfully)  as for the music within – another nail in the coffin of the traditional record biz. Yet the contents were remarkable as well, a tour de force restatement of everything Radiohead can do from rhythmic electronica spiked songs to stately ruminative ballads to rousing guitar rock. Light years ahead of their competition.

31. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Pig Lib

Malkmus throws off the yoke of his former band Pavement by embracing his increasingly virtuoso guitar pyrotechnics. At the same time though his offbeat lyrics still hold fast as do his joy in warping traditional rock sounds to his own aims.

30. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig Lazarus Dig!

After a few years of uneven output Nick Cave stormed back wonderfully with this record, a hip-swinging travelogue through the US with the titular bible personage who seems to spend an awful lot of his post-resurrection on his back with members of the opposite sex. A lusty triumph.

29. Cat Power – You Are Free

Chan Marshall has since embraced the easy-on-the-ears sound of Memphis soul, much in the same way and with the same cohorts as Frank Black attempted to. Beforehand though, she made her most interesting and engrossing album, a rough hewn gem that used a stripped back lo-fi sound to offset her smoky warble with edgy guitars and bone dry drums.

28. Spoon – Gimme Fiction

Spoon showed some unexpected moves here, building on their growing mastery of negative space to put over the falsetto groove of “I Turn My Camera On” as well as the simmer to a boil edge of “The Beast and Dragon Adored.” Britt Daniel firmly established his bands rubbery punch as a sound all it’s own, with some antecedents but few equals.

27. Jay-Z – The Black Album

If only Jay-Z had actually really retired after this monster, which supposedly represented his farewell to rap. All his strengths are played to her with some of his best and most personal rhymes and a set of superstar backing tracks that treated his words like settings for jewels.

26. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Arcade Fire did the impossible, following up their beloved debut with a second album that built in many places on the strengths of the first one, if a shade unevenly. Nevertheless the Canadian band became a worldwide sensation, catapulted to playing with heroes from Bruce Springsteen to David Bowie in the kind of indie rock fairytale that few believed in anymore.