Tomb

2000: Radiohead – Kid A (Capitol)

Thom Yorke picked his lyrics randomly out of a hat, Jonny Greenwood traded in his guitar to become an orchestrator of computer blips and electronic whirrs — and almost a full decade later, Kid A stands as one of the pre-eminent recordings of the decade. It was released in late 2000 and met with mostly positive reviews, but a decade’s worth of hindsight proves the album to have been way ahead of its time. In both its random lyrics and hesitant, detached mood, Kid A predicted a decade of uncertainty. It became the soundtrack to a world where globalization brought people closer together than ever before, only to realize how alone they truly are. In more practical terms, Kid A was the beginning of Radiohead’s shunning of the music industry rules. By refusing to promote the album in any way and still debuting at No. 1, Radiohead made the first step toward suggesting a new model. As the world gets smaller and weirder, Kid A just seems more profound.

NATHAN ATNIKOV

2001: Jimmy Eat World: Bleed American (Dreamworks)

Given the band’s slightly pretentious attitude, you wouldn’t associate the DIY ethic with Mesa, Arizona’s Jimmy Eat World, but deciding to self-record Bleed American proved to be the best business move of its career. Working with producer Mark Trombino (Blink 182), the band found a balance between the almost-oversensitive vocals of frontman Jim Adkins and the hyper-butch guitar interplay that became the signature of the leadoff single and title track. The strength of future singles like “The Middle” and “The Sweetness” induced a label-bidding war and a legion of indie-punk imitators (Spitalfield, I’m looking at you). The band has released better albums since, but none has captured the public attention or enjoyed the longevity that this one has. On a personal level, Bleed American has become a road-trip staple, “A Praise Chorus” has become a mix-CD standard and “The Authority Song” was played at my wedding. It’s catchy without being disposable, hooky without being annoying and heartfelt without being sappy — no small feat for a bunch of sensitive emo boys.

JASON LEWIS

2002: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags and Codes (Interscope)

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead’s 2002 masterpiece Source Tags and Codes should be a disaster. Emo lyrics, atmospheric segues, hardcore punk explosions, heavy orchestration and a bigger-is-always-better approach to every detail should have left the album as laughably overblown and as everything the band has done since. Here, though, it walks the tightrope perfectly, seemingly as awestruck and surprised at the sweeping beauty and shocking bursts of violence it produces as its listeners. The album is constantly a millimetre away from falling into absurdity, but it never succumbs to vertigo. Sure, the band collapsed into self-parody soon thereafter, but its one dizzying tightrope walk was a hell of a thing to behold. All of this worked particularly well for me in 2002, the year in which I graduated from high school, moved away from my hometown for university and finally got over ’90s SoCal punk. Source Tags was the album that finally kicked me out of the bad punk-rock ghetto for good. For that, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

GARTH PAULSON

2003: The Black Keys – Thickfreakness (Fat Possum Records)

Rubberbelt bluesmen Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney reinforced their down-home take on a post-punk world with their second full-length and only Fat Possum release, Thickfreakness. “Release” is an apt term to describe the brave, unfettered realism with which the stripped-bare duo approaches its craft. My father passed away two months after this record came out, and I spent the next six pouring over “Hurt Like Mine,” “Hold Me in Your Arms” and “I Cry Alone” on the headphones, giving each the attention it deserved. Running its fingers over the grain of soul-harvesting cuts that move like a fat lady in heat, The Black Keys conjured a world of pain and beauty as it confessed its sins on flat-out bombastic tracks including “Midnight in Her Eyes,” “Have Love Will Travel” and 2003’s best song, “Set You Free.”

CHRISTINE LEONARD

2004: Belle and Sebastian – Books EP (XL)

When I was tipped off to Books in 2004, it triggered a chain reaction of musical discovery that branched outward from the titans of Scottish twee to dozens of musical genres with catalogues that stretched back decades. The 15-minute EP features four songs, but none of them made as much of an impact as “Your Cover’s Blown,” the beautifully played multi-suite leadoff track. The cheeky nods to British art rock, the impeccable four-or-five-part harmonies, the minor-key meltdown that gave way to one last reprise of the main theme... this song had it all! I was sold and singing along within one listen, enthusiastic to join in on Stuart Murdoch’s kiss-offs, bouncing along through six minutes of blissful musical adventure. At some point, likely while plugging a clunky click-wheel iPod into some car stereo and cranking it, insisting that friends check out the song that NME had dubbed the “indie ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” it dawned on me that I was no longer the guy tracking down Tool bootlegs and wearing black jeans and NIN T-shirts in a three-day rotation. Cancel all operations, indeed.

PATRICK BOYLE

2005: Edan – Beauty and the Beat (Lewis Recordings)

Outside of the Beastie Boys, Why? or Tom Green and his Keepin’ It Real Crew, few artists seem less likely to drop science than Boston-based MC, DJ and underground hip hop producer Edan Portnoy. Proving you can never judge a book by its cover, Edan released one of the aughts’ most innovative and enduring albums (rap or otherwise) with 2005’s Beauty and the Beat, a genre-busting workout of dusted samples, tripped-out tape loops and classic rock-inspired psychedelia. Rhyme-wise, Edan swims down an eccentric stream of consciousness comparable to this decade’s other most consistently compelling alternative hip-hopper, MF Doom. Yet despite referencing Voltron and Castlevania and describing himself as “Darth Vader with the cross fader,” Edan also namedrops everyone from Kool Herc to Melle Mel and the Cold Crush Brothers on standout banger “Fumbling Over Words that Rhyme,” confirming that he’s well-aware of his place in hip hop history.

JESSE LOCKE

2006: Joanna Newsom – Ys (Drag City)

Though I usually reserve words like “fate” and “magic” for discussions about Harry Potter, I would not be describing my experience at the side of the Elvin princess of folk music Joanna Newsom with the accurate amount of emotional profundity without them. Like very few pieces of art ever truly do, Ys yanked me violently by the arms when I first heard it, and pulled me into the heart of its world. Sure, it was whimsical and touched with an antiquated fable-like tone, as anyone who has encountered Newsom’s music will attest, but it also pulsed and quivered with real, palpable human emotions, existential curiousity, frustration, sad reflection and fear. It would be four months and easily over 60 playthroughs until finally I lifted my sight from the deliberate rotation of the record on my turntable to realize that my life had been dissolved and reconstituted around me, but I didn’t really mind that I had largely tapped out. I had been away, whether you believe me or not — Hogwarts, Narnia, or Ys.

MATT LEAROYD

2007: Battles – Mirrored (Warp)

Because I didn't listen to Silent Shout until this year and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is too safe, the record that defined 2007 for me has to be Mirrored. Or, rather, the first six songs are. To date, I've only listened to Mirrored all the way through twice, and even in both those cases it was with twitching, ADHD impatience that I soldiered to the end. It isn't that the back half of the record is dull — far from it. It's just that those first handful of tracks made me feel like a robot had stuck its metal fingers into the squishy, rhythm-obsessed folds of my brain and administered 20,000 volts of joy. And if the incoherence of that metaphor is any evidence, the gleeful trauma of the experience has had some lasting effects.

SEAN MARCHETTO

2008: Women – Women (Flemish Eye)

When I interviewed local metal upstarts Veritas for the University of Calgary’s student newspaper in 2004, it was already obvious the band was on to something interesting. Barely out of high school, the four-piece was far more technically adept — and more adventurous — than bands that had been around longer than its members had been alive. Three important things happened in the four years between Veritas and Women. First, the members split up to pursue different projects — The Cape May, Azeda Booth and Pressure Kill Common Style. Second, because of that, they discovered pop. And third, the members reunited, combined their influences, and seemingly instantly earned a place on the international indie-rock landscape. Watching Women’s self-titled debut earn props from respected publications around the globe and seeing a who’s-who of the indie scene turn up for the band’s South by Southwest showcase was a perfect reminder of what a single album could achieve, and a reassurance people could be made to care what’s going on in Calgary.

PETER HEMMINGER

2009: Micachu & The Shapes – Jewellery (Rough Trade)

Micachu & The Shapes’ Jewellery isn’t just one of the decade’s most exciting albums full-stop, but somehow within its 13 short tunes, it also seems to write a taut and tight summation of the 10 years that came before. And talk about a surprising source: 21-year-old Londoner Mica Levi went from classical composition training at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music (even premiering a piece with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2008) to compiling the U.K. scene’s most sought-after home-made mixtape, Filthy Friends . Given the one-two opening punch of “Vulture” (spastic, scattered, tuneful) and “Lips” (bhangra-flavoured indie rock? Huh?), one would expect at least some small loss of inertia over the album’s remaining tracks. You’d be mistaken — Micachu wins, song after song, be it the angry fuzz of “Curly Teeth” or the dusty, downbeat revenge fantasy “Floor.” Backed by the production skills of Matthew Herbert — one of the 2000s most exciting musical chameleons in his own right — Jewellery’s the type of fully realized left-field shock attack that comes along once a decade.

MARK HAMILTON