LISTED: 30 Best Albums of the Last Decade (2000 - 2009)

*As the year 2010 is about to draw its curtain close, it is the time of the year (of any year) for many music sites and blogs to come up with a top list of albums of the year. Yes indeed the year 2010 has seen many interesting releases worthy of at least a top 20 list. But here at The Genuine Mind Zine we decided to do things a bit different and take a look at some of the best (of the best) releases throughout the last decade. This may not be the most comprehensive list around, lack of hip hop records for one, but all the albums listed here are indeed the most precious of last decade's precious gems.

1. Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)


This choice of making Funeral as the best album ever released throughout last decade should not come as a big surprise to many music publications who had their ears on the burgeoning Indie scene because by the time their third record dropped somewhere this year, they were already the most important act to ever grace the genre this side of the century. And all that praises going in their direction is totally understandable when what they have basically achieved with their debut is legendary greatness, of epic proportion. I'm using all this 'huge' words because this 2004 release is a 'huge' record in its own. Let's delve further on that point...

We have made it clear in the previous entry that when it comes to music, we look at the whole experience of listening to it, rather than just a remark of what was apparent on the surface, to deem the album as a masterpiece. And that is how Mastodon made it to number two because it made us feel awesome, ahead of Beck who had just written the most sincere album ever known to mankind. But alas, making us feeling like a total badass still meek in comparison as to how Arcade Fire's debut sounds like. We'll give you the basics first: it's a very delicate album that doesn't shout in your face and stamp its authority all over your heart, but rather very gently tugs at it and squeezes it until the tears comes out.

If that description sounds more troubling than comforting, more painful than insightful, then it could not get any truer about this album that it so much deserves the coveted first place. 2004 was the first time ever throughout my listening to music years in which I cried while listening to it. There is this painful, harrowing scream that echoes throughout the album which could only come from a long-tormented soul whose existence is only confirmed by the occasional act of solitude howling at the full moon, it is entirely impossible for anyone to not notice it. There has never been any other album that we've listened to that has such an overbearingly powerful emotion, delivered in its full glory, unfiltered by adulthood or level-headed sensibilities, it prompts you to coil in a fetal position while trembling and sobbing uncontrollably.

Think about the exact moment when someone you loved passed away; think of how empty your soul felt on that day, of how you felt that the world around you has crumbled and withered away and there is no more hope left in life and living - that is about as close as how you would experience, emotionally, when listening to this album. Not because incidentally the album was titled funeral, but because when they were in the midst of making this record, four of the band members lost a member of their family. We were thinking along the line of "so that's where they got the inspiration to make this album sounded like they were really hurt". Watch the video I've embedded below and try to get the whole feel of the song - it should reduce you to tears. It did that to me.

Modern day classic.