TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE PAST DECADE

I’ve been reading everyone else’s top ten albums of the year and stumbled across Paste magazines top 100 albums of the decade. It got me thinking - what were the top ten albums of the last decade for me?

I thought it would be hard. So many great albums, how would I fit them all in? But it was actually much easier than I thought. Sure there were some amazing albums released in the last decade, a lot of them not here on my list. But I realised that for me, the top ten albums are the ones that take me back to a moment in my life - as corny as it sounds – the soundtrack to that time in my life.

We all have them, the records you put on and the memories flood back. The images might be of a house you lived in, or someone you loved, or a day you took a drive and listened to the album and had a good cry. I'm a big fan of driving and crying.

As I compiled my list I had a sudden sense of how much had come to pass in my life in the last decade. I felt a good dose of nostalgia as I thought about these albums. I realised how much I LOVED these albums and still do.

My list isn’t about covering all of the genres of music, I’m no expert when it comes to hip hop for example. Nor am I a music editor who needs to assert how musically brilliant or edgy a release was in order to uphold their reputation. I don’t even listen to a whole heap of music, there would be hundreds of albums that I might have liked better than the ones below, that I’ve simply never heard.

For whatever reason these are the records that found me and owned me. My list.

I encourage you to take the time to do the same. It feels bloody marvellous.

1.Time (the Revelator) – Gillian Welch (2001)

2. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood – Neko Case (2006)

3. Yankee Foxtrot Hotel – Wilco (2002)

4. Seachange – Beck (2002)

5. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea – PJ Harvey (2000)

6. Sunset Studies – Augie March (2000)

7. The Covers Record/ You are Free – Cat Power (2000/2003)

8. Abattoir Blues/ The Lyre of Orpheus - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (2004)

9. Essence - Lucinda Williams (2000)

10. Wires – Art of Fighting (2001) & Future Suture - Ned Collette (2007)