So during yet another a brief hiatus from the December January Album essays I’m taking a few minutes to list my Favorite Albums from the first decade of the 2000′s.  If you want to get technical, I suppose this is a Best Of list for me, considering I liked these albums the best.  But really, it’s an opinion-based list; I don’t pretend to have listened to enough in the past decade to give an honest, all-encompassing Best Of list that’s 100 albums deep.  This list will reveal that I’m not pretentious enough to put out a list like Spin, not “Indie” enough to be “cool” like Pitchfork, and not mainstream enough to be in the class of Rolling Stone; I’m just a random schmuck from Rochester, NY who loves music enough to take the time to compile a Best Of list of Albums that he loved that were released from January 1st 2000 to December 31st 2009.  Unlike the Album Essays, these ARE the albums I liked listening to the best.  So, to that list, in no particular order:

1. Arcade Fire – Funeral
2. At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command
3. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
4. Flogging Molly – Swagger
5. Elliot Smith – Figure 8
6. Neil Young – Silver & Gold
7. Ani Difranc0 – Reveling/Reckoning
8. Bob Dylan – Love & Theft
9. The Strokes – Is This It?
10. System Of A Down – Toxicity
11. Aimee Mann – Lost In Space
12. Dredg – El Cielo
13. Flogging Molly – Druken Lullabies
14. Sigur Ros – ( )
15. Sparta – Wiretap Scars
16. A.F.I. – Sing The Sorrow
17. Kasey Chambers – Barricades & Brickwalls
18. Alkaline Trio – Good Mourning
19. Coheed And Cambria – In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3
20. Bruce Springsteen – The Rising
21. Dropkick Murphys – Blackout
22. The Mars Volta – De-Loused In The Comatorium
23. NoFX – The War On Erroism
24. OutKast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
25. Lindi Ortega – The Taste Of Forbidden Fruit
26. Street Dogs – Savin Hill
27. The Strokes – Room On Fire
28. 50 Cent – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
29. Action Action – Don’t Cut Your Fabric To This Year’s Fashion
30. Alexis MacIssac – Inspired
31. Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American
32. Jimmy Eat World – Futures
33. Keane – Hopes And Fears
34. The Killers – Hot Fuss
35. Killswitch Engage – The End Of Heartache
36. Madcap – Under Suspicion
37. Modest Mouse – Good People Who Love Bad News
38. Ray LaMontagne – Trouble
39. Regina Spektor – Soviet Kitsch
40. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
41. Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning
42. Damian Marley – Welcome to Jamrock
43. Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine
44. Ludacris – Word Of Mouf
45. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
46. Weezer – Make Believe
47. Amy Winehouse – Black To Black
48. Angels & Airwaves – We Don’t Need To Whisper
49. As Tall As Lions – As Tall As Lions
50. Bob Dylan – Modern Times
51. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
52. John Mayer – Continuum
53. Justin Timberlake – Futuresex/Lovesounds
54. Killswitch Engage – As Daylight Dies
55. M. Ward – Post-War
56. Mastodon – Blood Mountain
57. Nas – Hip Hop Is Dead
58. P!nk – I’m Not Dead
59. Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam
60. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stadium Arcadium
61. Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope
62. The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band – Big Damn Nation
63. Silversun Pickups – Carnavas
64. Sparta – Threes
65. Tenacious D – Tenacious D
66. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
67. Johnny Cash – American III: Solitary Man
68. Against Me! – New Wave
69. Bad Religion – New Maps Of Hell
70. Bon Iver – For Emma, Long Ago
71. Clutch – From Beale Street To Oblivion
72. Coheed And Cambria – No World For Tomorrow
73. Down – Down III: Over The Under
74. Once Soundtrack
75. The Hives – Tyrannosaurus Hives
76. Kate Nash – Made Of Bricks
77. Lindi Ortega – Fall From Grace
78. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City
79. Radiohead – In Rainbows
80. Thrice – The Alchemy Index I-IV
81. Emma-Lee – Never Just A Dream
82. Lil Wayne – Tha Carter III
83. Metallica – Death Magnetic
84. My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges
85. Nas – NaS
86. Opeth – Watershed
87. Ray LaMontagne – Gossip In The Grain
88. Sarah Shafey – Tiny Music Box
89. Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
90. Dredg – The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion
91. Alkaline Trio – From Here To Infirmary
92. The Irish Tenors – Ellis Island
93. Johnny Cash – American IV: The Man Comes Around
94. The Postal Service – Give Up
95. Sigur Ros – Agastis Byrjun
96. Tom Waits – Alice
97. Jay Z – The Blueprint
98. U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind
99. Outkast – Stankonia
100. The White Stripes – Elephant

Ok, if listing them at random is a cop-out, here at least is my Top-10:

1. Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies
2. Dredg – El Cielo
3. Arcade Fire – Funeral
4. Emma-Lee – Never Just A Dream
5. Thrice – The Alchemy Index
6. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
7. Sigur Ros – ( )
8. Bon Iver – For Emma, Long Ago
9. A.F.I. – Sing The Sorrow
10. Sparta – Wiretap Scars

So there’s that.