Best Albums of the 2000s

This chart is currently filtered to only show albums from The Decemberists. (Remove this filter)

Sort by

• Overall Rank
• Num. Charts
• Avg. Rating
• Num. Ratings
• Release Date
• Title
• Artist

123.

The Crane Wife 

 The Decemberists

Buy album

• EBAY
• APPLE MUSIC
• SPOTIFY
• AMAZON (US)
• #Sponsored

"Top notch storytelling, catchy melodies, and tracks that roll from one to another will ease. A 21st century masterpiece."  Reply

- junodog4 | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +5 votes (5 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2006

Appears in:

427 charts

Rank Score:

2,241

Rank in 2006:

12

Rank in 2000s:

123

Overall Rank:

769

Average Rating:

 78 (449 votes)

Comments:

21

157.

Picaresque 

 The Decemberists

Buy album

• EBAY
• APPLE MUSIC
• SPOTIFY
• AMAZON (US)
• #Sponsored

"Picaresque is my favorite album from the Decemberists. It starts off with a muted tribal horn i often blast before the drums beat in with Colin narrating the premise of "the infanta": "Here she comes in her palanquin / on the back of an elephant / on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk / all...""Picaresque is my favorite album from the Decemberists. It starts off with a muted tribal horn i often blast before the drums beat in with Colin narrating the premise of "the infanta": "Here she comes in her palanquin / on the back of an elephant / on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk / all astride on her father's line / with the king and his concubines / and her nurse with her pitchers of liquors and milk / and we'll all come praise the infanta". The charging literature of the song is finely offset by the quieter, pensive, recharging bridge. The lyrics on "infanta" are the best decemberists lyrics yet (and i love intelligent lyrics), replete with high-point scrabble words like "palanquin", "pachyderm" and "folderol", tied with another picaresque tune, the epic "mariner's revenge song", probably my favorite decemberists songs of all-time. "mariner's" starts in flashback mode "in this belly of a whale" recalling a "rake and a rastabout" who moved in on the narrator's mother when he was 14 "Leaving my mother A poor consumptive wretch" with a killer-yet-frail chorus delivered by Jenny wisping "Find him, bind him / Tie him to a pole and break / His fingers to splinters / Drag him to a hole until he / Wakes up naked / Clawing at the ceiling / Of his grave". The narrator later was hired in a priory "But never once in the employ / Of these holy men / Did I ever once turn my mind / From the thought of revenge" hearing about a captain known for "wanton cruelty", the man who left his mother destitute in death. There's even a pensive instrumental passage as the narrator contemplates commiting a "wicked deed" (to kill that captain) which nails the sound of the old sea (as only the Decemberists can!). Then "And then that fateful night / We had you in our sight / After twenty months at sea / Your starboard flank abeam / I was getting my muskets clean / When came this rumbling from beneath" as the whale rose from beneath which chews up all but our two antagonists. Marvelous storytelling and delivery including an energized ending. All tunes have the feel of tales of centuries ago, classic stories charles dickens or herman melville would be proud of, full of motorcars and muskets ablaze. "we both go down together" is a tale of a couple who commit suicide knowing their families will never allow them together ("Meet me on my vast veranda / My sweet untouched Miranda / and while the seagulls are crying / we fall but our souls are flying"). That Colin can make such wordsmithy, sea shanties so catchy and endearing is a testament to his intelligence and ability to tap the human condition. Like on "eli the barrow boy", the soliloquied epitaph of a loved one, singing "Would I could afford to buy my love a fine robe / Made of gold and silk Arabian thread / But she is dead and gone and lying in a pine grove / And I must push my barrow all the day". Or the humorously playful "the sporting life": "I fell on the playing field / the work of an errant heel / the din of the crowd and the loud commotion / went deafening silence and stopped emotion" . The instrumentation on this album kicks arse too, from the fiddle on "together" to the organ and horns on "16 military wives" to the accordion on "mariner's revenge song". The slower numbers work well too, from the crime scene buildup of "the bagman's gambit" ("On the lam from the law / on the steps of the capitol / you shot a plainclothes cop on the ten o'clock") and literally lost love "from my own true love (lost at sea)", to what i feel is Colin's first love song "of angels and angles". Beautiful acoustic guitar prefaces simply-felt lines like "there are angels in your angles, there's a low moon caught in your tangles", the perfectly understated closer to offset the literary bombast of "infanta". The sentiment is as saddening-sweet on "the engine driver" with a chorus pleading "and if you don't love me, let me go", and even on the lyrically-simple-life-of-a-male-prostitute of "on a bus mall" illustrating "here in our hovel we fuse like a family, / But I will not mourn for you. / So take off your makeup / And pocket your pills away. / We're kings among runaways / On the bus mall." . There's even a jab at politics in "16 military wives": "Cheer them on to their rivals / Cause America can, and America can't say no / And America does, if America says it's so". "  [+]  Reply

- paladisiac | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +11 votes (11 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2005

Appears in:

284 charts

Rank Score:

1,658

Rank in 2005:

18

Rank in 2000s:

157

Overall Rank:

1,054

Average Rating:

 78 (301 votes)

Comments:

15

264.

The Hazards Of Love 

 The Decemberists

Buy album

• EBAY
• APPLE MUSIC
• SPOTIFY
• AMAZON (US)
• #Sponsored

"Looking to explore deep into The Decemberist’ back catalogue I went into this album completely blind and sweet mother of god! . A Rock Opera! . A god damn Rock Opera. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. The Decemberist’ AMERICAN IDIOT. The verdict? . Yeah it’s pretty good. I agree ...""Looking to explore deep into The Decemberist’ back catalogue I went into this album completely blind and sweet mother of god! . A Rock Opera! . A god damn Rock Opera. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. The Decemberist’ AMERICAN IDIOT. The verdict? . Yeah it’s pretty good. I agree with previous posts that you need to listen to this album in its totality, I first listened on a long drive & it was perfect. The other suggestion I’d make is after your first listen look up the Hazards Of Love WIKI and learn the convoluted story under pinning the album then go back and listen to the album a second time. Finally my favourite parts of this release were the heaviest sections but the quiter moments work ok too. Easily one of my favourite Decemberist’ albums . Highly recommended if you haven’t listened to it."  [+]  Reply

- Brad1770 | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +3 votes (3 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2009

Appears in:

200 charts

Rank Score:

1,038

Rank in 2009:

22

Rank in 2000s:

264

Overall Rank:

1,651

Average Rating:

 75 (269 votes)

Comments:

20

527.

Castaways And Cutouts 

 The Decemberists

Buy album

• EBAY
• APPLE MUSIC
• SPOTIFY
• AMAZON (US)
• #Sponsored

"The decemberists' "castaways and cutouts" is a literary yarn of sea shanties and seaside romance gone awry full of parapets and petticoats. Literary alt-rock with a unique lyrical P.O.V. (vs all the other alt-rock out there) with songs like "here I dreamt I was an architect" (an architect who "bu...""The decemberists' "castaways and cutouts" is a literary yarn of sea shanties and seaside romance gone awry full of parapets and petticoats. Literary alt-rock with a unique lyrical P.O.V. (vs all the other alt-rock out there) with songs like "here I dreamt I was an architect" (an architect who "built this balustrade / To keep you home, to keep you safe / From the outside world"), "july! July!" ("i say your uncle was a crooked french canadian / and he was gut-shot runnin gin ") and its propulsion towards the strange, and "grace cathedral hill" and its lackluster new year's ("Some way to greet the year: / your eyes all bright and brimmed with tears. / The pilgrims, pills and tourists here all sing / "Fifty-three bucks to buy a brand new halo." "). There's a variety of instrumentation backing colin's off-kilter, off-cove vocals. The other songs are pretty good...and dark, like "leslie anne levine", a dead child who sings "my name is Leslie Anne Levine / my mother birthed me down a dry ravine / my mother birthed me far too soon / born at nine and dead at noon", or like "a cautionary tale" about a mom who whores to feed her kid ("the next time she tries to feed you collard greens, remember what she does when you're asleep"). "cocoon" overstays its welcome, but it's the only one. 10 minute closer "california one / youth and beauty brigade" ("We're calling all bed wetters and ambulance chasers / Poor pick-pockets, bring 'em in / Come join the youth and beauty brigade") never dulls and hints at epic numbers to come. Fun album."  [+]  Reply

- paladisiac | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2002

Appears in:

124 charts

Rank Score:

488

Rank in 2002:

54

Rank in 2000s:

527

Overall Rank:

3,117

Average Rating:

 77 (165 votes)

Comments:

10

748.

Her Majesty The Decemberists 

 The Decemberists

Buy album

• EBAY
• APPLE MUSIC
• SPOTIFY
• AMAZON (US)
• #Sponsored

"It lumbers out literally with a mostly-uninteresting "shanty for the arethusa", but after that, there's no let up. "billy liar" is a jaunty farce starting "Billy Liar's got his hands in his pockets / Staring over at the neighbor's, knickers down." Sarcastic ode "los angeles, i'm yours" backhanded...""It lumbers out literally with a mostly-uninteresting "shanty for the arethusa", but after that, there's no let up. "billy liar" is a jaunty farce starting "Billy Liar's got his hands in his pockets / Staring over at the neighbor's, knickers down." Sarcastic ode "los angeles, i'm yours" backhandedly offers "A plaintive melody / Truncated symphony / An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore, / Los Angeles, I’m yours", an otherwise elegant song, one of the highlights on the album along with "billy liar", "the bachelor and the bride", "the soldiering life", "red right ankle" and "the chimbley sweep". "the bachelor and the bride" is one of many decemberists songs of doomed love (colin sings "And his fingers are they telling / Of the barren of her belly / And his callouses cure her furrowed brow / Even now" before boxing the bride-to-be's ears). "the soldiering life" is just fun to sing along with, with its "bombazine dolls" and "You were a brickbat, a bowery tuff, so rough / They culled you from a cartoon / Pulled out of your pantaloons." "blazing away" to its war-time finale. The following song earnestly starts "This is the story of your red right ankle / And how it came to meet your leg / And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled / And how the skin was softly shed " over acoustic guitar, a love song in some awkward-geek-boy-sorta-way. "the chimbley sweep" tells the story of "a poor and wretched boy" and sounds like a mary poppins's lawrence welk band -- an ultra-literate, accordion-wielding weird al song on some askew level -- which is too much fun to take seriously "song for myla goldberg" is marching fun while "the gymnast, high above the ground" takes patience but pays off at the chorus."  [+]  Reply

- paladisiac | Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (2 helpful | 1 unhelpful) A maximum of 5 top-voted qualifying comments are selected for each album. To provide the best experience for visitors, comments are excluded if they refer to data corrections, contain excessive profanity, are written in all caps, are non-English, are too short, consist of conversations between users, or contain lists of best tracks etc.

Year of Release:

2003

Appears in:

87 charts

Rank Score:

327

Rank in 2003:

89

Rank in 2000s:

748

Overall Rank:

4,379

Average Rating:

 75 (105 votes)

Comments:

5

Total albums: 5. Page 1 of 1

Best Albums of the 2000s composition

Year	Albums	%
2000	104	10%
2001	102	10%
2002	110	11%
2003	112	11%
2004	86	9%
2005	111	11%
2006	99	10%
2007	91	9%
2008	87	9%
2009	101	10%

Artist	Albums	%
Bright Eyes	5	0%
The Black Keys	5	0%
Opeth	5	0%
Wilco	5	0%
Animal Collective	5	0%
Dream Theater	5	0%
Modest Mouse	5	0%
Show all

Country	Albums	%
	548	55%
	220	22%
	55	5%
	40	4%
	24	2%
	23	2%
	18	2%
Show all

Compilation?	Albums	%
No	991	99%
Yes	12	1%

Live?	Albums	%
No	995	99%
Yes	8	1%

Soundtrack?	Albums	%
No	992	99%
Yes	11	1%