If you can play a song on an acoustic guitar, alone, and sing it…stripping it down to its essence, and it’s still great, then you have a great song. Every song on Foxtrot achieves this, in my opinion. Everything I strive to be as a musician is contained in this record, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the traditional-instrument-playing- artists of the next decade reference this as an influence.

Few things make me happier than Pot Kettle Black.

Though I agree it’s a transitional work, what Wilco album has not been transitional? In contrast to Being There, it seems more coherent and better put together. Some of the songs on Summerteeth match YHF for their sonic complexity and emotional heft, but that album as a whole seems too much like an idea than a coherent collection of songs. YHF too is conceptual, but it is polished and complete. Not a second of the album sounds out of place.

Since then, Wilco has continued to make great songs and decent albums, but YHF alone has the internal coherence and aesthetic brilliance that demands a complete listen-through, every time. The three subsequent studio albums are all great, and I think I would give a slot in my top ten to A Ghost Is Born and Sky Blue Sky (as one album).

As for my other favorite records of the decade, I am torn. The Mountain Goats deserve another double entry, maybe two: The Sunset Tree and We Shall All Be Healed, I think, tied for second, right after YHF.

I have listened to a lot of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon this decade, but I am not sure which of Old Ramon, Ghosts on the Great Highway, or April deserve places in my top ten.

Other artists I admire, such as REM and Indigo Girls and Tom Waits and Tori Amos and Beck, have gone the decade without producing a great album as such. I am tempted to put Elvis Costello’s “Secret, Profane and Sugarcane” on the list, but I feel it needs a couple more years of listening. “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” definitely gets a place on my list, if only for its role in opening up a bigger audience for T-Bone Burnett’s version of Americana. I think I have to have a Dylan record on my list; would Tell Tale Signs count, even though it’s outtakes from the 90s and 00s?

I would retain a few slots on the list for albums I think of as new or typical of the decade: Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Antony and the Johnsons, Cold War Kids’ Robbers and Cowards, Vampire Weekend, Gillian Welch’s Time (The Revelator).

Other artists that definitely count for something but didn’t have the perfect album include Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Bowerbirds, Salt & Samovar, and Bright Eyes, White Stripes, Jenny Lewis.

What surprises me most though is how much music from the 1990s still fills up my daily listening. Maybe I’ll be able to pick my true aughts top ten in 2020. If nothing else, thank you for making my listening last decade (and hopefully next) much more interesting.

i’m a new reader to your blog, sent here from Sirius XMU and i adore it!
thanks for being so great!

BTW, the double album comment is ridiculous.

Congrats, AQ. This months-long retrospective for the decade was easily the best I read. And goddamn there were a ton of em.

As for the format in which a record is released, that really just depends on what a band has at the time of production, or how they feel about delivering. I mean, couldn’t they conceivably have 11 great songs for one record, and 19 or 20 pretty good songs for a double? Otherwise, I suppose Wilco believe everything they’ve done since “Being There” is automatically worse since they only bothered with one disc each outing. Striving for mediocrity: Wilco’s defining quality.