Escape Artist's Top 50 Albums of the 21st Century: 50-31

It's easy to look back on decades past and identify neat trends. The 60s was swingin'; the 70s was the disco-addled hangover fuelling the rise of a new kind of angry music; the 80s was the birth of the electropop template still recycled like cheap beer bottles today; the 90s was the earnestness of grunge and its gradual diminishment in the face of popular club culture. These trends are all accurate enough, but never tell the whole story. This is mostly because the whole story is near-impossible to tell.

This list, presented in three parts, shows no neat trends to catalogue the story of music in the past decade. Neither can it tell the whole story. Really, it's just an unwieldy, inelegant list of honest favourites written by someone possessing an impractically wide and naive taste in music.

A quick note - clearly music is subjective, and as such this list makes no attempt to chart the most significant or important records of the decade. I've picked these albums based on two criteria - that I loved them when I first heard them, and that I still love them and feel certain I will continue to love them until they bury my crusty bones. In that sense, the albums are timeless, but not necessarily to you. If you disagree, feel free to comment below. And then go make your own goddamned list.

50. DJ Format - Music For The Mature B-Boy (Genuine, 2003)

The antithesis of gangster rap's accesorized overcompensation that has led to the descent into self-parody of many a great rapper (heard any Snoop Dogg songs recently? Jesus.), Music... is a breezy set of beats that emphasises lyrical playfulness over brash self-regard. Regular DJ Format collaborator Abdominal is a particular highlight, who on album opener 'Ill Culinary Behaviour' casts the MC and the DJ as a fussy couple slaving over beats and rhymes for their dinner party guests.

49. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City, 2008)

The wry humour of baritone raconteur David Berman has always made up a major component of Silver Jews' sound, but Lookout Mountain... couples Berman's intricate narratives with a lighter sound that veers from chirpy bluegrass to classic rock via the kind of blues that you hear played by old, tired men in old, tired bars. The best kind.

48. Rachel Unthank and the Winterset - The Bairns (Rabble Rouser, 2007)

On an album that feels as much like historical document as English folk record, The Unthanks (as they're now known) interpret old northern ditties and tavern sing-a-longs with a passion and verve that defies the dryness of the initial concept. Especially engaging are the songs that paint a picture of the untold stories of women in centuries past, whether it's waiting on the pier for the return of husbands and sons stolen by the Royal Navy on 'Blue's Gaen Out Oot O'The Fashion' or rebelling against an abusive husband in the only way possible on 'Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk'.

47. Fucked Up - The Chemistry Of Common Life (Matador, 2008)

From the moment that album opener 'Son The Father' explodes into a fiery ball of atomic energy about a minute in, you know that Chemistry... is a hardcore album that's perfectly capable of bending you over and fucking you in the ears. The guitar sound, achieved through overdubbing guitar tracks again and again, is simply massive, especially on nihilist anthem 'No Epiphany'. But read the sleeve notes and you'll see that vocalist Pink Eyes' indecipherable grunts actually represents words. And what wonderful words they are, tackling the science and wonder that drives the world.

46. Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (Drag City, 2009)

Emerging from Smog’s dark cloud with the second album released under his own name, Callahan here is reflective but ultimately sanguine. The album’s true charm lies in the indescribable chemistry between the simple, folksy strings and Callahan’s husky baritone. The lyrics are never less than engaging, a particular highlight being 'All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beast', which turns psychological turmoil into a compelling natural metaphor.

45. Jay Reatard - Blood Visions (In The Red, 2006)

Although Jay Reatard died last year at the tender age of 29, we can take a little solace from the fact that he was one of last decade's most brilliant and prolific songwriters, building up a songbook in ten years that would be the envy of most musicians on their deathbeds. He also, knowingly or not, spearheaded a revitalised wave of 21st century American punk rock that's more about the unpretentious shared euphoria of loud music played live than political protest. 2006's Blood Visions might be the purest distillation of his wandering spirit - 15 tracks of adrenaline-fuelled melody and distortion, equal parts relentless speed and enduring heart. The album is the perfect introduction to Reatard's signature jagged style, with ample deviations to break the tempo, such as the toe-curlingly thrilling guitar breakdown at the end of 'Oh It's Such A Shame'.

44. Bruce Springsteen - Magic (Columbia, 2007)

When rock stars as monumental as Bruce Springsteen enter into their fourth decade of recording music, there's an unspoken expectation that they'll settle down into a statesmanlike routine of dignified, wordy albums which tell stories and express their socio-political beliefs before they croak and miss their chance. This is a pattern that Springsteen has (Devils And Dust notwithstanding) brazenly defied, never more so than on Magic, the joyous reunion of The Boss and his happy employees the E-Street Band, on which he struts like he did in the 80s, covering the disillusionment and melancholia of the lyrics with the fiery gusto of rock 'n' roll's Duracell icon.

43. Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank The Cradle (Sub Pop, 2002)

While Sam Beam has very successfully added a band and a fuller sound to his folk repertoire in the years between this 2002 release and today, his songs have never been more quietly devastating than on his first full-length album. Each track has a lo-fi, handcrafted quality; the crackle of home recording gives the songs a rustic prettiness that belies the attention paid to song structure and lyrics, which have the purity of expression and timelessness to ensure Beam's place in the hallowed halls of great acoustic songwriters.

42. Metric - Fantasies (Metric Music International, 2009)

A tough call between the warmth of Fantasies and the sterile paranoia of 2005's Live It Out, but warmth tends to win out with me. Fantasies was a startling move towards the mainstream for Emily Haines and co., but one that felt like natural musical progression rather than lusty land-grab. And who knew they'd do arena rock so well? Every moment of the album's stripped-down ten tracks is stuffed to the gills with pulsing guitars and dynamic electronics, making this one of the danciest, most compulsive rock albums of recent years. Tracks like 'Gold Guns Girls' and 'Gimme Sympathy' deserve to be pulverising stadiums.

41. Tool, Lateralus (Volcano, 2001)

Down to its very bones, Lateralus is a record for musical obsessives and audiophile geeks. Even more so than all their other albums. Its 79 minutes are greasy with the fingerprints of near infinite tinkering, a bad sign for most albums, especially those with 10 minute tracks. Fortunately, the overwhelming musicianship of one of prog-metal's most gifted groups simply crushes any concerns about excessive fiddliness. Intricacy is the point of Tool, and they have the talent to pull it off like no other band, from Maynard James Keenan's mountain-moving vocals to Adam Jones' rich layers of guitar. Oh, and you'll struggle to find better drumming on any album, ever. Just listen to album opener 'The Grudge' and put a pillow beneath you for when your jaw drops.

40. The Stills, Logic Will Break Your Heart (Vice, 2003)

Understated and underrated, The Stills' debut album mixes anthemic songcraft with a lyrical atmosphere of crippling anxiety. On 'Lola Stars And Stripes', for example, a wall of guitars shimmers and sparkles while frontman Tim Fletcher bunkers down in anticipation of "next week's chemical blast". It's an album of contrasts, of love married to death, of fear chipping away at hope. It deserved more than it got.

39. The Bug - London Zoo (Ninja Tune, 2008)

London Zoo is the UK capital's angry underside. London is so deeply embedded in the album's DNA that it plays like an enraged mutant that spawned in the city's sewers and now stalks empty Tube stations by night, seeking bloody revenge. It's a furious, thrilling mash-up of all the capital's most deliciously corrupted indigenous/Caribbean subgenres (dubstep, grime, dancehall, jungle) which can instantly fill a space with focussed indignation and spleen-paralysing bass rumble. The Bug (aka Kevin Martin) has filled the record with Grade-A nuclear talent on the mic, including Ricky Ranking, Aya, Spaceape, Tippa Irie and Warrior Queen, but the star of the show is Roll Deep's Flowdan, whose megabass vocal attack adds considerable threat to his three tracks.

38. Band of Horses - Everything All The Time (Sub Pop, 2006)

Have Eddie Vedder and Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell met at some point? If so, did Vedder invoke some scuffed-denim incantation, nominating the band as Pearl Jam's anointed purveyors of open-hearted rock, in perpetuity throughout the universe? If not, I'm disappointed. In fairness, Band of Horses' sound has a more pastoral bent than Pearl Jam's urban groove, but the link remains in the emotional honesty and anthemic melody that courses through the two bands' best work. Everything All The Time, Band of Horses' debut, is a soaring rock album par excellence. Tracks like 'The Funeral', 'The Great Salt Lake' and the Tom Petty-esque 'Weed Party' will make optimists of the most ardent doom-sayers, even if it's clear from the lyrics that Bridwell is hardly a barrel of sunshine, intoning on the chorus of 'The Funeral', "At every occassion, I'll be ready for the funeral".

37. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (DFA, 2007)

Apparently, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem fame turned down a writing job on the then-unknown Seinfeld in order to carry on with his musical career. So I guess the best compliment I could give to this album is that, against all odds, he has no reason to regret that decision. While taking the job would have seen him contribute to one of the 90s' best-loved sitcoms, his two albums have cemented him as one of the best producers/DJs/songwriters of the 21st century so far. Sound of Silver saw Murphy refine his lo-fi electronica and work on his lyrics (he often improvised vocals before then) to create an electro album that plays like a classic rock record. While the tone of the tracks veers from playful ('Get Innocuous!') to snide ('North American Scum') to wistful reminiscence ('All My Friends', 'Someone Great'), the songs are united by their warmth and humanity.

36. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Warp, 2008)

How can one make such naturalistic, textured music from a laptop full of meaningless wires and circuit boards? Flying Lotus might be the devil. But they say he has the best music and Los Angeles bears out the theory. In fact, the laptop is one of modern music's greatest tools for experimentation, giving people far smarter than me more opportunity than ever to rip sounds from their original context and weave them into something new and exciting. It's just that you have to be really good to make it work. Fortunately FlyLo is very, very good. His crackling beats are so smooth they're almost liquid, recalling the late great J Dilla in their elegance and primal danceability. While The Bug's London Zoo (above) sounds distinctly from London with its cloudy, brooding approach, Los Angeles echoes the cool sheen and otherworldliness of its own namesake.

35. Mono - Hymn To The Immortal Wind (Temporary Residence, 2009)

Has ever an album's title been more apt? Japanese post-rockers Mono have spent their career creating epic instrumental music to render the grand sweep of human emotion against an equally majestic natural background. With titles like 'Ashes In The Snow', 'Burial At Sea' and 'The Battle To Heaven', you know you're in for broad strokes, but Mono does broad strokes better than almost any other group. For Hymn..., the band made use of a 28-piece chamber orchestra, and the marriage bore fruit sweeter than a thousand candy babies. The songs play out like a supercharged concerto, with each track a mini-movement unto itself. It's the soundtrack to that movie which exists in your head but no human 'pon the face of the earth is good enough to direct.

34. The Icarus Line - Mono (Crank!, 2001)

With vicious live shows and an inconsistent roster of band members, The Icarus Line always looked set to follow a template that lead to life-changing live shows, disappointing albums and possibly early deaths, given the habit they had for pissing off the locals. But, wonder of wonders, here they are after more than ten years, still alive and recording. Even if their best album was their first. Mono captures the demented spirit of The Icarus Line's live performances while remaining tight enough to keep a lid on the cacophany of Stooges-esque guitar squalls and songs that turn on a dime. And when these songs turn, they turn nasty. With repeated listens, Mono unfurls like a hideous moth, inviting listeners into a teen noir world where no one escapes unbloodied.

33. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino, 2009)

Anyone turned off by the 'experimental' music tag should be exposed to Merriweather Post Pavilion as a perfect example of how avant-garde music can be as accessible and immediate as any well-worn genre. All their albums have a wonderful sense of childlike play, but no other Animal Collective record feels as instantly giving to the listener as Merriweather...,as if the children have finally grown up enough to know how to share their toys. The band retain their idiosyncracies with layered percussion and melodies that drift in and out of focus, but the sea of sounds is tied together with sustained sections of focused euphoria that are as invigorating as running down a hill at full gallop. You can call it electronic music, but this album floats in a hazy space above genre. You've never heard a band sound so free.

32. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash (Matador, 2008)

Ex-Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus has always been a riffer. Not in the heavy metal sense, rather in the sense that in a song, two riffs are always better than one, and 40 riffs best of all. It's a style that has lead to a lot of great, ambling jam albums, and a few that ambled just a little too long and too far. Fortunately, on his latest album with The Jicks, Malkmus might have just struck upon a vision of his musical future, where his endless fount of incredible riffs and licks are serviced by tight but limber rock 'n' roll structure. On the title track, as well as the likes of 'Baltimore' and 'Dragonfly Pie', this tighter structure gives Malkmus long rein to fly free with the riffing, whilst keeping him tethered to a consistent tone. The result? Peaches and cream.

31. Mastodon - Leviathan (Relapse, 2004)

The enduring appeal of heavy metal is that, in its purest form, it has the rippling muscle and steel backbone to commit to the kind of ludicrous concepts that would swallow most other genres whole and spit out a laughable, half-chewed mess. The best metal has an intimate relationship with the ridiculous, executing overblown ideas with such zeal that listeners can surrender to the band's grandiose vision. Leviathan, Mastodon's 2004 sophomore release, is the signature modern example. The music is as immediate and as accessible as proper metal gets - thunderous riffs, layered solos and drumming that by turns complements and rips apart the grooves. But it's also a convincing evocation of a typically monolithic concept: Melville's Moby Dick and the timeless metaphor of man's brittle defiance in the face of nature's might. 'Blood And Thunder', 'I Am Ahab' and 'Iron Tusk' deliver all the bearded-men-spitting-in-the-face-of-death imagery that your loins can absorb, with this lyrical excerpt from the first proving particularly fortifying to the nethers: "Split your lungs with blood and thunder/ When you see the white whale/ Break your backs and crack your oars men/ If you wish to prevail". There are subtler layers too, as the band process influences from the length and breadth of metal as well as southern country and world music to create a sound that's elemental and fascinating but still something that heavy metal can proudly call its own.

COMING SOON - Part two of the top 50 countdown! Featuring: Hip hop! Guitars! Pink Robots! The Secret of The Universe! Beards!