The Top 40 Best Albums of the 21st Century: #40 — 36

23rd Oct 2009

Wel­come, one and all, to our new weekly fea­ture. As 2009 draws slowly to a close, so does the decade. Here at Red­brick Tow­ers, we love noth­ing more than to look back with a tear in our eye and a CD in our hand. For many of us, these were prob­a­bly our for­ma­tive years, get­ting past the humil­i­at­ing obses­sions of youth and into sexy musi­cal matu­rity. So we present, for your delec­ta­tion, the 40 best albums of not only the ‘00s but the entirety of the mil­le­nium (so far).  Enjoy, and to hear a few tracks from each album (Spo­tify will­ing), there’s a playlist here.

40: Amy Wine­house

Back to Black 2006

YES, she is now as pop­u­lar in Heat mag­a­zine as she is in NME, but she has unde­ni­ably blessed these past few years with some great songs and an incred­i­ble album.  Back to Black is a superbly writ­ten and per­formed sec­ond record from Amy Wine­house, who spills out lyrics with great hon­esty and per­fect delivery.

Rehab marked her return to music as less of a jazz singer and more of a soul­ful artist, as Tears Dry On Their Own could very eas­ily stand as a clas­sic on any Motown hits com­pi­la­tion.   Annoy­ingly well pro­duced by Mark Ron­son, this is an album that deservedly should sit in this list, and rest there com­fort­ably for a good while to come.

Matthew Way

39: We Are Scientists

With Love & Squalor 2005

THIS album is a knock­out punch of sing-a-long songs with quirky atti­tude, and for that rare nov­elty, there was no way it wasn’t going to be in the Top 40. You can put this on in the morn­ing to drag your­self out of bed, or crank it up before a night out or maybe just sit in a queue on the Bris­tol Road to Inac­tion.

When­ever you hear the ener­getic riffs, pound­ing drums and catchy vocals, you can’t help but find your­self in a great mood; that’s just the We Are Sci­en­tists magic. It stood out like the grey hairs on Keith’s head when it was released, impact­ing on the music scene and show­ing it was always des­tined to be a great con­tri­bu­tion to this generation.

Edwina Moor­house

38: The Libertines

Up The Bracket 2002

IN this day and age, most peo­ple seem to have heard less by the Lib­ertines than they’ve heard about them. When they have heard some­thing, it has been from The Lib­ertines; the sec­ond album which sig­nalled their arrival in the big leagues, and their col­lapse. This is unfor­tu­nate, because the first was much bet­ter. Up The Bracket is a mis­sion state­ment for the inde­pen­dent move­ment that even those who aren’t con­ceited nar­cis­sis­tic sheep can appre­ci­ate. The pro­duc­tion val­ues are shoddy, the lyrics obscure and some of the tracks frankly rub­bish. But as an entity, it works so bloody well that I’m both per­turbed and secretly over­joyed that more peo­ple haven’t heard about it.

Ross Fisher

37: Kings of Leon

Youth & Young Man­hood 2003

ONE of the biggest draw­backs to my per­son­al­ity, aside from social inep­ti­tude, is my habit of devel­op­ing too much of an emo­tional attach­ment to bands. So you can imag­ine my dis­tress when it came to choos­ing my favorite Kings of Leon album.

This is by far one of the great­est debut albums I have heard this decade. Res­onat­ing with an ana­logue raw record­ing qual­ity, as accus­tomed to the bands’ Nashville roots, every track flows neatly into the next, alter­nat­ing near-perfectly between up-beat and somber whilst keep­ing the lis­tener engaged through­out. With more of a blues influ­ence than their other works, this album is so good it almost makes me for­get how awful Only by the Night is.

Will Hunter

36: Jus­tice

Cross 2007

HUGE, roar­ing, mon­u­men­tal, party dance tunes.  Jus­tice are in a league of their own on Cross, forg­ing the musi­cal met­als of disco, elec­tro and rock to cre­ate a melodic mon­ster of great pro­por­tions.  Learn­ing from their pre­de­ces­sors, the likes of Daft Punk and Mr Oizo, Cross brings together a great mixed bag of sounds and vocals, to form an album heav­ier than their sound system.

High­lights from the album include the rhyth­mic high inject­ing Phan­tom Pt.II and sing-a-long, future disco fuelled DVNO. Gas­pard and Xavier have cer­tainly added some­thing new and excit­ing to this mil­len­nium, while prov­ing, in actual fact, the French do it better.

Matthew Way

To con­tinue the count­down from 35 to 31, you can go here.