I don’t pretend that I’m a tastemaker whose hyperobscure top ten of the decade will open the ears of the multitude to a clutch of hidden gems.  However, it’s very important for my self-image that I prove to myself that there are 10 albums I’ve enjoyed in the last decade, and I’m not a hopeless curmudgeon destined to rant about how great the 90s were, as I pass, thrashing, into my dotage. Anyway, I hated the 90s, with all that Britpop cluttering up the place. So, without, further ado, and in no particular order:

Not a controversial choice. The debut from Montreal’s finest managed to sound like Godspeed You! Black Emperor playing stadium rock. With much, much better lyrics. It’s hard to think of any other band so histrionic and triumphalist that I would give the time of day to – but somehow Arcade Fire manage to make both of those things utterly compelling. If I knew how, I’d bottle it.

A break-up album, a concept album, an alt. folk album which sounds like Pixies as often as Bright Eyes (thankfully), produced by Grandaddy’s Jason Lyttle, and built around a core of such perfect melodicism and tender expression that it puts its peers (and most if his subsequent output) in the shade. Not a duff song on the record.

His last (proper) album, and the one where he final synthesized the scuzzy melacholy of Either/Or and his earlier albums with the sheeny bigshot production of XO.

Nixon (Lambchop)

Country band, soul group or artists chronicling the minutiae of American experience, what people don’t usually mention is that they’re really patchy. This overblown, high energy, polished soulfest is the exception to test the rule. Full of acerbic observations (”This learning not to demonstrate your asinine and callous traits, it could take some practice – I know”) from singer Kurt Wagner’s laconic baritone and strained falsetto, grand and melodramatic strings and foot tapping grooves, it’s the only Lambchop album I love. And to be honest, the only I can listen to from soup to nuts.

The Milk-eyed Mender (Joanna Newsom)

If your first reaction to Joanna Newsom’s voice isn’t ‘God that’s annoying’, then you’re lacking hearing in the 1-20kHz range. If your second, third and fourth reactions aren’t ‘but this is amazing’ then you’re an idiot. She’s like Bjork but with songs. And what amazing lyrics. I’ve chosen her debut album because I’m getting pretty old and if I put on Ys I will probably be long gone before the first “song cycle” finishes.

Tallahassee (The Mountain Goats)

You know on long flights when the captain will occasionally draw your attention to a point of interest by saying “And if you look out of your window to the left, you’ll be able to see Rekjavik” and you look out of the window and you realised you’ve completely missed it? If you ever have that experience with Florida’s state capital, you’ve spent too long there. It’s a city whose only claim to fame is electoral fraud. This has little to do with The Mountain Goats’ dark tale of a husband and wife who move there to drink one another to death, but Context is King and all that. No Children must be in the running for “most triumphantly misanthropic song of all time”. Amazing and strangely cathartic.

Rain On Lens (Smog)

Bill Callahan has gone all touchy-feely since this early noughties squally gem,  full of characteristicly wry humour and uncharacteristically tenacious grooves. Lyrics about lecherous fence painters vie with matter of fact musings on the mind/body duality on this massively overlooked masterpiece. Supper can get fucked.

Original Pirate Material (The Streets)

Because I am street. You youngsters probably don’t remember when bands weren’t all called “The something-or-others”, but around 2001 there was a big rash of the bastards, so much so that it got rather irritating. The only The bands worth listening to back then were The Strokes and The Streets. Look, the alternative was shit like The Datsuns and The Vines and The Thrills and – what do you mean you’ve never heard of them? I remember when this was all fields we had to make our own fun in those days etc.

Boxer (The National)

I don’t know what to say about this beguiling collection of enigmatic songs. Boxer feels to me like Stephin Merrit singing Paul Auster short stories set to the music of Interpol. Perhaps this is because I neither understand the fiction of Paul Auster nor the music of The National. I am endlessly drawn back to the disappointment of Mistaken for Strangers (”You wouldn’t want an angel watching over/ Surprise, surprise, one wouldn’t want to watch/ another uninnocent elegant fall/into the unmagnificent lives of adults”) and the refrain of Racing Like a Pro (”You’re dumbstruck, baby, now you know”). A deceptively simple album which belies it’s graceful sophistication.

This is my own personal way of dealing with it all (Superman Revenge Squad)
The best Croydon-based, Iron Maiden covering antifolk singer-songwriter out there at the moment, bar none. It turns out growing up in Croydon was a lot like growing up in Telford- and David Lynch, Smashing Pumpkins and King of Comedy are the only escape from the drudgery of suburbia; or indeed, one’s own existential angst. Just don’t mention Kerouac. He’s not a fan.

Honourable Mentions
Things we lost in the fire (Low)
1000 Hurts (Shellac)
The Argument (Fugazi)
69 love songs (The Magnetic Fields)
Do Dallas (McClusky)
Small Moments (David Kitt)
Yanqui Uxo (Godspeed you! Black emperor)
SmileSunset (Mark Mulcahy)
Rabbit Songs (Hem)

..and my senility has caught up with me and I can’t remember any more. Till the next decade.