Unlike the video game thread, I'm not going to confuse "favorite" with "best." It's likely that we won't listen to a single quarter note that anyone else recommends, but I don't care, here we go!! (For our purposes here, the decade goes from from 2000 to 2009.)
10.
Danger Radio - Used and Abused (2008)
I think I listened to this album a hundred times in the month of May, 2009. That's, what, three times a day? That's not much when you are working a dead-end job, you know. I
know I listened to it every time I drove to Ben & Kat's for BSG Nite, where I was able to carry on like some kind of moping blue mope. If I listened to this as much as I think I have, the track "You All Believe" would have been played five times that. Look, the math here is rough. And no, I don't expect any song or album on this list to appeal to anyone who ever reads this, but at least the cover art for the tenth song features a hawt girl.
I think most people would like to punch the lead singer in the face, because to look at him, he looks like that really short guy with the black hair that won the reality TV show about designing clothes nobody would ever wear. I'm amazed he's still living, looking so similar, frankly.
9.
My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade (2006)
I really didn't want to like this album, because I always thought these guys were a bunch of gays, but they knocked it out of the house for the first five tracks on the album. I can't remember any album starting off so strongly. They've stated that they were influenced by Queen in their ... well, I don't know what the phase was called, so I'll call it their "good phase," but this definitely sounds like an early Queen albumn.
Years later I've still been getting into tracks later in the disc. The one about how the guy's heroes are selling cars on TV (unfortunately, in the genre of pop punk, you end up having no idea what any songs are called.) I got all the angst out of my system when I wrote Chicks Dig Jerks, but that's some succulent and tempting angstus steak right there.
8.
Coheed & Cambria - Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness (2005)
This is an utterly ridiculous album.
Even the name is preposterous.
This is what happens when you read too many comic books and start a band.
I dont care - I don't know how they are live, and I know that the Coheed guy can't keep the same people in his band for very long, but this is a disc filled with good musicians making music that rocks with really attractive melodies.
The Suffering is my favorite song from the disc. Whatever you do,
don't watch this video. Seriously. Don't click on that link, we won't be friends any more.
Okay, I started the video because I'm not obeying anything in this shitty post either. "Listen well, will you marry me? And are you well in the suffering?" gets me EVERY FUCKING TIME. And not because it is a bad ass line, or because it's all rarr or anything, but because when you ask the first question, you're really on some level asking the other one, and yet it still works out for millions of people every day, and that will never stop being fascinating to me.
7.
The Rocket Summer - Hello, Good Friend (2005)
At least one of the Rocket Summer albums is apparently made by this kid, with him playing every note. I can't remember which one, so this disc just got elected. For some reason, The Rocket Summer is forever linked with picking up arcade games, which doesn't make any sense, because I didn't my car to get them. So the wires are somehow crossed in my head, and the song Brat Pack got synched up with Mr. Do!. Also, if I had unlimited access to other people's intellectual property, I would make Zork IV a game about the passionate struggle of loss that really matters to the people involved, and roll "Treasures" from this album over the end credits.
The end credits would take place inside a barrow.
6.
Mae - Singularity (2007)
I love the song
Waiting, which is on this album. It reminds me of the Wyoming Incident, which was the first ARG I ever knew about. If you get a good ARG for the first one, before you even know what an alternate reality game is, then you will be affected for the rest of your life, and it's an experience I wish everyone could have. I mean, the song is brilliant by itself. It would still be one of my ten favorite songs if I wasn't listening to it on repeat when learning about a pirate broadcast transmission that took place in the Middle of Nowhere, Wyoming. The way the feedback of the guitar leads into verses, and how the keyboard appears only when it has something to say always gives me chills. It's perfect. I don't even know that these guys can pull the song off in concert, which is sort of why I didn't go see them last week.
5.
Something Corporate - Leaving Through the Window (2002)
I listen to this album so much, that - even though I try never to play pop punk around people - the people I live with get sick of this album.
I use "Straw Dog" to get up in the morning. I sing "Fall" like some kind of gaybo on the way home from work. "Drunk Girl" is the one song in the world that has my name in it, when the dude says "sure when" quickly. "I Woke Up In a Car" actually makes being homeless a romantic option in counter-culture.
I have the Slacker Radio app to play a 'Something Corporate' station all day, and it's mostly this album with a bunch of other songs thrown in from "similar artists" and I don't care, I have been listening to it regularly for years and probably will for the rest of my life.
Sorry, future children.
4.
Katatonia - Viva Emptiness (2003)
I have acquired other discs by Katatonia, but as far as I can tell, what I like about this CD - the 'haunting' quality of sadness that each track has - was simply not a direction they ever otherwise went to. If there was a CD that could be said to be the soundtrack to Pantomime, it would be this one. I think I listened to Viva Emptiness a thousand times while writing that game.
If I could have stolen one bit from any album in this list, it would be how
A Premonition ends. Motherfuckers ended a song with each instrument slowly dying off from the song. nnnggghhhhh arrrgh FUCK I tried to do this once for a song my college band made, but we weren't able to get it to work and when I heard the idea done to perfection in that song, I was glad we pull it off, because it would have been inferior anyway.
When I grew up, we had an expanse of overgrown field behind our home. My father eventually bought it and turned it into Kentucky blue grass and we had many a pleasant memory playing football back there, blah blah. But before it was tamed, I'd sometimes walk back there by myself in the total darkness of a new moon, with no idea what the earth and life had in store for me - I was so young, anything was possible. Most of this album reminds me of those solitary walks. It is a good album to be alone by.
3.
Mae - The Everglow (2005)
A beautiful collection of songs that hint towards a reality that exists just outside this one like a poorly-QAed CYOA book, reachable only in an unconscious, dreamy bliss.
2.
New Found Glory - New Found Glory (2000)
I was commuting from Fort Collins down to Longmont when the CSU station played "Hit or Miss." In a very real way, that drive changed my life, as it got me into pop punk. You know how all of you found music that you couldn't
believe existed and blah blah blah? Well, for me, it didn't happen until I was like 30. It got me interested in music again. They have never been able to jam pack a disc with as many amazing (for pop punk) songs as this one - one of the few CDs I can listen to from start to finish without having a deep desire to skip over any songs.
1.
Acceptance- Phantoms (2005)
My favorite album of all-time, and if I were ever to rank my favorite 100 songs, at least four of them would be from this album. I listened to this album every single day when I first got it, every single day when the worst thing that ever happened to me happened to me and pretty much every single day since. (I started writing this post last week and came back to this paragraph tonight. I've listened to at least one song on it every day since then.) I'm still amazed that something that came out so recently was able to affect me so. In a way, I'm almost glad they broke up with one full CD to their names, because they were never gonna top this.
It starts out with the greatest First Three Words Of All-Time. 2008 was a not-so-great year for me, and I probably would have been in a lot worse shape if I weren't able to take some solace in the fact that this collection of music was there for me. There is a certain depth towards loss here that I never knew existed before in music, because nothing else anyone ever lamented ever had anything to do with
me. Until this, until now. But at the same time, the fucking thing rocks as well, making it the rare disc that can comfort you in sadness while kicking your ass in. (Well, it's rare for the genre I listen to, at any rate.)