I’m still not ready to make this list, but it’s already January 2 (and it’ll be January 3 by the time I post this), 2010, and it’s not going to get any easier, so I’m just going to shut up and post. As mentioned, I’m ranking only the top 6, and everything after that will be unnumbered, which I hope will distract people from the fact that my top 15 contains more than 15 records.

1. The Clientele, Strange Geometry (2005)
Quantity doesn’t always equal quality, obviously. But in this case, there was no record that I listened to more during the past decade, even though it didn’t come out until 2005. Once that song (“Since K Got Over Me,” referenced several times in the archives of this blog) hooked me, I was addicted, happily, to the whole record. Although I’ve always had a thing for dreamy, semi-psychedelic, swirly, atmospheric whatever, it wouldn’t be my favorite genre even if I were to choose a favorite genre. But this is the best example of the genre (if it is even a genre) that I’ve ever heard. It’s a glorious, achingly lovely, magical, spellbinding record, and there was no question that it was going to be my record of the decade.

(tie) 2. Dolly Varden, The Dumbest Magnets (2000)
In 2000, during the worst year of my life, when I was living in (and hating my life in) Chicago, a rare bright spot was getting to interview some fine musicians for the now-defunct Miles of Music MoMZine, the awesome John Doe among them. My favorite interview that year was with Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen, the husband-and-wife team who front Dolly Varden. I had only just heard of the band when I got the assignment and a copy of their new record, and at first, I liked the record but couldn’t quite latch on to it. But the more I listened to it, the more I fell in love with it. I think I wrote at the time (or it might have been Roy Kasten who wrote it; his review was the first I’d ever heard of the band) that it was the most purely beautiful record I’d heard all year, and ten years later, it’s just as beautiful. Also joyous, soaring, magical. It contains the best wedding song ever written (the title track), one that I love so much that I got Steve and Diane to sing it at my wedding (even though I felt a little weird about “borrowing” their wedding song for my own occasion). The Dumbest Magnets was Dolly Varden’s third album, and they’ve gone on to make two more official ones since then that are just as underrated and almost as great. If I had the power to make them famous, I would.

(tie) 2. The Delgados, Universal Audio (2004)
Sometimes I think other fans don’t hear exactly what I hear in the Delgados. They get that the band was extremely good at crafting simple yet lush melodies; they get the wit of the lyrics and the brilliance of combining punk rock sensibilities with orchestral pop. I’m sure they do hear the seething rage in Alun’s lyrics, which is hard to miss. But they don’t seem to hear the edge, the undercurrent of ferocity, that I hear beneath the sweetness of Emma’s voice and the richness of the arrangements. Which makes me think that maybe I’m totally wrong and the Delgados were really just what they seemed to be on the surface. But I don’t know, when I listen to songs like “Hate,” I can’t help but think that I might not be completely wrong. Either way, though I adore every record they put out and wish like crazy that they were still around to put out more, Universal Audio, on which every song would be a hit single in a perfect world, remains my favorite. I am forever grateful that I got to see them tour the record, especially because the odds of getting to see a semi-obscure indie band from Glasgow while living in Kansas City, MO, were not great. But there they were, and there we were, and thank God for that.

4. Scott Miller, Thus Always to Tyrants
As I said earlier, I feel like I should apologize to Scott for not ranking this record higher. So: I’m sorry, Scott. To make up for it, let me say that even though he didn’t make my record of the decade, Scott was unequivocally my Artist of the Decade, one of my favorite live performers of all time (both with his ace band and solo, though the latter is my preference) and a guy I’d travel just about anywhere to see. And a really likeable person, at least in my limited experience of hanging out and drinking with him. That his 2009 record was a disappointment to me isn’t even important; I could easily have put three of his records on this list, maybe even four, if I weren’t limiting myself to one album per artist. (It was very hard not to include Are You with Me?, the magnificent solo acoustic record that came out the same year as Thus Always, and Citation was also difficult to leave out.) He’s the most literate songwriter around, but totally lacking in pretense and self-seriousness. And yeah, he writes a lot of songs about trains and the Civil War and that sort of thing, but I for one have no problem with that.

5. Malcolm Middleton, Into the Woods. (2005)
I just wrote about Malcolm last night, in my favorites of 2009 post, so I won’t repeat myself here, except to reiterate something I said a few weeks ago while working on this list: if I could somehow make you listen to Malcolm, I would.

6. Allison Moorer, The Hardest Part (2000)
The first time I heard this record was before it came out, thanks to a friend’s connections to Allison. It was the aforementioned year that I spent in Chicago, and Bill was visiting, and we’d been drinking, and it was late, so I wasn’t sure whether or not my judgment was impaired, but I turned to him while we were listening to this and said, “Is it just me, or is this kind of unbelievably great?” We determined that it wasn’t just me, and repeated listenings clarified that it wasn’t just our enhanced state; it was an amazing record, and still is. It isn’t necessary to know the story behind the record in order to appreciate it, but once you know the story, it’s impossible not to think about it: it’s an attempt to tell her parents’ story from their points of view, and their story is that her father fatally shot her mother and then himself when Allison was 14 and her older sister, Shelby Lynne, was 17, with both of them in the house. I’ve always been amazed, and impressed, and moved, that Allison was able to write such a clear-eyed, forgiving account of something so terrible, and even more impressive, to make it sound as wonderful as this record does.

The rest, in no order, and with comments only where I have something vaguely lucid to say:

–Patty Griffin, Impossible Dream (2004)
–Sam Phillips, Fan Dance (2001)
–Patty Loveless, Mountain Soul (2001)
–Robbie Fulks, Couples in Trouble (2001)
I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll reiterate: This is not Robbie Fulks’s best record, and it’s not even his best record from this decade (that would be 2005′s superb Georgia Hard). But it’s his most ambitious, and it might be, in a way, his most interesting. And it works for me, in ways that I can’t necessarily explain. It’s all over the map, and not every song works; sometimes even the ones that work (in the sense that they do what they set out to do) are difficult to listen to—”Brenda’s New Stepfather” is the one I’m thinking of there. But in addition to admiring the effort, I mostly love the results, and the high points are very high indeed.
–Gary Allan, See If I Care (2003)
–Son Volt, Okemah and the Melody of Riot (2005)
I still feel sort of weirdly guilty about not loving Jay Farrar’s work this decade as much as I love his ’90s work, and yes, I do know that that’s very silly. But hey, at least I’m not silly enough to hold it against him, as some people do, that he kept the Son Volt name going even after parting ways with the Boquist brothers and Mike Heidorn. I debated for a long time about whether to include The Slaughter Rule soundtrack, which contains some of my favorite music of Jay’s, instead of Okemah, but a bout of intense re-listening to this record a few months ago confirmed how very much I love it.
–Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, 100 Days and 100 Nights (2007)
–Richard Thompson, The Old Kit Bag (2003)
–John Doyle, Evening Comes Early (2001)
–Reigning Sound, Time Bomb High School (2002)
–The Libertines, Up the Bracket (2002)
–Camera Obscura, Let’s Get Out of This Country (2006)
–The Duke Spirit, Cuts Across the Land (2005)
For a while, I had a whole spiel worked up about the Duke Spirit’s singer, Liela Moss, and the fact that she might be the best female rock singer who ever lived, because unlike many female singers who front rock bands, she is neither a folk-ish singer straining to be heard over the power chords, nor a bluesy belter, nor a punk rock vocalist who resorts to yelling in order to make herself heard; she’s a woman with a strong voice who can maintain volume without ever sounding harsh or screechy or unmelodic. But then I thought of five or six other female rock singers about whom the same can be said, so I have to hedge somewhat on calling Liela the best. Nonetheless, she’s really, really talented, and so is the whole band. They write punk-influenced, catchy, driving songs that get better with every listen, and this record could easily be joined by last year’s splendid Neptune if I were doing multiple titles per artists.
–British Sea Power, Open Seasons (2008)
–Bettie Serveert, Log 22 (2003)
–Richmond Fontaine, Post to Wire (2004)
–Grand Champeen, Dial T for This (2007)
–The Model Rockets, Tell the Kids the Cops Are Here (2002)
In a better world, John Ramberg would be very rich and incredibly famous. Very few people have written better pop songs, and the ones who did have names like John Lennon and Ray Davies.
–Dolorean, Violence in the Snowy Fields (2004)
–Dixie Chicks, Home (2002)

A few more that won’t quite fit in my already overloaded top “15″
–Wussy, Left for Dead (2008)
–Caitlin Cary, While You Weren’t Looking (2002)
–Sunny Sweeney, Heartbreaker’s Hall of Fame (2007)
–Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006)
–The Constantines, Shine a Light (2003)
–Brad Paisley, Mud on the Tires (2003), although Fifth Gear (2007) would also be a worthy choice

And that’s it. Well, I’m sure that’s not it, but I’ll wait till tomorrow to start kicking myself for all the records I left out.

As ever, these are “favorite” rather than “best.” This year more than any other, I had trouble ranking my favorites…so I decided not to try. The Clientele made my record of the year, but there are so many close runners-up that I’m just going to count all of them as my second favorite. Especially the first four after the Clientele.

1. The Clientele, Bonfires on the Heath
As I’ve noted, oh, thirty or forty times here, the Clientele’s 2005 record, Strange Geometry, is not only my Record of the Decade, but one of my top 3 or 4 records of all time, so I mean no disrespect to this latest effort when I say that it isn’t a patch on Strange Geometry; it’s still a wonderful record, and one song, “Never Anyone But You,” is unequivocally my song of the year. Alasdair has hinted at this being the Clientele’s last record, which, obviously, I desperately hope isn’t true.

–Malcolm Middleton, Waxing Gibbous
I’ve kind of given up on anyone but John Wendland ever sharing my affection for Malcolm, Scotland’s second-favorite arch-miserablist, but that’s okay. This year’s effort, which apparently may be his last for a while, is every bit as dark and funny and melodic and lovable as its predecessors.

–Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career
Some years ago, I bought Camera Obscura’s first album unheard, after someone or other recommended them to me, and I thought it was boring. This is now completely unimaginable to me, as I have come to think that they are, if anything, underrated, despite being popular (in an indie way); their songwriting and Tracyanne’s singing are really very close to perfect. This is a gorgeous record, start to finish.

–Son Volt, American Central Dust
Yes, it’s a return to form, or more precisely (since I don’t think they ever actually fell off their form), something of a return to the sound of the ’90s version of Son Volt. Which makes it even stranger that my chief reaction to this record when I first got it was to go listen to Okemah and the Melody of Riot over and over again. It turns out that even though the overall sound of this record is immediately appealing, the individual songs need a little bit of time to distinguish themselves. I eventually fell in love with the record, though. (But I still think Okemah is slightly better, she said in a small voice.)

–Wussy, Wussy
There are some really great sung-by-Chuck-Cleaver songs on this record, more than on its predecessor Left for Dead. I’m not sure if I think that’s a good thing or not, because Lisa Walker is my favorite thing about the band, and more Lisa is better. But either way, this is an excellent record, very nearly as good as Left for Dead (which is my fave).

–Reigning Sound, Love and Curses
People who like Reigning Sound are apparently a little underwhelmed by this record, and I guess I can see why: it’s kind of unvarying in tempo, and it doesn’t have any total knockout songs the way RS’s best records do. But it’s still pretty fucking great. Greg Cartwright can do no wrong, pretty much.

–Greg Cartwright, Live at the Circle A
See above comment re. Mr. Cartwright. Also, I am on a quest to own as many versions of “Drowning,” arguably his best song, as is humanly possible, and this adds to my total.

–Patty Loveless, Mountain Soul II
The fact that it’s not as good as the first Mountain Soul kept me, somewhat irrationally, from warming up to this one for a while. That was stupid. Mountain Soul was a mind-bogglingly great record; that this one is merely superb shouldn’t be counted against it.

–Ashley Monroe, Satisfied
A lovely bluegrass-y country record, on which every song is good. People who know my tastes kept recommending this record to me, and I kept forgetting to follow up on the recommendation. I’m very glad I finally remembered to. Ms. Monroe, who is only 23, is tremendously talented, and I look forward to following her career.

–Stuart Moxham, Cars in the Grass
Stuart Moxham was the songwriter/brains behind Young Marble Giants, and shortly after their breakup, he had a band (mostly just him) called the Gist, who recorded one of my favorite songs ever. I lost track of him after that, but earlier this year, while scouring the Internetz to try to find a copy of said favorite song, I discovered that he’d continued to make records on and off through the ’90s and ’00s. His stuff isn’t as full of blips and bloops as YMG were, but it still sounds much the same–spare, sweet, melancholy, gentle but a little edgy. I’m a fan.

–Ha Ha Tonka, Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South
Ha Ha Tonka are a genuinely original band, which can’t be said about many “alt-country” acts (and certainly not many Bloodshoot Records artists). Their debut was a total surprise to me; this one doesn’t have that same shock of the new, but I looked forward to it coming out for a long time and was glad that it was worth the wait. Brian Roberts is a remarkable singer—I don’t think I’d like the band quite as much if it weren’t for his vocals, which remind me how few truly great young male singers there seem to be these days.

–Metric, Fantasies
Yes, I do love synth-y dance music, especially when it’s as smart and edgy as this. I keep meaning to go back and get Metric’s other records. This is their fourth, but I had never heard of them until this year, when a guy I follow on Twitter mentioned them and linked to an MP3. I don’t know what made me click the link—my Twitter network is mostly professional contacts, and the fact that we work in the same field is definitely not a guarantee that we’ll share other tastes. (Especially since most of them are substantially younger than me, and for some reason a lot of them seem to like industrial metal.) But I did, and it was love at first listen.

–The Morning After Girls, Alone.
I had given up on the Morning After Girls ever releasing a new record; I think their last one came out in 1992 or something. (Oh, all right, it was 2005. Practically the same thing.) So I was pretty much jumping for joy when I heard this was coming out. I’m not going to say it was worth the wait, because that would suggest that taking four years between records is somehow acceptable, but I’ll grant that it didn’t disappoint. Their sound hasn’t changed, but it’s evolved, and it’s still great: atmospheric, quietly noisy, miasmic, totally satisfying.

–The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, s/t
Unapologetically shoegazy, and very lovable, the Pains are among my favorite new bands of the late ’00s, despite having an excruciatingly bad name. (It doesn’t matter if it’s ironic, as I’m sure it is. It’s still a terrible name.) I’m pretty unapologetically shoegazy myself, at least some of the time, and this ticks pretty much all the boxes.

–Lou Barlow, Goodnight Unknown
I’m a fan of most, though not all, of Lou’s non-Sebadoh projects, but this might be the best non-Sebadoh and non-Dinosaur Jr. record he’s ever done. (Hard to say; the second Folk Implosion record is also really great.) It’s less self-consciously lo-fi than some of the solo and Sentridoh stuff, and his songwriting is really strong. If you love Lou when he’s being all sensitive-guy-Lou, you’ll love this.

–Sam Phillips, Hypnotists in Paris (EP)
Like a handful of other songwriters with cult-sized audiences, Sam has started selling new music directly to fans on her Website. I think it’s a really smart business decision, and as a fan, it makes me really happy because it means a lot less time between new releases from Sam (who has traditionally had long lags between records). And if it’s all as good as this EP, I’ll be really really really happy.

–Vivian Girls, Everything Goes Wrong
I can think of ten reasons off the top of my head that someone could argue that the Vivian Girls aren’t really ready to be on anyone’s best-of list. Among others: their songs all sound the same, and it’s kind of a thin little song to begin with; they’re not going to wow anyone with their vocal and instrumental talents, and they seem to record in a toilet in a subway station. But fuck all that. They hit a sweet spot between early ’80s Brit-post-punk, ’60s girl group, and ’90s lo-fi that just totally works for me. Besides, their playing and songwriting have improved quite a bit since their first record, and the recording quality is more than a little bit better on this one too.

–Arctic Monkeys, Humbug
This is pretty different sonically from the first two, but it still has everything that makes the Arctic Monkeys great: their combination of sarcasm, wit, and lack of pretense, and their talent for writing songs that are nicely reminiscent of a lot of the pantheon of great British punk/post-punk but still entirely original. I don’t listen to them all that often, but when I do, I’m always struck by what a seriously great band they are, one that actually deserves the success and attention that they’ve had.

A few that I wish I liked better:
–Rosanne Cash, The List
–Obits, I Blame You
–Dinosaur Jr., The Farm

And some that I just haven’t spent enough time with yet:
–The High Strung, Ode to the Inverse of the Dude
–The Swell Season, Strict Joy
–Dallas Wayne, I’ll Take the Fifth
–The Tripwires, House to House
–Alela Diane, To Be Still
–Dave Rawlings Machine, A Friend of a Friend
–Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fountain (noteworthy for its very existence, really, and even more so for the fact that it’s really quite good)

I’ll be putting together a comp including songs from many of these releases, as I did last year. Watch this space.

Oh, and one other thing so I don’t forget: I was playing DJ for a while this evening and put on “Truth #2,” a wonderful Patty Griffin song from the Dixie Chicks’ masterpiece, Home. I realized that it came out this decade and that I had forgotten about it in sketching out my best of the decade list. It would be inexcusable to leave it off the final list (which I hope to tackle over the weekend), so I’m mentioning it here to prevent that from happening.

Happy New Year. (And good riddance to 2009, which was kind of a crap year.)