My 250 Favorite Songs of the 2000s - #90-81

#90 - The Engine Driver - The Decemberists

Picaresque (2005)

#89 - Walcott - Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend (2008)

#88 - Since I Left You - The Avalanches

Since I Left You (2000)

#87 - Pyramid Song - Radiohead

Amnesiac (2001)

#86 - Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake

Justified (2002)

#85 - Galang - M.I.A.

Arular (2005)

#84 - Knife - Grizzly Bear

Yellow House (2006)

#83 - Come Pick Me Up - Ryan Adams

Heartbreaker (2000)

#82 - Vanished - Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles (2008)

#81 - Archangel - Burial

Untrue (2007)

My 250 Favorite Songs of the 2000s - #170-161

#170 - Hey Ya! - Outkast

Speakerboxx/The Love Below (2003)

#169 - Nude - Radiohead

In Rainbows (2007)

#168 - Province - TV On the Radio

Return to Cookie Mountain (2006)

#167 - Accordion - Madvillain

Madvillainy (2004)

#166 - The Bachelor and the Bride - The Decemberists

Her Majesty..... (2003)

#165 - Just Abandoned My-Self - Boris

Pink (2005)

#164 - Jesus, Etc. - Wilco

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

#163 - Little Bit - Lykke Li

Youth Novels (2008)

#162 - Alan Is a Cowboy Killer - Mclusky

Mclusky Do Dallas (2002)

#161 - Losing My Edge - LCD Soundsystem

Losing My Edge (2002)

My 25 Favorite Artists of the 2000s - #17

#17 - The Decemberists

The Decemberists are easily the nerdiest band that I've ever heard. With their epic songs about life on the high seas, their album length rock operas, and the lyric sheet that requires either an Ivy League vocabulary or the largest dictionary known to man to decipher, The Decemberists were truly one of the unique entities of the decade. Inspired largely by the much-beloved 90s band Neutral Milk Hotel, each Decemberists track is like a novella that requires multiple careful listenings before the true emotional impact of the story sinks in....but once it does, the stories that singer/songwriter Colin Meloy tells are simply amazing.

My Favorite Albums:

1. Picaresque (2005)

2. Castaways and Cutouts (2002)

3. The Hazards of Love (2009)

4. Her Majesty....The Decemberists (2003)

5. 5 Songs (2001)

6. The Crane Wife (2006)

10. The Decemberists - The Engine Driver (2005)

Colin Meloy is one of the greatest storytellers in contemporary music. The vast majority of Decemberist songs sound as if they were sung straight out of a novel written decades ago.....you almost need a dictionary to understand some of the lyrics. This song breaks through all of the literary trappings though, and is all the more beautiful for it. Sitting right in the middle of the last non-prog Decemberists album Picaresque (also their best), it's also one of the more autobiographical songs in the Decemberists catalog. Instead of speaking about a peasant boy or some similar person as he so often does, Meloy seems to sing in the first-person, even describing himself as 'a writer of fictions'. Backed with accordion and glockenspiel, this is one of the best of all Decemberist songs.