Okay, okay. So posting top Top 10 lists after the new year is pretty much like wearing white after labor day. But rules were meant to be broken, and we have so much more we want to share with you guys! So there are three more Top 10 Albums from 2000-2009 lists from Loud Loop Press editors and contributors that will go up this week. Today, contributor Andy Kondrat swears his way through this Monday-busting list for the Top 10 Albums from 2000 – 2009.

1. Radiohead – Kid A/Amnesiac
There’s a reason that Kid A is at the top of everyone’s decade list, or is getting made fun of for being a clichéd choice at the top of everyone’s decade list: it’s a really fucking good album. From the opener “Everything In Its Right Place” to the closer “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” this album mesmerizes you and won’t let go. You know what? Fuck the decade: Kid A might be the best headphones album ever. Tell me you don’t get goosebumps during the dissonance/resolve portion of “How To Disappear Completely,” and I’ll tell you you’re a liar. Furthermore, we can’t forget the companion piece, Amnesiac. Just because it came out second doesn’t mean it’s any less essential. Slightly more electronic than its predecessor, Amnesiac is harder to get inside at the outset, but once these songs get in your brain, you won’t want to listen to anything else for months. These two records were meant to be thought of as one opus, and with them, Radiohead changed the face of what is acceptable for a rock band to do. Which wouldn’t be important if the music weren’t some of the prettiest stuff this side of a Beethoven symphony.

2. Fugazi – The Argument
It’s a testament to the depths of Fugazi’s brilliance that the band’s eighth and last album, is one of the strongest, musically speaking, the band ever released. Sure, one could argue that “Life and Limb” and “Strangelight” are vaguely similar, but one cannot argue that songs like “Cashout,” “Epic Problem,” or “Full Disclosure” aren’t overflowing with directed energy and innovative ideas. None of these songs sound like they’re in danger of falling apart at the seams—each one is intricately crafted and tightly performed—but it does sound like each song is on the verge of exploding. With The Argument, Fugazi proved that the band was still as important as ever, and had matured in a way that kept the youthful anger, but channeled it in some of the best song-writing the band had done. If we never get a new record from them again, this sure as hell isn’t a bad way to go out.

3. Battles – Mirrored
I don’t even know how to begin talking about Battles’ reinvention of instrumental music. Take Don Caballero, mix in a little bit of Turing Machine, and add in a lot of “holy fucking shit” moments, and you’re starting to get in the neighborhood. Depending on the day, Mirrored will either make you slam your hand against the wall with the beat, or make you sit perfectly still to pick out individual parts weaving together in ways you think are impossible. I don’t know how the hell they managed to write this stuff, and seeing them live once, I’m even less sure how they can play it live. My friend David sums up what I can’t perfectly when he says “it was unlike anything I’d ever heard but took everything that I liked and put it into one record.” I don’t know how Battles is going to top this one, but I can’t wait to see them try.

4. Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary
Apologies to the Queen Mary announces its arrival with slamming drums and a crazed keyboard riff, unhinged vocals not far behind. After this manic opening, the album never lets up, lets go, or loses focus. It’s obvious this record was produced by Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse; the quirky yet earnest energy that pervades the whole album is infectious, to say the least. With two top-tier songwriters in the band, Wolf Parade’s debut LP doesn’t get stuck in a stylistic rut, with song-writing and vocals duties usually switching off track to track. Dan Boeckner’s straight-up driving rock is more immediately accessible and instantly amazing, but on repeated listens, Apologies… belongs to Spencer Krug: the one-two punch of “Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts” and “I’ll Believe in Anything” is about as good as any ten minutes on any album got this decade.

5. All Spoon
Though the top spot on this list belongs to Radiohead, the decade itself belonged to Spoon. In the past ten years, Britt Daniel and company have released four albums that are guaranteed to blow your mind each and every time: Girls Can Tell, Kill the Moonlight, Gimme Fiction, and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. With each album, Spoon maintains its signature sound, exemplified by a sparseness of arrangement and Daniel’s too-cool vocals, yet each album has its own feel and ambiance that differentiates it significantly from the others. More importantly, all of them are through-and-through amazing. Four albums in a decade, and you don’t have to skip a single song on any of them. That’s impressive. Further, if a song that comes from the DFA label isn’t song of the decade, Spoon has a plethora of contenders. Each album has at least one: “Anything You Want” off Girls Can Tell? “The Way We Get By,” “Jonathan Fisk,” or “Back to the Life” from Kill the Moonlight? “Sister Jack,” “I Summon You,” “I Turn My Camera On” from Gimme Fiction? “Finer Feelings” from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga? Man, Spoon. You fucking owned this decade.

6. Mclusky – Do Dallas
Here’s the thing: Mclusky doesn’t like you, and they’re not afraid to let you know. And you, you want so hard to be liked by Mclusky, but they don’t give a shit you exist. This is the sound of Do Dallas. Tracks like “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues,” “The World Loves Us and Is Our Bitch,” “Fuck This Band,” and “To Hell With Good Intentions” are written to remind you that Mclusky is cooler than you are. But with lyrics like the opening line in “Gareth Brown Says” (All your friends are cunts/Your mother is a ballpoint pen thief), the band opens up and says, okay, we may be assholes, but at least we know it, and we’ll at least let you in on our fun. This Steve Albini-produced album goes straight for the jugular, and the ripping guitars, throbbing bass, and ear-shattering vocals are all designed to say “Go fuck yourself.” And it’s a blast all the way through.

7. Hot Snakes – Automatic Midnight/Suicide Invoice/Audit In Progress
I can’t say that Hot Snakes owned the decade in the way that Spoon did, but in the course of a few short years, this phoenix that rose from the ashes of Drive Like Jehu put out arguably what is some of the best, most visceral rock and roll of the decade. Giving a guitar to Jehu (and Hot Snakes) vocalist Rick Froberg was a brilliant idea, as he and John Reis traded in some of the musical complexity of Jehu for amping up the mutherfucking rock factor (though noticeably without overdoing the overdrive), playing off each other to create textures that make the music more intricate than it sounds on first listen—even when, in songs like “LAX” (Suicide Invoice) the song is already screwing with time signatures to begin with. And let’s talk for just one second about the bookends to Hot Snakes’ studio career. The first track off the first record, Automatic Midnight, “If Credit’s What Matters, I’ll Take Credit,” grabs you so quickly and with such force, that by the time the album is ready to close (with “Let It Come,” oh my God “Let It Come” is so good), you still haven’t had time to catch your breath. And the last track on the last one, Audit In Progress, “Plenty For All,” came out around the time that The Strokes and The Hives and all that stuff was big, and the song sounds like it’s Hot Snakes saying, “You kids think you know rock and roll? You don’t know rock and roll. We invented this type of shit, kiddos.” It’s a perfect song to cap the career of a band that created three albums so strong, they all had to make the decade list.

8. Rocket From the Crypt – Group Sounds
Before Hot Snakes and during Drive Like Jehu, John Reis also fronted Rocket From the Crypt, albeit under the persona of Speedo. And, by the 2000s, it seemed like RFTC might be a band that had run its course: it had been signed and dropped by a major label, and already seen albums like Circa: Now!, Scream, Dracula, Scream!, and RFTC make their mark on the music scene without breaking into the mainstream. But in 2001, Rocket came back with Group Sounds, an album filled to the brim with rough urgency from the very first notes of “Straight American Slave.” And, for a band that throughout its career (quite effectively) relied on a Phil Spector-ish well-produced wall of sound (Group Sounds included), there is a rawness to this album that Rocket hadn’t let loose before, swapping slickness for the musical equivalent of a snarling tiger. Yet even with the coarseness, this album could be the soundtrack to any great party, with album closer “Ghost Shark,” lulling you to sleep while you still hold on to that bottle of tequila. Rocket had been around a decade before Group Sounds, and has released a slew of stuff since (one last studio album, a live record, a b-sides record, a reissue or two), but this is the one is what needs to be a part of any serious music lover’s collection.

9. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
With their first album Almost Killed Me, The Hold Steady grabbed their place as heirs apparent to Bruce Springsteen as a bar band that could write rock anthems. But with Separation Sunday, The Hold Steady proved that the rock could get bigger, and the lyrics could get better, and there is far more to this group than Almost Killed Me even hinted at. Singer Craig Finn sings (sings?) about Holly and Charlemagne and a whole crew of misfits dabbling in sex, drugs, and Catholicism over balls-out rock led by Tad Kubler wailing on guitar. The music is larger than life, as are the characters in the songs, and the perfect storm of Separation Sunday allows you to rock out when you want, but every time you listen to it, another line you’ve never heard before catches you, making each listening experience incredibly rewarding. It took me at least a year to realize “The Cattle and the Creeping Things” is a reference to the Bible, and even longer to realize how intricate the lyrics are, covering Genesis to Revelations (explanation of the lyrics for that song at NPR.org. http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2005/aug/holdsteady/lyrics_cattle.html).

10. I’m not trying to be difficult, but, come on. Ten albums for the entire decade? Not possible.
I’ve gone back and forth over the past weeks trying to figure out what could go here: LCD Soundsystem’s self-titled, or Sounds of Silver? Old Crow Medicine Show’s O.C.M.S.? Man Man’s Six Demon Bag? Tom Waits’ Orphans? Daft Punk’s Discovery or Alive 2007? Turing Machine’s Zwei or A New Machine for Living? Any Kanye West album other than Graduation? Jay-Z’s The Blueprint? Sigur Ros’ ( )? The National’s Alligator? Dan Sartain’s Vs. the Serpientes? Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica? The Thermals’ Fuckin A? Liars’ Drums Not Dead? …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead’s Source Codes and Tags? Arcade Fire’s Funeral? Elliott Smith’s Figure 8? Girl Talk’s Night Ripper? The Walkmen’s Bows + Arrows? The dozen of albums on everyone else’s decade list I haven’t even listened to yet? A hundred others I haven’t even mentioned yet? So, yeah. Number ten. Tie between everything, ever.