The decade's best music reaches from

Arcade Fire to Metric to Maria Schneider

For a musical decade in which albums meant less than ever before, the last 10 years have brought us a number of recordings -- including many by Canadian artists -- that will stand the test of time. In the era of digital music, file-sharing and rapidly declining record sales, it may be even harder to produce a complete and fulfilling album. Canwest's

music critics and entertainment editors have combed their collections and memories, and each has chosen their favourite album of the decade.

Love and Theft

Bob Dylan (2001)

Many of today's artists were influenced by Bob Dylan. It's a tribute to him that, at this late date in his career, he regained his form after a two-album writer's block and began a series of records that started in 1997 with Time Out Of Mind and that consolidated his own influences -- blues, country, folk, rhythm and blues. Love and Theft was a significant continuation of one of Dylan's most productive periods.

Tom Harrison,

The Vancouver Province

Musicforthemorningafter

Pete Yorn (2001)

It's a rarity when a debut album is so consistently good from beginning to end. But singer-songwriter Pete Yorn's debut effort is a stunning collection of acoustically driven, melodic tunes. The New Jersey native's album immediately cemented his place among the darlings of modern-rock-singer-songwriters with a folky twist. Musicforthemorningafter is exactly that -- music for the morning after, without the adult-contemporary shlock. "After" what is irrelevant; what is relevant is the variety of beautifully crafted songs meant to be heard on a lazy morning over a cup of coffee in your favourite mug.

Sheri Levine,

Canwest News Service

You Forgot It In People

Broken Social Scene (2002)

Of the 13 tracks on Broken Social Scene's Juno-award-winning You Forgot It In People, not one is less than outstanding: from the rocking, danceable Almost Crimes to the achingly beautiful Lover's Spit, the grand orchestrations create a rich and complex tapestry of sound that doesn't seem to tire or age. But there's nothing clichéd about any of it: each tune is catchy and hummable, the lyrics surprising and fresh-sounding.

Larissa Liepins,

Canwest News Service

Elephant

The White Stripes (2003)

Most critics are citing 2001's White Blood Cells as the defining White Stripes moment, and great it is. But it was on 2003's Elephant that Jack White perfected the heavy, guttural garage-punk approach to roots music -- be it blues, country, or rock 'n' roll -- that would become his staple sound. In a decade where great rock was all too sparse, frequently lost under mountains of cookie-cutter pap and precious, emo-era art pop, White kept the genre

vital, fun and fierce.

Heath McCoy,

The Calgary Herald

Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

Metric (2003)

A natural question when ranking records is whether a person should hunt for the most musically important work or the album that, without fail, makes its way into the CD player year after year. Metric's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? falls into the latter category. It might not be the universal defining record of the decade, but, after six years, it is as current and listenable as it was upon its release. Featuring the baby-sweet-but-bad-ass vocals of frontwoman Emily Haines, the album is infectious electro, New Wave pop rock.

Stephanie McKay,

The StarPhoenix, Saskatoon

Funeral

Arcade Fire (2004)

Funeral has been referred to more than once as "bottled lightning." Passionate emotion bursts from every corner of Arcade Fire's breathtaking debut album. At once urgent, epic and intensely personal, it revives the idea of rock 'n' roll as salvation, and evokes solace in the face of death. This is youth music, after all; Funeral is turbo-charged with childlike wonder, and tinged with a bittersweet sense of despair. Yet it doesn't forget to rock. A communal clarion call to humans everywhere to stand up and be counted, the album achieved its lofty ambitions.

T'Cha Dunlevy,

The Montreal Gazette

Sky Blue

The Maria Schneider Orchestra (2007)

Jazz's foremost composer for large ensembles created an uplifting classic filled with enthralling themes and sumptuous orchestration. Her band of faithfuls included riveting soloists such as saxophonist Donny McCaslin, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, guitarist Ben Monder, pianist Frank Kimbrough -- all musicians with solo careers worth following. With its awesome, anthemic moments, Cerulean Skies, the centrepiece of Sky Blue, moved some listeners to tears when Schneider's orchestra played it in Confederation Park last summer.

Peter Hum,

The Ottawa Citizen

The Man Comes Around

Johnny Cash (2002)

Cash's last studio album is a sparse, deeply moving affair masterly produced by Rick Rubin that features backup vocal works from the likes of Fiona Apple, Don Henley and Nick Cave. The key to the album's resonance is a stripped-down approach, which allows Cash's signature voice to reach out like some kind of weathered, wounded biblical prophet. The album features Cash's take on Nine Inch Nail's Hurt -- the best cover song since Jimi Hendrix put his personal stamp on All Along the Watchtower. Other standouts include a blues-tinged version of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus and Cash's stamp on The Beatles' In My Life, which, feels much more sincere coming from a man whose life is near its end.

Chris Lackner,

Canwest News Service

Impossible Dream

Patty Griffin (2004)

Rarely has there been an album that can lift you higher through sorrow than Impossible Dream. "There's a million sad stories on the side of the road," Griffin sings in Cold As It Gets. Even though -- or maybe because -- the album marked a perceptible shift from intimate portraits to universal longing in her lyrics, it seemed Griffin told most of those stories on Impossible Dream. And yet, this is hopeful music -- not just due to the aerial vision from "high above the sadness and the fear" in Kite Song, and not just due to the warm folk, country and gospel arrangements, but because Griffin knows that to find the light, you need to accept the dark.

Jordan Zivitz,

The Montreal Gazette

Into the Wild

Eddie Vedder (2007)

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder came out of left field in 2007 with his solo debut, an ebb-and-flow soundtrack to Sean Penn's elegiac film, Into the Wild. The record offers a little bit of everything, from indie-rock cred (an appearance by Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker) to windows-down sing-alongs (his cover of Indio's Hard Sun), and when Vedder's lyrics occasionally slip, his music only strengthens its hold. Some critics complained that it sounded too much like a score. That's precisely what is so moving about Into the Wild -- rarely have song pieces that have no business sitting side by side worked so wonderfully in spite of themselves.

Mike Devlin,

The Victoria Times Colonist

Bluefinger

Black Francis (2007)

Charles Thompson's first post-Pixies album under his alias Black Francis is a masterpiece of modern, literary guitar rock. Thompson shrugs off mainstream convention and writes an entire album about a Dutch artist, Herman Brood, who, in 2001, jumped from a balcony at the Amsterdam Hilton, in the same room where John and Yoko staged their first "bed-in" for peace. "Prettier than Brando, he was punker than punk," Francis sings in Angels Come to Comfort You, one of the album's lyrical, dissolute gems, "a slave to rock and roll and a slave to junk." Francis keeps it simple, heavy (compared to the Pixies) and loose, and the great songs just keep coming.

Peter Simpson,

The Ottawa Citizen

Real Gone

Tom Waits (2004)

Part film noir, part dark romanticism, part dustbowl American folk, Tom Waits's 2004 Real Gone is his best work since the eccentric circus-jazz offering 1987's Frank's Wild Years. And as fans know, the songs just get better as his voice gets more gravelly and his songs get stranger. The catchy Hoist That Rag, foreboding How it's Going to End and the moody Dead and Lovely are particular highlights, as is the bluesy Sins of My Father. But it's Waits's first overtly political song, Day After Tomorrow, that's been touted as the most pertinent song written about the war that has defined the 2000s.

Julie Fortier,

Canwest News Service

The Seldom Seen Kid

Elbow (2008)

Kicking in the face of everything Britpop without alienating themselves from the people that listen to it, Elbow has carved out a song that is unique but accessible. This album, which won 2009's Mercury Prize, deals in love songs (Mirrorball), sing-alongs (One Day Like This) and complex emotion (The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver), and delivers it with style. Guy Garvey's strained but soaring vocals are the perfect complement to his lyrics, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes funny and always smart. The music is layered and deep, giving the listener plenty of reasons to keep this one on repeat.

Brad Frenette, National Post

Canwest News Service