Pitchfork's Actual Top 20

1. Radiohead - Kid A
2. Arcade Fire - Funeral
3. Daft Punk - Discovery
4. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
5. Jay-Z - The Blueprint
6. Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
7. The Strokes - Is This It?
8. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
9. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
10. Avalanches - Since I Left You
11. Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele
12. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
13. Outkast - Stankonia
14. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
15. The Knife - Silent Shout
16. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
17. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
18. Kanye West - Late Registration
19. Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
20. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights

I was pretty close. I thought the Kanye West album had appeared lower on the list and I just missed Ghostface Killah and Spoon's Kill the Moonlight. I remember seeing Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga lower on the list and I think that's their best album, but why quibble with a Spoon choice. I've never actually seen Spoon in concert, but right around the time KTM came out they were playing the Regent Street Retreat here in Madison, a tiny venue for such a band. I just decided not to go. For shame.

Anyway, the rest of the top 20 is interesting. They gave Animal Collective the 14th slot! I'm not disputing it, I just thought they'd been building up tension between who was going to be number one, MMP or Kid A. Interpol at 20! Modest Mouse at 6... These are all really good albums, but there's something disappointing about the list and I don't know what it is. A collection of the decade's best albums is probably done better with the perspective of more time. 2009, after all, isn't even over. Five or ten years from now they should revisit the decade.