10. The Avalances - Since I Left You
9. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
8. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
7. The Strokes - Is This It?
6. Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
5. Jay-Z - The Blueprint
4. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
3. Daft Punk - Discovery
2. Arcade Fire - Funeral
1. Radiohead - Kid A
I think it's funny that 8 of the Top 10 are from 2000 or 2001*. I suspect that says something about the way the internet has changed the rate and depth of music lovers' audio consumption.
Back in the beginning of the decade, file sharing was just starting to make an impact on music distribution outside of college campuses, and there weren’t many well-known sources of record reviews (only dead-tree mags like
Rolling Stone, etc. or the spearhead online reviewers like
Pitchfork). There were still relatively few tastemakers who were setting musical trends and not a whole lot of ways that people could hear and share more obscure music.
Contrast with today, where anyone can easily seek out dozens of review sites catering to a range of specific tastes, and have practically immediate access to any of that music through file-sharing sites. I think what you're seeing in that list is a breakdown of coherent musical zeitgeists near the beginning of the decade. Pre-2002, the "good" albums were well agreed-upon, at least so much so that they came out on top of Pitchfork's aggregate scoring system. Post-2002, individual tastes were given the freedom to splinter so much that only two albums,
Funeral and
Person Pitch, had wide enough consensus to make it into the Top 10 of the 00’s.
*I'm counting Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
as an ‘01 album because that’s when the band put it up on the internet. Albums #11, 12 and 13 are also from 2000 or 2001.