2004: Funeral

This is the only album I still listen to that has very specific memories attached to it. I can picture the room, my then bedroom (in 2005 actually), the fact that the curtains or curtain rail had broken, so that even late at night the room was lit by the streetlamps outside. Two or three nights at most, she walked over, and we just lay there and talked 'til we fell asleep. Wonderfully innocent, even though it wasn't a good idea practically. Obvious in the daytime but oblivious in the night. Funeral was the soundtrack, but specifically the first track, 'Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)'. No matter how many times I've listened to it in less magical surrounds since, at work, in different bedrooms, alone or with someone else, that first chiming piano melody never fails to take me back to that time. It's a great record, regardless, but it's possibly the best album of the decade because it has the ability to capture those fleeting, ethereal memories of childhood, of being sequestered from the outside world in 'our bedrooms, and our parents' bedrooms, and the bedrooms of our friends.'