Well my point isn't that you should look at the reviews anyway, it's that you should look at the ratings. The five-star albums are pretty much certain to be of high historical importance. If they weren't influential immediately they became influential later - see: Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, etc. I can't think of any album they've rated with five stars that didn't go on to influence countless future musicians. Or at least become a strong influence on specific musicians who would go on to influence countless future musicians themselves. The Soft Boys didn't receive wide exposure, but they were a major and very obvious influence on R.E.M.
That said, I agree that it's pretty difficult to get a full perspective on how music evolved without actually listening to it. The problem, of course, is that there are far too many important bands to listen to all of them in the time allotted for this assignment, so Bunny is going to have to pick and choose. The five-star thing helps to narrow it down.
That said I just realised the assignment apparently focuses on the 2000s specifically. Which is incredibly dumb. Like, so dumb it refused to register in my brain the first time I read Bunny's post. Most of that music developed out of trends set in the '70s, '80s and '90s. And to a lesser extent the '60s. Most of the artists I mentioned predate the 2000s because it's a history of rock class, and it's pretty difficult to come up with a good historical synthesis of stuff that hasn't exactly had much time to have an impact yet. For that I'd say just go with lists like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork's lists of the best albums of the decade. Even though I often find myself strongly disagreeing with both publications when it comes to music reviews.
It should also be pointed out that my history of punk is by no means comprehensive; there are many subgenres such as oi and street punk that I didn't bother to cover because I've never had much interest in them. I did cover most of the subgenres of hardcore though.