First of all, Merry Christmas and a happy holidays to everyone! I hope 2009 and this decade have been great for everyone, and I hope you all are looking forward to the new decade as much as I am.
You may be wondering where I have been for the past year. Because besides a couple rare one-off posts, I sure haven’t been at Kaini Industries.
True, I’ve been busy with college and work, but that didn’t stop me from updating last year. The truth is that I have been working on this project, which started in its raw forms as early as late 2008. I’ve started and stopped the project more times than I can count, and at times have questioned the point of doing this at all. But eventually I found myself with a good half of a particular incarnation of it done and plowed through the rest and here we are.
When people started cranking out lists like this not just for the 2000s but for other decades as well, I found that they were most useful for getting me to think about my favorite music and why I like all of it. I hope at the very least that it will get other people thinking about great music as well.
I started out writing lists year by year of my favorite releases and I came up with a list of about 200 really good albums. I decided 100 seemed like an appropriate enough number, so with a lot of difficulty I nailed the list down to 10o and started writing reviews. As I started writing, the list changed many times. After giving up the first time, I posted many reviews on the blog from the trashed list, and some of their remnants show up here. There are also some leftover reviews of albums not on the list, older drafts and other goodies I might post later.
This list is by no means meant to be definitive. I understand that I haven’t even come close to hearing all the great albums from this decade (God knows I try) and I’m sure my favorites will change. Above all else considered about this list, it should be considered that it is a list of my favorite albums of the 2000s right now.
I thought about numbering this list but I decided that entire process is arbitrary, and I also decided that ranking one hundred albums, most of which are completely different from one another, is really hard to get right. This list however is also hosted on rateyourmusic.com, so if you want the version with the arbitrary numbering, go here.
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/red_atm/off_this_century___my_favorite_albums_of_2000_2009
Please keep comments constructive and respectful. I don’t want any “where’s the ____???” stuff. If you want to give me a recommendation or have a discussion just be civil about it. That should go without saying.
Here we go.
cLOUDDEAD
cLOUDDEAD – cLOUDDEAD [2001]
We could keep asking “what is cLOUDDEAD?” for another decade, and we’ll probably never get a straight answer; the only people who ever even knew the literal answer don’t remember it. Ironically, this is enough to ensure this album is never forgotten, and cLOUDDEAD stands alone as one of the most unique hip hop albums of all time, having no yardstick by which to be measured. However, it’s brilliance is self evident beyond its uniqueness. Consider it’s vaporous fluidity, barely staying in one place for more than a few minutes before it transforms, or its menacing rhythmic lurch and glowing ambience from Odd Nosdam, the hell-raising modernist lyrics from Doseone and Why?… Try to pin it all you want, but in the end, you can only call it one thing.
♦♦♦
The Crane Wife
The Decemberists – The Crane Wife [2007]
The Decemberists have always operated best as storytellers, Colin Meloy’s lyrics delicately working through ancient tales and the rest of the band backing him up with a sweeping confidence, as if their notes are etched in stone. The Crane Wife takes their storytelling to the next level, and though it follows several tales throughout its span, we might still call it somewhat of a modern rock opera. It delivers impressive developments (“Summersong”), segments of mystery (“Shankill Butchers) and stunning climaxes (“O Valencia,” “The Crane Wife 1 & 2″) as parts of a grand whole. Chances are good that there will never be a universally acknowledged Decemberists masterwork; there are just as many fervid supporters of Castaways and Cutouts, Her Majesty the Decemberists and Picaresque as there are for this. I would make the case, though, that Crane Wife is their most focused and humble work, a sublime slice of folklore from a band doing what they do best.
♦♦♦
Drukqs
Aphex Twin – Drukqs [2001]
Though not a completely focused work like its predecessors, Richard D. James achieves a synthesis on Drukqs is an accomplishment nonetheless. And it’s not like the album doesn’t bring its fair share of new styles to the table. A good chunk of the album consists of simple, melodic pieces played on piano and prepared piano, while a converse portion contains his hardest hitting breakbeat/glitch tracks to date. On top of this are shards of styles past such as elements from the Selected Ambient Works series, acid techno and other one off genre experiments. The differentiation between all of these styles should make up for a messy album, which many claim it to be. James himself has stated that Drukqs probably isn’t meant to be listened to all the way through, but he has also expressed that it was meant to be a gift to fans, and it might as well be the best gift he’s given us.
♦♦♦
Heroes to Zeros
The Beta Band – Heroes to Zeros [2004]
The Beta Band were the quintessential indie every-men, and even when they were experimental, it was hard not to relate to not only their music but the band themselves. Their simple, repetitive motifs, their painfully honest lyrics, their ability to laugh at themselves…Whatever it was, people just wanted to sit down and have a drink with these guys, and that made their break up that much more of a letdown. Good thing they went out with a bang, then. Heroes to Zeros might be their most quotable album, a collection of memorable space-pop that is characteristically thoughtful and blunt, but also probably their most fun album to date. Flip on these songs and you won’t sell five copies of Heroes to Zeros but you’ll do better; you’ll feel like you’re sitting in a room with The Beta Band. How’s that for experimental?
♦♦♦
Beyond
Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond [2007]
In 2009, me going to a Dinosaur Jr. concert, getting my ears destroyed and seeing J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph all on stage at once, and even at one point all smiling at one another, seemed just as natural as it probably felt like in 1989. But let’s rewind about ten years here; in the new century, what the hell were the odds that all the original members of Dinosaur Jr., having at one time barely spoken to one another and slowly broke up do to seemingly irreconcilable differences, get back together, still be awesome, and release a string of albums that ranks with their absolute best? OK, maybe the chances weren’t that low, but we had all sure been hoping for it since Bug, and their reunion felt like a jackpot. This album is more than a surprise; it’s an unprecedented triumph of (*gasp*) teamwork! Beyond is classic Dinosaur Jr., loud as hell and possibly their most emotive record to date. Especially moving: “Can we be the same again?” Altogether now: “AWWWWWW!”
♦♦♦
Threads
Backini – Threads [2003]
Rob Quickenden may not have made the first great plunderphonics album (DJ Shadow and The Avalanches beat him to the draw), but he arguably was the one to make the genre truly sexy and fun. Backini’s debut exhibits a love for both dance music and jazz, and the resulting songs are often fusions of danceable downtempo and luscious jazz. His sampling is surprisingly restrained considering his eclecticism (save the decidedly nostalgic Nick-at-Nite funk of “Company B-Boy”); Quickenden can take a single sample and gently draw out all of its beauty (“Where R U,” “Istanbul,” “Go Go Killer”), and even his dense, fast pieces seem humble (“Dreamer,” “Champagne Flute”). While Endtroducing nailed sampling to a science and Since I Left You made it a party, Backini breathed further life into it by exploring the minute details of the process and crafting them into something instantly memorable.
♦♦♦
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion [2009]
On their ninth album, Animal Collective tread ground between experimentalism and accessibility like never before, using electronics to craft a challenging but enjoyable psychedelic pop album. You don’t have to think with an open mind to appreciate “My Girls,” “Summertime Clothes” or “Brother Sport,” but they still sound like no other hit singles in the history of pop. They only scratch the surface of this album’s accomplishments, though, and every song here is a gem, some appealing to Animal Collective’s noisier instincts (“Taste,” “Lion in a Coma”) and others more melodic (“In the Flowers,” “Bluish”), but everything here is, shamelessly, really catchy and happy, and that’s probably the reason that Merriweather Post Pavilion has more balls than any other Animal Collective album.
♦♦♦
Univers Zen ou de zéro à zéro
Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. – Univers Zen ou de zéro à zéro [2002]
I haven’t listened to every Acid Mothers Temple album such that I can say with certainty that Univers is their greatest achievement, but really, who has that kind of time? Shit, the last time I got an AMT album was 2007’s Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under the Stars, and apparently they’ve made ten albums since. For a bunch of stoners that make records with a similar noise rock style (many of which are forgettable) what seems like every month, it surprises me that they have made at least one album that is transcendent, a monolith of the Japanese noise scene that touches on all of the band’s strengths within massive suites. Heavy metal, punk, psychedelia, folk, noise, even blues- it’s all here.
♦♦♦
Labor Days
Aesop Rock – Labor Days [2001]
Aesop Rock’s breakthrough album rings disturbingly true for many people in the working world, and the fact that Aesop Rock was working full time as a waiter during the creation of Labor Days makes its overall concept all that more genuine. But it is the execution of the album that is truly impressive. Aesop’s delivery is uncompromising, funny, intelligent, and without match in flow. His brilliant, philosophical, often cross referential lyrics seem endless, and are held up by a rock solid albeit rough foundation of production from Aesop himself. The subtle eastern flavor and harrowing dynamics of the music highlights his mystical, burning representation of the plight of the working person. One would be hard pressed to find a more challenging and rewarding hip hop album than Labor Days, in any era.
♦♦♦
Sea Change
Beck – Sea Change [2002]
With Sea Change, Beck Hansen made his very own Blood on the Tracks; comparing the man to Dylan may seem hasty but there is little doubt that this album did many of the same things for Beck, putting his raw emotion over a painful breakup on display and showing a strong clarity in songwriting. While Beck had made folk songs since the very beginning and advanced them to a higher, more refreshing level on Mutations, those albums felt all over the board and unfocused. Sea Change is unapologetically melancholy and dramatic all the way through, and although it would be a bald faced lie to call it a fun listen like Mellow Gold or Odelay, it is the closest we have ever come to being inside his head, and although we may know him as an Asshole, Loser and Jackass already (in the best ways!), we see him here as as a human.
♦♦♦
Akuma no Uta
Boris – Akuma no Uta [2003]
By 2003, Boris had been hammering the Japanese underground for ten years with a repertoire so diverse that it bordered on ridiculous. Heavy metal, sludge, drone, noise, punk, and experimental music were all par for the course and they had already produced their fair share of cult hits before Akuma no Uta, which pulls all of their interests together into a compact, explosive set of songs. But this is more than a band playing the best cards in their hand or trying to be fully representative. Boris clearly realize the strengths and weaknesses of all of their interests and tailor the album’s structure with subtle cleverness, working its way to an ending for the history books. Akuma no Uta was by no means the first great Boris album, and they would go on to make several more great “anything goes” albums, but it proved that they could go beyond genre and produce music of their own breed.
♦♦♦
In Rainbows
Radiohead – In Rainbows [2007]
Looking back on it, it seemed difficult at the time to separate In Rainbows with it’s now famous pay-what-you-want innovation that has had people chattering about it since. Although it is important to look at this album on it’s own, there was something telling about stripping their music of any stated value (at least for one album). Right about when people were questioning the validity of claims that Radiohead were the most important band of the past twenty years, they had the balls to express that the issue was completely out of their hands. But when they keep releasing albums this cohesive and memorable, they aren’t doing much to argue their dominance.
♦♦♦
The Reminder
Feist – The Reminder [2007]
On Let it Die, Feist showed herself to be a humble yet vital musician, but on The Reminder she’s a full blown star. The album is not a complete departure from the delicate pop music on Let it Die, and we’re still reminded of why we appreciate Feist so much as a vocalist and songwriter. But what sets The Reminder apart is its utter refusal to let up with jaw-dropping highlights. And we can’t just point to the singles for this massive success, although they are certainly an amazing set. Not everything here is as catchy as “I Feel it All” and “1234,” but I’ll be damned if the suite of complementary songs “The Park” and “The Water” aren’t just as memorable, and what else can we call “Brandy Alexander” besides great modern folk music?
♦♦♦
Z
My Morning Jacket – Z [2005]
They charmed country rockers with The Tennessee Fire, came into themselves on At Dawn and won over a wider audience with It Still Moves – It seemed as if My Morning Jacket were unstoppable in 2005, but they were still, perhaps justly, pidgeonholed as the new face of Southern Rock. Without leaving behind their roots, My Morning Jacket became Rocketmen Elton John style and flew to New York, L.A., and everywhere in between before launching beyond the stratosphere. Z is above all its other elements a pop album, and My Morning Jacket give melody ultimate precedence: “Gideon,” “Off the Record” and “Anytime” are obvious choices for some of the 2000’s greatest pop-rock tunes, and their singalong penchant even works its way into possibly the greatest song you can’t sing along to (at least during the chorus) as well as the bossanova shine of “Knot Comes Loose.”
♦♦♦
Sakura
Susumu Yokota – Sakura [2000]
After spending the 1990s producing some of Japan’s most loved underground house music, Susumu Yokota delved into his artier instincts and produced an ambient masterwork, Sakura, which is as possessing as it is soothing. Fitting it’s cover art perfectly, Sakura is both elegant and sparse, natural and meticulously crafted. Though the core of the album is ambient music, what makes it most interesting is that it always can also be called something else: “Genshi” recalls his earlier house style, “Hisen” is whimsically experimental and the jazzy “Naminote” broods with an urban rush, and a vast majority of the album reflects on Yokota’s interest in both Japanese and Western classical music. For ambient music, Sakura is a very uneasy album, and the more you listen to it the more unnerving it sounds while still preserving its stable tranquility. It’s an album that keeps us listening on the edge of our seats in anticipation of something that never really comes, and like all great ambient music, speaks for itself.
♦♦♦
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt II
Raekwon – Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt II [2009]
The first installment of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx was a youthful, raw, head nodding masterpiece presented by rap’s new greats. On Pt II, you can really only sit and listen in fear at the game’s vets; Raekwon now rules his environment more than ever. As efficient as he is, the world of Cuban Linx Pt II is of chaos, and we see it’s ugly cross-section, everything from big business to the actual cooking of crack. The entire crew is in full force here: Ghost sounds like a bull out of the pen on the Dilla produced “House of Flying Daggers,” GZA kills it on his only verse appearance on “We Will Rob You” and Raekwon, with his cool composure and electrifying charisma more than leads the army; he controls and elevates it, drawing the best out of RZA, making the initially crusty Dre productions sound like the work of Pharrell and snaking the audience through the most uncompromising Wu album since Liquid Swords. And we listen with the lights out and eyes wide open.
♦♦♦
Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
The Dandy Warhols – Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia [2000]
Expanding the Dandy Warhols’ unique brand of glam-psychedelic-pop to an art with their most eclectic album to date, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia is continuous and cohesive, and for that reason alone it makes how damn fun it is a shocker when considering its ambition. Even the psychedelic jams here that harken back to as early as Dandys Rule OK sound meticulously crafted, and numbers such as “Godless,” “Mohammed” and “Sleep” are successes of both texture and melody. And when the Dandys get playful (“Country Leaver,” “Solid,” “Shakin’”), just try not to get involved. Hell, they even walked away with a radio mega-hit. I’ve always felt that the Dandys have been both loved and hated for their style (you can’t authorize cool, after all), but if there will be any reminder in the future of their standalone musicality, Thirteen Tales will cement their special place in pop music.
♦♦♦
Night Ripper
Girl Talk – Night Ripper [2006]
People like club anthems you can shake your ass to, pop hits you can sing along to and indie rock you can air-guitar to, so why don’t we just combine them all so everyone is happy at once? It doesn’t take a biomedical engineer to figure out that simple math, and Greg Gillis showed up to the mashup scene ten years too late to be groundbreaking. So why is it that Night Ripper is still the quintessential 2000s party album, and why does everyone still yell out “Hell yeah!” whenever they hear one of their favorite samples on it? You can say it’s a number of things: perhaps the speed and enthusiasm with which Gillis constructs these progressive pieces, his adoration for a plethora of genres or his zen-like handling of his and our favorite musical moments. Rationalize this as much as you want, but you’ll still get down to it, because it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
♦♦♦
Rossz csillag alatt született
Venetian Snares – Rossz csillag alatt született [2005]
Who would have thought that one of the most revered electronic albums of the decade would have come from breakcore mad scientist Aaron Funk? Well believe it. Just about the only album in Funk’s discography that truly earns its impact on its own terms, Rossz csillag is a concept album about pigeons that I would argue ranks among the greatest of modern classical compositions. Of course it isn’t the first album to combine breakbeats and classical music (we have Richard D. James Album to thank for that), but Rossz csillag is nonetheless a energizing and moving listen. I am picturing myself at a ripe age in a symphony hall watching a full orchestra take on this album in its entirety, Funk watching with old, wise eyes from a box seat.
♦♦♦
The Eraser
Thom Yorke – The Eraser [2006]
Was there a better idea in 2006 than Thom Yorke making a glitch album? Alright, it seems too easy, and he doesn’t always hit home runs. I can admit that I have no idea what “I want to eat your artichoke heart” means (if anything), but it hits me every time like a wrecking ball. You can make plenty of arguments for pretension here and if you aren’t a Radiohead fan this will only drive you further away, but those of us who followed Yorke up until The Eraser were treated with a startling album defined by subtle gestures. Yorke’s singing takes a backseat to his songwriting and simple but effective laptop productions, which seem at breaking point under the weight of depersonalization and claustrophobia. It’s easy to write off this album when comparing it to Radiohead’s discography and more complex experimental electronic music, but it would be a shame to fail to recognize its brilliance.
♦♦♦
Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes [2008]
By the time this album came out, no one needed any reminding that great Americana was still in full force and being made on a regular basis, but Fleet Foxes still felt like a punch to the face. When we came to, it seemed as if folk music was the standard for indie music and the U.S.A. had transformed into the freaking Shire for about a year. It was hard not to be spellbound by this album, with its tender instrumentation, reminiscing lyrics and yeah, those damned vocal harmonies that have been so sadly underused for decades. It was immediately hailed as a Summer classic, but it was the perfect soundtrack to the leaves turning in Autumn, breathed life into the dead winter and felt rejuvenating in Spring. By the time all of the seasons made their rounds with this on our radar, it’s mythological mood and spirited melodies had already solidified it as an American classic.
♦♦♦
Give Up
The Postal Service – Give Up [2003]
It’s easy to acknowledge Give Up for its significance in popular music as opposed to its actual quality, but seriously, just spin this once and it’s easy to hear. This album brought electronic pop music to a wider audience for a damn good reason; it is one of the most consistent indie records of all time, and easily the height of the careers of both artists involved. Jimmy Tamborello’s production perfectly surrounds Ben Gibbard’s aching lyrics, and the two elements turn the potential weaknesses of one another into bonafide successes. It may be a continuous cash-in of one trick (soft electronic beats, airy symphonics, sing-along-able pop melodies), but it’s one hell of a trick, and the excellent songwriting here is what makes this album one of electronic pop’s greatest.
♦♦♦
The Disintegration Loops
William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops [2001-2003]
Placing this album anywhere on this list was terribly hard. William Basinski’s massive, four album set The Disintegration Loops isn’t really something that one likes or dislikes or even assign a value to, so much as something that one experiences and takes for what it is. It does require some background information; Basinksi was digitizing old tape loops that were literally disintegrating (carbon pieces falling from the reel), and he just happened to finish up the recordings on September 11th 2001. He and his friends ran the equipment up onto the roof and the result is a project inseparable from its circumstances and yet still timeless. The technical aspects of the project may mark it as avant-garde that is more important than it is enjoyable, but getting lost in The Disintegration Loops‘ echoes and being touched by their mortality is an incredibly easy process.
♦♦♦
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix [2009]
When all is said and done, Phoenix have made some of the most loved songs of this decade. On that inevitable day that Best of Phoenix comes out, there is going to be an awful lot of rabbling about the selection, but it’s going to sell (or at least download) like The Eagles’ Greatest Hits. Phoenix are more important as artists and songwriters than as a producer of albums, and having to chose one to best represent them seems arbitrary, but I can’t help mentioning their latest, which is incidentally their most cohesive to date. All this talk of sunsets make me really worried that that Best Of album will come sooner than we would like, but Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is reassurance that this band will be more fondly remembered than sorely missed.
♦♦♦
Rainbow
Boris with Michio Kurihara – Rainbow [2006]
Boris have made several great albums that consolidate their strengths, but their first collaboration with Michio Kurihara seems to pull together a set of ideas that are completely new. It’s still heavy metal, and to an extent drone, but what is more important here is that Boris and Kurihara are skilled songwriters, and we often forget that behind their production values. What you’ll remember on Rainbow are the tunes, their style retro and delivery spacey. We’ve never heard Boris be nearly as deliberately emotional as they are on songs like the gentle “Rainbow” (Wata SINGS!), the atmospheric “Shine,” the funky build of “Sweet No. 1″ and the ambient glow of “…And, I Want”.
♦♦♦
More Adventurous
Rilo Kiley – More Adventurous [2004]
I barely ever listen to Rilo Kiley in my free time, because their style of music doesn’t interest me, though they are probably beyond being pinned in a particular genre at this point. And yet every time I have listened to any of their albums or seen them live, I’ve had my ass kicked. As far as the albums go, More Adventurous is the one in particular that deserves the brownie points on merit alone of being the most literate and lyrically complex album that I can remember hearing, relentless and challenging in its content. Songs ask innumerable questions and provide evidence that can only lead the listener towards their own answers. Trains of thought double back before reaching conclusions, fairy tales of falling in and out of love are spun, and both life and death are celebrated and mourned. This is an album that I simply could not dismiss how hard I tried, and it didn’t take too long before I didn’t care to anymore. It feels good to be idiosyncratic. I do love this.
♦♦♦
The Tired Sounds Of
Stars of the Lid – The Tired Sounds Of [2001]
In the history of ambient manifestos, the ’70s had Music for Airports, the ’80s had Structures from Silence, the ’90s had the Selected Ambient Works series and now the the ’00s have The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid. What it has to say about ambient music is a little more understated than its predecessors, though; the album moves in hazy, continuous waves of dreamy sound that leave little resolved and even less clearly stated (the wordy titles are the most we get as far as tangible concepts go). But the music is undoubtedly ambitious and sprawling, delivering snapshots in time and space within suites as well as standalone tracks. Naming highlights is a fruitless process, and it’s difficult to nail down essentials to anything less than the full tracklist. By the end of it I always find that it earns its collective impact as a development, it’s astral tones echoing back and forth until they have formed a flawless whole.
♦♦♦
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out [2000]
The idea of Yo La Tengo making an album of love songs seems like the most natural thing in the world, so it’s a bit of a surprise it took them fifteen years to actually do it. More than worth the wait though; And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is yet another Yo La Tengo masterwork comparable to Painful and I Can Hear The Heart… Actually, the title of the latter seems just as applicable as Inside-Out, and it sounds as if the band are pouring out their most intimate, internal emotions. On You Can Have it All, Georgia Hubley gently sings “If you want my heart, take it baby…” I can’t think of a band I could be more flattered by having been given their all.
♦♦♦
You & Me
The Walkmen – You & Me [2008]
The most important place for the Walkmen is of course New York City, but my favorite Walkmen album sees them leaving home. As its title suggests, You & Me album is mostly about love, but like many great stories, this love is viewed from an unusual context: The Adriatic Sea, Cabo San Lucas, Barcelona, the Caribbean. The Walkmen’s classical delivery congeals fantastically with the international styles they explore here, but You & Me is hardly a walk on the beach. Hamilton Leithauser’s yearning vocals and bittersweet lyrics ache with more emotion than he has ever delivered before, and we get the feeling that these songs are fleeting memories more than they are current events. It’s a good sign for an album if you don’t even have to close your eyes to be taken to a different place.
♦♦♦
Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles [2008]
What is most impressive about Toronto duo Crystal Castles’ debut is how much ground it covers within its limited genre of visceral 8bit video game techno, shown by its wealth of utterly unique songs and seemingly endless stream of “holy shit” moments. The excellent singles (“Alice Practice,” “Crimewave,” “Air War,” “Courtship Dating”) may be representative of the album’s strengths, but the highlights don’t stop there. The otherworldly vocals on “Untrust Us,” the chopped up aggression of “Xxzxcuzx Me,” the steadily developing groove of “Magic Spells,” the dance floor demon “Black Panther”… And if the final, show stopping “Tell Me What to Swallow” doesn’t slap you in the face and make you believe that Crystal Castles are capable of transcending their reputation, well, something else here probably already did.
♦♦♦
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots [2002]
The Soft Bulletin may have been the most accomplished album by the Flaming Lips, but it certainly was not the last great album. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is the most advanced the band’s sound has ever been, and yet another wonderful set of songs that meld together into a grand, lush album. But also in its possession are some of the bands most immediate and touching singles, which The Soft Bulletin does not quite deliver in as great a breadth. “Fight Test,” “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1,” “Ego Tripping At The Gates of Hell,” “It’s Summertime,” and of course the timeless “Do You Realize?” are all in the run for both catchiest and most sophisticated pop songs ever. Only one of the world’s most talented bands could ever make an album about such magical content so heartwarming and human.
♦♦♦
And the Glass Handed Kites
Mew – And the Glass Handed Kites [2005]
Alright, “progressive dreampop” isn’t exactly the most likely genre combo to be successful, but any Mew fan will probably be the first to remind you of that. And that’s probably what makes And the Glass Handed Kites so impressive in the first place; it shows Mew taking disparate ideas, weaving them together and being really passionate about what they are doing. The Danish band love rock music just as much as they love texture, which explains why they can pull off featuring J. Mascis and cranking out catchy riff rockers and name songs shit like “The Seething Rain Weeps for You” on the same damned album, and why we buy into every second of it.
♦♦♦
Let it Die
Feist – Let it Die [2004]
Listening to Let It Die is like an old fashioned practice; Leslie Feist whispers gentle lyrics of love and heartbreak over delicate, mostly piano-based melodies, and we listen intently with a gentle sensitivity. The album harkens back to a time when pop music was either heard on a phonograph or in a piano lounge, and when vocals meant much more. People make albums of music like this all the time, but what differentiates Feist are her distinctive, intimate vocals and her sense of songwriting adventure which takes the listener from somewhere not even on a map to a New York City penthouse and back again with ease.
♦♦♦
Lesser Matters
The Radio Dept. – Lesser Matters [2003]
The Radio Dept. had stiff competition and little chance to really fall into place in indie pop. Trailing the release of The Postal Service’s Give Up by a single month, Lesser Matters is a humble, sentimental lo-fi electronic pop album of a largely uniform style. The Radio Dept. never hit it big, but Lesser Matters guaranteed a place for them immediately with its warm production and genuine lyrics which outline realistic life problems with a playful sense of adventure. Some dots can be connected to shoegaze and dreampop (“Keen On Boys” sounds like it’s coming live from a sauna), but Lesser Matters is largely a unique, stylized effort that brings genuine gravity to everyday events.
♦♦♦
Supreme Clientele
Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele [2000]
On one hand, Ghostface Killah’s borderlilne nonsensical lyrics may make him seem less threatening than his Wu-Tang brethren due to sheer lack of intelligibility, but it’s actually what makes him the most vicious and unpredictable of the bunch, especially when he’s leading the pack. His James Joyce-like free associative lyrics range from playful to apocalyptic, and they meld with his fast paced, caustic delivery perfectly. But we’d known about all that since Enter the Wu-Tang. What’s cool about Supreme Clientele is that while it is still very much a Wu-Tang album, it owes little to nothing to its predecessors and bravely moves from one unique idea, producer and style to another, much like Ghost’s relentless delivery.
♦♦♦
Lamentate
Arvo Pärt – Lamentate [2005]
As a classical musician, Arvo Pärt’s output naturally isn’t exactly album-based, and many of his best releases are compilations. But Lamentate is mostly a single segmented work, save the beginning inclusion of the lovely peace-call “Da Pacem Domine”. “Lamentate” itself is a work of staggering emotion, specifically sadness, crystallized into music. The pieces range from agony to grief to desperation to loneliness, most making use of Pärt’s talent for capitalizing on silence, which resonates here as a destructive force beyond comprehension. An essential composition, Lamentate is proof that even sixty years into his career, Arvo Pärt is still pushing his boundaries and is one of the most talented composers in the world.
♦♦♦
Body Riddle
Clark – Body Riddle [2006]
It’s hardly debatable that Chris Clark was one of the most important electronic artists of Warp’s second decade. Clarence Park and Empty the Bones of You had obvious peaks of genius, but as wholes they felt like fragmented collections of songs. Body Riddle was where Clark’s brilliance found a cohesion, and it is a continuous, fully formed work. The title is appropriate; the album is a cerebral puzzle, one that rewards repeated listens with great rewards, not unlike other more difficult Warp touchstones such as Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, LP5 and Geogaddi. It’s sensible that it was around this time that Chris Clark shortened his name to simply “Clark”; he more than earned the shorthand with this album, his finest achievement and a turning point for his consistently great career.
♦♦♦
Nothing Changes Under the Sun
Blue States – Nothing Changes Under the Sun [2000]
Blue States’ debut album of spacey synths and mountain-high rhythms started off ambient techno in the new millennium with a bang, effectively fusing the genre with jazz and maximizing its appeal for home audiences. Moon Safari comparisons may hold some legitimacy, but Nothing Changes Under the Sun does more than just subtract the French cheese and a couple hundred thousand in sales. Andy Dragazis lets his rhythms run to their full potential and builds jazzy compositions with sweeping harmonies over them, resulting in an album that can’t manage to stop delivering high points while keeping its cool composure. Nearly a decade later it has aged wonderfully, a quiet monolith of new millenium electronica.
♦♦♦
Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend [2008]
Ok, I’ll bite. There really isn’t anything challenging about Vampire Weekend. Maybe the hardest thing is not cringing at the fact that they are singing about punctuation and Louis Vuitton. African Pop? Bait and switch. You need literally no background knowledge of any sort to appreciate what these guys do on this album of Mothersbaugh-esque chamber pop. But I’ll tell you what it is: a punk record. Yeah, that’s right. Sure, no glue is being sniffed and they’re a bunch of cardigan-wearing cream puffs, but making pop music with absolutely no strings attached was just about the most punk thing you could do in 2008, and at its core this is one of the most honest, fearless pop albums of the decade.
♦♦♦
Since I Left You
The Avalanches – Since I Left You [2000]
Picking up where DJ Shadow left off in 1996, The Avalanches expanded on retro sampling with their only album release, Since I Left You. Both albums sound like they resonate from a crackly AM radio, but while DJ Shadow filtered nostalgia through a prism of melancholy, this music is gloriously happy with a touch of longing. It is shamelessly a shimmering pop synthesis of genres that people already look back on with fondness: soul, R&B, swing, hip hop, dance and retro sampling. It’s overall product is a continuous album that is endlessly replayable and fun. While listening to Since I Left You, it is difficult not to regard the album with the giddy excitement with which they themselves regard musical buried treasure.
♦♦♦
XX
The xx – XX [2009]
Talk about greatest album covers of all time: pointed, encroaching blackness behind a pure white figure which dims and warps subtly the longer you stare at it. It easily ousts Merriweather Post Pavilion’s illusory silliness. This album is black licorice, the kind of vintage, no-tricks sexy that you couldn’t get at a burlesque. The xx’s cheap sex and cigarettes are both their greatest strength and their most considerable weakness. This album is a quiet thrill with a unique, bare bones style: With its simple drum machine, pulsing bass tones and Romy Madley Croft’s subtly slurred vocals, XX sounds like it was birthed in a single night. For that reason, it ends up more than just a humble album; it sounds like a peek through a window, revealing only part of a greater story. It’s unlikely that with the modesty the xx have that they will ever rise to stardom, but in that sense they’re ten steps ahead of the game in becoming legends, this album their chilling definitive statement.
♦♦♦
Return to Cookie Mountain
TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain [2006]
Return to Cookie Mountain might be the aural equivalent of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead: In their claustrophobic, terrifying world of sound, TV on the Radio are their own worst enemies. Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone yowl in anguish of lost love, addiction and terrifying transformation over crashing drums and jagged guitars. But their self-deprecation is hardly sympathy-seeking. What is really weird about this album and what sets it apart from the aforementioned fellow cult-hit is that in the face of all of its conflicts, it seems to find a solution in its conclusion, breaking into a blinding dawn after stumbling through the darkest night. Maybe that was a clever foreshadowing to the invigorating victory lap of Dear Science. They deserved it after this, their toughest battle in their ugliest hour.
♦♦♦
The Glow Pt. 2
The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2 [2001]
It’s kind of hard for me to believe that this album came out in the twenty first century. I feel like it has been around for longer, gaining trunk-rings and turning leaves for decades. But it doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere in the twentieth century either. With The Glow Pt. 2, Phil Elvrum achieves a superb level of control without sacrificing his free-form style, and the result, not just in spite of its occasional chaos but because of it, feels wholly natural and timeless. The turn of the century was typically deeply concerned with time-crunching, degradation in the face of technology and the fear of creating new legacy; in general, most of these fascinations lay in things unnatural. The Glow Pt. 2, however, is wholly organic, and those themes only exist as distant lights on the horizon. Primarily, Elvrum takes on the most complex and relevant issue of all; the self.
♦♦♦
( )
How can I even begin to describe this, an album that doesn’t even have a title and is allegedly composed of a void (you can even HEAR the parentheses, for Christ’s sake)? It’s not that it’s impossible to describe, just difficult to do justice to. To say this album is full of slow moving, melancholy post-rock is just about the least attractive thing I could imagine saying about any album. But ( ) is all of these things as well as cold, warm, dense, sparse, and much more. Oh yeah, and it contains eight of Sigur Rós’ greatest songs, all of them utterly moving. Listen and then try doing better than I just did, I dare you. I’ll bet Sigur Rós would be proud that this album finds us as speechless as it found them.
♦♦♦
Kill the Moonlight
Spoon – Kill the Moonlight [2002]
Each Spoon album has felt like a systematic advance over the last, but to many their fourth album may have felt like a step backwards. Spoon had always shown that less was more with their music, but Kill the Moonlight took those ideas to the extreme. Songs are subtly built up with simple melodic shards, and at first glance they don’t sound much different than the band’s previous work, but closer inspection reveals their intricacy. “Stay Don’t Go,” for example, may be constructed with the most simple of elements that anyone could have created, but it’s details and sequencing could only be the work of Spoon. Kill the Moonlight is in no way deceptive. It lays all of it’s spirit out on the table and somehow we wait, thinking we’re going to get to some kind of “point” or find an answer. On any other album that would be a sign of weakness, but here it is a great strength, and you only have to listen and find yourself incredibly satisfied by the end to see why that is.
♦♦♦
Akron/Family
Akron/Family – Akron/Family [2005]
One of the most representative artists in the neo freak-folk movement was Brooklyn based Akron/Family, and their self titled debut is one of the most memorable folk albums of its time. The concept is straightforward: accompany simple campfire melodies (some of the best melodies on record, as it happened), with sharp contrasts in delivery and production. The results are intriguing; the often bizarre idiosyncrasies make the songs distinctive and memorable, yet still warm and comforting. From the R2D2 bleeps and bloops of the opening “Before And Again,” to the lush synthesizers in “I’ll Be On The Water,” through the splashes of reverberation and recorded natural sounds on “Afford,” all the way to the crooked horns and vocals on “Franny/You’re Human,” Akron/Family is loaded with highlights that feel like fragments of great folklore with surreal modern contexts. Although quite strange, an album as warm and intimate as this is a rarity.
♦♦♦
Endless Summer
Fennesz – Endless Summer [2001]
For what is certainly one of the most revered glitch albums of all time, it is a natural question to ask, “what would we get if we took the glitch away?” The answer: probably elevator music. Endless Summer sputters and whirs, grinds and distorts the simplest and least interesting of melodies into masterpieces. I’ve heard many claim that at its heart this album is Beach Boys pop, and I wouldn’t argue, but to me its heart is only mechanically important, much less the point than than its brain, which can’t seem to get a full grasp on things. We’ve all experienced this before, revisiting a childhood vacation locale ten years later to realize it’s not half as cool as we remember it. Endless Summer touches people so internally because it imitates the way memory works, scratchy and imperfect. Thus, the real secret of this album is that said “Summer” ended a long time ago, and we just can’t bear to leave it behind.
♦♦♦
Souvenirs d'un autre monde
Alcest – Souvenirs d’un autre monde [2007]
When Souvenirs came out, Neige said that he had never listened to shoegaze before. With that said, any shoegaze fan won’t be able to help raising an eyebrow at this album. It screams influences like Slowdive, Ride and the Catherine Wheel, but then I’ve also heard some people call it Black Metal, which seems ridiculous to me. Whatever the hell it is, it sure is purdy, and Neige has a sublime control over his dynamics and flowing melodies that make up these six multi-faceted epics. There is diversity within these songs too; the title directly translates to “Memories from Another World,” and there are heavenly soundscapes abound here, but the beginning of “Ciel Errant” sounds like the theme to your middle school dance, and we even get some double bass-drum metallic edge on “Les Iris”. Maybe this is some kind of heavy metal after all. If it is, it definitely blurs the line.
♦♦♦
Guero
Beck – Guero [2005]
I’ll never forget my experiences with Guero, quite possibly my favorite Beck album. I’ve heard it be written off more times than I can count and I’m sick of it. This is, to me, just about the definitive Summer album. Sunny pop pieces like “Girl,” rockers “E-Pro” and “Rental Car,” lazy head-nodders “Missing” and “Earthquake Weather,” hilarious experiments “Que Onda Guero” and “Hell Yes;” all among Beck’s greatest. By this time, the album may have seemed to many to be typical, and I can see why. He makes writing such good, unique tunes sound effortless, and his delivery on Guero is tame, even relaxed with its South-of-the-border style, but Guero is by no means a lazy album. Beck clearly had to work hard to squeeze out so many thoroughly enjoyable songs, simultaneously stylized and diverse. If typical Beck is this fun, then we only have further evidence that he’s one of the greatest songwriters around.
♦♦♦
Vivian Girls
Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls [2008]
Many would claim the Vivian Girls had everything going against them, having blossomed in a time when pop-punk was out of style and hipster backlash could have killed a group with such honest intentions, but this album speaks for itself; It sounds like it could level a city, and the most frequent adjective thrown around to describe it is appropriately “apocalyptic.” Think an atom bomb painted pink; Vivian Girls is noisy and destructive, and any semblance of cute is rendered stark and devastating by its surroundings. But what really shines here is Cassie Ramone’s combination of syrupy sweet vocals and dark lyrics, which perfectly congeal with this album’s instrumental grit.
♦♦♦
For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago [2007]
Musically, 2007 was a year of detail and complexity: Kala subverted all expectations on a song by song basis, Untrue unfolded a world of dark secrets and For Emma, Forever Ago…uh, well, actually ended up being exactly what it sounded like, a dude in a cabin in Wisconsin with a guitar. I may have spent more time thinking about those other albums, but I remember every moment on Emma because there aren’t any tricks here. Alright, ambition is important, but the term is often consigned to experimentation and advancement. Justin Vernon was ambitious on this album in the classical sense. We get albums like this once in a blue moon, albums that settle in with you and become an important part of your life for their duration. More than anything, we needed Bon Iver in 2007, because we always need reminding that honesty never goes out of style.
♦♦♦
Stankonia
Outkast – Stankonia [2000]
By now we have recognized Outkast as one of the most important singles bands of the 2000s, and before the turn of the century we already knew they were an important album band, but Stankonia cemented both concepts. The sprawling hip hop funk masterpiece is loaded with memorable songs, a vast majority of which could have passed for singles even though only a few of them did. But what is really special about Stankonia, as well as the interplay of Andre 3000 and Big Boi, is how they function as a whole, resulting in not only one of the most fun albums I’ve ever heard but also one of the most underhandedly affecting. It’s hard to not dance to “Humble Mumble” and “B.O.B.” is possibly Outkast’s most electrifying performance, but the custody war saga “Ms. Jackson” will hit you like a brick wall, and the suicide story “Toilet Tisha” is worthy of discussion in a sociology symposium. Thus, Outkast crafted a fierceley dual-themed album, ironically their last with any real unity as a group. Yes, “Hey, Ya!” is good, clean fun. But great music isn’t always clean or polite. The truth can be unabashedly stanky.
♦♦♦
Night Piece
Shugo Tokumaru – Night Piece [2004]
Miles Davis once said, “Don’t play what’s there – play what’s not there.” Shugo Tokumaru’s debut album Night Piece seems to do just this, perhaps not in the exact way that Davis described his musical philosophy, but much like a wood block painting where musical subtleties are outlined by vast expanses of empty space that jut off into infinity. Night Piece reaches a sort of equilibrium where sweet melodies and subtle irregularities balance each other out. For this reason, the album is completely engaging and ambitious, but simultaneously warm and comforting. The humble melodies are often left bare and full, so that each pluck fills the massive space it inhabits and each rhythm takes confident control. Every song is a musical haiku, completely satisfied with its own simple beauty. Once you get comfortable with Night Piece, it might as well blanket your thoughts and really just make you extremely HAPPY for an indefinite number of plays.
♦♦♦
Geogaddi
Boards of Canada – Geogaddi [2002]
Boards of Canada followed up their masterful 1998 LP Music Has the Right to Children with Geogaddi, a lucid, potentially frightening pseudo-concept album. It’s underlying themes are not stated explicitly, but there is clearly a sonic narrative being told here. On paper, this music is much the same as Music Has the Right’s long I.D.M. pieces dispersed with short vignettes, but in actuality Geogaddi’s warped execution and form is Music inverted. Pieces warp and twist under their own energy, and around every turn the listener peers around, there lies yet another turn. Geogaddi is an album that rewards extended time spent with it and close examination, and every time the bigger picture comes closer, but remains just out of reach.
♦♦♦
Hail to the Thief
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief [2003]
After meticulously crafting the twin albums Kid A and Amnesiac, Radiohead were probably going to get ragged on no matter what they did here, and the fact that Hail to the Thief is as much a collection of songs as it is an album probably didn’t help their chances. Good news? Those songs fit together like jigsaws, and Thief still manages to be a cohesive album. Even better news? It contains many of their best songs, all unique, and none of them weak, although the album echoes of some kind of physical and mental damage. It is still their darkest album to date, and everything from haunting electronics to elegant acoustics to noisy rock resonate of crisis. Greatest news? This is yet another great Radiohead album, and we’ll be listening to it decades from now, parsing through it, just as amazed as we are with the rest. Bad news? Your world is falling apart.
♦♦♦
Microcastle / Weird Era Continued
Deerhunter – Microcastle / Weird Era Continued [2008]
While few albums weren’t effected by the internet in the 2000s, this might be the only album that was truly shaped by it. If Microcastle hadn’t leaked six months early and Bradford Cox hadn’t flipped a shit about it (and reasonably so), we might never have gotten the second disk of this album, Weird Era Continued, which itself subsequently leaked anyway. Make no mistake, Weird Era is no bonus disk; this album is proof that the double album can still pack a wallop, and Deerhunter blaze through two tireless disks of their unique and now perfected style of developmental dream-pop (if you can really call it anything except Deerhunter, dammit), and we’re left slack-jawed. “Agoraphobia,” “Vox Humana,” “Nothing Ever Happened,” “Backspace Century”… Aw forget it, just jump on this train and don’t get off.
♦♦♦
White Blood Cells
The White Stripes – White Blood Cells [2001]
Remember rock music before The White Stripes? Yeah, me neither. OK, I’ve got a little bit of a bias; White Blood Cells was one of the first rock albums I ever bought, and it shaped the development of my personal taste, but there is still something self-evidently brilliant here. It practically sounds like a Greatest Hits album (of course excluding the their two brilliant prior albums), albeit of a really off-the-wall underground band. White Blood Cells is loaded with gems, many of which found their way into American culture through media and radio play very fast (“Hotel Yorba,” “Fell in Love With A Girl,” “We’re Going to Be Friends”), but it is also in it for the long haul, delivering emotive pieces like “The Union Forever” and “This Protector.” The White Stripes proved that great rock bands can still thrive as adventurous, album-based units, and White Blood Cells was their most convincing proof.
♦♦♦
In a Beautiful Place out in the Country
Boards of Canada – In a Beautiful Place out in the Country [2000]
This is the only EP on this list, and it’s really no surprise. Scarcely any EPs from any decade even get close to this one, a collection of four songs from the Geogaddi sessions that perfect Boards of Canada’s style: chilled out, nature-oriented, nostalgic, beat-driven ambient techno. The songs here are not quite as disturbing as the songs on Geogaddi, but they still have their fair share of sonic details that just border between interesting and unnerving. As a result, these songs take on an otherworldly spiritual texture, but are still down to earth in form, structured much like the material on Music Has the Right to Children but advanced in technique.
♦♦♦
Original Pirate Material
The Streets – Original Pirate Material [2002]
Could there be a more appropriate commencement than “Turn the Page”? The Streets’ debut album Original Pirate Material was by no means the first UK garage album, but it felt like both the beginning and the end of big things. Most importantly, though, it showed Mike Skinner in his prime, with the vitality necessary to push garage and grime forward. He shows no hesitation in dressing his productions with aching, dramatic strings and pianos to depictions of typical UK post-rave culture. He elevates mundane situations (chance meetings on the street, trips to K.F.C., drunken stumbling) to near biblical levels of precedence, painting stark portraits of deep-seeded urban decay, not unlike the photograph by Rut Blees Luxemburg titled “Towering Inforno” which adorns the album’s cover. And somehow, interspersed among melancholy and anger, Skinner maintains an intelligent sense of humor and assures us that stars are aligning, weak are becoming heroes and the best thing we can do for ourselves is to stay positive. On one hand it’s easy to say he’s got a lot of nerve, the twerp, but it’s undeniable that he has tapped into something frighteningly close to the human condition, and we’ll likely be repeating his words even when his empire has fallen.
♦♦♦
Los Angeles
Flying Lotus – Los Angeles [2008]
Flying Lotus is not the future of hip hop. Flying Lotus is the future of music, and Los Angeles is the badge to prove it. With his second album, Steven Ellison melts down all of his influences (hip hop, electronic, jazz, among others) into a malleable form and shapes it to his liking to create a masterwork. Los Angeles is, as a result, a left-of-center album of the future, recalling those genres he loves but putting a completely new spin on them, forming a melting pot of ideas like the city from which it takes its name. Beats are off-tempo, sounds are diverse and highly distorted, and songs are unique and fresh. At times productions sound like they are limited by the sound register: “GNG-BNG”’s beats are too huge for their environment, “Camel” is nearly tangible and “Auntie’s Lock/Infinitum” brings Los Angeles to an inscrutable close. It’s not hard to see this being an influential electronic album, not only because it is unique but also because it is so dynamic, and if we still have artists like Flying Lotus pushing the boundaries of what is going on in modern music, the future looks bright.
♦♦♦
Rejoicing in the Hands
Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands [2004]
There are a couple features which set Devendra Banhart apart from his peers: you could point a finger at his vocals, persistent weirdness or constant show of pubic hair as reasons he’s never going to be forgotten. But what gets him through the day on his second album on Young God is nothing more than sheer excellence in songwriting, and he is without peers in 2000s folk music. Rejoicing in the Hands is loaded with gems that are a pleasure to listen to, only bolstered by his unique vocals, but are for the most part left naked, and they succeed on their own terms. He can make his fingerpicking shine like the sun (“This is the Way”, “The Body Breaks”) or brood like a storm (“See Saw”), and the final product is fully formed and rounded. There is no reason that troubadours at crossroads shouldn’t be singing these songs for hundreds of years.
♦♦♦
Vision Creation Newsun
Boredoms – Vision Creation Newsun [2000]
When people talk about monumental albums, they don’t usually mean it in the literal sense of the word. Boredoms last major album feels like it could be a physical construction, something tangible and awesome. Instead, at least unless you’re on acid, Vision Creation Newsun is an spellbinding musical statement, and we are reminded that The Boredoms are capable of great focus and inspiration resulting in awesome things, here a progressive, free-form rock symphony. Vision Creation Newsun is the album where the Boredoms set a collaborative goal and power towards it with everything they’ve got. They really reach for the sky here, and they most definitely touch it.
♦♦♦
Funeral
Arcade Fire – Funeral [2004]
For me, the definitive moment of Arcade Fire’s debut album has always been the middle stretch of “Haiti” where Regine Chassagne sings over arugably the album’s catchiest hook “in the the forest we lie hiding/unmarked graves where flowers grow/hear the soldier’s angry yelling/in the river we will go.” It seems to embody the spirit of the album, that is, an incident frozen in time, either explicitly explained or implicitly suggested, where someone is there, living, loving and learning. Indeed, this happens on more than one occasion, and Funeral is a continuous string of crystallized humanity. While the album is named “Funeral“, it primarily recognizes death as a necessary component to life, and this puts all of its ambitious goals on a song by song basis into perspective. The love here is completely human, and it might be considered the 2000s’ indie prototype for that reason alone.
♦♦♦
Feels
Animal Collective – Feels [2005]
Feels may not be the first time Animal Collective operated in a certain way (Here Comes the Indian and Sung Tongs typically get high praise for just those reasons), but it sees them in top form, pulling all of their elements together with dazzling results. And interestingly enough, Feels is their album of love songs, and these whimsical pieces pulse with lovely pop sensibility. This doesn’t sound much different than what Of Montreal brought to the table with The Gay Parade, but what sets Animal Collective apart is their innovative pop structures, favoring formless ambient passages and noise influences just as much as they value catchy tunes.
♦♦♦
Hell Hath No Fury
Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury [2006]
Some moments on Hell Hath No Fury will have you believing that the Thornton Brothers find themselves literally invulnerable. They push, shove, and unflinchingly advertise themselves as the top of the coke game. But other times, their ultimate mortality casts its eye on them over piles of keys and cash. They know it’s there, and it’s killing them slowly. In the wake of a damning label controversy, Pusha T. and Malice teamed up with exclusive producers the Neptunes once again, and the result is a violently schizophrenic hip hop album, contrary to its unswerving confidence (thanks in part to Pharrell and Chad Hugo’s dirty, sparse production). Every track is fair game for best accomplishment claims: The middle Eastern burn of “Trill,” the guilty accordion confessional “Momma I’m So Sorry,” the desperate swagger of “Ain’t Cha”… Yes, they’re on a boat wit’cha bitch, but a storm is brewing.
♦♦♦
Ashes Grammar
A Sunny Day in Glasgow – Ashes Grammar [2009]
The latter half of the 2000s had one hell of a run for awesome shoegaze albums. Since 2005 we got at least one knockout a year, and A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Ashes Grammar was and is the shoegaze album of 2009, in a big way. Their 2007 debut was interesting in its airy experimentation, but it too often found itself stuck in its own rules. Ashes Grammar does create its own musical grammar, syntax and vocabulary, but they are fluid, shifting freely from idea to idea, musical glossolalia. No, not improvisation; this album is meticulously planned, concrete, and pleasingly melodic. It won’t float away from you, and it is oddly familiar, even at first listen. Give these pieces a little time and they become as natural as breathing.
♦♦♦
The Moon and Antarctica
Modest Mouse – The Moon and Antarctica [2000]
In many ways, The Lonesome Crowded West was the left field success of the ’90s, gathering its strength from ideas obscured by situations, both unusual and frighteningly common. Hearing Modest Mouse go from there to The Moon & Antarctica, which wears its dark themes on its sleeves, was understandably a shock and a turnoff to many. Although it might not have the clever literacy of Lonesome Crowded West, Antarctica is an even more ambitious statement, further diversifying Modest Mouse’s sound with instrumentation that varies from warm to harrowingly cold and of course the words of Isaac Brock, one of the most underhandedly brilliant lyricists of all time. This album is of a rare kind, one that wants to be big and ambitious and succeeds with flying colors.
♦♦♦
New Amerykah Part One (Fourth World War)
Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (Fourth World War) [2008]
It’s easy to miss Erykah Badu on the first track of New Amerykah. This is odd, because she sings and speaks throughout, but for some reason she melts into what is around her, a sloganeering p-funk styled boogie. She does this throughout the album, her voice hovering like a specter commanding all that it shares space with. This album has plenty you can shake your ass too, but also a lot you can only really listen to attentively in anticipation at. And then before you know it, it’s over. In short, this album sneaks up on you no matter how much you are paying attention, and somewhere along the line this chain of ambitious but subtle R&B gems becomes bigger than Erykah Badu, bigger than hip hop, religion, America. Most artists pray for that kind of achievement, but Badu steps up to the plate and actually earns it.
♦♦♦
Boris at Last -Feedbacker-
Boris – Boris at Last -Feedbacker- [2003]
Most of Boris’ grand achievements in the 2000s have been syntheses of their greatest elements. Boris at Last has, to me, always functioned as the band’s definitive metal statement despite the fact that it overlooks many of the band’s interests, namely punk and experimental jamming. But it sure covers all the heavy metal bases: In five sprawling, unnamed suites, Feedbacker is a heavy metal opera, the kind of thing that people crowd around a stereo and nod their heads to in understanding. With massive buildups, walls of drone, cacophonous noise, cathartic screams and rock-hard riffing, this album may not have it all but it’s hard to imagine it sounding any more full. In a word, epic. And it has that timeless cover art too; the album practically gives its listeners a concussion, so I can only imagine what it would do to the creators.
♦♦♦
God Is Saying This to You...
Kurt Vile – God Is Saying This to You… [2009]
Kurt Vile’s most striking album is also his most irregular. God is Saying This to You is said to be a collection of obscurities, and clocking at under thirty minutes, half of these songs are experimental instrumentals. It sounds like it shouldn’t be fully formed, but why does this album hit like a ton of bricks? Vile’s songwriting is the culprit, and he is truly one of the decades finest folk singers. The aforementioned interludes are bitingly cerebral, and this carries over to the folk songs too. Vile is no stranger to good fun, but these songs are of a different breed. They transcend expression through music, because they don’t even sound like expression. They sound downright internal, deeply meditated thoughts and fleeting feelings of love and pain.
♦♦♦
The Ape of Naples
Coil – The Ape of Naples [2005]
Five years later and Coil’s final album, The Ape of Naples, still scares the living shit out of me. I can’t truly say that any other album can really affect me at every listen like that, although some could manage it for multiple listens before the shock wore off. But for some reason, I still can’t shake the vibe this one gives me. John Balance’s consumptive alcoholism was finally the death of him, and we get the feeling that he realized that this was happening. What makes The Ape of Naples so effective is that it is a process. No behind-the-door scare tactics, no twists. You see the degradation happening. It is easy to recognize the subject of it’s narrative arc from the beginning (the opening “Fire of the Mind,” which gave the album its original name, even sounds funereal), but that doesn’t make the following songs any less truly stunning, and I don’t know if there is anything to leave accountable besides frighteningly genuine musicianship.
♦♦♦
Guitar Romantic
The Exploding Hearts – Guitar Romantic [2003]
Please, hold me back now; how else can I help but gush about The Exploding Hearts? People listen to this album and they just know that the Hearts were something special. Granted, it does seem like this could have come out of a time machine from the ’70s, a pop-punk record unafraid to show its influences, but great pop music is timeless and Guitar Romantic is bursting with enthusiasm. “I’m a Pretender” should be instated as the nation’s official drinking song, “Throwaway Style” is a rare song that might actually be comparable to the Beatles and if there is any justice there will be always be High School punks somewhere outside a burger joint smoking to the sounds of “Sleeping Aids and Razorblades”. The rest of the story is painful but necessary to tell; their van flipped and three of them died. What can I say? Guitar Romantic makes me want to throw my hands up into the air, sing and dance. It’s an album that stands alone, not because of legacy but because of The Exploding Hearts’ obvious sheer love for craft.
♦♦♦
Gorillaz
Gorillaz – Gorillaz [2001]
Almost a decade after the fact, the debut album from Gorillaz feels less like a virtual pop experiment than it does an exercise in diversity. Sure, we had plenty of all-over-the-board albums this decade, but none of them as ambitious as this. Throughout the album, the songwriting of primary members Damon Albarn and Dan “the Automator” Nakamura lend themselves to developing ideas within and between their favorite genres like rock, electronic, hip hop, dub and punk over long periods of time spanning many songs each, and in the process blur the lines between all of them. The result, in my opinion, is the most underrated album on this list. It’s understandable that no one found it a masterpiece of any genre in particular; it may be spread out, but it’s spread out damn thick.
♦♦♦
Is This It
The Strokes – Is This It [2001]
My guess is that Is This It will be the first album on this list to be considered “classic rock.” Not because it is in any way antiquated; on the contrary this album still sounds fresh, and isn’t that what a classic is? It proves something that albums have proved for decades; there will never be an end to creative ways of doing rock ‘n roll. Julian Casablancas and company still pop my eyes out of my head on this one: The fast and melodic riffing, the uptempo rhythm section, and of course the heartbreaking vocals. These elements sounded like age-old standards when Is This It came out, and it’s hard to believe that The Strokes were the first to use them. It’s New York punk, definitely, but it sounds like it has been zoned in from somewhere else, although Casablancas even seems to doubt that this all can be pinned down: “In spaceships they won’t understand / And me? I ain’t never gonna understand.” That, my friends, is how classic albums are made.
♦♦♦
Saint Dymphna
Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna [2008]
Saint Dymphna’s defining lyric comes from guest vocalist Tinchy Stryder on “Princes”: “Oh shit, Gang Gang!” From the opening moments of this album straight until the end, it’s clear that no one has their shit together better than Gang Gang Dance in 2008. Dymphna is a synthesis of cultures and sounds as well as a percussive explosion, not unlike the band’s past successes, but Saint Dymphna brings them to a completely different level. Gang Gang Dance are fearless, and no where else in indie or electronic music do you hear anything even remotely like these choice songs: The high-as-the-sky “Vacuum,” the down-the-rabbit-hole “House Jam,” the propulsive hip-swinging “First Communion,” the ethnic ambient pop of “Dust”… “Oh Shit, Gang Gang” indeed.
♦♦♦
Burial
Burial – Burial [2006]
We may have not known who Burial was, but his message was clear; the South London Boroughs are a very dark place, and you probably wouldn’t want to be there. With that said, it’s funny that his debut album and dubstep’s first true knockout is so salivatingly addictive. Burial puts atmosphere at the top of his priorities, and even the 2-step beats, propulsive as they are, are simply used as a catalyst to get to a more vivid ambiance. His sampling is also impeccable: the loading of handguns act as beats, Middle-Eastern strings blossom in fields of dead grass and musical structures teeter on the verge of collapse. It’s a fantastic portrait, but it’s hard to say of it’s really fantasy. In the new millennium, decaying urban grit might have been the most defining environment, and Burial captured that in music like no other.
♦♦♦
Alive 2007
Daft Punk – Alive 2007 [2007]
Without question Daft Punk were among the most important artists of the 2000s: With their larger than life productions and memorable singles they brought dance music and DJ culture to both mainstream and indie audiences. When “One More Time” comes on at a party, who can’t get down? But somehow their studio albums as wholes don’t quite cut it at describing exactly why Daft Punk were so brilliant; their shows, clearly, do. While listening to Daft Punk’s second live album, you may not have the legendary pyramid or the blinding lights, but the energy translates in full and Alive 2007 is an electrifying listen with aural fireworks that their studio albums can’t quite replicate. Though it ignites the hits and energizes many of the obscurities, Alive is much more than a retrospective; it shows a vital band at the height of their power, filling more than mere stadiums with energy and music.
♦♦♦
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot [2002]
I’ve learned an awful lot from spending personal time with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and I know I am not the only one. I remember in particular listening to it while riding a city subway just for the hell of it, and it seemed to fit what I was doing perfectly. It moves at a slow, deliberate pace with a sort of grace to it, but it is by no means delicate. On the contrary, it is often fractured and dissonant, and it embodies the concept that music, as well as life, can be perfectly imperfect. For that reason it seems totally in place in the city, specifically Chicago, where at one point you may feel like you are in the center of everything and at other times feel like you are about as far from reality as you can get, slowly disintegrating with impersonal day to day routines. This all sounds pretty depressing, and at times it is, but when I’m listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, these themes are undercurrents to a collection of wonderful, experimental pop, rock, and folk music. This is timeless American music.
♦♦♦
Citrus
Asobi Seksu – Citrus [2006]
When it comes to shoegaze in the 2000s, I understand the desire for familiarity. There is warmth in many of the Slowdive and Ride sound-alikes out there, but to score points with me you need to really do something unique. Asobi Seksu’s symphonic sophomore album Citrus bridged the gap between rock, pop and ambitious atmospherics. It expands on the bands self titled debut by widening their sonic palette to be truly immersing, and yet it shreds and bounces, all within the same songs. This can be heard best in “Red Sea,” perhaps the most ambitious shoegaze track since Loveless. Yuki Chikudate’s singalong vocals seem completely at home with James Hannah’s audacious guitar work and flood of feedback. This album succeeds in bringing shoegaze out of itself. It is my belief that Citrus kills the genre by deeming it an unnecessary label, and no other recent band has exercised quite this much freedom with their interests.
♦♦♦
Third
Portishead – Third [2008]
Of all the late decade reunions, Portishead walked away with the best evidence to show. The reunited trip-hop heroes pull no punches here, and unreservedly deliver their most difficult and arguably their most rewarding album yet with Third. These are some of the most genuine songs I’ve heard in a long time, and just about all of them are terrifyingly heavy (even by the time you reach “Deep Water,” you’re most likely cowering in fear of the unseeable). Clearly Portishead have a deep understanding of not only their own musicality but also its effect on their listeners, and they know that exactly what may scare them off can keep them coming back. It’s easy to want to turn Third off when you hear the paranoid trip of “Nylon Smile” or the crawling on the ceiling head rush of “We Carry On,” and don’t even get me started on the utterly concussive “Machine Gun.” I’m convinced that the apocalypse will sound like “Threads.” These are just a few of the reasons that it is so easy to be drawn into Third’s dark energy and so hard to escape its grasp on your psyche. Beware of the rule of three.
♦♦♦
Donuts
J Dilla – Donuts [2006]
I often hear people questioning the true quality of J Dilla’s final album based on the circumstances surrounding its release. Dilla made most of Donuts from a hospital bed, and it was released only three days before his death of TTP. To me, Donuts‘ brilliance has always seemed quite self-evident, and the question of whether it would have gained the popularity that it has had Dilla not passed away is irrelevant; Dilla would never have made an album quite like this, loaded with romantic cut-and-paste soul haiku, emotional flourishes and acknowledgments of his brief time left – all at almost painfully short, bite-sized lengths – had he not only had a short amount of time to do it. It’s no surprise at all that Dilla has become one of the most namechecked artists of the latter half of the decade and that the echoes of Donuts can be heard everywhere. These songs, themselves constructed from lost vinyl gems, sounded like new standards from the beginning, and it’s likely that Dilla’s final statement will be on repeat in the hip hop world for a long time.
♦♦♦
Devotion
Beach House – Devotion [2008]
Although Baltimore-based Beach House haven’t changed their style much since their 2006 self-titled debut, their second album is much advanced beyond its predecessor. Devotion’s songs change frequently, segueing from one pastoral arrangement to another with ease, but frequently surprising with shreds of melancholy. Songs therefore seem to sputter with emotion, flickering lights through windows drenched in rain. At some points, the pieces are hushed tropical lullabies, and at the next moment booming, painful dirges. “You Came to Me” and “Holy Dances” evoke a heartwarming mysticism while others such as “Gila” and “Heart of Chambers” woefully lament. But the ultimate spirit is that of genuine, mature romance, which Legrand articulates so delicately in every song. She sings of love managing to overcome time and space as if reading from a book of hymns with ultimate faith, and she preaches a word we can’t help but hold on to and believe unconditionally.
♦♦♦
Arular
M.I.A. – Arular [2005]
Maya Arulpragasam was not the first artist to capture globalization in music, and by no means was she the first musical activist, but she was the one to garner the most discussion, controversy and popularity in the 2000s. With Arular, M.I.A. brought forth a new wave of dance music, relentless in it’s political and social observations and culturally collaborative in its musicality. You can hear the chaos of the Sri Lankan civil war which M.I.A. so stringently fought against on Arular in both M.I.A.’s lyrics as well as the production which receives assistance the likes of Diplo and Switch. Perhaps what is most amazing about this album is that it manages to be challenging and uncompromising while still being irresistible and fun. The dissonance that results from the inevitable groove elicited by this album’s non-stop energy paired with Arulpragasam’s bitter social observations is more than just discomforting; it takes a special kind of talent to get the masses dancing in opposition to genocide. Cutting edge.
♦♦♦
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [2007]
This album is about as habit forming as morphine but without all the negative repercussions. I still need a little taste of it at least every few days (the louder the better), and when I get it I’m immediately happier. Some of the decade’s finest pop songs are on here, all of them simultaneously hummable and innovative. Take “The Ghost of You Lingers,” for instance: It still has the signature Spoon elements of hypnotic repetition and simplicity, but I always get the wind knocked out of me when the warped electronics come in. The song is unique, but its quality and ambition are not. Leave it to Spoon to make the catchiest album ever while still retaining their songwriting maturity; it seemed like the only thing they hadn’t done yet.
♦♦♦
And Their Refinement of the Decline
Stars of the Lid – And Their Refinement of the Decline [2007]
Taking six years to follow up the vastly successful The Tired Sounds Of, Stars of the Lid did pretty much the polar opposite of what anyone would have expected with their eighth album, even considering they had done just about everything else in their long career; they made a pop album. Granted, it is also still an ambient album and a drone album, but the melodies here are more pronounced than anywhere else in their career, and what we find is that when the Stars raise the tempo of their melodies even by just a couple non-existent beats per minute, they are pretty much the most legitimately talented songwriters of their genre. In the end, Their Refinement may not have the benefit of being the first masterpiece that Stars of the Lid made, but it is even more moving, and on a grander scope.
♦♦♦
Takk...
Sigur Ros – Takk… [2005]
If Sigur Rós’ 1999 album Ágætis Byrjun was their defining statement and ( ) showed them at the height of their expressive power, Takk was the album where, as an established band of incredible talent, they could truly do whatever they wanted. Their sound doesn’t dip back into the experimentalism of Von, the hazy psychedelia of Ágætis or the melancholy of ( ), and we have yet another Sigur Rós album that sounds nothing like the rest. Here the band are more emotive than ever, and take on a more uptempo approach to many of the songs (“Hoppipolla,” “Gong,” “Saeglopur”), and craft achingly beautiful developments that take full advantage of accompanying string section Amiina. It’s completely arguable which Sigur Rós album is the best, but Takk is almost unquestionably their most free spirited.
♦♦♦
Amnesiac
Radiohead – Amnesiac [2001]
It’s not really surprising that Radiohead’s headiest album is also one of their most rewarding. Like Kid A, it contains its fair share of willfully difficult and abrasive moments, but it is just as gripping, paranoid and visceral. It digs to deep, uncomfortable places, and begins its ambitious process immediately (“After years of waiting, nothing came / and you realize you’re looking in the wrong place”). People seemed to think that Amnesiac was hodgepodge and messy upon release, and who can blame them after albums such as OK Computer and Kid A, that were meticulously crafted as seamless wholes? One of Amnesiac’s greatest strengths is that it is at times disjointed. Almost every serious Radiohead fan reaches a point of understanding with this album, and then asks themselves the million dollar question: How could they have possibly ever thought that Radiohead didn’t know exactly what they were doing?
♦♦♦
You Forgot It in People
Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It in People [2002]
Alright, so it’s the early part of the millennium and everything already seems stagnant. I’m walking around seeing kids with tight jeans and Fallout Boy t-shirts who are supposed to be emotional, and then there’s this album, by a band called “Broken Social Scene” for Christ’s sake. And then it turns out to be a playful, sophisticated, romantic album made by an ever-changing cast of adults. Yeah, this is an album that, to an extent, celebrates that we are all fucked up, but it is something else too. This is the sound of growing up, I am sure of it. There have been so many albums about the subject, but the reason why Broken Social Scene make You Forgot It In People transcendent is because they portray the process as continuous and collective.
♦♦♦
Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
Grouper – Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill [2008]
The traces of melody scattered throughout Liz Harris’ previous albums may have made Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill a logical next step, but it didn’t do anything to soften the blow. Here the Portland singer/songwriter makes a full transformation to a folk artist, meticulously crafting a developmental melancholy album of subtle victories. At times we hear the most inviting songs that Harris has made up to this point (“Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping,” “A Cover Over,” “Fishing Bird”), but she hasn’t completely left behind her previously utilized drone and noise techniques, and an enveloping layer of reverberation hangs around this album. On the outside is blackness. The most we get from Grouper here are her melodies, barely recognizable lyrics and loosely related song titles. We only seem to get half of the pieces to this puzzle of an album, but we can be content leaving it unsolved, wrapped in warmth and broken beauty.
♦♦♦
Vespertine
Bjork – Vespertine [2001]
In 1997, Bjork released the heated, internal Homogenic, and it was her most violent and dramatic development yet in a career already filled with twists in turns. Her 2001 follow up is comparatively emotional and personal, but in deep contrast to Homogenic’s in-the-moment theatrics, Vespertine sounds aged like fine wine. It is an album from another world, one which is both cold and warm, as indicated by the album’s elegant and icy strings, warm electronic rhythm and skyward melodies. But like all of her other albums, Bjork’s vocals and lyrics demand the spotlight, and she delivers performances that stand among the greatest of her career (listen to the breathy “Aurora” for yet another reminder of why Bjork is your favorite vocalist since Liz Fraser). In the end, it’s our delight to see Bjork doing what she does best yet again: creating a world of her own from scratch and immersing us completely.
♦♦♦
Kala
M.I.A. – Kala [2007]
Kala left a good portion of us silenced in awe regardless of our prior opinions of M.I.A.; the album to fulfill Arular’s most progressive ambitions but in a different dimension. Loaded with innovative pop hits and difficult genre hopping experiments, the album draws ideas from all over the world following M.I.A.s travels. The momentum is unstoppable, even when it hits its downtempo middle section. It’s about as daring as any pop album has ever come, a complete meltdown all the way through. Some scared doubters said that M.I.A. sold out, but when you examine how literate this album is, it becomes obvious what the focus is; If you are listening to M.I.A., be it through an Academy Award winning film, a stoner movie trailer or the radio, it’s that much more time you have to sit down and actually think about things like the genocide in Darfur, the mistreatment of women world over, the Sri Lankan civil war, illegal immigration, the third world, and hell, even that twenty dollar bill in your pocket. M.I.A. has always put the world before herself in her music, and that her bangin’-est album could be so conscious is a testament to that.
♦♦♦
Madvillainy
Madvillain – Madvillainy [2004]
One of my favorite moments on Madvillainy is during “Bistro,” where a relaxed, probably stoned, perhaps suit dressed Supervillain introduces the one and only Madlib, at which point the backing track goes silent. It might just be Madlib staring at us all pissed off as if we’re wasting his time, or for all we know he might be completely absent, backstage smoking a blunt. Both DOOM and Madlib do this disappearing act several times throughout the album, creating a rotating cast of hip hop deviants, but when they decide to grace us with their presence, Madlib provides some of the most sophisticated productions in the hip hop world, and DOOM continuously proves himself to be the most bizarre (“Freshwater trout!”) and skilled (“There will be the chopped off heads of leviathan”) MC of his generation. And dammit, these jackasses make it seem like it’s just another day in the life- while they could have milked just about all of these tracks into radio hits, they keep them all brief and fleeting. This is two incredibly talented artists with great chemistry doing whatever they want and turning up with a classic, unique hip hop album. “So nasty that it’s probably somewhat of a travesty.” Indeed. Be afraid. Very afraid.
♦♦♦
Silent Shout
The Knife – Silent Shout [2006]
Forget electroclash. Forget dance-punk. Forget all the other 80s electronic and dance revivalist bands of the 2000s; Silent Shout is the definitive back-to-basics electronic album of the decade. A decisively determined album, it focuses on its goals without making any concessions, and thus Silent Shout produces no pop gems in the vein of “Heartbeats,” but what replaces the style that the band previously explored is no less engrossing. It’s got everything necessary to make it a classic: The haunting, unique vocals, icy electronics, danceable neck-breakers (“We Share Our Mothers Health” is a rare track that might actually be physically dangerous), melodic burns and dark mystique. Silent Shout both sounds like something completely new and futuristic and yet also somehow antiquated; “The Captain” is a perfect example, sleek and yet frozen, smooth and yet rough as if coated in brine. It only further emphasizes the fact that the album doesn’t quite fit in with anything else of its age, even consciously nostalgic dance music that dominated much of the decades independent scene. If it recalls anything, it’s an alternate reality of the 80s when Antarctica had a thriving electronic scene, but it also sounds cutting edge and advanced. Perhaps this is what makes Silent Shout so timeless; ultimately, it is an album that seems to resound from nowhere, and thus answers to no one, nothing.
♦♦♦
Ágætis Byrjun
Sigur Rós – Ágætis Byrjun [2000]
Okay, I’ll admit it; I made a big, unnecessary stink about this one. Yes, it was initially released in the 1990s, in addition to a few other albums on this list, but these albums are unmistakably millennial, and Ágætis Byrjun especially is an important album for the 21st Century. Some big changes came with its international release, and I don’t just mean that the lovely Icelandic band Sigur Rós were now a part of the lives of millions, although that in it of itself is important. Ágætis Byrjun’s power is completely original because it is devoid of context. Yes, they make music that we might be able to uneasily delineate to “dream pop” or “post rock,” but we only do this because we have no idea what the hell else to call it, because we have never heard anything quite like it. The reality of this album is that it feels like a modern composition, only in part because of its gorgeous backing strings, sweeping crescendos or heartbreaking melodies; what also gives Ágætis Byrjun its spellbinding power is that it is simultaneously unique and gorgeous enough that it completely changed the landscape of music in the 2000s.
♦♦♦
Leaves Turn Inside You
Unwound – Leaves Turn Inside You [2001]
Around the turn of the century, one of the finest post-hardcore bands of the 90s spent years making their own studio, MagRecOne, recorded their final album, and disappeared. Made around the time that indie rock as well as America were about to make important, indescribable changes, the double-album Leaves Turn Inside You, as its title suggests, is about subtle but gravitational changes as well. It reinvents Unwound’s style, keeping their paranoid punk riffing but mixing it with melancholy and mystery. It’s difficult to listen to this record and not think on some level that there is something very wrong going on, but exactly what always illudes, and that’s what keeps me coming back to the surreal build of “We Invent You,” the jagged rock of “Scarlette” and the emotive “Below the Salt,” as well as the rest of this album. It’s rocking, tough, heady, introspective, emotional, scary, and beautiful at once. I couldn’t possibly ask for more from Unwound.
♦♦♦
Untrue
Burial – Untrue [2007]
For what many considered to be a scattershot genre, Burial turned out to be dubstep’s only bonafide superstar, and for a long time no one even knew who he was. While his debut album is more focused on setting, Untrue is instead a personal, internal affair, and the poignancy of this was only bolstered by his anonymity. A favorite example of the genuine but haunting humanity he injects into his music comes with “In McDonalds,” one of the album’s beatless tracks, that even goes so far as to set up a narrative using only its title, some gentle vocal samples and the music’s raw emotional power. This is a melancholy album of confounding difficulty with its fractured, slowly changing rhythms and haunting sampling, and requires repeated listens to get the full effect. Give it a couple spins to settle and pretty soon its nature as a meticulously developed album becomes apparent, and its sounds become second-nature. With its synthesis of interests in creative rhythm, sampling and atmosphere, Untrue is without question one of the most unique and accomplished productions in electronic music of the decade.
♦♦♦
Person Pitch
Panda Bear – Person Pitch [2007]
When all is said and done, a lot of people are going to be making claims that Animal Collective ruled this decade, and it’s going to be hard to argue with them. No other bands were nearly as simultaneously ambitious, prolific and loved. With that said, it was a bit of a surprise that the best album to come out of the Collective was actually a Panda Bear solo album, and it ends up being the most forward thinking as well as accessible in the Paw Tracks library. What’s most striking about it is how unique it is; the only things that sounded anything like it were the subsequent Animal Collective albums which it clearly influenced with its sound collage techniques. What Panda Bear does on Person Pitch is an album of sample based melodies, breaking down disparate sources (everything from choir music, Kraftwerk, Lee Scratch Perry and Cat Stevens to fireworks, bubblebaths and projector reels) then building them up from scratch to make unique developmental pop pieces. It’s no surprise that the album has already gained widespread admiration; as the years roll by, there are only more and more things to say about Person Pitch.
♦♦♦
Elephant
The White Stripes – Elephant [2003]
I’ve always had a difficult time explaining exactly why I feel that Elephant is the definitive rock album of the decade. I blame the tip-of-the-iceberg technique used with not just this album but with the band as a whole. The White Stripes give you some pretty simple, bare bones shit, and you can’t feel like you are missing something, but as soon as it hits your eardrum the flowers bloom. The band did the same with their personae, and we didn’t know what Jack and Meg’s relationship was for years, but after we heard this, we knew immediately that they were stars with much more to offer than a guitar, drums and some amps. Of course they are still a heavy metal minimalist band at their heart and they show it here in spades, but this proved that they had the ambition to do anything they wanted with whatever tools they chose and still reach incredible heights, pounding through retro pop, ballads, hard Detroit blues, punk and the weirdest, sexiest, most free and irresistible moments I’ve heard from any rock band, ever.
♦♦♦
Turn on the Bright Lights
Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights [2002]
Interpol may or may not have made one of the most influential albums of the decade that you can trace a good portion of indie rock’s elements back to (highly melodic riffing, violent and melancholy dynamics, throaty vocals, dark atmosphere). They may or may not have started that whole chic punk thing, or indirectly birthed everything from The Killers to dance-punk. The fact of the matter is that the best thing Interpol brought us is this album, standing on its own as a powerful melancholy statement. We’ve heard it all before; Interpol aren’t messiahs. They have influences, like everyone else does, and they could never manage to follow Bright Lights properly, but after listening to it, one could never expect them to. It’s songs are deeply personal and resonant: “NYC” is about a specific time and place, but who hasn’t felt that they need some more change in their life? The massive “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down” is similarly intimate and still achieves a haunting reach. And try to keep your feet on the floor during the beautifully cruel “The New.” In my experience with Bright Lights, I first found it to be difficult, and this is completely expected. Then, it became second nature, and then again a wholly uncomfortable experience. I explain the return of that discomfort by pointing a finger at how far this album really goes, and how deep it digs. It’s a natural arc, and we wait for albums like this for decades, albums that truly connect with their listeners on a deeper level.
♦♦♦
Kid A
Radiohead – Kid A [2000]
I knew this was the album I had to talk about last from the start. This may not be too big of a surprise. With it’s fragmented structure, lush instrumentation and raw emotion, Kid A has stood as a figurehead of music in this decade since its release, but it evades categorization or explanation. Yes, we can talk about it’s high points objectively, of course: From “Everyone is so near” to “I’m not there/This isn’t happening,” how Thom Yorke’s vocals meld with the instrumentation on “How to Disappear Completely” at 4:37, the destructive statement on dance music with “Idioteque,” the communication breakdowns, the looming disaster, and having to face it all alone, regardless of how many people you’re sitting in a room with when you try to break it all down. Other artists have achieved similar heights and even comparable narrative arcs within albums this decade, but none of them have been nearly as involving, and what makes Kid A priceless is that it builds a relationship with the listener, not only in the long term but also on individual spins. I’ve seen it in myself as well as others. While at first listen Kid A almost always seems a mess, given time the paranoid echoes of “In Limbo” become zen, the gentle melancholy of “Kid A” resonates, “Idioteque” sings the body electric and we wait in silence, counting the seconds, for the coda of “Motion Picture Soundtrack.” Kid A has utter command in its atmosphere and the mood of its listeners, and stopping it anywhere before the end just feels wrong. When all is said and done, calling Kid A my favorite album of all time, discussing its strengths and weaknesses or questioning what it all means echoes through empty space. I find myself standing at the threshold of expression when I try to talk about Kid A, mostly because it transcends genre, class, describability. It is an album that has grown to be a fixture in people’s lives because they can sit down with it and, despite all conceivable obstacles and difficulties, achieve a level of trust unlike any other album before has elicited.
