109. Band of Horses - Everything All The Time (2006)

This is one of the out-and-out lamest albums I've ever heard. It's the 00s equivalent of something like Candlebox; everything is so incredibly generic that one is surprised to find that actual human beings created this music and not robots or an incredibly sophisticated team of marketers and trend-analyzers outfitted with the newest and best tracking devices. "The Funeral" is a power ballad, and in about ten years it's going to seem about as embarrassing as most other songs that bear that descriptor; "First Song" is lame glossy rock, "Weed Party" is lame folk-rock, "Our Swords" is lame folk-rock...it's all lame folk-rock. "The Great Salt Lake" has a neat little power chord opening but the melody is lame and Ben Bridwell's vocals, which sound like Robin Pecknold's with all the beauty and personality sucked out, ruin everything they touch. There are plenty of albums on these Pitchfork lists that aren't up to par, but this one might anger me the most--it's so aggressively boring, as if music were just something you did as a painful duty, something to be cranked out between other things. The following two Band of Horses albums, both of which are allegedly terrible, only seem to confirm what I think about this record. It's awful.

MY RATING: 1.1

Band of Horses - "The First Song"

110, The National - Boxer (2007)

The National are a band I like and respect, despite the fact that they've only released one album that I like without reservation, and this isn't it. One could almost say the idea of the National is more promising than the National themselves--dour, gloomy, moody music, written and produced with an exactness so complete that it borders on the obsessive. The most noticeable thing about these guys at first is Matt Berninger's vocals--he's a baritone, and he's got the kind of voice that seems to embody pain and suffering without being excessive about it. The problem with this album in particular is that it's too much of a slow-burner--music this emotionally fraught needs a few moments of release (like the four tracks "Secret Meeting", "Friend of Mine", "Abel" and "Mr. November" from Alligator, each of which were placed perfectly to relieve the tension). There just isn't any of that here. It's all slow and dark and ponderous. The sheer weight of the style sucks all the power out of what would otherwise be great tracks ("Slow Show" and "Apartment Story"). Only the opening track, "Fake Empire", really works--there's a lightness in the opening piano line that is missing from the rest of the album and since it's encountered first the style seems invigorating instead of depressing, as it does near the end. I don't want to impugn this album too much because the National do what they do better than anyone else and this really is a mostly gorgeous, well-written record; it's just too much of the same thing.

MY RATING: 6.9

The National - "Squalor Victoria"

111. M83 - Saturdays = Youth (2008)

It's so satisfying when a group with an interesting sound but less-than-interesting ways of implementing it gets their act together and finds the perfect style and subject matter for their music. Jose Gonzalez' idea to meld his super-emotional electronic noise washes with John Hughes movie soundtrack-esque melodies and song structures was one of the most genius conceptual moves of the entire decade; a specific time in music is evoked so perfectly that it practically induces flashbacks. And, most importantly, this music evokes the 80s without copying it: the songs might be a little retrograde, sure, derivative of stuff by Single Minds and Richard Marx and (most obviously) Peter Schilling, but M83's style itself is wholly futuristic. The album is perfectly tuned and sequenced: "Kim and Jessie" is basically opening credits music, gigantic chords and longing, longing, longing. The word "emo" gets thrown around a lot, and if you could somehow remove all its negative associations this kind of music is what would be left: huge, pastel-colored blasts of synth coupled with lyrics that make absolutely no logical sense but make perfect emotional sense--just like the music. Most of these songs build up to apocalyptic climaxes of electronic noise and Morgan Kibby's alien vocals, and it works. You get chills down your spine. The final track, being little more than 12 minutes of the exact same keyboard line over and over, is a little disappointing, but if you treat it like closing credits music (i.e. feel free to ignore it, walk out) it works. Just play "You, Appearing" again, and if the hair on your neck doesn't go up, I don't know what's wrong with you. A huge, huge, huge improvement on  this band's previous two records.

MY RATING: 9.2

M83 -  "Skin of the Night"

112. Feist - The Reminder (2007)

This album edges dangerously close to the dreaded adult contemporary--the kind of music you listen to while drinking wine and considering art with your yuppie friends in a Whit Stillman-esque panorama of decadent wealth. The album cover doesn't do much to alter this conception. Feist's vocals throughout are kind of emotionless and pretty and the arrangements are simple, unobtrusive and--sigh--tasteful. I find this kind of record as pointless to hate as it it to love--only by using the most tortured Marxist criteria could you call the thing "bad", but it's not going to change anybody's life, either. The whole thing is just too cold and distant to be a classic--compare this record with Cat Power's far more spotty but much more emotionally tortured You Are Free. Several of these songs are so "atmospheric" and without melody that they pass by without any memory of even having existed at all ("The Park", "The Water") and "Sealion" is an annoying kids' track that should have been cut. But even I have to admit that the melody to the infamous "1234" is something special and "Honey Honey" is effectively austere and chilling. The result is a record that seeks to be professional above all things--how far you're able to stand that kind of thing is exactly how much you're going to like it.

MY RATING: 6.5

Feist - "My Moon My Man"

113. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem (2005)

James Murphy might be too smart for his own good. I saw LCD Soundsystem perform at Lollapalooza in 2007. They were the second-to-last performer of the night, right after which was to be, holy of holies, Daft Punk. It was like the heavens had aligned, but Murphy almost seemed embarrassed by real life's lining up with one of his songs, simply saying "I'm not even going to comment on this." Murphy might be rock's most ironic frontman--even his attempts at sentiment in later records have this apologetic thing about them, like "Isn't it crazy that a cynical guy like me is being so emotionally direct?" The pose seems so...calculated. Again this would all be moot if the music were more interesting, but LCD's first record is pretty boring, an album as bleached-out as its cover. I've never understood exactly how this could work as dance music, since Murphy refuses to put any low end into any of these songs. Everything is harsh and trebly and minimalistic--dance music for art installations. The attempts to combine dance and rock don't work as well as they did on the two follow-up records and a couple of these songs are nothing more than eight-minute-plus odes to percussion and screeching synth noises. James' method is to start out quiet and get louder and louder and louder, which might work if you're Mogwai but gets awfully irritating in a dance track. The only track that really works is "Tribulations", but nevertheless it's depressing to note that it's the album's least adventurous song. "Losing My Edge" is a shaggy-dog story set to music, "Great Release" starts out as an alright Brian Eno ripoff but ends in three minutes of pointless noise, and "Yeah" is just too noisy to enjoy. At least the album's, uh, clever?

MY RATING: 5.5

LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge"

114. Cam'ron - Purple Haze (2004)

This is one of the most stridently awful hip-hop albums I've ever heard; nearly 80 endless minutes of subpar beats and Cam'Ron's terrible vocals. The guy is one of the least charismatic rappers there is. There are more than twenty tracks here, and while that's fine for a record with some kind of thematic through-line (Raekwon's two Cuban Linx albums) here everything is bogged down in a seemingly-endless number of skits and subpar tracks. I'm not catching any of the "atmosphere" others say this album has, and I think I'm going to have to call them on their bluff. There isn't any. Listen to Kool Keith's Octagonecologyst: there's a hip-hop record with atmosphere. Hardly a moment on this record differs from any other because Cam'ron isn't able to generate a convincing enough presence to bring us along with him. He seems like he barely cares--which might well be the effect he's going for, but that doesn't make this thing any easier to listen to. Also, if he says the word "dipset" one more time I'm going to flip out.

MY RATING: 1.2

Cam'ron - "Dip-Set Forever"

115. The Shins - Oh, Inverted World (2001)

This is one record that's almost certainly going to be remembered more as a cultural artifact than anything approaching a great collection of music; while it's catchy enough, the thing is too low-key and mediocre overall to have done much if it hadn't been for a certain (annoying) character in a certain (terrible) movie saying that this band would "change your life". Well, no, seeing that there's more than enough groups out there who produce music just like this, and alleged "highlight" "New Slang" is disappointing, a mindlessly pretty acoustic track that's like Nick Drake with all the atmosphere sucked out. The more upbeat pop tracks generally fare better, and while there's hardly a song here I can remember once the thing's over, they certainly sound great while they're on. About one-sixth of this really short album is taken up with a minimal acoustic ditty called "The Past and Pending", and it's the best thing here, the only thing on the album that could be said to approach a truly timeless melody. The jury's still out (for me) on these guys: Chutes Too Narrow was great, Wincing the Night Away was awful, and this sits somewhere in the middle. It's pleasant, just don't expect it to change your life or anything. How could music this dementedly unpretentious ever change anything at all?

MY RATING: 6.2

The Shins - "Caring Is Creepy"

116. Michael Mayer - Immer (2002)

Another German microhouse record, except this time the tracks are chosen in such a way that they flow faultlessly from one to the next--you'd be forgiven for thinking this was all the work of the same artist. The consistency here is pretty astonishing, seeing that these are all (ostensibly) the work of different producers: what this shows me is that the Kompakt label (from the roster of which this record was compiled) maintains its aesthetic with such an iron grip that it effectively renders the idea of the "artist" kaput, the quality and styles of the music so similar from one to the next that it matters less who makes the music than who selects it--thus this album's being shelved under the name of the compiler, Michael Mayer. I'll name some highlights--the early 90s house organ of "A Rocket In Dub", the obsessive beat of "Gratis", and the almost cartoonishly Germanic "love" track "Perfect Lovers". The music doesn't perhaps reach the level of natural genius of Ricardo Villalobos' work, but it's of consistently higher overall quality--the whole thing is so expertly sequenced and recorded that any doubts about it being a little too monochromatic in style are rendered irrelevant. One Immer is probably all you need, but you need at least one.

MY RATING: 8.6

Rocket No.3 - "A Rocket In Dub"

117. Low - Things We Lost in the Fire (2001)

What is your tolerance for depression in music? What is your tolerance for moroseness? It better be high, because this record, as beautiful as it is, might well drive you to suicide if you listen to it in the wrong frame of mind. It's not happy music. The first lyric is "When they found your body / Giant X's on your eyes" and it only gets more despairing from there. Low's music is like a black-and-white line drawing: everything is leached out of it until all that's left is a skeleton, the aching slowness of their melodies repeating and repeating. The two vocalists sing as though they thought there was nothing left to live for. I find this album to be one of the decade's most emotionally punishing--you either have to give yourself up to it or ignore it entirely. Not a single song deviates from the general atmosphere of glacial depression except for "Dinosaur Act", and that one's just a little bit louder than the rest--and just as depressing. I can't love this album--I don't think anyone really could--but it is what it is: a celebration of the futility of love and laments for the dead.

MY RATING: 8.8

Low - "Closer"

118. The Beta Band - Hot Shots II (2001)

The Beta Band's first (non-EP) record legitimately sounded like the work of a band who didn't give a shit whether anyone liked them or not. It was as shambolic and disconnected a record as I've ever heard; the band themselves disparaged it later. All of which makes this followup even more surprising--every track follows the same underlying aesthetic, that of a simple electronic pop overlaid with harmony vocals. It's like a far more accomplished version of the Notwist's Neon Golden--while the Notwist so systematically stripped their songs of emotion that what was left over was--nothing, the Beta Band make sure that their electronics are wedded to great songs. Actually, this album is pretty much faultless--the problem is that the thing is so damn tunnel-visioned, so committed to a single sound, that it can become fatiguing to listen to. It's best appreciated in small doses, when you can listen to individual tracks and appreciate them at your leisure. One after another it all becomes numbing. It's too laid-back. Still, if you're at all interested in electronic pop music, only the Postal Service's Give Up and the Junior Boys' Last Exit managed to best this album this decade (and the Beta Band's vocals are way less annoying than the Postal Service's).

MY RATING: 8.0

The Beta Band - "Al Sharp"

119. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Eminem was huge ten years ago and enough critics have written enough about him that I don't know what else I can add except that it's clear the reason Eminem is a great rapper isn't his lyrics, it's his delivery. If we consider Eminem just a vocalist, then he's certainly one of the greatest to ever live: he changes his voice every five seconds, acts out little dialogues in almost every other line, and just basically pulls every trick in the book to make his lyrics more interesting. The beats are little more than a backdrop for Eminem's rants: all Dr. Dre does is put down a simple nursery-rhymey melody and that's it. The problem with this thing is that it's way too long. "Amityville", "Bitch Please II", "Under the Influence" and "Criminal" could have all been dropped, and whose idea was it not to end the record with "Kim", an incredible bit of playacting that decimates everything that comes after it? Too many reviews of Eminem's music (like Kanye West after him) are little more than crappy bits of sub-psychology in which the reviewer tries to figure out what it all "means" for our society that something so violent and antagonistic could be such a huge hit. What's really in Eminem's head, etc. It doesn't surprise me at all: Eminem's delivery is so above and beyond what any other rapper was attempting at the time that (to me) it was almost a foregone conclusion he'd be successful. This is his magnum opus, I suppose, although one wonders exactly how much of a masterpiece it is when nearly a half hour of it should have been chopped.


MY RATING: 7.8

Eminem - "Kill You"

120. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Tyranny of Distance (2001)

Ted Leo and his band are no-frills. There is no attempt on this record to be anything else but a really good pop-punk group, and it's in this that Leo most resembles Elvis Costello, where his innovations were mostly taking a more modern aesthetic and marrying it to an older style. Although I prefer Leo to Costello--his songwriting seems less predictable and contrived. Also, a good seventy percent of these songs are great. The beginning is a little shaky, but once you hit "Timorous Me" the album just becomes one great track after another. Leo also shows his talent at sequencing--the gorgeous, two-minute folk track "The Gold Finch and the Red Oak" is perfectly placed after the propulsive riff-fest "My Vien Ilin". The album is free of the bizarre production choices that plagued the followup Hearts of Oak and, frankly, the songs are just better. Listen to that vibrate-y guitar bit that shows up in the verses of "St. John the Divine"! The Gaelic-sounding fiddley part at the end of "Timorous Me"! Leo is able to fill his songs with clever little bits that help them transcend mere catchiness, and it's this that tosses him to the top of the pack of the hundreds of groups out there that essentially sound just like this one. It won't ever be confused with a classic (it's too workmanlike for that)--it's just a group of excellent songs.

MY RATING: 8.6

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - "Biomusicology"

121. Broadcast - Haha Sound (2003)

Basically the same thing as the last Brodcast album, except considerably less good, mostly due to the fact that the band dials down the "atmospheric" quality of their sound (which was the only thing they had going for them) in favor of going further down the "pop" route, which they aren't nearly as good at. Other than that it's the same sort of thing, more simple melodies surrounded with chimes and organs and 60s swinger-pad-isms. I like "Pendulum"'s excellent drumming, and "Lunch Hour Pops" has a nice uptempo melody (even though, for a band who sounds exactly like Stereolab, the track sounds EXACTLY like Stereolab), but what else is there here? Pleasant, unmemorable, forgettable. Get their first album and forget this one.

MY RATING: 4.9

Broadcast - "Man Is Not A Bird"

122. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (2000)

There can hardly be a more disappointing career in the decade than that of Ryan Adams, a country singer who started out by recording one of the best debut albums in the history of the genre and followed it up with album after album of second-rate, whatever-pops-into-his-head stuff. That shouldn't take away from the greatness of this one, though; what's best about this is how well Adams is able to get away with reconciling the two sides of the "country outlaw" character: the wild outlaw and the sensitive outlaw. There are far more ballads on this album than uptempo numbers, certainly, but those that are here are so powerful they come close to redeeming the entire genre. "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)" is certainly one of the greatest country stompers ever written or performed by anyone, a monstrous explosion of excitement that seems connected by lightning directly to the greatest folk performers of the 20s and 30s--Uncle Dave Macon, Dock Boggs. The ballads are no less good--the only one of them that approaches generic is "Oh My Sweet Carolina", and Adams saves it with his stunning arrangement and vocal performance. The songwriting is impeccable, the lyrics fantastic, the highlights so many it's easier to list the songs that aren't than those that are--this is a classic. I fully believe that.

MY RATING: 9.5

Ryan Adams - "Bartering Lines"

123. Four Tet - Rounds (2003)

Four Tet are usually thrown in the "electronica" bin, but that makes no sense to me because this stuff sounds closer to a more melodic and less improvisatory Tortoise: the emphasis here is on live instrumentation and songwriting and less on "exploration". I love this album. I think it's gorgeous. Kieran Hebden seems to have built a career on expanding the prepared piano sound Aphex Twin got into on Drukqs, and the whole thing is easily recognizable as a single style but there are enough variations on it that it never becomes boring. There are so many highlights here--the languid "Unspoken", the frantic "Spirit Fingers" and of course "Slow Jam", which features one of the greatest instrumental melodies of the decade. What really brings this album over the top is the rejection of length: most instrumental records are way too long, the artists apparently laboring under the delusion that eschewing vocals and a normal pop-song structure gives them free reign to let their songs run for eight minutes under the same repetitive pattern. There's only one track on this album that goes over 8, and the majority are between four and five--these are short tracks, comparatively, and each does its business and gets out. I'd be more willing to classify this as jazz than anything else--but it's a new kind of jazz, one just as technically proficient but one that focuses on emotional and melodic connection instead of endless instrumental wanking: a Marquee Moon to most jazz's Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. Beautiful.

MY RATING: 9.2

Four Tet - "Slow Jam"

124. PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)

This is a record that by sheer melodic and songwriting skill manages to overcome the general boredom that one would expect to find in it. This is a big, glossy modern rock record with a big, glossy modern rock album cover, the kind of thing that brings to mind images of the Wallflowers and Tonic and Third Eye Blind and later-period Tori Amos and other mostly awful artists. But what saves this one is the songwriting: these songs are (mostly) so fucking good. "Big Exit" might be the best song Harvey ever wrote, a track that resembles nothing so much as Heart but a hundred times better than anything they ever did: the lyrics are fantastic and the chorus is heart-stopping. "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" is like a glossier, more anthemic variation of a Rid of Me track, and the four tracks "One Line", "Beautiful Feeling", "Horses In My Dreams" and "We Float" approach and even eclipse Kate Bush in their gorgeous ambience. One or two tracks ("Is This Love" and "Kamikaze") are a little less inspired than the rest, but this is a fantastic record, varied and well-written and worth every bit of praise heaped upon it.

MY RATING: 9.1

PJ Harvey - "Big Exit"

125. The Books - Thought for Food (2002)

First off, let's be perfectly honest: I have no clue what in the hell the Books are trying to do here (both on this record and its equally lauded followup, The Lemon of Pink). I have no clue what's going on, I have no clue why it's supposed to be any good, I have no clue why anyone would like it, I have no clue why I should like it, etc. So what this is is basically obscure spoken-word vocal samples taken from old advertisements, instructional videos and so forth set to calming, amelodic washes of acoustic guitar, rumbly-sounding percussion and dinging noises. The whole thing is aggressively quirky and weird and nothing is really allowed to stay around long enough to make much of an impression. I don't understand why this is any good at all. Occasionally a good melody will jump out of the murk (like on "All Our Base Are Belong to Them") but that's the exception more than a rule. I suppose this kind of stuff makes the most sense as an attempt to inject some interest into "ambient music", which is laudable I guess, but this isn't the way to do it. So 1. I've never heard anything else much like this and 2. that might be a good thing.

MY RATING: 4.4

The Books - "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again"

126. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)

I don't know much about metal. I own the "masterpieces" of the genre and don't have much familiarity with anything outside those. I think Ride the Lightning is better than Master of Puppets and Slayer's Reign in Blood is better than both of them. Metal seems to exist entirely outside of most other types of music; there's very little, if any, cross-pollination between it and, say, "indie" or hip-hop or pop or whatever. This is somewhat by way of saying that the inclusion of Leviathan on this list smacks of tokenism--it's a great record, certainly, but it seems a little silly for them to include it when I find it hard to believe there are no other metal albums worthy of being on such a list. It seems like they felt that they had to put at least one metal album on a top 200 of the 00s list or nobody would take them seriously--a strange idea, since they managed to leave Metallica and Slayer off their 80s list, which to me is a far bigger omission (Mastodon are good, but this record's no Reign in Blood). Anyway, as for this one, all I can really say is that it's metal varied and well-composed enough to interest a non-metal fan (me). I was about 25 minutes into it before I consciously realized that the thing had been solidly kicking my ass for those entire 25 minutes without a break, and some of the record's best moments basically consist of one brilliant guitar riff after another, each following the previous one so rapidly your brain hardly has time to comprehend the power of the one that's been left behind. The effect is of an embarrassment of riches--like the band is so good at coming up with these riffs that they can afford to just throw them away. The band's strongest aspect, though, is Brett Dailor's drumming: the guy is clearly one of the best drummers alive, and at times the rest of the record almost seems to exist to justify his ridiculous fills. Anyway, if you are at all interested in metal, you undoubtedly already own this or have at least listened to it (it is without a doubt the most popular and critically respected metal album of the past 10 years). If you don't like metal, give it a try. It's about as good as a limited genre can possibly get.

MY RATING: 8.8

Mastodon - "I Am Ahab"

127. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)

This motherfucker is loud. The mix is so distorted and in-the-red that it rivals, and possibly surpasses, Iggy Pop's infamous remix of Raw Power (which I prefer to the original, btw) as the loudest single piece of music I've ever heard. For this record Sleater-Kinney largely dropped any semblance of "punk", instead settling for gigantic, terrifying exercises of guitar that almost approach Jimi Hendrix in their ferocity. Opening track "The Fox" barely seems to hold together outside of its unbelievable volume, but that's what makes it thrilling--you're basically too busy scraping your brain off the back wall from the power of that colossal opening chord to even think about whether it's a "good song" or not. And that's a good thing, because the songwriting here is, in general, far weaker than their preceding record. There are no bad tracks, but the songs are a lot more pedestrian than I was used to hearing from Sleater-Kinney--most of these tracks are basically generic riff-fests that could have been written by pretty much anyone. "Jumpers", in addition to sharing a title with a Third Eye Blind track, is about as generic. But I'm willing to throw a lot of that aside out of sheer respect for the sound on this record--while I assume audiophiles will tear their hair out upon hearing it (some tracks are so loud they devolve into static) I love it because when turned up high enough, it sounds like a goddamned jet engine. If there's no place in this world for insanely loud music, you can count me out.

MY RATING: 8.4

Sleater-Kinney - "The Fox"

128. Life Without Buildings - Any Other City (2001)

First of all: this is basically a hip-hop record. Don't go into it thinking it's "indie rock" in any conventional sense: there are no choruses and lead vocalist Sue Tompkins doesn't really sing, she mutters and rambles. Let's talk more about Sue Tompkins here, because she's the thing that prevents this album from being utterly forgettable, as musically it's nothing more than repetitive Belle and Sebastian-y vamps without melody. Tompkins, though, sounds like she's going insane in pretty much every track--her vocals sound like the nutty person on the street corner's ramblings set to music. The problem is that aside from that trick there isn't much else here at all--some of the tempos are slower ("Sorrow") and some of the tempos are quicker ("The Leanover") but overall it's the same method in every single track and your enjoyment of this record is going to depend completely upon whether or not you find it interesting or completely insufferable. I like it, mostly, and like this record whenever I'm listening to it, although I very rarely have a desire to do so. It's probably for the best these guys only released one album before breaking up: the world doesn't need two of what we have here.

MY RATING: 7.0

Life Without Buildings -  "The Leanover"

129. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free (2004)

Mike Skinner was born to make this record. The concept album fits him like the proverbial glove, and what makes the whole thing even better is that this is basically a concept album about nothing much--our hero forgets to return his DVD, goes on a date, smokes pot at his girlfriend's house, etc...it's a nice way of making use of the strengths of the concept album format without falling into its worst pitfall--pretentiousness. This album is funny, catchy, and perfectly sequenced--it flows like a good story, and it seemed like a classic the first time I heard it. Skinner is probably the most human rapper there is--he's all about his foibles and little moments most others would ignore. He takes the tiniest things and turns them into epics--"Empty Cans" in particular. The production is simple and effective, the lyrics are without peer (seriously--there's hardly a weak line on the entire record) and it's about as near a classic as this decade brought us. One or two of the tracks are weaker than the others, and that's a disappointment, but the rest of the album is so exemplary Skinner can keep on making crappy follow-up records for the rest of his life and I won't care. He's earned a lifetime of goodwill with this one.

MY RATING: 9.4

The Streets - "Fit But You Know It"

130. Clipse - We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 (2005)

Ah, the hip-hop mixtape. Usually, it's an art form designed to be listened to and quickly forgotten; a chance to show off a rapper's skills and tide fans over until a real album. But it took four years for Clipse to follow up Lord Willin' with the masterpiece Hell Hath No Fury, and this was one of the only things we got to tide us over. Clipse seem to have realized this and stepped up their game--certainly it's one of the few mixtapes that is comparable in quality to a regular album. Granted it still falls victim to some of the same problems as other mixtapes (some mismatches between beats and vocals, outdated cultural references, occasional moments where the rappers seem like they're treading water, underwritten lines) but the highpoints outweigh the low ones. The first half of this record is one hot line after another--"Re-Up Intro" in particular is about as great a trunk-banger as I've ever heard; car stereo systems were built to blast this track. Their take on the Game's "Hate It Or Love It" knocks his out of the water, and "Zen" is just as much of a classic single as it ever was. So overall this is about as great as an intrinsically flawed type of record can be; mixtapes are generally never more than placeholders, but this is one of the first times the word "mixtape" didn't seem to connote "something we threw together in two days to keep us in the public eye." Great, and a nice appetizer to the atom bomb these guys would drop on our heads a year later.

MY RATING: 8.1

Clipse - "Re-Up Intro"

131. The Notwist - Neon Golden (2002)

This album is so oppressively mediocre it's difficult to say anything about it; only two tracks rise above the murk (the atmospheric title track and the somewhat pretty closer "Consequence")  and those only barely. So, what we've got here is middling electronic pop, with almost none of the magisterial command of atmosphere that the Junior Boys bring and none of the melodic sense of the Postal Service. I often hear post-rock and ambient denigrated as "background music", but this to me is far more deserving of the term: there's simply nothing going on here. It's pleasant, and there's certainly nothing incompetent about it, but that's it. The vaguely European vocals float away, the boringly arranged blips-and-bloops float away, the passable melodies float away too and leave no trace. You will not remember this album ten minutes after you hear it.

MY RATING: 4.0

The Notwist - "Pilot"

132. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair (2008)

First of all, I don't know whose idea it was to get vibrato-y torch singer Antony Hegarty to sing on a disco track, but give him lots of money right now because that idea was genius. That song, "Blind", along with the Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers", is probably the high point of the entire 00s "dance-punk" thing, with "Blind" being closer to dance, and "Lovers" being closer to punk. So, what about the album that surrounds it? Most of it is the same sort of updated 70s disco, with an occasional nod to 90s dance ("You Belong"). In my opinion it's a little early to start canonizing this record; it seems like the setup for an even better follow-up. Too much of the second half is slow electronica stuff that does nothing original, and what it does do it does boringly. A notable exception is "Easy", which brings in Antony to sing gorgeous lyrics over a chilly, almost Knife-ish backing. It's truly one of the great underrated tracks of the decade, and it's in danger of getting lost within the album's more flashy moments. Overall it sounds like the kind of record the Rapture would have made had they not tried to out-Strokes the Strokes. There's always a danger of this kind of overly nostalgic music making you think: well, if I like this so much, why don't I just listen to the original stuff? Aside from "Blind" and "Easy", two songs that almost by themselves make this purchase-worthy, I don't know how well this record is able to answer that question.

MY RATING: 6.9


Hercules and Love Affair - "Blind"

133. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)

Be warned--this album is dense. It wasn't until well into my fifth listen when I was able to start to unpack it, to understand it, and I'm still not sure whether what you get is worth all that time you have to put into it. Certain tracks ("The Healer" in particular--listen to that cymbal sound!) create a mood that to the best of my knowledge little other funk/R&B has been able to do, while other tracks ("That Hump"; "Twinkle") are just generic slinky R&B. It's all about the groove here, and the album cover itself sets this record up as a throwback to the great funk protest records of the 70s, like The Payback and Superfly. Certainly this isn't as good as either of those, but it is remarkable how little "modern" production intrudes on the dense mood. The opening track isn't able to transcend its impression as a blacksploitation music pastiche, but "The Cell" fares much better, the groove produced within so powerful that Badu is able to drop out the music entirely for an entire minute near the end of the track, leaving nothing but a single repetitive chant, and the track doesn't lose one bit of its power and the effect doesn't seem like showboating. So what we've got here, in the end, is an incredibly ambitious funk record, and I'm inclined to give the album more points for its sheer ambition (even though the album would be outstripped, both conceptually and musically, by Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid two years later). Funk records of this overall quality don't come around often, so just ignore the weak stuff and focus on what's good.

MY RATING: 7.8

Erykah Badu - "The Healer"

134. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf (2002)

This record is completely unapologetic about its 70s influence--it's basically like listening to a classic rock station for an hour (and the little "radio" interludes, as irritating as they can get, only confirm this). I used to not like this one too much, thinking the production was too in-the-red and the whole thing was too singleminded to really enjoy, but time has improved it a little bit. Not a lot, but a little. First of all, there's not a lot of variety here at all--the opening track kicks your ass a little more than the rest do, and "Mosquito Song" brings in one of the Ween Brothers to vary the palette, but this is hard-drivin' 70s rock all the way, with massive, prehistoric guitar riffs and highpitched vocals and organ. Critics fell all over it because it certainly was rare to see hard rock played with such skill and as creatively as possible (note: sounding like 70s rock is not the same as ripping off 70s rock--compare these guys to Eagles of Death Metal to see the difference. These guys use their sound in an intelligent way, and take into account the fact that years have passed between the 70s and now). But the album is long, and monolithic, and there's a depressing stretch near the end of it that seems to be the exact same song over and over again for about four tracks, as well as the fact that "Song for the Dead" is just six minutes of ugly riffs. Aside from those problems, this is probably this decade's seminal "hard rock" (not metal or punk) record, so grab 'er if you like this kind of stuff. I personally think that if you can't beat Led Zeppelin, don't even try, but that's just me...

MY RATING: 6.5


Queens of the Stone Age - "God Is In the Radio"

135. Sigur Rós - ( ) (2002)

Conceptually, this is one of the strongest records on this list--it's split perfectly into two halves, the first half being a super-optimistic and joyous set of love songs and the second half a depressing series of apocalyptic dirges that bring to mind images of despair and your own eventual death. The tracks have no names (although they've been given names by fans, much in the fashion of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works) and the lyrics are the exact same nonsense line repeated over and over again at different speeds and to different tunes. This album is a near-masterpiece, and the best album these guys have made; if you agree with me that the purpose of Sigur Ros is the construction of mood, the ability to paint modernistic pictures in your head, then ( ) is peerless, one of the greatest post-rock records ever made. Another point: This album is slow. The tracks are all six minutes plus (some surpassing ten) and generally do not change during their duration (aside from the apocalyptic last track, which sounds like all of hell is falling down on your head). If you can handle that, and you appreciate the skill required in constructing a world with sound (at which Sigur Ros are unmatched) than get this.

MY RATING: 9.3

Sigur Ros - "6 (Untitled)"

136. No Age - Weirdo Rippers (2007)

This is weird. Punk and ambient music? How the hell could this work? Well, it doesn't, not really; what this album ends up being is a bunch of catchy punk tracks interspersed with noodly ambient passages, and the whole thing is over in a half hour. It doesn't gel together perfectly (or really at all), but that doesn't mean I don't like it. I admire this thing, mostly because it has the guts to go for such a weird-ass idea full-tilt without caring much if it makes sense or fits together or whatever. These are two styles at complete opposite ends of the musical spectrum, in terms of energy--hardcore punk, and Aphex Twin circa Selected Ambient Works Vol.II ambient stuff. "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy" is probably the highlight here, with its minute or two of white noise and feedback followed up by a massive guitar riff and yelling and static. Most of the other tracks follow the same pattern, although the majority of the songs are shorter and do much the same thing as the first track in even less time. "Boy Void" is super-catchy punk rock, "Loosen This Job" is scratchy noises and indistinct vocals. This album exists in a weird little cul-de-sac into which few other bands are probably going to want to venture (and for good reason--it really doesn't make any sense) but I like it anyway.

MY RATING: 7.7

No Age - "Neck Escaper"

137. Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank The Cradle (2002)

This record's closest analogue (at least on this list) is Califone's Roots and Crowns, but I like this record a great deal less than that one. What Califone did (updating the practically-ancient folk sounds of Harry Smith's anthology) here becomes a case of straight-up nostalgia. While Califone replicated the experience of listening to such music while simultaneously contemporizing(?) it? Sam Beam seeks to replicate that music exactly.  And for a while it's impressive. "Wow!" you go. "This sounds really old!" And that's pretty much it. This is maybe less disappointing in light of Beam's later, far superior work (The Shepherd's Dog in particular is a great album) but it's still disheartening to hear such acts of musical nostalgia. It's the kind of thing that led people to buy up the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and not go any deeper into the music it represented; it's nothing more than shallow history-aping, as though the years between 1928 and 2002 never happened. Music, I think, must take into account other music! That's how art develops. Each time I find myself liking a track on this record (and that happens a lot!) I realize I like it because it sounds like a certain type of music, not because of what it is. "Sounding like" music recorded 80 years ago does not automatically guarantee comparable artistic quality. You've got to move on. Thankfully, Beam did, and quickly enough revealed his astonishing talents as an arranger on later records, but this one is disappointing.


MY RATING: 5.3

Iron & Wine - "An Angry Blade"

138. The Libertines - Up the Bracket (2002)

I have to admit that my tolerance for snotty British punk is pretty low. I don't even like Singles Going Steady all that much, I think The Jam suck, and as I've already written on this very blog, the Arctic Monkeys are one of the worst "critically respected" rock groups to come along in years. So it's to these guys' credit that I sort of like this record; well, at least, I actively don't hate it. There are some good songs on here! "The Good Old Days" in particular has a great melody, the backing vocals during the chorus working wonders with very little. "The Boy Looked at Johnny" has a "lie-lie-lie" vocal thing that's so stupid and so British I can't help but love it, and "Time for Heroes" is a good enough single. I suspect my overall dislike for this kind of music might be a cultural thing--certainly these guys didn't exactly make it big in the States. I wonder what people in the UK think of the Hold Steady, a band so aggressively "local" they don't seem to me to be able to translate anywhere else (I grew up in the Midwest, so of course the band hits me in all the right places). Aside from the aforementioned songs, there's not much else here that's too memorable, but everything is certainly passable and frankly, the Arctic Monkeys make this band sound like the fucking Who. So if you want a watered-down Sex Pistols/Stranglers/Undertones/etc. (notice I didn't mention the Clash--those guys are in another class altogether) pick this up. For what it is (something I don't like) it's good!

MY RATING: 6.2

The Libertines - "The Boy Looked At Johnny"

139. Love Is All - Nine Times That Same Song (2006)

I'll be straight with you: if you can get through the first minute of this album without declaring it awesome, I don't know if we can be friends. For the first seven tracks of this thing I was convinced I was hearing the greatest pop and/or punk album of the decade: they're nearly flawless, each one a masterful construction of pop hooks and energy. Unfortunately the final three tracks are a real letdown; nothing in them comes to the incredible headlong rush of "Talk Talk Talk Talk", which I nominate for the greatest opening minute of any album of the decade. I was blown out of my chair when the guitar drops out and the backing vocals start in at around 0:40, and unbelievably the album was able to sustain this level of energy and creativity for almost twenty-five minutes, which is miraculous. "Ageing Had Never Been His Friend", "Turn The Radio Off", "Used Goods", "Busy Doing Nothing", "Make Out Fall Out Make Up" and "Felt Tip" are each fantastic, the combination of a bleating saxophone, harsh guitar and near-incomprehensible female vocals are perfect. It's like if X-Ray Spex and the Buzzcocks had a baby. Aside from that big drop-off in quality near the end, this is great.

MY RATING: 9.1

Love Is All - "Busy Doing Nothing"

140. TV on the Radio - Dear Science (2008)

For their fourth record TV on the Radio decided to drop a lot of their indie-rock associations and go in a more R&B/funk inspired direction. While lead vocalist Tunde Adebimpe is more than suited to such a stylistic change (and he's the only member of the band that comes out of this record still looking good--his vocals are uniformly great throughout), the band backing him up decidedly is not, and this record just ends up being an experiment that doesn't work. The first problem is the production--it's way, way too thin to be a "proper" funk record. Where's the bass? What's the deal with these processed, weak-ass drums? "Golden Age" is one of the ugliest-sounding things I've ever heard, a hideous "funky" thing that sounds like five different bands all playing at once (Actually, that description makes the song sound more interesting than it actually is). "Family Tree" is a maudlin, keyboard-drenched ballad, "Shout Me Out" is too minimalistic for its own good, and "Lover's Day", compared to the music made by actual funk groups, is laughable. Only "DLZ" works, and unsurprisingly it's the track on the album that hews closest to the style found on Return to Cookie Mountain. I respect what the band is trying to do here, and certainly this isn't a lazy or boring record at all, but the production choices are uniformly awful and it's hard to listen to this incredibly talented group laboring away at a style that just doesn't suit them at all. Worth a listen, but overall a real disappointment.

MY RATING: 5.9

TV on the Radio - "Love Dog"

141. Neko Case - Blacklisted (2002)

This album has the unfortunate luck of belonging to a genre I can't much get into--that of the countryish singer-songwriter. There are exceptions (once of which comes later in this list) but mostly I think this type of music suffers from being so strung to a particular instrumental style that there isn't much room for interest or innovation. Blues has a similar problem, but it seems to me that attempts to experiment with it have met with a lot more success than country. Basically this album just passes me by; it's fine enough while it's one but when it's over I can't remember a thing about it. Case has a great voice, but I already knew that from her work with the New Pornographers, and while the thing with them was that her voice wasn't required to carry much emotional weight aside from its tone (which in many tracks was just wordless backing) here it has to do almost all the work, and it's not up to it. I suppose it's not fair to trash a country record for not being ambitious enough, but this in addition to not being ambitious isn't even very memorable, which might be a more damaging quality. The whole thing is too shiny, too produced: what helps similar singer-songwriters like Jason Molina and Will Oldham is that their production styles are simple, while this takes too many cues from horrific "modern country". Not my kind of thing, I guess.

MY RATING: 3.9

Neko Case - "Deep Red Bells"

142. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR (2000)

This is certainly the most aggressive record on this entire top 200 list--I mean, look at the titles: "Kill All Hippies". "Accelerator". "Exterminator". "Swastika Eyes". "Blood Money". "If They Move, Kill 'Em". The entire album is soaked in this violent, militaristic rage that in this age sounds even more prescient than it must have in 2000. If ever an album's sound was perfectly evoked by its album cover, it's this one--"Accelerator" is a garage rock song so loud and distorted it sounds like a jet taking off and the rest of the tracks are nothing more than celebrations of aggression and violence, and at points I was reminded of vintage Stooges, except with a more electronic flavor. This album is a near-masterpiece: every track feeds into the central theme of violence perfectly and each track does something different while never seeming extraneous--variations on a theme. It's a concept record of a sort--the opening sample is a woman saying "It's not sexual, it's just aggression," and then you've got the insane militaristic funk of "Kill All Hippies", stuff like "Insect Royalty" that sounds like a drinking song for robots, and "Blood Money", which sounds like Miles Davis being force-fed amphetamines in Hell. The second remix of "Swastika Eyes" is totally unnecessary, but everything else is so perfectly written, performed and produced that it boggles the mind. Bands should not be releasing albums this good fifteen years into their career. Play it loud and have your brains knocked out.

MY RATING: 9.4

Primal Scream - "Shoot Speed/Kill Light"

143. The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005)

The Decemberists have their own sound and their own purpose, and you either have to give yourself over to it and accept it, or reject them entirely. Their sound is a super-bookish collection of overwritten songs about pirates, star-crossed lovers, sailors, spies and so forth, the lyrics loaded with three-dollar words (just look at the opening track: "palanquin", "largesse", "infanta", "folderol", "chaparral", "phalanx", "rhapsodical"). The singer, Colin Meloy, sounds just like Al Stewart (I also look exactly like him--Meloy, not Stewart--in case you wanted to get a picture of your humble webmaster), so if that's your thing...I actually enjoy a great deal of this, and its preciousness really doesn't get on my nerves too much simply because the lyrics are (mostly) well-written in spite of their studied archness and the melodies are (mostly) excellent and the songs are well-performed. What separates this group from every other roaming pack of drama and English majors is that they have a real talent at constructing a world for each song they write: the instruments and arrangements are perfectly chosen for each topic. They are masters of atmosphere. Actually, the followup record The Crane Wife seems, to me, to be easily this group's masterpiece, and I'm not sure why this one was chosen to represent the group on this list. This album, for example, contains the infamous "The Mariner's Revenge Song", a minimalistic story-song that might work well in concert but recorded is a near-disaster, where it seems little more than an interminable nine minute long novelty track. "On The Bus Mall" has wonderful, evocative lyrics but the melody is too undistinguished to support its six minutes, and I don't know what the hell the band is trying to do in "The Bagman's Gambit". Overall this is good, but I'd only recommend it if you've already picked up The Crane Wife and want to hear more.

MY RATING: 7.3

The Decemberists - "We Both Go Down Together"

144. Andrew W.K. - I Get Wet (2001)

When it comes to the phenomenon (thing?) that is Andrew W.K., there's not much room for subtle thinking. This music rejects subtlety, forcefully and almost involuntarily like a human body rejecting a donor liver. The message of "Party Hard" is to party hard. The message of "I Love NYC" is that Andrew loves NYC. The message of "She Is Beautiful" is that she is beautiful. There may have been subtlety in this music's making but there is none in the final result, and it's one of the greatest examples I've ever seen in which what must have been thousands of hours of studio time was spent slaving over something so brilliantly, gloriously stupid. What does this album sound like? It sounds like Van Halen's "Jump" if it were performed by Metallica. It sounds like a sweaty man jumping around a room. It sounds like if Queen decided, after recording News of the World, to double down on that style and never attempt anything else. You can't argue with this record. It will break into your house and party you into submission. There's a song on here called "Party Till You Puke", and that's exactly what the song is about. I can't argue with that.

MY RATING: 8.3

Andrew W.K. - "Party Hard" (what else???)

145. The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (2004)

 

This is by far the most extreme example of the (for a time) popular "progressive pop" style, in which pop melodies are placed one after another in endless profusion so we get 8 minute-plus tracks in which melodies last for about a minute, to be replaced by another. Destroyer's Destroyer's Rubies was an example of this, but this is even more out-there, with 5 tracks over 8 minutes, singing in Inuit, four-minute Steve Reich-y minimalist patterns and lengthy, surrealistic children's stories. It's too complex for its own good; to get anything out of this record requires about four or five careful listens (i.e. no distractions) and even then you'll realize that what you get out of it isn't all that great. There are catchy moments, yes, but they don't develop or lead into or out of anything and the endless childishness of the lyrics gets annoying after a while. Also, lead vocalist Eleanor Friedberger has a snobbish-sounding, schoolmarm-y voice that is totally inappropriate for this kind of music. It needed a Joanna Newsom, someone who isn't afraid to embrace her inner child when singing. But even then, would this have worked? There comes a point when the sheer amount of mental work required to understand a composition works against its quality--or, the quality revealed is incommensurate with the work you had to put in to discover it. It ain't about how good a musician or arranger you are--this is why the Ramones are a better band than say, Dream Theater. Plus there is no sense of atmosphere or any attempt at soundscaping on this record--at least when the Decemberists write their stupid songs about pirate ships they make you feel like you're on a pirate ship through the production and instrumental choices. It's all just one annoying pop bit after another, and it could have easily been 30 short tracks as opposed to 13 long ones. I want to say that despite all this, the album is still impressive in its scope and ambition, but even saying that rings false to me. It just goes to show that excellence in art more often happens when one takes a single thing and works it to perfection, rather than taking a million things and throwing them against the wall.

MY RATING: 4.3

The Fiery Furnaces - "Mason City"

146. My Morning Jacket - Z (2005)

I feel like this record is a good deal more ambitious than it was credited for being--most gushed over it, yes, but basically on the level of it being a "great classic rock record", filled with great melodies and musicianship and nary a weak track to be found, and really neglected to mention what, to me, is this album's greatest asset--an attempt to combine 70s and 00s rock styles on an almost molecular level. Now, aping the 70s today is no new thing--there are a million bands that do it, some excellently (The Black Keys), some pretty well (The Datsuns, Black Mountain) and some fairly terribly (Wolfmother, Eagles of Death Metal). What My Morning Jacket are doing here, though, is far more interesting than anything those bands have yet tried--what's going on here is an attempt, I feel, to try and figure out the links between Neil Young and Radiohead, between Skynyrd and the Strokes, between the Rolling Stones and Beck, and slam them together so seamlessly that there's no way they can be accused of cheap nostalgia or contemporary scene-following. And (mostly) it works. When it does, it's a hell of an achievement--"Off the Record", to pick one, is something else, a track that simultaneously invokes Bob Marley, Neil Young circa Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere and Radiohead, and does so so efficiently and effectively that it sounds like entirely its own thing. When this album is on its game it's one of the greatest examples of rock music stretching across decades that I've ever seen. When it doesn't (a few tracks on the second half of the record) it just sounds like a slightly updated version of Mountain or the Allman Brothers Band--certainly not bad, but not inspired either. It's a kind of miracle, this album, and I certainly can't think of another this decade in which a band stepped so far outside its comfort level and had it work so well.

MY RATING: 8.9

My Morning Jacket - "Lay Low"

147. T.I. - King (2006)

Now here's an album that isn't bad, exactly--but it's so punishing and unchanging and blank in its style that it seems to be twice as long as its already lengthy 75 minutes. You've heard "What You Know", right? And you liked it (of course you did--it's a great song!). Now imagine 70 more minutes of tracks exactly like "What You Know", except not quite as good, and there you have King. There are a few standard R&B ballads, but they aren't anything special, and the skit tracks are just as disposable as they generally always are on rap records. T.I. basically constructs gigantic truck-bangers out of thick bass and massive, regal-sounding synth lines. These are songs meant to be played loud, preferably out your window while you're driving down the street and slapping your left hand against the outside of the car's doorframe. That's this album's purpose, and in that context it succeeds wonderfully, but it doesn't transcend that milieu at all, and in the end it all just starts running together. Play it when you're driving around, or when there's a party, but don't think of getting much out of it anywhere else.

MY RATING: 6.0

T.I. - "Ride Wit Me"

148. Erlend Øye – DJ-Kicks (2004)

This is a mix record, of which there are a few on this list, but what separates this one from the rest is that Kings of Convenience member Oye uses the format to indulge his own particulars, doing things like covering "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" and re-recording certain songs with his own vocals. The whole thing is like a cross between Michael Mayer's Immer and a DJ Shadow record, and it works beautifully (most of the time). Oye has a great, soothing voice, perfectly suited for this kind of electronic pop, and the album works the best when it's focusing on that and not trying to make us "dance". Because, frankly, this isn't a very good dance record. The interpolation of "2D2F" is a near-disaster; while this kind of hyper-aggressive and filthy as hell dance track might have worked on 2 Many DJs' As Heard on Radio Soulwax, here it's a total mood-killer and doesn't fit with the rest of the record. The interpolation of the more "obvious" artists doesn't work too much either--Phoenix don't fit with this kind of record, as good as they are, and the Rapture's "I Need Your Love" is too straightforward a pop track to fit with the rest. Other than those caveats, this really is a well-sequenced, at some parts gorgeous pop record. Oye manages to keep the thing flowing nicely despite the frequent switches between tracks, and with his own re-recorded vocals there to tie everything together, it really feels all one thing, as opposed to just another mix record.

MY RATING: 8.4

Erlend Oye - "Sheltered Life vs. Fine Day (accapella)"

149. The Tough Alliance - A New Chance (2007)

I figured it wouldn't be long until the nostalgia factory that is modern indie music got around to early 90s dance pop--stuff like Dee-Lite, Haddaway, Real McCoy, etc. Granted this album doesn't exactly copy those (there aren't any rap bridges performed by deep-voiced bald men, for example) but it's pretty close. The operative word here on this record is fun--everything's uptempo, upbeat, and happy. The group tosses in a reggae groove ("Looking for Gold") and a minimalistic dance number ("Miami") but this is happy European pop music, not so far removed from something like Eiffel 65. The best thing about this album is that it's short--not that it's bad, but too many groups seem to feel like they're required to pump out at least 40 minutes or it isn't a proper record. This album is 30 minutes exactly--not a minute too short or too long. It won't change the world, and I'm a little confused as to why it's on such a list, but it isn't bad at all, and if, like me, you have a soft spot for Londonbeat or Bizarre Inc., this is more of the same.

MY RATING: 7.6

The Tough Alliance - "The Last Dance"

150. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema (2005)

Power pop is probably my least favorite type of music in the world. I like music that, for lack of a better phrase, creates some sort of coherent emotional world--and while that sounds complicated it really isn't. Music, of all the arts, is probably the one that works most on pure emotion. The problem with power pop, to me, is that it neglects everything else music can do in favor of one thing--melodies. That's it. Power pop is the quest for the catchy melody, and nothing else much matters. The New Pornographers are as guilty of this as anyone--I find Electric Version near-unlistenable, and it's a good lesson on what happens when a band neglects everything else in favor of melody. You stand on melody, and you fall on melody. If the melody isn't memorable, the rest of the song is worthless. But I don't know what the hell happened here, because Twin Cinema is, quite possibly, the greatest single collection of melodies on one album in the entire decade. The music--that is, the arrangements, the performances--are pretty middling. There's the neat stuttering part in "Falling Through Your Clothes", and the horns in "Stacked Crooked"--but that's about it. But God, the melodies! I don't know what family member A.C. Newman had to sacrifice to his god to come up with these, but even if it was his only son it was worth it. Surely I'm not the only one who repeatedly thought of Lennon/McCartney when these songs were playing. No other pop group even comes close to this level of melodic invention--each track contains so many gorgeous, intertwining chorus melodies that the level of complexity almost approaches progressive rock at times. Just listen to "Use It"! I count at least four melodies in that track that any other band would have killed to have written. These guys seem to get more acclaim these days for Mass Romantic, but this--this is the one. It even made me like power pop.

MY RATING: 9.5

The New Pornographers -  "The Bleeding Heart Show"

151. The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows (2004)

This one's definitely a grower. I don't even want to know about the number of people who bought this album on the strength of "The Rat", a fantastic song but not in any way indicative of this album's sound, and at that moment immediately swore off buying another Walkmen album ever again. That's too bad, because once you get around the fact that this is largely an atmospheric record, it works very well. The Walkmen are a five-piece rock band, yes, but they appear to be influenced less by other rock groups than by singer-songwriters like Tom Waits. Basically, if the spirit of Waits could be split among five guys in a band, that would be the Walkmen. This was the first time they found songs that were worthy of their intense command of dark and panicked atmosphere, and while it's not the best album they've made (that would be You & Me) it's probably the second best. The constant alternating between gauzy, feedback-laden ballads and aggressive rock tracks works well, and Hamilton Leithauser's voice (despite its obvious similarity to Bob Dylan's) is the perfect one for this band. Nobody else sounds quite like them, and I think that's a worthy enough achievement to celebrate. They evoke classic American folk music without falling into a single one of the obvious cliches practiced by pretty much every mediocre folk group--in its own way it's as brilliant a reinvention of blues and folk as that made by Led Zeppelin forty years earlier. But when it's all over it'll be the sound--not the songs--you'll be remembering.

MY RATING: 8.3

The Walkmen - "Little House of Savages"

152. Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein (2001)

Man, I really wanted to like this one, and even now it still baffles me why I don't; the producer is EL-P, mastermind behind Funcrusher Plus, one of my favorite hip-hop records of all time, and Cannibal Ox, lyrically, cover similar themes (science fiction, surrealism)--except maybe even to a more extreme extent than Company Flow. So what's the problem? The problem might lie in the beats--while the beats on Funcrusher were a bit odd and skewed compared to most hip-hop production, there was still a solid enough low end that the songs never floated away--a track like "Silence" was as funky as anything the Roots ever did. This album, though, mainly focuses on the "creepy" side, and the songs kind of fly away with it. Also the guys in Ox are nowhere as good at rapping as Company Flow were--while the first half of Funcrusher Plus was alive with memorable lines ("mute like Maggie Simpson"; "I see through pussy like the Invisible Woman") there's almost nothing here to latch onto--they're trying to be too weird, and frankly, when it comes to surrealistic lyricism in rap, nobody is ever going to outdo Kool Keith on Dr. Octagonecologyst, so best not even try. It might not seem fair to constantly bring up another record when looking at this one, but Funcrusher Plus is this album's most obvious referent, and the similarities between the two are so strong that when listening to this one, all I can hear are its faults. It's great for two tracks, but becomes incredibly numbing for longer than that--every track has the exact same production tricks and atmosphere. Disappointing, all the more so because modern hip-hop could use a bit of branching-out like this album tried to do.

MY RATING: 4.4

Cannibal Ox - "Stress Rap"

153. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007)

First thing: this is one of the most repulsive-sounding albums I've ever heard in my life. I tried to think of a nicer word, but I couldn't. There's something about the combination of Lekman's smooth, Vegasy voice, the maudlin orchestration and electronic beats that makes me feel ill. It's like some sort of terrible inversion of Tindersticks' music--but the gulf in quality between these two artists' music is so vast I won't comment any more on it. As the first track came on my first thought was: is this a joke? It sounds like a Ween parody of showtune music, except there's no parody here: it's done straight. And it's no good. It's as though this music, which is so awful nobody would question its being sold for twenty-five cents in a used bin had it been released in 1972, is supposed to suddenly become good when it's being done by an attractive, Pitchfork-approved singer-songwriter. There is exactly one good track on this album and that's "A Postcard to Nina"; the lyrics are clever (if a bit annoying when coming out of Lekman's mouth) and the chorus is actually well-written and catchy. The production is just as bad as the rest of the album, sucking every bit of life and spontaneity out of the music, but a good song is a good song. The rest is terrible. This album is like a dentist's drill to me, like nails on a chalkboard, like a cat being strangled, etc. Maybe it's me. And I liked "Black Cab"! Why do so many artists, on attempting to emulate Scott Walker, choose to emulate the first half of his career and not the latter half?

MY RATING: 0.8

Jens Lekman - "And I Remember Every Kiss"