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"