80. The Clientele - Suburban Light (2000)

Suburban Light is one of the decade's great achievements of atmosphere, and it is all the more remarkable for the fact that it never really strays from the standard pop formula; it's easy enough to construct atmospherics if you've got ten minute-long tracks and progressive song structures to play with, but it's a heck of a lot harder if you're writing pop songs and all you're using are the standard drums, bass, vocals, guitar. This album is a kind of miracle: it perfectly encapsulates the hazy, rainy feeling of its cover, and it never deviates from it for a second. The band's discipline is such that each track adds to the experience and yet there are no songs that "stand out"; everything is very even; selecting a favorite track is impossible here. "From A Window" is a little bit faster than the rest and "Reflections After Jane" was the single, but pretty much any track could have been a single--the songs are that good. What also is impressive here is that this music evokes no specific era: it's 60s pop, it's 70s pop, there's even a little bit of the Smiths in there for your 80s pop. It exists in its own world, a world that was created for this album only and was never to be returned to again.

MY RATING: 9.3

The Clientele - "We Could Walk Together"