198. Boris - Akuma no Uta (2003)

While it's a common thing to call a group "Zep-influenced" or (less often) "the new Led Zep", most often this is nonsense. It's easy enough to toss together a high-pitched lead singer, heavy drums and giant guitar riffs and assume that's good enough to make you Led Zeppelin (just ask the Datsuns, Queens of the Stone Age, The Dead Weather, Them Crooked Vultures, etc...) what made Zep special wasn't any of this but something less definable--something in the way they seemed less like a band than a rampaging monster, each instrument an essential part of the creature's anatomy, Bonham's biblical drumwork serving as the pounding feet of Godzilla destroying a city about ten miles away. Now this is a roundabout way of saying that Boris' 2003 near-masterpiece Akuma no Uta is the closest thing I've heard to the spirit of Led Zeppelin than the band itself. It doesn't seem like human beings are playing these instruments; whether it's through honest skill or through clever production (I get the sense the drums on this album have been distorted to all hell) it's there, and there is stuff on this album that reaches the same level of heavy rock power of "Dazed and Confused". The gorgeous and terrifying ten-minute instrumental that opens the record is the perfect way to get into things, and then from there the intensity never lets up, aside from a short portion of "Naki Kyoku". The album is well-sequenced and short, which is a godsend in the age of 78-minute "epics", as if sheer length were the only thing that constituted one. What I'm saying is that Tool need to listen to this album and then go and sit in the corner for fifteen minutes and think about what they've done. Also: the title, translated, means "The Devil's Song." METAL.

MY RATING: 9.1

Boris - "Akuma no Uta"

199. Deerhoof - Apple O' (2003)

What are Deerhoof? Well, Deerhoof are Deerhoof. Nobody sounds like they do. If you for even a second thought that the traditional rock lineup of drums - bass - guitar - keyboards - vocals was in danger of running out of new sounds, these guys will quickly disabuse you of that notion. It's hard to describe what Deerhoof sound like; the combination of squiggly keyboard lines, "angular" (sorry) guitars, pounding drums and highpitched Shonen Knife-y vocals adds up to something totally original. I thought Pitchfork, if they were going to put a Deerhoof album on this list (and I suppose you'd have to) would pick The Runners Four; it's the longest, the most "epic" and the most indebted to traditional song structures. But I'm glad they picked this one. It's pretty much the quintessential Deerhoof record, containing both their herky-jerky avantgarde side and their poppier side (which really isn't "pop" in any traditional sense of the term: it sounds like punk music from Mars). So, is it good? Well, it's Deerhoof. And in the words of Roger Ebert (and I think he stole them from somebody else): if you like this sort of thing, this will be the sort of thing you like.

MY RATING: 7.9

Deerhoof - "Apple Bomb"

200. Jay Reatard - Blood Visions (2006)

As an album cover, this sits somewhere between Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet and the Dwarves' Blood Guts & Pussy; as quality punk music it sits right next to the Ramones' first record.  In my book that's no small praise; Ramones is one of the greatest rock albums ever made, and the fact that this one, at times, makes me think of that one is recommendation enough.  So, what is it?  Fifteen songs in twenty-eight minutes, all superfast and all supercatchy. Every song has something to recommend it, whether or not it's a guitar riff, a beautiful sung chorus or an aggressive screamed chorus. The thing is so consistent it's hard to pick any high points, but the magnificent guitar riff of "Turning Blue" and the gorgeous Nuggets-influenced "Oh It's Such A Shame" come the closest. This record is so good that I'm tempted to think that Pitchfork underrated it by placing it at #200; personally I think it's one of the top twenty records of the decade. Certainly it's in the top fifty, and its staggering quality shows more than anything else he put out why Reatard's death in early 2010 was a tragedy. Barely registering when it came out, in the intervening four years it's become a cult classic of punk music. It's violent, it's scary, it's catchy. Buy it.

 MY RATING: 9.3

Jay Reatard - "Oh It's Such A Shame"

Opening Post/Hello!

 Pitchfork is huge. And their top 100 lists (or, in the case of the 00s, 200) basically dictate the taste of hipsters the nation (and world) over. Now normally this would be the part where I link to one of the myriad old-media articles detailing Pitchfork's influence on the world of music, but I can't be bothered right now and besides, you have Google. Suffice it to say that if you're in music, Pitchfork can and will make (ever heard of the Arcade Fire?) or break (poor, poor Travis Morrison) you. A few years ago I wanted to increase the size of my music collection, and what better place to look for suggestion than the Pitchfork lists? I'd bought some albums on their recommendation before and liked them a great deal, and the lists were loaded with stuff I either hadn't heard, didn't own or hadn't even heard of. It seemed like a good idea, and I had some spending money (which I wish I had now, but you can't predict the future, can you? Or, at least, the job opportunities for recent MFA grads). Anyway, the rest is history.

I promise I will never say that phrase again.

So: the purpose of this site is to go through the albums on Pitchfork's top 100 lists, one at a time. Are they good? Bad? Did they screw up in putting the list together? I know it's difficult to make your own decisions about these important things, so never fear: I'm here to do it for you!  In the interest of comparison, I will provide my own Pitchfork-esque (Pitchforky?) decimal rating of the album in question, from 0 to 10.0. To help you figure out what these numbers mean, here's a handy chart:

10.0 - Ol' Dirty Bastard (alive)
9.0 - Ghostface Killah
8.0 - RZA
7.0 - GZA
6.0 - Raekwon
5.0 - Method Man
4.0 - Inspectah Deck
3.0 - Masta Killah
2.0 - U-God
1.0 - Ol' Dirty Bastard (dead)
0.0 - Cappadonna

Understand? So, an album that I give a 7.2 to would be somewhere between GZA and RZA, but closer to GZA. Not too hard. Also, each review will be supplemented with a link to Youtube of a track from the album. The track will be chosen to be representative of what the album sounds like, not necessarily the best track. Although the two dovetail more often than not.

More general notes: I can write with penetrating clarity and depth on pretty much any other topic, but music baffles me. Writing about it, I mean. I consume it like some eyeless alien worm, but I cannot for the life of me transform that interest into memorable prose. In short, I don't think I'm very good at writing about music. When describing it I search and search for the appropriate phrases to use, only to fall helplessly upon things like "This song rocks" or "This album has really good songwriting". I'll probably still do that, because there is one hard and fast rule: one review a day. Unless I'm dead or otherwise without internet access, this rule will be maintained. So there won't be a whole lot of time for rewriting or taking out embarrassing passages (and trust me, when I write about music, the issue is less whether or not the writing is embarrassing to begin with than the overall level of embarrassment). Basically, I wanted to write about music because I think I suck at it.

I'll be working backward from the 00s to the 70s, so get ready for Jay Reatard's Blood Visions!

Top 200 Albums of the 2000s
Top 100 Albums of the 1990s
Top 100 Albums of the 1980s
Top 100 Albums of the 1970s