168. Califone - Roots & Crowns (2006)

Califone's Roots & Crowns is like a tribute to the kind of music found on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music: wild hoedowns and slower, banjo-picking tracks. True enough, there's more than enough of this kind of music out there, but what separates this from the rest of the pack is an uncanny ability to recreate the unknowable creepiness of listening to a recording that's 80+ years old. Everything on this album is soaked in a kind of fuzzy hiss, and the vocals are distant and emotionless: the effect is unsettling, like a Jandek album but with better melodies. There are no hamfisted attempts at "emotion" here: everything is dropped to the side for the sake of a somewhat forbidding atmosphere that's uncommon in folk records, which are usually designed to be as "warm" and "inviting" as possible. There's nothing "warm" or "inviting" about this record. It's creepy and weird, with song titles like "The Eye You Lost in the Crusades" and "3-Legged Animals", little snatches of radio static seeping in and out of the songs, weird and possibly electronic percussion effects. The album is like a direct channel to the unpalatable, odd, and strange folk music made all those years ago: the real stuff. There is no ego on this album at all: everything is bent upon constructing that atmosphere. A real achievement.

MY RATING: 8.6


Califone - "The Eye You Lost in the Crusades"
 

169. Common - Like Water for Chocolate (2000)

As I've said before, there's nothing I dislike more than the "elder statesman" persona in rap, where the rapper talks about how terrible things are now vs. how great things were when he was a youngster. At least with Scarface's The Fix these lyrics were often backed up with great beats; here, we don't even have that. This is one of the most boring albums I've ever heard in my life: the beats are shapeless "groovy" constructions reminiscent of a lobotomized A Tribe Called Quest, and the lyrics are no better. J Dilla did some of these, which makes me wonder if he was saving all his best stuff for the incredible Donuts six years later. Most of these songs approach six minutes, and the entire album is almost 80 total. It's painful. What I love most about rap is when the beat and vocal mesh on such a level that it becomes hypnotic, when the vocals drop and slide in between each individual beat so well that they cannot be separated (See Nas's "New York State of Mind" for a textbook example of this). This is just lazy, easy-listening R&B (as opposed to D'Angelo's easy-listening R&B, which is anything but lazy). One of these tracks is dedicated to Fela Kuti, one of the greatest musicians to ever walk this earth; to even call this an insult is to give it too much credence. It's not bad, it's just unacceptably boring, which is even worse.

MY RATING: 2.1

Common - "The Light"

170. Bright Eyes - Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

I have every reason to hate this album, but I don't, not really. Conor Oberst has sort of become the poster boy for emo whininess, but honestly I don't see much of that in his first record. His voice is pretty fantastic: he sounds less like a whiny emo kid than some mentally disturbed Die Hard villain telling John McClane through a cell phone that he mustn't do whatever he's doing or his daughter will die. The vocals on the first track in particular are masterful, so well-recorded that you can practically hear Oberst's spit hit the microphone. The lyrics aren't too special but what matters here is that Oberst is able to sell it. Also, the infamous "An Attempt to Tip the Scales" is hilarious. Why do people hate this? Why is it okay for rap albums to have dozens of (often unfunny) skits when this one hilarious skit on a folk album gets repeatedly slammed? It's not a real interview! It's scripted! Oberst is poking fun at himself! Anyway, the problem with this album? It contains not one single memorable melody. Not one. The songs are basically repetitive dirges, some of which are rhythmically interesting, but not melodically. Now melodies aren't exactly Priority #1 in folk music, most of them being stolen anyway, but their total absence here becomes a little tiresome on an album that lasts nearly an hour. Oberst tries to cover up the songs' melodic and structural primitiveness with his psychotic vocals, but interest in that fades pretty quick. So: not as bad as you might expect. And it's a hell of a lot better than the goddamned Mountain Goats.

MY RATING: 6.5

Bright Eyes - "Sunrise, Sunset"

171. The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike (2004)

At its best, this sounds like the music that would play when you and your motley crew of well-trained misfits jump in your specially outfitted van and drive around the city solving crime and other related mysteries. At its worst it sounds like a cheap, tinny dance record recorded on some guy's boombox. I found a copy of this at Walmart (!!!) six years ago for five dollars and picked it up and loved it right away, thinking it was one of the best records I've heard in years: it smacks you in the face immediately. It's the opposite of a "grower"; it kicks your ass the first time, and then seems progressively weaker each time you listen to it. It's musical candy, in that a tiny bit of it is great, but after even fifteen minutes it gets tiresome and annoying and you want to throw in something with real substance (It reminds me more than a little of Sleigh Bells' Treats, actually: although this album's much better overall). The followup record has a little bit more of that, but unfortunately not enough, and the songs on that one are weaker overall, so it's a bit of a toss-up as to which one is better. Anyway, the point of this album is EXCITEMENT. There are no moments of quiet or reflection, except for a few interlude-y tracks, which sound like a group of first-graders banging on the school piano when the music teacher is out of the room. Again, is some of it fun? Yes. "Panther Dash" kicks ass, bursting through the gate right away with a gigantic surf guitar riff, as good as anything the Ventures ever put out. The problem with this is that four or five of these songs are just weaker versions of the good stuff, and it just isn't fun to sit through, and the final track is a bizarre, five-minute series of "western" noises (banjos, Ennio Morricone-aping orchestration) that just doesn't work. The best of this is great, but the whole thing is shallow as a puddle of spit on a sand dune and will probably end up like those thousands of "Sounds from Outer-Space!!!" records from the fifties and early sixties you can find in used bins.

MY RATING: 6.9

The Go! Team - "Junior Kickstart"

172. The Constantines - Shine a Light (2003)

Now this is just a great, old-fashioned rock album, the kind that seems to be in shorter and shorter supply these days. The obvious equation here (and the one referenced by everyone who reviewed it) is if Bruce Springsteen had Fugazi as a backing band, and while that works on some tracks ("On to You"; "Young Lions") it doesn't entirely work with the punkier stuff, which sounds more like the Wipers. The harder tracks are almost without flaw, fascinating bits of modern guitar-rock that outdo even Les Savy Fav, the most famous current practitioners of that style. Also fantastic here are the two slower tracks--"Goodbye Baby & Amen" and "Sub-Domestic" which are almost John Mellancamp-ian in their simple guitar and harmonica interplay and melodicism. The band never even came close to following this one up, and it's probably not possible to do so: the album takes a fairly limited central conceit and runs about as far as they can with it. One of the decade's great sleepers: almost nobody remembers this one anymore, and it's good to see Pitchfork recognize it.

MY RATING: 8.7

The Constantines - "Shine a Light"

173. Herbert - Bodily Functions (2001)

Herbert's previous album Around the House is still widely respected by many, but I don't care much for it; it doesn't add anything new to the microhouse genre, and aside from the central conceit (sounds created from normal household objects) there isn't a whole lot to latch onto. This one is a huge improvement, both because Herbert has increased his partner Dani Siciliano's presence on the tracks and constructed the songs according to a more traditional verse-chorus structure, which in the world of techno is fairly revolutionary. Even if you think you don't like repetitive electronic music, I'd strongly urge you to try this one out: it's songs! Many of the melodies are obscenely catchy and it's pretty amazing how Herbert is able to absorb smooth-jazz influences without falling into stupid "smooth jams" kitsch. I personally think that Herbert's tradition of choosing a new "concept" for each record (this one: sounds made by the human body) is pretty gimmicky, but as long as it isn't distracting it doesn't matter much, and it isn't distracting at all here. It's like the best, most atmospheric smooth jazz updated with electronic backing: the two dovetail so well with each other it's as though they were never separate.  One track "I Know" is even a straight-up jazz track! A combination of 40s smoky jazz/torch songs and techno: it shouldn't work, but it does, and it's one of the most original and beguiling things made in the decade.

MY RATING: 8.5

Herbert - "Addiction"

174. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy (2005)

Okkervil River's breakout record is so good that it probably renders the rest of their output irrelevant; The Stage Names was alright, but why listen to it when you've got this? This is one of the best fusions of folk and rock music I've heard this decade, and it's all the more powerful for the fact that it sneaks up on you slowly. The melodies are subtle and sophisticated, and the lyrics are peerless. There's a line between self-pity that is affecting and self-pity that is annoying, and this album straddles it like a master. "A Stone" is probably the single most impressive unrequited-love song written by anybody this decade--the lyrics are based upon a medieval conceit, yes, but the fantastical imagery gives the song power and does not trivialize it. If this thing had a fault it's that it's a bit samey and there are probably one or two too many slow folky pieces for my taste (the album could stand to be about ten minutes shorter) but overall this is an excellently written, produced and performed piece of work. The combination of folk and throat-shredding vocals shouldn't work, but it does. All the more disappointing that afterward, frontman Will Sheff seemed perfectly content to crank out folk-pop in the mold of Andrew Bird and the Decemberists rather than pursue the dark, violent and disturbing vision that led to this record. "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" in particular is heartrending, an eight-minute dirge built around somewhat horrifying lyrics of the utmost self-debasement. This kind of why-doesn't-she-love-me stuff is a minefield, and I am in awe of how Sheff manages to avoid every cliche of the genre. A major album.

MY RATING: 9.0

Okkervil River - "So Come Back, I Am Waiting"

175. Various Artists - Kompakt Total 3 (2001)

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance! I am never more at a loss to describe music than I am when talking about German microhouse, a style of electronic music that relies on what is basically bleeps and bloops in a rhythmic pattern. This is largely a mood record, about as far from "dance" music as techno can possibly get (although Ricardo Villalobos gives it a run for its money). I gather that this particular compilation is more well-known for its historical importance than its quality; it's not as creative as Erlend Oye's DJ-Kicks or as brilliantly well-sequenced as Michael Mayer's Immer (and again, Ricardo Villalobos' Alcachofa is a different thing entirely). But the style and overall sound of those two records can be largely traced back to this one. Aside from one or two tracks, nothing really jumps out at me here; the beats don't become utterly hypnotic as they do on Luomo's Vocalcity, and the whole thing hardly rises above the level of mood music. It's very dark, very cold, very emotionless, and very German.

MY RATING: 5.5

Jurgen Paape - "So Weit Wie Noch Nie"

176. The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee (2002)

First thing: I don't like John Darnielle's voice. I never have, and I don't think I ever will. It's rare for me to be so irritated with somebody's singing voice, but every single time I listen to a Mountain Goats song I wonder how much better these songs would be with a better singer. Second thing: I don't much like the Mountain Goats. I think they appropriate the trappings of folk music without really doing them justice. These songs have no real sense of atmosphere; Darnielle's insistence on making the lyrics carry all the weight lends the whole album an accompaniment-ish quality, as though this were one of those "rock-by-mail" things that Robert Pollard sometimes does where he and a collaborator record an album by long distance. It's poetry with gentle folk backing, vaguely pleasant music (notwithstanding Darnielle's incongruous, childlike voice) that does not try one single new thing throughout its entire 40 minutes. A lot of people like this, and good on them, but I've never been one to believe that emotion and emotion alone can carry music. Just compare this to Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands, a similar but nevertheless far superior record. Banhart's voice is far more emotionless, almost mantra-like, but the beauty of it meshes so well with the music that it constructs the emotion. This sounds pasted-together; nothing fits. This is literate and boring, like those bland, colorless books of short stories produced by the dozens.

MY RATING: 3.9

The Mountain Goats - "Oceanographer's Choice"

177. Broadcast - The Noise Made By People (2000)

Or: Stereolab under a different name. This is a fine record, certainly better than the one that followed it, but the similarity to Stereolab is so obvious as to be disconcerting. Aside from that, this works pretty great as low-key mood-pop; the 60s influence is obvious but not so overdone as to seem like nothing but cheap nostalgia and some of the songs do manage to create an intense atmosphere ("Long Was the Year"; Echo's Answer"). It's one of those records where the production is just as important as the music itself, if not more so; it's all about atmosphere and mood here, and its success is predicated almost entirely on how well that mood is maintained, and how inviting the melodies are, so you can be effectively drawn into that mood. It does pretty well on both counts, although some of this stuff is little more than easy listening--excellently produced, but easy listening nonetheless. Not revolutionary or anything, and certainly derivative of about four or five other groups I can think of right off the top of my head, but certainly pleasant enough. Overall, a pretty good debut effort from Stereolab 2.0 Broadcast.

MY RATING: 7.3

Broadcast - "Echo's Answer"

178. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter II (2005)

Lil Wayne is a genius, if one of an especially specific kind. He doesn't ever know when to stop; his albums are all overlong, and this one (22 tracks in about 80 minutes) is no exception. It's hard to sit through the whole thing, but this is probably due less to the quality of the songs, which are excellent, than Wayne's enervating, scattershot delivery. This thing is huge, and in the pantheon of Epic Rap Albums it surely beats the previous year's Purple Haze, by Cam'ron. While Cam'ron seemed to be an average rapper who, through luck, managed to hook up with some excellent producers, Lil' Wayne always seems in control. Everything on this album happens because he wanted it to happen. Listening to this album on random might even be better: it's not very well sequenced. It's basically just one track after another, so listening to each track one at a time, without the cumulative effect of 22 other tracks just like it, is the best way to find out how well-written the whole thing is and how fantastic the beats are.  "Mo Fire"! Listen to that! Stevie Wonder himself couldn't have come up with a more ass-shaking beat than that one. Wayne's later work is more popular, but aside from the novelty value of throwing a nutcase like Lil' Wayne in the ring with mainstream guys like Robin Thicke, it has about one tenth the depth of this stuff. This is probably his best album: it sits right between the off-the-rails insanity of Da Drought 3 and the pop-rap exercises of Tha Carter III. If you have to buy one Lil Wayne album (and you really should) this is the one. He doesn't compare himself to a geese erection in this one, though. Too bad.

MY RATING: 8.1

Lil Wayne - "Mo' Fire"

179. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country (2006)

This is one of the most pointless albums I've ever heard in my life. There is nothing going on here aside from cheap nostalgia. It's getting that anytime I hear the words "lush" and "60s" and "pop" in one sentence together in an album description, I start to get scared. This music is meaningless. The melodies are weak--I can't recall how a single song goes on here, even after listening to the thing about five or six times--and the arrangements are boring, great washes of ugly organ thrown over the track, done so incompetently it's as though the musicians are merely aware that 60s pop contained organ and have no knowledge how or why. It's like a weaker version of late-period Belle and Sebastian, which was already weak enough to begin with. Why does stuff like this exist, and why is it so loved? Are people unaware that it's all already been done? Plus, it's twee. This is so twee. It's tweer than a Scottish kid in a kilt playing with a bunny rabbit. It's tweer than a twelve-year old boy and a twelve year-old girl both placing their palms on a pane of glass, the snow falling on the forlorn boy outdoors. It's so insufferably cute and it makes me want to stomp on a squirrel or douse wedding guests in black paint or something. Jesus, I can't wait for this stuff to fall out of style.

MY RATING: 1.4

Camera Obscura - "Come Back Margaret"

180. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)

Oh yeah. Now this is the stuff. Nick Cave is one of the greatest songwriters of the past fifty years, one of rock's authentic geniuses, and this is probably one of the top three records he's made. And it's a double album! Over eighty minutes! And it's all great! Well, one or two tracks ("Abbatoir Blues", "Babe, You Turn Me On") are a little bit less great, but with this album, picking out the great songs is just a matter of listing everything. Cave's lyrics took a turn for the stranger here--whereas he used to let loose bloodsoaked tales of cowboys, murderers, and murderous cowboys, now he's replaced it for an almost Dylanesque series of bizarre images. And the music? Oh, it's great. More mainstream and less avantgarde than the earlier Bad Seeds stuff, sure, but who cares when the melodies and arrangements are so stunning? It's almost impossible to pick out the best stuff here, but I suppose I'll single out two tracks for special praise: "Hiding All Away" is about as apocalyptic as Cave ever gets, and "Easy Money" is so beautifully, flabbergastingly depressing you'll weep for humanity. I'm not saying any more--you get the drift. Why do you not have this? Buy this!

MY RATING: 9.8

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Hiding All Away"

181. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005)

Another album of inoffensive folk-pop, except this time there's some Beatlesy instrumentation to convince people that it's something more than an album of inoffensive folk-pop. Now here's the thing about this kind of music: I can't stand all that much of it. I love folk music, but the best of it, especially recently (I'm thinking about stuff like Songs: Ohia's Didn't It Rain and Iron & Wine's The Shepherd's Dog here) always contain some kind of darkness in the lyrics or interest in the arrangements that just isn't present here.  The whole thing is just so calculated. It's the kind of stuff designed to make well-off white folks hold their chins between thumb and forefinger and pontificate on how well-produced and pretty it is while they wander around in an art gallery and look at old photos of Andy Warhol altered in clever ways. It certainly is pretty, and almost every track has some sort of nifty production trick to keep you listening. But I play this whole thing and I despair a little bit. It's like a critic-bait movie made for the express purpose of addressing Big Themes and winning Oscars. Sure, the technicals are impeccable and there's no specific thing you can point at and say "That's bad," but it's just lacking heart. It's so goddamned well-behaved and humorless (or if it does have humor, it handles it, in the immortal words of Achewood, with a lab coat and tweezers). Like a lot of this Pitchfork-approved stuff, it makes me want to go and throw on a Meatmen or Frogs record.

MY RATING: 4.3

Andrew Bird - "Skin Is, My"

182. Max Tundra - Mastered By Guy at the Exchange (2002)

Now this is a weird one. This album sounds like someone gave Tundra (that can't be his real name, right?) the keys to a music store and told him to go nuts. There's dance music, pop, some chiptune stuff, acoustic tracks with pretty female vocals, all in less than 40 minutes. Impressively enough, all of this stuff somehow fits together--don't ask me how. The whole thing could fall under the banner of light and airy pop; there's nothing dark here. It's happy computer music! Particularly great are the two-minute dance/punk thing "MBgate" and the lengthy instrumental track "Cabasa".  There's even a song about French music video director Michel Gondry, titled appropriately enough "Gondry", in which Tundra pleads with the director to make a video of one of his songs. The whole thing seems to be simultaneously labored-over and tossed off, which is probably a harder thing to do than it seems. Not a track overstays its welcome, and if the album has a fault at all it's slightness--it seems to fall right on the edge of novelty music, as if the thing were in small part an excuse for Tundra to try out all these wacky things in the studio. But it's no less entertaining for all this, and definitely worth picking up (if you can find it for a reasonable price--used copies of this seem to be ridiculously expensive for some reason).

MY RATING: 7.4

Max Tundra - "Labial"

183. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the glory days of Oasis and Suede (not to knock Suede; their first two records were great, but their entire "scene" was pretty tiresome), but if this is the best the British music press can throw at us these days, then the whole thing is pretty much dead. I have never heard--in my life--music that was so dependent on attitude as opposed to actual musical talent. It's a series of faux-edgy descriptors--clubbing, getting drunk, etc. etc.--in search of music to carry it. I'd compare it to Mike Skinner of the Streets in its general worldview, except that Skinner has a sense of humor and a real talent for arranging and musicianship, which these guys do not have. I suppose this record's only real strength is its bloody-mindedness: there are no tracks which deviate from the central style, which is an angular, punky rock hybrid where the lyrics are more spoken than sung. There is not a single memorable moment throughout its entire length. The band attacks this style with such obsession that there is not a second in which the music, or the listener, is allowed space to breathe. This would be an upside--that is, if the music were good. But it isn't. Much has been said about how original many of the songs are, and indeed the band doesn't really dip into the standard grab-bag of punk riffs we've heard a million times. But the problem is they replace it with stuff that is shapeless and inert. There's a reason punk bands keep using those riffs--they're good. They work (just look at Art Brut, who are no geniuses themselves but kick this group's ass in almost every conceivable way). It's not good to simply repeat what other bands have done, yes, but it's hardly an improvement to replace it with original shit.

MY RATING: 1.0

Arctic Monkeys - "Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured" 

184. Vitalic - OK Cowboy (2005)

French house producer Vitalic's first album is a weird and fascinating combination of heavy techno and aggressive noise that almost brings to mind heavy metal. Later the Fuck Buttons would expand and improve on this sound, but Vitalic's music is more mainstream and would undoubtedly work better in a club. It's dance music you can headbang to. Daft Punk might party hard, but Vitalic is undoubtedly angrier and parties harder. Vitalic is like Daft Punk's louder, dumber older brother (Following that comparison, Burial could be called Daft Punk's younger, more depressed brother). The album is built around the gigantic bangers "La Rock" and "Poney" parts one and two. Both of these are excellent--some of the decade's best dance music. There are also some shorter, weirder tracks, like the opening "Polkamatic" and the closing "Valletta Fanfares", which in its incessant hi-hat pounding seems to presage Major Lazer. So, is this album a classic? No. It's fairly disposable. Is it fun, and worth sitting down and listening to for 50 minutes? Absolutely. I don't know how much value it has outside of a dance club, but inside one, it kills.

MY RATING: 7.0

Vitalic - "Poney Pt. 1"

185. Scarface - The Fix (2002)

I've never been much of a fan of Scarface's rap persona; it's more of the "back in my day" kind of thing, the sort of rap that asserts that today's streets are more violent and lawless than those in the 70s or 80s or whatever, and if people could only (?) everything would be better. This kind of thinking irritates me more than anything else, and it seems especially disingenuous coming from from rappers who cultivate such violent images. Note that my problem is not the violence; it's the insistence that the violence isn't a big deal. This is why I'm a much bigger fan of hip-hop outfits like the Clipse, who make no excuses for their callowness and disregard for human life. So this thing is going to stand and fall on its beats, and thankfully enough, those are pretty good. "Safe" in particular is a great track, despite the aforementioned lyrical lameness. The two Kanye West-produced tracks right afterward are nowhere near his best work, but still better than most of the other stuff on here. Frankly, I can't tell why this album is on this list. Scarface's best stuff was in the 90s; this new work is basically a reliving of past glories. Jay-Z has been around almost as long, yet he (mostly) never devolved into hypocrisy and only-God-understands-me stupidity, like this album does in its terrible final tracks. Pretty mediocre, and not an album I'll be returning to much.

MY RATING: 5.1

Scarface - "Safe"

186. The Thermals - The Body, the Blood, the Machine (2006)

First off, isn't that a great album cover? Kind of an archetypal punk rock cover, that one. The record itself isn't quite as good as its cover, but it comes close. So: The Body, the Blood, the Machine is a punk rock concept album about living in the age of Bush. It's basically an indie version of Green Day's American Idiot, with a very important difference being that it's not an overproduced piece of junk designed to appeal to theater majors and Johnny Depp fans (redundancy)? What the Thermals do very well here is to combine their punk and pop influences so that neither one cancels the other out. This is a hard thing to do, as evidenced by the followup Now We Can See in which the band tilted a little too far toward the "pop" side and basically became Weezer with better lyrics. There are a couple of excellent tracks in the middle of this album that are almost ballads: "Returning to the Fold" and "Test Pattern" maintain their edge through the great production and excellent vocals. The problem is that the album is incredibly samey and that three or four songs near the end of the album are basically the same as those at the beginning, except weaker and a lot longer. So it's not all good. But about half of it is, and it's probably the best thing the Thermals, a profoundly middling band, will ever do, so cherish it, I guess.

MY RATING: 6.8

The Thermals - "Here's Your Future"

187. Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (2001)

Stars of the Lid are drone. This album is basically a series of rising and falling tones which alternate between electronic, string and electric--that's drone. The problem with this is that aside from a strong introduction, it doesn't go anywhere. The whole thing is more than two hours long and it becomes a chore to listen to after about twenty minutes--the endless fading in and out is not particularly evocative of anything except maybe a huge blank sea, the tide pulling in and out, and I like a little bit more variation, even in my mood music. What's especially galling about this is that Stars of the Lid's next album And Their Refinement of the Decline is far superior in almost every way--yet doesn't appear on this list. Maybe 2007 was too recent to judge the merits of another gigantic double album? Basically this album seems like little more than a dry run for that one, and there's no point in buying a weaker version of something else. Aside from a few moments of real beauty, that thankfully come early, this is one of the most emotionally inert records I've ever heard.

MY RATING: 3.5

Stars of the Lid - "Requiem for Dying Mothers (part 2)"

(NOTE SEVERAL MONTHS LATER: I may have underrated this record. The problem is that it doesn't work when listened to directly. It works quite well, however, as background music.)

188. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003)

An interesting situation: a creative, original sound, but no good songs or arrangements to go with it. M83's second album follows the shoegaze pattern of My Bloody Valentine and Ride, except with the guitars entirely replaced by electronics programmed to sound like guitars--so what we've got here is faux-guitar noise with obscure little electronic plinks and keyboard tones in the background designed to give the music space. The thing is loud, overpowering, and boring. There is no talent shown here in arrangements at all--every track follows the same formula: begin with a pretty enough keyboard melody and layer on noise until it becomes ear-shatteringly loud. And that's it. There is not a moment that deviates from this. One track of this is fine enough to listen to, but everything becomes nearly unlistenable when repeated twelve times. What might have made this work is if the tracks were longer and the progression-of-loudness more intricate (this is how most post-rock groups like Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor! work) but nope, most of the songs are between three and four minutes. M83 would would produce one more bad album (Before the Dawn Heals Us) before perfecting their sound, but this album is really of no interest except to completists. Download one track; that's all you need.

MY RATING: 2.7

M83 - "Noise"

189. Jamie Lidell - Multiply (2005)

This is a soul/R&B album released on the Warp label, which used to be better known for electronic stuff like Aphex Twin but has since decided to branch out, adding bands like Battles and Grizzly Bear to their roster. The first thing that comes to mind when you pop this thing in is obviously 70s soul like Marvin Gaye and Al Green, albeit with an updated electronic backing, but other influences are obviously Stax/Motown ("Multiply") and Prince ("When I Come Back Around"). Mostly this is great stuff, classic soul pumped with enough electronic influence to keep it interesting. Lidell has an excellent voice, if somewhat faceless, and he manages to bring songs like "When I Come Back Around" off through just pure force of emotion and personality. This thing is short and every track has something to recommend it, whether it be the pure nostalgia of "Multiply" or the futurist, almost jungle beat of "The City". It's the kind of album that modern radio wants to make you believe doesn't exist anymore. The only weak spot comes at the end--placing two slow ballads right after each other to close out the record wasn't the best idea--but you can always go back and put "A Little Bit More" on again and dance. And you will want to. Lidell's later work hasn't even come close to the promise of this one, but this one is great enough. The level of musicianship here almost comes close to the early "classic period" Stevie Wonder, particularly Talking Book (although it doesn't match a masterpiece like Songs in the Key of Life). It's the perfect thing to play for your grumpy dad in the car when he starts complaining about how they don't make music like they used to. They do, and it's right here. A nice surprise to find on this list.

MY RATING: 8.0

Jamie Lidell - "When I Come Back Around"

190. Elliott Smith - Figure 8 (2000)

The placement of this album on this list is as good an illustration as any of the shortcomings of the "auteur theory". Basically, if Elliott Smith weren't Elliott Smith, this album would be nowhere near a top 200 of the decade. It brings nothing new to the table, and in fact shows Smith regressing toward the almost atonal stuff he did at the beginning of his career. See, the thing about Smith was that he was basically an indie Paul McCartney in disguise--his stuff is at its strongest when it's at its biggest. The best tracks on Either/Or are the most produced, and it was on XO that he finally realized his true strengths and slathered everything in pianos, strings and harpsichords. This album, however, is a kind of half-assed combination of his simpler and his more complex work, with weaker melodies than either. "Junk Bond Trader" has a nice classic-rock feel, and "Everything Means Nothing To Me" makes a real emotional connection, but the rest of this is largely absent interest or memorability. Pick up New Moon instead, and his 90s stuff of course.

MY RATING: 3.8

 Elliott Smith - "Junk Bond Trader"

191. Air - Talkie Walkie (2004)

This is, without a doubt, the single most gorgeous album on this entire 2000s list. It's an album to fall in love to; an album to stare at sunsets to. What Air have done here is take everything gorgeous about 80s pop and soft rock and jettison everything cheesy and sentimental and produce a near-masterpiece. It's the best thing they've ever done--the more famous Moon Safari, while great, doesn't have the melodic and emotional directness that this one does. Hardly a second is given over to aimless "pretty" synthesizers, as would become a problem on later Air releases, and every bit of it is filled up music that is simultaneously light and deep. I have no idea how they did this. Air have always stood on the edge of the proverbial knife--their music is always just this close to being kitsch, the kind of stuff they play to ease your pain while your teeth are being yanked out. Not this time. Just listen to something like "Venus"--never before have I heard a song that so openly courts derisive laughter, the lyrics in their entirety being the following: "You could be from Venus/I could be from Mars/We would be together/Lovers forever/Care for each other/You could live in the sea/And I could be a bird/We would be together/Lovers forever/Care for each other/if you were an illusion/I would make it real/We would be together/Lovers forever/Care for each other/If you walk in the sun/I would be your shadow/We would be together/Lovers forever." That ain't Shakespeare, but how Air make it work is to eschew all "emotion" in the lyrics, reciting them like robots, so that the words themselves become sounds, almost a religious chant. The song is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard in my life. #191? Shamefully low. Buy this album. Give it to your girlfriend and she will marry you. I guarantee it (not a guarantee).

MY RATING: 9.7

Air - "Venus"

192. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll (2005)

If there was ever a record that didn't need a follow-up, it was this one; Art Brut's insanely arch, ironic first album is almost entirely self-contained, featuring an opening track about forming a band and a track near the end about breaking one up. This is probably the most meta rock album ever made, it's about nothing else than rock music itself. Most reviews of Art Brut degenerate into a quote-fest of the album's most memorable lines, and indeed it's full of them. The music itself is a bunch of energetic punk that's been ripped off a million times before and undoubtedly will be reused a hundred times after; it's hardly Art Brut's fault that the guitar riffs they're using have come from the minds of others. It even seems appropriate, given the album's subject matter. Picking a "favorite song" is an exercise in futility since it's all of a piece, but I have a soft spot for "Modern Art", basically because it cracks me up the most consistently ("Modern art...makes me...want to...ROCK OUT!!!" is undoubtedly one of the most kickass moments in rock music this decade).  Critical opinion on this album has kind of soured since it came out five years ago, probably because the whole thing's a sort of shallow joke. But that doesn't mean it isn't entertaining. It's short, it's catchy, it's funny, and for these guys, that's enough.

MY RATING: 7.5

Art Brut - "Modern Art"

193. Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in the Hands (2004)

 

Devendra Banhart is a hippie from San Francisco with a giant beard who just happens to make some excellent folk music. This album's greatest strength is its unpretentiousness--Banhart sings songs about his beard and people he knows and things like that. The melodies are tasteful without being boring (a hard thing to pull off--look at the depressing number of guys-with-a-guitar out there). This thing was produced by scary man and resident gothic genius Michael Gira, and even though this album, tonally, is pretty far from the Swans, it's easy to see what attracted him. Banhart's voice is fantastic, a wild quaver that almost singlehandedly pulls this album to the upper echelon of folk music records. It's tough to mention highlights on such an even record, but my personal favorite is probably "My Beard Is For Siobhan," which gains its power from the inexplicable foot-stomping hoedown Banhart tosses in at the end. A wonderful, subtle, underrated record. My little brother loves it.

MY RATING: 8.1

Devendra Banhart - "A Sight to Behold"

194. Pulp - We Love Life (2001)

This album wasn't supposed to be this good. Pulp were, by all standards, washed up; their best work was far behind them, and I was one of the few who thought This Is Hardcore was basically an ambitious misfire. Jarvis Cocker's propensity for favoring drama over melody had finally caught up with him, and while "I Spy" was a great enough song on the relatively varied Different Class, with This Is Hardcore we had an entire album of "I Spy"s. To make matters worse, the band had enlisted Scott Walker to produce the record, and as everyone who's heard the man's albums knows, Scott Walker is good at many things, but he is not good at melody. So how the hell did this happen? We Love Life is Pulp's most melodic and well-composed album in six years, even giving their 1993-1995 work a run for its money. It's just great rock music, rousing and beautiful in all the right places, with a marked pastoral influence that shows itself in tracks like "Weeds", "Wickerman" and "Roadkill". Ironically enough, the tracks most reminiscent of Pulp's earlier material ("Bob Lind", "Bad Cover Version") are the weakest; the band slides so effectively into this new, more acoustic incarnation that they seem to have been doing it their whole career.  It takes a damn good record to make a title like "We Love Life" seem non-ironic, and even harder if you're Pulp. Probably the best swan song of the decade, and a great surprise to find it on this list.

MY RATING: 8.7

Pulp - "Sunrise"

195. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - The Letting Go (2006)

Basically a more pastoral cousin of Billy's 1999 masterpiece I See a Darkness; thus it largely avoids the depression and weirdness of that one in favor of a string-drenched, "pretty" folkiness (with female backing vocals). Sometimes this works, and is unbelievably gorgeous ("Then The Letting Go", "No Bad News") and sometimes it degenerates into endless, tuneless nonsense ("God's Small Song"). The two best tracks on this album by far are the most reminiscent of his previous work, probably not coincidentally. "Strange Form of Life" has probably the single most heart-rending guitar riff of the entire decade, and "The Seedling" is pretty terrifying. It's probably worth picking this thing up for those two tracks alone, but it's kind of depressing to see such an iconoclastic artist systematically remove all the things that made him special, all the things that once separated him from every other wispy-voiced troubadour with an acoustic guitar.

MY RATING: 6.8

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Strange Form of Life"

196. William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I-IV (2001)

This one can't be reviewed quite like other albums; it's as much about the process of making the music as the music itself. This thing is nearly five hours, by far the longest album on this list, with the opening track alone lasting over an hour. And it's a five-second loop of an (admittedly gorgeous) electronic melody, repeated over and over again. The rest of the tracks follow the same pattern. Basinski was transferring these loops, most of which were close to fifteen years old, to tape when he realized the tape was disintegrating as he was making the transfer. The music itself is dying as you listen to it. Loops drop out and become distorted, change, fill with static, collapse to nothingness. This is a work of art in which music and concept are so utterly intertwined they could not be separated without killing both, like Siamese twins. It's profound, it's boring. It is not "music" in the conventional sense; its progression (or regression, I suppose) comes not from the aesthetics of any human being but from the randomness of a dying machine, the natural destructiveness of nature. It's half-music. But how much can any of us say we control ourselves? Perhaps Basinski is simply being more honest here, but coming right out and saying exactly how it was chance and nature, and not his own mind, that constructed this music. How strange that what is probably the simplest album on this list, musically, conceals the profoundest depths.

MY RATING: 9.6

William Basinski - "D | P 1.1 (excerpt)"
(note: of all the albums on this list, this one is probably the least effectively served by a sample. It really should be experienced in full, or it won't make much sense. Trust me, it's worth it.)

197. Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals (2007)

I first heard this album the same day I first viewed Terrence Malick's classic film Days of Heaven, so there will probably always be a connection in my mind between the alternately bucolic and apocalyptic vision of the film and the gorgeous, psychedelic sound of this album's best tracks. The album's marriage between pop and psychedelia brings to mind most readily stuff on Nuggets II, but since this is an indie album made by New Yorkers in the 2000s, there's a strong dance element. It sounds like a new-century update of the Eastern-style stuff everyone was doing in the 60s, mixed with elements of the kind of campfire-singalong thing that Animal Collective was trying to do on Sung Tongs, except more successful (not that Animal Collective didn't immediately redeem themselves with their next record). The first four tracks set a standard that the rest of the album can't reach, however, and there's a noticeable drop-off in quality after the creepy lyrics and wheezy accordion of "Germs". The second half is basically the same as the first half minus the good melodies, so at least you've got an interesting enough atmosphere to groove on, if nothing else. Still, the first four tracks are glorious, almost revelatory, and about as good as pop music got this decade. Definitely worth hearing, and it's nice to see this band get some commercial success with their follow-up.

MY RATING: 8.0

Yeasayer - "Sunrise"