97. The Dismemberment Plan - Change (2001)

I'm a little dubious of the concept of "maturity" in making music. Usually it's nothing more than an admission that the album in question is less creative, less risky than those that have come before. R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People is undoubtedly more "mature" than Lifes Rich Pageant, but is it better? Is Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero a better album than The Downward Spiral just because its subject matter is more concerned with "important" subjects? Is Nick Cave's lugubrious The Boatman's Call better than the gloriously ridiculous Your Funeral...My Trial? I doubt it. This is all to say that it's almost a miracle when a more "mature" album manages to outdo its predecessors, and the Dismemberment Plan's Change is one of those miracles. In his prime, Travis Morrison was one of the greatest lyricists on the planet Earth, and Change is loaded with examples of his skill: "There will be times when you will not like the sound of my voice"; "I've watched the rich risk it all for 15 minutes in a Heathrow bathroom". It's not as universally-loved a record as Emergency & I but it's a better one: while that album had a few too many filler-y punk rock tracks (because no matter how much I might love them, the Dismemberment Plan's primary skill is not "rocking") this one is just one brilliantly written and composed rock track after another. "Superpowers" is the most anthemic song they ever wrote, "Time Bomb" should have been a massive hit, and "The Other Side" is one of the best love songs written by anybody this decade. "Come Home" and "Following Through" are admittedly a little weak compared to the rest of the album, but overall this is this band's strongest statement.

MY RATING: 8.9

The Dismemberment Plan - "Superpowers"

98. Cat Power - You Are Free (2003)

Cat Power's You Are Free is one of the great emotional experiences of the decade. Songs like "I Don't Blame You" and "Names" are textbook examples of the power of sheer performance to overcome substandard melody; both of these songs are basically simplistic piano vamps but Chan Marshall turns them into songs so emotionally punishing that I, personally, find this album hard to listen to. "Good Woman" in particular is a masterpiece, one of the greatest examples of "alt-country" I can think of and a piece of music that would move just about anybody to tears. Actually, every single track on this album has that power to an extent--Marshall's voice is so gorgeous and evocative that she fixes everything she touches. And this album might need a little fixing: a few of the songs have little going for them outside of Marshall's charisma, and if you pressed me I'd say the whole thing was probably about ten minutes too long. But that hardly seems to matter when you're listening to something as powerful as "Shaking Paper," a song that I'll be damned if I can understand but nevertheless is about as astonishing a construction from simple elements that I've ever heard. So: pick it up, and have a good cry.

MY RATING: 9.2

Cat Power - "Names"

99. Lil Wayne - Da Drought 3 (2007)

First off: Lil Wayne is some kind of a genius. There is nobody else in hip-hop with his ability to conjure up bizarre images from nothing--his skill in wordplay is unmatched. The problem, like with many geniuses, is he seemingly has no ability to distinguish between quality and subpar work: he just lets it all flow out of him as it comes and the rest of us have to try to pick out the good stuff from the bad. This mixtape is a nearly two hour-long tribute to Weezy's genius and madness, and you're just as likely to be amazed as you are to be bored. There are tracks so tight they could have fit on a regular album ("Walk It Out") and Wayne ranting for ten minutes over a minimalistic beat ("Outro"). If you're the type who likes his albums to be immaculate objects without flaw, then stay far away, but if you don't mind sitting through some boredom, then this won't seem too bad. Me I'm not really the type to sit through stuff like Self-Portrait and Sandanista! even though I'm a big fan of both Bob Dylan and the Clash, so this album's appeal is fairly limited for me. But if you like Wayne, this is nothing less than his brain torn out and spread out over two hours of music. Beware.

MY RATING: 5.6

Lil Wayne - "Swizzy (Remix)"

100. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Source Tags & Codes (2002)

No album of the 00s has been treated more disingenuously by the P-Fork guys than this one, which was given a perfect rating at the time and proclaimed a masterpiece, an album to end all albums, the logical endpoint of the entire postpunk era, etc. Now, it's tossed into the ignominious #100 spot on their end-of-decade list and treated like a bad memory, a bit of embarrassing youthful exuberance that we've all outgrown. Certainly Trail of Dead's followup records didn't help: I don't think they're that bad myself (and if you say you can't hear the beginnings of their later ridiculousness in this album, you're nuts) but they certainly aren't that good. But all of that is unfair--this album is huge, it's pretentious, it's embarrassing in parts, certainly, but it's incredibly powerful and for my money it beats anything the band's obvious forebears, Sonic Youth, have ever done (not Fugazi, however). This is an incredibly emotional record--one of the few that manages to generate true and real emotion not though simplicity but through complexity and density, a million things going on at once, orchestral samples, layered guitars, thundering drums. The album is a torrent of sound. The songs move in and out of each other, from the vicious "Homage" to the super-duper-anthemic "Relative Ways". It's a punk record that sounds like it cost a billion dollars, and it's ridiculous and stupid. It's also fantastic, one of the decade's most important and enduring albums.

MY RATING: 9.6

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - "Days of Being Wild"

101. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand (2004)

Franz Ferdinand's first album is one of the finest examples of a type of music that in the future is going to signify the 00s just as disco signified the late 70s and British Invasion signified the mid-60s: angular, Gang of Four-esque rock. What FF did to vary the formula was add a gigantic, ass-shaking low end (so heavy that in fact none other than Kanye West once called the band "white crunk") and catchier, Hollies-esque melodies. It's amazing how well-formed this is, and it's only a debut; only Bloc Party's first album beats it, I think, and only the Strokes come close. Everyone's heard "Take Me Out", but "Cheating on You" beats both the Vines and the Hives at their own game and the lyrics to "Michael" must have pissed off more than one idiotic jock-type who bought this record because of "Take Me Out". Granted, everything's not perfect: I've always thought the other gigantic single "This Fire" was too simplistic for its own good and "Come On Home" is pure filler. Also, the album's production is weak: playing this record back-to-back with the later FF albums just shows how much better their later ones sound (even though they never reached this level of songwriting again). A near-great album, even if it's one that people like to pile on for being "shallow"--but how "deep", exactly, are those early Beatles records, I ask you?

MY RATING: 8.8

Franz Ferdinand - "Jacqueline"

102. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree (2005)

I don't think I'll ever be able to appreciate John Darnielle's music; his voice is so annoying and unlikable (for me) that everything he sings, no matter how gorgeous or well-written, is utterly mangled. This album is about his relationship with his abusive stepfather, and while that's an interesting subject to approach through music the lyrics have a tinge of safeness to them, of overly-studied "tossed-off"-ness. Maybe it's just Darnielle's voice that's throwing me off, but everything here is just so composed that it's bloodless. Listen to Will Oldham's music for comparison--even on a (relatively) weak recording like The Letting Go he blends in perfectly with the music, and songs like "The Seedling" and "Strange Form of Life" have real emotional power. Also someone like Jason Molina--his music and subject matter is similar to Darnielle's but there's a power in his lyrics and arrangements that Darnielle almost completely lacks. It sounds like a self-help record, an album that would have a hotline listed in the liner notes for someone to call if they also have an abusive family member. Again, it's not the subject matter that sinks this record; it's that the subject matter is not interpreted in an interesting way. Darnielle needs to give his stuff to other musicians, maybe; his voice sinks everything he does. He sounds kind of like Thomas Dolby; just imagine the guy who sang "She Blinded Me With Science" trying to sing super-emotional folk songs and you'll understand my ambivalence toward this record and everything else the Mountain Goats do. The arrangements are boring; the vocals weak. Just another folk record.

MY RATING: 3.7

The Mountain Goats - "Broom People"

103. M.I.A. - Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol.1 (2004)

This served as little more than an introduction to M.I.A. and her music back in 2004, and today it doesn't serve much purpose now that Arular and Kala exist; all this album does is make me want to listen to an actual M.I.A. album. I did like that this mixtape looks back all the way to the early 90s when looking for stuff to sample; it's a big departure from the hundreds of rap mixtapes that never sample anything that's more than a year old. "China Girl (Diplo Mix)" starts out with a Eurythmics sample, which by itself isn't all that creative but shows M.I.A.'s awareness that she is closer to Madonna than Fela Kuti, who never once allowed the politics on his records to usurp the music, so too on this record its most powerful moments are when M.I.A. allows the political statements to come second behind the beats and samples. So this is basically a party record, to be put on when you're more focused on drinking and talking to other people than listening to music.

MY RATING: 3.8

M.I.A. - "Baile Funk One"

104. The Postal Service - Give Up (2003)

I really wanted to dislike this record--at first listen it's the worst kind of adult-contemporary pabulum, pleasant electronic pop with wistfully pretty and studiedly "clever" lyrics about love and all that. But I can't hate it. The melodies are too well-written and the instrumentation gels so well with the vocals that I can't discount it. The melody of "Such Great Heights" is cloying and annoying, yes, but once you get beyond that you can start to appreciate the finer points of this record--the way "We Will Become Silhouettes" seems to eschew a chorus melody until the last possible second, the heavily processed horn samples of "Clark Gable", the pounding noise of the first few minutes of "Natural Anthem". It's like a much-improved version of the Notwist's Neon Golden, except where that record was content to float in a puddle of its own mediocrity this one tries to be catchy--even anthemic--something that at first might seem at odds with the practiced simplicity of the electronic instrumentation, but works incredibly well most of the time. Ben Gibbard's vocals are an acquired taste, yes, but I can't think of any other sort of singing that would sort this kind of music so well. A real surprise. As this type of electronic pop goes it doesn't quite reach the mastery of the Junior Boys (who are this genre's masters) but it's a clear improvement on the Notwist.

MY RATING: 8.5

The Postal Service - "Clark Gable"

105. Battles - Mirrored (2007)

I've yet to wander much into the somewhat frightening (and terribly-named) world that is "math-rock"; it seems to be more about technical prowess than emotion and I don't like that kind of stuff. Battles vary the palette with adding weird, processed vocals and when it's all put together this stuff sounds like battle (aha!) music for some kind of possessed chipmunk army. One thing to be said: the musicianship on this record is almost wholly perfect and the production is fantastic. "Race:In" performs the neat trick of making it sound like the performers are going at it right in your own room, and "Bad Trails" is repetitive but produces a frightening little atmosphere (and was memorably used in the underrated film Big Fan). The problem with albums that carve out a distinct sonic atmosphere for themselves (and this one certainly does) is that if the resulting album is not sufficiently emotionally convincing it can sound like novelty music, a one-off. Two other famous "singular-sounding" albums--My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and Slint's Spiderland--moved beyond their oddness through transcendence in the first case and power and terror in the second, and this album really has neither of those. It's a nifty little curio, and since this band seems to be all but broken up right now, never to release a followup, that's probably what it will remain.

MY RATING: 7.4

Battles - "Atlas"

106. Manitoba - Up in Flames (2003)

In electronic, sample-based music it's usually electronic elements that are sampled and placed in new contexts; what this album tried to do was take acoustic music and mess with it electronically so that the two types of music (electronic and acoustic) would be bonded on a molecular level. This sounds like psychedelia more often than not, and a lot of this sounds like a more lush but less melodic version of Love's Forever Changes. Vocals are chopped up and abused in the same fashion, but the effect is pleasantly relaxing (this is not intense music). The whole album is basically just a huge, candy-colored collection of psychedelia; there's not much to say about it as it changes little throughout its duration (honestly the whole album sounds like individual parts of a single longish track) but on the whole this stuff feels a lot more honest and creative to me than repetitive "psychedelic nostalgia" bands like the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. Just let it relax and carry you away, etc...

MY RATING: 8.3

Manitoba - "Kid You'll Move Mountains"

107. Justice - † (2007)

It was inevitable that after Daft Punk would come the Daft Punk copyists--even moreso since it seems that the original duo don't seem much interested in making new music anymore. The band is still coasting off of Discovery, now nine years old, and it only makes sense that other groups would jump in to fill the super-bassy French house void Daft Punk have left behind them. So how does this fare? The entire thing is basically constructed around the gigantic single "D.A.N.C.E.", a song I've never really liked, mainly because the playground-chant chorus isn't nearly as good as the band seems to think it is and there isn't enough else interesting in the track to make up for it. The rest of the tracks somewhat resemble that single except with the catchy choruses removed, as though Justice only decided to copy the middle, slightly less good section of Discovery and forget the rest. All is not lost, though: "Newjack" and "DVNO" are both great dance tracks, the latter with its expertly sampled vocals almost worthy of the great ones themselves (it's as good as "Face to Face", anyway). But the whole thing is kind of neutered and faceless, as if sheer loudness were enough to overcome the essential emptiness at this album's center. It isn't, and it doesn't.

MY RATING: 5.9

Justice - "Let There Be Light"

108. Sonic Youth - Murray Street (2002)

Sonic Youth worked hard to carve out a totally original sound for themselves in the 80s, of which Daydream Nation was the apotheosis, but, that apex reached, it seems like now a Sonic Youth record is more successful based on how much it deviates from the SY formula (the great pop record Rather Ripped) rather than how much it adheres to it (the boring Sonic Nurse and The Eternal). Thankfully Murray Street follows the former more than the latter path and uses the Sonic Youth sound not for avantgarde noisemaking but for sheer atmospheric beauty. This is certainly the most gorgeous album Sonic Youth have ever made--certainly it isn't the strongest in songwriting or sheer power, but that isn't its focus: its focus is to be pretty, and it does that wonderfully. Also, SY's infamous noise breaks in the middle of each track are used this time in the service of emotional power rather than wacky guitar experimentation. Even the lengthy feedback part that covers about seven minutes in "Karen Revisited" has a clear emotional trajectory from beginning to end--something new for this band. These are not conventional songs in any sense of the word--they meander and move through various instrumental passages, but the passages are very pretty, and this is a great record to fall asleep to. Who would have thought that in the days of "Death Valley 69"?

MY RATING: 8.1

Sonic Youth - "Rain On Tin"