77. Missy Elliott - Miss E...So Addictive (2001)

What is it with albums where the second side is just a weaker version of the first? If this album were nothing but the first four "actual" tracks it would be one of the best of the decade: "Dog in Heat", "One Minute Man", "Lick Shots" and of course "Get Ur Freak On" are fucking awesome, a combination of monstrous funk bass and squiggly-sounding synths that sound not only completely new but out of time entirely: Timbaland's production here is fantastic. But the album's last two-thirds? Well, there's nothing much to say about it except that it fails to match what's come before and just makes you want to listen to "Dog in Heat" again. Actually, can we talk about "Get Ur Freak On"? That track is amazing. It doesn't reveal its genius the first time round: in fact it even sounds annoying, the perpetual Punjabi melody threatening to give you a headache, but a lot of great pop music has skirted just this side of irritation--remember "Sugar Sugar"? Hell, even on the opposite side, Laurie Anderson's "O Superman"? Pop music thrives on repetition (The Fall understand this) and "Get Ur Freak On" is such a bracing combination of genres that it transcends funk/R&B and becomes not even pop but some kind of all-encompassing music that represents all cultures: Eastern and Western, rich and poor. The rest? Ehh.

MY RATING: 6.3

Missy Elliott - "Get Ur Freak On"

84. Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World (2001)

Super Furry Animals are a pop consortium in the vein of the Beatles in that they'll try any musical style and use any idea (the comparison should end there, however). There's not a single thing they won't do, and on this album you've got an acoustic pop track that turns into a death metal song ("Receptacle for the Respectable") a countryish ballad that becomes an Aphex Twin-ish IDM track and several songs that sound like Broadway showstoppers ("Shoot Doris Day" and "It's Not The End of the World?"). It's impossible to describe exactly what a Super Furry Animals album sounds like because that changes track-to-track and even minute-to-minute, so all you can do is rate how well the songs work. I don't feel like this one is quite as successful as Radiator (which was their best collection of songs) or even Guerrilla (which was their best attempt at messing with genres) but it does have a better sense of sequencing: "Run, Christian Run!" has an honest-to-god epic guitar solo to close things out, and "Alternate Route to Vulcan Street" is a great, shimmery opener. The problem is that here the "wacky" effects occasionally crowd out the songs, which are weaker than those in the band's past, and too much time is wasted on inexplicable sound effects and noise that create no atmosphere and mostly serve as lip service to the band's eccentricity and to help bolster their "weird" credentials. These moments don't work, but the album mostly does and it's the rare pop record that is as ambitious in its sound as it is in its melody and songwriting.

MY RATING: 8.1

Super Furry Animals - "Receptacle for the Respectable"

92. Björk - Vespertine (2001)

I really, really wanted to like this album. Post and Homogenic are both masterpieces, but the key to their greatness was that they combined Bjork's persona with understandable song structures and melodies. When Bjork abandons this, the results are unlistenable (Medulla). She's just not suited for experimental music--the worst of it seems like a less good Yoko Ono, terrible vocal experiments layered over uninspiring backdrops. This album isn't nearly as bad as Medulla but you can sense Bjork moving in that direction--most of the songs are "atmospheric"-ish little poetic experiments that become tiring over the album's nearly hour-long length. The only tracks that really work are the opening "Hidden World", with its hypnotizing vocal backing and lovely closing track "Unison". The rest is just frighteningly unmemorable and disappointing--what happened to the mid-album ass-kicking of "It's Oh So Quiet" and "Enjoy"? The gorgeous string arrangements on "Joga" and "Bachelorette"? There's nothing on this record that even approaches the ambition and power of what Bjork's already achieved. It's Bjork-lite.


MY RATING: 4.4

Bjork - "Pagan Poetry"

96. Spoon - Girls Can Tell (2001)

Spoon are one thing above all, and that is dependable. I suppose you could also call them minimalistic, which they certainly are for a rock band, but after five critically lauded albums, none of which really departed from their central style, dependable makes more sense. We're going to be seeing a lot of Spoon on this list (they're up there with Radiohead in the critically-respected game) but it's hard to think of things to say about them; they practice an uber-cool kind of rock music that apes the atmosphere of jazz if none of its content. Everything is simple, instrumentally minimal, and catchy. The problem with Girls Can Tell is that the style works more as a straitjacket than anything else; I can hardly tell any difference between the first five tracks on this album at all, and after the nifty little organ-led ballad "Anything You Want" there's another six or so songs that hew so closely to the same sound that you can't tell them apart. Now, sometimes, that's okay. Clientele's Suburban Light certainly is just as, if not more, monochromatic in style than this one is and that one comes out a near-masterpiece. But that one has atmosphere and this one doesn't. It's just a series of slightly jazzy rock songs; there's little of the synth that the band would add to their repertoire on Kill the Moonlight and none of the horn overdubs they threw in on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. It kind of sounds like a slightly more upbeat National at times, and that's hardly something anyone needs.

MY RATING: 6.1

Spoon - "Lines in the Suit"

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"

115. The Shins - Oh, Inverted World (2001)

This is one record that's almost certainly going to be remembered more as a cultural artifact than anything approaching a great collection of music; while it's catchy enough, the thing is too low-key and mediocre overall to have done much if it hadn't been for a certain (annoying) character in a certain (terrible) movie saying that this band would "change your life". Well, no, seeing that there's more than enough groups out there who produce music just like this, and alleged "highlight" "New Slang" is disappointing, a mindlessly pretty acoustic track that's like Nick Drake with all the atmosphere sucked out. The more upbeat pop tracks generally fare better, and while there's hardly a song here I can remember once the thing's over, they certainly sound great while they're on. About one-sixth of this really short album is taken up with a minimal acoustic ditty called "The Past and Pending", and it's the best thing here, the only thing on the album that could be said to approach a truly timeless melody. The jury's still out (for me) on these guys: Chutes Too Narrow was great, Wincing the Night Away was awful, and this sits somewhere in the middle. It's pleasant, just don't expect it to change your life or anything. How could music this dementedly unpretentious ever change anything at all?

MY RATING: 6.2

The Shins - "Caring Is Creepy"

117. Low - Things We Lost in the Fire (2001)

What is your tolerance for depression in music? What is your tolerance for moroseness? It better be high, because this record, as beautiful as it is, might well drive you to suicide if you listen to it in the wrong frame of mind. It's not happy music. The first lyric is "When they found your body / Giant X's on your eyes" and it only gets more despairing from there. Low's music is like a black-and-white line drawing: everything is leached out of it until all that's left is a skeleton, the aching slowness of their melodies repeating and repeating. The two vocalists sing as though they thought there was nothing left to live for. I find this album to be one of the decade's most emotionally punishing--you either have to give yourself up to it or ignore it entirely. Not a single song deviates from the general atmosphere of glacial depression except for "Dinosaur Act", and that one's just a little bit louder than the rest--and just as depressing. I can't love this album--I don't think anyone really could--but it is what it is: a celebration of the futility of love and laments for the dead.

MY RATING: 8.8

Low - "Closer"

118. The Beta Band - Hot Shots II (2001)

The Beta Band's first (non-EP) record legitimately sounded like the work of a band who didn't give a shit whether anyone liked them or not. It was as shambolic and disconnected a record as I've ever heard; the band themselves disparaged it later. All of which makes this followup even more surprising--every track follows the same underlying aesthetic, that of a simple electronic pop overlaid with harmony vocals. It's like a far more accomplished version of the Notwist's Neon Golden--while the Notwist so systematically stripped their songs of emotion that what was left over was--nothing, the Beta Band make sure that their electronics are wedded to great songs. Actually, this album is pretty much faultless--the problem is that the thing is so damn tunnel-visioned, so committed to a single sound, that it can become fatiguing to listen to. It's best appreciated in small doses, when you can listen to individual tracks and appreciate them at your leisure. One after another it all becomes numbing. It's too laid-back. Still, if you're at all interested in electronic pop music, only the Postal Service's Give Up and the Junior Boys' Last Exit managed to best this album this decade (and the Beta Band's vocals are way less annoying than the Postal Service's).

MY RATING: 8.0

The Beta Band - "Al Sharp"

120. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Tyranny of Distance (2001)

Ted Leo and his band are no-frills. There is no attempt on this record to be anything else but a really good pop-punk group, and it's in this that Leo most resembles Elvis Costello, where his innovations were mostly taking a more modern aesthetic and marrying it to an older style. Although I prefer Leo to Costello--his songwriting seems less predictable and contrived. Also, a good seventy percent of these songs are great. The beginning is a little shaky, but once you hit "Timorous Me" the album just becomes one great track after another. Leo also shows his talent at sequencing--the gorgeous, two-minute folk track "The Gold Finch and the Red Oak" is perfectly placed after the propulsive riff-fest "My Vien Ilin". The album is free of the bizarre production choices that plagued the followup Hearts of Oak and, frankly, the songs are just better. Listen to that vibrate-y guitar bit that shows up in the verses of "St. John the Divine"! The Gaelic-sounding fiddley part at the end of "Timorous Me"! Leo is able to fill his songs with clever little bits that help them transcend mere catchiness, and it's this that tosses him to the top of the pack of the hundreds of groups out there that essentially sound just like this one. It won't ever be confused with a classic (it's too workmanlike for that)--it's just a group of excellent songs.

MY RATING: 8.6

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - "Biomusicology"

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"

144. Andrew W.K. - I Get Wet (2001)

When it comes to the phenomenon (thing?) that is Andrew W.K., there's not much room for subtle thinking. This music rejects subtlety, forcefully and almost involuntarily like a human body rejecting a donor liver. The message of "Party Hard" is to party hard. The message of "I Love NYC" is that Andrew loves NYC. The message of "She Is Beautiful" is that she is beautiful. There may have been subtlety in this music's making but there is none in the final result, and it's one of the greatest examples I've ever seen in which what must have been thousands of hours of studio time was spent slaving over something so brilliantly, gloriously stupid. What does this album sound like? It sounds like Van Halen's "Jump" if it were performed by Metallica. It sounds like a sweaty man jumping around a room. It sounds like if Queen decided, after recording News of the World, to double down on that style and never attempt anything else. You can't argue with this record. It will break into your house and party you into submission. There's a song on here called "Party Till You Puke", and that's exactly what the song is about. I can't argue with that.

MY RATING: 8.3

Andrew W.K. - "Party Hard" (what else???)

152. Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein (2001)

Man, I really wanted to like this one, and even now it still baffles me why I don't; the producer is EL-P, mastermind behind Funcrusher Plus, one of my favorite hip-hop records of all time, and Cannibal Ox, lyrically, cover similar themes (science fiction, surrealism)--except maybe even to a more extreme extent than Company Flow. So what's the problem? The problem might lie in the beats--while the beats on Funcrusher were a bit odd and skewed compared to most hip-hop production, there was still a solid enough low end that the songs never floated away--a track like "Silence" was as funky as anything the Roots ever did. This album, though, mainly focuses on the "creepy" side, and the songs kind of fly away with it. Also the guys in Ox are nowhere as good at rapping as Company Flow were--while the first half of Funcrusher Plus was alive with memorable lines ("mute like Maggie Simpson"; "I see through pussy like the Invisible Woman") there's almost nothing here to latch onto--they're trying to be too weird, and frankly, when it comes to surrealistic lyricism in rap, nobody is ever going to outdo Kool Keith on Dr. Octagonecologyst, so best not even try. It might not seem fair to constantly bring up another record when looking at this one, but Funcrusher Plus is this album's most obvious referent, and the similarities between the two are so strong that when listening to this one, all I can hear are its faults. It's great for two tracks, but becomes incredibly numbing for longer than that--every track has the exact same production tricks and atmosphere. Disappointing, all the more so because modern hip-hop could use a bit of branching-out like this album tried to do.

MY RATING: 4.4

Cannibal Ox - "Stress Rap"

166. Jim O'Rourke - Insignificance (2001)

One of the weirdest turnarounds this decade: avantgarde/jazz maven from NYC named Jim O'Rourke produces...a 70s classic rock record? I don't know what the hell possessed him to do this, but it was certainly a good choice, as this album shows there's still life in the old genre yet. Aside from the bizarre (and fantastic) cover art, O'Rourke is going all the way towards trying to make this feel like a forgotten 70s rock classic: it opens with a catchy guitar riff, there are only 7 songs and the whole thing's over in less than 40 minutes, it's split up fairly equally between sunshiny acoustic pop and big 70s Foghat-esque guitar riffs--often in the same song. The record's main flaw is that it isn't sequenced very well--there's a glut of slow-paced acoustic stuff near the end so the album just kind of peters out after the fantastic "Memory Lane" ends. Aside, of course, from the album's last two minutes--O'Rourke, seemingly apropos of nothing, piles on layers of static and noise that steadily increases in volume until the album just shuts off, leaving you to wonder just what in the hell that all was and affirming his identity as more of a noisemaker than a pop songwriter. Still, this is an excellent try, and certainly one of the more weird and singular records of the decade. A rare example of an artist seemingly stepping completely out of his or her comfort zone and coming up with a success (partially--the last couple of tracks really are pretty boring). Play it for your dad: just sneak it into the CD player between the local radio station playing "Slow Ride" and "Foreplay/Long Time" for the sixtieth time that day, and he'll probably like it. Just don't show him the cover.

Jim O'Rourke - "All Downhill From Here" 

MY RATING: 7.8

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"

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"

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.)

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"

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.)