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"

119. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Eminem was huge ten years ago and enough critics have written enough about him that I don't know what else I can add except that it's clear the reason Eminem is a great rapper isn't his lyrics, it's his delivery. If we consider Eminem just a vocalist, then he's certainly one of the greatest to ever live: he changes his voice every five seconds, acts out little dialogues in almost every other line, and just basically pulls every trick in the book to make his lyrics more interesting. The beats are little more than a backdrop for Eminem's rants: all Dr. Dre does is put down a simple nursery-rhymey melody and that's it. The problem with this thing is that it's way too long. "Amityville", "Bitch Please II", "Under the Influence" and "Criminal" could have all been dropped, and whose idea was it not to end the record with "Kim", an incredible bit of playacting that decimates everything that comes after it? Too many reviews of Eminem's music (like Kanye West after him) are little more than crappy bits of sub-psychology in which the reviewer tries to figure out what it all "means" for our society that something so violent and antagonistic could be such a huge hit. What's really in Eminem's head, etc. It doesn't surprise me at all: Eminem's delivery is so above and beyond what any other rapper was attempting at the time that (to me) it was almost a foregone conclusion he'd be successful. This is his magnum opus, I suppose, although one wonders exactly how much of a masterpiece it is when nearly a half hour of it should have been chopped.


MY RATING: 7.8

Eminem - "Kill You"

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"

121. Broadcast - Haha Sound (2003)

Basically the same thing as the last Brodcast album, except considerably less good, mostly due to the fact that the band dials down the "atmospheric" quality of their sound (which was the only thing they had going for them) in favor of going further down the "pop" route, which they aren't nearly as good at. Other than that it's the same sort of thing, more simple melodies surrounded with chimes and organs and 60s swinger-pad-isms. I like "Pendulum"'s excellent drumming, and "Lunch Hour Pops" has a nice uptempo melody (even though, for a band who sounds exactly like Stereolab, the track sounds EXACTLY like Stereolab), but what else is there here? Pleasant, unmemorable, forgettable. Get their first album and forget this one.

MY RATING: 4.9

Broadcast - "Man Is Not A Bird"

122. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (2000)

There can hardly be a more disappointing career in the decade than that of Ryan Adams, a country singer who started out by recording one of the best debut albums in the history of the genre and followed it up with album after album of second-rate, whatever-pops-into-his-head stuff. That shouldn't take away from the greatness of this one, though; what's best about this is how well Adams is able to get away with reconciling the two sides of the "country outlaw" character: the wild outlaw and the sensitive outlaw. There are far more ballads on this album than uptempo numbers, certainly, but those that are here are so powerful they come close to redeeming the entire genre. "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)" is certainly one of the greatest country stompers ever written or performed by anyone, a monstrous explosion of excitement that seems connected by lightning directly to the greatest folk performers of the 20s and 30s--Uncle Dave Macon, Dock Boggs. The ballads are no less good--the only one of them that approaches generic is "Oh My Sweet Carolina", and Adams saves it with his stunning arrangement and vocal performance. The songwriting is impeccable, the lyrics fantastic, the highlights so many it's easier to list the songs that aren't than those that are--this is a classic. I fully believe that.

MY RATING: 9.5

Ryan Adams - "Bartering Lines"

123. Four Tet - Rounds (2003)

Four Tet are usually thrown in the "electronica" bin, but that makes no sense to me because this stuff sounds closer to a more melodic and less improvisatory Tortoise: the emphasis here is on live instrumentation and songwriting and less on "exploration". I love this album. I think it's gorgeous. Kieran Hebden seems to have built a career on expanding the prepared piano sound Aphex Twin got into on Drukqs, and the whole thing is easily recognizable as a single style but there are enough variations on it that it never becomes boring. There are so many highlights here--the languid "Unspoken", the frantic "Spirit Fingers" and of course "Slow Jam", which features one of the greatest instrumental melodies of the decade. What really brings this album over the top is the rejection of length: most instrumental records are way too long, the artists apparently laboring under the delusion that eschewing vocals and a normal pop-song structure gives them free reign to let their songs run for eight minutes under the same repetitive pattern. There's only one track on this album that goes over 8, and the majority are between four and five--these are short tracks, comparatively, and each does its business and gets out. I'd be more willing to classify this as jazz than anything else--but it's a new kind of jazz, one just as technically proficient but one that focuses on emotional and melodic connection instead of endless instrumental wanking: a Marquee Moon to most jazz's Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs. Beautiful.

MY RATING: 9.2

Four Tet - "Slow Jam"

124. PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)

This is a record that by sheer melodic and songwriting skill manages to overcome the general boredom that one would expect to find in it. This is a big, glossy modern rock record with a big, glossy modern rock album cover, the kind of thing that brings to mind images of the Wallflowers and Tonic and Third Eye Blind and later-period Tori Amos and other mostly awful artists. But what saves this one is the songwriting: these songs are (mostly) so fucking good. "Big Exit" might be the best song Harvey ever wrote, a track that resembles nothing so much as Heart but a hundred times better than anything they ever did: the lyrics are fantastic and the chorus is heart-stopping. "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" is like a glossier, more anthemic variation of a Rid of Me track, and the four tracks "One Line", "Beautiful Feeling", "Horses In My Dreams" and "We Float" approach and even eclipse Kate Bush in their gorgeous ambience. One or two tracks ("Is This Love" and "Kamikaze") are a little less inspired than the rest, but this is a fantastic record, varied and well-written and worth every bit of praise heaped upon it.

MY RATING: 9.1

PJ Harvey - "Big Exit"