142. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR (2000)

This is certainly the most aggressive record on this entire top 200 list--I mean, look at the titles: "Kill All Hippies". "Accelerator". "Exterminator". "Swastika Eyes". "Blood Money". "If They Move, Kill 'Em". The entire album is soaked in this violent, militaristic rage that in this age sounds even more prescient than it must have in 2000. If ever an album's sound was perfectly evoked by its album cover, it's this one--"Accelerator" is a garage rock song so loud and distorted it sounds like a jet taking off and the rest of the tracks are nothing more than celebrations of aggression and violence, and at points I was reminded of vintage Stooges, except with a more electronic flavor. This album is a near-masterpiece: every track feeds into the central theme of violence perfectly and each track does something different while never seeming extraneous--variations on a theme. It's a concept record of a sort--the opening sample is a woman saying "It's not sexual, it's just aggression," and then you've got the insane militaristic funk of "Kill All Hippies", stuff like "Insect Royalty" that sounds like a drinking song for robots, and "Blood Money", which sounds like Miles Davis being force-fed amphetamines in Hell. The second remix of "Swastika Eyes" is totally unnecessary, but everything else is so perfectly written, performed and produced that it boggles the mind. Bands should not be releasing albums this good fifteen years into their career. Play it loud and have your brains knocked out.

MY RATING: 9.4

Primal Scream - "Shoot Speed/Kill Light"

143. The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005)

The Decemberists have their own sound and their own purpose, and you either have to give yourself over to it and accept it, or reject them entirely. Their sound is a super-bookish collection of overwritten songs about pirates, star-crossed lovers, sailors, spies and so forth, the lyrics loaded with three-dollar words (just look at the opening track: "palanquin", "largesse", "infanta", "folderol", "chaparral", "phalanx", "rhapsodical"). The singer, Colin Meloy, sounds just like Al Stewart (I also look exactly like him--Meloy, not Stewart--in case you wanted to get a picture of your humble webmaster), so if that's your thing...I actually enjoy a great deal of this, and its preciousness really doesn't get on my nerves too much simply because the lyrics are (mostly) well-written in spite of their studied archness and the melodies are (mostly) excellent and the songs are well-performed. What separates this group from every other roaming pack of drama and English majors is that they have a real talent at constructing a world for each song they write: the instruments and arrangements are perfectly chosen for each topic. They are masters of atmosphere. Actually, the followup record The Crane Wife seems, to me, to be easily this group's masterpiece, and I'm not sure why this one was chosen to represent the group on this list. This album, for example, contains the infamous "The Mariner's Revenge Song", a minimalistic story-song that might work well in concert but recorded is a near-disaster, where it seems little more than an interminable nine minute long novelty track. "On The Bus Mall" has wonderful, evocative lyrics but the melody is too undistinguished to support its six minutes, and I don't know what the hell the band is trying to do in "The Bagman's Gambit". Overall this is good, but I'd only recommend it if you've already picked up The Crane Wife and want to hear more.

MY RATING: 7.3

The Decemberists - "We Both Go Down Together"

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???)

145. The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (2004)

 

This is by far the most extreme example of the (for a time) popular "progressive pop" style, in which pop melodies are placed one after another in endless profusion so we get 8 minute-plus tracks in which melodies last for about a minute, to be replaced by another. Destroyer's Destroyer's Rubies was an example of this, but this is even more out-there, with 5 tracks over 8 minutes, singing in Inuit, four-minute Steve Reich-y minimalist patterns and lengthy, surrealistic children's stories. It's too complex for its own good; to get anything out of this record requires about four or five careful listens (i.e. no distractions) and even then you'll realize that what you get out of it isn't all that great. There are catchy moments, yes, but they don't develop or lead into or out of anything and the endless childishness of the lyrics gets annoying after a while. Also, lead vocalist Eleanor Friedberger has a snobbish-sounding, schoolmarm-y voice that is totally inappropriate for this kind of music. It needed a Joanna Newsom, someone who isn't afraid to embrace her inner child when singing. But even then, would this have worked? There comes a point when the sheer amount of mental work required to understand a composition works against its quality--or, the quality revealed is incommensurate with the work you had to put in to discover it. It ain't about how good a musician or arranger you are--this is why the Ramones are a better band than say, Dream Theater. Plus there is no sense of atmosphere or any attempt at soundscaping on this record--at least when the Decemberists write their stupid songs about pirate ships they make you feel like you're on a pirate ship through the production and instrumental choices. It's all just one annoying pop bit after another, and it could have easily been 30 short tracks as opposed to 13 long ones. I want to say that despite all this, the album is still impressive in its scope and ambition, but even saying that rings false to me. It just goes to show that excellence in art more often happens when one takes a single thing and works it to perfection, rather than taking a million things and throwing them against the wall.

MY RATING: 4.3

The Fiery Furnaces - "Mason City"

146. My Morning Jacket - Z (2005)

I feel like this record is a good deal more ambitious than it was credited for being--most gushed over it, yes, but basically on the level of it being a "great classic rock record", filled with great melodies and musicianship and nary a weak track to be found, and really neglected to mention what, to me, is this album's greatest asset--an attempt to combine 70s and 00s rock styles on an almost molecular level. Now, aping the 70s today is no new thing--there are a million bands that do it, some excellently (The Black Keys), some pretty well (The Datsuns, Black Mountain) and some fairly terribly (Wolfmother, Eagles of Death Metal). What My Morning Jacket are doing here, though, is far more interesting than anything those bands have yet tried--what's going on here is an attempt, I feel, to try and figure out the links between Neil Young and Radiohead, between Skynyrd and the Strokes, between the Rolling Stones and Beck, and slam them together so seamlessly that there's no way they can be accused of cheap nostalgia or contemporary scene-following. And (mostly) it works. When it does, it's a hell of an achievement--"Off the Record", to pick one, is something else, a track that simultaneously invokes Bob Marley, Neil Young circa Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere and Radiohead, and does so so efficiently and effectively that it sounds like entirely its own thing. When this album is on its game it's one of the greatest examples of rock music stretching across decades that I've ever seen. When it doesn't (a few tracks on the second half of the record) it just sounds like a slightly updated version of Mountain or the Allman Brothers Band--certainly not bad, but not inspired either. It's a kind of miracle, this album, and I certainly can't think of another this decade in which a band stepped so far outside its comfort level and had it work so well.

MY RATING: 8.9

My Morning Jacket - "Lay Low"

147. T.I. - King (2006)

Now here's an album that isn't bad, exactly--but it's so punishing and unchanging and blank in its style that it seems to be twice as long as its already lengthy 75 minutes. You've heard "What You Know", right? And you liked it (of course you did--it's a great song!). Now imagine 70 more minutes of tracks exactly like "What You Know", except not quite as good, and there you have King. There are a few standard R&B ballads, but they aren't anything special, and the skit tracks are just as disposable as they generally always are on rap records. T.I. basically constructs gigantic truck-bangers out of thick bass and massive, regal-sounding synth lines. These are songs meant to be played loud, preferably out your window while you're driving down the street and slapping your left hand against the outside of the car's doorframe. That's this album's purpose, and in that context it succeeds wonderfully, but it doesn't transcend that milieu at all, and in the end it all just starts running together. Play it when you're driving around, or when there's a party, but don't think of getting much out of it anywhere else.

MY RATING: 6.0

T.I. - "Ride Wit Me"

148. Erlend Øye – DJ-Kicks (2004)

This is a mix record, of which there are a few on this list, but what separates this one from the rest is that Kings of Convenience member Oye uses the format to indulge his own particulars, doing things like covering "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" and re-recording certain songs with his own vocals. The whole thing is like a cross between Michael Mayer's Immer and a DJ Shadow record, and it works beautifully (most of the time). Oye has a great, soothing voice, perfectly suited for this kind of electronic pop, and the album works the best when it's focusing on that and not trying to make us "dance". Because, frankly, this isn't a very good dance record. The interpolation of "2D2F" is a near-disaster; while this kind of hyper-aggressive and filthy as hell dance track might have worked on 2 Many DJs' As Heard on Radio Soulwax, here it's a total mood-killer and doesn't fit with the rest of the record. The interpolation of the more "obvious" artists doesn't work too much either--Phoenix don't fit with this kind of record, as good as they are, and the Rapture's "I Need Your Love" is too straightforward a pop track to fit with the rest. Other than those caveats, this really is a well-sequenced, at some parts gorgeous pop record. Oye manages to keep the thing flowing nicely despite the frequent switches between tracks, and with his own re-recorded vocals there to tie everything together, it really feels all one thing, as opposed to just another mix record.

MY RATING: 8.4

Erlend Oye - "Sheltered Life vs. Fine Day (accapella)"