125. The Books - Thought for Food (2002)

First off, let's be perfectly honest: I have no clue what in the hell the Books are trying to do here (both on this record and its equally lauded followup, The Lemon of Pink). I have no clue what's going on, I have no clue why it's supposed to be any good, I have no clue why anyone would like it, I have no clue why I should like it, etc. So what this is is basically obscure spoken-word vocal samples taken from old advertisements, instructional videos and so forth set to calming, amelodic washes of acoustic guitar, rumbly-sounding percussion and dinging noises. The whole thing is aggressively quirky and weird and nothing is really allowed to stay around long enough to make much of an impression. I don't understand why this is any good at all. Occasionally a good melody will jump out of the murk (like on "All Our Base Are Belong to Them") but that's the exception more than a rule. I suppose this kind of stuff makes the most sense as an attempt to inject some interest into "ambient music", which is laudable I guess, but this isn't the way to do it. So 1. I've never heard anything else much like this and 2. that might be a good thing.

MY RATING: 4.4

The Books - "Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again"

126. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)

I don't know much about metal. I own the "masterpieces" of the genre and don't have much familiarity with anything outside those. I think Ride the Lightning is better than Master of Puppets and Slayer's Reign in Blood is better than both of them. Metal seems to exist entirely outside of most other types of music; there's very little, if any, cross-pollination between it and, say, "indie" or hip-hop or pop or whatever. This is somewhat by way of saying that the inclusion of Leviathan on this list smacks of tokenism--it's a great record, certainly, but it seems a little silly for them to include it when I find it hard to believe there are no other metal albums worthy of being on such a list. It seems like they felt that they had to put at least one metal album on a top 200 of the 00s list or nobody would take them seriously--a strange idea, since they managed to leave Metallica and Slayer off their 80s list, which to me is a far bigger omission (Mastodon are good, but this record's no Reign in Blood). Anyway, as for this one, all I can really say is that it's metal varied and well-composed enough to interest a non-metal fan (me). I was about 25 minutes into it before I consciously realized that the thing had been solidly kicking my ass for those entire 25 minutes without a break, and some of the record's best moments basically consist of one brilliant guitar riff after another, each following the previous one so rapidly your brain hardly has time to comprehend the power of the one that's been left behind. The effect is of an embarrassment of riches--like the band is so good at coming up with these riffs that they can afford to just throw them away. The band's strongest aspect, though, is Brett Dailor's drumming: the guy is clearly one of the best drummers alive, and at times the rest of the record almost seems to exist to justify his ridiculous fills. Anyway, if you are at all interested in metal, you undoubtedly already own this or have at least listened to it (it is without a doubt the most popular and critically respected metal album of the past 10 years). If you don't like metal, give it a try. It's about as good as a limited genre can possibly get.

MY RATING: 8.8

Mastodon - "I Am Ahab"

127. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)

This motherfucker is loud. The mix is so distorted and in-the-red that it rivals, and possibly surpasses, Iggy Pop's infamous remix of Raw Power (which I prefer to the original, btw) as the loudest single piece of music I've ever heard. For this record Sleater-Kinney largely dropped any semblance of "punk", instead settling for gigantic, terrifying exercises of guitar that almost approach Jimi Hendrix in their ferocity. Opening track "The Fox" barely seems to hold together outside of its unbelievable volume, but that's what makes it thrilling--you're basically too busy scraping your brain off the back wall from the power of that colossal opening chord to even think about whether it's a "good song" or not. And that's a good thing, because the songwriting here is, in general, far weaker than their preceding record. There are no bad tracks, but the songs are a lot more pedestrian than I was used to hearing from Sleater-Kinney--most of these tracks are basically generic riff-fests that could have been written by pretty much anyone. "Jumpers", in addition to sharing a title with a Third Eye Blind track, is about as generic. But I'm willing to throw a lot of that aside out of sheer respect for the sound on this record--while I assume audiophiles will tear their hair out upon hearing it (some tracks are so loud they devolve into static) I love it because when turned up high enough, it sounds like a goddamned jet engine. If there's no place in this world for insanely loud music, you can count me out.

MY RATING: 8.4

Sleater-Kinney - "The Fox"

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"

129. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free (2004)

Mike Skinner was born to make this record. The concept album fits him like the proverbial glove, and what makes the whole thing even better is that this is basically a concept album about nothing much--our hero forgets to return his DVD, goes on a date, smokes pot at his girlfriend's house, etc...it's a nice way of making use of the strengths of the concept album format without falling into its worst pitfall--pretentiousness. This album is funny, catchy, and perfectly sequenced--it flows like a good story, and it seemed like a classic the first time I heard it. Skinner is probably the most human rapper there is--he's all about his foibles and little moments most others would ignore. He takes the tiniest things and turns them into epics--"Empty Cans" in particular. The production is simple and effective, the lyrics are without peer (seriously--there's hardly a weak line on the entire record) and it's about as near a classic as this decade brought us. One or two of the tracks are weaker than the others, and that's a disappointment, but the rest of the album is so exemplary Skinner can keep on making crappy follow-up records for the rest of his life and I won't care. He's earned a lifetime of goodwill with this one.

MY RATING: 9.4

The Streets - "Fit But You Know It"

130. Clipse - We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 (2005)

Ah, the hip-hop mixtape. Usually, it's an art form designed to be listened to and quickly forgotten; a chance to show off a rapper's skills and tide fans over until a real album. But it took four years for Clipse to follow up Lord Willin' with the masterpiece Hell Hath No Fury, and this was one of the only things we got to tide us over. Clipse seem to have realized this and stepped up their game--certainly it's one of the few mixtapes that is comparable in quality to a regular album. Granted it still falls victim to some of the same problems as other mixtapes (some mismatches between beats and vocals, outdated cultural references, occasional moments where the rappers seem like they're treading water, underwritten lines) but the highpoints outweigh the low ones. The first half of this record is one hot line after another--"Re-Up Intro" in particular is about as great a trunk-banger as I've ever heard; car stereo systems were built to blast this track. Their take on the Game's "Hate It Or Love It" knocks his out of the water, and "Zen" is just as much of a classic single as it ever was. So overall this is about as great as an intrinsically flawed type of record can be; mixtapes are generally never more than placeholders, but this is one of the first times the word "mixtape" didn't seem to connote "something we threw together in two days to keep us in the public eye." Great, and a nice appetizer to the atom bomb these guys would drop on our heads a year later.

MY RATING: 8.1

Clipse - "Re-Up Intro"

131. The Notwist - Neon Golden (2002)

This album is so oppressively mediocre it's difficult to say anything about it; only two tracks rise above the murk (the atmospheric title track and the somewhat pretty closer "Consequence")  and those only barely. So, what we've got here is middling electronic pop, with almost none of the magisterial command of atmosphere that the Junior Boys bring and none of the melodic sense of the Postal Service. I often hear post-rock and ambient denigrated as "background music", but this to me is far more deserving of the term: there's simply nothing going on here. It's pleasant, and there's certainly nothing incompetent about it, but that's it. The vaguely European vocals float away, the boringly arranged blips-and-bloops float away, the passable melodies float away too and leave no trace. You will not remember this album ten minutes after you hear it.

MY RATING: 4.0

The Notwist - "Pilot"