Revisiting the 2000s: 20 albums (final thoughts)

Well, here we are! You read the intro, where I laid out the project of reviewing what a cross-section of critical opinion regards as twenty of the best albums of the decade that must not be named (or at least, never properly was), 2000-2009. You thrilled to the reviews of albums 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 and 16-20. Here, at the end of all things, what have we learned?

First off, having spent a lot of the decade distracted by other things and back-filling older artists and genres, it was a pleasant surprise to find some things I really liked. My "top" picks from among the albums I listened to were:

Arcade Fire, Funeral

Beck, Sea Change

Eminem, Marshall Mathers LP

Jay-Z, The Blueprint

Kayne West, Late Registration

Madvillian, Madvilliany

MIA, Arular

Outkast, Stankonia

Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Then there was another whole patch that, while I can't think they're the best albums of this last or any other decade, I would call "good". They don't reach "top" status for various reasons (musical or thematic inconsistency, lightness of lyrics or theme compared to the top albums, or just being a kind of good clean fun that doesn't quite rise to greatness):

Daft Punk, Discovery

Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights

LCD Soundystem, Sound of Silver

MIA, Kala

Spoon, Kill the Moonlight

Sufjan Stevens, Illinois

TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain

And, then, well...I have to respectfully disagree with the critics on the following albums. The first I found too experimental and not enough listenable, and the second was just kind of derivative and blah:

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavillion

D'Angelo, Voodoo

We'll get back to this "good" and "great" question in a moment. First, a pair of further observations.

1. This was not Rock's decade. Of the 20 albums in this list, more than half were hip-hop, soul or dance music. Not that I don't have a lot of love for those genres, but I do hope that Rock makes a rebound sometime in the 2010-2019 decade. For which, we are currently accepting naming bids...

2. You could make a very decent case that many of the best albums of the decade were basically 90s-afterburn. I will illustrate with one of my favorite data formats, the histogram. In this case, of the year the albums came out in. As you can see, fully half come from the first three years of the decade.

Now, back to this best/great/good question. In my previous installment, I got into an interesting commentary stream with my friend Matt, who besides being generally a groovy guy and great writer is an audiophile and astute pop culture critic. One of his contentions was that I'd gone too easy on the decade by calling anything that came out of it good compared to albums of decades past. I'll let him speak for himself on this point:

"Maybe you need to shift your categories downward some more. "Good" should mean "adequate" and "adequate" should mean "terrible" and "terrible" should mean "I feel sorry for this band, I really do." 

To me, I think it comes down to this: if I met somebody who was more or less intelligent but had little familiarity with the popular music of the last 60 years, what music would I recommend to them? And what albums from the '00s would I include in my recommendation? 

Rolling Stone just recently "updated" their 500 Greatest Albums list by adding several albums from the '00s to it, which now makes me less inclined to recommend the list to people. It's just so awkward seeing Vampire Weekend, M.I.A., and Arcade Fire right next to Roxy Music, Santana, and N.W.A. I just want to shout out to a potential reader, "No! This is not the right list!" To be fair, the highest an album from the '00s ranks on the new list is at 118 (Late Registration?), but honestly, they should have just left the damn list alone.

Hey, if writers and musicians genuinely believe that LCD Soundsystem and Wilco deserve to be lumped together with Led Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder, then I guess I just have some lint stuck in my ears. But I really believe that recorded music in the album format simply will not have the cultural and emotional impact it did up until the '00s.

All these people are in denial!"

He has a point about where the music on this list fits in the grand scheme. There are specific entries I might argue with him on, and time of course is the great arbiter. But none of these albums are epochal. I don't think it was that kind of decade, I think it was largely a decade of reflection and remixing that lacked the galvanizing new musical movements of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 90s. I'm hopeful that it was one of those periods of consolidation and musical drift that have preceded a "next big thing" in the past. Then again, thanks to technological change, maybe pop culture is too atomized now to have a "next big thing". I wouldn't bet on it, but there is an interesting neo-Marxian argument to be had about how the technological shift in the means of production may preclude this. It may certainly, as Matt contends, diminish the importance of the album as a form. Music lived before the album as we currently know it arose in the 60s, though, and I think it will live just fine in its next phase as well.

In the meantime, I haven't given up on the album as an art form. And while this project has given me some new albums to like, I happen to think there were plenty of great albums in the 2000s. My own personal list of the top 20 albums of the decade (only three of which appeared on the nine critics lists I perused, again proving that, if nothing else, this was a very idiosyncratic decade) is (in alphabetical order):  

Bangs  Call and Response  (2002)
There's a kind of female-powered punky and yet poppy band that I really, really like, and hope will hit it big, but they break up and vanish after producing one or two great albums. The 2000s had a lot of bands like this, and there is another on this very same list. But my first sadly gone girl-group love of the decade was the Bangs. 10 years later, this still sounds fresh, fun and eminently listenable.  

Breeders  Title TK  (2002)
As documented above, there's a good case to be made that some of the best music of the 2000s was actually 90s afterburn. This is true on my list as well, witness this fine outing by one of the best bands of the 90s, the Breeders, headed by one of the driving forces behind another of the best bands of the late 80s/early 90s (and, in my opinion, of the entire history of Rock) the Pixies. It's dark moodiness was one of the things that carried me through post-divorce early 2000s, and I love it still today.

Bruce Springsteen  Magic  (2007)
While I like Bruce Springsteen a lot in general, I tend to like best the dark Springsteen albums that he comes out with every other album or so. Magic is that, and is also a kind of perfect distillation of the mid-decade despair of the Bush years, delivered by a Springsteen that has aged into the world-weariness and mythic presence that he sometimes had to pose at in younger days.   

Death Cab For Cutie  Narrow Stairs  (2008)
I'm not sure the last decade had a better lyricist than Ben Gibbard, the lead of Death Cab for Cutie. Structurally, the songs are often simplistic, but what I've observed about them is that they linger. And the mellow, seemingly straightforward package in this album delivers things like a haunting wrestle with Jack Kerouac's legacy, seeing smoke from the grapevine turned into a timeless struggle against the elements, and one of the most chilling "love" songs ever recorded, laying bare yet again how many of our favorite "romantic" songs are actually creepy obsession when you think about them.     

Deerhoof   Reveille  (2002)
If somebody took perfect pop rock, exploded it, and reassembled the pieces out of sequence but in a way that strangely still works, it would sound like this album. I don't just love Deerhoof because they're a Bay Area band. I love them because (and particularly on this album) they show just how creatively lazy every other band this last decade was, and that surprising, idiosyncratically beautiful things can still be done in Rock.

Drive-By Truckers  Brighter Than Creation's Dark  (2008)
I said in the intro piece to this series that nobody in any pop genre had really had a great decade in the 2000s. In fact, that isn't entirely true, and this album would be one of my prime exhibits in the contention that some of the best music of the 2000s was in fact Country music. Granted, it wasn't by people you were going to hear on any Country station, but that doesn't make it any less true. This is an amazing band, and an amazing album by them. Whether they're writing about the rise and fall of Grunge (yes, really), a lament to a friend's downfall through crystal meth, a sympathetic portrait of a soldier's regret at having to kill, or just good old fashioned country themes, they are superb throughout, and adept at mixing Country and Rock together in way that you can't really say which is which.     

Gillian Welch   Time (the Revelator)  (2001)
Some of the best music of the 2000s was Country music, but you won't hear it on any Country station Exhibit II. I guess technically she might be Bluegrass, but let's not split hairs. The point is Gillian Welch is a living encyclopedia of American roots music, channeling decades of influences to make her own outstanding contribution on this album.  

Hank William III  Straight to Hell  (2006)
Some of the best music of the 2000s was Country music, but you won't hear it on any Country station Exhibit III. They just happened to all end up in a row alphabetically, but it still makes for a nice exhibit. They didn't quite make my top 20, but you could add the Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash and Lucinda Williams to the list as well. As for this album, the way Deerhoof should make everybody working in Rock ashamed of how little they've strived for, Hank III should make everybody working in Country ashamed of how lame they are.

Kristin Hersh  Sunny Border Blue  (2001)
And I suppose this might be Exhibit II in my "90s afterburn" theorem. Nee of Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh is an amazing songwriter and a powerful musician. The songs here are spare, confessional and harrowing. This was another album that helped me burn through post-divorce darkness early in the decade, and it's taken on whole new meaning to me as we both (the album and I) have aged.   

Martha Wainwright  Martha Wainwright  (2005)
Martha Wainwright is one of the lushest, most true to herself voices of the decade. Here is a woman not worried about being popular or likable, laying it all out, good, bad and ugly. Which, of course, ends up lending the proceedings a vulnerability that wins through the darkness. Loudon Wainwright is great, Rufus has his many fans, but give me Martha any day!    

Northern State   Dying in Stereo  (2003)
Hip hop can be great. Feminism too. Political records sometimes. Empowered women creating something, always. Put them all together, and you get one of the best albums of the past decade. 

Raveonettes  Whip It On  (2002)
Rock is dead, they say. Pretty regularly. And there are long stretches of certain decades (80s, 2000s) that you think they might have a point. Then something like this comes along, and you realize that there's plenty of life left in the old beast. Not to mention all in Bminor! It took a Danish band to do it, which would make me sad as an American, except we had the White Stripes in the same decade. So go Danes, go!  

Red Hot Chilli Peppers  By The Way  (2002)
There's something wise and melodically bittersweet about this album. Which makes sense, since it comes almost two decades in for the group, and after lead singer Anthony Kiedis got into recovery. Which maybe is part of the reason it works for me. I think it suits the decade too- a moment to pause and reflect in a rough era that's seen a lot go by.   

Rilo Kiley  Under the Blacklight  (2007)
If there is anything to not like about this album (or indeed the band in general) I don't know what it would be.  Between Jenny Lewis' lush and precisely delivered vocals, the intelligent and more than occasionally emotionally chilling lyrics and the inventive and skillful musical craftsmanship on display here, this album is a delight.    

Sleater Kinney  One Beat  (2002)
I used to think of this album as a kind of predecessor to American Idiot, full of a similar disquiet over post-9/11 America that the later album delivered even more thunderously. As the years wear on, what impresses me is how Sleater Kinney's effort is more perennial than Greenday's, which started to sound dated to me a two or three years after it was released. I find it to be an excellent illustration of my general theory that to produce political art that lasts, you have to prioritize the personal over the polemical.    

Soviettes  LP III  (2005)
Remember in the opening entry above about the Bangs, how I described that certain kind of female-powered punky yet poppy band that I'm always hoping will make it big and instead collapses? Meet my mid-decade heartbreak, Minnesota's the Soviettes, on the third and best of three excellent albums they put out before breaking up.  

Tanya Donelly  beautysleep  (2002)
Picture me in 2002, post-divorce, starting to re-connect to who I am as a person and artistically. I'm alone in the dark, sitting next to the stereo with the first new music I've bought in years. On comes Tanya Donelly, 80s co-founder of the Throwing Muses and 90s veteran of the Breeders and Belly. Through moody billowing music and shimmering vocals she's celebrating the birth of her first child, and the renewal this represents after decades of wandering. And I'm right there with her... 

Tanya Donelly  Whiskey Tango Ghosts  (2004)
Or, you know, here with her two years later. She's now in a more acoustic vein, looking back over the years and through the complexity and ambiguity of marriage with well-worn wisdom and tenderness. I lvoed it from first listen, but this album has played better and better for me as I've gone through the same journey myself.  

The White Stripes  De Stijl  (2000)
Other White Stripes albums made the best of the decade lists I compiled my twenty albums from, and indeed one of my sources, Paste, made the following pretty excellent case that Jack White owned the whole damn decade musically:
2000: The White Stripes, De Stijl 
2001: The White Stripes, White Blood Cells; White founds Third Man Records
2003: The White Stripes, Elephant; White contributes to Cold Mountain soundtrack and appears in the film
2004: White produces and performs on Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose
2005: The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
2006: The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers
2007: The White Stripes, _Icky Thump _
2008: The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely; White records “Another Way to Die” with Alicia Keys for Bond flick Quantum of Solace
2009: The Dead Weather, Horehound; White Stripes tour film Under the Great White Northern Lightspremieres at Toronto Film Festival; White stars in guitar love-note doc It Might Get Loud with Jimmy Page and U2’s The Edge
While White Blood Cells and Elephant deservedly draw a lot of praise, De Stijl is my favorite. It starts rocking the second you put it on, and pretty much never stops. 

U2  All That You Can't Leave Behind   (2000)

I recall reading some music critic (I'm sure someone can remind me who) describing the Clash's London Calling as the album that perfectly personified the 70s collapsing into the 80s. I feel like this album is the same thing for the liminal knife-edge of the 90s becoming the 00s. Here are U2 as world weary veterans producing an album that almost crystallizes the transition from the hopefulness of 90s globalism to the post-9/11 global unease of the 00s. Yes, it was a little before that. But the artist as prophet can do that, call the coming zeitgeist before it comes.  


So there you go. We've seen me reviewing the critics call on the best albums of the last decade  and now you've seen my picks for the 20 best albums of the decade. What do you think? The next move is your's...

Year of Kerouac: Visions of Gerard

Do you know what a New Year calls for? A new literary resolution! For this year, mine is to read the full works of someone who's long been one of my muses, Jack Kerouac. I remember late nights up in my parent's living room while home on college break, reading his works, and biographies of him and the other Beats. Sneaking vodka from the bottle I had hidden in my suitcase, mixing it with kool-aid at 1 AM and reading, my head aswirl with the words (and the vodka), dreaming of literary greatness.

That, of course, was an adolescent dream, and not coincidentally a preview of bottoming out myself nearly two decades hence. But it was also significant in awakening my literary ambitions and poetic vision, and he and the Beats remain a touchstone for me to this day. It is impossible to overestimate the influence they've had on creative output in all genres since the 50s, the way they made space in American literary life for subjects and points of view that had been ignored and/or forbidden. And personally, I've found that the depths of their vision, and meaning and warnings of their lives, keep revealing new facets to me as I get older.

So here I am at 42, only a few younger than Kerouac when he died, and at the perfect age to discover the secret of Life, the Universe and Everything. It seemed like an opportune time to look back. In brief, what I plan to do is read all the works he meant to publish (as opposed to the flood of sometimes questionable posthumous editions), plus a select one or two more. Furthermore, I'm going to read them in the order of the main subject he himself choose, the chronicle of his life. That is, I'll read them by the period in his life they cover, rather than when they were written.

In more depth, the works I'm going to try to complete are (with the year they were written, and the period of his life they cover, listed after):  

Visions of Gerard             1956       1922–1926

Doctor Sax          1952       1930–1936

Maggie Cassidy 1953       1938–1939

·         Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings    1936–1943           Various

The Town and the City   1946–1949           1935–1946

Vanity of Duluoz               1968       1935–1946

On The Road      1948–1956           1946–1950

Visions of Cody 1951–1952           1946–1952

The Subterraneans         1953       1953

·         Mexico City Blues (1955; published 1959)

Tristessa              1955–1956           1955–1956

The Dharma Bums           1957       1955–1956

·         The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (1956; published 1960) 

Desolation Angels            1956–1957

·        Lonesome Traveler, short story collection (1960)

Big Sur (novel)   1961       1960

Satori in Paris     1965       1965

·         Pic, novella (1951 & 1969; published 1971)

I've just completed the first of these, Visions of Gerard. Though written in the mid-period of his career, during his mid-50s peak of output, it actually covers events in the earliest period of his life, the death of his older brother Gerard when he was four. It is a profoundly melancholy little book, just 130 pages. I actually had trouble getting in to the reading at first, since it comes from one of his most experimental periods, but once I was in, it had amazing depths. It is equal parts nostalgic childhood reminiscence, exposition on the ephemeral nature of life, and exploration of the birth of his own psyche. He presents his dying young brother as a sensitive youth prone to mystical vision. But of course, he's also presenting himself in this portrait, as he even says, "At that age I was Gerard." I'm realizing reading it that Kerouac's sense of the bleakness of this life,  mystical superposition of this realm and realms beyond, and desire to let everyone know about how close liberation lies began at a very young age. Of course some of this is written on to events after, but he's clearly getting at the root of how he saw the world here too. A special additional pleasure for me, now that I've been living on the North Shore of the Boston Area for a year and a half, is the portrait of Lowell in the 20s. I can feel, smell and taste things in his descriptions that might have escaped me before.

Next, I'll continue his portrayal of early life in Lowell with Doctor Sax.        

And the Goodreads Challenge score is...

31 out of 52! Well, I've learned that these things can be very valuable once you let go of self-flagellation if you don't make it. Because the thing is, you end up achieving more with an ambitious goal, even if you fall short of it, than if you aim low. I'll keep it brief here, since I haven't done an update in a while. The final books were:

When The Past Is Present  (David Richo, 2008, 224 pp.)
A friend recommended this to me two years ago or so, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. David Richo uses conventional psychology, Jungian psychology and Buddhist concepts to explore how issues from childhood and past relationships can cloud our present relationships, and how we can learn to recognize and process them so we can be truly present. If I hadn't already done A LOT of this kind of work in the past few years, this book would have landed on me like a thunderbolt. It strongly affected and challenged me as it was. Recommended for anyone who has had issues with unresolved issues from the past affecting the present. In other words, everyone.     

Sliver  (Dave Morrison, 2008, 108 pp.)
Here's the deal: If you're a 40ish former rock musician from New York & Boston who currently lives with your wife in my dreaming-of-living-there state Maine, and I run across your book during a trip to Portland, Maine just as I'm ready for a new volume of poetry, I'm going to get it. As it turns out, in subject matter and sensibility, Morrison is my kind of poet even if the form of his poetry doesn't always work for me.   

Foundation Trilogy  (Isaac Asimov, 1961, 678 pp.)
We'd read several things by Asimov in my late great Sci-fi Book Club, but we never got around to this, widely considered to be one of his masterworks. About the only thing I can say about it that isn't superlative is that the dialogue ends up sounding a little dated (1950sish, in fact) at times. Otherwise, you have an epic sweep of future history, political intrigue, twists and surprises, and, as always, Asimov's shrewd and compassionate understanding of how people are.    

Powers: Roleplay  (Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming, 2001, 110 pp.)
If you have a fondness for superhero comics and you haven't read Powers yet, I highly recommend it. The series centers upon a pair of cops (one of them with an intriguing secret past) who investigate crimes involving super-powered individuals. In this volume, they're investigating the murders of a group of college kids who were role-playing superheroes. Bendis is a superb writer, Oeming is a superb (though highly stylized) artist, and the whole thing is just fun. Get on board!      

Ultimate Spider-man Ultimate Collection II  (Brian Michael Bendis & Mark Bagley, 2009, 308 pp.)
And here have Brian Michael Bendis' second appearance on this list, in a volume that brings together issues 14-27 of Ultimate Spider-man. Marvel's used-to-be-great "Ultimate" line took characters from Marvel's mainstream Universe and retold their tales in a setting stripped of the main continuity's decades of story-line, giving things a chance to be fresh and new again. So here we get Peter Parker back to his roots, a teenager learning the ropes as Spider-man while also dealing with crushes, bullies and high school, and in a more modernized setting. Good clean fun all around, including the most realistic portrayal ever of what would really happen if the totally-human Kraven fought the strongly super-powered Spider-man. My only complaint is that the teen love melodrama got a little needlessly thick at the end. Ah well, kids. What can you do?      

JLA Vol. 1: New World Order  (Grant Morrison, Howard Porter & John Dell, 1997, 93 pp.)
Let's not dodge the truth: for a lot of the 70s and 80s, DC sucked. Then, starting in the 90s, several creators stepped in, remembered that they were dealing with the world's greatest heroes, and started to have fun with them again. Grant Morrison's work with the JLA was one of the signposts of this, and here we have the first volume of his run as writer for the group. The artists, well, let's just say they haven't quite caught up yet (that will come later in the series), but the tale is solid good old-fashioned fun.   

Superman/Batman Vol 6: Torment  (Alan Burnett, Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs, 2009, 160 pp.)
I do love my Superman/Batman. They're both such icons, and there's so much that somebody who understands how to bring out the contrast between them can do, purely in terms of characterization, to make a great story. Throw in some cosmic shenanigans and great artists, and you get a grand tale here. It's marred a little bit by tie-ins to the most recent grand Universe-shaking hullabaloo that DC was doing at the time, but otherwise is a rollicking good time.    

So there we are for 2012. And what's on the docket for 2013? (But first, let's pause here for a second to say, "Holy crap! It's going to be 2013! How did that happen? And are there flying cars yet?") I don't think I'll be doing the Goodreads challenge again, instead I'll be challenging myself to read the collected works of two of my muses, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. To whit, Ginsberg's collected poems 1947-1997, and all the works Kerouac published in his lifetime, plus two published after. More description to follow...

And Happy New Year! See you in 2013!

Revisiting the 2000s: 20 albums (16-20)

And here we are, the final five albums of my re-visitation of what was a musical lost decade for me, the 2000s (aka Naughts, aka 00s, aka we never came up with a good name for it). To quickly reintroduce you to the theme, despite being a huge audiophile, I spent most of the last decade vastly distracted by life and/or back-filling on older artists and genres. So I wondered what I had missed, and turned to a cross-section of critical evaluation to identify the top 20 albums of the decade that I hadn't given a careful listen to yet.

You'll find the intro to this project here, followed by albums 1-5, 6-10 and 11-15. In all those reviews, as in the ones you're about to read, I wrote my reviews in real-time, as I listened to the album. What you see here are my immediate reactions, unedited except to correct gross spelling and grammar missteps.    

And so here we proceed with the final five, highlighted below in yellow:

Animal Collective, “Merriweather Post Pavillion” (3)

Arcade Fire, “Funeral” (7)

Beck, “Sea Change” (5)

Daft Punk, “Discovery” (4)

D'Angelo, “Voodoo” (3)

Eminem, “Marshall Mathers LP” (3)

Interpol, “Turn on the Bright Lights” (4)

Jay-Z, “The Blueprint” (6)

Kayne West, “Late Registration” (4)

LCD Soundystem, “Sound of Silver” (6)

Madvillian, “Madvilliany” (3)

MIA, “Arular” (3)

MIA, “Kala” (4)

Outkast, “Stankonia” (6)

Phoenix, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” (3)

Spoon, “Kill the Moonlight” (3)

Sufjan Stevens, “Illinois” (3)

The Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (3)

TV on the Radio, “Return to Cookie Mountain” (3)

Wilco, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (8)  

Spoon, “Kill the Moonlight” (2002, 3 votes)

Track one “Small Stakes” is a nice thumping way to start an album, and I like how there’s a slurred uneducated indifference to the vocal delivery that contrasts with the music’s head-bopping driving power. This really reminds me of the Jam, which is to say it’s immediately endearing itself to me. Makes me wonder, is this a British or an American band? Yes, that’s how little I knew about Spoon before starting this review. Only know the name, really. Oh, track two still has that Jam thing going on, only now a little more swinging, with a hint of, say mid-60s Kinks. This must be a Britpop group. And, heck, there’s no law against that. Especially since this one is more on the rock, and less on the 60s studio overproduction, side of that equation. Three tracks in now, and this one is having some Who-style power-pop coming through. I love it! So entranced by the music thus far that I’m not quite catching the lyrics. I have a feeling they hold some riches that will emerge from repeated listening. Oh, you know who else this is reminding me of? The Zutons. Which, again, endears it to me. I’ve got the feeling that this lacks the gravity of, say, Arcade Fire or Beck’s efforts from this list, but I would probably play it more- it’s hitting all my “British rock favorite” nerves in just the right way! Track 6 “Paper Tiger” is doing some interesting things with a kind of love song from a pub thug meets well-mannered pop-rock sound. You know what every song is about so far? Short catchy refrains. Again, puts me in mind of Jam/Buzzcocks. I would also like to give these guys a medal, maybe even kiss them, for the fact that the longest track on the album is 3:39. You don’t need more than that when you know what you’re doing! And track nine, “All the Pretty Girls Go to the City” knows what it’s doing. Weary, jaded lyrics, big beats and even a little piano, without ever forgetting to rock. Track 10 of 12, still loving it. It’s weird though- this could be almost an undiscovered 60s holdover, an alt-80s band, or a 90s Britpop album. It gives it a kind of timeless quality. And track 11 is- wait, what?!? Just permitted myself a little research now that I’m near the end- Texas based? From Austin? Is Austin producing bands that do classic timeless-sounding Britpop-inflected rock better than the Brits? I’m moving there immediately! USA-USA-USA!    

     

Sufjan Stevens, “Illinois” (2005, 3 votes)

When this first came out I remember hearing about his project to do an album based on every state in the Union and thinking both, “Damn that’s ambitious- admire!” and “He’ll never get around to it.” That second has turned out to be true, which makes this even more precious, so I’m glad to finally have a chance to listen to it. My impression so far? I love the opening track, an indie folk ballad about a UFO sighting. Second piece was instrumental. Third seems to have crossbred Muzak and polka. It’s all very poppy, and very, very indie- long titles that are a thesis unto themselves, clever lyrics, lackadaisical vocals, musically a variety pack that delights in its own quirkiness. You wouldn’t put this on if you wanted to rick, but you might put it on to clean the house on a Sunday afternoon. I’m finding myself in a war between finding it too cutesy for its own good and oddly catchy and compelling. Now a ballad on John Wayne Gacy which is appropriately unsettling. Ah, and there we go, the narrator identifying at the end with him, and the secrets we all keep. Track five, “Jacksonville” seems to be channeling a little Neil Young- crap, I think the album is winning me over despite its self-consciousness and way too much production with strings. Track seven “Decatur”- equally catchy, equally befuddling. I can’t decide whether it’s profound, or a cheesy farce. Which is, you know, kind of like life, and maybe true to his experience of Illinois. Now it’s getting more serious toward the middle with and “Chicago” and “Casimir Pulaski Day” the kind of earnest heartfelt lyrically dense songs that Deathcab for Cutie trades in. And now noticeably less “children’s album” than some of the earlier songs on the album with their lyrical and musical quirkiness. Figures that the Superman-related song “The Man of Steel Steals our Hearts” works for me, of course, and is (in parts) the most rocking thing on the album so far. Though it could do with being half as long. This whole thing strikes me as kind of what would happen if you had Michelangelo do a WPA art mural: a klunky collection of themes rendered with unwarranted extraordinary artistry. Now track 16, with a title much too long to actually write, but something to do with a wasp, is (not for the first time on this album) presenting some queer themes, which is always good news socially, though it can be more of a mixed bag musically. This is reminding me of “69 Love Songs” now, which also continually confronts one with the question, “Is this the greatest thing ever, or is it kind of silly and annoying?” There is something to be said for having the title of every track make you want to read a Wikipedia article to understand it, though. It has its charm. Not as much charm as a hard-rocking song that kicks your ass, but still. Now on my research break, I’m interested to see how several sources mention the Christian themes of the album. Which didn’t really make as distinct an impression on me, I suspect because I always see the mundane suffused with theological significance. It just seems normal to me. And now track 24 of 26 (granted, several of them are interludes). What to say to sum up? A+ for super-sized cajones of artistic ambition. A+ again for high musical and lyrical quality of such excellence. Now apply a preciousness deflator and indie over-cleverness penalty. It adds up to something superb, always listenable, and sometimes quite affecting, even if it’s not quite my cup of tea.

The Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (2002, 3 votes)

I have to admit I’ve always been well disposed toward this album, since Yoshimi and Pink Robots is clearly within my oeuvre. Without having more than a vague sense of its contents. I have to admit I didn’t expect it to sound like this! “Fight Test” is like burned out 70s rock fueled by a child’s synthesizer. Pretty groovy. Now the second track is more of the ambient electronic sound effect inflected piece I was expecting. But it’s got a beat, and it’s about a robot, so I have to be pretty happy with it. And I am, despite the swell of strings and electronic sound effects at the end of track two. Now three, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part I)”, it’s like an acoustic ballad that swallowed and is digesting electronica. This is superb! Vocally so heartfelt, lyrically superb, and yet ridiculous. I’m moved to wonder why this is working for me, but “Illinois” didn’t? Stronger point of view? Less lyrical obliquity? Material I’m just more in tune with? Greater thematic and musical unity, certainly. And the electronic beat certainly makes it more uptempo, which I appreciate. At heart, I think just can’t help but love anybody capable of producing a yearning heartfelt ballad to a Japanese girl fighting giant robots. Now “In the Morning of the Magicians”, a title check to an occult conspiracy classic. Of course I love it! This track, by the way, is like a space age psychedlica. “Are You a Hypnotist?” asks track seven, and yes indeed this album does put one in a fine and mellow mood. It’s just the eight mix of ambient, strong beat and orchestral swell, and it doesn’t hurt that the lead vocalist could just as easily be singing a country song. I think this is the vocal tenor all those other droning bleary indie groups are going for, and missing. It is getting a little too late Beatles studio experimental for my taste as it goes on, but still quite charming. As, indeed, is late Beatles studio experimental if you can divorce it from its canonical standing. Oh, I didn’t realize “Do You Realize” was them. Very fine, very fine. Sad, heartfelt, space age, esoteric yet feeling real. Thumbs up all around! They even managed to pull off ending the album with an instrumental track. Well done, boys, well done.      

TV on the Radio, “Return to Cookie Mountain” (2006, 3 votes)

Oh to be on Cookie Mountain, with the barkers and the colored balloons… No, wait, other song. So, I have to admit to loving the title of this album, but not knowing what to expect from it. Based on track one, I have to say there’s more Lo-Fi and distortion and less blasé indie musical drift than I would have feared. To be sure, there is the overproduction and blending of electronica and rock that you do tend to get with a lot of indie. But it’s built here around rock structure and sensibility, and the lyrics feel like they have some bite to them. It is a little all in one tone so far (as of track three), but if you were in a mood for a certain kind of mellow tinged by bitterness, this would really hit that spot. Kind of reminds me of two of my 2000s favorites, No Age and Times New Viking, if they had a little tilt toward Daft Punk or LCD Soundsystem in them. So far, not as engaging as Kanye, Emminem or Jay-Z, not as fun as MIA or Phoenix, or as weirdly wonderful as Madvillain or Sufjan Stevens. But a solid good- I wouldn’t turn it off, and there are no tracks I want to skip past. Oh, in fact, track five “Wolf like me” is really kicking it up. Is it because it’s like electronica-enhanced Garage Rock? What can I say, I’m a rocker. Oh, and track six “A Method” is doing some interesting things with rhythm and hand claps. Maybe this is one of those albums that takes a while to hit its stride. Loving track seven “Let the Devil In”! Okay, TV on the Radio, you’re growing on me. Now, of all things, it’s reminding me of 80s era Peter Gabriel on track eight. Something about the poly-rhythmic  beats, intelligent lyrics and vocal pitch of the semi-chanted lyrics. The first four tracks were clearly some kind of muted mood-setter, and it really gets unleashed here in the middle. I wonder what’s coming next? What? Nine “Blues from Down Here” is like Bauhaus if they did a dance song. TV, who are you? Okay, this one (“Tonight”) is different yet again. It actually sounds like it may have been recorded to vinyl and then re-recorded from vinyl. Even if that’s not true I’d like to believe it is. Seemed to take a segue in the middle into an old-time croon, then at the end trails off into metallic scrapes and echoes. And now a big stomping beat on “Wash the Day Away” and the wave of distortion that’s more familiar from the first few tracks, but with a hint of psychedelic. Reminding me of, of all things, Prince. I would like to pause here and say that I cannot endorse the average 6-7 minute track length we’re getting here late in the album. This one, of all of them, I might delete because I’m not sure 8 minutes of rather repetitive sound does anything to improve my life. “Untitled seem to be a similarly audio tape loop sound effects “Day In The Life” kind of thing. Delete. Oh and then, fuck them, just as I was about to give up the next one “Snakes and Martyrs” is unique and interesting. I guess that’s how experimental works- sometimes you miss, and sometimes you hit big. So, what we have here is a good beginning, a great middle, a ponderous after, and then back to great at the end. Sounds to me not like a “great”, but a top tier of good. Best of the decade, as critics indicate? Not overall, but at its best moments, yes.

Wilco, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (2002, 8 votes)

This is a fitting album to end on, as I’d heard hype about it all decade long, both critically and from people I knew. I’ve even heard a lot of it, even though I never owned it, or listened to it all the way through. There definitely is something to this first track too. Not only is there the sonorous rhythm of the weary burned-out vocals and the weirdly disorienting beginning, but there are lyrical flashed of brilliance throughout including one of the all-time best lines, “I am trying to break your heart.” Every great song ever has been, but Jeff Tweedy actually figures that out and turns it into a manifesto. A little too Beatles sound-effecty clever tape loop at the end, but hey, they have the ambition to sell it. And then comes “Kamera” a nearly perfect pop-rock song something that sounds a little bit like it belongs to the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s simultaneously. “Radio Cure” seems like it might be a love song to Radiohead, or almost a sonic one-uppance of Thom Yorke. And of course kudos for just coming out lyrically with, “There is something wrong with me.” All these songs, too, are somehow undermined in a way that doesn’t actually undermine them, but instead disorients just the right amount, by what sounds like a toy synthesizer. And fuck, I mean come on, “War on War” is one of the most perfect songs I can imagine. My take so far is that this album is like a distillation, a nearly perfect distillation, of a certain vein of 80s college rock and 90s alternative. Something neo-singer/songwriter, alt country, ironic experimental a la Camper Van Beethoven, with the intense emotional nakedness that grunge had at its best, divorced of the bombast. And don’t get me wrong, I love that bombast, but this album has a stripped down straightforwardness that’s refreshing. And now “Heavy Metal Drummer”, a paen to “playing Kiss covers beautiful and stoned” as if to prove my point. But at the same time full of musical playfulness and some pure music geek experimentalism. Track eight “I’m the Man Who Loves You” plays almost like a thesis on 60s and 70s pop-rock, without forgetting to be fun. Now track nine with its tagline “every song is a comeback”, and darned if it doesn’t sound like it. In a way, I feel like this is the end product of the evolution of Big Star->a certain current of alt 80s->certain current of 90s alternative->Big Star of the 2000s that evokes it all. Wrapping up now, as we approach track 11 of 11. What to say? It’s pretty awesome. This is the kind of album you could finish and immediately start again. I could see it going in to heavy rotation thereafter. I have to think it is one of the best albums of the 00s, though in a way it seems odd to say it, since it feels so timeless. Got a little ambient at the end of the last track, which isn’t the note I would think you would want to end the album on. That’s the danger of going to 7 minutes- it’s hardly ever justified. Still, any way you slice it, it belongs near the top. A fitting way to end this review of the leading candidates for the best album of the 2000s.  

And there we are, my take on the critical world's top 20 albums of the 2000s. In another week or two, I'll do one last summary post looking back on the whole list, and suggesting my take on a dissident top 20. In the mean time, dear reader, I would love to hear your reactions...