Sound It Out Records

Disclaimer:

I do realize there is a lack of albums released over the last two years of the decade, the reason being that I put together this list based on how good I’ve felt about these records over the course of the years. Because it is difficult for me to evaluate how much I’ll be digging, let’s say, Animal Collective’s “Merriweather Post Pavillion” over the next few years (and because I am likely to discover albums released in the past and current years and enjoy them more than anything that made my previous and current year-end lists), I had to refrain from adding recent releases.

In other words, I expect my “Best Albums of the 2000s” list to be a different kind of monster if I tackle it again late next year. Conversely, I didn’t think 2008 was a “game-changing” music year in the vein of 2001 (“new rock” wave) or 2004 (let’s call it “attack of the dancing hipsters”), for example… and 2009, well, that’s not even over yet.

These are my favorite albums of the last decade, as of the fall of 2009. You may notice an unhealthy lack of hip-hop or R&B (I’m still incapable of doing full albums, though I keep falling in love with the occasional mainstream radio single… of today or yesteryear) and an overabundance of pseudo-cool rock. Each list has its biases and mine are pretty obvious, but none of that should stop you from enjoying the following great records:

10. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (2007)

When the Rapture, the Faint, !!!, and other assorted dance rockers — some of which with the help of then-producer-only James Murphy — stormed the scene in 2003-04, many decried them as “poseurs” and their music as a “fad”. To a large extent, these critics were accurate and I certainly wasn’t one of them, which almost certainly should make me embarrassed of admitting my early pull towards dance rock (which in my book includes the Killers’ “Hot Fuss” and its 4 or 5 great songs). The reason I don’t regret is because Murphy, visibly pissed about the status quo of mediocre dance-y bands, put together the most mind-blowing, organic fusion of rock and dance music I ever had the privilege to hear and witness in concert. While the eclectic self-titled debut and early singles were great (if you haven’t heard “Losing My Edge”, do it now), Sound of Silver all but proved that the fat guy in a t-shirt doing all the singing is, well, kind of a genius… and that things like Daft Punk and dancing are also cool.

9. Bjork – Vespertine (2001)

I am not one to hide my favorable bias toward Bjork: I have been lucky enough to follow her career ever since her aptly titled Debut album dropped in the mid-nineties. Truth is, to this day I don’t “get” her albums until several years after their release, possibly because I was spoiled by the cheaply made pop music of her first solo effort. Vespertine came out at a time when the only remotely electronic music I had ears for was Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, so there was no way I could dig this minimalist crap (as I will reveal a few paragraphs below, I was even more repulsed by Kid A). Yet the years passed and I realized I should probably give Bjork’s fourth (and from my perspective at the time, worst) album a good try. Go figure: over the course of the years, I’ve come to basically worship songs like “Aurora” and “Unison” as some of the best shit I’ve ever heard in my life. These are the kind of songs that may very well move you to tears, as was the case with me when I finally got to see the Bjork in concert in 2007… and I was sober. Easily my favorite 3 a.m. album of the decade.

8. Sleater-Kinney - One Beat / The Woods (2002/2005)

See, I decided to be sneaky and actually turn this list into a “Top 13,” with Sleater-Kinney as one of the culprits. Given I was such a close-minded metal head at the turn of the century, it is somewhat ironic that SK is the heaviest, closest-to-punk-or-metal band to feature on this list. But I digress. One Beat is a haunting post-9/11 reality check of an album, and The Woods is the sound of an all-female band taking over classic rock AND kicking it in the ass at the same time. Because I already wrote a review on One Beat, here are my thoughts on The Woods: this may be the loudest CD or LP you’ll ever own, at least in terms of sheer volume. The mixing in this thing is f-up to the point you wonder whether it’s intentional or accidental, which clearly doesn’t matter, because the songs sound good and, most importantly, vital. It’s no surprise they went on hiatus after touring for this record: there really was nowhere else to go from here. A final, honorable roar.

7. The Strokes – Is This It (2001)

Plenty of people still don’t get what’s so great about this record. If that’s your case, I don’t think I’ll be able to help you out: Is This It is just a straight-forward, mildly backward-looking rock n’ roll album. It doesn’t exactly sound like most indie rock (which, divergences on the ambiguous nature of the term “indie” aside, the Strokes were definitely NOT… or else I would not have learned about them through the Brazilian MTV), nor did it fit into any mainstream rock of, well, any era. Some New York Dolls-meets-Television comparisons were thrown around, but when it came down to it, the Strokes as a band had a very idiosyncratic, methodical, and most of all precise approach to rock music. Their lead singer was kind of the opposite: drunk, imprecise, slightly random. It is quite possible this album would not have made my list if it weren’t for its marketing ploy, but as it is, nothing sounds as much like 2001 to me as Is This It.

6. Radiohead – In Rainbows / Kid A (2007/2000)

Another sneaker double feature and geez… Radiohead’s not in the top 5? That’s so risqué. Anyway: Kid A horrified me as a 16-year-old heavy rock fan in the early 2000s. I could not get over the “techno” beats and simply did not understand why a “rock band” had ceased to sound like a “rock band.” Where the hell were the guitars? Of course, the years passed and eventually I gave away to the currently widespread notion that, if you had to pick one, many “serious” rock music fans would say Radiohead is the best, most defining act of our generation (I guess we’re what, Gen Y? Maybe XY? I don’t know), like the Beatles, or Led Zeppelin, or, ugh, U2 before them. Now, while Kid A is a pretty revolutionary album, In Rainbows is definitely my favorite Radiohead release of the past ten years, solely because I prefer song-driven albums, and the songs that drive it are quite amazing. “15 Step”, “All I Need”, “Reckoner”… how do they do this? It’s Radiohead, man – like them, or forget about music cred.

5. The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

This is where my list gets controversial: the Shins were as lovable then as they are dated now, yet I seriously considered rating this as the #1 album of the 2000s. Why? Because in my eyes and to my ears this is virtually a flawless record, arguably more so than any other album on this list. Front to back, these ten songs are the epitome of light-sounding, heavy-hearted indie pop of the 2000s (Death Cab, Postal Service, or even Decemberists albums may fulfill this role in other critics’ lists). On paper, the lyrics are annoyingly quirky (though too elaborate to look like what kool kidz would call “emo”) and, theoretically, the arrangements are kind of cheesy. The thing is: once Chutes Too Narrow is playing, I am unable to criticize it, and all I can do, and find myself doing, over and over again, is enjoying it because it sounds so damn good.

4. Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)

This is a predictable pick, but it is oh so fair. Hyped so much that I wanted to dislike them on principle alone, yet so irresistibly honest, talented, and tight once you give them a chance, the Arcade Fire may be the “best band in the world” if Radiohead were to retire. If you haven’t seen them live this claim may sound silly, but this group is the real thing: 8 or 9 gifted musicians, many of them multi-instrumentalists who are capable of creating an experience rather than a mere rock concert (and you know that’s at least what David Byrne, David Bowie, and Bruce Springsteen think). I’ll admit that their records don’t carry their live magic as well, but then again, if these songs weren’t so great to begin with, the band and the crowd wouldn’t be so into it in a live setting. Neon Bible was good (in fact, from time to time I like it more than Funeral), but their first full-length is a perfect embodiment of a band that was ready to transcend the hype machine and prove themselves in the face of the adversity known as Internet backlash. Like its follower, Funeral is a complete album; “Haiti” and “Wake Up” are some of my favorite tunes of the decade, and I’m sure other people feel that way about many of this record’s other songs. I’ve been crassly wrong about this kind of predictions before (at one point I thought the Strokes would be the defining band of this decade… and then they released their third LP and went poof!), but I think the Arcade Fire is still not nearly as big as they should and hopefully will be.

3. PJ Harvey – Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000)

Hell, the beginning of the decade sure feels like a really long time ago. I’ll even go ahead and tell you that nothing came close to Iron Maiden’s Brave New World (their first album as a 6-piece with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith back in the band) in terms of new music I was excited about in 2000, save perhaps Rob Halford’s solo effort Resurrection. Times and tastes they have a-changed, and in retrospect my favorite album of the year 2000 is the most accessible full length of PJ Harvey’s awesome career. Arguably her masterpiece (I still like this and Is This Desire? better than Rid of Me or To Bring You My Love), Stories… is the portrait of a big city (in this case, NYC) from dusk to dawn. But screw the generic descriptions: the cool thing about this album is that its songs kill in so many different ways that at least half the tracks have “favorite song on the album” potential. There’s “Big Exit”, the fantastic opener with an insane chorus; the omniscience of “Good Fortune” and the raw sadness of “A Place Called Home”; the Thom Yorke duet “This Mess We’re In” and the crazy ending of “The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore”; “Kamize,” the big rocker; “This is Love,” the honest foot-stomper; “We Float,” the blissful closer… and that’s not even all that is awesome about this album. This is a prime example of a record one keeps coming back to over the course of the years.

2. Spoon – Gimme Fiction (2005)

I could have made this a quadruple entry and included Girls Can Tell, Kill the Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga because these are all amazing albums in their own right, but it just so happens that out of all the Spoon records I’ve heard, Gimme Fiction is the one that best holds together as an album (I understand how this seems to contradict my affinity for In Rainbows over Kid A), even though most people probably only remember the almost-hit “I Turn My Camera On”. In my book, Spoon ranks up there with Radiohead, the White Stripes, the New Pornographers, and a few select others among the most consistent bands of the decade, a.k.a. groups that released four or more good or excellent full length records in the 2000s… in fact, they may top that list, given how they have continued to push their musical boundaries AND refined their sound at the same time. Gimme Fiction opens with “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”, one of Britt Daniels’ most meta-musical moments, where over the slow beat he cryptically describes the process of songwriting for some of the albums’ later tracks, in the same subtle way he criticized the recording industry in Girls Can Tell’s “Lines in the Suit” (best Spoon song ever?), and then reaffirms his belief in rock n’ roll by playing the shortest, most dissonant guitar solo I can think of… all of which brings me to the point I have so poorly tried to express: that Daniels is a great lyricist, songwriter, and performer, period. And darn, that’s just the first song. Gimme Fiction is solid and diverse, original yet reminiscent of the some of the best rock and pop music of the past. Blasphemy! If there is one band that reminds me of the Beatles, it’s these guys.

1. Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit / Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2006/2003)

I didn’t want to be too bothered by what should be the #1 album of the decade, as the people at Pitchfork, RollingStone, and other countless publications that actually pay their contributors will be laboring over cultural impact and whatnot. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of fanfare for Kid A, Merriweather Post Pavillion, Funeral, Love & Theft, Is This It, Elephant, Discovery, College Dropout, Person Pitch, a couple of Outkast and TV on the Radio albums, and so on. Of course I buy into some of that hype, after all it doesn’t hurt to listen to a highly-rated and -regarded album from time to time and see what you personally think of it. Sometimes you think the hype makes sense (Arcade Fire), while other times you wonder what the hell is wrong with people (Lil’ Wayne); most of the time you may find yourself in between, regarding some artists as pretty cool but perhaps slightly overrated (M.I.A.). Then there’s Belle & Sebastian, a band that was subjected to the most intense pre-MP3 hype, including the irrational adoration of obsessive fans and the unfounded hatred in the mouths of people who never really listened to them (I was there in 1999).

Scratch all that and start over: one can listen to Dear Catastrophe Waitress or The Life Pursuit and feel that B&S have all but detached from the sound and image they created in the late-nineties: gone were the mopey, lo-fi arrangements, in was the full-on badass pop band sound. Some bands have undergone intense transitions toward pop territory, but fewer have done so as gracefully and tastefully as this one. “Stay Loose”, “Another Sunny Day”, “The Blues Are Still Blue” and plenty of other tracks from these two albums have an almost Beatlesque kind of replay value. That these records never made it out of college radio matters not: this is some of the best pop music out there, stuff that will make you either dance or just smile… and boy, does it have a heart. If there is one thing these records (especially The Life Pursuit, which may be my favorite album, well, ever) have in common with B&S’ early releases, it’s that they can still be life-changing.

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That’s it, that’s the list at least until next time I edit it.