Top Albums of the 2000s

As I was scrolling through my poorly organized iTunes library to help me determine what belongs on this list, it occurred to me that releases I own from the past ten years are mostly reissues. On the basis of that, I'm not really a fan of the 2000s, and that's probably because I lived through it. Most individuals dislike the era in which they live, which explains why so many fourteen year old girls are donning side ponytails and listening to bad synthpop knockoffs. But this especially rings true for a number of music enthusiasts who aren't so much throwback purists as they are stubborn assholes (myself included). This is because the 2000s made indie rock more popular than Jesus and created a subculture that most of us want to spit on.

I could spend paragraphs talking about the literal meaning of "indie" and why it just doesn't apply anymore. "Indie," whether we like it or not, has been made into a musical genre. What used to be a mostly technical term has turned into a phrase that is seriously overused. Radiohead is indie. The Beatles are indie. I'm sure someone on Last.fm has tagged Ladysmith Black Mambazo as indie. There are reputable indie bands out there, but indie culture in itself stretches far beyond The Shins and into thrift stores and Wes Anderson motifs. The popularity of being ironic, poor, and hip has added a lot of conceitedness and pretension to the indie rock movement, which explains why multitudes of people are drawn to it. I remember thinking I was really special when I was one of five people in my high school who listened to Rilo Kiley in 2005, when in reality they'd already become popular. The preconceived notion regarding said audience is why it's become increasingly difficult for me to enjoy the majority of music Pitchfork overhypes.

What that really means is, Merriweather Post Pavilion will not be on this list.

That's not to say this list doesn't have some obvious picks; in fact, the closer you get to number one, the more foreseeable it gets. All of these are pretty interchangeable, and my opinions don't always prove permanent. That said, I present my top ten albums of the last decade, and furthermore congratulate you for even getting this far (seeing as how I sounded unreasonably hateful earlier).

Honorable Mentions:
Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond (2007)
The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love (2009)
Tim and Eric - Awesome Record, Great Songs! (2008)
Arcade Fire - Funeral (2003)


10. soulico - Exotic on the Speaker (2009)
In an age where hip-hop is generally overplayed and overdone, this Tel Aviv-based DJ foursome provides a refreshing alternative. Exotic on the Speaker, their debut on JDub Records, draws upon Soulico's Jewish roots through folk samples and wordplay littered with Yiddish, offering a new take on world music as an unmistakable genre-crosser. With an assortment of guest spots filled by everyone from Ghostface Killah to M.I.A. protégé Rye Rye, it's guaranteed to satisfy even the most fastidious of hip-hop listeners.
>> soulico - "Politrix (feat. Del the Funky Homosapien)"


09. Ween - Quebec (2003)
The duo that gave us the seminal Chocolate and Cheese gave us another fluctuating bunch of tracks that make us want to drop acid. In most cases, Ween is pretty insane, but Quebec was a step in a calmer, more stoner-friendly direction. Its oscillating, sometimes severe mood swings provide engaging noise and blatant comic relief. Even "Happy Colored Marbles," a track with the most terrifying conclusion for anyone on drugs, is laughable. The album retains a lot of musical merit, as there are few musicians as successfully experimental as Gene and Dean, but it's still impossible to compare them to other artists (spare Magical Mystery Tour Beatles) or bind them into a genre. Quebec is just another surprise in their bag of tricks, and judging from the tracks on Pure Guava and La Cucaracha, they'll continue to produce albums that make us feel content and comatose.
>> Ween - "So Many People in the Neighborhood"



08. The National - Boxer (2007)
Even though vocalist Matt Berninger sounds a lot like Weebl, the National is by far one of the best acts of the last few years. Tons of people regard "Mr. November" as the band's best single, but they obviously have never given Boxer a fair listen, since evocative tracks like "Start a War" and "Fake Empire" blow most of Alligator's material out of the water on initial listen. Washed arrangements provide an excellent backdrop for Berninger's somber and distinctive baritone, helping the album not only succeed in general terms but also as a mood piece. This is the National's way of pushing the boundaries of the genre, and if they continue such a superlative trend, the rules of indie rock may be redefined. Or maybe we'll just have another National album. Either way, the audience wins in the end.
>> The National - "Start a War"


07. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic (2009)
Those superfans looking for duplicates of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots or At War with the Mystics (and the people who only know the Lips through those albums, for that matter) will be disappointed. Embryonic not only surpasses these albums by a longshot, but it resurrects the original spirit of the group's material. The tracks sound as if they were conceived in a futuristic era, and the space age twangs and astrological imagery take their place as dominant elements that pick up where the Lips' 2008 sci-fi flick Christmas on Mars left off. The album's surreal nature and utter bombast (see "Aquarius Sabotage" and "See the Leaves") are two of the things that give it its appeal, thus making it one of those Lips' releases that helps us remember how innovative, surprising, and pleasantly unorthodox Wayne Coyne and his boys really are.
>> The Flaming Lips - "Watching the Planets"


06. Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop [Box] (2002)
In all honesty, I just wanted an excuse to squeeze a Yoko Kanno album in here, and since this box set offers the better mix of material, I deem it the most suitable. For those of you unfamiliar with Cowboy Bebop, it's a futuristic anime about two gruff bounty hunters, a hustler with large breasts, and an all-too-happy hacker. They beat up bad guys for cash and the main character has a painfully interesting backstory. While the narrative is exceptional, the music is the most unique component of the show because it assembles so many forms of music into a hodgepodge that's nothing short of classy. On this collection in particular, there's an acceptable amount of material from the other albums as well as the rarities that didn't fit in anywhere else. If you like Coltrane-based jazz, innumerable spooky instrumentals, and a well-paced cover of "On the Run," find a bootleg of this set somehow, because it's an orgasm in a box.
>> Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts - "Adieu (Long Version)"


05. Low - Drums and Guns (2007)
The Drums and Guns album cover states a lot about the tone of the album. In truth, it's pretty bleak, so much that I tend to picture the Yukon whenever I listen to it. But "bleak" is certainly not synonymous with "god awful." With few guitars and the echo of ethereal harmonies, Drums successfully combines Low's earlier material with their more recent aesthetics. It's experimental but not completely contrived, and its minimalism (as always) is perfectly crafted. It's purposely haunting and overwhelmingly contemplative, which can also serve as the album's only flaw (not the album to listen to if you're an introspective drunk). Somberness aside, it's completely enjoyable as a textural album. It's worth making it through some of the cryptic wordplay to hear that inverted guitar and all those layers of distinctive vocals.
>> Low - "Breaker"



04. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs (2009)
Popular Songs puts YLT's last effort, 2006's I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, to shame. While Beat Your Ass is great because of the minimalistic production and appropriated noise, Songs makes a bigger statement by possessing all the characteristics of a genuinely romantic album. The long instrumentals lack the pretension of most post-rock tracks, and "Here to Fall" features a slew of strings that serves as perfect accompaniment to the songs that succeed it. From start to finish, Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley surprise the listener with an honest and relatable testament to true love, so much that it's impossible not to fall in love with them.
>> Yo La Tengo - "The Fireside"



03. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
There's not a whole lot I can say about Kid A, mainly because everything has already been said. It's an album that emulates retroactive sounds without sounding dated, and it was certainly a gem among all the hokey electronica being released in the earliest part of the decade. I won't blow smoke up Thom Yorke's ass as much as Ryan Schreiber and the rest of the world, but there's justification for all the hype. It's pleasantly listenable and successfully crosses a number of genres, ultimately forming a sexually ambiguous electro post-rock lovechild. If you haven't listened to it yet, I question your living capabilities.
>> Radiohead - "The National Anthem"



02. Elliott Smith - Figure 8 (2000)
Critics trash this album as "overproduced" in comparison to earlier releases, but while it's a little more polished, it's far more uplifting, even for Elliott Smith. Unlike the Kill Rock Star releases (Elliott Smith and Either/Or), Figure 8 does not make me feel like I should take an entire bottle of sleeping pills. The melodies are convincingly happy and engaging (spare "Everything Reminds Me of Her"), and the work as a whole features an array of power pop sounds that are unequivocally excellent. This rings true especially when combined with Smith's thin voice, which is hauntingly gorgeous. This is, by far, the most revered effort in the back catalog left to the world by one very talented songwriter who died too soon.
>> Elliott Smith - "Wouldn't Mama Be Proud?"



01. Aimee Mann - Lost in Space (2002)
I'm sure most of you are disappointed that Lost in Space is my big kahuna of the decade. Never mind Mann's elaborate storytelling and uniquely pleasant voice; this choice deals with a more personal connection. Every music fan has that one album that helped them see the light, and Lost in Space was my gateway. Up until that point, I'd rarely encountered a female singer-songwriter who I didn't immediately hate, because too many of them featured ex-boyfriends as prevalent subject matter. While Mann does include more than a bit of love-related depression on Space, it's wry and poetic, not whiny and distasteful. She's sincere without being all Alanis about it, and can be morose without being just plain depressing (aside from "This is How it Goes," depending on your mood when giving it a listen). The poignant songwriting proves that Mann is capable of articulating complex thoughts that most individuals can barely form into words, and it's this quality that causes every song to deliver. This, in addition to perfectly crafted melodies, makes the album an experience that deserves more than just a few listens.
>> Aimee Mann - "The Moth"

R.E.M. - Out of Time (1991, Warner Bros.)

Ah, R.E.M.

Admittedly, with the exception of Accelerate and Live at the Olympia (if the latter counts), they haven't released an insane amount of quality material in the past few years. I'm unsure of the reason behind the blatant mediocrity of the past decade, but I never dwell on it excessively. I always think of them as four youngsters performing in dirty sneakers and cheap pants on Letterman in the wake of Murmur's release. I feel about R.E.M. the way John Peel felt about the Fall; I love them to tears, regardless of how long Michael Stipe wants to wear that detestable blue face paint on stage. So, despite a few clunkers, I can forgive them because they're some of the coolest dudes on the planet.

If Document isn't the effort superfans dub as the breakthrough ("sellout") album for R.E.M., Out of Time fills those shoes with ease. Moving with the momentum of the lyrically ambiguous and hugely celebrated "Losing My Religion," the band reached its peak in popularity, earning three Grammys as the album was catapulted into the top slots of the Billboard 200. But "selling out" is one very archaic and extremely stupid term. Purists can remain as persistent as they want in pooping on R.E.M.'s mainstream pinnacle, but that makes the album no less astute. It serves as one of their best and most experimental albums up to that point. There's no way all that vocal diversity and mandolin goodness could fit in well with material on Fables of the Reconstruction. All that eclecticism proved a sensible albeit brief route, seeing as 1992's Automatic for the People continued their success. But somehow they later fell off the wagon, and I don't think even Peter Buck knows what the hell happened (aside from the departure of unibrow'd and aneurysm'd drummer Bill Berry, which didn't exactly affect them musically, but inevitably caused the group to suffer an emotional blow).

Decade-long pothole aside, Out of Time is one of R.E.M.'s master works. Within the confines of my own opinion regarding the band's back catalog, it's only rivaled by their debut in sheer excellence and back-to-back listenability (well, mostly; "Shiny Happy People" and "Country Feedback" are arguably worth skipping once you've heard the album more than twice). The tracks shift moods pretty obviously - "Radio Song" is far less melancholic than "Low" - but most of the album retains a comforting vibe, as if it was made solely for relatable reassurance. It remains musically optimistic throughout; even "Endgame," an extremely wistful instrumental, sounds happy beneath the surface ("Half a World Away" and "Belong" also follow this pattern). "Texarkana" is the only song on Time that bears a resemblance to the band's early jangle pop sound, with Mike Mills lending his dulcet vocals to accompany dominating bass and Michael Stipe's harmonies. However, the best track on the album is introduced early on. Squeezed between "Low" and "Endgame" is "Near Wild Heaven," a captivating and almost disturbingly melodic ode to relationship discontent. Again, Mills takes the reins and succeeds in crafting a perfect pop song with a combination of harmonies and Bill Berry's piano. The final track, "Me in Honey," is only second in greatness. It features dreadful B-52's bouffant gal Kate Pierson* joining Stipe in a sweet-sounding duet about a baby-mama dilemma from the male perspective (in turn serving as a plausible response to 10,000 Maniacs' "Eat for Two," which represented the female point of view). The only faults on this album are the tracks I deemed skippable, and even those are mediocre and nowhere near god-awful.

I could babble on and on about Time's degree of quality. The album becomes increasingly relevant as I age and will continue to do so, despite the fact that I've listened to portions of it since I was a freshman in high school. It can serve as both a source of gratification and a contextual relic. For a person who was born at the height of the band's popularity and turned five on the brink of their comedown, it's a pretty sweet deal to have something as awesome as Out of Time to remember R.E.M. as they should be remembered.

But that doesn't mean the album cover couldn't have been better. I'd take the top half of Bill Berry's head over some street sign lookin' thing any day.

* I have to wonder: do I really hate Kate Pierson, or do I hate her because I was raised to hate her? After re-reading this five times, I still don't know.

Van Halen - 1984 (Warner Bros.)

All things considered, this is an album I thought I'd never review. But after I couldn't pin down Skid Row's "I Remember You" while perusing in my friend's food-littered Ford Focus, I felt extremely disappointed (because seriously, it was #1 for how many weeks?). One re-read of Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City and ten Slaughter tracks later, I consider myself somewhat redeemable if I review one of the best glam metal albums ever made. Or maybe I've just lost my already wavering credibility with all three readers of this blog because I admitted that I have more than one Slaughter song in my iTunes library. Sorry.

1984 was Van Halen at their zenith, critically and commercially. While Eddie Van Halen had already mastered his signature pyrotechnic riffs on previous albums (spare a dark conceptual rut with Fair Warning), this album cemented their status as Billboard favorites and redefined the glam rock genre. At the same time, it furthermore mounted tensions between Eddie and vocalist David Lee Roth, and a year after the album's release, Diamond Dave took his drunken douchebaggery and habitual girl chasing elsewhere, exiting the group and leaving 1984 behind as his last and very triumphant hurrah. Sammy Hagar stepped in as lead performer in the years that followed, but most Van Halen fans (including myself) act like this never happened, because, really, we can't respect the guy who wrote the song, "I Can't Drive 55."

"1984," the album's opener, is a short and hokey synth instrumental written and performed by Eddie. For a title track, it's fairly mediocre in nature, but it also serves as a relatively decent preview for what's to follow. The succeeding track, "Jump," oozes 1980s pop anthem, driven by its artificial brass intro and thoroughly coinciding with what was later coined "arena rock." After over three million sales, three decades, and one bastardized cover (see: Glee), it still serves as Van Halen's signature staple. "Panama," "Hot for Teacher," and "I'll Wait," are rife with choice guitar licks and fetching choruses, also going on and meeting "Jump" in becoming overplayed MTV monster hits. "Girl Gone Bad" and "Top Jimmy" carry a faint avant-garde feel underneath the abundance of arpeggios, while "Drop Dead Legs" is the perfect representation of drummer Alex Van Halen's ability to carry a steadily powerful sound. The underrated "House of Pain" ends 1984 on a high note (literally) with Eddie's final solo shrieking its way through a reluctant yet very fitting conclusion to a stellar album.

While 1984 isn't the greatest album of all time as some people claim, it's particularly monumental to Van Halen's back catalog. It champions over one or two of its predecessors, and triumphs over any of Hagar's efforts. It also successfully exemplifies two distinct elements within the band: Eddie's guitar talent and Roth's egotistical personality. Without these things, Van Halen, in all its corny-yet-awesome long haired grandeur, might have never been, 'cause lord knows you need some guitars and a total asshole to catapult a hair metal band into Rolling Stone fame.

Please don't expect a slew of hair metal reviews after this, because I wouldn't review anything by Vixen even if you paid me for it. But I'm sure Appetite for Destruction will show up somewhere in the near future.

Extremely low-budget:


Extremely bastardized:


Somewhat clever:

My Life Story - The Golden Mile (1997, Parlophone)

There is only one word that can encompass all the elements of this grandiose Britpop act: bombast. With twelve members, two string-soaked albums, and a pop star adorned in sparkly coats, merely calling My Life Story "extravagant" wouldn't do them justice. While they only released three albums, The Golden Mile, their 1997 sophomore effort, showcases their elemental sensibilities far more than the others. With its florid compositions and colorful lyrics, the album is highly theatrical in nature, and creates a niche within chamber pop that still has yet to be defined.

I was introduced to this album at the age of seven, when my full-time music enthusiast dad bought it from a primitive online store that sold imports. It stood out to me more than the Belle & Sebastian and Gene Loves Jezebel he'd been playing in the car for the past year, but being brought up in the nineties meant that I would spend most of my preteens immersed in bubblegum girl pop and Hanson. I didn't return to The Golden Mile until I was sixteen, when I was into bands with unusual and/or pretentious names like Gregor Samsa and the Heliocentrics. My Life Story (in junction with the Smiths) brought back my childhood, and catapulted my interest in music from across the pond.

Unfortunately, because of their homeland and timing, My Life Story was frequently grouped with the tail-end Britpop bands of the day. But these guys were nothing like Oasis or The Verve, and such a difference made it difficult to get any radio play. Their first album, Mornington Crescent, was completely disregarded by their peers. But after the band was signed to famed label Parlophone and released The Golden Mile, its opener, "12 Reasons Why I Love Her," entered the airwaves. The album spawned five more singles that entered the charts, Mornington Crescent was re-released, and the hype granted ringleader Jake Shillingford a brief spot in the limelight. However, the group faded into the background and after downgrading to a four-piece and releasing 1999's Joined Up Talking, the appealing bombast eventually met its demise. Regardless, The Golden Mile lives on as their creative and ridiculously wonderful (or wonderfully ridiculous) magnum opus.

With songs like "Sparkle," "Duchess," and "Marriage Blister," it's hard not to listen to the album in its entirety. "12 Reasons Why I Love Her" hooks the listener immediately and draws them in with its symphonic amenities. Shillingford's voice may initially seem a bit abrasive to be consorting such orchestral components, but it's so perfectly British that it seems to be just as Victorian as its accompanying arrangements. Such a unique pairing earned the album rave reviews in its heyday, and with good reason. While My Life Story's music is generally known for being ostentatious, there are a few songs on the album that are softer and resemble something similar to balladry, if not that. "Claret" advertises the band's affinity for strings, but lacks the bombast that most other songs provide; "You Can't Uneat the Apple" and "November 5th" follow suit with different select instruments . The Golden Mile's high points are certainly in the beginning and in the end, while the middle tends to be overlooked due to songs like "I Dive" and "The King of Kissingdom," which lack an unidentifiable characteristic the rest of the album possesses. But this small fault can be forgotten, seeing as twelve other tracks make up for it.

The fact that such an awesome band bit the dust is disheartening. My Life Story's bountiful extravagance, in both size and music, is what set them apart from the rest. The Golden Mile encompasses all of what they were about, and sadly, it seems to have gotten lost in America. However, the band has retained a reasonable following in their home country, thanks to sporadic reunion shows and the release of Megaphone Theology, a collection of b-sides and rarities. The re-release of The Golden Mile and a multitude of loyal fans undoubtedly guarantee that this band and their back catalog will never fully vanish from the pop culture lexicon.

Well, in the UK, anyway.

(And at least these guys won't tell Damon Albarn to catch AIDS and die. /jab at Noel Gallagher)