Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 50 to 41

50. Akron/Family - Akron/Family


Folktronica is a misleading term, but then, so is Laptop-Folk. Isn't all Folk lap-related? It's where the guitar sits as you coo, and that coo, it's lap-related. Admit it brother/sister, you're trying to coo a lover into that lap. Ain't no shame in that. Every listen to Akron/Family's self-titled record is a reminder that I don't listen to it enough. The sense of experimentation in styles is finely pronounced, for all its spontaneity, the songs never lose shape entirely. They always keep me enraptured. Is this postmodern? I don't really know how to define postmodernism, but then isn't that what postmodernism is? All that matters about Akron/Family is that at its heart is an honest and likeable voice. There are bleeps and beeps and strings, too.




49. Phosphorescent - Pride




The sound of Pride played late night/early morning is a transcendental experience. 'The Waves at Night' quite literally laps against the walls of the room you're in, the reverb that carries Matthew Houck's voice washes around and back again. But it's 'Wolves' that offers the closest summary of this record, with Houck singing 'Momma there's Wolves in the house/momma I tried to get them out.' It's a song that can transport you into the freezing foreground of a Jack London short story. The record closes with the title track, a pack of Houcks groaning and hollering in the vast, perfectly rendered expanse of Pride's universe.




48. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours



And so you have the most addictive album in recent years, 'Lights and Music' is an instant stamp on the unconscious: 'Lights and music, in my mind/Be my baby, one more time'. Those lyrics read like Whigfield, but that sort of layman-esque euphoria is irrelevant with music as good as In Ghost Colours. There are also a number of very good ambient tracks that could be filler nine times out of ten, 'We Fight for Diamonds', 'Voices in Quartz', 'Visions', they all positively glow. The basslines might be the lasting element, the shuddering synth blurts that appear on the final curve of the bass shatter all my inhibition and light up the present.




47. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago



I constantly question how good this album actually is, and the story about Justin Vernon buggering off into a little hut owned by his Dad is really a poor man's Henry David Thoreau - sorry, Justin, but you didn't build your own gaff. But then Vernon didn't do all the talking here, it was mostly British newspapers and magazines who were like 'OMG der is like this new sound with compooterz and like deep folk vocals'. Number 1 record of 2008 it ain't. I think it's fair to say Vernon needs to get some new material out there, and indeed, Blood Bank is very good, and the side-project with Collections of Colonies of Bees, Volcano Choir, proves the man got skill. And so, I do like this record. A lot. But it's more a sign of talents yet to ripen than some kind of God-on-earth solar eclipse. Lump Sum is fucking superb. The early music intro of cathedral-size cooing is exactly what I love about this artist. And then there's a bloody 4/4, 808 kick to take things off! A very good record, but a first draft on something greater and yet to arrive.





46. Feist - The Reminder



This, British popular media, is a pop record, ok? So stop throwing around the term as if it was some sort of reneged evil-doer who actually deserves a second chance because really it's actually kind of an economic resurgent. Feist didn't deserve that, she's so above it, this woman is like my best friend. Have you seen her on Sesame Street? How could there be any sort of social unrest in North America with Sesame Street and Feist appearing in the same room at least once. '1-2-3-4' is Bresson-esque simplicity that outlives its dick-pod advertisement. There are flashes of REM, Neil Young, the Beatles, with songs like 'Past in Present' and 'I Feel it All' ringing like classic folk-rockers. The Reminder has everything going for it.




45. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah




I'll admit that listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah recently didn't offer the same thrills as once before. But skipping to track 5 - Details of the War - is a heady experience. It reminds me of lying on the floor, stretching out my arms and despairing. That chugging song is temperamental hurt in itself, it feels really sorry for itself. But the toms that patter and climb beneath the scrambling guitars always seem to lift the song back to its feet, however dour that strange voice is. 'It's over/I have seen it all before.' Oh, my. Sometimes it's nice to lie on the floor and sulk.





44. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion



I prefer the slow churn of Feels, it's true, but Merriweather Post Pavilion is a great record. It's not exactly the breakthrough that some have called it. The videos for the songs, particularly 'In the Flowers', underline Animal Collective's intention to obscure rather than entertain. I think they should be a applauded for that. This is an intensely economic game they're involved in - hence adverts for MPP's sickening artwork on London's tube network - but they manage to reject it and evoke something above the banal thrum of the capitalist music ditch. Noah Lennox's 'My Girls' is one of the great songs of my lifetime, the hellenistic philosophers would be fucking proud. Every time I listen to that song, life - this mundane, modern thing - takes on an importance that belies its visual appearance. Yes, New Weird America has given me reason to believe. Noah Lennox (aye-kay-aye Panda Bear) is possibly the great auteur of popularish-music today. He even has himself an understudy in Bradford Cox who learns from him, borrows him, and creates in his image.





43. Marissa Nadler - Songs III: Bird on the Water



2007 was a great year for music, ushered in (nearly) by Joanna Newsom in December 2006 with Ys, and solidified in the early months with records from LCD Soundsystem and that debut from Panda Bear. But one record which went *cliche alert* 'largely-unnoticed' is Marissa Nadler's Songs III: Bird on the Water. The first track is a killer, 'Diamond Heart' is a terrifying song about the death of Marissa's lover's father, 'Your father died, some months ago/and we scattered his ashes, in-the-snow'. 'Oh, my lonely diamond heart, that misses you so well/Oh, my lonely diamond heart/that misses you/oh well.' That 'Oh' is a typically romantic start to a sentence, and Nadler's lyrics have something of Petrarch about them, they capture a sense of longing 'so well'.






42. The Microphones - The Glow Pt. 2



This record remains an unknown quanitity of sorts, for me. But listening to the melody that erupts in 'I Want Wind to Blow', the opener to The Glow Pt. 2, is like being endowed with some kind of all-encompassing wisdom. The clanging guitars never leave you, I would love to type how it sounds 'dun dun dun-dun, dun dun dun-dun duhhh', but that's not it. What about the distant field recording of a boat that appears like a leitmotif, 'bwooooooooarh', towards the end of the record, and eventually sees it out. This record is what America sounds like to me, a place I've never been to. I idealise Anacortes, Washington, all a part of Phil Elvrum's oeuvre, probably the very thing that marks him out as a great musician, photographer and drawererer. I remember eavesdropping on my friend Graeme handing a copy of this record to someone about 4 years ago now. 'I assure you, you'll love this,' he said to the recipient of the disc. And since then, I knew that I would too.





41. The National - Boxer




I heartily enjoy Dark was the Night, but the myspace-esque friendship blurting of The National's bros Dressner kind of grates. Out of the context of Boxer, Matt Berninger's voice sounds way off. That drawl and growl just isn't fit for foil alongside Justin Vernon, the textures don't mesh. The portentousness is distracting. But, on Boxer, it's wonderful. Maybe it's the sense of humour Berninger has in singing about 'baking apples, making pies' and lemonade and that. 'Fake Empire' too, it has a sort of personal decay about it that isn't too Sn** Pat*** or U*. Because, let's face it, I find that sort of stadium rock horsecarp sickening. This blurb has indeed been a moan about The National in other spheres, but then who could be proud about appearing in the narrative intro for Hollyoaks. Can you put narrative and Hollyoaks in the same sentence? The fact is that the proliferation of good music into shit consumerist nonsense is saddening and it does have an effect on the original product itself. But what Boxer was to me, pre-H****oaks, means more than the pain of hearing a good song in bad company.

Record Review: Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong

via Ragged Words
By Daniel Greenwood

This time last year Vivian Girls released their self-titled debut to general surprise and applause on these shores. The so-called ‘Noise revival’ in North America lent few ripples to Europe’s banal mainstream, where the break-up of Oasis is a grave occurrence. Bands like Times New Viking and Eat Skull are nothing names here, whereas fellow alt-guitar clangers Vivian Girls tuck neatly inside a Guardian reader’s indie quota. What makes Vivian Girls likeable is in part their quaintness and good looks, but really it’s the songs that do the work. From Vivian Girls, ‘Tell the World’ is witty and emotive, and ‘I Believe in Nothing’ marries a strong harmonic melody with a nihilistic mantra. That debut has a lot to say for itself, it’s honest and loveable.

Speaking to Ragged Words last December, the band were eager to get back into the studio and have their second record out the following September, their first with Ali Koehler on drums. So, September rolls around and Vivian Girls’ sophomore work is here. But maybe the desire to fully-initiate Ali on tape has been to the detriment of the songs.

Everything Goes Wrong feels rushed in a way that’s unlike the rush you get from Vivian Girls. ‘Tension’ is perhaps the highlight, with a hint of The Mamas & Papas in the vocal harmony collapsing behind Cassie Ramone’s tremulous Interpol impression and Ali’s gusting cymbals. Hole are of interest here, this record could have sounded like Live Through This, though these girls are too young to write a record like that, or at least not as experienced as Courtney Love. ‘Walking Alone at Night’, ‘I Have No Fun’ and ‘Can’t Get Over You’ pick up where Vivian Girls left off, and it’s a really strong sing-along opening to the record. One intentional change in the structure of the songs is the addition of Hardcore gestures three-quarters of the way through some of the later tracks. ‘When I’m Gone’ disbands from its form and delves into faceless crashing. These attempts to give the songs more depth in length don’t work so well. It’s not necessarily filler, just a trio of fledgling musicians finding what works best.

In life, everything does go wrong in one way or another, most of the time. But it has to before it can ever be alright again. And if it hasn’t worked so well for Vivian Girls this year, you can be sure it will – maybe this time next year? Everything Goes Wrong will certainly do for now.

Record Review: Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs

via Ragged Words:
by Daniel Greenwood

Experience is on Yo La Tengo’s side, with this New Jersey trio of Ira Kaplin, Georgia Hubley and James McNew having ploughed through the 1990s and now seeing out the 2000s with another very good record. The band have dropped at least one great album in each of the past two decades: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One(1996) and Suddenly Everything Turned Itself Inside Out (2000). This is definitely a band you can rely on. And with Popular Songs, that stance hasn’t changed.

Opener ‘Here to Fall’ feels like a more contained and therefore volatile Yo La Tengo epic, with a cinematic orchestra ducking and diving as Ira Kaplin declares ‘I know you’re worried/I’m worried too’. Popular Songs has a throw-away feel to it, laid back and loose, but not in the melancholy way that Suddenly Everything is. Maybe it feels like the hard work is behind this band. Though, that’s not to say they don’t work hard, evidently they do, but the band’s craft is effortless and refined.

The first nine tracks make up a Pop record, and that’s clearly something intentional, because the final three songs comprise an almost entirely different album. Here’s where the uninitiated might turn the stereo off, or some of the uber-initiated might delete it from their hard drive. Perhaps it’s a trick, with Popular Songs luring the listener into the experience, expecting Beach Boys off-shoots and doo-wop, which there’s plenty of. ‘More Stars than there are in Heaven’ reels you in further, but no hook is forthcoming, instead there’s the near-drone acoustic ambience of ‘The Fireside’. Here Yo La Tengo slip their shoes off and sit back, allowing the looping reverb to melt into the blur somewhere above the song. And, eleven minutes later, the sort of alternative guitar squalor that’s such a fine fixture on I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One turns up to slap you in the chops for fifteen minutes. ‘And the Glitter is Gone’, indeed.

Yo La Tengo can do what they like, but then they always have, successful or not they’ve always written honest songs that have proven popular over time. This band are easy to love. But as with the upper tier of Popular Songs, love isn’t so short nor sweet as you might expect.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 60 to 51

Albums 60 to 51, AWW YEH:

60: Wavves - Wavves

What Nathan Williams typifies above all in recent years is the DIY ethic. Williams recorded all these songs himself using his computer, and with little concern for arrangements or production. Perhaps it's the sign of a golden age that the personal computer and internet connection has given to everyday folks, Vivian Girls are the pre-cursor to Wavves, the big sister of Williams the fuzz-drenched wunderkind. It's debatable whether it's pop music, but Wavves with two v's is the jewel shared amongst blogspotters and second-hand, European Pitchfork readers with a taste for American indie rock and dreadful ambient dregs. 'Vermin' is my favourite, because it sheds a melancholic light on Wavves' otherwise bumptious persona.


59: Ricardo Villalobos - Achso EP

European art wins out for me, it hits right at the heart. To generalise massively, perhaps Western-infected art, like much English 21st century music and film, and American similarly, is impeded upon by societal pains too easily. But then most European art of the 20th century is digesting the terrible experiment of Stalin's Communism, or the catastrophe of the Second World War. European wordless music has a chance to do something different, post-Classical. If Rudolph Arnheim claims that poetry fails after the holocaust then here Ricardo Villalobos in no way refers to such a thing, but proves minimal ambient music prevails. There is life positively spilling from these four tracks, and more than ever, kicks feel like heartbeats. 'Ichso' has a deeply pronounced beat that hits in a little before 5-minutes, and with the right sound system you'll never fail to be enlivened by it. Villalobos is a genius, his craft is a meticulous and endlessly rewarding one.


58: Gang Gang Dance - God's Money

Brooklyn is a goldmine. But Gang Gang Dance don't necessarily sound like they're straight out of New York City, more like the creature traumatised by a globalised community. This creature's pain is expressed in distinctly wonderful melodies, with bouts shrieking and delayed vocal loops. God's Money is the phrase a deceased friend of GGD's used to offer to receivers of his generosity, 'it's not my money, it's God's money,' he'd say. So God is at the heart of these songs, but it's up to fidgety critics to relay whether God is there or absent. For me, these songs are Holy things, 'Egowar' is a masterful expression of modern alternative music. If you're not cut-up when that strange xylophone-like loop comes in then, well.


57: Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey EP

Deerhunter are the best guitar band of the decade, IMO. Cryptograms is the most innovative use of delay pedals, the antithesis of Bloc Party's twee. But an idea seems to surround the band that they're inaccessible. Well this 4-track monolithic slab of alternative guitar music solves that bollock-wrangle. 'Like New' is maybe about Deerhunter's deceased first bass player, Bradley Ira Harris, 'Be like new/be like you'. Or else it could be Bradford Cox shaking off the high school jinx, trying to be himself. Otherwise, 'Fluorescent Grey' is all about the city and the dying 'the city spotting/the corpses rotting/the glow'. The glow is the colour of dead flesh, as per the title of the EP. Above all that, these songs are invigorating to listen to.


56: The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow

I know this is nailed-on as favourite for real fans of the Shins, but it's heavier-going than Oh, Inverted World. Is it the last really good record by this band? You'd have to argue for a long time to disprove that to some. Me, too. Chutes Too Narrow is altogether a more saddened event for the band, a little Camera Obscura in part, 'Gone for Good' sounds like it helped to write Let's Get Out of This Country in one go. The intricate, lyrical imagery of Oh, Inverted World are apparent though, with grass growing in the corners of James Mercer's bedsheets.


55: Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary

Remember this is a personal list, and I think for a lot of people this Wolf Parade record is a certain Top Ten. My favourite is 'Dinner Bells', it's Spencer Krug at his loneliest, 'There'll be no more dinner bells/dinner bells to ring'. I also love how it's 7-minutes plus, it fills a space of time perfectly, never feeling hurried or overlong. 'Shine a Light' was played to me by a friend and we must have listened to it about sixty times that night, it was a memorable introduction to the band. Perhaps Wolf Parade have finally taken a back seat for Krug though, with Sunset Rubdown now arguably making stronger records, Dragonslayer in particular.


54: Department of Eagles - The Cold Nose

This is a long way from Grizzly Bear's dusty classical dirge, and it's got to be Dan Rossen's sense of humour that makes the whole thing such a treat. '$20 lamp! $40 rug! Playstation 2! Tony Hawk 4!' as on 'Forty Dollar Rug', an ode to popular consumerism for the twenty-something males far-flown from the nest. The songs are surprisingly strong here, a first attempt for Dan Rossen as a musician, and our chum Fred Nicolaus also. You get the feeling that songs like 'Sailing by Night' and 'Ghost in Summer' clothes are the early indicators of Rossen's future fruit. Sure, In Ear Park is a very good record, but Rossen's magnum opus is yet to arrive. I can't wait!


53: Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country

Ouch, so Chutes Too Narrow helped Camera Obscura to write this record (material proof pending) but then it appears higher up! What a farce, someone email the media. Well, maybe 'Tears for Affairs' emotes like non-Brits cannot. Soz. That's flagrant racism. Nah, it's just different, Scotland is c-old. Or should I say, as only the Brits can! Look, 'Let's Get Out of This Country' besmirches all that, for these Scots want to live and love in cathedral cities like Munich and Prague: 'We'll wave goodbye to thankless jobs.../we'll find a cathedral city/you can be handsome and I'll be pretty'. Sounds good, ach aye.


52: The Knife - Silent Shout

This is where it gets heated. Silent Shout was Pitchfork's #1 record of 2006, but I'm sorry you don't put Joanna Newsom third behind TV on the Radio, and however much The Knife have crafted something like the best electronic record of the decade (for most people), well, you know, it's personal. Darkness and danceability are rarely married together, but then the Knife came along. Fever Ray is doing something like it currently, but it's less danceable and more minimal beat-intoxication. I listened to 'Silent Shout' on headphones in HMV in Liverpool, and I was scared. The headphones test thing was new, probably riddled by the bacteria of germy trance-face earholes, but the song blew that all away. 'Like a Pen', 'Marble House' and 'We Share Our Mother's Health' make me afraid of the sunlight.


51: Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Rob Pecknold, Tillman and co. are tapping into something divine. 'Meadowlarks' is distinctly gnostic-cum-early music, a song about a bird that I don't get to see in England. In fact, I saw a model of a meadowlark in the Horniman museum, and it's a creature worthy of the song. There is a sort of running, tree-hugging joke that follows Fleet Foxes around, and it's only because what is directly beautiful and wonderful gets scoffed at. Yeah, the Guardian are guilty of it, particularly in Michael Hann's review of Veckatimest recently, whatever they gave Fleet Foxes last year, 'landmark in American music' blah. On the BBC Culture Show, when Pecknold was asked by Lauren Laverne what his songwriting was about, he meekly replied that he wouldn't know how to write a song for a club night. Fair, Fleet Foxes isn't perfect, but Sun Giant is, nearly.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 70 to 61

Here's the Spotify playlist.

Albums 70 to 61, get in:

70: Azeda Booth - In Flesh Tones (2008)

Azeda Booth have gone largely unnoticed in the blogosphere, and there's not been a single mention of them in the British press. But that suits their sound. In Flesh Tones is a pale sounding record, with androgynous vocals bleating meekly amid swathes of swooning keys and trickling percussion of sticks and toms. For any fan of quietly ambitious ambient music this is a must-have. 'Ran' is the opening and standout track, the best unknown of 2008.


69: Belong - October Language (2006)

What Deerhunter do so well in parts on Cryptograms, Belong do for breakfast. Delay pedals are the least you can blame for this oceanic sound, where only the song titles do any talking. Take 'Who Told You This Room Exists?' and 'I Never Lose. Never Really', titles which suggest a standpoint, the posing of a question or a slither of rhetoric that capsizes into the stonking depths of these near hierophanous spaces of sound.


68: Dan Deacon - Bromst (2009)

Don't listen to this record if you've had any coffee, if you're particularly susceptible to palpitations or anxiety. I can imagine that listening to Dan Deacon's masterpiece in a busy inner-city might elevate you somewhere else, or will make you collapse. Deacon borders on genius, his songs are much like paintings, ecstatic works of art like something Miro did, but somehow all the more collected and congealed. Deacon is a patient artist whose live shows, apparently, are the best out there, whether you're a fan or not.


67: Feist - Let it Die (2004)

Leslie Feist is an integral part of Broken Social Scene, with her, the band aren't the full chomp. Just see Kevin Drew and co. cameoing in The Time Traveller's Wife (WTF?). I know. What she does well is humility, but more heartbreak. Actually, Feist has a pretty good crack at truth: 'The saddest part of a broken heart/isn't the ending/as much as the start.' I find that lyric to be positive in its reverse, you haven't lost anything by being alone. It's what you give to someone else, rather than what they can do for you. Perhaps.


66: Papercuts - Can't Go Back (2007)

I think Papercuts' most recent record, You Can Have What You Want, is pretty bloody good. It's not got the praise it deserves, but for a 4-star review in the English Times newspaper. You Can Have is an oneiric affair, all mooted loveloss and broken, droning organs, whereas Can't Go Back is a straight up folk megapiece. 'Sandy' is the love song for any summer, 'Outside Looking In' is a superb anthem for loners. Do not let this one slip by you.


65: Lindstrom - Where You Go to I Go too (2008)

Though album opener ‘Where You Go I Go Too’ runs close to 30-minutes, it feels more compact than much of Lindstrom’s last record It’s a Feedelity Affair. The Swede can be heard panting at the the title track's end, and for the listener it could have been the heavy breathing of a laboured-slog. Instead it’s the sumptuous rush of adrenaline that reaches its peak at around 27-minutes, an exhilarating surmount. The arrangements are impressive, and Lindstrom’s skill in this department is what makes the record a real joy.


64: Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008)

It’s near impossible to work out what Liz Harris is actually singing on the opening track of Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, but the angst living within the harmony makes such knowledge unnecessary. ‘Disengaged’ opens with the sound of a world ending, the harbinger of some unspeakable sadness that will consume everything by the end of the song. And it kind of does, moving into 'Heavy Water/I'd Rather be Sleeping', with Harris singing 'this love is enormous it's eating me up'. To me, it's the issue of living and dying, investing or sleeping. For Harris she's lost beneath the waves, but the idea of being anywhere else is an unrequited desire.


63: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lie Down in the Light (2008)

'If there's only one thing I can do/and you know that I don't want to do it' sings Will Oldham on 'Easy Does It', a paean to procrastination. The big pluses about this Bonnie 'Prince' Billy record are the production and its sense of momentum. The first few songs swan swiftly along and towards the album's close the momentum arrests in two lovely, plaintive numbers - 'Willow Trees Bend' and 'I'll Be Glad' - the latter offering hope to the Lord Himself: 'You'll always have me around'. Oldham's is a catalogue to be mined as if for jewels, let's hope he sticks around some more.


62: Department of Eagles - In Ear Park (2008)

Daniel Rossen's stench is all over Yellow House, Grizzly Bear's first official recording as a four-piece. And perhaps that stench is so strong that Rossen had to pull away, giving more space to the Grizzle Bizzle project and throw all his roughed-up, acoustic virtuoso-isms into something almost completely his own. Fred Nicolaus is Rossen's other half here, but the poor blighter has to work and wait while Rossen sojourns with his full-time band mates. But then so do fans of Department of Eagles, who waited a long time for this quite ominous record that shelves the sample-o-rama-cum-beatmania of DoE's dormroom offering The Cold Nose. 'Balmy Night' feels a little elliptical here at the record's end, but it's my favourite because Rossen's at his heartiest and most Chekhovian.


61: Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls (2008)

OK, I didn't get Vivian Girls for a long time. Vivian Girls' 20-minute run time seemed just to whizz-by, with the emotional content of the songs completely elusive. But after seeing the Brooklyn three-piece live and thus studying their material more closely, you realise that these are brilliant songs. There's an emotional intelligence to the way Cassie sings about lusting after others: 'I'm going insane/going out of my mind/does he know, does he know/that he's totally fine,' because she pulls-off the pop sensibility with aplomb. It's so quickfire. 'Tell the World' is a psychic romance that feels like the album's centre-piece, a signifier of the record's need to express the sheer excitement in loving someone else, and in being alive. Though 'I Believe in Nothing' proves that theory all wrong.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 80 to 71

Here's your Spotify playlist.

Songs 80 to 71, do it:

80: The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (2007)

One thing that really sticks about The Twilight Sad is singer James Graham's Scottish accent. It's so fitting for songs like 'Cold Days from the Birdhouse' and 'And She Would Darken the Memory'. It's also his employment of the c-word whence describing someone wasting away at his desk. The guitars are what make the record, with Graham's simmering hostility finding the perfect foil in the swathes of hammering guitars that push the band ever upward, the rolling, stuttering snare grounded beneath it all.


79: Pan American - White Bird Release (2009)

Labradford are a band, like Stars of the Lid, whose style you could describe as 'barely-there', or 'simmercore'. Mark Nelson is Pan American, formerly of Labradford. But Nelson's work as Pan American is more like Stars of the Lid, with more willingly ascending drones and the advent of husky, right-up-close vocals. Listening to this record is like wandering on the edges of sleep, it really feels like sleep-paralysis. Rather than the strange disturbance of being half awake and half asleep, it's fine to drift along these faint lines.


78: Madvillain - Madvillainy (2004)

I don't propose to know much about Hip Hop but I like Pete Rock, but he's more straight-up. The combination of Madlib and MF Doom came together in 2004 to make something of a comic book for the ears, or, if you're a bit high brow, a graphic novel for the cochlea. My favourite samples are in the intro track, where Doom introduces Madlib, and a little 1950s Reefer Madness-esque voice chirrups 'How do you do?' at irregular intervals. The record's sense of humour and thirst for texture is unrelenting.


77: Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (2008)

I can't work out Steven Ellison's beats. They suggest the anxiety and paranoia of an artist who works assiduously and on his own. 'Itchy' is the closest you'll get to defining it, but the real joy is in the ambient thrums and fledgling basslines. This is music that is very hard to write about and absolutely brilliant to listen to. You could almost say it was life-affirming. Beautiful, danceable and frightening all in one.


76: Pantha du Prince - This Bliss (2007)

It was the Pitchfork review that turned me onto Pantha du Prince, an introduction to the minimal techno field, one that led eventually to Ricardo Villalobos and on to Gas. The thing that hooks me about Pantha du Prince is a resemblance to nature vs. science, technology vs. trees. The medium is all computers, no doubt, but the spirit of the music is vast. 'Saturn Strobe' and 'Asha' make up the first two tracks, and I though they may have come from an overheating laptop in a dark room, the shakers on 'Saturn Strobe' sound like the empty, echoing streets of Berlin.


75: Tinariwen - Aman Imam (2007)

Water is Life is the translation, but it could easily be Music is Life (perhaps for a less poetic European House reincarnation). 'Mano Dayak' and 'Matadjem Yinmixan' are key to the album's melodic core, the chanting doesn't out-do Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for toil, but the measure of the band's vision is bountiful. It feels almost post-rock in its sense of place, with the unmistakable African guitar sound that reinvigorated a turgid Western scene in the early 00s.


74: Broken Social Scene - Feel Good Lost (2004)

Some might describe Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning's work here as a poor man's Pan American or any other Kranky-imprint. But any record with Feist appearing on it is fine with me. It's nice to listen to songs like 'Alive in 85' or 'Guilty Cubicles', to inhale their wistful, almost teenage romanticism and realise the monstrous brilliance that was to arrive in 2002 when Drew and Canning built the BSS ark.


73: Dirty Projectors - Rise Above (2007)

I've never listened to Black Flag, but I know their songs are nothing like those that appear courtesy of Dave Longstreth on Rise Above. That's probably the point. 'Thirsty and Miserable' highlight Longstreth's compositional skill combined with the heavenly vocal harmonies of Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian. Some people really don't like Longstreth's voice, but it's a bit like Colin Meloy or Joanna Newsom - though very different - in theory it's a taste worth acquiring.


72: Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (2007)

I remember sitting in my university computer room and listening to 'Keep the Car Running' a few weeks before Neon Bible was released, my hopes were sky-high. I even remember a BBC Newsnight Review episode where the album was reviewed by a group of journos. A TV Chef tore into Win Butler for trying to lecture 'him' about climate change (?) and another novelist called it 'dull'. A Guardian journalist said it was 'scarily good'. It turned out to be a bit of both of the former descriptions. For my money (not much), 'Intervention' is a faux-anthem that underlines Butler's clunky lyricism which is found elsewhere on 'Black Wave/Bad Vibrations'. But not many bands can write songs like 'Keep the Car Running', and as much as it sounds, I actually really like this record.


71: Rufus Wainwright - Want Two (2005)

Rufus gets a bad deal from high-brow motherfuckers, and, if there's one thing Rufus ain't, it's a motherfucker. But that's beside the point. 'Memphis Skyline' is reputedly a song about Jeff Buckley, and it couldn't be more subtle - it neither confirms nor denies it - but Wainwright has admitted as much. The Canadian claims he was jealous of Buckley's successes in the early 90s when Wainwright was floundering in bars and pithy clubs. 'The Art Teacher' is a plaintive love song about a Turner painting and a lost, well, love. Ok, so Rufus's croon may not be for everyone, but, yikes, it works wonderfully for some of us.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 90 to 81

Albums 90 to 81, here's the Spotify playlist, let's go:

90: Dodos - Visiter (2008)

Killer songs are generally abound on Dodo's debut, 'God?' and 'Ashley' are lovely and they go somewhere. At least, by the end of the record, it feels like you've been moved some place else. Blistering acoustic guitar thrumming and rim splatter pitter patter with the sticks.


89: Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual (2008)

Dustin, Ponytail's manic rhythm guitarist, typified the creative process for the band as building a bridge outward rather than some towering mass upward. It's the perfect simile for a band that really need to be experienced live to be experienced at all. 'Late for School' is an anthem for kids who just got out of bed and realised it's past nine o'clock. 'Oh! No! I'm late for schooooool!'


88: Why? - Alopecia (2008)

Probably the best first 5 songs on any record in 2008, Alopecia is the most interesting record of that year, and possibly the wittiest and generally most brilliantly written of the past few years. 'If you grew up with white boys who only look at black and Puerto-Rican porno because they want something that their Dad don't got/then you know where you're at/murdering your earholes shut with wet coke in a Starbucks' bathroom with the door closed/...Sending sexy SMSs to my ex's new man/cause I can'. Kurt Vonnegut would have rejoiced.


87: Italians Do It Better - After Dark (2007)

The perfect introduction to a range of artists both melodic in sound and conscientious in mind. Mirage's cover of 'Last Night a DJ Saved My Life' is my favourite, but Glass Candy's 'Miss Broadway' is a should-have-been for many critical 500 songs of the decade.


86: Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs

Do Andrew Bird's songs feel like hard work? Maybe they do, but it's only because he offers a good deal of investment, if you can wait out the beautiful parts of his songs. A bit like any Wolf Parade off-shoot, Bird's compositions are sneaky buggers that are fuzzy at first but soon enough they're ingrained on your psyche and inhabit a period of your memory. 'Sovay' is an instant stamp, though. 'Sovay, so vain', I think.


85: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (2008)

Summaries of this record in 2008 end-of-year lists referred to 'haters' a lot, but there weren't too many from what I could see. Maybe a few people who'd grown a bit tired of decent American indie guitar bands. Nevertheless it was the winter 2007 tour with the Shins that opened Vampire Weekend to the broader British public. I remember laughing at the name, 'what a stupid name', but was quickly shut up by 'Cape Cop Kwassa Kwassa' which is a ridiculously simple ergo brilliant song.


84: Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days (2002)

It's pretty incredible what Sam Beam has done with the Iron & Wine sound, it's never grown stale. The man has a wonderful, very powerful voice that can reach out into an auditorium perhaps as you might not expect. On The Shepherd's Dog Beam expanded the band and the sound, but Our Endless Numbered Days is Beam's folk at its most refined. The Creek Drank the Cradle feels a little too meek sometimes.


83: St. Vincent - Actor (2009)

Yes, Annie Clark is beautiful, but that would count for nothing if she didn't have the persona. What's most attractive about Clark's style is her sense of suppleness, the damaged air that's carried over from her debut Marry Me. Clark shares Phil Elverum's sort of candidness but in a popular format that is entirely rivetting and diverse on Actor. 'All of my old friends aren't so friendly/and all of my old haunts are now haunting me'.


82: The Ruby Suns - Sea Lion (2007)

Sea Lion has the same sort of effect as Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. You end up saying to yourself, 'Why don't I listen to this more often?' The Kiwis shake things up no end, 'Adventure Tour' and 'Mojave' are remedies for those of us drowning in an age of plodding British 'pop' and 'rock' music. Exciting song structures and soulful ambience make Sea Lion a real diamond of a disc.


81: The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (2007)

The Field showed me that dance music was OK. You don't have to be white, bald and English to like it and, at their heart, songs like 'Everday' possess a transcendence that is of the genre of electronic music only. Lots of room to jump up and down with eyes closed. You don't need drugs for music this good.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 100 to 91

Disclaimer:

This isn't a definitive list of the best records of the decade, it's not possible for one person to compile something like that. You can only talk about what you've heard, about what's set itself as a figment of your recent past. In this case, my recent past is 2000 to 2009, and here is the music that's either followed or led me through it.

You'll notice lots of records from 2007, that's the year I really learned to love new and predominantly American music. I don't think any other country (bar Sweden) comes close to it for the sheer range of styles and artists.

Here's the Spotify playlist so you can listen for yourself.

Most of it is probably wrong:

100: Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (2001)

'A Place for My Head' was brilliant. At 15, you're still a child. There was enough fantasy and nu-metal to go around for a solid group of chums. This was a record for mid-teens with a diminishing sense of violent angst that goes-with growing up in South London. It's also a strangely sexless record.


99: Radiohead - Kid A (2000)

I remember this being an event for older people. I was still playing N64. It only hit it in 2005, and sadly, it was Tom Cruise that lit this one up. Radiohead are enormous, but perhaps it's their ambition that swells their fanbase between so many different people. You can tell they're doing something right when some people still don't like The Bends. It's depressing, apparently.


98: Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36 (2007)

'The most meticulous music' is how a friend described minimal techno, and it's true. This is almost cinematic in its strange, microcosmic attention to detail. Nothing is more satisfying than a Ricky Villalobos kick. Villalobos's music sounds to me like a tapestry, he sows the tiniest things together and they bloom into something else entirely when realised as a whole.


97: El Guincho - Alegranza (2007)

El Guincho borders on irritable/addictive, but like a good rash it clears itself up and can be beamed back upon in hindsight as a worthy stoicism. It's also the closest anyone has come to matching Madvillainy or Person Pitch for sampling skills. 'Palmitos Park' is danceable and beautiful.


96: Findlay Brown - Separated by the Sea (2006)

This is an underrated record that seemed never to get an American release. Separated by the Sea was a five-star affair in the Guardian, and though you often find Dave Simpson handing out 4-stars like Pizza Hut flyers, The GDN are generally right about the fivers. 'Green Pram' and 'Come Home' do the sad, folkish job. Polished stuff.


95: I'm from Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends (2006)

OK, MASSIVE band (numerically) but succint pop music to sing along to for months. However strange the Blogotheque videos of the lead singer orchestrating timid diners in a Spanish restaurant into a rendition of 'Tree House' are.


94: The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? (2003)

It's a good question, actually. 'Tuff Ghost' does it for me here, there's something irrepressibly itchy about these songs, as if they're all about to fall over.


93: Kria Brekkan & Avey Tare - Pullhair Rubyeye (in reverse) (2007)

Mark Richardson at Pitchfork panned this (the original, unreversed version) but you know he just went home, loaded the thing into Logic and turned it upside down. But he was right, these are lovely, simple folk songs, why reverse them?


92: Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If... (2007)

Kevin Drew doesn't do himself any favours with cock-rock performances at the Shepherd's Bush Empire minus the imperative female contigent of BSS, but this is a super album that probably has gone unnoticed by people who'd actually probably generally really like it.


91: Death from Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine (2004)

These were sensational at Reading in 2005. Sadly, now You're a Woman, I'm a failing solo project/bland electro nipper. 'Little Girl' is one of the best songs of the 2000s.