Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 10 to 1

10. Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid

Perhaps it's late 2008 with the streetlamps spilling orange light onto the bare branches; or the spring of 2009, with the clocks going forward, daffodils nodding in front gardens in the blue light of a chilly April-time dawn.

9. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender

January 2007 definitely. Rain falling on grey paving, cracked slabs spurting black muck when stepped on. But then there's a harp and a harpsichord: 'I am blue, and unwell.'

8. Deerhunter - Microcastle

The clocks have gone back, it's early November. It's stuffy on the tube, the trains are empty but the floors are covered with wet footprints that glint in the glare of the halogen bulbs.

7. The Clientele - Strange Geometry

Ireland, June 2007, whirring along the lanes lit green on either side. 'Julia, I get on my knees!' Sitting on the flat rocks, looking out at the ocean that is unending, apparently beyond it lies America. The water is sparkling and sloshing: 'I can't seem to make you mine/through the long and lonely nights/but I tried so hard, darling.'

6. Animal Collective - Feels

Summer 2007, drunk and listening to Loch Raven, staring at an old Japanese painting of a bird on the mantlepiece. Or else it's lying in bed listening to Banshee Beat and having the quiet revelation come full-circle: 'I don't think that I like you anymore.'

5. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

March 2007: Sunny weather. Someone Great's mourning work amidst the throbbing incandescence of Western Ireland's motorways.

4. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

'When my soul stops growing.' Sitting in a ferry cabin, the water green in the porthole window, the uneven gait you acquire the moment you try to stand up. 'Hey man, what's your problem?/Don't you know that I don't belong to you.' The feeling of beginning, eventually. Infinity.

3. Joanna Newsom - Ys

Driving to Scotland, the smell of methane coming from the fields, where cows and bulls sit in the aftermath of a long downpour.

2. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It in People

March 2006: What a recommendation. I called you to make sure. Any excuse. Spring in Liverpool: broad blue skies, the red-brick university buildings basking in the golden light of the early afternoon.

1. Arcade Fire - Funeral

March 2005: Hearing Haiti upon descending into King's Cross tube station, like a song I'd heard before, so familiar. Like much of the good in life. August 2005: Seeing a friend's face when he emerged from the tent at Reading - euphoria, confusion, disbelief. September 2005: Leaving London in a car full of stuff. 'We let our hair grow long/and forget all we used to know'. I kissed her dancing to Power Out.

Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 20 to 11

I said too little last time, no pictures as punishment (overruled):

20. Mt. Eerie - Lost Wisdom

Phil Elverum. We saw him in Tufnell Park. Had never been there before. Graeme bought two tickets and came down from Liverpool. It was a bleak October night. High Places supported, I bought 03/07 - 09/07 from Rob Barber and lost it somewhere on London Bridge as we whizzed into the river through slots in the bridge barriers. I bought Lost Wisdom from Phil Elverum. I didn't lose it. Graeme wished he'd brought a CD for Phil to sign. We got lost and walked over another bridge, towards the Tate. We scuffed our shoes like percussive instruments on the wet and mucky iron bridge.



19. Liars - Drum's Not Dead

Downloading music has its perils. You listen to a record only briefly through these dull computer speakers that hyperventilate at the presence of a bassline. That was August 2007. In June 2008 Liars played with Deerhunter and High Places in a theatre renovated by volunteers. Mostly students and recent graduates who aren't native Scousers. We got to the show early and a big van with a Czech plate was parked outside. Bradford Cox was crouched outside the doors of the venue smoking a cigarette and prodding an mp3 player with this finger. He wore black shades and seemed moody. A girl lulled around the entrance complaining of a stomach ache. High Places were soundchecking inside, loudly. We were the only non-band members there for a while.



18. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House

'The Knife' did the rounds on MTV2's 120 minutes. That was the way to find out about music. It's a song that has no real pull, just this looping melody that goes on and on. It does suck you down like the sand that swallows the band in the video. I found Yellow House in HMV in Liverpool and had no real interest in it for months. But there was an allure early on, perhaps the surprise of actually finding this record in that temporary store, in a city with poor record shops. This album performs something like mourning work. Listening to 'Little Brother' in an aeroplane over the clouds, a little dinky plane a speck below: 'My little brother will be born again.'



17. Beach House - Devotion

Sitting in Liverpool Lime Street, the train begins to pull away. On my mp3 player is an album I uploaded from John's computer. It has a picture of a man and a woman sitting around a table with a cake and candles. The music throbs a bit, matching the rhythm of the pendelino. It's a faintly sunny morning, a mist is dissolving in the fields. A woman is singing in a sometimes harsh whisper about astronauts, Turtle Island, by the dark of the park. I will wait for you there weeping silently.




16. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

September 2007. Back in Liverpool, desperate to be there. Screaming 'YATZAH YATZAH' along with Avey Tare to that opening track. Now it's November, fireworks night is a shocker. Sefton Park is full of people, a mass of dark shapes, an amorphous squelching mass. You play up, and you play up for months to come. November in the North, a trench. A while later I'm lying in bed one evening: 'At the end of the day/when no one else is looking'. Chores gets you out of it.



15. The Decemberists - Picaresque

You send me SMS after SMS about the Decemberists. I'm not talking to you to try and be cruel. It works. You quote 'Angels and Angles', I don't care. You have ingrained in me an interest in this band. I do a Homer Simpson and give Picaresque to a family member as a Christmas present. She hates Colin Meloy's voice. 'Can I borrow it?' 'Oh, take it, please.' The Engine Driver, We Both Go Down Together. On The Bus Mall is haunting. And months later I put it on the stereo and look at you while it plays. It's not you. It's the song. And you've got your own back, again.



14. Jens Lekman - Oh, You're So Silent Jens

November 2007, Manchester. They actually have this in HMV? I pick it up. I'm telling you, you should listen to this record. Like fuck do you. You listen to Cat Power, and even then you barely listen to her. You won't be borrowing this one. Jens Lekman becomes a limb. Maple Leaves, Rocky Dennis's Farewell Song, I Saw Her at the Anti-War Demonstration. Jens taught me to sing. He taught me how to forget about you.



13. Gas - Nah Und Fern

I am yet to read a satisfying written account of this music.







12. Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans

Going to classes at 9am, sleeping at midday. Enduring sleep paralysis, throwing my shoulders upwards, breaking the hold. She was cleaning her bedroom and my stereo came on. Seven Swans was in the CD player. It was a numinous experience, she said, sitting on her windowsill with a dusty cloth in her hand. 'I can see a lot of light in you/and I think that dress looks nice on you.'



11. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline

When I put this CD on, a grave sense of relief came over me. This is the music I have been looking for, I thought. I said it to you later. But when you do find that music, you know it's a death knell of sorts. Those feelings are rare. And maybe that's why I download so much from blogs, anything that I can. It's the sense of discovery that pervades all walks of life, that nomadic longing. But I have settled down somewhat with music, and whenever I settle down to this record it posits me somewhere else entirely. It is meditative. I am utterly reassured about existence with this music rising and falling against my ear, drifting off and coming back.

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.

Article: Straight outta Brooklyn: A Golden Age in American music

By Daniel Greenwood
via Seven

It has been said that, when times are hard, the art gets better. To compare the state of the American economy to the health of indie music in America shows that there is some truth to this idea. The rude health of American music is symptomatic of the sheer number of lauded artists (big and small) emerging from Brooklyn, New York. At the top of the scale are TV on the Radio, whose recent release Dear Science headed numerous album polls last year; Rolling Stone and Spin are two of the bigger brands who plumped for the act. In fact, American music dominated year-end charts, with British act Portishead and Aussies Cut Copy the only acts outside of the States to really trouble critical listings.
TV on the Radio are a bi-racial alternative rock band; four of the members are African Americans (Gerard A. Smith on keys and brass, Kyp Malone on bass, singer Tunde Adebimpe and Jaleel Bunton-Drums as percussionist) while fifth member and production hot-shot Dave Sitek is a white American. The significance of this idea of a bi-racial act is in line with the recent inauguration of America’s first African American president, Barack Obama. Take the track “Golden Age” from Dear Science: “There is a golden age/and it’s coming round.”

Leading indie website Pitchfork ranked Dear Science at number six in 2008 and their writer Eric Harvey commented: “One last sigh of relief that "Golden Age" in December isn't a sad curio of a nation afraid to embrace difference on November 4th [Election day], but instead stands as a bona fide fucking anthem going forward.”

For Harvey, this “Golden Age” is one of racial harmony, of kicking out Bush the draconian; but it can speak equally for the brilliant lights of the Brooklyn scene.

Telepathe are an electronic duo residing in Brooklyn, but with the release of their debut record Dance Mother, they haven’t been spending much time in the New York borough. Their record was produced by TV on the Radio member Sitek. It is experimental electronica and minimal, simmering with reverb-laden guitar moments akin to Sitek’s work for TV on the Radio.

In January, I spoke to Busy Ganges, one half of Telepathe, in the build-up to their debut release. Originally from Los Angeles, she said: “I’ve lived in Brooklyn for a few years now and I feel like I’ve been lucky to see live so many interesting and innovative bands over the years. But this past year, I feel like I’ve barely lived here. We’ve been touring, so I haven’t actually been out to any shows in Brooklyn. I feel like the scene has become so big that it’s almost overwhelming. I hear about a new band every single day.”

Ganges has a point. The overwhelming nature of the scene has lead to some bands spilling out into other parts of the country. Rob Barber and Mary Pearson of High Places comprise one of these acts who, in January, upped-sticks to Los Angeles, home of No Age and the Smell – perhaps America’s most relevant and, currently, most famous indie setting. High Places marry together an Animal Collective (once NYC-based) instinct for samples and ambient sounds, many of which are electronically modified sounds recorded at home, like plastic bags and even food bowls floating in a paddling pool full of water. High Places are perhaps the most under-the-radar of Brooklyn’s recent graduates but with much in common with the superlative Gang Gang Dance, another similar to Animal Collective.

The thing that ties bands such as TV on the Radio, High Places, Gang Gang Dance and Animal Collective together is their continental sound. The cover for Gang Gang Dance’s St. Dymphna is adorned with the image of lead singer Lizzi Bougatsos wearing colourful, almost royal Arabic headgear. The samples that tinge their breakthrough record hint at Middle Eastern influences with the kind of beats reminiscent of African American hip hop acts. It all adds up to a vibrant and colourful spectrum of artists that seem to cover so many genres that it all merges into one – a golden age for art.
Though artists like High Places have drifted away from New York’s epicentre, there is a constant germination of new acts. Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts are two bands to have achieved international acclaim with their debut albums in late 2008, along with the lesser-known experimental dance trio Lemonade.

For all the hyped artists, such as Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts, dominating the blogosphere over the past 12 months, one band is on the brink of doing something wonderful. This band is Grizzly Bear, the Brooklyn-based quartet of Ed Droste (vocals), Chris Taylor (bass), Daniel Rossen (guitar) and Christopher Bear (drums). Veckatimest, their second studio album, will be released in May and has been described by indie-hegemonic Pitchfork as “one of the big ones”.

But 2008 was no dry year for the band. Rossen teamed with friend Fred Nikolaus to release their long-anticipated 4AD debut under the Department of Eagles guise – In Ear Park. What you can expect from Grizzly Bear’s new record will be similar to the Department of Eagles’ tone, a spirited sound lit by the ruffle of acoustic guitars and droning piano keys. In Rossen, Grizzly Bear have a folk-virtuoso, a skilled arranger whose input on 2006’s superlative slow burner Yellow House cannot be ignored. The band is on the verge of breaking into the corner of the mainstream inhabited by Seattle-based and much-admired folk crooners Fleet Foxes. In simpler terms, Grizzly Bear have the chance to hold the gong for 2009 as TV on the Radio did last year.

The Brooklyn scene is in the throes of a golden age. But what is most wonderful about it is its eddy; you cannot identify one influence for these bands. Thanks to the internet – the blogging culture that desperately and adoringly attempts to charter the rise of these bands – much of it can be witnessed from outside the city itself and from across the pond. As some acts move on and those such as Grizzly Bear scale the international heights, new bands are moving in and playing their first shows. The scale is large, but with TV on the Radio stirring styles at the top and the likes of Lemonade reinventing rave-culture at the other end, there’s plenty of gold to mine.

Animal Collective @ Koko via Ragged Words

Ragged Words

Hype is rarely a good thing, and this Ragged Words reviewer felt it badly. Animal Collective’s ninth studio album Merriweather Post Pavillion was new material to these ears, but the wonderful aspect of Panda Bear, Avey Tare and Geologist’s more soulful, poppy tracks is that they feel instantly familiar. And, tonight, so is the venue. AC played Koko only last May, and it appears that Camden feels like home for these fellows.

If there is a surprise element to this the first fixture of AC’s 2009 touring calendar, it’s that things start so slowly. ‘In The Flowers’ is something of a false dawn as the evening’s opener, Avey Tare gathers momentum with his signature jink and head bob but the pace just isn’t there. Sure, it’s gorgeous enough – the swelling of one note in particular pushes high, up and beyond the boxes of Koko’s amphitheatre – but it takes an hour before anything entirely interesting happens.

All complaints aside, all dropping of heads and gawping at watches, people reading text messages, twisting their necks to look up at Koko’s grand heights, it’s so worth the wait. The breakout begins with ‘Summertime Clothes’, that rampant synth loop is devastating in a live environment, the perfect intro for ‘Brother Sport’. Only one song – ‘Grass’ – has ever enraptured an AC concert like ‘Brother Sport’ does, fist-pumping and spot-hopping, finally! The trio disappear and return swiftly to perform Strawberry Jam’s superlative ‘Chores’, a skewered ‘Banshee Beat’, and perhaps the most addictive of Merriweather Post Pavillion’s hyped-tracks, ‘My Girls’. Everyone knows the words to this one – but the album only came out today, didn’t we all wait? Guess not.

It’s hard to feel let-down by Animal Collective’s slow approach tonight, because ‘Summertime Clothes’ and ‘Brother Sport’ swallowed up everything in that transient, numinous, words-failing kind of way. Thank God for Animal Collective.