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 - 40 to 31

Ok, I said too much last time:



40. The Knife - Deep Cuts




Deep Cuts trades more on wit and irony than any 'The First Cut is the Deepest' deal, with songs about proto-pornos as in 'Handy Man'. The record is likeable because it engages the humorous side of European clubbish techno that seems to be taken so seriously on the face of things by English-speaking ravers. It takes that homoeroticism and pushes it firmly in your ear. But it has to be 'Heartbeats' that makes this very fun album somewhat painful and heartfelt also.




39. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem




It's a complete accident that I like this band. It was Reading in 2005, the Sunday night, alone in the Radio 1 tent. I'd gone initially to see The Futureheads but the schedule had been delayed. This was the first time I heard 'Yeah' (Crass version), a semi religio-disco moment that completely re-wrote my perception of James Murphy and co. The throbbing melody that gobbles 'Yeah' down re-affirms much of my ill-intentions that were probably well-meant in the first place. Sometimes you should just be quiet and have a little dance.





38. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs




This record is whack. Perhaps listening to 'Kids on Holiday' in an airport is a good idea, because the sense of giddiness translates, even if you are on your way back home. Sung Tongs is the infantile goodness of AC, with the rare hints of trauma that seem to guide this band, as on 'Leaf House': 'This house is sad/because he's gone'. That is the song that got me into them, everything else before just seemed, well, peculiar.





37. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene




This is an underrated record. It's packed full of great melodies and the production is excellent. It's messier than You Forgot It in People, and it doesn't try to be anything other than what it really is - a melodic mess. But, again, any mess including Emily Haines and Feist will always manage to make the roughness pristine and lovely. '7/4 Shoreline' is one of the top songs in Canadian history, and, 'Swimmers'? Sheesh. 'Fire Eye'd Boy', 'Ibi Dreams of Pavement', 'Our Faces Split the Coast in Half'??? GET BORN!!!!1!1!!!1!!!





36. The Shins - Oh, Inverted World




Oh, Inverted World? It's a student's dream record, with songs about bus stops and bookshops. Yes, some of us are happy to get the bus and a little too happy to be in bookshops. Though, really it was Garden State that introduced me to The Shins. I did indeed wish that Natalie Portman had plopped headphones on my head, rather than Zach Braff's. Still, the first few listens to 'New Slang' offer a sensation that only this gullible and sweet-hearted kind of minor music can produce.





35. Alan Braxe & Friends - The Upper Cuts




Ok, so it's 2007 and I'm not embarrassed anymore, and no I don't want a fight. This is elated, euphoric French dance music that is completely welcoming and strangely indiscriminate. Though, you do have to stick with these songs to get their full spunk, like 'Most Wanted'. 'Intro' is Fred Falke at his best, slappin' de bass as only he can, in some studio in Marseille, probably. Let's not forget 'The Music Sounds Better with You', an infinitely playable track that seems to have soundtracked the late '90s as if by the soundbrush of God Herself.






34. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest



Please let's not talk about Jay-Z or Twitter and all that Pitchfork news-barf about Ed Droste talking to some people who don't look like him or listen to the same songs. Veckatimest isn't a fashionable record but for 'Two Weeks' and Victoria Legrand gaining deserved notoriety in what is a stage of pre-Beach House breakthrough, before Teen Dream spaffs gently in the face of unknowing turbo-critics in January. What marks Grizzly Bear out is the slow thrust of fisticuffs as on Yellow House's 'On a Neck, on a Spit' and here with 'While You Wait For the Others'. It's also the New Weird America influences that sees the band wait for a song to hit, ala 'Dory' or 'Cheerleader'. Veckatimest is a very good record, but I'll admit, its charms aren't fully-fledged just yet. And that's a compliment.





33. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights




For lists that matter this year - i.e. not this one - Turn on the Bright Lights is a three-four gob throb with The Strokes Is This It. It's not been a good past few years for Interpol. Ok, Antics was good, but Our Love to Admire lit few flames, and the band have admitted as much. It seems that everything comes back to their debut full-length, a seminal work. It's a good mixture of reverb-guitar-pain and danceability as on 'Say Hello to the Angels'. It's the bass that undercuts the mastery, with 'The New' written sorely but sweetly on my memory if ever I listen to it. And 'Leif Erikson' tears my tits swiftly off with Paul Banks talking about time that our deceased Leif once had for Paul, always.





32. Great Lake Swimmers - Great Lake Swimmers




My fellow Great Lake Swimmers chum made me a mix which included a song from an unknown GLS record. I called him immediately to say thanks, Tony Dekker's voice is one that puts me firmly back in the wet Christmas of 2005. When us Brits could use Pandora to discover new music (you can't stop the constant revolution) 'Three Days at Sea (Three Lost Years)' always seemed to show up and punch me in the shoulder. I couldn't find the record in shops, it wasn't on the band's myspace, couldn't find it free anywhere it was only available to buy online. And so, after months of shoulder-pangs, I got hold of it. And, though it's not a circus ride of varying styles, it sticks to exactly what it's good at: washing reverb-swamped vocals (pre-Panda Bear), and faintly disturbing lyrics: 'The man with no skin/they would not let him in/nobody wants to see a beating heart/a lung, or a brain/or anything'. All-American goodness ala Washington Irving.





31. The Tough Alliance - A New Chance




Pop music, not pop-ular, feels energetic and exciting, new and unfounded. So, not the same retreading of old economic successes/artistic fuck-offs. To listen to 'A New Chance' is a rapturous experience, 'a new romance' indeed. There's an intensely political feel to songs like 'First Class Riot': 'Don't you diet/first class riot.' And the wittiness of this Swedish (best) duo is what makes the politics feel un-political and more unifying, more honest. There is no discrimination here, it's kind of the pacifist's uproar, using a Zizekian but non-alienating sense of humour, the type to dig cynics in the bits. 'Neo Violence' and 'Miami' are both growers, giving A New Chance a sense of effervesence over time. But it's the style of 'Something Special' that lives on: 'You were something special/something real.'

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.