Lists: My Top 100 Albums of the 2000s - 31 to 20

30. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The Letting Go

'My love, my love, my careful love/I only want to lay with you/my love, my love/o! careful love/I found the hard way love is true.'

29. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise

'Oooooooooh/history repeats itself.'

28. Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

'Where'd my mind go?/Out of tune.'

27. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

'After-all that-we've been-throoough/I see you along the way, baby/stillness is the move.'

26. The Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts

'Grace Cathedral Hill/all wrapped in bones of setting sun/all dust and stone and moribund/I paid 25c to light a little white candle.'

25. Sufjan Stevens - Michigan

'Our Grandpa died in a hospital gown/she didn't seem to care/she smoked in her room and coloured her hair.'

24. Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel

'Quarantined and kept/so far away/from my friends'.

23. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

'I was slicing up an avocado/when you came up behind me/with your silent brand new sneakers/your reflection I did not see/it was the hottest day in August/we were heading for the sea/for a second my mind started drifting and you put your arms around me/blood sprayed on the kitchen sink/'what's this?' I had time to think/I see the tip of my index finger/my mind is slowly creating a link'.

22. Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP

'Days are just drops in the river to be lost/always'.

21. Deerhunter - Cryptograms

'I saw the curtains/it was the end/when one life is over a new one begins'.

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.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T LISTENED TO...Yo La Tengo!

In an age and arena (the internet) where we all must act as if we know everything (because it's all available) how refreshing to have a new series that will proclaim loudly and proudly that I HAVEN'T SEEN CASABLANCA OR LISTENED TO A CERTAIN BAND! Let's go! Maybe the 10-minute intro of I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass isn't the best way to taste-test Yo La Tengo. It's the sort of intro that's made for a band's hardened fanbase. But instead, this seems the most accessible and gorgeous place to start - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. According to their label Matador 'Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew sound like no other band. This is not because they're contrarians, but because they're artists.' That's a sure-fire way to put me off. But listening to 'Damage', 'Green Arrow' and 'The Lie and How We Told it' I think I've found my new favourite band.

Yo La Tengo
YLT on myspace
YLT on the Hype Machine