Tag: At the Drive-In
Ten Years!(?)(!?!) A Guide to the Best of the Decade: 2000
by Dion on Nov.30, 2009, under Uncategorized
So there I was last weekend, dancing like a fool, partying like it was 1999, when the realisation that a decade has passed hit me like a truck. Actually, it didn’t hit me at all. In fact, I didn’t fucking care. Still, it’s an excuse to launch a best of the decade series, because I know how much you, dear reader, care what some random asshole on the Internet thinks was important in the 21st century (so far). For the next few weeks, I will be detailing the best albums of each year of the noughties (God, I hate that tag). Here’s the rules on how I picked the 10 best albums for each year: there are none. I don’t believe in objective ‘good’ when it comes to music. This is just what I enjoyed, and hopefully we can find some common ground. However, I limited it to one album per artist, because otherwise many years would start to look to samey. I will be attempting to cover three years every week, culminating in an extra-special two-part on 2009, detailing my 20 favourite albums from the last year, some time right around Christmas. Here’s 2000!
2000
Historical Context
People were excited about not only a new decade, but also a new millennium. Few figure they will make it to the next millennial celebration. Y2K came and immediately the world was plunged into an apocalyptic nightmare full of cannibalism, warfare and reality television. Somehow, Keith Richards is still alive.
10. At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command
This album was what turned out to be the swan song for this seminal post-hardcore group, but it was a pretty impressive way to go into this good night. By combining seemingly incompatible elements, like melody, dissonance, shouting and sky-high choruses, these boys created a loud and angry work that manages to be both musically complex and also completely accessible, which would inform artists from Fucked Up to Battles in the coming ten years.
9. Hawksley Workman – For Him and the Girls
I like eccentric artists, and I think ol’ Hawksley fits into this mould. Combining elements of vaudeville, rock, folk and electronica, he’s a restless but inventive and talented creative type. He released 10 albums this decade (7 physically, 3 digital only) and is set to release two more in 2010, so to be honest he could use a bit of quality control, but any of his albums is worth getting. I just picked his debut as it was a bit of a fun, quirky, but still affecting breath of fresh air in the days when rap rock still ruled.
8. Elliott Smith – Figure 8
Admittedly, I was a little late onto the Elliott Smith bandwagon, but I still like his last (proper) album best. Critics thought the production was a bit lush, but I think that the beautiful Beatles-esque instrumentation underscores his sad lyrics perfectly. A fitting swan song for an artist taken too early, dead in 2003 from two stab wounds to the chest (coroners’ reports were inconclusive on whether these were self-inflicted).
7. Radiohead – Kid A
I had a bit of a tough time picking a best Radiohead record for the decade. I went for this one, as I feel it set out a sort of mission statement for what the band would do over the next ten years. While something like In Rainbows is (in some minds) better, this album was a shot across the bows for people who thought Radiohead were done with being innovative AND good with OK Computer. Everybody talked about what a cold and inaccessible record this was at the time, but ten years on I’m not sure why. The opening synth bit on ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ is warmth personified and ‘How to Disappear Completely’ is narcotized gentleness and heartbreak. Sure, there’s a few weak (but still ambient) tracks (Kid A, Treefingers), and Radiohead went on to make other great albums this decade, but this album acted as the blueprint for everything that would follow, from them and from many others. Many of the tracks on this album – from the glitchy dance beat of Idioteque, to the folk-electro fusion of How to Disappear Completely, to the horn skronk of National Anthem – went on to inform what a lot of indie music would sound like over the next decade.
6. Primal Scream – XTRMNTR
Primal Scream fuelled a lot of the E love in Britain in the 90s and started out the 2000s in the most abrasive fashion possible. While it`s all well and good to Come Together in some hedonistic, narcissistic show of club love, the 2000s would turn out somewhat darker, and Primal Scream embraced that with a set intent to Kill All Hippies. It`s an unsettling record but hell, it`s still one I want to dance to.
5. The Wallflowers – (Breach)
They’re better known for 1996’s Bringing Down the Horse, but I prefer this album, where they take a step outside of their Tom Petty influences and create an album that is both timely and traditional roots rock. It’s just good, oft-melancholic folk that falls on the catchy, rather than preachy, end of the spectrum.
4. Outkast – Stanonia
Confession time: I am white and in no way cool. I consider Barry Manilow to be ‘soul’. I still have very little knowledge of rap, but Outkast’s ‘Bombs Over Baghdad’ was my HOLY SHIT moment when I realised the sheer power of these artists. Like I said, I have no knowledge in the area, but I can understand the people who argue that rap represents the vital, political end of folk music in the 21st century, while a bunch of white idiots with guitars are singing about love and heartbreak and feelings and shit. This song would become horrifyingly more prescient in years to come.
3. Marah – Kids in Philly
This is a bit of a difficult entry for me, as I am, to be honest, disappointed with Marah as a band. This album is sheer brilliance, but they have never come close to matching its power. Maybe I expect too much of them after producing this epic blend of soul-influenced folk rock that comfortably moves between fun and moving, but their other albums this decade failed to come close to Kids in Philly. Still, this is a cracker of a record, lean and full of goodness.
2. Deftones – White Pony
Rap rock, or (involuntary shudder) nu-metal has understandably and deservedly got a bad reputation, but a lot (well, or a FEW) worthy bands came in on the wrong wave and were unfairly lumped in with idiotic crotch rock nu-metal. Deftones had real talent though, and this album was the pinnacle of their output. Far too sensitive to be placed next to meathead jock metal like Limp Bizkit, their sound is dense, textured and heavy through atmosphere, rather than sheer aggression and wattage. An excellent album.
1. Dandy Warhols – Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia
Here’s another frustrating band. Lead man Courtney Taylor Taylor is incredibly talented, but also, it seems, incredibly lazy. He can write a hook so catchy it makes your shoes melt, but many times he chooses instead to masturbatorily indulge in shapelessgo-nowhere stoner dirges. This was the album where he perfectly balanced his pop sensibilities with his ironic detachment with his experimentation. It starts out with a hazy but head-nodding trifecta of rhythmic, repetitive epics, before moving on to some of the catchiest songs recorded this decade (even ubiquitous phone adverts couldn’t dull the hummability of ‘Bohemian Like You’). It swerves from Krautrock to pop to country, but holds together as an album too. Brilliant. Too bad they’ve turned into druggy, shit-purveying drone monsters on their last two albums.
Coming soon: where were you in 2001?
Bonus Track: Pulp - Disco 2000
Elliott Smith - Everything Reminds Me of Her
Radiohead - Everything in Its Right Place
Primal Scream - Kill All Hippies
The Wallflowers - Letters from the Wasteland
Outkast - B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)
Marah - It’s Only Money, Tyrone
