Tag: The Arcade Fire
Ten Years!(?)(!?!) A Guide to the Best of the Decade: 2004
by Dion on Dec.10, 2009, under Uncategorized
Before we start with today’s proceedings, I’d just like to welcome the 10,000 visitor to the site. Thanks for reading!
Historical Context
Facebook is founded, prompting high fives from the millions of people who fear face to face contact with their friends. The EU undergoes its largest expansion to date, moving east and exposing countless unsuspecting Frenchmen to unacceptable levels of Eastern European folk metal. Edvard Munch’s paintings ‘The Scream’ and ‘Madonna’ are stolen. Meanwhile, the other Madonna continues to steal Dick Van Dyke’s routine and pretend she’s a 19th century English chimney sweep. Some guy was elected president of the USA. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t John Kerry. In December a tsunami hits eleven Asian countries and is among the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded.
Also, folks, we have come to what in my estimation is the best (and possibly most varied) year in music of the decade. Yes, after numerous scientific studies, mathematical equations and chemical experiments involving Win Butler’s DNA, 2004 wins that crown, and I had some serious difficulty narrowing this list down to ten albums. For example, I had to leave excellent albums by Death from Above 1979, Devotchka, Hayden, the Killers, K-Os and Secret Machines off the list.
10. The Dears – No Cities Left
If the apocalypse comes, the world could do worse than have it soundtracked by this album. Lead Dear Murray Lightburn doesn’t exactly have a sunshiney disposition, but his lovely baritone and portentous lyrics nonetheless make for beautiful dark music. Subsequent albums would strip back some of the lushness seen on No Cities Left, and while they’re still good, this album stands as their grand mission statement.
9. Green Day – American Idiot
Based on cultural impact, this deserves to be much higher, and even based on music alone it would do better in any other year. Green Day had hit it big with Dookie and then spent the following 10 years gradually fading into irrelevance as their jokey pop punk mantle was taken up by a new generation (Sum 41, Blink 182). They responded with this shot across the bow of what they stood for, building a more mature, still catchy, (somewhat) coherent concept album about the malaise and paranoia settling into early-2000s America. They aimed this U2-style anthemic approach past arenas and into the stadiums, and pulled the audacious thing off. The title track brought the fun back to their snarky pop punk, while the ballads resonated in a mainstream but heartfelt way.
8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – The Lyre of Orpheus/ Abattoir Blues
I find Nick Cave to be a great listen, but in small doses. His intelligent but detached doom and gloom starts to grate after a while. His 2004 double album covered nearly all facets of his musical growth, from straight up rock to tender ballads, all executed precisely but still warmly. The extensive use of piano on this record made it something special in my mind, as he treats the instrument sometimes as melody, sometimes as percussion, and sometimes as texture. His lyrics were sharp but somewhat more esoteric, a good thing for those who tired of hearing him talk about assholes shooting other motherfuckers dead.
7. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come for Free
Mike Skinner came onto the scene with 2002’s (also) brilliant Original Pirate Material, spinning intricate tales of everyday English life in each song. For 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come for Free, he extended the concept and produced an entire album that told a narrative. On paper, it doesn’t sound like much, with the story revolving around a guy who loses £1000. Skinner takes the simple premise and somehow makes it feel epic and resonant, as the main character loves, loses, loves again and examines the nature of friendship, paranoia, drug use and fit women. Closer Empty Cans’ double-back repeat of the song could come off as gimmicky but instead plays as profound, with the protagonist taking two very different concluding paths, based on nothing more than whether he chooses to trust the TV repairman.
6. Micah P Hinson – Micah P Hinson & The Gospel of Progress
Released when he was 23 and already sounding about 60, the album sounds forged from the same spirit, if not sonic palette, as back porch southern US blues. Hinson sounds mostly resigned and world weary, making a song like ‘Patience’, where he finally breaks out and lets the anger fly, sound all the more powerful. This is a good thinkin’ record, so just grab a tall glass of whisky, sit down and contemplate.
5. Mark Lanegan Band – Bubblegum
The album title in no way fits with the sounds contained therein. I wasn’t a Screaming Trees fan, but Mark Lanegan’s cigarettes-and-whisky voice fits much better in the music he’s picked since he left his original grungy band. Lanegan was all over the place this decade, collaborating with Queens of the Stone Age, Isobel Campbell, Greg Dulli (as the Gutter Twins), Soulsavers and his own solo work. Almost all of his output is good, if not great, and his 2004 solo album stands (along with Soulsavers) as the real highlight. ‘Methamphetamine Blues’ and ‘Driving Death Valley Blues’ sound sinister, while ‘Morning Glory Wine’ is likely the closest thing he’ll write to a love song. This is music to read Hunter S Thompson to (minus the guns).
4. Drive-By Truckers – The Dirty South
The Truckers are consistently good in their output (I even like 2006’s much maligned A Blessing & A Curse), and this entry is a stand-in for the other years in the 2000s when they released great records. This one gets the nod over others because it best shows the band at its three-songwriter zenith, with Jason Isbell, Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood all contributing some of their best work.
3. Tom Waits – Real Gone
Tom Waits’ career has followed an interesting trajectory, as he produced his most traditional, piano crooner fare when he was at his most tumultuous personally. Now that he is comfortably settled with his wife of nearly thirty years, Kathleen Brennan, Waits has morphed into a crazed soothsayer and documenter of all-things perverse, sordid and gutter-bound, spinning yarns over junkyard blues and found bits of chaos. Real Gone is his most lyrically and musically expansive take on his demented-circus master persona. He growls through songs of love, loss and murderous paranoia. His lyrics even get political on tracks like the angry ‘Hoist That Rag’ and the touching ‘Day After Tomorrow’, and his music clangs along like usual, but with added human beatbox(!). This ranks among the decade’s most (studiously) mad musical entries, but nobody can pull that off better than Waits.
2. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
Believe it or not, even awkward white boys with black-framed glasses want to dance once in a while, and Franz Ferdinand gave them the excuse to (or at least to nod their heads appreciatively, instead of just staring at their shoes). They led the revival of indie dance of a sort, building on the Strokes retro-cool, the Gang of Four’s abrasiveness and the beats of post-punk dance to create a sound that defined many a scenesters sweaty drunken nights for years to come.
1. The Arcade Fire – Funeral
I liked the return to basics of a lot of early 2000s indie rock, but much of it lacked any sort of punch-in-the-gut emotional impact, and the Arcade Fire reminded rock fans that it was alright to feel something once in a while too. Few albums in this decade packed the euphoric highs and the complicated emotional resonance of songs like ‘Wake Up’ or ‘Rebellion (Lies)’. The album marked a tidal shift in music in the decade, bringing back a lushness that was largely lacking after the stripped-down sounds of the garage rock bands seen earlier in the 2000s.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Supernaturally
Mark Lanegan - Methamphetamine Blues
Drive-By Truckers - Where the Devil Don’t Stay
