The 25 Best Albums Of The 00′s

I’ve got two quick thoughts to get out of the way before we get to the albums of the decade. The first goes out to all the disingenuous wankers who started their best-of-the-decade lists with an apology. If you’re really sorry for creating another list in a world full of lists, do us all a favor – cram it down your tightly puckered cakehole and spare us the time.

Personally I was fired up to reflect on a great decade of music. If you step back and look at the big picture musically, the 00′s were many times more interesting than the 60′s, which are held in unnaturally high regard. The 00′s provided more textures, rhythyms, beats, tempos, samples, sounds, and concepts than the whole of the 60′s on its best LSD daydream. The day-glo ideas behind an album like Sgt Pepper’s is trumped many times over by albums released during the last decade, but we’ve all been too close to them to see what truly amazing musical times we live in. We not only get re-issues of the best of the 60′s and 70′s bands, but the output of all their brilliant spiritual grandchildren. It’s been a tough decade in many ways, but musically these have been the best of times…

My second thought relates to the form that music has taken in the 00′s. It’s easy to look at MP3s and iPods and see technology as the story of music this decade. But while the form of music has changed, its function is still the same. Music has to move us, take us places that are beyond ourselves, and most elementally, rock us to the bone. Technology doesn’t do that – music does. Here are 25 albums that did it for me…

25] Neko Case | Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006) – I’m not totally sure what she’s singing about most of the time, but Neko Case has a voice that gives me goosebumps. She’s got what I affectionately call a ‘phone book voice’ – ie, she could sing the metropolitan white pages and make it sound angelic. Fox Confessor… is littered with shady characters slipping through the cracks of society – people lose fingers in canneries and drown in motor oil – while the title track sees Case revisit her hometown and find awe and tears in scenes that once seemed commonplace. A moving album and a world-class voice…

Listen: Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

24] Cee-Lo Green | Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine (2004) – Cee-Lo Green became an unlikely pop star through his involvement with Gnarls Barkley, but his previous solo album is the record that really mines a new zone in popular music. By combining his soul chops with a hip-hop backbeat, Cee-Lo made an album that anticipated the soul revival of the late-00′s and still sounds brand new. Few could have predicted the guise that fame would find him in, but those who heard this album weren’t surprised when Cee-Lo finally blew up…

Listen: Living Again

23] Iron & Wine | The Shepherd’s Dog (2007) – The first several notes sound like they’re coming through a tinny radio, teasing at Sam Beam’s typically lo-fi sound. Then The Shepherd’s Dog bursts into full bloom – awash in sonic flourishes that enhance Beam’s sound and purpose. His first three albums were all stripped-down, man-and-guitar affairs, but here he adds just the right amount of lush orchestration and cryptic wordplay to create an album that rivals the finest folk albums of the 60’s. This carefully crafted, shimmering music stands as a milemarker of how far folk music has grown from its picket line and protest song roots.

Listen: Boy With A Coin

22] Lyrics Born | Same !@#$ Different Day (2005) – A remix (and vast improvement) of 2003’s Later That Day, Same !@#$… finds this Bay Area MC using a deep rolodex of collaborators and spinning gold from nouns and verbs. LB’s infectious enthusiasm is at its highest pitch throughout, and tracks like the rapid-fire, 200 words-per-minute bounce of ‘Do That There (Young Einstein Hoo-hoo Mix)’ prove that this Quannum/Blackalicious protégé has a bright future fulla gettin’ parties started. This is one good reason we spent the decade with our hands in the !@#$ing air…

Listen: Do That There (The Young Einstein Hoo-Hoo Mix)

21] Groove Armada | Lovebox (2002) – Early hip-hop was party music that concerned itself first and foremost with moving the crowd. Electronica has been party music since its inception as disco in the 70′s, so it seems only natural that the two genres would eventually find common ground. Lovebox is a premier example of that fusion, and proof positive that electronica had finally matured into a genre that could produce interesting long-players…

Listen: Groove Is On

20] Bon Iver | For Emma, Forever Ago (2008) – The story of Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) is oft-told and worth revisiting: guy loses girlfriend, sees his band split up, and cloisters himself away in a cabin in Wisconsin in the dead of winter. He kills his food, chops his firewood, and makes an album of stunning beauty with just his voice, a guitar, and a few effects pedals. Isolated, mournful, and ghostly, For Emma, Forever Ago is beyond classification and genre, and one of the finest debut albums of the decade.

Listen: Skinny Love

19] Missy Elliott | Under Construction (2002) – Missy Elliott claimed to be a work in progress on Under Construction, and then proceeded to roll out one of the most complete blueprints of the many facets of hip-hop (and its untapped possibilities) ever recorded. She harkens back to the pre-gangsta days, when the music was more about having fun than having beef. Missy: “I used to love them days. No tension.” As she proved here, it’s possible to have fun and run the table. Killer guest spots from Method Man, Jay Z, 50-Cent, and Ludacris don’t hurt, but this is Missy’s party, and she puts the good-natured block party vibe, her big league flow, and Timbaland’s production to excellent use, creating an album that is both sonically and intellectually perfect.

Listen: Bring The Pain (featuring Method Man)

18] The Black Keys | Thickfreakness (2003) – Raise your hand if you thought The Blues were going to provide a wellspring of musical inspiration this decade. The rest of us were pleasantly surprised when The Black Keys took an old genre, roughed it up around the edges, amplified it with some buzz, and threw their retouching software in the trash. The result was a series of albums that felt as old and solid as an oak tree, but new as the morning sun poking through its leaves. Thickfreakness is the best album from one of the most reliably unpredictable act of the 00′s – a band that is as comfortable covering Junior Kimbrough as they are jamming with hip-hop artists.

Listen: Set You Free

17] Kings Of Leon | Youth & Young Manhood (2003) – When they first hit, the Kings Of Leon were unimaginatively labeled ‘The Southern Strokes’, but in truth they wore their punk influences much further down their sleeve than The Strokes and most other NYC bands. The brothers Followill named their band after their Southern Baptist preacher father, and then led an unexpected revival of Southern Rock. But their musical influences extend well beyond the Allman Brothers and Tom Petty – they took those down home sounds, played them with the fury of a punk band, and added the sheen of post-punk. And that was just their debut…

Listen: Red Morning Light

16] Various Artists | O Brother Where Art Thou? Soundtrack (2000) – The soundtrack to this classic Coen Brothers film brought widespread and overdue recognition to Bluegrass music almost overnight. The performances are all letter perfect, from Ralph Stanley’s chilling take on ‘O Death’ to Dan Tyminski‘s (ie the Soggy Bottom Boys) ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ to Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch going otherworldly on ‘Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby’ and beyond. The movie and soundtrack spawned several tours and albums, but the original article best captured the levity, sadness, tradition and invention that are (now, mainstream) Bluegrass.

Listen: I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow

15] Wilco | Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) – Wilco’s label rejected this album, forcing them to take it to an independent and pushing its release back by more than a year. In hindsight, it was the best thing that could have happened – the album featured guitar/bass/drum/piano renditions of lovely songs of heartbreak that were then processed to sound like they’d been dipped in audio acid. Pre-9/11, who knows if this album catches the general public fancy, but post-9/11 it struck the perfect chord of beautiful memories boiled in painful regret…

Listen: Ashes Of American Flags

14] Zeph & Azeem | Mixed Messages (2007) – Poetry slam champ and former Spearhead protege Azeem deserves a new handle: most underappreciated rapper in the world. Released as a promotional add-on to Zeph & Azeem’s 2007 release Rise Up, Mixed Messages collects B-sides, remixes, outtakes and more onto one of the finest hip-hop albums of the last decade. This tour-de-force features a buffet of tasty samples, including Latin horns, disco strings, and Pink Floyd. Throw in Azeem’s rhymes, which touch on everything from global tourism to the Illuminati, and you’ve got a monster album that flows from top to bottom like the Mississippi river, and demonstrates how inventive hip-hop might sound in a world without overly restrictive copyright infringement laws.

Listen: What If (Exclusive Remix)

13] Outkast | Stankonia (2000) – Reporting from an underwater kingdom “seven light years below sea level” where all funky things originate, Outkast took above average rhymes, added Jimi Hendrix-style psychedelic trippiness, tons of style, serious IQ and relentless beats. Stankonia feels appropriately greasy, but by rapping about gasoline, apple pie, mothers-in-law, and Baghdad, this Atlanta, GA duo expanded the parameters of popular rap by what seemed like several acres…

Listen: B.O.B.

12] PJ Harvey | Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (2000) – Polly Jean Harvey is an imposing post-feminist musician. She plays a mean guitar, writes tough songs (her lyrics wouldn’t sound out of place coming out of Keith Richards’ mouth) and strikes a glamorous profile. Her finest album, Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea is an often wistful portrait of life in The Big Apple, where promises are broken, people float along, and the whores hustle. Her songwriting has always trended towards brutal honesty, but here she observes and reports in oblique details, leaving it to the listener to find the big truths scattered among the little lies.

Listen: You Said Something

11] M. Ward | Transfiguration Of Vincent (2003) – The ingredients are really pretty simple – a gently strummed Fahey-esque guitar, minor chords, plaintive vocals, perhaps the slightest tinkle of a piano. But throw in M. Ward’s old-man croon, his gift for simple, striking guitar lines, and his penchant for writing spare, mysterious songs that leave you rewinding and wondering, and you’ve got one of the most inventive artists of the decade. Of his several brilliant albums, Transfiguration Of Vincent gets the recco by the width of a guitar string…

Listen: Helicopter

10] Ryan Adams | Heartbreaker (2000) – The heart is a strange symbol of love’s energies. When a relationship burns out and fades away, it’s the mind that’s left wandering over the past, replaying what once was, and dreaming of what might have been. Meanwhile that damned heart just keeps on beating a steady monotone, pushing love’s victim forward into a desperate future full of long nights. Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker is the perfect soundtrack for one of those whiskey-soaked, sorrow-drenched, late night bouts of despair. [Read Full Review]

Listen: Why Do They Leave?

9] Queens Of The Stone Age | Songs For The Deaf (2002) – By the time the 00′s rolled around, Hard Rock had become a strange franchise – strange mainly because it had become a franchise, cafes and otherwise. Metallica was inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame, and metal seemed destined to be smothered in corporate America’s warm embrace. But head-banging is alive and well, thank you very much. Songs For The Deaf isn’t metal per se, and it doesn’t scream non-stop, but it is indeed heavy. Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri are joined here by Mark Lanegan and Dave Grohl, resulting in QOTSA’s most consistently fist-pump-worthy batch of songs. The album title sounds tongue-in-cheek, but these songs have that kind of kick…

Listen: Hangin’ Tree

8] My Morning Jacket | Z (2005) – Perched midway between the analog heart and the digital brain, Z saw Louisville KY’s My Morning Jacket ditch their feedback-soaked, Neil Young-influenced sound in favor of sleeker, more space-age beats. The fact that they made the adjustment after losing two founding members is impressive – that the sound fit them like a glove and represented their maturation as a band was remarkable. Songs like ‘Wordless Chorus’ and ‘It Beats 4 U’ were nothing less than the electronica-infused grandchildren of Southern Rock, and this album still sounds like a missive from the south of the Mason-Dixon and north of 2050…

Listen: Wordless Chorus

7] The Coup | Party Music (2001) – Fittingly, the best hip-hop album of the decade doesn’t pull a single punch, and proves that the spirit of the Black Panthers is alive and well in Oakland, CA. The album originally featured cover art with group members Boots Riley and Pam The Funkstress detonating the World Trade Center – it was set for release in September of 2001, but delayed until November of that year while new cover art was cooked up – and if that doesn’t tip off the incendiary nature of this music, nothing will. Every noun and verb of Party Music is politically motivated and culturally aware, but dressed up with deeply funky beats that make the whole thing feel like a genuine party. Riley is a gifted lyricist who commonly drops ghetto manifestos, but makes them feel like party rhymes. “When somebody hit you, hit ‘em back/Then negotiate a peace contract” are pretty strong words to live by, but everything about this album is strong…

Listen: Everythang

6] The White Stripes | Elephant (2003) – At the dawn of the 21st century, albums like this just weren’t supposed to get made anymore. Elephant is a throwback in both form and function – an album of vintage styles recorded on early-60’s equipment. The distortion, fuzz and blues that form the backbone of this album are exactly what made it sound so fresh in a digital world. After the crunching, Led Zeppelican riffs of album-opener ‘Seven Nation Army’ we’re treated to dirty blues, psychedelic rock, tender balladry, and even a torch song from Meg. Retro in all the best ways, The White Stripes don’t simply mimic and pick over the musical past – they infuse it with their own particular brilliance, while playing with the energy of a punk band. [Read Full Review]

Listen: Seven Nation Army

5] The Strokes | Is This It (2001) – Is This It was a blast of fresh air from the Big Apple. Julian Casablancas sings with a cool boredom that ought to grate – instead it squares perfectly with Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr’s jagged, sleepless guitars. Not since Paul’s Boutique had an album so effectively captured the rhythm and attitude of NYC. “New York City cops/They ain’t too smart” is part of what got the song ‘NYC Cops’ yanked from the album at the last minute, in the wake of 9/11. Less clear is why the original cover art, featuring a woman’s gloved hand resting against her naked hip, was exchanged in the US for a piece of pseudo-Zodiac artwork. Bad move. The original cover (pictured above) was a much better match for the sass and strut of the music, but either way, this album breathed life into the stone dead corpse of post-punk, and gave us something to get excited about. And sometimes that’s all you need your music to do… [Read Full Review]

Listen: Last Night

4] Josh Ritter | Golden Age Of Radio (2001) – Golden Age Of Radio captures the many joys and frustrations of small-town life. And that begins with its cover art, which alone brings back shudder-inducing memories of grade school. This is a record full of bonfire singalongs, open landscapes, true love, dead cornhusks, starlit skies, and intense longing for brighter lights and bigger places. ‘Me & Jiggs’ is a conspiracy of friends and beer and nowhere to go and stories to tell and Townes Van Zandt songs to sing. ‘You’ve Got The Moon’ is pure summer romance. But ‘Lawrence, KS’ is the moment here – an anguished clutch of emotion from someone who feels their dreams of escape slipping away into nothing. That’s a feeling I can relate to. [Read Full Review]

Listen: Me & Jiggs

3] Flaming Lips | Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002) – Hidden deep behind the shiny facade of giant robots, karate and burbling electronic noises is the simple concept at the heart of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots – a concept that many critics have approached without ever precisely articulating. On its surface, The Flaming Lips’ 2002 album is a muddled story about a squadron of Japanese girls fighting invaders who possess artificial intelligence, but thankfully there’s much less to it than that.

The surface story makes for good sci-fi, prog-rock comparisons, and led many a reviewer to proclaim that Yoshimi’s driving concept was ‘man vs. technology’ ’synthetic vs. reality’ or practically any other William Gibson/Ray Bradbury plot-line you care to conjure up [choose your fave]. But its true meaning is as clear as the pimple on the end of your nose: this is an album about the confusing journey from childhood into adolescence. [Read Full Review]

Listen: Fight Test

2] Fleet Foxes | Fleet Foxes (2008) – While most modern Folk seems to be aiming to recreate either Greenwich Village in the 60’s or Laurel Canyon in the 70’s, Fleet Foxes sounds like a product of the 1500’s. With layered, baroque harmonies that are as organic as a stroll in the woods, this music is miles removed from the hurly burly of the Billboard Hot 100.

The album’s liner notes thank Brian Wilson, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Charles Mingus, Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Lee, Colin Blunstone, Rita Lee, John Lennon, Townes Van Zandt, Van Morrison, and Marvin Gaye, among others. Connect those disparate and far flung dots, and you’ve got a timeless, pastoral masterpiece that reveals the depth of its elemental beauty with each subsequent listen. Debut albums are notoriously poor indicators of the future output of any artist, but if Fleet Foxes never turn out another note, their legacy is sealed with this fine record.

Listen: White Winter Hymnal

1] Radiohead | Kid A (2000) – Within the first 15 seconds of Kid A, it becomes apparent that Radiohead set out to make an album that was completely different from anything that came before it. It opens with a stuttering, indecipherable, heavily processed voice babbling nonsense while Thom Yorke spits out the phrase ‘Kid A’ like a robot with Tourette’s syndrome. Most music flaunts its humanity, but with this 2000 album, Radiohead seemed to strip every trace of human touch from its music. Synthetic sounding keyboards drift in and out of a collage of processed noises – if/when smart computers take over the world, the music they make for their own enjoyment will sound a lot like this album.

The term “art” is used very liberally regarding music – much of what gets released into the world isn’t art, but product, and nearly any listener who cares to do so can readily discern the difference. But with Kid A, Radiohead created what can only be described as sonic architecture – like the Sistine Chapel, the amount of detail and effort involved here is staggering. After the massive triumph of their previous album, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for Radiohead to have cranked out OK Computer II and called it a day. Instead, they went in the opposite direction, making an album that sounded almost nothing like its predecessor – a record filled with the kind of squinches and squelches that most bands spend good money eliminating from their music. Kid A inhabits a parallel artistic universe, where Kraftwerk are bigger than The Beatles, and bands are encouraged to forget about sales and follow their instincts.

Listen: Everything In Its Right Place

*****

The Next 25 or so…

Royksopp | Melody A.M.
Calexico | Hot Rail
Amadou & Mariam | Dimanche à Bamako
Air | Virgin Suicides Soundtrack
The Kleptones | A Night At The Hip-Hopera
Basement Jaxx | Rooty
Blackalicious | Nia
Jurassic 5 | Quality Control
Cat Power | The Greatest
Arctic Monkeys | Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not
LCD Soundsystem | LCD Soundsystem
Kings Of Convenience | Quiet Is The New Loud
Jack Johnson | Brushfire Fairytales
Amy Winehouse | Back To Black
The Avalanches | Since I Left You
The National | Alligator
Kanye West | The College Dropout
Girl Talk | Night Ripper
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss | Raising Sand
Arcade Fire | Funeral
Danger Mouse | The Grey Album
Various Artists | I’m Not There Soundtrack
Madeleine Peyroux | Half The Perfect World
Living Things | Ahead Of The Lions
Beastie Boys | To The 5 Boroughs
Flight Of The Conchords | Flight Of The Conchords
Solomon Burke | Don’t Give Up On Me

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Tags: Bon Iver, Cee-lo Green, Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, Josh Ritter, Kings Of Leon, Lyrics Born, M. Ward, Missy Elliott, My Morning Jacket, Neko Case, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Outkast, PJ Harvey, Queens Of The Stone Age, Radiohead, Royksopp, Ryan Adams, The Black Keys, The Coup, The Flaming Lips, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Wilco, Zeph & Azeem