Let's face it: as we start approaching the end of the year, best-of-the-decade music lists are going to start cropping up in a race to coronate
Kid A THE record of the 00's. Which is was. Kind of.
I can't think of any other album from the past ten years that demanded such critical attention -- whether positive or negative. To listen to
Kid A was to have an opinion of it. I can only imagine the deflating/exhilerating reaction most Radiohead fans must have had when they first heard the opening notes of "Everything In Its Right Place." My first experience was far more mundane. Nell put the CD on at a party and by the time it reached the halfway mark of "The National Anthem" I had asked her to turn it off.
In my defense, in Two-Zero-Zero-Zero Anno Domini my exposure to music was fairly limited. Although I was probably the first kid on the block to be trading mp3s via FTP sites, I still listened to music exclusively in the context of singles and rarely ventured beyond typical radio fare. In one of those small historical ironies, while
Kid A will be remembered as the swan song of the album format in the age of digital distribution, 2000 was the year I bought my first CD, Harvey Danger's
King James Version.
[Just to appropriately date the moment: these were the halcyon post-Y2K days when Coldplay were just some blokes with a quaint single on the radio. Critics were hailing them as the next Radiohead based off a couple of EPs that bore more than a passing resemblance to "Karma Police" -- a comparison that would be completely torpedoed by the release of both
Parachutes and
Kid A. Most of my friends weren't even that sophisticated with their musical frames of reference. One thought that Chris Martin sounded like Dave Matthews.]
Now that we are half-way through the last year of the decade, it seemed as good a time as any to go back and revisit this shadowy corner of my musical knowledge and do great violence to such ethereal pieces of art by objectively ranking them.
Most of these albums are canonical at this point and don't need further explication from me. A couple others probably ring a bell, but you won't see them on as many end-of-the-decade lists because alternative pop albums are always under-appreciated.
I do want to focus, however, on three records that I feel are some of the most underrated albums of the decade.
10. Yo La Tengo - And then nothing turned itself inside-out.
9. Doves - Lost Souls
8. Arovane - Tides
Harpsichord over downtempo hip-hop beats. This is the kind of melodic IDM that had huge cross-over success for Boards of Canada and Four Tet, yet Uwe Zahn (a.k.a. Arovane) never achieved any sort of widespread recognition for his minimalist laptronica. Gorgeous and understated,
Tides is appropriately named for its lush ambient beach sounds and metaphorically arpeggiated synths. Even the album cover image of a dilapidated wooden roller-coaster is beautifully evocative of a sine wave. Sadly, the 2004 followup album was also Zahn's last. After a trip to Japan, he recorded
Lillies including the concluding track "Goodbye Forever," dismantled his studio and was never heard from again. Perhaps a fitting ending for music almost too delicate for this world.
7. Radiohead - Kid A
6. Dandy Warhols - Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
5. The Avalanches - Since I Left You
4. Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
3. Gas - Pop
While certainly not underrated, Gas probably needs a bit of an introduction. Wolfgang Voigt is one of the founders of Kompakt and defined the Pop Ambient genre (ambient music with a techno sensibility) under the Gas moniker. The program at his concert described his music as "a metaphysical journey through German Romanticism and its ambivalent mythology." Curious parties should start with the last song on the album, "Pop 7."
2. Harvey Danger - King James Version
I keep waiting for the day when revisionist history finally narrates Sean Nelson into the indie rock pantheon.
King James Version has all the trappings of the quintessential cult album: crafted by a perceived one-hit wonder, it never found an audience after its recently consolidated label provided no support (unless you consider an opening spot on the SR-71 tour an asset) and subsequently buried the record as a loss on the ledgers. Instead of being rightfully worshipped as the 00s version of Weezer that Weezer should have been, Harvey Danger is now relegated to a 10-second blurb on I <3 the 90s and Sean Nelson will forever be a footnote as the dude responsible for bringing Death Cab For Cutie to the masses and Seth Cohen. Yet even from "Flagpole Sitta" it was clear Nelson was too clever by half. Lead-off track "Meetings With Remarkable Men" name-checks Jesus Christ, Morrissey, Fitzgerald, AND Kip Winger, while simultaneously beating you to the punch just as you begin to catch on ["And just because it’s meta doesn’t make it any better"]. Nelson bobs and weaves like a lyrical featherweight which makes
King James Version relentlessly inventive and
endlessly quotable. I would feel bad for Harvey Danger, but as Nelson has already pointed out: “It’s so much harder to be underfed than under-understood.”
1. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
Released in the first few weeks of the decade,
XTRMNTR is a perfect soundtrack to the eight-year snuff film that was the Bush Administration. While a majority of the albums from 2000 were busy with introspection and Fukuyamian end-of-history malaise, Primal Scream was busy unmasking the fascists within.
XTRMNTR begins with a startling gunshot, but from all the menacing signs you will probably approach the album with knives out. From the abrasive vowel-less title to the gunmetal grey album sleeve, the record is an exercise in incendiary saber-rattling. Even the song titles bristle with antagonism. "Swastika Eyes" is like a fishhook in the eye. "Kill All Hippies" is just baiting you to respond. Of course Bobby Gillespie's shoot first, ask questions later lyrical policy would be a paper tiger if the album did not stand up sonically. Backed by a rag-tag 80's Band of Brothers featuring Mani (The Stone Roses), Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), and Bernard Sumner (New Order), as well as a phalanx of producers including The Chemical Brothers and the future DFA founders Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy,
XTRMNTR is searingly fierce. "Accelerator" feels like standing behind a jet engine. "MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill Em')" is the sound of something terrible and menacing slouching towards Bethlehem.
XTRMNTR is the unheralded musical and political haruspex of the decade, giving us a rallying-cry for the Bush years and beyond: SBVRT NRMLTY.
And finally, as always, I leave you with an immaculately crafted mixtape which brilliantly distills a year's essence in under 80 minutes. Or something like that.
Don't even bang unless you plan to hit something:
LOGANMIX2000: I'm 5 Years Ahead Of My Time
1. Everything In Its Right Place - Radiohead [Kid A]
2. 3030 - Deltron 3030 [Deltron 3030]
3. Utopia - Goldfrapp [Felt Mountain]
4. Here It Comes - Doves [Lost Souls]
5. Trouble - Coldplay [Parachutes]
6. 405 - Death Cab For Cutie [We Have The Facts And We Are Voting Yes]
7. The Crystal Lake - Granddaddy [Sophtware Slump]
8. You Can Have It All - Yo La Tengo [And then nothing turned itself inside-out.]
9. Everybody's Stalking - Badly Drawn Boy [The Hour Of Bewilderment]
10. Tiny Cities Made Of Ash - Modest Mouse [The Moon and Antarctica]
11. Felix Partz - Peaches [Teaches of Peaches]
12. B.O.B. - Outkast [Stakonia]
13. MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill 'Em) - Primal Scream [XTRMNTR]
14. Nietzsche - The Dany Warhols [Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia]
15. Humility On Parade - Harvey Danger [King James Version]
