The Top 100 Albums of 2000-04, Part One
Mon: 02-07-05

The Top 100 Albums of 2000-04, Part One

Staff List by Pitchfork Staff

Aging hipsters may-- as they have at all points in history-- mope and whine that none of today's artists share the lasting appeal of the artists of bygone eras. But looking back on the first half of the new millennium's first decade to create this list of the Top 100 best albums to date only re-enforced our already well-founded beliefs that, not only are these bellyachers just too old, their opinions are laughably wrong. The '00s have, thus far, produced as many innovating, life-changing, just-plain-amazing albums as had any other decade by this point, and while the intent of this list is simply to have some good, nostalgic fun celebrating the best music of the past five years, it just so happens to double nicely as ammunition against anyone who forgot how to enjoy themselves along the way.

[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

 

100: Various Artists
DFA Compilation #2
[DFA; 2004]

Murphy, Galkin, and Tim Handclaps aren't aloof-- they just want nothing to do with your scene. This comp documented DFA's increasing eclecticism, but more importantly, defended it from pigeonholing. While many labels anxiously tried tapping the post-Rapture heroin worm for last sprays, the DFA explored expansive disco (Black Leotard Front), revived electro-analog (Delia & Gavin), and confronted their own musical influences (Liquid Liquid, LCD). And of course, the two times the DFA did play into stereotype-- LCD's "Yeah" and Pixeltan's "Get Up/Say What"-- well, you've heard those songs. --Nick Sylvester

 

099: The Unicorns
Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone
[Alien8; 2003]

No one should believe a word that comes out of the Unicorns' lying mouths. They say they're broken up-- maybe they are, maybe they aren't. They say they wanna produce hip-hop-- right, sure. Steel cage matches? Doubtful. All that we know about them for sure is this unlikely, almost impossibly quirky mélange of song-seeds, a career's worth of glorious melodies and darkly sugary would-be choruses-- the Unicorns never repeat themselves-- got crammed into a lone, intricate pop accident, like a fatal crash between Brian Wilson and Daniel Johnston. Maybe they broke up from depression, regretful over tossing away so many great, half-formed notions on one album. If they're even broken up at all, that is. The Unicorns can't be trusted beyond the 13 tracks of their debut album, but at least follow them that far. --Eric Carr

 

098: Clipse
Lord Willin'
[Arista; 2002]

In 2002, Lord Willin' seemed to be the Neptunes' album-- their science-lab synths punched and clinked as well or better than any tracks they'd made before (see "Grindin'", whose rhythms made of flesh and breath foreshadowed their finger-popping on 2004's "Drop it Like It's Hot")-- while the Clipse got a lot of hate for rapping ever-familiar tales of playing, pushing, and block-posting, territory covered since, essentially, the dawn of hip-hop. Unfair. Despite their claims to hoodrich and the sound of coin on the beats, Pusha T and Malice painted a darker, raggedier telescopy of street-life, their lip-curled irony cutting devastatingly: on "Comedy Central", after describing shooting someone as "cock the gauge/ Polkadot your braids," Malice raps, "I hate to think the dope game is my callin/ 'Cause it got us singing lullabies to our fallen." In the same track, Pusha says, "Ghetto streets so numb they call me Novocaine"-- so deep is their dichotomy of dealer braggadocio and S.O.S. ("Virginia"). As the men say, "i live this shit." --Julianne Shepherd

 

097: Black Dice
Beaches and Canyons
[DFA; 2003]

There are lots of patterns to follow and like. I might guess Black Dice was caught in a pattern whirled up by Boredoms, and that Vibracathedral Orchestra and Excepter were mixed up in the same spiral. Or, I could say that Black Dice were caught in their (new) city's bubbling underground of beats and electronics, surging with life even after death from above. Or, I might wonder if all of us were caught running after something mystical in an age of instant gratification and shared information; a quartet of former noise-mongrels were as good ambassadors as any for recognizing beauty from seemingly infinite bits of noise and static. However, ultimately, I'm struck not by the myriad of patterns, but the transitions: Beaches & Canyons writhes with life and the tease of resolution, caught between states of euphoria and confusion, and it makes absolute sense that it doesn't sound like anything else they've done. --Dominique Leone

 

096: The Decemberists
Castaways & Cutouts
[Kill Rock Stars; 2003]

Efforts to typecast the Decemberists as face-painting, pirate costume-wearing indoors types fell apart after 2004 embraced freak folk's much weirder acid-fed progenitors. The Decemberists' rococo folk-rock is sweet and pure, and Colin Meloy's Pulitzer-aspirant lyrics are just the icing on a deeply labored-over cake. "July, July" is jubilantly traditional, organ-bumping folk-rock-- a far cry from the putative weirdness interpreted into this album by lazy, overeager critics. And while "Odalisque" and "The Legionnaire's Lament" are undeniably Mangum-steeped, the Decemberists have likely read as much Bangs as Beard, borrowing discreetly from sources far and wide; there's nary a song that doesn't stutter on its own immense cultural vocabulary. --Sam Ubl

 

095: Unwound
Leaves Turn Inside You
[Kill Rock Stars; 2001]

Drone heads be wary: The two minutes of glaring sustained synth notes you hear at the beginning of "We Invent You" are deceptive. Leaves Turn Inside You is an Unwound album, and-- despite the band's penchant for obfuscation and risk-taking-- what would an Unwound album be without big, steely guitars? It may come as great relief when the harmolodic six-string melody finally comes ricocheting through the din like a rope of light through deepest space, but by then the band have made their point: Leaves Turn Inside You is one of the most aggressively unaffiliated albums of the aughts captured in (primarily) guitar, bass, and drums.

This is a departure from even the band's most far-reaching prior material-- Unwound did some major musical soul-searching (nearly three years' worth) before deciding to construct their own studio and record a self-produced double album on analog. Shear pomposity aside, how else could the ran-backward guitar solos, percussive jamborees, cinematic organ builds, and slow-burning 10-minute seances have come about? Take the high-arching three-act "Terminus" out for a spin and begin to love perhaps the least-heard album on this list. --Sam Ubl

 

094: The Strokes
Room on Fire
[RCA; 2003]

I have a difficult time recalling why this album was seen as a disappointment. It seems each member of the Strokes learned a few lessons about the true meaning of being rock stars in the aftermath of Is This It?: Nick and Al learned to make guitars into keyboards, adding the illusion of increased complexity while sticking to the stripped-down melodic simplicity that served them so well, not to mention some kickass two-note solos. Julian learned that he's capable of drawing-out vowel sounds better than almost anyone, and that those sonds are the source of his vocal powers. Fabrizio learned that every beat can sound the same and that as long as you hold steady, let Nick and Al dish the hooks and Julian drawl, everything will be beautiful. Their bass player learned that he's invisible. And collectively, they learned that by sticking to the simple if formulaic reliance on great riffs and killer choruses, you can make one hell of a rock record. Just like the last time. --Eric Carr

 

093: Eminem
The Marshall Mathers LP
[Interscope; 2000]

There's Marshall Mathers, and there's Slim Shady. There's the multi-millionaire from Detroit writing lengthy letters to fans, and there's the multi-millionaire calling his fans "fucking retards." There's the man wondering why parents are allowing their children to listen to his music ("Now because of this blonde mop that's on top/ And this fucked up head that I've got, I've gone pop?"), and there's the shifty thug screaming "I don't owe you a motherfucking thing." There's the single father from a broken home inexplicably finding himself the idol of millions, and there's the obnoxious class clown reveling in the rewards and money he's received for acting like a fuck-up.

There are the thoughtful and considered stories of Em's life, and there's the skit where Em pretending to be both some guy getting his dick sucked by the Insane Clown Posse and the Insane Clown Posse sucking some guy's dick. There's a brilliant and nuanced track tackling fan worship and artistic responsibility like "Stan", and there's an interminable and nearly unlistenable wife-murdering scree like "Kim". There's a happy-go-lucky shiny pop hit like "The Real Slim Shady", and there's a hard-knock-life dirge like "Amityville". There's the doubt and reflection in "The Way I Am", and there's the irredeemably ignorant fag-bashing in "Criminal".

This is where Em played Marshall against Slim like a chess master playing both sides of the board to a draw. Marshall redeems Slim; Slim validates Marshall; Eminem tries to stay true to both, and succeeds by simply acknowledging that both Slim and Marshall need to co-exist in order for Eminem to survive. This is where Eminem rose to the top. This is where Eminem began to fall. --David Raposa

 

092: The Clientele
Suburban Light
[Pointy; 2000; Merge; 2001]

The Clientele are about place. Over the course of the early singles collected here you can hear them building the fictional geography in which one hopes their music will always be set. Down these leafy lanes, striding through empty parks, illuminated by dingy lamplights as dogs bark in the distance, people quietly fall in and out of love beneath their umbrellas (weatherman is the dream gig in Clientele-land). Suburban Light is the triumph of romanticism: It doesn't matter what happens with that girl or guy, as long as it's sharply observed and you can wallow in the result with a heavily reverbed and catchy melody. As long as we have rain and Augusts inevitably fade, we'll have the Clientele, a band that illustrates the virtues of tirelessly revisiting familiar places. When your parents complained that you didn't live in the real world, this is where you were hiding. --Mark Richardson

 

091: Yo La Tengo
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
[Matador; 2000]

Yo La Tengo had to get old, too. But though the distortion-soaked sonics of previous outings may have quieted, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out spotlights some of the band's most emotionally acute songwriting. "Last Days of Disco" nicks the title of an underappreciated Whit Stillman film to languidly look back on the first moments of a now-aborted relationship. "The song said 'let's be happy,'" Ira Kaplan recalls, "I was happy/ It never made me happy before." Anyone who has over-appreciated an awful love song can appreciate the sentiment (for me it was DJ Sammy's cover of Bryan Adams' "Heaven"). "Our Way to Fall" captures the same moment on the way up. Kaplan adapts a Thomas Pynchon title for a hilariously bittersweet half-spoken song about lovers' quarrels ("It seems like just a little thing/ You don't want to listen and I can't shut up"). Georgia Hubley's vocals render a George McRae cover quietly sublime. Then the squalling power-pop of "Cherry Chapstick" proves Yo La Tengo have still got it. --Marc Hogan

 

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[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

090: DJ/Rupture
Minesweeper Suite
[Tigerbeat6; 2002]

Its title alludes to the beats he digs and the diasporas they represent, and if rupture had one thesis, it might be that music is never a a separate entity from the climate it was made in. This was his first "bona fide" release, and the maestro, aka American expatriate Jace Clayton, has such a gentle relationship with the music he mashes, and a respect for it evident in the shape of his sculptures. Less decoupage than a seamless knit, he brought Cutty Ranks together with Foxy Brown and clenched-tight gravity-chamber breakbeats; draped Soul II Soul elegantly across a maniacal, bomb-conjuring riddim; slowly emitted the sonic language of reformation and revolution; and connected hard rap tracks with bhangra while testing the emergency warning system ("Up from the Underground"). Even as the beats converge and propel, we never forget that above and below his gorgeous landscape, someone's cleaning up bombs. --Julianne Shepherd

 

089: Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand
[Domino; 2004]

Franz Ferdinand's debut album was a rock monster that conquered the airwaves and catapulted the band onto magazine covers, in turn spawning an evil backlash monster that spread far and wide on the web boards and in certain quarters of the blogosphere. As the two did battle, though, the backlash monster never grew strong enough to obscure the fact that the album was an incredibly solid, manifestly enjoyable record bereft of filler and possessed of some totally sweet grooves to boot. We all know how the staccato disco attack of Pazz and Jop champ "Take Me Out" spread like a virus through radio, MTV, and sporting arena PA systems, but that's a tiny part of the story when measured against the jumpy bassline of "Auf Achse", the dreamy harmonies on the chorus of "Tell Her Tonight", the ear-grabbing riff of "Cheating on You", and the wholesome ball of all-powerful awesomeness that is "Dark of the Matinee". Stateside, the sexual ambiguity of "Michael" was refreshing in 2004, a year stuffed with talk of Constitutional amendments designed to deprive specific people of basic marriage rights, while "This Fire" was refreshing simply because it rocked. The sloppy early century make-out session between rock and disco had mixed results, but Franz Ferdinand stands as one of the best. --Joe Tangari

 

088: Viktor Vaughn
Vaudeville Villain
[Traffic; 2003]

After a long period of silence that MF Doom apparently spent drinking gravel smoothies and losing his damn mind, he reemerged with a vengeance in the new millennium. He abandoned the socially conscious rap he'd trafficked in with KMD, amassed enough aliases to give Kool Keith a run for his money, and began cranking out concept albums about super-heroes, alien invasions, and comestibles. Of the Many Faces of Doom, Viktor Vaughn is the least oblique--no interminable samples, and any superhero shenanigans are more figurative than literal. Instead, it's all rhymes, all the time, as Doom swims through icy, polluted beats, gargling his brilliant, nonsensical fire. Without all the ponderous high-concept stuff to distract from them, Doom's strengths as an MC, rather than as a visionary sound manipulator, come to the fore: His ability for locating the most obvious, dopest similes that somehow no one has thought to use ("I came to save the game like a memory card"--duh!), and his knack for perfectly cockeyed, ebullient braggadocio laced with obscure references ("For a buck they'd likely dance a jig or do the huckabuck/ To Vik it's no big deal, they're just a bunch of knucklefucks"). Oooooooh! --Brian Howe

 

087: Ekkehard Ehlers
Plays
[Staubgold; 2002]

Spend years in Frankfurt reading Adorno, listening to Sun Ra, Black Flag, and the latest Force Tracks 12-inch, and learning a thing or two about computer software, and you might wind up making a record like Plays. Trying to get a handle on its layers of referencing-- Ehlers folds music in on itself and cryptically salutes his aesthetic heroes ("Plays Cornelius Cardew", "Plays Hubert Fichte")-- is like imagining what a universe with five dimensions might look like. Setting aside the intellectual puzzles, Plays is an excellent and unusually varied collection, as each two-song homage explores a different range of moods and textures. At some point during these 75 minutes, Ehlers gives most of the latest ideas in experimental electronic music a whirl. Still, there's no escaping the enigma: the song where Ehlers Plays the Beatles is called "Plays John Cassevetes". --Mark Richardson

 

086: Björk
Medulla
[Elektra; 2004]

The fact is, I really don't know what great art is supposed to be. It could be something that illustrates a principle of what it means to be human, but then what does that make a Rothko painting or Cage piece? It could be something that makes clear how the world looks to one person-- the artist-- and our appreciation lies only in how well we recognize its nuances. But what if I just don't get it? Or don't like it? And who determines what it is I'm supposed to be getting and liking? My best guess is that art is both of those concepts, but also the idea that our views of the world color the paintings and fill up the strange harmonies in songs just as much as any artist's. Medulla doesn't give me any other choice but to fill in the missing colors and notes with my own lingering thoughts and doubts. That Björk gave me a record where I can find both of us inside is something amazing and beautiful. And I think it's good art, too. --Dominique Leone

 

085: Keith Fullerton Whitman
Playthroughs
[Kranky; 2002]

John Cage despised the "Hallelujah Chorus" in Handel's Messiah. "Don't you like to be moved?" a friend asked him. "I don't mind being moved," Cage replied, "but I don't like being pushed." No record on this list does as little pushing as Keith Whitman's Playthroughs, a subtle masterpiece that sits in place with its glorious geometry and waits for you to make the first move. The varied material Whitman has released since suggests Playthroughs was a radiant one-off and not the statement of purpose it first seemed, when Hrvatski dropped the nickname, quit dissecting the "Amen" break, and plugged his guitar into his laptop. Here he explored how much could be done with a bare minimum of material. Quite a lot, it turned out. --Mark Richardson

 

084: Mu
Afro Finger and Gel
[Tigersushi; 2003]

Fuck "When is it okay to fart in front of my girlfriend?"-- if she don't dig AF+G just take your shit elsewhere. There's no middle ground for this leftfield house freakshow: screaming, cartwheeling, Brechtian face-splitting, schizo Chicago housing, scene-obsessing, venom-spitting, domestically violent beyond beliefing-- and you can dance to it, and you do. With yourself. --Nick Sylvester

 

083: Prefuse 73
Vocal Studies & Uprock Narratives
[Warp; 2001]

If you can't re-invent the wheel, then you can always turn heads by taking time-tested music and recontextualizing it. Without getting too deep into the history of collage, we can at least say Vocal Studies & Uprock Narratives uses the technique to the fullest. Scratching and sampling are far from new, but cutting up the delivery of an MC made sure those elements took front and center. This is where Scott Herren succeeded, by using ageless jazz tones as his backdrop and fusing it with the attraction of the new. And no matter how hot their guest spot was, MCs were just as vulnerable to manipulation as a bassline or a beat. Fortunately, Herren's beats are as canny as his presentation, helping him define and create a "Prefuse 73 sound" right from the start. --Jason Crock

 

082: King Geedorah
Take Me to Your Leader
[Ninja Tune; 2003]

Daniel Dumile is more convincing as a three-headed movie monster than a comic book supervillain, and even though he's made more sophisticated albums, dropped better rhymes, and maybe even made better beats as MF Doom, somehow nothing beats the whole package of King Geedorah's Take Me To Your Leader. The music is bold and oversized-- like the searing guitar lick on "Fastlane" that just gets better the 80th time you hear it, or the weeping strings on "I Wonder", or the drum machine that stomps across every unyielding, repetitive loop. Geedorah mostly stays behind the boards to give the mic to a well-chosen entourage of guest MCs, but he steals the show on a couple cuts, especially when he takes his crown and charges in over the trumpet fanfare and beat box of "The Fine Print"-- and when the king speaks, you ain't worth a swipe of his monster-sized tail. --Chris Dahlen

 

081: Les Savy Fav
Rome (Written Upside Down) EP
[Southern; 2000]

Silence on Nixon Watergate tapes: 18 minutes. Length of Les Savy Fav's Rome EP: 18 minutes. Coincidence? Probably, but Nixon had evil plans for the future and Kissinger was sort of like a cyborg, topics that get a lot of play on the record, so who knows? You could make a proper, worshipful article about this EP by just quoting Tim Harrington's evocative couplets, but the journey into the band's funky, tuneful dystopian vision wouldn't be complete without mentions of their fractured sense of rhythm and anti-orthodox sense of songcraft. Ballads of degraded civilization morph into four-headed post-punk monsters, tape defects make beautiful rhythms, and innocent electronic bleeps give no clue to the ensuing fragmented exhilaration of "I.C. Timer", which rides rambunctious punk-funk histrionics all the way to Harrington's nightmare conversion into something more machine than man. "You know who built this house/ You-know-who will tear it down" goes the opening of "Asleepers Union", and it reads like a manifesto as the band innovates a sound all their own. --Joe Tangari

 

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[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

080: Annie
Anniemal
[679; 2004]

"If ever there's a girl who could rock your world," Annie Lilia Berge-Strand sings on "Me Plus One", "then that girl sure is me." Singing in a breathy voice like Kylie's younger sister (although not that other younger sister), she makes pop music even indie kids can love, with more class, inventiveness, and joy than any of her sex-obsessed American counterparts. Subtle shades of emotions, perhaps sparked by the tragic death of her musical and romantic partner Tore Korknes, make all the catchy choruses and enticing beats on Anniemal more than just pop accoutrements, but rather expressions of a singular personality. The Richard X-produced "Chewing Gum" is a nonchalant kiss-off, and "Me Plus One" is potently satirical and even a little self-deprecating. But the stand-out is "Heartbeat". Not only is it as perfect a pop song as you could ask for, but it's an affecting expression of loneliness and longing. --Stephen M. Deusner

 

079: The Go! Team
Thunder Lightning Strike
[Memphis Industries; 2004]

Lo-fi became an indie cliché sometime around 1996, with bands relying on tape hiss and nonexistent mixing to mask the stale classic rock influences in their DNA. It took the Go! Team to remind us to hate the player, not the TASCAM-- or in other words, that the underwhelming effect of most basement recordings were due to the tired influences rather than the methods. Rather than sticking to pop-rock vanilla, the Go! Team played at blending Toni Basil, Ennio Morricone, and Henry Mancini, like kids going through their parent's terrible record collection and deciding to remake all of them at once. Each concoction ends up like a quick music history lesson beamed in over a transistor radio, like the progression through Motown girl-groups to early rap to electro-pop on "Ladyflash". DJs take heed-- the home recorders of the world may be catching on to your game. --Rob Mitchum

 

078: The New Pornographers
Mass Romantic
[Matador; 2000]

In theory the New Pornographers are a supergroup-- a loosely defined, binational crew of Pacific Northwest musicians from bands like Destroyer, Zumpano, and Limblifter. Oh, and there's Neko Case. In practice, however, the New Pornographers are actually a superdupergroup. Carl Newman writes hooks so infectious-- like the title track and the transcendent "Letter from an Occupant"-- that the U.S. has already run out of vaccine for them; Dan Bejar injects "Jackie" and "Execution Day" with magnificent pop drama; and the rest of the band perform them with a live-wire snap. Oh, and there's Neko Case. Although she only appears on a few tracks, she overcompensates by hitting each note more perfectly than you thought possible, sounding like Kate Pierson with super powers. --Stephen M. Deusner

 

077: The Wrens
The Meadowlands
[Absolutely Kosher; 2003]

Hate them for procrastinating, hate them for their myopic lyrical scope, hate them for filling a record with half slow songs and giving it awkward sequencing, hate them for giving their lyrics a narrative arc between this record and the last one they put out more than seven years earlier and expecting you to still care, hate them for being hopelessly over the hill and crying into their beers about their rockstar careers that never were... All that's fine. But don't hate them for writing the best power-pop sing-along on this list ("Hopeless"), as well as the second and third runners-up, "This Boy is Exhausted" and "Ex-Girl Collection". --Jason Crock

 

076: Missy Elliott
Miss E...So Addictive
[Elektra; 2001]

Showing customary disregard for artificial boundaries, on Miss E...So Addictive Missy Elliott and renaissance-man producer Timbaland completely gobbled through the cellular walls that supposedly separate club hip-hop from IDM, dub, and sheer Martian lunacy to create a mutant masterpiece so intoxicating that Busta Rhymes (of all people) sounds completely justified in his mid-album recommendation that the record come equipped with a designated driver. Elliott plays the perfect hostess to her steady succession of A-list guests, keeping the drinks filled and ashtrays emptied without ever letting anyone forget who pays the electric bill. And Timbaland's jam-packed, sanitized-fresh production remains astonishing; from the outrageously salacious funk of "Dog in Heat" and "Lick Shots" through the still-irresistible Morse code convulsions of "Get Ur Freak On" to the fervent Sign O' The Times gospel of "Higher Ground". Other artists might work harder at busting frontiers, but few have managed to do it with Missy's sheer hot-wired joy. --Matthew Murphy

 

075: M83
Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts
[Mute; 2003]

Pulling from a rock-meets-Metropolis palette, M83's Before The Dawn Heals Us navigates glow-stick landscapes and culminates time again in bouts of Wagnerian bombast. On this earlier gem, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, French aesthetes Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau take a more synthesized shot at digital romanticism with half the indulgence, cheaper sounding keyboards, and-- in hindsight-- a bummer of a lack of live drums. Depending on how you like your cyborg melodrama, this could be either welcome respite or a complete downer; regardless, there's enough buzzing power, ringing hooks, and joie de vivre to keep just about anyone with an inkling of an interest in hazy keys and gigantic guitars more than happy. Think of M83 as the airborne collision between a new wave Matmos posse and a Mogwai laser-light show (really, only later did the My Bloody Valentine name-dropping start to make legitimate sense). Regardless of the comparisons, if you prick the whirls of M83's echos, you'll draw blood, which is more than you can say about most electro-based, Robocop boogie woogie. --Brandon Stosuy

 

074: Aesop Rock
Labor Days
[Definitive Jux; 2001]

The critical schism between gang-bangers and backpackers, if you believe the propaganda, seems to be to pit monosyllabic street smarts against smart-ass book learnin'. Some would say the former treasures immediacy and big beats over nuance and meaningful messages. Some would say the latter sacrifices brevity for depth and prides itself on musical and lyrical obfuscation. Clearly, these folks need to recognize that they can both be used to cook chicken soup, and there are plenty of performers on both sides of the divide that can be standard bearers regardless of where they currently stand.

This is where Labor Days comes in, but not so much because of Aesop-- though he is an excellent MC, there are plenty of spots where he gets in his own way ("Life's not a bitch, life is a beautiful woman/ You only call her a bitch 'cause she wouldn't let you get that pussy") and crosses that line where nerds begin to earn their wedgies. The album's true strength lies in the production (offered by Blockhead, Omega One, and Aesop himself). Labor Days puts forth a more refined version of Wu-Tang's orchestral shimmy, providing Aesop a sturdy platform where he can scat-a-bee-boop about sidewalk artists and the daily grind and other workday concerns and not resort to sterile soapboxing. Take it from the Greek guy-- if you're going to try to teach folks a lesson, it's better to do so without sounding like a teacher. --David Raposa

 

073: Deerhoof
Reveille
[Kill Rock Stars; 2002]

Deerhoof are the best band out there right now. They are better than your favorite band. If your favorite band is Deerhoof, they are better than you think. And if you're in Deerhoof, congratulations, I think your band's awesome. Reveille? It's Apple O' in crystalis: rougher, maybe slightly more surprising, noisier but never loses sight of melody, tight in that "least tight band ever" sort of way. Sonic Youth openly advertised their Deerhoof love after Reveille-- probably because they knew the Frisco quartet they'd influenced finally had them beat. --Nick Sylvester

 

072: Sleater-Kinney
One Beat
[Kill Rock Stars; 2002]

Sleater-Kinney do this thing where they sing with enormous force and conviction about huge, personal subjects without ever miring themselves in portentious self-righteousness or cloying melodrama. Their sixth album is their most ambitious; Corin Tucker sings about love and war and motherhood with fierce clarity and searing eloquence. But it's also their most immediately satisfying; Tucker and Carrie Brownstein's guitars dip and weave and slash with delirious sugar-rush abandon, while Tucker's biblical yowl and Brownstein's arch, playful gasp steamroll into glorious, full-bodied hook after glorious full-bodied hook and Janet Weiss's perfect drums keep everything moving constantly forward. The candyburst stomp of "Oh!" captures the dizzy, frantic rush of love's first blush while "Step Aside" triumphantly, passionately, and desperately states its intent to fucking rock you. Best of all is "Sympathy", Tucker's song for her newborn son, a raw, bruising scream of ecstasy and fear and helplessness and awe. --Tom Breihan

 

071: The Shins
Oh, Inverted World
[Sub Pop; 2001]

I call this band Les Savvy Fey because their smooth debut archly manipulates so many stereotypical fan-factions. "Know Your Onion" was practically crass bait for geeky music critics: blending some of the best moves of darlings such as the Beach Boys, the Who, the Kinks, and R.E.M., and including lyrics such as "Shut out, pimply and angry...Lucked out, found my favorite records." And of course, "New Slang" was practically cocaine atop a Honda key for a certain type of female who would go through great (and somewhat uniform) pains to be identified as "indie," but who would never identify as "indie." The tease continued with a seductive tune called "The Celibate Life". Oh, Inverted World is a coy buffet offering hundreds of portions on thin, meticulously arranged trays. The album's illusions are made more tempting by its historical context as the most hypnotic gem from the last dreamy summer before the new terror era began in earnest. --William Bowers

 

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[Albums: 100-051]
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070: Sonic Youth
Murray Street
[Geffen; 2002]

Murray Street was an unexpected light at the end of the tunnel for both longtime and casual SY fans, as well as the first indication that Jim O'Rourke wasn't steering the plane into the mountain. If Sonic Youth's once-unpredictable penchant for feedback jams had to be indulged, then they could at least as be structured and effective as in "Karen Revisited", Lee Ranoldo's dark mirro to Kim Gordon's tribute. As for Kim, while we may never get another "Halloween" or "Shadow of a Doubt", her popstar-fascinated squealing over the noise squalls of "Plastic Sun" and "Sympathy for the Strawberry" are well-juxtaposed against Thurston Moore's rambling epics like "Disconnection Notice" or "Empty Page". If everyone was shouting Daydream Nation after this one, it's because Murray Street was the evidence that Sonic Youth could reach that level of greatness again. --Jason Crock

 

069: Erlend Øye
DJ-Kicks
[Studio K7; 2004]

We make mixes all the time: for ourselves, for exercising, for driving, for people we want to know we have a crush on them, for parties, to impress our friends, to suit some mood we predict we'll have at some point in the near future. Mixes are not just signposts for our tastes and our environment, but our lives, ourselves, really. Erlend Øye made a mix in 2004 that somehow managed to apply itself to almost all of the above situations for me and lots of others, which makes me really curious at all the allegations of "oh, but the beatmatching is terrible" and "oh, but indie kids are all supposed to be into dance music now". Øye's entry in the DJ-Kicks series is kindred to any mix made by a passionate, young music fan; full of good songs (and I'm convinced it ensured very good years for Phoenix, Justus Köhncke, Alan Braxe and Fred Falke), unabashed fandom, and even good old bedroom escapism via his own private sing-a-longs. Like any great album, it's easy to get lost in the flow of songs, and like any great mix, it makes all of them seem better than they might be alone. I couldn't ask for more. --Dominique Leone

 

068: 2 Many DJs
As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Vol. 2
[Pias; 2002]

Since we steal every good song for first kisses, O.C. soundtracks and low-budget gifts, we kinda deserve mind-fucks like Radio Soulwax. For instance: I was listening to The Stooges' "No Fun" the first time I was shot; when my mom was pregnant with my youngest sister, she piped Salt n Pepa's "Push It" into the womb to encourage a premature birth. Now mashed up, whenever the song comes on all I can think of is my mom shooting bullets out her vagina. --Nick Sylvester

 

067: Herbert
Bodily Functions
[Studio K7; 2001]

I'll never forget when my friend Heather showed me that she could rotate her head and her hips not only in different directions, but at totally different speeds. I just didn't know that you could do that with your body. Which brings me to this album, which sets the feet and the heart in sneaky syncopation. Conflict of interest alert: I contributed some laser eye surgery noises to this album (it has a loosely worn "samples of human bodily noise" theme) and remixed one of its singles. But I didn't contribute one iota of Herbert's slithery melodic gifts, his innate understanding that when you mic something you have already begun to play it, his nous for when to back off and when to pile on textural detail (a fatal Cleopatra to most electronic producers), his refusal to cut corners compositionally or strategically, or his knack for tilting Rhodes piano melodies, scuttling house rhythms and wry lyrics in opposite directions, stretching a taut pop canvas over the whole thing, and then reclining in the cool shade cast by this delicate tension. Sublimely intimate and resolutely modern, this album is at its best when, as on "Leave Me Now", Matthew Herbert's structures and Dani Siciliano's vocal phrasing stare each other down, take an elegant turn, and then, joyously, click right back into place. Yes, you can do that with your body. Go on, try it. --Drew Daniel

 

066: Basement Jaxx
Kish Kash
[Astralwerks; 2003]

065: Basement Jaxx
Rooty
[Astralwerks; 2001]

Depending on how strongly you feel about the Jaxx (and this is assuming you care about them at all), Rooty and Kish Kash's back-to-back placing up here in the mid-60s is either an affirmation of Felix Buxton & Simon Ratcliffe's consistency or proof positive that well-adjusted dance music still isn't afforded the same critical respect as poorly-adjusted guitar music. If astonishingly produced, maximalist, grin-inducing dance is your bag (sounds terrible, doesn't it), I don't know how you could possibly ever want more than what Rooty and Kish Kash provide.

That said, the reason these records suffer on critical and commercial terms is also the very thing that makes them special. Both have always felt gloriously out-of-step with the highly codified, nomenclature-obsessed world of dance music-- even when the comparatively pop-minded big beat was happening, Rooty wasn't it. A composite of electro, house, wet funk, songful pop, and whatever the hell the incredible "Romeo" is, Rooty was always the purple elephant in the room, the record whose place didn't exist outside of Pringles and Levi's commercials.

Even more far-reaching was 2003's Kish Kash, which at its best, sounded like the aural equivalent of Shiva's rainbow cumshot. Containing fused-together fragments of disco, electro, acid, bollywood, new wave, and whatever the hell the incredible "Living Room" is, Kish Kash's gaudy world collage fell by the wayside next to the minimalist sounds of microhouse and grime. Oh well-- at least Felix and Simon had the good sense to dress Dizzee up in pretty colors while they had him. --Mark Pytlik

 

064: Animal Collective
Here Comes the Indian
[Paw Tracks; 2003]

Sung Tongs' deconstructed Beach Boys harmonies transformed Animal Collective from Brooklyn's experimental favs to nationally recognized critical darlings, but with a back catalogue including Here Comes the Indian-- as well as Campire Songs' mellow cricket roast and Danse Manatee's spiraling raconteur-- there's no reason the crossover needed to take so long. Like the hidden treasure at the end of a Caroliner Rainbow, Here Comes the Indian is Sung Tongs' raw, Ritalin chomping older brother. Recorded in a psychedelic cauldron, there's the kinetic call-and-response/lazy day clap around a capella of "Hey Light", "Native Belle"'s centrifugal merry-go-round safety dance, flitting Scarborough fireflies and spattering Midsummer Night's hardcore propulsivity via "Slippi" (etc), all of which is salad-tossed from treetops by clever, ecstatic wood deities speaking tongues with heavy reverb accents. --Brandon Stosuy

 

063: Cat Power
You Are Free
[Matador; 2003]

Chan Marshall's pained self-consciousness, which has exhibited itself in countless awkward shows, is notorious among fans and detractors alike, who find her Cat Power persona alternately magnetic and frustrating. But what makes her sixth album, You Are Free, so surprising is how unself-conscious she sounds, even as she sings about the terror of inhabiting the spotlight, and even as she shares that spotlight with guests like Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl. On the title track she excuses Kurt Cobain for taking his own life, even identifying with his fatally conflicted earnestness; on the next song, she lays out her artistic mission: "Don't fall in love with the autograph, just fall in love when you sing your song." Nothing else sounds as self-reflexive as those first two tracks, but the album expands her hushed sound with songs that go beyond the stark intimacy of previous work and with a performance that is equally contemplative and sensuous. The result is an album that sounds like a battle but ultimately lives up to its title-- Marshall sounds freer than ever. --Stephen M. Deusner

 

062: Iron & Wine
The Creek Drank the Cradle
[Sub Pop; 2002]

Long before Margaret Mitchell, the American South was lending itself to romanticism-- there's something about the muggy summer days or the wide, lolling rivers. Iron & Wine's Sam Beam adds his grainy, stripped-down songs to that tradition with The Creek Drank the Cradle, his debut. The whispered-in-your-dreams intimacy of his compositions brings to mind other singer/songwriters like Nick Drake or Elliott Smith, but even their most uplifting works were always tinged with resigned self-loathing. Beam sings about love like someone joyful and humbled to be in its grasp, from the earth-warming laughter in "Lion's Mane" to the touching keepsakes of "Weary Memories". The tangled history of the South breathes complexity into Beam's rosy visions through the bare-bones arrangements. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville deemed the South a land "gone to sleep." He was speaking of its politics, but Beam's understated anthems are lullabies worthy of a ride along the Mississip' or the reflected vista from Lookout Mountain in the corner of a lover's eye. --Marc Hogan

 

061: The Books
Thought for Food
[Tomlab; 2002]

Often when a record needs a certain kind of technology to happen, technology becomes in some way the music's subject. The Books collage approach could never have happened without a computer (at least not with a budget this low), but Thought For Food sounds old and creaky, like it was sort of always there. Though this was a big and surprising record for a lot of people upon its release, The Books don't make music of extremes, and Thought For Food will never make you cry or dance. Instead, they celebrate a peaceful state of quiet reflection, those moments when you feel curious about the world and want to know all the details. If you've been there, Thought For Food is the perfect soundtrack. --Mark Richardson

 

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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

060: Spoon
Girls Can Tell
[Merge; 2001]

Recording Girls Can Tell after their brief, misguided coffee break on Elektra left them frustrated and label-less, Britt Daniel and the men of Spoon certainly had no reason to swagger into the studio brimming with confidence. And a quick peek at the album's lyric sheet would seem to verify the band's self-doubt ("How come I feel so washed up at such a tender age now?") and disappointment ("Tough break handjob sent me back home to Ma, back to Cowtown and the fish shop and the mall"). But here there's absolutely nothing hesitant or uncertain about the band's music or their faith in it, with Daniel flicking off his dynamite pop hooks like $100 bills off a fat roll. Throughout the album the band show themselves equally adept at the brooding simmer of "Everything Hits at Once", the folkish pallbearer's lament "10:20 A.M", and the angular, bass-heavy "Me and the Bean", and prove once again the endlessly restorative powers of brilliant songcraft. --Matthew Murphy

 

059: M.I.A. / Diplo
Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1
[Hollertronix; 2004]

In a few weeks, when Arular becomes the best album of the next five years, people will probably shelf the Diplo mixtape that preceded the official release. That's fine, really-- I say leave Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 in 2004. The tape dropped a few days before the presidential election, and when shit went bad November 2, we were fortunate that M.I.A didn't disappoint. If the election dissipated most if all the hope we had in the social power of pop, M.I.A.'s smattered canvassing of world revolution, enhanced by Diplo's rio baile funk accents and weighty instrumentals, re-sparked us. --Nick Sylvester

 

058: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fever to Tell
[Interscope; 2003]

The early 00s New York scene that begat the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, among others, resembled the early 80s New York scene, when buzz often outweighed talent and hip young artists like Julian Schnabel and Ashley Bickerton sold works for exorbitant amounts before the paint had dried. Likewise, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs earned a great deal of hype and suspicion before they even released a full album, let alone their eponymous ep. But Fever to Tell didn't just live up to all the band's press; it surpassed it. The album conveys such ragged spontaneity and glorious disarray that it seems unimaginable that these dozen songs (counting the hidden track) could have been written down beforehand. Instead, they feel more like the band found pieces of them on street corners and in bar bathrooms, in gutters and unmade beds, then cobbled them together during an all-nighter. Despite the hype, money, and inevitable backlash, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs managed to create something exciting, vital, and durable: Fever to Tell survives as art and not merely as an artifact of a particular scene. --Stephen M. Deusner

 

057: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Hearts of Oak
[Lookout; 2003]

Hearts of Oak proved that there was hope yet for white people by being a thing of intelligence, spirit, and talent from-- whodathunkit-- an intelligent, spirited, and talented man/band. Throughout this even-paced disc, Leo sings on par with the leader of any heralded glam-band filtered through an Elvis-Costello-versus-George-Michael colander. With the exception of a few percussive breakdowns, he plays the guitar as if he rigged it to generate electricity for his amp. Even better, he writes adventurous lyrics that go political and religious, yet sustain a healthy slogan-to-observation-to-analysis ratio. Boogie-provoking, and implicitly/explicitly ambiguous about its subjects (nostalgia, the existence of God, nationalism, rock), Hearts of Oak should have been bundled as a diet supplement called Vitamin Lightning. "Bridges, Squares" alone sounds like a pastiche of bands that could have made the Carter-Reagan segue easier on the brain. --William Bowers

 

056: The Postal Service
Give Up
[Sub Pop; 2003]

Give Up sounds like that scene from season one of "The O.C." where Seth jumps up on Summer's kissing-booth table and demands that she stop ignoring him and kiss him in front of everyone. It's the sound of a hyper-articulate emo dork pulling his head out of his ass and staring the outside world straight in the face, an emo album that dares to be something other than emo. Jimmy Tamborello's twinkling, shimmering sonics sound like Boards of Canada after a pitcher of Kool-Aid and an afternoon watching cartoons. Ben Gibbard sings like Bernard Sumner having a really intense conversation on the floor of his dorm room at three in the morning when he totally has a final in, like, a few hours. "Such Great Heights" is the song that Natalie Portman should've played for Zach Braff, and "Nothing Better" is the Human League's "Don't You Want Me?" in a Ramen-stained hoodie and yesterday's socks-- at least until the beat drops out and that amazing string sample comes in. --Tom Breihan

 

055: Cannibal Ox
The Cold Vein
[Definitive Jux; 2001]

Cannibal Ox's math and science teachers must have been rather fierce, because while many of this group's admirers fixate on the comic book apocalypse imagery that runs through their work, I'm convinced that there is in fact a strange mathematical and (meta)physical subtext to this album: Vordul Megilah and Vast Aire keep insisting upon medians and modes and parallels and adjacencies, while limning a cosmology of dark, oppressive forces that flicker in and out of view like ambassadors from the kind of non-Euclidean occult geometries that drive people insane in H. P. Lovecraft's short stories. Songtitles about Asgard and El-P's smoggy, proggy production keep pulling you up to a twinkling, celestial Roger Dean empyrean full of acid fuzz, warrior horns and Wagnerian string-swells gone foghorn long-- and then the rhymes slam you down on the hard concrete of poverty, addiction, and predatory violence, puncturing this sonic utopia with luciferian ingenuity. From the stark ethical choices of their mini-narrative "Vein" to the gently knowing humor of "The F-Word" (where Vast raps: "The Big Bang theory/ What is this, a trend?/ You ask a girl out/ And the universe extends?") to the Hieronymous Bosch hell of "Iron Galaxy", there's a desolate brilliance and sharp wit that is much missed. One Cannibal Ox album is the loneliest number. --Drew Daniel

 

054: Joanna Newsom
The Milk-Eyed Mender
[Drag City; 2004]

At first glance, Joanna Newsom-- with her eccentric, childlike vocals, her angelic harp, and her complex, thorny lyricism-- might resemble a visitor from another world. However, once you become acclimated to her peculiarities (and anybody who's digested much American folk as anthologized by Harry Smith or Alan Lomax has surely endured voices more unorthodox than Newsom's) the intricately knotted patchwork of her songs teems with life-affirming beauty. With lyrics that weave bizarre non-sequiters ("even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden") with homespun aphorisms ("Never get so attached to a poem, you forget truth that lacks lyricism") into starkly personal journal entries, songs like "The Book of Right On" and "Sadie" become more profoundly moving with each successive listen. And though her songs abound with such fanciful creations as dirigibles, cockles, and bean sprouts; it's not long before you realize there's nothing otherworldly about Newsom's talents-- she just has a unique gift for capturing the stray magic that already exists on this planet. --Matthew Murphy

 

053: The Dismemberment Plan
Change
[Desoto; 2001]

"Change" is an understatement: This record is as far from the Dismemberment Plan's frenzied mission statements of ! and Is Terrified as you can get. However, once you get past the grown-up tone (and a few stumbles like "It could have been off the hook, now"), everything that made the band great is here: Thoughtful lyrics, hyperactive Motown-robbing rhythms, and melting their influences into a sound that was uniquely theirs. It's easier to play connect-the-dots with the Plan's favorite artists on Change, as their influences are more clearly explored: the Remain in Light workout of "Sentimental Man", the Björk-ish samples that saddle up next to the crying-emo chorus of "Face of The Earth"; "Secret Curse" picks off the chorus to R.E.M's "So. Central Rain" and struts all the way to the end zone, and the Paul Simon-storytelling over laid-back funk on "Ellen and Ben" closed the album (and their career) with a big hug and few thousand "yeeahuuuh"'s. Still irreverent while poignant, still goofy while gallant, the Plan at least had the sense to go out on top. --Jason Crock

 

052: Max Tundra
Mastered By Guy at the Exchange
[Tigerbeat6; 2002]

Ben Jacobs knew exactly when to quit: He piled layers upon layers of beats and bright synths onto twelve pop songs, obsessively cramming horns, accordions and keys into every second of the record, and practically drove the whole thing over a cliff. The result is exhilirating IDM/pop, yet compared to the music, Jacobs wrote lyrics about nebbishly mundane events-- boy fancies girl, boy treats a cold sore, boy spends weeks in the studio-- and sang them in a voice that is pleasing but not striking, sounding like any number of smart and withdrawn men you might see hunched over a computer in an unkempt bedroom. And there's the charm. Jacobs transforms his daily rut with digital effusiveness, making a sixth or seventh love feel like the first, and coming to peace with any lousy day job that helps him pay for his music. He sums up the whole project when he sings that the colored diodes in his studio remind him of his lover's dress; MBGATE finds the explosions that roil inside us all, and draws them out one light at a time. --Chris Dahlen

 

051: Prefuse 73
One Word Extinguisher / Extinguished
[Warp; 2003]

Every time I've reviewed a project by Prefuse 73's Scott Herren, I've received an e-mail response from him...and it's not always a polite thank you note. But the fact that Herren does bother to personally respond at all is an anomaly in a genre where anonymity is typically protected like a fortress, just as Herren's music frequently carries far more emotional weight than that of his IDM peers. Whatever the backstory, One Word Extinguisher wrings real feeling out of its technological innovations, maybe because Prefuse so expertly walks the unincorporated regions between electronic music, hip-hop, and jazz. Glitched vocals stand in for communication breakdowns, arrhythmia beats project uneasiness, and warm keyboards comfortingly stroke hair. Oh, and just to show how easy it all comes to him, Herren also turned a hard drive dump into the brilliant companion megamix of Extinguished. --Rob Mitchum