Favorite Albums of 2000s
Wow, what an original: another decade list after a long creative drought.
Which I will address. Not that I should. It may even be wiser not to. But nevertheless I shall: there simply hasn't been a subject I've wanted to write on.
I've been writing for a while, so I'm aware of the bizarre ups-and-downs that go behind creative output. It's not even tied to anything in my personal or professional life: it just happens your mind glides over what makes a subject interesting, or finds nothing interesting, or finds the things interesting not worth writing about, or in any case thinks they are not worth writing about. It has nothing to do with intellect and curiosity, which grow constantly, just some bizarre change in behavior or perspective. I realized 2022 was an unusually fecund year for writing essays even from the beginning of the year, and by the end of the year, as I was editing those last essays, felt a freeze coming. In the opposite end, 2022's primary creative activity was essay-writing; all other activities, say, writing fiction or coding, stagnated substantially.
There's no use in commenting on it, honestly. I'm a bit of a Taoist at heart, so I believe there's no choice but to go with the flow. Thank goodness creative endeavors rarely affect or hurt us in our human world, and I don't need to write for a living. So, have this small section as a comment on the creative process, which I hope amuses. As is ominously foretold Chrollo in "Hunter x Hunter", "Amuse yourself with the entr'acte."
Anyway, on this 2000s list: the idea began in 2022, and so I felt it didn't hurt to finish it off, as the list had cooled substantially but also raised some interesting questions. Same rules as last time: whatever I listen to the most, wins.
2000
All anyone says of Luomo's "Vocalcity" are the clicks and cuts, but rarely does anyone mention the complete frigidity, and sudden spots of warmth, that come from his approach. The beat that holds "Class" together is ironically the same that characterizes the heartless beat of the Holter monitor, yet those clicks and cuts give the effect of ice melting and breaking apart by their planes of cleavage. It is the sound of the guarded soul slowly thawing, revealing itself to intimacy, in spite of robotic refrains of "There's nothing in the world, that you can do for me" and "Nothing to do, always can do", such that, when we arrive to "Synkro", we are submerged underneath the water, which no longer feels so frozen, as a result of our feet moving. The album culminates with the refrain in "Tessio": "I guess you turn me on / when you're gone; / for me, it didn't go wrong, / we just made another song," admitting finally the human warmth that was lurking behind the music. I think Vladislav Delay himself dislikes/is indifferent to the album because it seems shallow to him, a reminder of the vain clubbing in the early 2000s. To him I retort: Junichiro Tanizaki said, "Elegance is frigid." In form and in execution, "Vocalcity" is the epitome of elegance. It's fine if people, furthermore, dance to it.
...though we're not done yet.
"I'm like Malcolm, out the window with a joint / hoodied up, blood in my eye, I let two fly / like fuck it, look how these niggas duck shit; / one kid hollering "What?", looking up, he the big wig - / fake ass cat, low life, sodomized mind / beating niggas, big bricks of bread, sell them as dimes, / his feet hurt, networking, he get no work; / yo smack him where his hand hurt, fuck what he worth."
To this day, if Ghostface boasted that he was the greatest rapper alive, I would shake my head and wholeheartedly agree, especially given certain deaths lately. Weird take, but "Supreme Clientele" might contain some of the best writing in music - in writing, period, I'd have to think about it. As a poet, a verse might contain an entire story, or an arc of emotions and an exercise in irony felt. Ghost as a character is impossible to imitate in any artform; his is the voice one wishes Ishmael Reed developed in his later years. Take the second verse in "Mighty Healthy": "Snap out of Candyland, kids, the rumor is / black become immune and shit, we never did / like eating dead birds, trust the pharmacy over herbs, / men marrying men, ew, they got the urge." Several topics at once, all about contemporary society, and all in rhyme. That's pretty incredible. I didn't like Ghost initially, probably because he rapped way too quickly to hear what he was saying. When I listened, I likely rejected the ambition, or the impossibly-set standard. He and RZA boast: "Don't go against the grain, the grain..." That's just how it is. What Ghost accomplishes here is every writer's goal. His second greatest accomplishment in life is appearing in a Disney movie while having rapped "We at the opera, Queen Elizabeth rubbing my leg, / had ketchup on her dress from a Whopper; / chunky ass necklace, / must be her birthstone, / John Paul cop the biggest stones outta Rome."
So that's how it is. There are two winners for the year 2000. It wouldn't be my opinion anymore if I chose one over the other. Or: fuck rules.
I'm sure everyone is screaming at the computer screen anyway because I hadn't chosen the other most-important album ever that came out this year. Can you blame me? This is the same year Radiohead's "Kid A" came out. Yet as momentous as "Kid A" still feels, I just don't listen to it all that much; I had already said how that album feels juvenile to me, though it has impressive, indeed nonpareil affect.
And then there's Modest Mouse "The Moon & Antartica". If "Kid A" is the ideal vehicle for a band's re-invention, "The Moon & Antartica" is the ideal indie rock opus. "Since I Left You" is the ideal electronic album to chill out to - Daft Punk's "Discovery" is ideal for dancing to. "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out" is the ideal romantic's album. D'Angelo's "Voodoo", the ideal R&B. "Stankonia"... I mean, what do you expect from me? Anyone trying to make out with a winner this year would be a loser. This is easily the best year in music in the last three decades. Let's leave it at that.
2001
Fugazi's "The Argument" is still the greatest punk album here or across the pond.
"Endless Summer" is still a beautifully executed concept album, beauty built on the ugliness of glitch, thereby rendering it not so ugly.
I listened to a lot of these albums during my years in high school, to their disadvantage. Still, Daft Punk's "Discovery" is great, possibly because those robots were tongue-in-cheek making it. I'll admit there's something appealing to Julian Casablancas' drawl in "Is This It". "The Glow Pt. 2" was more a college thing, and therefore more emotionally resonant. "Amnesiac" is the greatest Radiohead album.
When is Missy Elliott coming back? We're waiting to get our freak on. I'm not asking the same of Basement Jaxx, but we can acknowledge, begrudgingly, the greatness of "Rooty".
2002
"How can I ever tell you, it's me I don't like?" How can we resist Jeff Tweedy's put-on?
During my years in college I enjoyed resting on the hill beside the library and listening to albums, beginning to end, singing them out loud when no one was around. (It's sad how such pleasures can't be had again, in my older years.) "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was my favorite to sing, just as the sun vanished below the horizon. Of the indie albums of the last two decades, it still impresses as the most sincere, even when it's at its most ambitious. It's never juvenile, never backward-looking, and it has that sienna burn all over it from Tweedy's struggles in Chicago.
(09/14/2023)
It's weird, because something like "Jesus, Etc." would seem puerile in the voice of a contemporary singer. With Tweedy, the singer of "Summerteeth", who sang of beating and murdering women, we know it's a part of his complicated fantasy. No need to look backwards in history, that quality is in his voice: he's no child, but he wants to believe. It must come from all those novels he was reading at the time, particularly William Gass's "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country".
And, on re-analysis, one of the strengths of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" comes from its novelistic approach. No, not the novels the New Yorker reviews, but novels that stand distant from hashtags and the stock market, novels that take place in another world i.e. the writer's body and soul. Are the lyrics occasionally precious? Yes, but they're not clever, as in, they're not more clever than the audience. "I want a good life, with a nose for things: / fresh wind and bright skies, to enjoy my suffering." He's a sad sack for sure, but at least he admits it.
When I wrote this initially I thought, Well, what hasn't been said of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"? The answer is, Everything. I kept looking at this entry and thought only of things that could be added. But we're leaving it at this, because it's already too much of a distraction.
"Geogaddi" is such fascinating music, isn't it? Creepy and catchy.
2003
"If you don't know by now... / Take me down... / Infatuation..." Those words have haunted me over and over again. The violence and madness behind The Rapture's "Echoes" are endlessly fascinating, especially as dance music. I'm always drawn by the intensity Jenner sings lines such as, "I called you on the telephone, cuz I was lonely," though one wonders if he is only acting out ANOHNI's pain. If so, good act. He and Vito Roccoforte's drums play a game where they try to be louder than the other, drilling the beat and Jenner's cries into your brain; Gabriel Andruzzi's keyboards relate the human drama. "I can't believe she came here today and took me away, took me away" is juvenile in its face, until Jenner grinds his teeth crying "And if you focus very hard / the train will come out for you at last, / and if you're stuck out in the yard...", his mouth coming out in a froth. The next song, appropriately, is the muted sob, "Open Up Your Heart": "When you're sad, and lonely, / and your mind sees you only, / take a chance, you can fight it, / open up your heart..." sung to someone unknown, himself or a loved one. And we're not even talking about the heart attack, "House of Jealous Lovers".
The Wrens' "Meadowlands" is just such a huge bummer. Great album.
(09/14/2023) (Edit 1)
Well shit, I forgot about Ricardo Villalobos' "Alcachofa". I bet my lack of memory comes from it not being in any streaming service - though I do own a cracked CD of it, unfortunately no player at the moment.
I was waiting in line at a Target when the recollection came upon me, as I was staring at the sterile white light, reflected off the sterile white walls and tiling. It was "Dexter", that murky, ominous track, which woke me from my trance. Because I like to live in an interesting world, and "Dexter" is as much an invitation for the occult as Mort Garson's "Lucifer" is. Which is to say, the darkness of things exists everywhere, even in a mega-sized retail store. No one really knows the history of the person in front or behind them, nor what goes on after hours or behind closed doors.
"Alcachofa", and generally Villalobos' oeuvre, is an invitation to that mystery. "Easy Lee" comes almost at a shock to those looking for a typical dance record. We're not really sure what lurks behind the gasps of silence in Villalobos' music. Where there are vocal tracks, as in "I Try to Live (Can I Live)" and "What You Say Is More Than I Can Say", we feel no life in them, as if they're repeated by ghosts that haunt the periphery of our consciousness.
Um. I actually don't know if this changes things. One, "Alcachofa" is so long. I need to think about it - which would mean, listening to it a lot, which would mean finding it somewhere. And then revisiting other 2003 albums. I won't write anything more about it here, maybe in another article.
(Edit 2) Crap. I think I have to redo this. For a different reason.
2004
When I was out of ideas for the greater part of 2020, I would listen to one album from start to end every weekend for inspiration. I refused to do anything else except kick my head back, stare at the ceiling and focus on every word, so that I understood immediately one rule: "remember all caps when you spell the man [sic] name." Oh, and that DOOM is the "best emcee with no chain you ever heard."
The first review on this site was Madvillain's "Madvillainy", but it's not adequate enough; it dwells too much on DOOM's death. So let's try again:
This is the other greatest rap album of all time, shoulder to shoulder with "Supreme Clientele". Stop thinking about it from the standpoint of the lyrics. (I think JAY-Z's "4:44" is the exemplar of that side of the genre, but even then the experiment doesn't seem finished.) Rappers have always been fascinated by the placement of the voice in the art form - their influences start somewhere with Gil Scott-Heron, himself influenced by blues musicians like Blind Willie Johnson. White voices have always had the privilege of having their words heard and interpreted. The black musician has always been interested in how to make their voices heard, and to say the emotions that words fail to express.
DOOM and Madlib know this, Madlib through his crate-digging and reverence for records of the past and DOOM through his own past. Anyone familiar with the record "Black Bastards", by the group KMD that a young Dumile Thompson belonged to, knows of the artist's frothing anger at society's attitude to his black skin, evident through the title and cover art. After his brother's death and a stint with homelessness, as the story goes, he resurrected as the iron masked DOOM. As the voice-over says in the opener "The Illest Villains", the villain is someone society loves to hate; DOOM's superpower was to make the world's hatred towards him into strength.
That being said, it's not an aggressive album. At all. Not even musically. Eric Andre, of the "Eric Andre Show", remarked, at DOOM's death, that DOOM opened his eyes into a more relaxed kind of rapping. One that couldn't be confused for any social commentary and, therefore, would be less popular. Not saying that groups like Public Enemy and NWA are somehow less artistic, but it's certain, with hindsight, that the legacy of those groups is mixed with a white audience's desire to see black faces, in RZA's words, "bring the motherfucking ruckus." Almost in a zen-like state, DOOM, having made those types of records with KMD, foretold the appropriation and emulated instead the make-it-look-so-easy flow of jazz musicians of the past, flowing rhymes like Bird or Coltrane, choosing words not for their emotional content but their color and variety.
One day, when I was deep in my creative slump, I wrote down the lyrics to "Meat Grinder" as I was listening to them:
Tripping off the beat, kinda, dripping off the meat grinder, heat niner, pimping, stripping, soft sweet minor, China was a neat signer, trouble with the script, digits double dipped, bubble lipped, subtle lisped midget, borderline schizo, sorta fine tits though, pour the wine, whore to grind, quarter to nine, let's go, ever since ten-eleven, glad she made a brethren, then it's last down, seven alligator seven, at the gates of heaven, knocking, no answer, slow dancer, hopeless romancer, dopest flow stanzas...
As to where a line begins or ends, I couldn't tell you. The lyrics are ruled by commas, which were ever unpresent in DOOM's checks. But goddamn is there so much detail packed in a phrase, and there's only one word that fuels his roving eye: creativity, sheer creativity. Don't think about the subject, the narrative, all of those things that signify an orderly and conservative world: just follow the flow. And wonder, how the fuck did he come up with that killer triplet, "digits double dipped, bubble lipped, subtle lisped midget"? Or what came into his mind to end with the oddly-romantic lines, "seven alligator seven, at the gates of heaven, knocking, no answer, slow dancer, hopeless romancer," while ending it with a brag: "dopest flow stanzas"?
As DOOM himself says in "Bistro", just sit back and relax. It's music, pure and simple. You approach it as you would Mozart. Madlib and DOOM construct a symphony that wants, most of all, to please the audience. And I think Madlib was a key component to the production. A detail I find interesting, though likely irrelevant, is that Madlib is about the same age as his deceased brother. Whatever is the case, Madlib's instrumentals really brought out DOOM's inner bard, without bringing up any other type of soup scum. Where a different kind of instrumental might have made DOOM more braggadocious or more righteous, here he is just focused on bringing up the best word combinations he can, like "Hands so fast he can out-spin Flash" or "One starry night, I saw the light, heard a voice that sounded like Barry White say 'Sure you're right.'"
Earlier I said I'd call Ghost the best rapper alive. It sucks DOOM died, but it's not a shame. One, he is reunited with his younger brother, and two, we have him right here: "Operation Doomsday", "Take Me to Your Leader", "Vaudeville Villain", "Mm..Food", hell, he's fiery in the Avalanches' "Frankie Sinatra". DOOM became immortal the day he donned the mask, and he knew it too: so he ends "Madvillainy": "Curses, he's truly the worstest, with enough rhymes to spread throughout the boundless universes; let the beat blast, she told him wear the mask, he said You bet your sweet ass, it's made of fine chrome alloy, find him on the grind, he's the Rhinestone Cowboy." (Ending with a decisive period here.)
2005
Sleater-Kinney is a lot of things at once, but with "The Woods" we can safely pin them down as one of the greatest American bands ever.
I'm conflicted about Sleater-Kinney. I love their self-titled debut and sophomore album, "Call the Doctor". I don't forget Corin Tucker's "Heard what you said, I heard what you said, on that day / Wasn't so nice, it wasn't so nice, as I thought it would be" on "Slow Song" or her recollection of a heart attack on "Heart Attack"; the material just feels too real to me. "One More Hour" is just an amazing song, musically and lyrically. But after that, the album "Dig Me Out" becames grey and indistinct, and that's what I found a lot of Sleater-Kinney's post "Call the Doctor" songs: unorganized, uncolored, beige, but better recorded, better played.
For that reason, I didn't think "The Woods" was going to make the top of the list; I was planning on giving it to a no-namer, because 2005 was not a particularly fecund year (shut up about "Late Registration" and "Illinois" already). There's "The Fox", "Wilderness" and "Modern Girl" going for it, but then there's "Jumpers" and "Entertain". As it happens when constructing these types of lists, I have a tinge of regret leaving some albums off the list; I would have liked the narrative of Sleater-Kinney's last album before their first hiatus being their best one, and the bite in the former three songs was the sharpest I had ever seen from the band.
"Well, ok," I said for the twentieth time, "let's give the album another shot. Usually I try to respect the track order when doing these. Let's listen to a random song I hadn't heard before and see if it confirms what I think. How about Let's Call It Love?"
And so we're here.
"The Woods" is Sleater-Kinney's dirtiest album. I'm more than happy with that; the dirtier an album is, the more I like it. (The greatest album of 1970 is The Stooges' "Funhouse", folks. (I might have to re-review that statement after cursory research.)) There's crazy aggression in it, not in a strictly masculine way, which is appropriate for an album whose title suggests an entrance into the human psyche. The madness filters into "Let's Call It Love", particularly when Carrie Brownstein, in a panting vociferation, cries, "It's such a long time, / I've wasted such a long time, / been such a long time, / I've wasted all my fucking time," not in a puerile 24-year-old Kurt Cobain-esque manner, but with the rage of a 30-year-old Brownstein who really had waited such a long time - all while Janet Weiss bangs the drums with machine gun-like precision.
Rock needs a little wildness. Sleater-Kinney is sometimes too clever for their own good. Chaos occasionally does wonders for a person's constitution. You need a bit of both, and in "The Woods" the band's increasingly intricate playing finally reconciled with the straightforward rocking aspect of rock n' roll. In "Rollercoaster" Corrin Tucker yelps "Sweet like my tomato, / red cherry tomato, / down at the market, pick out the ripe one, / tempting me sorely, I want to bite one" while she and Brownstein's guitars have their famous, jolting dual exchange that simulates rather perfectly the fluttering of the heart as it experiences intense regret. "The Fox" begins with pummeling, before Tucker enters her primitive story of a duck and a fox, as if to label the issues she is addressing as ancient as time itself. The lyrics of "Modern Girl" are so great Brownstein used them to title her memoir - "Hunger makes me a modern girl" is a surprisingly endurable line for our modern condition.
The album art depicts the titular woods on a stage. I think the intent is a nod to the lyrics of "Wilderness", in that our daily dramas are in a sense staged - they follow a prescribed narrative, and we must follow them though we are absurdly aware of the directions - and in spite of that forced quality are still real, to the actors involved. This seems to be somewhere the right interpretation. Kinney has always been interested in the narratives forced upon people and pried open the curtains hiding the (secretly-)suffering individual, particularly in the arena of women's rights. "The Woods" is their magnum opus.
The no-namer of 2005 was Garaj Mahal's "Blueberry Cave". I assume most had no idea this infinitely funky album existed; it only popped up after doing extensive - extensive - research. It's simply incredibly listenable. I don't think I can do much justice describing the album - except by saying, here is your real multicultural coalition, your Pakistani singer/guitarist in Fareed Haque, your Black German bassist in Kai Eckhardt, playing fusion music of all things - so I can only implore people to listen to it.
2006
If we go by Julio Cortazar's writings in the posthumous collection of his poetry, "Salve" ("Save Twilight"), he went mad writing his most well-known opus, "Rayuela" ("Hopscotch"), with pleasure. With a smile on his face, he prefaces the novel by saying that it can be read in any order the reader chooses - he knows, as he has read them in innumerable sequences - but he himself has a preferred order, which he has recorded for the reader's pleasure.
Openly admitting his madness, he is also cheekily stating that he's just too good.
So it is with J Dilla's "Donuts". I don't listen to it anymore in sequence. I prefer to shuffle the track list and have it surprise me, endlessly, with how good certain combinations. Even now, as I listen to it, "Gobstopper" transitions perfectly into "Stop", into "Welcome to the Show", into "The New".
There's an unusual craft in making songs...well, perfect, in the way Dilla did, in the way Cortazar made fragments perfect. Every song in "Donuts" has a perfect arc and character. That's why you can play them in any sequence. You don't get bored by any song and you don't get bored by the track list. Like a donut, or Ourobouros, the album circles into itself. So saying, Dilla is eternal. (This is not an exaggeration given the second life he gave his samples.)
It's hard to know what was on Dilla's mind as he was constructing "Donuts". Dilla on his death bed is as legendary as Arthur sailing to Avalon. It's hard not to read messages in the track list, especially the last two: "Last Donut of the Night" and "Welcome to the Show". It's obvious, isn't it? The show's still going on.
"Destroyer's Rubies" is such a close second. I used to sing the lyrics, "Pitiful me, pitiful me, / I left my cargo to the sea, / I gave the water, what it always wanted it to be," while walking beside the Charles River at night, alone. Dan Bejar is the romantic of our time: "All good things must come to an end; the bad ones just go on forever."
2007
Rock as a word is also its best description: the music has to make you rock, first. You think after. Don't get 'em mixed up. A lot of what is considered rock nowadays has a feeling of inevitability to it: killer hook, big chorus, some trite lyrics about the very idea of rocking out itself. All to the effect that we know the song already. Spoon's "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" is a true capital-R Rock album because it has none of that obviousness. You dance to "Cherry Bomb". Yelp out "Don't make me a target!" You're not even sure what "Finer Feelings" means. But damn is it good music. You have your Mick Jagger substitute in Britt Daniel. The focus of the album is groove, or good ol' Rhythm and Blues. Daniel channeled those musicians of yore when he sang "I believe that someone / will take care of me tonight," or a bit of Muddy Waters at "You got no fear of the underdog, / that's why you won't survive," followed by a pent-up "RIGHT!"
Burial's "Untrue" may not be his best work, which says a lot. It's long and depressing, but Burial is so famous in electronic music at this point to say something sounds like his music is already high praise. The Field's "From Here We Go Sublime" is another high mark and more influential than we may know. The madness of "Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?" has been extremely memorable, and "Person Pitch" is the best thing from Animal Collective.
2008
Who in the world finds William Parker's bass below temptation? The winner is the William Parker Quartet's ephemeral "Petit Oiseau".
Well what about "Double Sunrise Over Neptune"? Uhhh well why not, that too. We can give William Parker all the accolades. What's stopping him from winning every year?
I'm just saying, the theory around Wynton Marsalis is pretty good: find someone who dissed 'em and chances are you'll find a good musician. At the very least, they'll find themselves in a club with Miles Davis of all people (not that Davis has the most spotless of reputations).
Parker's bass stands out the most in his music. The bass is probably one of jazz's most distinctive instruments, and the one often ignored. It acts as a kind of shadow, dogging the tempo and revealing a cooler side to the music. In this sense, the instrument is the realist in the ensemble, a "Come down, man" retort to the music's romantic side. Contrast Parker with Mingus, whose passion for life and sex could be heard in his playing, especially in "Money Jungle" and "Haitian Fight Club". Mingus' bass trembles with lusts that cannot be fulfilled. Much like the watercolors on the cover of "Petit Oiseau", the reverb in Parker's bass layer upon each other like a mist, lending a humidity to the music. His is a music of warmth, whether it's the steam of the jungle in "The Golden Bell", the heat of the morning commute in "Four for Tommy", the sunshine on white linen during an afternoon stroll in "Malachi's Mode". Perhaps Parker is the titular little bird, dancing among the flowers; in contrast to Mingus' life, which was one long rage, Parker's is a long meditation on a Sunday afternoon.
2009
When I commuted to work in my early 20s, I'd bury my face into my backpack and fall asleep to the jogging of the train, singing to myself, "I didn't know what a brute I was... / I dipped my cigarette, and rode the bus. / Vengeance built me hastily, and I dragged the clanging notion I was nobody, nobody, / nobody..." That "nobody, nobody" haunted my dreams, and I repeated it in a doze. I felt I was simultaneously the singer and the target of the song: "Your easy loves you keep like pets, / denied them you are powerless; / whatever keeps you sleeping through the night..." And in desperation I'd sing: "But you're the one, that I still miss; / you're the one, that I still miss, / and it's ruthless that it comes as no surprise."
That was the peak of my depression. For whatever reason, Neko Case's voice soundtracked a lot of it. There's the inexorable longing in "This Tornado Loves You":
I have waited, with a glacier's patience,
smashed every transformer, with every trailer,
sixty miles wide...
still you are nowhere,
still you are nowhere, nowhere in sight...
And then "Magpie to the Morning", ironically sung on the night train home:
Mockingbird sings, in the middle of the night
all his songs are stolen and he hides -
Stole them from Whippoorwill,
And the meadow lark,
He sings them for you special,
He knows you're afraid of the dark.
The odd thing I found out is that we write similar, from studying "Vengeance is Sleeping" so much (I suppose, by force). I mean, as far as fiction goes. The writing's no good if the emotion isn't on its face, but it is just as wrong if you fake the emotion. You write, over and over again, so that the emotion comes authentic every time, and you do so by going through the mazes in one's mind and making sure the words are personal only. That's very hard to do, discovering your own language. You have to repeat misdirections, show the audience how you arrived at dead-ends. "Middle Cyclone" is a wonderful treasure of mistakes.
Because none of the lyrics in Case's album make any sense, not even the Nielsen cover. Take "People Got a Lotta Nerve":
So the saying says
"An elephant never forgets"
standing in a concrete cage
swinging sad and insane.
And then back to "This Tornado Loves You":
I miss
how you'd sigh yourself to sleep
when I rake the springtime, across your cheek.
You know what though, who fucking cares. You know what she means. That's the point of art - expression through abnormal means. To this day, I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but I can tell you volumes about the melancholy and struggle behind them.
That being said, I didn't think Neko'd take 2009. The album's really long. It's a little distracted with smaller songs. But it always comes down to whatever I've listened to most.
2000s
I was a wee lad in the 2000s, but it's not all too difficult for me to conclude that the Bush era had a great impact on artists. Fugazi's "The Argument" was released a month after 9/11, though, given how socially conscious the band was, the album had been built up since Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton. On the other big punk album of the decade, I wouldn't be surprised if Sleater-Kinney's "The Woods" was a partial commentary on women's rights, though not directly.
As I had mentioned for the 2010s, this decade contains the last truly great rock records. Besides the aforementioned "Argument" and "Woods", which are as eviscerating as only American rock can be, Spoon's "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" is...well, is a rock record, as much as we can't distinguish "Sticky Fingers" or "Who's Next" from the genre. Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot", for all its artsy pretensions, still entertains its audience with jams like "Heavy Metal Drummer" and "I'm The Man Who Loves You". (As to where "alternative" or "indie" fit next to rock, I'll use Arcade Fire as a dividing line; rock IMO comes from rhythm, rather than loudness.) It's fitting "Middle Cyclone" ends out the decade, because it's flirting with the musicality of the decade and the confessional lyricism of the next; Neko's one of the few people who could achieve that effect because, "country" "star" as she is, it's all music to her, and it's always personal.
In so saying, there was certainly a casual nature to the music of the 2000s, at least in comparison to our contemporary era. Music nowadays must be a statement, in the same vein an Instagram post is. What statement constitutes "Donuts"? "Madvillainy"? That they're dope as fuck? "Supreme Clientele" is wordier than a novel, and yet it somehow finds nothing to say. Yet even when stood next to the self-unaware 90s, sleazy 80s and feral 70s, the 00s had even less to say, sometimes nothing to say. It's unusual for Americans to say nothing, but I suppose in the time of the Dot-Com Bubble, War on Terror and the Great Recession no one really wanted to say anything. Though, with irony that can only be hilarious, on the creation of Facebook, everyone suddenly had a lot to say. During the decade of MySpace and Geocities, there was a brief moment of quiet interconnectedness, when websites were read and not commented on, as the clicks and cuts of "Vocalcity" and Parker's bass in "Petit Oiseau" indicate. Until the troll floodgates were opened, anyway.
Something of note is that the 2000s were relatively unclouded by old names: no legendary artist released a career-defining album (maybe Tracy Chapman, can't think of anyone else). I had forgotten Leonard Cohen released "The Future" in the 90s, which makes it a serious contender for whatever year it came out. Then Dylan had "Time Out Of Mind" in 1997. If anything, the stories of the 2000s were of career revivals or rapid ascents, Swans - who toured with Sonic Youth - with "The Seer", Destroyer with "Kaputt", to the point of straight mythologizing with Dilla and Doom. Fiona Apple (America's greatest contemporary songwriter?) matured during this era. This really was a decade where new talent had space to breathe - and subsequently found a lot to say. (Until the dark times. Until the right now.)
I have no idea if I'll publish a 90s article. It would be immensely fun to write - I would love to find out if The Breeders will get a two-fer - but 1) because there's so much material, some extensive crate-digging would need to be done - "Ask The Ages" really threw a wrench for 1991 - and 2) it's a little weird writing about a decade I can barely remember, when the whole exercise is about the observation of time.