Rockfeedback Records of the Decade #100-76
By: Charlie Potter, Michael Lewin, Sian Norris, Liam Manley, Tim Dellow, Fred Mikardo-Greaves, Chris Helsen, Matt Tomiak, Dan Monsell, Thomas Hannan
100) TV On The Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain
Only records you could merely qualify as good do you love on first listen as much as you do on the thirtieth. The really great ones take ages. This one did. It's its own little world - the introduction of low, rumbling brass for example on 'Blues From Down Here' seemed totally alien to the rest of it at first. Now, anyone accustomed with it would class it as a highlight. 'Method', with its eerie whistles and heavy reliance on barely any instruments at all, feels like the floor dropping out of the middle of the record. At first. Soon I couldn’t stop whistling it. Return To Cookie Mountain feels like an event every time it escapes its jewel case. It doesn't just tick all the boxes. It creates new boxes for itself, then goes about ticking them as well. [THOMAS HANNAN]
99) Idlewild – 100 Broken Windows
The cerebral Scottish quartet's second album represented a huge leap from the volatile punk-rawk convulsions of debut Hope Is Important, wearing brittle early R.E.M. influences as proudly as the lyrical purple patches (“I bet you don’t know how to spell “contradiction”/ I bet you don’t know how to sell conviction” crooned Roddy Woomble on 'These Wooden Ideas', channelling his inner Stephen Fry). Their later output would find Idlewild turning somewhat softer around the edges, but 100 Broken Windows represents the perfect marriage of noise, tunes and erudition. [MATT TOMIAK]
98) Destroyer – Destroyer’s Rubies
The sound of a half-mad drunkard soaked in bourbon, sitting at the piano in the corner of some dingy Vancouver bar, rambling verses tinged with brilliance and invoking the power of some hellish lounge band. Whatever you think of Bejar's voice or his dense, elaborate lyrics and wordy approach to song writing, it is an album that, despite the length and meandering nature of many of the songs, remains generally captivating throughout. The perfect antidote to modern watered-down singer songwriters, Destroyer's music is interesting, intellectual, intense and delivered with a shameless integrity of a true master. Quite simply this is the work of an artist. [CHRIS HELSEN]
97) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
The double-album. Typically, the cause of decline for most - in retrospect, did The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie... truly merit a two-disc set? - while, for others, it's just part of the expanse; Guns 'N' Roses' decision to unleash two double-LPs on the same day - Use Your Illusion 1 & 2 - was possibly the most terrifying historic event in living-memory. More a record in two parts than the conceptual 'separate' albums it alludes to, with Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus, Cave and The Bad Seeds continued one of the most fruitful, genuinely inspiring and starkly original recording legacies of all-time without once proving hackneyed or predictable. Coupled with the ingenuity of compelling, film-like arrangements and lyrical prowess that persists to enchant, the group's statuesque relevance still flippantly overshadowed a whole plethora of the 'true greats' that still paraded these crumbling, uncertain shores. [TOBY L]
96) The Postal Service – Give Up
We may never see a follow-up to this beloved cult debut, in which Death Cab For Cutie singer and lyricist Ben Gibbard welded Death Cab's patented intimate introspection onto warm, succulent electronica as sculpted by Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello. Hugely influential - everyone from from Hot Chip to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs owes a debt to its luscious melodies and bleepy self-examination- the six years (and counting) that have passed since Give Up was unveiled have not dulled its charm. The best track remains the swooning battle-of-the-sexes duet 'Nothing Better', in which Gibbard's textbook self-pitying emo heartbreak (“Will someone please call a surgeon/who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart/that you're deserting for better company?”) is met with an icy response in the form of co-vocalist Jen Wood's no-nonsense rebuke, sort of like an indie-pop Supernanny (“I feel I must interject here you're getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself…”) Listen and learn, Fall Out Boy. [MATT TOMIAK]
95) Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News
This album marked the juncture where the Washington State natives streamlined their sloppily abrasive, prog n' Pixies-indebted indie rock into something that ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr would choose to involve himself with a couple of years down the line. Frontman Isaac Brock may have claimed to "like songs about drifters, books about the same" on 'The World At Large', but make no mistake, that track - like 'Float On' and 'Ocean Breathes Salty' - was polished, radio-friendly, fully accessible stuff. There was still room for the MM aggression of old, however: notably the delirious Tom Waits gurn of 'Dance Hall' and Brock’s suitably unhinged Frank Black impression on 'This Devil's Workday.' [MATT TOMIAK]
94) Sonic Youth – Sonic Nurse
Sonic Nurse is all so sweeping, so subtle; and so intricate are the parts, so humble the (self)production, that it's open to the listener to pick apart the crushing contrasts - trust us, they're there; they're just a bit shy at times (take the Moore-beauty of 'New Hampshire', or sloping, ethereal slumber of Ranaldo's 'Paper Cup Exit' for demos: as toweringly beautiful and dramatic as midnight waves crashing against a desolate, fast-receding coastline). It peaks, however, in the intimately majestic, Kim-purred 'I Love You Golden Blue', so delicate and awash with its own devastating grandeur that it takes a whole two minutes before it even begins; its precedent is ambient, rattling noise-bliss. The past ten years saw a time when Sonic Youth remained not just merely ahead of the pack, but amidst their own 'pack' entirely, and in their finest of the decade, Sonic Nurse, they merited the ovation of 'innovators' more-so than any other. Rue the very instant that ever changes. [TOBY L]
93) Kanye West – The College Dropout
Kanye West had been shaping the game for years, though not many people actually knew about him. Coming up with beats that would define the decade on Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and The Black Album, as well as working with artists ranging from Common and Mobb Deep to John Legend and Alicia Keys, Kanye’s name was made behind the decks well before it was made behind the mic. That said, The College Dropout is by no means your standard sub-par producer-turner-rapper affair, sluggish of beat and slack of jaw. Here, West does it all – the killer singles that hit just that little bit harder (‘Jesus Walks’, ‘Slow Jamz’, ‘Through the Wire’); “conscious hip-hop” turns that still sound fresh and vital (‘We Don’t Care’, ‘Spaceship’, ‘Get em High’); one of those way-too-long-final-tracks-that-tells-the-artist’s-“rags-to-riches”-story (‘Last Call’). Forget the farcical egotistical shrivel of a human 2009-Kanye has made himself out to be – with The College Dropout, he made an album we’ll still be talking about when Ms. Taylor Swift is laid to rest. [FRED MIKARDO-GREAVES]
92) Clor – Clor
Clor wrote edgy, dangerous, magnificently uplifting pop music. It was electronica that rocked; dirty, sensual, hitting hard with mechanical precision but always containing a sentiment that was clearly recognisable as being human. It could come across as soppy, the 'each of us is special in our own unique way' self-help mantra that ends a wonderful 'Outlines' sounding a little peculiar at first, but when you later arrived at the downright breathtaking sleaze of 'Magic Touch', the contrast provides you with both pieces to the puzzle. Possession of the whole picture is very important. Their debut, and only, LP was also a very geeky, quirky little record. There were enough funny chord progressions and uncomfortably overlapping time signatures ('Garden of Love' pulled off both admirably) to keep things musically interesting, but a fantastic tune wasn't ever sacrificed solely for the purposes of keeping us on our toes. They split up on the verge of being massive. Tw*ts. [THOMAS HANNAN]
91) Radiohead – Amnesiac
Coming just eight months after the band blew all notions of the direction of popular music in the new century, Amnesiac gathered together the loose ends from the mammoth Kid A sessions. However, those expecting something akin to a Kid B were once more befuddled. A record at times warmer, at times darker, and as a whole less alien than its predecessor, Amnesiac veered from the minimal click of ‘Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box’ and ‘Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors’, through the acoustic shiftiness of ‘You and Whose Army?’ and ‘Knives Out’, to the culminating drunken jazz flop of Humphrey Lyttelton-starring ‘Life in a Glass House’. And in the gorgeous Eastern meditation of ‘Pyramid Song’, they had a startling and subversive top five hit. [FRED MIKARDO-GREAVES]
90) Beck – Sea Change
Beck's Sea Change, a concept album about the end of a relationship, is a gorgeous example of how to arrange strings around your songs so that they not only swell the melody and emotion, but confuse you into following them into sweeping Elgaic spirals, unlike anything committed to recorded media in the indie, rock or pop sections of your local record store. Oddly dated, and yet at one with its time, and indeed embracing the fleeting changeability and mutability of it all, Sea Change is a masterpiece of fluiditiy, an enigma only Beck could have taken on in this last decade of music whilst returning triumphant. Here we find little of what we commonly define his presence by - there's little-to-no genre-bending, and the trademark virtuoso breaks are hidden not beneath glitch or in high relief, but in a subtle
change of tone, or a swirl in the eddy of the album's singular melodies. It leaves you a little empty inside when it ends, and you can’t quite work out if you're upset that the album had to finish, or if it was what they album was all about that left you a little hollow. And then you realise that's exactly the point of the whole, and spend the next few hours a little bemused at quite how good Beck is. Which is awesome. [KEVIN MOLLOY]
89) Liars – They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Witches don't actually listen to Norwegian Death metal. They go to their suburban town-houses in Cherokees, blasting out Randy McGraw's favourite country moments. At night, however, they bust out the tribal drums and Gregorian chants to soundtrack the Hansel and Gretel chainsaw massacre, payback for Christ's drowning of a thousand Salem women. Liars have been there. And that's the truth. This is not an easy album to like - but as well as scaring the shit out of you, it knows it looks good in black. When a pencil scribbles a hex across your eardrums you panic about the consequences of these guilty pleasures. But hey - you followed 'em in. Now you must pay the price. [TIM DELLOW]
88) Queens of the Stone Age – Songs For The Deaf
Turn on the radio and switch to any station. Now listen as the homogenous slop pours forth, punctuated by the inane braying of pseudo-personalities. Songs For The Deaf knew radio was dead, whether it was K-R-D-L (“The Kurdle”), CLONE (“your infinite repeat”) or evangelists spoiling music for everyone. Josh Homme took this premise and commandeered a road trip through a taut, visceral landscape, redefining hard rock with nods to glam, hardcore and pysch. Joining him were Nick Oliveri, cast a rabid dog with a hard-on for the pharmaceutical cookie jar, and Mark Lanegan at his most vampiric, lips still wet with blood. The biggest coup remains Dave Grohl’s re-conversion to the dark side, his relentless and muscular drumming front and centre. Post-script: Lanegan continues to work as a lone-wolf mercenary, Oliveri remains in exile and The Foo Fighters haven’t suddenly got any better. Any surprise that Grohl’s back with Homme? [LIAM MANLEY]
87) Sigur Ros – Ágætis Byrjun
As far as I’m aware no one can remember what life in the womb was like, but you get the feeling that listening to Ágætis Byrjun must be pretty close. A devastating leap forward from Sigur Ros’ debut, it’s the kind of record for which words like “lush”, “epic” and “grandeur” were invented, but somehow plain old English doesn’t seem to do the scale of the Icelandics’ work justice. Post-rock masterpieces like ‘Sven-G-Englar’ and ‘Starálfur’ raise Ágætis Byrjun to a plain where genres or comparisons are obsolete. Truly compelling as so few albums are, it just makes you glad that there are musicians out there this committed to their art. [CHRIS HELSEN]
86) Bjork – Vespertine
After the grandiose sound of Homogenic came this, a record formed with microbeats and tiny, almost claustrophobic tinkering. After the sadness and anger of Homogenic comes an album about love, sex, desire and joy. Working with electronica geniuses such as Matmos and Herbert, this album sees Bjork using miniature sounds that are almost insect like at times (‘Hidden Place’, ‘It’s Not Up To You’), contrasted with the uplifting strings and powerful thrust of ‘Pagan Poetry’ and ‘Heirloom’. It is an album that is fundamentally experimental (Matmos even creating music from a cat litter tray in ‘Aurora’, a music box being employed for the instrumental ‘Frosti’) yet completely listenable. And whereas with Homogenic we experienced Bjork coming out of a dark period in her life, in Vespertine we see her revelling in the joys of love and family and the beauty of nature. The sweetness of the music and her happy vocal belies the sheer eroticism of her lyrics, waking up to find her lover “still inside me” in ‘Cocoon’; a song which neatly contrasts with the dark and frightening sexuality in ‘Harm of Will’. The elevation in her voice in the perfect love song ‘Unison’ is a joy to hear; her passion carries her across the sheer power of the twisted and poetic metaphors of ‘Pagan Poetry’. [SIAN NORRIS]
85) M.I.A. – Kala
In 2005, a diminutive girl from Sri Lanka, strikingly pretty and laced with an arsenal of dirty beats and London swagger, saw her debut LP Arular quietly sneak onto the Billboard 200. Fast forward four years, and Mathangi Arulpragasam has two Grammies, a worldwide smash in ‘Paper Planes’, and a place on the 2009 Time 100. Whilst Arular was undoubtedly a great record, it was too brash for crossover appeal – the drums too harsh, the accent too wide, the aesthetic too inflammatory. On Kala, without sacrificing any of her rhetoric, M.I.A. performed the decades’ most unexpected musical cross-pollinations, crash-landing square in the centre of the mainstream. Whilst this was due in part to some shrewd endorsements – Jay-Z and Tropic Thunder to name but two – she couldn’t have done it without the backing of such a monster of a record. Bubbling up with the brooding ‘Bamboo Banga’, Kala is an album that doesn’t let you settle down for one second. She switches from Kalashnikov clatter on ‘Hussel’ to nursery-rhyme japery (‘Mango Pickle Down River’) and back again for ‘$20’ without dropping her guard. Every scatter-gun clack of 505, every tear-gas scream, every drop of the shoulder and click of the tongue – it all smacks together in a sound that would come to embody the best and worst of the world of this new century. M.I.A. told reporters how she grew up in such poverty she would perform Bollywood hit (and Kala standout) ‘Jimmy’ for money as a child. Truly, this is the most valiant story of girl-done-good of this, or any, decade. [FRED MIKARDO-GREAVES]
84) Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
On Two Dancers, each Wild Beast seems to have found a place they’re far more comfortable in than they were on album one. The drumming of Chris Talbot takes a far more prominent role than on Limbo Panto…, pushing and bustling the record towards its climax, and Tom Fleming’s basslines (ranging from ghostly flit on opener ‘The Fun Powder Plot’ to the webby darkness of ‘We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ on our Tongues’) murmur like a sinister angel under the melodies. Guitars glisten and ring like quicksilver, in turn chiming harsh on ‘Hooting and Howling’ and slipping into a broken music-box swing for ‘Two Dancers (II)’ and ‘Underbelly’. Hayden Thorpe can still, at the drop of the hat, switch from deranged child to a sweet intensity akin to Anthony Hegarty, and he appears to have learned how to both assimilate himself into the sound and still sound like no indie singer out there. But what of the songs? They are, to put it quite simply, astonishing. I don’t quite know how, but the group have managed to make Limbo…, a fine debut in anyone’s eyes, sound positively ordinary when put up against their new work. Driven by a seemingly insatiable desire to lay bare the myriad emotions tied up in love, sex, and the futility of youth, this set of ten tracks sets about blowing all previous notions clean out the water whilst somehow still being inexorably Wild-Beastly. [FRED MIKARDO-GREAVES]
83) Sunset Rubdown – Shut Up I Am Dreaming
Not since, The Glow Pt. 2' by The Microphones have I been so enchanted by a lo-fi album - indeed, not since then have I stumbled across one with such ambition. Because, in this record, Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade fame has "done a James Mercer" and developed a solo project that should eclipse all his previous work. While one of the bleakest listens since Berlin, the self aware humour saves it from overindulgence, into an ultimately uplifting, life affirming experience - best typified on the closing 'Shut Up I am Dreaming of Places where Lovers have Wings', perhaps the best song these jaded ears have heard all year. Opening with a timid picking, lifting and swooning with the romance of its sentiment, 'As I fall into the drink', he cries, 'I will say your name before I sink', before conceding that 'Oceans never listen to us anyway... so don't make a sound', before the song frizzes into a jaw dropping sonic splash that genuinely leaves your heart in your mouth, in a lifeboat lost at sea. And you realise you've been listening to a very special record indeed. [TIM DELLOW]
82) Tom Waits – Orphans
Metacritic, the website which aggregates critical scores of music, film, etc, has only two artists sitting in its top 20 for the decade in music who feature twice: Outkast and Tom Waits. About a third of that top 20 are ‘heritage artists’ with either re-releases of pre-00s work or slightly over-exuberant receptions to new works (cough Dylan), ranging from Brian Wilson to Nirvana via Talking Heads. Tom Waits does not fit in with them. Nor with the world music artists, nor the urban or the indie who fill it out. He defiantly stands alone. No one working the nominal popular music milieu since its inception in the 50s has a body of work to match Tom Waits. And even in Waits’ own oeuvre, there’s nothing to match the gutter grandeur of Orphans – spread over three themed discs Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (blues-y rock, sad ballads and bongo-madness, respecterz), outtakes and discarded tracks mingle with new songs, which may variously manage to be timeless, effortless, cool, heart-rending, blistering and/or radical when taken individually, and somehow even more than that when considered together. The thought of musicians who can listen to Orphans without serious soul-searching afterwards makes me spit; can anyone really hear it without wondering what it is to really be an artist in music, even in this age of hyperbole? This is greatness, right here. It’s probably not even his greatest work. [MICHAEL LEWIN]
81) Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Letting Go
While Bonnie 'Prince' Billies can be found in last chance saloons all over the US, and beyond, over time Oldham has risen up to claim his rightful place as a leader of sorts in the modern alt-country world. Of all his continuously strong output over a decade that's seen a slew of great releases from Oldham, The Letting Go seems to sneak through as his best collection. It feels both the most intimate we've found him and his band to our ears so far, and also perhaps the most consistent in quality. From album opener and highlight 'Love Comes to Me' onwards, this album finds Oldham at the fullness of his warm and powerful delivery. That the naming of this record after an Emily Dickenson poem that starts "After a great pain, a formal feeling comes" could not be more apt. Here, more than ever, we get a sense of an experience of difficult themes inhabiting Oldham's head being dealt with in a soothingly orderly and comfortable manner. What with every listen bring such immediate solace, and this must have been the case for Oldham recording this too. [DANIEL MONSELL]
80) Smog – Dongs of Sevotion
How do you sum up album like Dongs Of Sevotion in 100 words? What soundbites can you muster for an album that encompasses sadism, submission, loss of innocence, decomposition and cheerleaders? A record that at one point claims “I lay open jelly-limbed/To your smallest whim”, the next “I could hold a woman down on a hardwood floor”? Where a man’s dying wish is for his wife to contrive a eulogy that extols his virtuous nature, but also recounts their sexual exploits, particularly “the time we did it on the beach, with fireworks above us”. The last truly Smog album to be released under that moniker, it can only be summed up by Bill Callahan himself: “The conversation is like the beating taken in a dream/Where no real blows are landed/The only harm is in memory”. [LIAM MANLEY]
79) Four Tet – Rounds
Big periods of near-silence, entwining guitars, dashings of robotic, synthesized beats and swaths of liltingly sweeping keys and laptop-infused grooves; the hybrid between organic instrumentation and subtle electronica is Kieran Hebden's greatest attribute. On his greatest album to date, Rounds, it was this synergy that melded the joint between icy coolness - that such music from the genre too commonly provides itself - with glowing, resounding warmth that saturates the ensuing tones and sounds to a comforting, leisurely listen... A soundtrack to experience after a heavy day, or amidst quiet company, it's the sound of the city at night, condensed into an ideas-bustling 40 minutes that ranks toweringly amongst Hebden's rich cannon of works. [TOBY L]
78) The Melvins – The Trilogy
When the Melvins made this album, they said they were committing commercial suicide. Committing commercial suicide is the best thing that they have ever done. You may be thinking ‘hang on, this is three albums, one of which was released in 1999!”, but if you are a good little MELVINOBOT like me then you will own the beautiful vinyl edition of the trilogy in mesmerising gatefold glory. We have millions of years of cultural evolution to thank for this album, but at the same time this is only something that can be described as a mutation: the place that The Trilogy occupies within culture is completely non-linear, the way it connects with other music is so unusual that for many it has been a challenge to find their way into this album; once people are there on the other hand they seem to become stuck - where do you go from there? Well don't worry - whereas it seems a shame that this album forces you to abandon so much rubbish music you have been listening to for ages, at least you won’t have listen to all that rubbish music anymore. What a lot of people don't understand about this album is that it is about the love of music. Although it doesn't fall into a specific genre there are tons of influences on this album from all over the place – Buzz Osborne has even said that The Trilogy as a whole is supposed to be a commentary on the progression of bands in general. This is an album made by music lovers for music lovers. I can think of no better way of ending this recommendation than quoting Buzz in the Crybaby Cd inlay.
"This is PART THREE of a whole. The maggot is part one. The bootlicker is part two. BUY ALL THREE."
[CHARLIE POTTER]
77) The Microphones – The Glow Pt. 2
I first encountered this album through the lovely folk at Southern/K - they sent me a copy of Phil Elvrum's seventh album and immediately I felt compelled to put the title track on every mixtape I made for the next couple of years - and it was always the song that stood out - from The Mystery Jets to Jeremy Warmsley and Becoming Real, I can vouch first hand that this album influenced a new generation of songwriter. And you can hear why from the second you put it on. Transmogrifying the history lo-fi in a beautifully cracked voice, entirely earnest, plea to humanity it covers more distance emotionally and musically in one song than most albums manage in their entire duration. And the other 19 tracks are just as absorbing, from the fragility and distant longing of ‘instrumental’ to ‘Map’s genius in pulling beauty and hope from the punk-est of origins. The perfect pop of ‘You'll be in the Air’ is up there with The Beatles (White album era...) and ‘The Moon’ with its brass hooks and open scope is one of the most colourful moments committed to decayed and borrowed tape. This album proved that lo-fi and no-budget didn't mean that you had to have a lack of ambition; a lesson also mirrored by A Silver Mt. Zion and GYBE! and one learnt by the likes of The Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene who took these underground teachings to the masses. However, for the intricacies and shining brilliance contained on this album, it's certainly best to go to the source. [TIM DELLOW]
76) The xx – The xx
Brittle though it may first appear, the more time you give it the more you’ll realise the capabilities of this skeleton of a record. It can enforce everything from crying over nothing (‘Shelter’) to celebratory shape throwing (the exquisite ‘Basic Space’) without ever shifting from its particularly downbeat, couldn’t give a f**k delivery, or smiling, once. And yes, it is samey. Its variations of pace are practically non-existent. It admits of no happiness, other than that to be found in a drum sample with precisely the right amount of reverb on it (though I grant there is a lot of happiness to be found in that). But as we began to describe, The XX have a reason for everything sounding like it does here. The explanation is that everything sounds just perfect, doesn’t it? It’s as if the initial blueprints were so beautiful that they never even bothered building the thing. [THOMAS HANNAN]
THIS IS PART TWO
Artists in this article: The Microphones, The Melvins, Four Tet, Smog, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, The XX, Tom Waits, Sunset Rubdown, Wild Beasts, Mia, Bjork, Sigur Ros, Queens Of The Stone Age, Liars, Beck, Radiohead, Clor, Kanye West, Sonic Youth, The Postal Service, Modest Mouse, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Destroyer, Idlewild, TV On The Radio