Albums of the Decade: 2000-2009 - #10-1

#10

At Dawn
My Morning Jacket
2001

Stan from American Dad was wrong.  Jim James isn't singing these songs to him, he is singing them to me.  If goosebumps could kill, I'd be dead every time At Dawn's first lyric, At dawn we ride, again hit my ears.  Just a soulcrushing entrance to an album.  About a minute of droning buildup, into such a delicate start to a pretty serious song.  It's a calling to follow your dreams (in his case, to fucking rock your face off with his music).  This marks the last album before they picked up Animal from the Muppet Band.  For that, it's slightly less epic than what was to come, but MMJ measure epicness on a totally different scale. 

This album is as epic as a rainy day album could ever be.  Listen to the opening guitar lines of Hopefully.  Perfection.  The grain silo vocal treatment might not be better than it is here, on this track.  Again, goosebumps on the chorus, here.  They really pick things up with Honest Man, an epic 7 minute honky tonk ramble.  In pure MMJ style, it's the slow drag that makes it so great, then it explodes through the guitar solo, and you're wondering what happened to that slow tempo.  They just fill space.  Then, the back to back Phone Went West and Strangulation, on the tail end of the album, both bring some heavy riffage back into the fold.  Strangulation is perhaps the most interesting song on the album, with it's chugging slow metal riff that melts away into a quiet strum, and then you're hit with some derivative of Big Star when it all comes back together, complete with tinkling piano, and slide guitar.  Then the build back into that slow metal riff.  Damn, that's what music is supposed to sound like.

#9

Hazards of Love
The Decemberists
2009

Where to start...a pretentiously written, Shakespearean tragedy about a girl who falls in love with a shapeshifting fawn in the forest.  She gets knocked up, he begs the forest witch to release him to be with his girl...and the forest witch agrees...only to then gets jealous, and send her most evil man to kidnap the girl, rape her, and defile her, while the forlorn shapeshifter tries to cross a raging river.  Enter a dead children's choir to foil the plan, but in the end the two lovers still drown in the river, in a dying embrace.  Ah, the hazards of love, amiright?  Maybe it's the nerdy, sci-fi fantasy kid that still lives deep inside me.  Maybe it's a secret love for prog metal, but only if it's mega ironic.  Maybe it's just that I'm (again) a concept album whore.  But I love it. 

Story aside, this thing sounds great.  It's hard to tear the songs out of the narrative, since everything basically blends in together.  I've heard criticisms that the metal riffs are too cheesy, coming from these guys, and everything is just too ironic.  I question this, though.  The first half of the album, as the two fall in love, and all that, is basically a fragile love story.  The songs are almost twee, especially when the woman, Margaret, is singing.  It's when the riffage kicks in that you catch the foreshadowing of doom.  The final three or four songs basically just rework the musical themes heard before them, but with a more frantic pace.  It's not irony when the riffs kick in for The Abduction of Margaret/The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing.  The album is serious as a heart attack, now.  The vile Rake, and his children murdering ways, represents about as evil of a character as you'll see.  His conscious gets him in the end, in the form of his dead children coming back to haunt him, is perfect usage of a classic tragedy archetype.  The characters are all fleshed out, just from their soliloquy-like lines.  It's really an amazing piece of drama.

The critics thought it was overwrought, cliche, and out of sync with the Decemberists previous style.  I argue that they've been driving towards this album with every release, and that this is the culmination of their talent as a band.  That culmination just happens to evoke Iron Maiden on occasion.  Best album of 2009.

#8

The Creek Drank the Cradle
Iron & Wine
2002

A life changing album, when I first heard it back late 2002/early 2003.  Basically paved the way for who knows how many similar sounding artists over the last 7 years, and redefined Sub Pop as a label.  All that just from a bunch of 4 track bedroom recordings?  Indeed.  You've got amazing imagery in the lyrics, as I've said before, Beam is at the top of the songwriting craft.  It was the instrumentation that caught me, though.  Soaring choruses, layered vocals, revolving chords, with great banjo licks (I might have been wrong about Sufjan Stevens owning the best use of the banjo...Promising Light tops him).  You can hear every chord change, fingers sliding on the frets.  This isn't music that was made for mass consumption.  This was intimate stuff, that you'd be afraid to share with your buddies, fearful that they'd tell you it wasn't any good.  I'm glad Sam Beam let his stuff out to his friends, otherwise we'd never have gotten to hear this magical album.

We can also pretty much thank Sam Beam for bringing the hipster beard into style.

#7

Ghosts of the Great Highway
Sun Kil Moon
2003

Of all the Neil Young aping that happened this decade, Mark Kozalek did it the best.  It's in the vocals, and it's in the swirling guitar riffs.  It's unapologetic, but it does not need to be, because it transcends the comparisons, and creates it's own soul out of those building blocks created by Crazy Horse and Co back in the 70's.  The pair of songs about boxers, Salvador Sanchez and Pancho Villa (essentially the same song, with drastically different arrangements) are barely eclipsed by the greatness of Duk Koo Kim, a 14 minute long masterpiece, and one of the best songs of any decade, much less this past one.  There are no weak links here.  The nostalgic Glenn Tipton and Carry Me Ohio are near classics, and the instrumental Si Paloma is a wonder to hear on headphones, so that you can pick out all the intricacies of the arrangement.  I joined the bandwagon too late, and have had to go dig into most of Kozalek's material in a backwards way.  Still, I think this album represents his finest work, and is an album that should weather the years, and remain a favorite of mine.

#6

For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver
2008

Just a dude, heartbroken, sick (recovering from mono?), and secluded from society for four months in a cabin in the woods.  The setting for a classic album?  I'd say so.  It's short, but it's unbelievably complete, as a mini-concept album detailing heartbreak and loneliness.  I'm a big fan of the drum, but it's sparse usage on this album (just an occasional kick drum, it sounds like) is just the perfect accompaniment.  It makes Skinny Love one of the best songs ever, as it amplifies that soulful lyric in the chorus just enough to make it epic.  The soaring chorus on For Emma, paired with the horns, and the slide guitar, are amazing, especially as they slide into the cold closer, Re: Stacks.  The album doesn't have a happy ending to it, at all.  Heartbreak never goes away.  It's another introspective, personal experience of an album that probably means a little something different to everyone who passes it through their record player, CD player, MP3 player, or however you choose else you might choose to amplify the magic.

#5

Heartbreaker
Ryan Adams
2000

Why is the pressure always on Ryan Adams to deliver a classic album every time he walks into the studio?  Why doesn't he get any grading curve, at all, from the critics, who look for every reason to dislike what he does, out of the box?  It's because he aimed so high and delivered, right off the bat.  'Heartbreaker' is stupendous.  The rocking To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High), kicks things off with a rocking start...it's tempo belies the heavy tone of the rest of the album, which revolves mostly around lost love, bad relationships, and getting fucked up, themes obviously covered before, but freshened up by Adams. 

The classic songs here abound.  Come Pick Me Up, Why Do They Leave, and Oh My Sweet Carolina (ft Emmylou Harris on backing vocals) all resonate as much today as they did 10 years ago.  This one just doesn't get old.  Bartering Lines, with it's tribal beat and Gillian Welch backup vocal is a sneaky treasure.  And Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains) deserves mention anytime this album is brought up in conversation.  There is no weak link here.  He wasn't trying to hard to sound like his heroes here, like he would end up doing on Gold.  The drugs were just right, and he was churning through women quick enough to spawn song after song of heartache and loneliness.  The perfect storm for a classic album.  He'll probably never touch greatness like this again.

#4

Funeral
Arcade Fire
2004

This album is like a bomb blast going off in your speakers.  I'm not sure what their sound is.  It's got New Wave elements...sort of Glam, at times, but ramped up on so much cocaine, it'd be hard to keep up.  Leave it to the Canadians to spew out something totally original.  I almost exclusively listen to this one in the car, these days.  It's a driving album, perfect for long trips.  Which is odd, because it's an album about living in post-apocalyptic tunnels (and falling in love).  Wake Up, which was nearly rendered overblown by being attached to Where the Wild Things Are's first trailers, might be the anthem of the decade.  And no, I don't just like these guys because they put on concerts for Obama during the last election.  This is the #1 band on my list to see live before I die.

#3

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco
2002

This is our generation's 'Pet Sounds'.  They inadvertently reinvented rock n roll here.  And yes, I'm fully aware that if Warner Bros had just put the damn thing out, without jerking them around, it might not have reached the overall critical acclaim that it picked up after becoming an unreleased cult album (I'd still love it, I think...I was a Wilco whore, and had gobbled up the leaked tracks way before it saw a real pressing by Nonesuch).  So how do you separate that from the album's legacy?  I don't think you even need to. 

Four deserted island songs here...I am Trying to Break Your Heart, Jesus Etc, Ashes of American Flags, and I'm the Man Who Loves You are indispensable songs when you look at this thing historically.  Curiously (or not), three of those four have Bennett as co-writing credit.  I'm convinced that Wilco's slide in the last few years is at least in part due to the fact that Bennett was jettisoned during this album's recording.  He made 'Being There' and 'Summerteeth', more than he's ever been given credit for, and he was instrumental in the core recording of this album. 

I think in hindsight, Jim O'Rourke coming in, and turning Tweedy all Kraut Rock is going to turn out to be their downfall as a 'band', even as much as introducing them to Glenn Kotche, who redid all the drums (and let's face it, it's the drums that make a lot of these cutting edge songs on this record), improved things.  Again, all this bullshit means nothing, once you pop it in and listen to the songs.  They still speak for themselves.  It's a classic, and will be remembered as a watershed moment in rock history when all our kids are playing OOTP37, and doing their own 'Final 4' album tournament, years from now.

#2

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Sigur Ros
2002

No album name, no names for the tracks, no liner notes...the damn thing isn't even spoken in a real language.  What it is, though, is the biggest catharsis album I've ever heard.  Essentially split in half, with the first half being far more upbeat than the sinister/explosive second half.  The main 'lyric' throughout the entire album is You xylo. You xylo no fi lo. You so, which is stretched, altered, and rearranged many times, but essentially remains in it's phonetic form.  Through pitch and tempo changes, though, that one invented lyric becomes like some kind of shamanistic mantra.  If you ever get the chance to just envelope yourself in this one (set aside about 70 minutes...it's long), just put headphones on and listen all the way through, it's guaranteed to alter whatever your mood is.  Maybe you'll be sadder.  Maybe you'll be more ready to tackle the world.  Maybe you'll be ready to listen to it again! 

The meat and potatoes are in the final two tracks, where everything comes together into gigantic crescendos, false peaks, builds, and catastrophic drum rolls.  This is an album that does not have a maximum volume setting; just crank it up just short of ear bleed, and hope that the neighbors like it, too.

#1

It Still Moves
My Morning Jacket
2003

I pretty much decided on this as the #1 album a couple of weeks ago, one afternoon while goofing off around the house.  I've always kept it in extremely high regard, but it struck me that day as even better than just a great album.  I think it's the best damned album of the decade.  Mahgeetah, Run Thru, the Skynard homage One Big Holiday, and the epic I Will Sing You Songs...each one of these could run the table for song of the decade.  My personal choice would be Run Thru, with it's 'start in the middle of the song' feel that jars you awake after I Will Sing You Songs lulls you into a peaceful feeling.  The last triumphant time through the main riff of that song, tempo dropped just enough to be noticeable, but with heavier guitars, is the highlight of the album.  There is no weak song on this album.  It is perfect in every way.

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