The Needle Has Landed: Albums of the Decade: 2000-2009

#20

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Flaming Lips
2002

While it's not as good as their 1999 beauty 'The Soft Bulletin', this one carries special meaning, since they were touring this material when I met my wife at one of their shows. Do You Realize??, in all it's massively cliche'd glory, would not work with any, and I mean any, other band. Only the Lips can pull this one off. This one is full of electronic goodness, like the reverse beats of Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell or the playful Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt 1, with it's karate chop chorus, and blasting drumbeat. I don't know how they pull this thing off...it's part concept album, part birthday party, and part noise rock. Go figure.

#19

Kid A
Radiohead
2000

This is what the apocalypse will sound like. Find me a colder album, and by the time you bring it back from the record store, you'll be frozen to death. It's almost mechanically cold, with it's techno beats, and tangential lyrics. But it's a sprawling masterpiece of sound. Everything in Its Right Place and How to Disappear Completely are simply life altering. It functions almost exclusively as a complete album experience...I don't think I've ever sat down and thought of listening to just one or two tracks. You put it on, and you wait until the end before doing anything else. Pitchfork has this guy as the #1 album of the decade. They make a good case, and I'll even go so far as to copy some words here, that I think sum this one up very well:

when I slide Kid A into the CD player (how's that for a retro image?), something else happens. Once that drawer closes and the first chords of "Everything in Its Right Place" start-- those haunting, clicking keyboard textures and Thom Yorke's warped voice-- all these other ideas feel secondary. Instead, I get lost in the dissonant horn blasts of "The National Anthem" and hypnotized between the play of the drones and the hissy beats in "Idioteque"; I feel the deep pang of yearning and sadness with the title track, and I rest during the gorgeous Brian Eno-like interlude of "Treefingers". I'm listening to a brilliant album by an especially creative rock band functioning at its peak. Such records have strong melodies, exciting chord changes, unexpected arrangements, and tricky rhythms that you want to hear over and over again.

I can't argue much with that assessment. For me, it's got such a cold outer shell, it takes a lot of gusto for me to even play this one. Once it's on, though, I'm blown away yet again. It's a monumental piece of work.

#18

Sophtware Slump
Grandaddy
2000

You know, Kid A and this one have a lot in common. Concept-y albums about the end of the world...We must have really have been scared of Y2k, I guess. Grandaddy's previous material was not nearly as epic, and I think they struggled to get it back, though they were always solid (Sumday is another great album). This one channels Pavement, at times, but the electronic elements were pretty groundbreaking for the era. He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot, clocking in at over 8 minutes long, is fantastic. They rework common themes throughout the album, in classic rock opera style, making this one seem more like you're hearing a story than listening to a rock n roll album. This was a critics darling when it came out, drawing comparisons to Flaming Lips and Radiohead (the two most influential bands in the world, back then). I think those comparisons were valid, but this one transcends that, especially as we get further away from what those bands represented at the time.

#17

White Ladder
David Gray
2000

I think David Gray is one of the Top-5 songwriters in the last 30 years. I'd put him up there against anyone. This album was his first taste of fame, but what he did in the late 90's led directly to this one. Throwing in that tinge of electronica put him all over MTV and the radio (Babylon and White Ladder were both moderate hits, and still play on Adult Contemp stations). He writes one hell of a love song, from sad to whimsical, but I think the best track on this album is We're Not Right, a song about struggling with a dangerous drinking habit. There's nothing lewd, like Lead You Upstairs, but the PG version of David Gray is worth listening to over and over. Nightblindness, Sail Away, Please Forgive Me...these are just amazing songs.

#16

Shallow Grave
The Tallest Man on Earth
2008

Hat tip to my buddy Ryan for cluing me in on this one, and then for leaving the vinyl over for the last couple of months (the grooves are wearing out, I bet). Stripped down, lo-fi folk music...wonderful guitar lines, though. Great fingerpicking. It's cool how something so simple as this collection of songs can be so powerful of a musical statement. I have no idea who the guy is, other than he's some short fucker from Sweden who likes to sing songs outside while the sun sets over the water. They are short songs, too...little 3 minute long vignettes, perfectly crafted. Your mileage might vary on listening to this one, but I can't think of any reason not to call this a classic in the making.

#15

Devotion
Beach House
2008

Kind of a mix between Grace Slick, Portishead, and Grizzly Bear. I'm 100% behind Beach House these days...this album vaulted up the list after really growing on me over the past year or so. I picked it up initially off the strength of Gila, which was the single on the Satellite radio. The rest of it took some time to delve into. This is a headphones album...layers and layers of stuff in this sound. That would defy a first impression in a non-intimate setting, as on the surface this one can sound a bit...stripped down. The lo-fi edge is just a front, though. I'm on record for saying that 2010 is the year of Beach House. I'm super stoked for their next album, and hope that it can be close to as good as this one.

#14

Time (The Revelator)
Gillian Welch
2001

Best 'country' album of the decade, hands down. Welch is a hell of a songwriter, crafting in a timeless style that is so accessible, but never boring. The title track is an epic masterpiece, and I spin it every time I have an extra dollar on me at my local brewpub (I have no idea why this album is in that jukebox...). Welch and David Rawlings pair so well together on these songs, it's a shame they aren't more prolific. Some great fucking Americana right here.

#13

Change
Dismemberment Plan
2001

How good were D-Plan? Holy shit. Time Bomb? Classic fucking song. One of the all-time catharsis anthems. If you need to get your road rage anger out, this is the one to hammer your steering wheel to. These guys really gelled on 'Emergency & I' and 'Change', which sandwiched the end of the last decade. Sentimental Man and Face of the Earth are nearly as good. This album is one to move to, and is best played at volumes that the woman of your life will abhor. When they broke up, a tiny piece of me died. Now Travis Morrison is working as an IT for a newspaper, somewhere? The world is not right, sometimes. I still kick myself that I never got to see them live (despite owning a ticket to a show in Raleigh at the Cat's Cradle on their farewell tour).

#12

Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear
2009

Second best album of 2009...I recall declaring 2009 'The Year of Grizzly Bear' back in January, in anticipation of this album. 'Yellow House' was sooo good, and they had reportedly spent way more time than any sane band would need turning the knobs on this one...but out of the box, I had a hard time engaging this album. It's very...complicated. There's shit everywhere. It's probably the most 'prog' mainstream album in years. There are key changes, dynamic shifts in sound, and weirdly syncopated rhythms everywhere. The opener, Southern Point changes meter several times, as it shifts from the chorus, to the build, and back. Then it just ends. Two Weeks was the 'single', and is by far the most accessible song on the album. While You Wait for the Others became a surprise hit, but not the album version...former Doobie Brother Mike MacDonald stepped in and recorded vocals for the song, and they threw his version on the backside of a 7". He sums up Grizz pretty well (h/t to pitchfork for the quote):

"what the indie rock movement is doing right now is very inspiring" angle. He hears a musical bond between the Grizz's intricately filigreed chamber pop and his own past work: "When I was with the Doobies, the style of music was that we all went over the falls with chord progressions, trying to make things as complex and interconnected as possible. The punk movement swung towards being as primitive as possible, but now it's back to where these guys are good musicians. I never thought that would come back around, but it has."

Actually, I don't really give a fuck what Mike MacDonald thinks about Grizzly Bear, but the mere fact that he's even talking about them is extremely odd. I'm in a bizzaro world where my favorite band (MMJ) is trying to sound like a cross between Bread and Loggins/Messina, and the most groundbreaking band since Radiohead in the late 90's is getting props from the fucking Doobie Brothers. It's like a weird flashforward episode of Yacht Rock. Go figure.

The thing about Grizz is that I do not see a looming backlash. Remember how Radiohead never really had one (post-Pablo Honey doesn't count)? When they threw The Bends->Ok Computer->Kid A at us (holy shit, what a three album run), the critics stayed pretty much on board. You lost some of the poseurs, who were just following them because they were the hot buzz, but at no point did anyone start to claim they had jumped the shark. I think that's where Grizz lives right now. They pretty much have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they want. Record the next album on the moon, with zombies singing backup vocals? I wouldn't be surprised, and I guarantee Pitchfork will be there to slap a 9.3 on it (in a snarky way). I kind of hope they go minimal, strip everything out, and just pipe samples from Sonic the Hedgehog 3, in reverse, through a church organ. That would blow Mike MacDonald's mind.

#11

Illinoise
Sufjan Stevens
2005

I have a soft spot for Sufjan Stevens, in all his butterfly winged glory. The fact that he can even be remotely popular while flogging his art-rock is a wonder. This is his opus, an ode to the State of Illinois, and all her rich histories and stories. What a weird idea, but it totally works. Listening to an entire Sufjan Steven album is like having the Encyclopedia read to you, poetically. Again, weird, but it totally works. Every note seems to be exactly where it should be. The horns in Jacksonville are really amazing, and the harmonized Chicago is wonderful. The best song on the album, though, is probably Casimir Pulaski Day, which isn't even about Illinois directly, but rather a series of autobiographical memories of something that happened on the obscure 'holiday'. Best use of banjo this decade. I'm, yet again, victim to being a concept album whore. I could listen to this one all day long.

Click HERE to go back to #30-21
Click HERE to go back to the Album of the Decade main page
Click HERE to go on to #10-1