Skeleton Crew Quarterly's Top Fifty Albums of the 00s

I’m pretty sure I was lying when I initially wrote that I’d be compiling a Decades’ list; at the very least, I doubted my ability and patience to pull one off. I can’t be bothered to count how many records I listen to in a year, let alone a decade, and besides, with the way hindsight recreates our past, who’s to say it doesn’t equally manipulate the albums that got us to the present?

So it’s with small doses of pride and a moment’s pause to recognize how easy SCQ’s Top Fifty Albums of the 00s came together. Over the course of a week, I dug through the SCQ Vault and heard records that weren’t nearly as great as I remembered, and albums that remain as thrilling as ever. I scratched out important releases I thought would make the cut and rubbed my temples over whether record A was better than record B, but at no point did any of the final choices elicit surprise in me. I didn’t listen to these releases so much as live through them, and their presence on this list is as assured as the impact they cratered in my last decade. If only I had the patience for a Top 100…

Where applicable, I’ve quoted original SCQ reviews for my own embarrassment but otherwise each record receives a quick impression, unnecessary justification, or little anecdote of how a shiny piece of plastic can save one’s life.

To everyone I’ve shared any of these records with and Penny, the little kitten who just caught up on all of them…

50. You Are Free – Cat Power (2003)

While I agree that Chan Marshall has a particular allure, I wouldn’t confuse that with a ton of textbook talent. Her instrumentation is pretty basic, her vocals self-taught and many of her lyrics personal enough to skim interpretation. And while I do think the press has hyped her beyond her capabilities, Chan Marshall is in good company there. So many idols from our parents’ generation were alluring not because they were perfectly trained musicians, but because they (Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, and Marshall’s hero, Dylan) carried a particular allure.

Before I get a tirade of emails, let me make clear that I’m not placing Cat Power in the same talent-pool as Young, Dylan or their ilk. Yet like those aforementioned artists and many since (Springsteen, Petty, etc.), Marshall has an every-person, down-to-earth quality that renders her emotions and lyrics easily shared among her fan-base. You Are Free is that album that perfectly merged Cat Power’s early cult following with newer audiences attracted by her increasingly extroverted work. Featuring Marshall at her most eclectic and commanding, You Are Free should be enough to get a petition going in order to save Cat Power from the Memphis soul that diluted her strengths on The Greatest and Jukebox.

49. Room On Fire – The Strokes (2003)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

There are some acts you don’t necessarily want to change, either because you recognize their limitations or enjoy what they have to offer. In the case of the Strokes, it’s the latter; their 30 minute records of slick Velvet Underground-influenced rock were effortlessly better than First Impressions of Earth, which almost sounded purposeful. Room On Fire best illustrates any band’s philosophy on living the high life, while leaving the tedious posturing for the magazine cover-shoots.

48. Cryptograms – Deerhunter (2007)

Microcastle was instantly loveable. By the time third track ‘Never Stops’ ran its course, I was already singing its praises and convinced of its status on my year-end list. No doubt my hype-barrier had been significantly weakened over the previous months due to the album’s early leak and all the drama that coattails anything Bradford Cox does… but that was the point, wasn’t it? Minus the leak, none of that attention hurt the release of Microcastle, I can tell you that.

Cryptograms didn’t get the benefit of that pre-release digestion-time, nor the anticipation, nor the star-power. Here’s a record so uncompromising in its love of ambience and warped rock, it spends the majority of its tracks hopscotch-jumping between genres. On paper, this stutter/stop of pulverizing black psychedelia (‘Lake Somerset’) and stillborn shimmer-stretches (‘Red Ink’) shouldn’t equate a cohesive listening-experience but, as if these divisive ideologies had been chugging at different speeds, Cryptograms takes off in its final third when these gears finally gel. The hazy shoegaze of ‘Spring Hall Convert’, ‘Strange Lights’ and ‘Hazel St’ each provide ample pay-off for the record’s earlier bipolarity. Having said all that, Cryptograms isn’t the better record because it’s difficult; it’s better because it asks you to adapt the way you listen to, and think about, albums. And it’ll mean more to you once you give in.

47. White Blood Cells – White Stripes (2002)

There’s a freedom to being a young rock duo modernizing a blues-rock tradition no one’s touched since, what, Zeppelin? And that’s exactly what White Blood Cells feels like - a blank canvas of negative space being coloured in with archaic-sounding electrics, pounding drums, white, red and lots of rash decisions (‘Little Room’, anyone?). Although in hindsight it seems a bit conservative, the foundation of their style was already concreted and tracks like ‘I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman’ and ‘The Boy You’ve Always Known’ are prime examples of Jack White’s growing songwriting voice. Perhaps just as importantly, Jack and Meg were matching the quality of their songs with a lightheartedness that has proven to stretch all the way to the metal-antics of Icky Thump. When ‘Fell In Love With a Girl’ first hit the airwaves, did anyone expect the White Stripes to outlive their equally untested colleagues (The Hives, The Strokes, The Vines) to become one of the most successful American bands of the decade? That stardom began right here.

46. Tanks and Recognizers - Lights Out Asia (2007)

My friend and I have a running joke: like clockwork, Lights Out Asia show up at a random Milwaukee high school to compete in its annual battle-of-the-bands competition. They unload all of their extensive gear, play a show so immense and spectacular that the audiences’ spines go straight, the auditorium’s house-speakers blow, and Lights Out Asia are awarded second place. Sure, part of the joke is in reference to Milwaukee’s questionable music scene but mostly the joke is our way of expressing confusion that Lights Out Asia aren’t selling out shows in Paris, Tokyo and Germany. What’s that they say about a joke you have to explain…?

Tanks and Recognizers should’ve catapulted this Milwaukee trio toward the post-rock echelon with unforgettable epics like ‘Roy’, ‘March Against the Savages’ and ‘Four Square’ but word never traveled. Here’s hoping the band’s upcoming 2010 effort earns them the attention long-since due.

45. You Were Here – Sarah Harmer (2000)

A constant challenge faced amid selecting this Top 50 of the 00s list is debating which is better: an artist’s most progressive album or the one that might be slightly flawed but is of heightened personal significance. In most cases I chose the latter but here’s an exception: You Were Here may not carry the personal gravity that I’m A Mountain reminisces but it’s easily her most well-rounded, varied album. At times bare-boned (as on the haunting title track) and radio-slick (‘Basement Apt.’), the wealth of these arrangements float on a lyrical intimacy woven by this Canadian songbird’s signature voice. Sorrowful and nostalgic without a trace of regret or hang-ups, You Were Here remains the crowning statement of Harmer’s infrequent discography.

44. Set Free – American Analog Set (2005)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

If The Golden Band displayed the band at their most ambient and if Promise of Love was their rock album, Set Free is certainly their break-up swan song. The only album dutifully recorded in studio (several, in fact), this final release before their indefinite hiatus has a Long and Winding Road feel – luckily without the schmaltz. ‘She’s Half’ features multi-tracked vocals which harmonize the lyrical melancholy to wonderful effect, while ‘The Green Green Grass’ is as rocking as the Texas quintet get, locking into a tight guitar riff and dousing it in crystal psychedelics. By the time ‘Fuck This… I’m Leaving’ opens into electric strumming to close the disc, we’re left with little doubt that this is American Analog Set’s most ear-catching collection, and the fact that the band drove thousands of miles to record bits and pieces in various studios makes Set Free’s cohesiveness all the more impressive.

Each Amanset album is insular and, because their sixth album does little to deter that self-consciously sensitive reputation, Set Free is a certainly a record I’d fight the flames to save while my apartment collapsed around me. It’s a worthy curtain-close for a band that never seemed to care whether anyone was listening; they were playing their songs, their way. I’m just happy I found them in time to say goodbye.

43. No Good For No One Now – Owen (2002)

Owen at first struck me as a fine hybrid of Bright Eyes and Dashboard Confessional, in that Mike Kinsella’s heartache and complaints felt respectively drunken and, well, childish. That No Good For No One Now was recorded in the old bedroom of his mother’s house should further incriminate this adolescence. But damned if we all can’t relate to his growing pains – the breakups, hook-ups and subsequent regrets – which are sung in his always-conversational delivery and warm guitar tones.

All things considered, it’s likely that 2009’s New Leaves is Kinsella’s best release but No Good For No One Now is where I hitched my wagon to Owen’s sweetly depressed spiral toward suburbia. And it has lost none of its emotion.

42. Bloodflowers – The Cure (2000)

Here’s one of those records you’re given no differently than a love-letter or a crisply-folded flag, in that what it grows to mean can’t be quantified by its jewel-case, plastic disc or even the songs there-in. In fact, you should make it your business to never purchase or (god forbid) download this record, and instead pray someone significant will lend it your way and accidentally change your life forever. This is a record to save for your most vulnerable, romantically impossible moments.

I probably just oversold the record. In the six years I’ve owned this, I’ve probably only listened to it front-to-back four times. It’s a depressing, occasionally disturbing album but what always placates its overarching feel for me are the slowburners: ‘The Loudest Sound’, ‘There Is No If…’ and ‘The Last Day of Summer’ feature Robert Smith at his most melodically nostalgic. And since ‘Out of This World’ is my favourite Cure song ever, Bloodflowers earns an important spot on my Top 50 Albums of the 00s.

41. Cold Roses – Ryan Adams & the Cardinals (2005)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

Cold Roses is chocked full of nature imagery to the point of overkill. In this rural landscape he has painted, every street is named after plants or fruit, any obstacles made of earth and stone, every girl a river or rose. Most every reference is indicative of his own newfound peace, an easy plateau, so to speak, after the tumultuous years of Love is Hell and Rock N Roll that reached climax when he severely broke his wrist during a stage-fall in early 2004. Newly subdued and reflective, ‘How Do You Keep Love Alive’ finds Adams completely at odds with his winking counterpart while ‘When Will You Come Back Home’ is a James Taylor cover waiting to happen (as my father accurately pinned). His serene disposition even touches on ideas of spirituality in ‘Life is Beautiful’, a song that speaks volumes when compared to ‘Fuck the Universe’, written not two years earlier.

The idea of a Ryan Adams double-album rang off as redundant in some circles who deemed much of his records excessive and poorly edited, but Cold Roses proves focused, not only in its Grateful Dead jam-ability sense, but because I can only find two songs I could bear to cut from this eighteen song-cycle. And when tracks like ‘Sweet Illusions’ and ‘Cherry Lane’ aren’t wooing you with their mid-tempo guitar licks, you’re staring in the headlights of ‘Let It Ride’, one of Adams’ best songs ever.

40. Last Exit – Junior Boys (2004)

Few records reveal themselves with the nuanced steps that Last Exit does. First I was floored by two undeniable tracks - ‘Bellona’ and ‘Birthday’ - which provided the necessary incentive to listen ever-closer to the Hamilton duo’s hazier efforts. And that’s where this debut truly shimmers; between the echoed-synths of ‘Three Words’, or drifting along the North 400 with the title track, lies the frosted soul of Last Exit. In no time, this song-cycle melts together like the best post-club album one could hope for… and remains the pinnacle this group may never reach again.

39. Takk… - Sigur Ros (2005)

What did Takk… accomplish if not delivering on the promise put forth by Agaetis Byrjun? Just when fans and critics had forgave Sigur Ros’ for shunning their orchestral urges (with the stirring sterility of ( )’s waiting room, and again with warmer experimentation on Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do), Takk… launches with enough firepower to not only bring the Icelandic four-piece full circle creatively, but to trademark their own piece in the post-rock pie. In fact, there might be a tad too much firepower, as this third full-length tallies an inordinate amount of massive climaxes (I stand by my early assessment that the ten-minute ‘Milano’ needn’t have been included), but that’s just me taking Sigur Ros for granted again. After all, it takes a transcendent band to turn new tricks from post-rock’s old-hat dynamics and, for all their imitators, there isn’t a single other band in the world like these guys.

38. The Reminder – Feist (2007)

Never, at any point preceding the release of The Reminder, did I plan on buying a Feist album. Yes, I’d heard ‘Mushaboom’. No, I didn’t gush about it in public. I’d seen her live and, yeah, it was pretty much by accident. So the way I saw it, my odds of buying The Reminder on the first day of its release seemed fairly slim… but that’s because I’d never heard it.

Wandering the predictable aisles of HMV, I recognized the layered Arts & Crafts-styled guitar-pop of ‘Feel It All’ as Feist and noted some element of inner surprise. Then the eerie balladry of ‘The Water’ lulled me toward the store’s corner speakers, whispering sweet mysteries, and by the time ‘How My Heart Behaves’ trickled through my ears like the best song Bjork never wrote, I was trading scratch for it at the counter. Yes, I know ‘1,2,3,4’ is on it and, no, I don’t gush about that track either but The Reminder is truly one of the finest Canadian albums ever, and a classic where any country is concerned.

37. Talkie Walkie – Air (2004)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

If the star-gazing Moon Safari and romantically androgenous 10000hz To Legend left listeners confused over who Air were, dew-eyed dreamers or electronic misfits, their third proper full-length proves they’re the former. Mixed and co-produced by the one and only Nigel Godrich, Talkie Walkie is a bedroom record of the highest order; a collection of love letters never sent because writers (Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin) can’t be bothered to toss their bedsheets for stamps.

The album opens with the dirge-slow ‘Venus’, a deliberate piano repetition with distant hand-claps that rises into a synth-driven haze. It’s a serious statement of forlorn love that turns on its head for ‘Cherry Blossom Girl’ where its acoustic-led sweetness shows a more positive outlook – even if that sought-after love is no closer to reality. How these songs interact on a musical and thematic level is indicative of all ten tracks here, as these compositions react to each other like a smoothly executed chemistry experiment; where the theme of longing fluctuates on mood, this sequence retorts by leaning on organic or electronic treatment. The glimmering digital tricks pulled on ‘Run’, a sensational chime-stitched production of seamless beauty, fade into the unplugged allure of ‘Universal Traveler’, etc. Due to the wide range of instrumentation – that, and this being some of Air’s finest songwriting ever - Talkie Walkie is continually fresh and enjoyable listening, with just enough mood to avert becoming too sweet.

36. April – Sun Kil Moon (2008)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

All the same, a Sun Kil Moon record can’t be summed up by the tag-word ‘folk’ alone. With eleven tracks settling at 74 minutes, April is prone to classic rock and slowcore comparisons just as convincingly, the latter clearly dealing with the more superficial issue of running-time. Enough genre-ambiguity ensures April its own territory to shine, and it’s for the best; the Leonard Cohen musings and Neil Young guitar-slaying of opener ‘Lost Verses’ is enough to make anyone give up deciphering how Kozelek might feel about what Dylan did at the Royal Albert Hall forty-odd years ago.

These songs are meant to be heard outside the concrete jungles we’ve grown in, words for the rural expanses you’ve only walked from the passenger seat. ‘The Light’, like all of the LP, is a tight meditation on the guitar riff and how it can breathe relief or stiffen to a tough snarl; Kozelek’s gift is writing a seven-minute song that consistently thrills based on such minimal compositions. Occupying the best of these quiet reflections is ‘Moorestown’s string-drenched play-by-play and ‘Like the River’ (which enlists the fabulous Bonnie Prince Billy on backing vocals).

35. A Weekend In the City – Bloc Party (2007)

As impressive as Silent Alarm was, I was instantly smitten with Bloc Party’s romantic side; the fraction to their style that spawned ‘Blue Light’ and ‘This Modern Love’. They were simple, often lyrically-empty songs that nonetheless owned my stereo thanks to their urgency. A Weekend In the City, while front-to-back my vote for strongest Bloc Party album, likely wouldn’t have made this Decade’s List without the sentimental emphasis which crowds the record’s back-end. From the hungover start of ‘Kreuzberg’ through the redemptive ‘SRXT’, A Weekend In the City is flawless, its romanticism fleshed-out into open swoons and fed with some of Kele Okereke’s most personal lyrics. Countered with more experimental tracks like the M83-indebted ‘Waiting For the 7.18’ and the electronic ‘On’, this sophomore remains the band’s emotional high-ground. Not even the odd clunky lyric about consumerism or mall-kids can bring this one down…

34. Happy Songs For Happy People – Mogwai (2003)

Mogwai’s catalog is something to envy. The Scottish outfit needn’t commit to drastic changes on their songwriting, as it makes up the strong backbone to post-rock as a whole, so each album is inevitably distinguished by cosmetic differences. Young Team was raw, Come On Die Young was quieter, Rock Action carried an increasingly polished veneer and Happy Songs for Happy People went borderline electronic. And equipped with these softer, sonic lens, Mogwai transcended new ground, giving ‘Moses? I Amn’t’ and ‘Kids Will Be Skeletons’ an added cinematic touch.

Like I said, though, these are aesthetic changes; Happy Songs for Happy People also prizes some of the band’s best work. If ‘Hunted By a Freak’ isn’t a convincing candidate for Mogwai’s greatest tunes, ‘Stop Coming To My House’ is the shoe-in ringer (without doubt, one of my most played songs of the decade). Let’s hope they reach these heights again someday…

33. Concentration – Dog Day (2009)

(Taken from SCQ’s Top 20 Albums of 2009:)

From the moment I first heard Concentration on a Soundscapes listening-post, I sensed that I’d stumbled upon something irreplaceable. On the surface it sounded like a straight-forward indie-rock album but there was something to its feel, as if each chord and vocal were swamped in humid darkness and embracing that cool caress. Between Seth Smith’s vocals seemingly coated in post-punk echo and atmospheric rifts which occasionally boiled up out of nowhere, Concentration held pop songs – dark but catchy nonetheless. And as these tracks followed me around the next several months, these tracks further revealed themselves; the clinking glasses and bar chatter that swirls around ‘Saturday Night’’s close, that pristine guitar jam which turns the romantic pop of ‘Rome’ into something far greater, or the devastating breakdown that transforms ‘Judgement Day’. An indie-rock record that towers over its countless competitors usually has a calling-card, be it the rhythmic propulsion of The National, Grizzly Bear’s four-part harmonies, or the sincere psychedelia of Animal Collective. Dog Day have a calling-card, that much I’m sure of, but pinpointing its gears at work is far tougher since each member of the quartet contributes such distinctive measures to a composition. The way these songs shift and pulse, it seems positively shameful to label Dog Day something as bland as indie-rock… but if that’s the most apt descriptor available, I’ll happily pronounce Concentration the best indie-rock record of the year.

32. When the Angels Make Contact – Matt Mays (2006)

(Taken from the SCQ Review:)

After conquering folk, roots-rock and Springsteen-grandeur on his first two albums (one mostly acoustic, the second entirely electric), When the Angels Make Contact finds Mays mixing the aforementioned with electronic instruments, hip-hop and frankly, the best production (courtesy of El Torpedo’s Tim Jim Baker) for some of Mays best songs. Perhaps because of the unfinished film’s subject matter (a biker who searches the brink of mortality for his lost love), songs like ‘Spoonful of Sugar’ and the title track feel emotionally troubled compared to Mays’ earlier work, while ‘Rough N’ Tumble Come Down’ sounds down-right dangerous.

Truthfully, some of the songs within this 18 track behemoth are so powerful, I’ve occasionally daydreamed about how perfect this record would’ve been had he ditched most of the soundtrack-y interludes and kept the absolute essential eleven songs. It would’ve been Mays’ brooding masterpiece, and contender for SCQ’s album of the year in 2006.