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Why I Like Every Album on THIS List

November 19, 2009 by Peter

The NME Magazine of England has just come out with a list of the Top 50 ‘Best’ Albums of the Decade. All lists like this are created with two vectors in mind:
1. Assuring rabid fans of certain popular bands that their favorites appear in the right place so they will buy copies of the magazine
2. Pissing off music nerds who hate certain bands and will click on the list and comment 100 times advocating for some obscure Finnish folk singer whom it is a travesty of life that she ain’t #4 you disease-whores of Babylon to collect ad revenues off their page clicks. Since there is no criteria for greatness, the results are totally meaningless.

So how horrified was I when I realized scanning it that I enjoyed every single album on this list? I panicked: What does this say about me as a ‘critic’? NME is renowned for being unadventurous as well as frothing about the next cute boy band…am I a sucker for man meat or just hopelessly middle-class? Or maybe it’s just that part of the point of music to me is remembering that first encounter with it, and all of these records were pretty big (or notable), so reading the list is therapeutic? Freud is heavy on my record player these days, so to relax I wrote up this talking cure justification of what these joints meant, or what they did for the decade, in my so-called opinion. And therefore
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WHY I LIKE EVERY ALBIM ON THIS LIST
By, a rockist
With ☆ ratings
In reverse order

MIA ARULAR 5☆s
Infectious, audacious houseparty music with loopy hooks, non-western instruments, and diplos best production work. Listen to it on a midnight bus out of Mumbai.

MUSE ABSORPTION 3☆
Dude’s voice makes up for the overly dramatic production, soaring like Jeff Buckley on meth. Sometimes rocks the Morricone western noodling. What explosions in the sky would do if hired to soundtrack Uwe Boll.

WALKMEN BOWS N ARROWS 3☆
The Joshua Tree loses it’s naive greenery and catches fire after it’s girlfriend leaves it for a younger pine. Histrionic? Aren’t we all.

BRENDEN BENSON LAPALCO 5☆
the perfect pop record. Superdrag and Nick Lowe and Badfinger and every true twee Scotsman bow reverently before his multitracking treacle and matthew sweetass guitar tones.

THE DELGADOS
Just listened to this for the first time and it was catchy. Thanks NME!

AVALANCHES SINCE I LEFT YOU 4☆
Funky melange experimenting to make girltalk embarrassed

OUTCAST SB/TLB 3☆/5☆
SB is decent crunk with smooth edges, but TLB is beyond anything done in hip hop before or since. Funkadelic, Prince, Quincy, Andre in that order. Draculas Wedding made the hippop world ready again for sweaters, sarcasm, and real melody.

WILCO YANKEE HF 17☆
My number 1 of the decade and I don’t like anything wilco did before or after. Right place, right time, right persona– Tentative, foolish Joy emerges from Utter Chaos again and again to die in the debris. If this is dadrock i’m ready to impregnate all comers.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND ST 3☆
Vocals a bit weak (insert Born Ruffians comparison) but the ripoffs of afrobeat are Paul Simontastic.

WILD BEASTS
another new one on me, decent lazerpop. Time for coffee!

RYAN ADAMS GOLD 3☆
I hate the eagles too but when I’m actually driving in the actual desert and Peaceful Easy Feeling comes on I just take a sip of my coffee and do the high parts and hope everyone else in the car is asleep.

CRYSTAL CASTLES ST 3☆
Lazerpop is a term I just invented for this kind of semi-weird scene. Makes me long for a Mini Cooper. The future of the past is still the 80s, thank god.

BLOCK PARTY SILENT ALARM 4☆
MADNESS? NO, THIS IS SPECIAL BEAT! ok they don’t really sound like ska but something about the goofy seriousness mixed with dancepunk twinkling clean everything is uplifting in the same vein. Born to be superstars, with god given ass.

THE KNIFE SILENT SHOUT 5☆
As the album goes on, the dark deep computer voice 6 octaves below the girl singer’s gets louder and more desperate. Every song is a new chapter of rising action, like an audio horror movie that you can dance to. Listen again, it’s not about love, or loss…it’s about terror. Praise Baal and pass the vocoder.

SPIRITUALIZED LET IT COME DOWN 4☆
Velvet Universities finest pomp-majors b- dissertation

BABYSHAMBLES DOWN IN ALBION 3☆
More on this later

GRANDADDY SOPHTWARE SLUMP 3☆
hooray electromericana! big ups city country music! hifive Kozeleks of all capacities! Let’s get more coffee!

ARCADE FIRE NEON BIBLE 3☆
better make it a dubbleshot espresso I’m late to a business meeting with the marketing department. By which I mean my divorce proceedings. Or both.

YEAH YEAH YEAH SHOW YOUR BONES 4☆
Whoever decided to move beyond dirty blues no-wave homeland into poppier, more expansive moors deserves a back slap of kudos. Maybe it was a publicist. Score one for the machines.

BRIGHT EYES I’M WIDE AWAKE ETC 5☆
oh god did I want to hate this. I wanted to hate this right in its freshly scrubbed fauxNaif face. But for once conar keeps his mumbling cracking and rambling in check with sweet nebraska crooning and live sounding drums and stripped down alt.guitars. I can’t help it, emmylou, I can’t help but fall in love with you.

ELBOW ASLEEP IN THE BACK 3☆
Bit too all over the place to be cohesive imo but with a couple awesome dollops of whipped cream.

SFA RINGS AROUND THE WORLD 3☆
if I was welsh or had been to wales I’d probably love it. As it is I prefer supergrass when it comes to supers, but this is a fine super substitute.

JOHNNY CASH THE MAN 5☆
god bless rick rubin forever and ever and may jack white or whoever else keep up this tradition of re-inspiring old folks.

AMY WINEHOUSE BACK IN BLACK TO COMM HAHA 5☆
Fuck authenticity. I don’t really care whether this was entirely manufactured by the unholy pairing of sugarman records house band and crack cocaine. Sure Sharon jones is more soulful and wise and a better singer or whatev but she doesn’t capture that feeling where you’ve fucked up so badly and you know it and you tell the people you’ve fucked over ’sorry’ but they can’t forgive you, they try, I mean they pretend to, but in their eyes you both know you’re shitt massive worthless shitt who doesn’t deserve to live. Morrissey better like this record or he’s a total sellout.

DIZEE RASCAL BOY IN THE CORNER 5☆
speaking of inauthentic how about a teenage rapper bragging about his mastery of the arts and sexual prowess? How about sampling billy squier’s best beat on every single song and it fucking ruling every genres dancefloor. How about inventing or stealing an entirely new dialect based either on mike singer plus bonethugs or bonethugs MINUS mike singer’s cartoon dog I can’t tell. How bout that?

THE RAPTURE ECHOES 5☆
Discopunks biggest admirers move backwards from gang of four into roxy music and bring the more cowbell along.

LIBERTINES ST 4☆
Wait for it…

KLAXONS FUTURE 3☆
future rave never happened and this should have had more madchester bits and less donking but still–if you want cyberspace this is your best outlet.

JAYZ THE BLUEPRINT
the only 00s mainstream rap record I own. To me best, because of the indelible thread of doom and religious guilt that runs through the hubris like a gray hair, or less romantically, like a discord in a distortion overtone.

CORAL S/T 3☆
lots of rattles and klatters and umm flutes? over cute psychpop. Cute!

BLUR THINK TANK 4☆
Just Damon Albarn being weird. Still fab.

WHITE STRIPES ELEPHANT/WBC 5☆ apiece
WBC is excellent powerful gutter zep but elephant has timpanis and toy pianos and it broadcasts an image in my heart of a burlesque dancer in a gothic brothel dying of hyperbole on a golden couch. Blues opera starring schoolchildren.

SUFJAN STEVENS ILLINOIZ 3☆
nice church folk. Hummable.

THE STREET A GRAND DONT COME 4 FREE 4☆
After OPM mike wanted to write about his life again, but his life was so weird he felt stupid writing about touring and tv promos so he wrote a memoir. The desperation and small successes of being small time and middling in England make for uncomfortable singles but all together add up to Hardyesque portrait of betrayal, lust, confusion, and false hope. Also contains the best gambling song of the decade. Every time something goes horribly pear in my own life I hear him whining ‘it was sposed to be so eeeaaasy’ like a cockney clerks character.

QOTSA SONGS FOR THE DEAF 5☆
I cannot overstate the importance of this record to those of us from the school of hard rocks. Druggy, hyper, evil, bashing, grungy harmonizing– it’s got something for everyone. Try this: be in any kind of rock band and tell a guy (whether redneck or scenster) you sound like this record. He will nod.

ATDI RELATIONSHIP OF COMMAND 3☆
the last good emo record. Definitely more banging than all offshoots.

RADIOHEAD KID A etc 4☆
radiohead is fine

SHINS WINCING THE NIGHT AWAY 4☆
good mixtape fodder. Somewhat numbing taken together but plucked out individually will change a beloved’s life on contact mysteriously. Specially ‘red rabbits’ man talk about instant nostalgia.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM SOUNDS OF SILVER 3☆
They make all the right references which is as annoying on records as it is at cocktail parties but I can’t help finding them endearing if delivered by a hot chick, aka a phat hotchipish track.

STREETS ORIGINAL PIRATE MATERIAL 5☆
If you think his voice is weird and annoying listen to ’sharp darts’ first. UK Ambassador he calls himself in a pretty conventional but spicy flow’d rap track. Ok, get it? He’s reaching out! Take his hand, you won’t regret the journey. One minute you’re giggling at the stupid anachronisms (artful dodger? Is this a musical?) the next thing you know you’re googling Twostep and driving a tiny rental car around Galway blaring Weak Become Heroes because even if you weren’t there, you were somewhere once, young and idealistic and ready for your scene to change the world, and it’s over now, you failed and you’re bored you need excitement. Poetry has a sneaky way of teaching your mouth to move while yr mind is still closed.

INTERPOL TURN ON THE BRIGHT LIGHTS 5☆
Ian Curtis. There I said it. Oh everyone says that? Oh ok. Can I hear that New York song again? Thanks. Man I was really depressed after 9/11.

ARCADE FIRE FUNERAL 4☆
Even gutterpunks like this album. I mean, they fall asleep to it with their bandana’d dogs under a greasy tarp tent on a dry concrete riverbank but hey–everyone needs to feel safe sometimes.

PJ HARVEY STORIES FROM THE C 5☆
Her best record. Seemingly simple but rewards extra listens with slow gorgeous gems of songcraftery. She should get heartsick more often, or at least keep eating kris kristoffersons breakfast: bad coffee is better when it’s cold.

YEAHx3 FEVER TO TELL 4☆
Cum On Feele The Paganizm

ARCTIC MONKEYS WHATER PEOPLE SAY 3☆
meta-punk is another term I just invented for this endless list’s benefit. So tinny it’s seemingly recorded in a 5th level classroom in hintershire somewhere it’s still a fine example of why rock and roll is the best medium for jittery tennagers to give themselves the finger.

PRIMAL SCREAM XTRMNTAR 3☆
the second best VU scholars in the country write an A- pomp dissertation and then slit their wrists

THE LIBERTINES UP THE BRACKET 5☆

I was going to write some long defense of these kids as the last bastions of british rebellion in a world increasingly polite and businessminded where the clash wouldn’t write white riot for fear of being labeled racist and the replacements would be Yale graduates with tailored suits and 5 year plans and Tall Dwarfs would have a high powered agent who hooked up a grizzleybear remix onto the gossip girl sndtk but eh fuck it. If you can’t get into a band who during a wrestling match while  recording bumped a drum mic (BOMP) and kept it in the song, I can’t do nothin for ya man. They’re a fookin mess of selfconscious neuroses, and I’m just talking about the arrangements.

STROKES
This Is It sounds like DMZ covering the Supremes.
Anyone who can’t get behind that should stick MRSA in their ears.
But these guys started all that fashionable professionalism so shouldn’t I hate them? Good question. Do we blame barry gordy for sanitizing r&b? Yes. But do we listen to Motown with great pleasure? When we’re in the mood, sure. Before the ’strks’: everyone in indie rock was a shlub and every punk/garager was a retro cliché. Since this record, everyone has a stylist, even if it’s an internal one. That’s just the way of things I guess. Anyway the first time I heard ‘last nite’ the album hadn’t come out yet (Huge Brag!) and I was driving back to college in my busto toyota and after NYC cops that song comes on and I have to hear it again, and again, and I ended up driving around my dorm parking lot banging on the steering wheel when that bassline comes in and trying to decipher that one stupid word (it was Spaceships) deliriously. When the single came out I was delighted. When they became annoyingly ubiquitous I was tickled. When internetters frothed with hatred about them, I smiled, cuz they made my afternoon feel transcendent once, and I owe them, inestimably.

It wasn’t the best of time or the worst of times. It was basically just some times, which were OK, now that I think about it. Cheers 00s!

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