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“Ask a man what he thinks about music, and he’ll tell you what he thinks about you.”
- Neven Mrgan
I don’t trust my brain. Sure, it keeps me vertical most of the time, it tells me when I’m hungry, and I let it take care of the water bill. But ask it what my favorite music of the last decade was, and you’ll get a lot of hogwash comprising a neat mix of popular tunes, obscure concept albums, and hipster honor badges.
No, the better way to gauge my favorite music is to ask iTunes, my companion since roughly around the turn of the decade (n.b. I think I stopped paying any attention at all to other devices and media pretty much immediately after I installed iTunes and got an iPod.) iTunes knows what I actually listen to and it remembers this info, so a simple Smart Playlist was all it took to produce a list of albums made in the 2000s which I listened to the most. Ladies and gentlemen, the faves:
Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (2007)
I would’ve picked this myself even without the help of iTunes. It’s an album I cherish like a good friend: it never disappoints, and there’s always something to do with it on a Saturday night. I used to listen to it as I walked around my then-new neighborhood of Southeast Portland, taking breaks from my home-office job, and I think someone in Ladd’s addition still tells the tale of the crazy bearded man who air-played Nels Cline’s phenomenal solos in the street every afternoon. It’s a strange pick for a piece of music to symbolize a millennium-opening decade (there’s nothing here that couldn’t have been recorded in 1971) but no matter; the songwriting is beautiful, the interplay tight, and the whole package just endlessly lovable. I also liked their A Ghost Is Born (2004), listening to it more after Sky Blue Sky came out. Terrific songs there as well. ‘I’m A Wheel’ would make my top-10 list for sure.
Listen to a sample of Wilco’s ‘Walken’: (iPhone users, tap here)
Hail to the Thief (2003), In Rainbows (2007), Amnesiac (2001), Radiohead
Not a huge surprise, this. Radiohead was the only band I listened to as much in the ’00s as I did in the ’90s. It wasn’t the easiest of transitions for me, though; notice that Kid A isn’t on the list. I admit I was one of those people who were put off by it in 2000. Maybe it was the lower expectations that endeared me to Hail to The Thief. I like making fun of Radiohead, but it’s to their credit that they’ve built a whole mythology rich enough to be parodied.
You’ve heard Radiohead before, but here’s a sample of ‘Nude’: (iPhone link)
Whatever, Mortal, Papa M
Maybe it’s my loss that I never got into your Sufjan Stevenses, your Devendra Banharts, Irons & Wines, but have you heard David Pajo - of Slint and Tortoise - play his indie folk? It’s so shaggy-dog, so vulnerable and earnest, you’ll either love it to death or you’ll want to give him a wedgie as that shivering voice paints him a thoroughly nice guy just doing his best. He’s never attempted anything in this vein again, but… whatever!
Listen to a sample of Papa M’s ‘Glad You’re Here With Me’: (iPhone link)
Born Again in The USA, Loose Fur (2006)
I could’ve told you right away there’d be a lot of Jeff Tweedy and Jim O’Rourke on this list; here they’re together, playing a 50/50 mix of early Wilco and O’Rourke at his most entertaining. They’re a bit like Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman on a good-melody day, enjoying their irreverent selves on an album of harsh - but always joyful - mockery of religion. You don’t often find yourself whistling along with that.
So, try not to whistle along with Loose Fur’s ‘The Ruling Class’: (iPhone link)
In Our Times, School Days (2002)
A sleeping monster - a live jazz album I found who knows how. Ken Vandermark has long been a contemporary favorite, but on this album, the band led by his pal Jeb Bishop brews a wholly different concoction. It all starts with a fairly unlistenable free-jazz explosion, but soon a method to the madness is revealed: vibraphonist Kjell Nordeson chimes a spooky bell, the drums roll a grooving march, and Vandermark plays in perhaps his best form ever. Jazz is the genre that best reveals my old-fogeism: I usually listen to music between five and fifty years old. I have yet to make any meaningful excursions into post-1974 jazz. My love affairs with the 2000s’ Jason Moran and The Bad Plus were brief. Hopefully I’ll find some good millennial cuts around, oh, 2018.
Can’t get much from 30 seconds of a jazz track, but do your best: (iPhone link)
Beet, Maize, & Corn, The High Llamas (2003)
Normally, this amount of sugary melodies and omni-instrumentalist decadence puts me off, but somehow Sean O’Hagan makes it work. I can play this album in the background any time. It’s not a musical revolution, but it doesn’t try to be that; it’s just made of nothing but hooks. And call me crazy, but I can stomach this way easier than Pet Sounds. (So long, followers!) Faux-Americana of the highest quality.
Listen to a sample of The High Llamas’ ‘Rotary Hop’: (iPhone link)
Foxy Music, Mushroom (2001)
Mushroom make music like no other band I know of; sure, sometimes the influences are totally obvious (Can, Herbie Hancock, Zappa) but no one else keeps blending and straining them this way. And hey, someone should remind us of how great Faust and the Headhunters could be. If I had to pick my five favorite Mushroom songs, they’d all be picked for different reasons; some maybe for titles alone. Even if they’re recycling history instead of making it, I sure am glad dudes like this exist.
Listen to a sample of Mushroom’s ‘I Got Blisters on My Fingers’: (iPhone link)
Insignificance, Jim O’Rourke (2001)
Oh, Jim O’Rourke. You and your nearly annoying weirdness. Here’s a ridiculously talented guy who’s produced albums for pretty much anyone worth producing, and yet with each release of his own he displays a mock-confident nervousness of a musical debutant. A one-man playground, this is an album that’ll seem stranger the more closely you listen to it; not that you have to. There’s plenty of steering-wheel-tapping grooving going on to just listen along.
Listen to a sample of Jim O’Rourke’s ‘Insignificance’: (iPhone link)
Internal Wrangler, Clinic (2000)
This one did not age so well; I never listen to it anymore. But, it did get spun quite a bit in its day. Now that I hear it again, its goofy garage sound and familiar-but-otherworldly vibe still do some sort of magic on my ears (‘Second Line’ in particular still holds its rank as a perfect Simple Weird Song.) It’s all good - I just wish Clinic hadn’t kept making the same exact album for the next eight years.
Listen to a sample of Clinic’s ‘The Second Line’: (iPhone link)
Reality (2003)
Yeah, a David Bowie album from 2003. I know. Hey, I liked it - some very car-friendly songs (‘New Killer Star’, ‘Never Get Old’), a totally badass cover of The Modern Lovers’ ‘Pablo Picasso’, and a wonderful 21st-century ballad, ‘The Loneliest Guy’. Bowie has fared well in every decade; this last one shouldn’t be an exception. Now, I am sorry for subjecting you to that “cover” on the left; maybe some of the drugs he took in the ’70s finally kicked in?
Listen to David Bowie’s upbeat cover of ‘Pablo Picasso’: (iPhone link)
Un Dia, Juana Molina (2008)
My brother introduced me to this quirky bit of Argentinian electronica just a few months ago; like my friend Dave, who I then passed it on to, I was hooked in the first seven seconds of the first song. Imagine an unpretentious Bjork, sans choreography and with a more Radiohead-y agenda. She weaves long, repetitive aural textures awash in layers of her strong voice, plucking a warm acoustic guitar every now and then. There - that’s the newest music I can say with some honesty I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
Listen to a sample of Juana Molina’s ‘Dar’: (iPhone link)
Phew. Do I pass this level? Can I move up to the 2010s now? (Oh, and, I realize you got a goulash of pop, obscura, and hipsterdom using this method anyway!)
Surprises
Either my iTunes database is off or my memory is, but had you asked me, I would’ve been certain that the following albums would’ve had high play counts:
- Real Gone, Tom Waits (2004)
- Who Stole The I Walkman?, Isotope 217 (2000)
- Amazing Grace, Spiritualized (2003)
- Ys, Joana Newsom (2006)
- Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada, Godspeed You Black Emperor! (2000)
- Thought for Food, The Books (2002)
Honorary Mentions
These aren’t exactly albums from the 2000s, but technically they were released during the decade, and they showed up in my report:
- Kind of Bloop, Andy Baio’s 8-bit reimagining of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. Sublime.
- Cold Heat: Heavy Funk Rarities 1968-1974, Vol. 1, a pretty brilliant collection of rare funk cuts steeped in dirty, sweaty soul rather than the cheesy disco of the late ’70s.
Songs
While the albums these songs are on didn’t make the cut, the song themselves were often played more than anything on the albums above:
- ‘The Mother of All Funk Chords’, Kutiman (2009)
- ‘End Creditouilles’, Michael Giacchino (2007)
- ‘Wogs Will Walk’, Cornershop (2002)
- ‘This Train’, Alice Coltrane (2004)
- ‘Old Fashioned Morphine’, Jolie Holland (2002)
- ‘Multiply’, Jamie Lidell (2005)
- ‘Mushaboom’, Feist (2004)
- ‘Canada’, Low (2002)
- ‘Turn It Out’, Death From Above 1979 (2004)
- ‘No One Knows’, Queens of The Stone Age (2002)
And that’s it! Did you listen to any of the samples? I hope you did - took me hours!
Since I’m so slow to pick up new music, I should probably do this again in about five years; I’m sure I’ll warm up to a lot of late-2000s stuff by then.
