Last April, in celebration of O&A’s 21st anniversary, we chose 21 albums from 21 years—one album per year, plus an early prediction for 2009—that we felt defined the times we live in. You won’t find any of those records here, although you will see some names that have made both lists. Rather, we’re using these pages to highlight a fresh set of recordings from the past 10 years. Despite sentiments—see Time magazine’s recent cover story or DJ Shadow’s “Worst. Decade. Ever.” T-shirts—that the 2000s couldn’t possibly be any worse, the following albums offer proof that not all hope was lost, at least creatively. <<10 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Australian composer Nick Cave can be off-putting—the man looks like a werewolf that ate a vampire (or vice versa)—but on his 14th album with the Bad Seeds, he’s more accessible than ever, rocking and rolling with the New Testament and trying to connect with the dead. BEST MOMENT: “We Call Upon the Author” (2008) <<9 Daft Punk Human After All The French duo’s third and most recent album got slammed as boring upon its release, but that’s why hindsight keeps its receipt. This is Daft Punk finding the future in the past, ditching the irony and apathy of the ’90s for the disco culture of the ’70s and the awe of the ’80s. Robots have feelings, too. BEST MOMENT: “Emotion” (2005) <<8 Madvillain Madvillainy
“On his own microphone, bring it everywhere he go / So he can bring it to you live in stere-ere-o / Pan it / Can’t understand it, ban it / The underhanded ran it, planned it, and left him stranded / Thee best / Any who profess will be remanded / ‘Yes, sir, request permission to be candid’ / Granted / ‘I don’t think we can handle a style so rancid / He flipped it like matted and did an old jazz standard.’” BEST MOMENT: “All Caps” (2004) <<7 The White Stripes Elephant Jack and Meg White certainly belong here, but this list favors recordings over the artists behind them. Luckily, Elephant stands not only as the duo’s finest 50 minutes, but some of the finest 50 minutes this past decade. Released at a time when CDs were bloated with filler and individual-track downloads were beginning their takeover, Elephant succeeds because it treats the album format as something that can move in one direction and still have plenty of moving parts. BEST MOMENT: “There’s No Room for You Here” (2003) <<6 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion
Lodged between the sunshine of the Beach Boys and the disorientation of Radiohead, Animal Collective spent seven albums experimenting with woodsy sound collage. But they also grew by leaps and bounds, evidenced by their willingness to play nice while still tripping out. By 2004’s Sung Tongs, they were incorporating structure and melody and shoving their vocals up front. These elements reach full bloom on the kaleidoscopic Merriweather Post, making it a place you’d want to be, not just somewhere you ended up. BEST MOMENT: “In the Flowers” (2009) <<5 Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds
No artist this decade has made both the artistic and commercial transitions Justin Timberlake has. He was Teflon, able to ditch the teen-pop-star identity so meticulously crafted in ’N Sync for a career as a serious artist. Then, to show he hadn’t lost his sense of humor (or forgotten his boy-band roots), he took one self-deprecating stab after another. FutureSex bends and breaks dance-pop in weird, fun ways—JT even smashes a disco ball on the cover—and cemented producer Timbaland’s reputation as a modern-day Quincy Jones. BEST MOMENT: “I Think She Knows” (2006) <<4 Kanye West Graduation
So obnoxious, and now painfully predictable, is Kanye’s need to hear himself opine that it’s easy to call him, as our president did last year, a jackass. But he’s a jackass who’s stretched—more than anyone else, ever—the possibilities and glories of hip-hop. Graduation is illuminated by unlikely samples (Can, Steely Dan), punctuated by earned confidence, and stripped free of frivolity. It’s also a pop-culture magnet: Lil Wayne and Chris Martin have cameos, Michael Jackson is in the credits, and Rosie Perez gets name-checked in the opening track. BEST MOMENT: “Flashing Lights” (2007) <<3 Radiohead Kid A
I had a friend tell me he bought Kid A the day it came out, listened to it once, took the disc out, and threw it across the room. That sounds right. If you were used to the kind of anguished and linear rock Radiohead had mastered on The Bends and OK Computer, Kid A was all wrong for you. But if you saw those albums as heading toward a cliff, rather than up a mountain, Kid A made beautiful sense. It sounds like a band with an aerial view of the great unknown: soothing, thrilling, scary. That uncertainty could apply to the coming decade—did we know where we were going?—or simply to the music Radiohead was making—is Kid A a rock record or an electronic record? But the real mind twist was in “Optimistic,” a straightforward guitar song that urges, “Try the best you can.” It took time, but my friend came around. BEST MOMENT: “Kid A” (2000) <<2 The Arcade Fire Neon Bible
Purists would argue that the Arcade Fire’s debut, Funeral, should be here (or even one spot higher). But for those unmoved by the band’s innocence-lost theatricality, Neon Bible supplies all the drama on a much more palatable stage. There are nods to campfire folk and Springsteen, and the orchestration—overpowering, at times, on Funeral—feels like it has a “Use in Case of Emergency” box around it. Thematically, Neon Bible swaps personal lyrics for social and political commentary, a shift that makes things, oddly, more personal. “I don’t want it faster, I don’t want it free / I don’t want to show you what they’ve done to me,” Win Butler sings in “Windowsill.” “I don’t want to fight in a holy war / I don’t want the salesman knocking at my door / I don’t want to live in America no more.” Somehow, these are words that don’t sound unpatriotic or hopeless. BEST MOMENT: “Intervention” (2007) <<1 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
For a while, it seemed, the legend of Wilco’s fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, outweighed the content. Here was a great band with a loyal following that had finally made its statement, only to have that statement silenced by a label, and an industry, rattled by the ensuing digital revolution. “I would guess that if I was an executive at a record company—the guys with the gold-plated cell phones—and I listened to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, I wouldn’t get it,” Rolling Stone’s David Fricke says in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, the 2003 documentary about the making (and unmaking) of the album. “Why don’t I get it? Because it doesn’t tell me exactly who it’s for, it doesn’t tell me exactly what it’s about, and it doesn’t tell me exactly how much it’ll sell.” In a poetic twist, Wilco won: They got paid twice for the album, which eventually sold more than half a million copies. But YHF should be remembered for other reasons. Released shortly after 9/11, it’s a record about America, for America. You can hear the beating of the heartland in “Ashes of American Flags,” or tattered love in “Poor Places.” The marriage of melody and mystery in “Pot Kettle Black” and “Jesus, Etc.” The juxtaposition of organic and electronic—warmth and distance—in “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.” The longing in “Reservations.” “I know this isn’t what you want me to say / How can I get closer and be further away?” Jeff Tweedy asks in that song. We’ve wondered the same thing. But you won’t find answers at Yankee Hotel, and maybe that’s the point. “We’re looking at things in ways like, “How much time do I have to devote to this?” Fricke says. “And it’s really sad. Music, art, literature, poetry…They’re not meant to be done and done with.” BEST MOMENT: “War on War” (2002) |