Sunday, December 27, 2009
Victor’s Top 10 Albums of the 00s
It’s the end of a decade and time to make a list. A few publications have compiled definitive Top 10 (or Top 50) album lists, so why not me? The only problem being: I don’t think I’ve heard 10 albums from the 00s: on the contrary, this decade is when I got into music made 40 years ago. So to reach 10, I’m including albums I first heard in the 00s.
This makes my list so subjective as to be nearly useless. After all, a list is supposed to provide boundaries to something: genre, timeline or fads, etc. My list delimits nothing more than my mood over the past 10 years... which, now that I look at it, is part of the brooding artist-intellectual image I try so hard to cultivate.
Darling, I tire of my absinthe - Mick Jagger, Performance
10. War & Peace – Edwin Starr
If you had a party and could only choose a single album, you could do worse than leave this on. Starr is the definition of high-energy, his band providing solid up-tempo funk while he throws everything at the wall: wailing, pidgin Spanish, he even has a chorus where he faux-cries to the rhythm. Everyone knows War (What Is It Good For?), his breakout hit, but the rest of the album provides similarly sober highlights at odds with his enthusiasm, including Time, where he muses on his own mortality while the band mimics an alarm clock.
9. Lupine Howl – The Carnivorous Adventures of Lupine Howl
Lupine Howl formed from the bulk of Spiritualized after Jason Pierce kicked them out for labour organizing. In a fair world, they would’ve become just as big as Pierce’s ego. They take the drugs and alienation of Spiritualized and ramp it up, crafting 9 blistering odes to paranoia, loneliness and all the other things one feels once the drugs wear off. The guitars are fuzzy, the vocals are processed, the jams are spacey and psychedelic, but Lupine Howl actually go one better than their predecessor, keeping their arrangements tight and never falling into the latter’s introverted morosis. (If that’s not a word, it should be.) The Jam That Ate Itself says it best: “Gonna find me a UFO and get the fuck out of here.” Sign a better contract first, boys.
8. Alan Price – Lucky Man
Yet to be ground down - Malcolm McDowell, O Lucky Man!
Price made this as the soundtrack to O Lucky Man!, Lindsay Anderson’s post-‘68 rage against the dying of the leftist light. It’s a brilliant film, detailing the descent of Michael Travis, Malcolm McDowell’s bright-eyed naïf, into poverty and disillusion. Price’s soundtrack is like McDowell’s guardian angel, singing bittersweet foreshadowing ballads about life under capitalism. Had Travis paid attention, he would’ve heard Price telling him work & life is a struggle just to survive with a smile on your face. Travis never learns; yet Price studiously avoids mawkish folk, composing bright, upbeat, poppy numbers that belie the tragedy he’s observing.
7. Keane – Under The Iron Sea
Well turned out lads
OK, OK, guilty pleasure. Keane makes solid pop songs, with an edge of self-blame, passive-aggressivity and bitterness. What could be more British? The piano floats delicately over the melody, the background choruses are hummable: I challenge anyone to find better music for a Sunday afternoon stuck in a suburb. Sure, lead singer Tom Chaplin’s breathing can get a bit laboured at times; and on occasion I just want to slap him and tell him to be happier. But since we know pop music demands that every aspect of a failed relationship be submitted to scrutiny, I can think of few groups better suited for the task.
6. The Postal Service – Give Up
This was my soundtrack to 2004, and today when I heard it in a restaurant I still knew every melody. This is a side project of Death Cab For Cutie, whom I always found too tortured and whiny for my tastes; but The Postal Service is indie rock done right. Which is to say, with keyboards instead of guitars, and unironic levity. I hate a certain species of indie rock, one that makes a virtue of an inability to sing and a middle class affectation of detachment. I want my musicians to belt it out with genuine feeling – and here, The Postal Service prove with their bouncy electro-pop that hipsters have feelings, too.
5. Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul – I Got So Much Trouble In My Mind
But they look so happy
This was the first funk disc I ever bought, and it’s still one of the best. Sir Joe wasn’t one of the leading lights of funk, and I suspect it’s because he was a little too honest. He sings about both social and his very personal troubles: he pays too many taxes, his girlfriend is pregnant, his job is hard. He’s even got a whole song devoted to finding one friend – literally, “Gonna get me a friend one day.” He’s like the guy at the party who corners you and insists on telling you all his problems. But backed up by Free Soul, each tale of woe is transformed into a deep, funky groove: the bassline and horns play back and forth, and in a nod to the psych-RnB encounter there’s some feedback-laced guitars to provide extra edge. From the title track: “Give me the strength to carry on, because everything I got is just about gone, and I think about it, I worry about it, I dream about it.” But suddenly you’re dancing to Sir Joe’s blues and everything’s fine again.
4. Vicki Anderson – Message From A Soul Sister
Anderson was part of James Brown’s back-up band; while you can hear his influence on the extended jams and call-and-response, Anderson outshines her roots with her biggest asset, her voice. She tackles gospel-inflected soul, straight-up funk and lugubrious ballads, and the whole time she sounds like she’s standing back from the mic so she doesn’t break it. When she does let loose, like in the civil-rights themed In The Land of Milk and Honey, it’s pure longing and regret. This is not music that’s ashamed of its feelings: Anderson shares her rage and joy, and the lush orchestration is barely enough to channel it. For everyone who thinks any piece of rock music produced in the last 20 years has ‘soul’, this should be required listening.
3. Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul
Real men like cats - Isaac Hayes, Truck Turner
Isaac Hayes was the ultimate in masculinity, before that meant getting oiled up and finding a fellow MMAer to hug. If you thought you were in love, or lonely, your feelings were only margarine to Isaac Hayes' rich creamery butter. Hot Buttered Soul only has four songs, because that’s all the Man needed to express sorrow, lust, regret and love, respectively. I won’t try to describe how smooth his voice is, or how masterful his stage presence in. (Watch Wattstax to see him in 1973 at his prime, when he was the most popular RnB singer ever.) But a brief description of Track 3 will suffice. Hayes takes the most famous ballad about emotional immaturity and running away, By The Time I Get To Phoenix, and transforms it into the tragic story of a young man who devotes his life to passion and gets his heart stomped on. At the moment he discovers he’s being cheated on, Hayes breathes, “Baby, momma – why?” and thrusts more pathos into that single syllable than every single James Blunt, Nickelback and Celine Dion song put together. Check out his 19 minute arrangement for an even more epic emotional ride. The strings and his own saxophone playing are top-rate, but they’re strictly a backdrop to Isaac Hayes’ soul, which we’re lucky that he shared with us.
2. Roots Manuva – Run Come Save Me
We actually need production justice, but I'll forgive him
I realize having only one hip-hop album on this list qualifies me for What White People Like – so be it. Roots Manuva is consistently the most creative hip-hop artist on either side of the Atlantic. His deep, dub-inflected beats draw as much from Jamaica as America, veering close to Tricky’s weed-fogged haze without getting lost in it. His lyrics betray a complex, political understanding of the music industry, social problems and his Black British identity. Witness (1 Hope) was the big hit off that album and remains as infectious as H1N1; Swords In The Dirt is frighteningly danceable, while Sinny Sin Sins tells a languid tale of the contradictions of growing up Baptist. When the bass kicks in, you have to move, but you don’t have to wince at the words.
1. Manic Street Preachers – Know Your Enemy
The Manics, in happier - er, earlier days
Despite having an insane amount of fun seeing the Manics in October, I actually don’t think they’ve had that good a decade. Lifeblood was forced; Send Away The Tigers felt like a belated stab at the teen market; and let’s forget the embarrassing covers compilation Lipstick Traces. Their last truly good album was 2001’s Know Your Enemy, in which they’re in top form, musically and politically. It sees a return to a heavier, angry sound after the stadium anthems of the late 90s; this has to be connected to their subject matter, which draws on a range of artistic and cultural references to alienation, McCarthyism and imperialism. If it sounds complex, it is, which allows the album to yield repeated listenings without getting tired – I’ve had this on heavy rotation for 9 years and it still stands up. The guitars and rhythms are hard and driving but never overwhelming. My personal favourite, Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children, sees them lambasting celebrity liberals for celebrating democracy while ignoring capitalist exploitation (“We love to kiss the Dalai Lama’s ass, cos he is such a holy man, Free to eat and buy anything, Free to fuck from Paris to Beijing”). What’s not to love?
Runners-up: actually, a lot of hip-hop should be on this list. Blackalicious’ Blazing Arrow, Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, Dizzie Rascal, The Streets. Hard-Fi deserves special mention for making anti-capitalist pub sing-a-longs. Jarvis Cocker’s solo work shows the impact of maturity on talent. Ah well – next decade.
For the next cut
This makes my list so subjective as to be nearly useless. After all, a list is supposed to provide boundaries to something: genre, timeline or fads, etc. My list delimits nothing more than my mood over the past 10 years... which, now that I look at it, is part of the brooding artist-intellectual image I try so hard to cultivate.
Darling, I tire of my absinthe - Mick Jagger, Performance
10. War & Peace – Edwin Starr
If you had a party and could only choose a single album, you could do worse than leave this on. Starr is the definition of high-energy, his band providing solid up-tempo funk while he throws everything at the wall: wailing, pidgin Spanish, he even has a chorus where he faux-cries to the rhythm. Everyone knows War (What Is It Good For?), his breakout hit, but the rest of the album provides similarly sober highlights at odds with his enthusiasm, including Time, where he muses on his own mortality while the band mimics an alarm clock.
9. Lupine Howl – The Carnivorous Adventures of Lupine Howl
Lupine Howl formed from the bulk of Spiritualized after Jason Pierce kicked them out for labour organizing. In a fair world, they would’ve become just as big as Pierce’s ego. They take the drugs and alienation of Spiritualized and ramp it up, crafting 9 blistering odes to paranoia, loneliness and all the other things one feels once the drugs wear off. The guitars are fuzzy, the vocals are processed, the jams are spacey and psychedelic, but Lupine Howl actually go one better than their predecessor, keeping their arrangements tight and never falling into the latter’s introverted morosis. (If that’s not a word, it should be.) The Jam That Ate Itself says it best: “Gonna find me a UFO and get the fuck out of here.” Sign a better contract first, boys.
8. Alan Price – Lucky Man
Yet to be ground down - Malcolm McDowell, O Lucky Man!
Price made this as the soundtrack to O Lucky Man!, Lindsay Anderson’s post-‘68 rage against the dying of the leftist light. It’s a brilliant film, detailing the descent of Michael Travis, Malcolm McDowell’s bright-eyed naïf, into poverty and disillusion. Price’s soundtrack is like McDowell’s guardian angel, singing bittersweet foreshadowing ballads about life under capitalism. Had Travis paid attention, he would’ve heard Price telling him work & life is a struggle just to survive with a smile on your face. Travis never learns; yet Price studiously avoids mawkish folk, composing bright, upbeat, poppy numbers that belie the tragedy he’s observing.
7. Keane – Under The Iron Sea
Well turned out lads
OK, OK, guilty pleasure. Keane makes solid pop songs, with an edge of self-blame, passive-aggressivity and bitterness. What could be more British? The piano floats delicately over the melody, the background choruses are hummable: I challenge anyone to find better music for a Sunday afternoon stuck in a suburb. Sure, lead singer Tom Chaplin’s breathing can get a bit laboured at times; and on occasion I just want to slap him and tell him to be happier. But since we know pop music demands that every aspect of a failed relationship be submitted to scrutiny, I can think of few groups better suited for the task.
6. The Postal Service – Give Up
This was my soundtrack to 2004, and today when I heard it in a restaurant I still knew every melody. This is a side project of Death Cab For Cutie, whom I always found too tortured and whiny for my tastes; but The Postal Service is indie rock done right. Which is to say, with keyboards instead of guitars, and unironic levity. I hate a certain species of indie rock, one that makes a virtue of an inability to sing and a middle class affectation of detachment. I want my musicians to belt it out with genuine feeling – and here, The Postal Service prove with their bouncy electro-pop that hipsters have feelings, too.
5. Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul – I Got So Much Trouble In My Mind
But they look so happy
This was the first funk disc I ever bought, and it’s still one of the best. Sir Joe wasn’t one of the leading lights of funk, and I suspect it’s because he was a little too honest. He sings about both social and his very personal troubles: he pays too many taxes, his girlfriend is pregnant, his job is hard. He’s even got a whole song devoted to finding one friend – literally, “Gonna get me a friend one day.” He’s like the guy at the party who corners you and insists on telling you all his problems. But backed up by Free Soul, each tale of woe is transformed into a deep, funky groove: the bassline and horns play back and forth, and in a nod to the psych-RnB encounter there’s some feedback-laced guitars to provide extra edge. From the title track: “Give me the strength to carry on, because everything I got is just about gone, and I think about it, I worry about it, I dream about it.” But suddenly you’re dancing to Sir Joe’s blues and everything’s fine again.
4. Vicki Anderson – Message From A Soul Sister
Anderson was part of James Brown’s back-up band; while you can hear his influence on the extended jams and call-and-response, Anderson outshines her roots with her biggest asset, her voice. She tackles gospel-inflected soul, straight-up funk and lugubrious ballads, and the whole time she sounds like she’s standing back from the mic so she doesn’t break it. When she does let loose, like in the civil-rights themed In The Land of Milk and Honey, it’s pure longing and regret. This is not music that’s ashamed of its feelings: Anderson shares her rage and joy, and the lush orchestration is barely enough to channel it. For everyone who thinks any piece of rock music produced in the last 20 years has ‘soul’, this should be required listening.
3. Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul
Real men like cats - Isaac Hayes, Truck Turner
Isaac Hayes was the ultimate in masculinity, before that meant getting oiled up and finding a fellow MMAer to hug. If you thought you were in love, or lonely, your feelings were only margarine to Isaac Hayes' rich creamery butter. Hot Buttered Soul only has four songs, because that’s all the Man needed to express sorrow, lust, regret and love, respectively. I won’t try to describe how smooth his voice is, or how masterful his stage presence in. (Watch Wattstax to see him in 1973 at his prime, when he was the most popular RnB singer ever.) But a brief description of Track 3 will suffice. Hayes takes the most famous ballad about emotional immaturity and running away, By The Time I Get To Phoenix, and transforms it into the tragic story of a young man who devotes his life to passion and gets his heart stomped on. At the moment he discovers he’s being cheated on, Hayes breathes, “Baby, momma – why?” and thrusts more pathos into that single syllable than every single James Blunt, Nickelback and Celine Dion song put together. Check out his 19 minute arrangement for an even more epic emotional ride. The strings and his own saxophone playing are top-rate, but they’re strictly a backdrop to Isaac Hayes’ soul, which we’re lucky that he shared with us.
2. Roots Manuva – Run Come Save Me
We actually need production justice, but I'll forgive him
I realize having only one hip-hop album on this list qualifies me for What White People Like – so be it. Roots Manuva is consistently the most creative hip-hop artist on either side of the Atlantic. His deep, dub-inflected beats draw as much from Jamaica as America, veering close to Tricky’s weed-fogged haze without getting lost in it. His lyrics betray a complex, political understanding of the music industry, social problems and his Black British identity. Witness (1 Hope) was the big hit off that album and remains as infectious as H1N1; Swords In The Dirt is frighteningly danceable, while Sinny Sin Sins tells a languid tale of the contradictions of growing up Baptist. When the bass kicks in, you have to move, but you don’t have to wince at the words.
1. Manic Street Preachers – Know Your Enemy
The Manics, in happier - er, earlier days
Despite having an insane amount of fun seeing the Manics in October, I actually don’t think they’ve had that good a decade. Lifeblood was forced; Send Away The Tigers felt like a belated stab at the teen market; and let’s forget the embarrassing covers compilation Lipstick Traces. Their last truly good album was 2001’s Know Your Enemy, in which they’re in top form, musically and politically. It sees a return to a heavier, angry sound after the stadium anthems of the late 90s; this has to be connected to their subject matter, which draws on a range of artistic and cultural references to alienation, McCarthyism and imperialism. If it sounds complex, it is, which allows the album to yield repeated listenings without getting tired – I’ve had this on heavy rotation for 9 years and it still stands up. The guitars and rhythms are hard and driving but never overwhelming. My personal favourite, Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children, sees them lambasting celebrity liberals for celebrating democracy while ignoring capitalist exploitation (“We love to kiss the Dalai Lama’s ass, cos he is such a holy man, Free to eat and buy anything, Free to fuck from Paris to Beijing”). What’s not to love?
Runners-up: actually, a lot of hip-hop should be on this list. Blackalicious’ Blazing Arrow, Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, Dizzie Rascal, The Streets. Hard-Fi deserves special mention for making anti-capitalist pub sing-a-longs. Jarvis Cocker’s solo work shows the impact of maturity on talent. Ah well – next decade.
For the next cut
Labels: Britpop, funk, hip hop, music, Top 10
