The World Spins Out Of Tune - Top 50 Albums of the 2000s
It’s not quite the end of the decade yet, but it’s near enough for Pitchfork and Uncut to release horrifically mediocre Top Albums of the Decade lists, so I thought I may as well get in on the act now as well. It’s unlikely that anything released in the next couple of months will drastically change the order of the list, but if it does and you’re reading this now, well gosh now I feel silly. The thing about the 2000s is that there has been no underlying trend, as far as I can see there are no hands-down classics like Pet Sounds in the 60s or Loveless in the 90s that you’d just have to have on the list. But on the upside there has been loads of fantastic music that will only ever be a niche interest. The state of music certainly isn’t as grim as a cursory scan of Pitchfork or Uncut will have you believe. When I started my list, I thought I would find no trend in my results either, but as the list went on, I found myself more and more describing the music as having the ability to transport you to some Other Place, the ability to create a self-contained musical world. This probably says more about my taste then any general trend in music itself, but as far as trends go, I’m happy with that one. I don’t think music should not engage at all with reality, I just like the ability to completely lose yourself in a good record.
So this list is simply the 50 albums that came out in the last 10 years that I’ve enjoyed the most. I have limited each artist to one album for the sake of musical diversity; suffice to say there are many artists on this list for whom I could have easily picked two or more albums from. The Fall, Erase Errata, Electrelane and all the Ghost Box artists spring to mind immediately. The order is absolutely final and was calculated using SCIENCE that you mere mortals would simply not understand, but trust me when I say that my methods are mathematically sound and totally wasn’t the result of me typing up the first 50 albums I could think of and randomly rearranging the order so it looked nice. But first: honourable and dishonourable mentions:
Not on the list because they’re crap: Up The Bracket, Is This It, Vampire Weekend, anything by Sigur Ros, Kid A.
Bubbling under because they’re good but in danger of becoming horrifically over-rated: Turn On The Bright Lights, Funeral (second best album of the decade? Piss off.), Fever To Tell, Dear Catastrophe Waitress (The Life Pursuit’s crap). Probably Yoshimi falls into this category as well.
Artists who have surprisingly been shit for 10 years now but still soldier on: the Manics, Radiohead. Congratulations Mr Cave, No More Shall We Part means you just miss out.
Embarrassingly not on the list because I’ve forgotten or haven’t got round to listening to it yet: fill this bit in yourself. The Transactional Dharma of Roj (Ghost Box 012) probably belongs on here somewhere, but I only got it through the post yesterday so I’ve only heard it the once.
Right. On to the main attraction:
50. King Crimson – The ConstruKction of Light (2000)
If modern day Crimso are a disappointment, it’s only in comparison to the giddy heights they scaled earlier in their career. Taken on their own considerable merits, their 00s albums are great. Whilst 2003’s The Power To Believe is the stronger album, ConstruKction arguably reaches higher peaks. Modern updates of ‘Larks Tongues’ and ‘Fracture’ may be unnecessary, but it’s still great to hear the band in full flight muscling its way through such strong material. The rest of the material saw King Crimson’s eccentric sense of humour to the fore, (mostly) without harming the power and majesty of the music. And the title track is an all-time Crimso great, with its spiralling elliptical guitar lines and one of Adrian Belew’s most engaging and cryptic lyrics. “And if Warhol is a genius…”
49. The Long Blondes – Someone To Drive You Home (2006)
Stolen moves, sure, but when they’re executed this well, who cares? The Long Blondes were fun, smart and sassy, brimming with infectious energy and armed with a real knack for a tune. The album highlights ‘Once And Never Again’, ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ and ‘Weekend Without Makeup’ transcend their Blondie-meets-Pulp origins to make great pop with heart and brains.
48. The Mars Volta – De-Loused In The Comatorium (2003)
The prog rock revival has been secretly gaining ground for some time, but even today to announce on your debut album that you’ve written an allegorical concept album about your dead friend’s afterlife or whatever the devil De-Loused is meant to be about is to set yourself up as a target for untold ridicule. The Mars Volta, then as now, were never ones to let ridicule stand in the way of their preposterous ambition. Against all the odds, the ex-hardcore punks came up trumps with a fantastically overblown yet stunningly ambitious piece of music that flew in the face of indie rock orthodoxy. The band have never looked back. Their other albums are fantastic, but the debut remains my favourite, if only for its sheer audacity.
47. Liars – They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On The Top (2001)
You know, it’s funny that I can’t be bothered with Liars any more, because I loved this album when it came out. The whole dance-punk, post-punk revival thing wound up being a massive disappointment, but actually, I still reckon this album delivers. Helped in no small part by a great rhythm section (which they subsequently lost, and boy do the records suffer for it), They Threw Us All… may be a gauche recycling of past post-punk tropes, but it undeniably possesses a dark energy and enthusiasm. While they never matched the invention and intensity of the Gang of Four or ESG records they were imitating, the likes of ‘Grown Men Don’t Fall In A River Just Like That’ and ‘Mr. Your On Fire Mr.’ thunder along with convulsive purpose. And the occult horrors of ‘This Dust Makes That Mud’ ends on a 20 minute lock groove designed to test the listener’s patience. Stupid but cool.
46. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (2007)
I don’t really want to add too much to the noise already surrounding this album, but, you know, it’s pretty good. James Murphy gets to rip off everyone from La Dusseldorf to David Bowie and doesn’t wind up looking stupid doing so. He even manages to invest the record with real emotional punch – ‘Someone Great’ and ‘All My Friends’ wind up being more then fancy games of Spot The Hipster Reference Point via Murphy’s sincere and actually kinda profound look at ageing.
45. Welcome – Sirs (2006)
An oddity in this day and age, in that there’s pretty much no context for this. Arguably just a thirty-minute mess with no discernable hooks, patience reveals Welcome to be a bizarre half-breed descended from early Pere Ubu and Syd Barrett-era Floyd. Trebly scratchy guitars pan wildly from one speaker to the other, drums clatter, the whole thing collapses in on itself then reassembles inside out. And eventually, structures reveal themselves – charming, tuneful vocals rise out of the chaos, only to be swallowed again as all hell breaks loose. Then the song ends, and it’s only been two and a half minutes. This continues for the whole record. I have no idea who these guys are, but in its own way and entirely on its own terms, I think this album is something of a modern classic.
44. Deerhoof – Milk Man (2004)
Now this is definitely a modern classic. Deerhoof play an attention deficit mash of post-punk, psychedelia, prog and sheer noise, often all at the same time, topped off by a cute Japanese singer who sings disturbingly twisted and gauche lyrics like sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Milk Man is the band at the peak of their powers, cramming as many hooks, ideas and just general bat shit craziness into each song as possible. It’s a concept album of some sort about the eponymous Milk Man, who kidnaps children and takes them to his magical kingdom. Or something. The band have too much fun to get bogged down in the details, which is how it should be. And with tunes as infectious as the title track, who’s complaining?
43. Blood Ceremony – Blood Ceremony (2008)
In this irony-clad age, thank the gods for Blood Ceremony. Copping all their moves from Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull circa 72 and writing songs about witchcraft and black magic entirely devoid of self-awareness or irony, Blood Ceremony are a surprisingly refreshing proposition. It doesn’t hurt that their guitarist sure knows how to Tony Iommi-it up, or that their female lead vocalist has an incredible voice. But it’s the strength of the material that lifts this above retro-pastiche and gives the band a voice of their own, despite their prominent influences.
42. Subtonix – Tarantism (2002)
And whilst we’re on the subject of black magic… Here come the Subtonix, like an undead X-Ray Spex, all set to feed on the flesh of the living and banish all the mediocre post-punk revivalists to the pit from whence they came. Considering how bland most of the post-punk revival bands turned out, it’s something of a mystery why Subtonix, armed with real attitude, nurse uniforms and buckets of fake blood, failed to capture the public’s imagination. They certainly had the tunes – all spiky guitars, gloomy bass, shrieking sax riffs and Siouxsie vocals. Sadly it wasn’t to be, but we still have this, the band’s only album, which still brims with darkness, mystery and, well, damnit, fun.
41. Animal Collective – Sung Tongs (2004)
Again, this record’s been praised enough. But it’s got some top tunes on it. Despite having their influences, Animal Collective didn’t really sound like anyone else, and they remain unique. Sung Tongs saw them staking out their territory, and it’s remarkable in this reductive day and age just how broad it is – folky guitars and campfire singalongs to tape-loops, electronics and daemonic chanting. This openness has served AC very well over the years, and they ended the decade with the fantastic Meriwether Post Pavilion being justifiably praised to the skies and even scraping the top 20. Nice one.
40. Einsturzende Neubauten – Perpetuum Mobile (2004)
Much as I hate this phrase, Perpetuum Mobile really was a return to form. For the first time in their career, Ende Neu and Silence Is Sexy had seen Neubauten occasionally struggling to reconcile compositional subtlety with their penchant for all-out metal on metal noise. However, with Perpetuum Mobile, they really nailed it. From the motorik of the title track which echoes their Krautrock forefathers to the haiku-like elegance of ‘Ich Gehe Jetz’, the album’s sonic range is stunning. The boys from Berlin use every material that comes their way to its fullest sonic potential, yet always ensure that the arrangement serves the song. Blixa is on top form as a vocalist as form, showing that he can handle delicate emotion as well as that scream. They even get all sentimental on the genuinely moving ‘Dead Friends (Around The Corner)’ and carry it off with aplomb and dignity.
39. Xiu Xiu – Fabulous Muscles (2004)
Another Pitchfork choice. Good record though. Fabulous Muscles remains Xiu Xiu’s peak, the perfect mix of crazy sonic inventiveness and delicately poised (well, for these guys anyway) songwriting. Despite the often harrowing subject matter, it remains a thoroughly enjoyable record. No more is the disparity between luscious, New Order-influenced melody and the song’s innate horror shown then on ‘I Love The Valley OH!’, a passionately sung overdose tale set to gorgeous pop.
38. Comets On Fire – Blue Cathedral (2004)
This one actually pisses me off, because if it was better, then it would be unbelievably awesome. I think it’s let down by crappy production, the way it’s recorded makes it kind of hard to listen to. Anyway, what a great album. Ben Chasny does 70s space rock. He’s a fantastic guitarist, and he freaks out with a vengeance all over this record. See, if it were better then I could say it was like a modern Ash Ra Tempel, with Chasny as a Manuel Gottsching de nos jours, but sadly the record just misses. Irritating. Anyway, yeah, top stuff otherwise.
37. Kate Bush – Aerial (2005)
Kate Bush’s return after 12 years. It’s funny, in her absence she’s really become a touchstone for a kind of female pop singer. I like Tori Amos, but once you get on to people like Bat For Lashes, they’re kind of taking the piss. Anyway, Kate storms back into the fold with this glorious song suite and shows ‘em all how it’s done. Songs about washing machines, numbers, sunsets… it was like she’d never been away. Despite having nothing to prove at this stage of the game, she went ahead and did it anyway. And then… silence.
36. Six Organs Of Admittance – Dark Noontide (2002)
More Ben Chasny. Six Organs Of Admittance are a bit better then Blue Cathedral at fulfilling their potential. This album is a fantastic mix of Western and Eastern folk, psychedelic rock and electronic drone, almost Fairport Convention covering Coil in Hokkaido. People tried to nail them to the free folk thing, but Six Organs don’t really fit anywhere, they just continue ploughing their own furrow and sod the rest of the world. Good on ‘em. Album highlight – the almost Amon Duul II-like ‘A Thousand Birds’, the perfect synthesis of psychedelic folk and raga rock.
35. Litmus – Planetfall (2007)
‘DESTROY THE MOTHERSHIP!’ Litmus are blatant Hawkwind plagiarists, but when it’s done with such panache it’s impossible to be angry. And not even Hawkwind have ripped off Hawkwind this well for years. This is a highly proficient slab of space rock in good old fashioned Mountain Grill vintage. However, Litmus are smart enough to avoid Hawkwind’s missteps without jettisoning their sense of adventure. If these guys ever learn to stand on their own two feet, they could be dangerous. For now, they can settle with just great fun.
34. Legendary Pink Dots – The Whispering Wall (2004)
The Legendary Pink Dots have gotten to the stage of their career where they can pretty much do what they want. They’re never going to crack the mainstream, and they don’t care, they’re pretty much happy with their small but loyal solid fan base. The Whispering Wall comes on like its contending with the big boys though. All the usual ingredients are there in exelcis – swirling pulsating keyboards, dinky electronics, psychedelic guitar and Edward Ka-Spel’s lisping vocals. But now it was coupled to some of their strongest and just plain approachable material in ages. A younger band would have been gunning for a breakthrough, but typically the Pink Dots were unconcerned about the wider world.
33. Wolf Eyes – Human Animal (2006)
Why not Burned Mind? Great as that album was, it was fairly standard Whitehouse/Merzbow burn-your-face-off noise, albeit done with aplomb. Human Animal is a more developed, subtler album. It’s as nasty and unpleasant as it’s predecessor, but because it actually factors in quieter moments and different timbers, it manages to be even more extreme and nerve-wracking, and even expand the vocabulary of a genre far too content to play to its strengths at the expense of development.
32. Current 93 – Black Ships Ate The Sky (2006)
In which Current 93 almost accidentally break into the mainstream. Black Ships… isn’t a prissy sell-out record by any stretch of the imagination – it’s pretty much business as usual. Violent apocalyptic visions, tapeloops, guitar and piano led folk music. But, thanks to all the free folk nonsense flying around, C93 were in the odd position off almost fitting with the current musical context, and high-profile collaborators from Antony to Marc Almond raised the record’s profile even further. At the end of the day, though, it wasn’t to be, and all we are left with is another great Current 93 album. There are worse fates.
31. Porcupine Tree – Deadwing (2005)
It’s pretty much personal preference which P-Tree album of the 00s is your favourite. Whilst none of them matched the band’s career highs of Signify and The Sky Moves Sideways, they were all consistently good. I’m going for Deadwing today because it has the gorgeous ‘Lazarus’ and ‘Mellotron Scratch’ on it. And it’s a pretty good album. So there.
30. Nisennenmondai – Destination Tokyo (2008)
Nisennenmondai are an all-girl Japanese no-wave trio who call their songs ‘Pop Group’ and ‘This Heat’. The only way they could get any better would be if, on their full-length debut, they went on an epic krautprog freak out as well. Oh wait, that’s just what they did. Perfect. If you don’t think that sounds like the best thing since sliced bread, there’s something wrong with you.
29. Kode9 And The Spaceape – Memories Of The Near Future (2006)
A dubstep classic. Kode9’s sonic dystopia – all loping beats, sub-bass explosions, the hollowed-out zombie corpse of rave – is matched by Spaceape’s Philip K Dick-on-a-downer paranoid alien rantings, all delivered in his sonorous Jamaican patois. Cannibalising everything in its wake from rave culture to the Seven Samurai to Prince, Kode9 takes no prisoners. The sound of post-millennial dread at its chilling finest.
28. The Organ – Grab That Gun (2004)
At the end of the day, were The Organ just wasted potential? Grab That Gun comes on like the strongest indie debut of the decade. Katie Sketch’s hand-picked crew materialised out of nowhere with this gem of a record. Heavily influenced by The Cure and The Smiths, The Organ appropriated those bands’ male whining and used it as a template to express their female angst. But beyond the intriguing concept were ridiculously strong songs with intelligent and perceptive lyrics. ‘Steve Smith’ deals with the spectre of Morrissey by taking him out and shooting him, and ‘Brother’ has Sketch wryly acknowledging that she could be wrong over the song’s brutal coda. This half hour of top quality pop should have been the start of a brilliant career, but wound up being the end as the band disintegrated a mere two years later.
27. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – No More Shall We Part (2001)
Old Saint Nick’s last great album is arguably his best work outside the Birthday Party. Having abandoned his old fire and brimstone style for reflective ballads, the real triumph of No More… is that it reveals what a strong songwriter Cave had become. There’s nothing really new here in sonics or lyrics – Cave explores his usual themes of love, passion, death, loss and the morality and consequences which tie all of them together – it’s more the strength of the material is at an absolute peak. ‘Hallelujah’, ‘As I Sat Sadly By Her Side’ and ‘Love Letter’ show Nick at his most melodic and lyrical, whilst he still manages to summon up some of the fire of old (thanks in no small part to Blixa) on ‘The Sorrowful Wife’. Cave would follow this up with the meritless Noctoruama before getting bored with writing songs altogether, instead hamming up his mad preacher shtick over less and less memorable material. Remember him this way.
26. The Go-Betweens – Oceans Apart (2005)
This album wound up becoming the Go-Betweens’ unintentional swansong, as it was followed by the sudden tragic death of Grant McLennan. Still, what a way to go. The Go-Betweens sign off at the peak of their game, with Robert Forster at his scabrous best on ‘Here Comes A City’, and McLennan sounding suitably elegiac on the gorgeous ‘No Reason To Cry’. Elsewhere, the usual fine melodies and literate wordplay were present in abundance. The band sound on top form, and very much like they’re enjoying themselves immensely. It’s nice that they finished on such a strong, uplifting album.
25. Antony And The Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now (2005)
I Am A Bird Now shows Antony’s songwriting at its personal best. Delicate, imaginative arrangements, unusual subject matter treated in a sensitive and intelligent way, and that voice – this album was incredibly fresh when it appeared amidst a tired and clichéd indie scene and despite all the media attention that followed, it still sounds remarkably singular. What remains is the haunting simplicity of the songs, and the passion that Antony pours into the performance.
24. XTC – Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) (2000)
XTC’s final offering sees the band in fine health. Apple Venus Volume 1 saw XTC take their jerky, oblique pop to new orchestral heights. Wasp Star retains the general sound, but feels somehow more relaxed and at ease with itself. These songs may have been rumoured to be offtakes from Volume 1, but when the material’s this good it seems churlish to complain. Lyrical, poppy and gorgeously melodic, yet unassuming and eccentric, Wasp Star makes a very fitting coda to XTC’s recording career. God bless.
23. Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna (2008)
The peak of the Brooklyn scene. Gang Gang dance are such a weird mash-up of influences – electro, afrobeat, hip hop, psychedelia, post punk, R & B, noise… their music should be a complete unlistenable mess. Yet somehow, on Saint Dymphna it all comes together to create a thoroughly modern hybrid. Chanting mixes in with brutal electric precussion as MBV soundscapes swirl into themselves. More so then even their most accomplished peers, Gang Gang Dance have fused their disparate source material into their own identifiable sound. It’s catchy too.
22. Life Without Buildings – Any Other City (2001)
“If I lose / If I lose / If I lose….” The most remarkable thing about Life Without Buildings’ sole LP is Sue Tompkins’ stream of consciousness vocals. Her weird, chirpy voice stutters and trips over phrases. Lyrics seem to chase each other’s tails throughout entire songs, cutting and pasting back in on themselves. Mundane pieces of chatter become magical by being removed from their context. What on earth is she on about? That’s not to say that she carries the album by herself. The rest of the band provide a shimmering dreampop backing which swirls and swells, like a blessed-out Television. The band mysteriously broke up one year later, and nothing more was heard from them, but this album remains a thing of wondrous, mysterious beauty.
21. Eric Zann – Ouroborindra (2005)
Ghost Box 004. An eccentric release on an eccentric album, Eric Zann was a mute viol player whose eldritch music had the ability to cause rifts in the space-time continuum, allowing all sorts of cosmic horrors access to our dimension. Jim Jupp couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate pseudonym for this release. Whereas the other Ghost Box artists focus more on the uncanny then the menacing, most of the music on Ouroborindra is outright malevolent. With its references to Lovecraft, C S Lewis and Arthur Machen, the album is full of warped tape effects, evil sounding drones and analogue synthesizers, all manipulated to sound as menacing as possible. Don’t listen to this in the dark.
20. The Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (2009)
Against the odds, this album actually comes close to some kind of Gentle Giant meets Scritti Politti hybrid. With their concept albums about Don Henley and lounge-music reworkings of Black Flag albums, Dirty Projectors should be complete charlatans. I’m still not convinced that Dave Longstreth isn’t a charlatan; he certainly sounds, behaves and acts like one. Therefore the Dirty Projectors should just be smug hipster douchebaggery, but this actually is far from the case. I have no idea what this band’s game are, I mean what the hell are they trying to achieve? I suspect a massive put on, but then maybe Longstreth has some kind of idiot savant thing going on. Whatever his bizarre intentions maybe, when he writes a tune, stuff like ‘Useful Chamber’ and ‘Stillness Is The Move’ happen. Which ultimately makes him alright by me, I guess.
19. Coil – Musick To Play In The Dark Volumes 1 and 2 (2000)
Yeah this is kind of cheating. So bite me. Coil reinvented themselves at the turn of the millennium by opening themselves up to the female and lunar influences they had been shutting out. The results were some of their finest music. Laced with digital clicks, designed as the computer-age equivalent to the crackle of the fire, these dark and sensual songs give Coil an extra dimension that was missing from their earlier, more aggressive work. Haunted and haunting, Balance is at his shamanistic best throughout, whether flirting with ghost boys on ‘Where Are You?’ or dealing with the death of his parents by sheltering in memories of their mundane advice in ‘Broccoli’. ‘The Dreamer Is Still Asleep’ is a dark psychedelic epic, whilst the elegiac ‘Batwings’ ends with Balance singing made-up gibberish like it was Gregorian chants. The end effect is surprisingly moving.
18. Scritti Politti – White Bread, Black Beer (2006)
Who could have predicted that Green Gartside would return from years of exile in 2006 with his best album yet? Yet that’s what happened. Green Gartside finally got over his existential neurosis and post-structuralism to deliver the pop album he was born to make. From the Beatles-esque ‘Dr. Abernathy’ to Snow In The Sun’, the record is crammed full of great pop, all the more affecting for being emotionally honest for a change. The album was even followed by rare, celebratory live dates, most out of character for the borderline-reclusive Gartside.
17. Magma – Kohntarkosz Anteria (2004)
KA is one of Magma’s crowning achievements. It is one of their perfect albums, up there with Mekanik Destructiw Kommandoh, Kohntarkosz, Wurdah Itah and Theuz Haamtahk. The only reason it’s as low as number 17 is because, whilst it was recorded in 2004, it was written in the mid 70s, so I kind of feel placing it any higher is cheating. KA is part of the Kohntarkosz trilogy, and, as with the Wurdah Itah trilogy, lack of funding and the rigours of touring meant that when the time to record came round, Christian Vander skipped straight to the climactic Kohntartkosz. KA remained unrecorded for years, like Theusz Haamtahk and Ementeht Ra, the latter which remains so. Fortunately for us, Vander got Magma back together to finally do justice to the work, and it stands up there with the rest of the band’s masterpieces. Harsh, rhythmic and malevolent like its sister piece, KA finds the new line up coping wonderfully well with the material, and comparing quite favourably indeed thank you to the iconic Topp and Blasquiz line up which recorded the latter.
16. Acid Mothers Temple And The Melting Paradise UFO – Absolutely Freak Out! (Zap Your Mind) (2001)
Let’s face it, all AMT albums are interchangeable up to a point, so you may as well pick whatever one you like. I’m going for Absolutely Freak Out. It’s a double album, so there’s plenty of krautrock-damaged space rock to go round, it’s got a good solid line up with Cotton Casino on vocals, and it has a nice cover. Epic stuff.
15. Marillion – Marbles (2004)
Hogarth-era Marillion work in a strange way. Masterpieces are interspersed with increasingly experimental gap albums, which the band use as stepping stones to achieve the next masterpiece. Marbles is the result of the band expanding their palette on This Strange Engine, Radiation and Marillion.com, which saw them add Cuban party music, Radiohead-derived indie rock and electronica and trip hop to their list of influences. Those albums were all fantastic and it was a lot of fun to hear the band try out all these new styles, but it was only with Marbles that you got to see where they were going with all this. Marbles is a solid gold classic; identifiably prog in its classic incarnation, but at the same time boldly and brashly modern. ‘The Invisible Man’ is Marillion’s ‘Supper’s Ready’, a moving and lyrical epic that shifts through a number of styles, but augmented by electronics, incredibly inventive keyboard work from Mark Kelly and some very innovative guitar work from Steve Rothery. Elsewhere Marillion out-REM REM on ‘Genie’ and give us two more prog epics in Ocean Cloud and Neverland. Mud in the eye for anyone who still thinks they’re one-dimensional Genesis rip-offs.
14. The Advisory Circle – Other Channels (2008)
Ghost Box 010. Other Channels is The Advisory Circle’s first full-length release. Building on from the excellent Mind How You Go EP, Other Channels is the gateway to an alternate universe, the world as seen by bored sedated housewives when the Mogadon starts to go wrong. Cold War paranoia crackles through public service announcements, cracks start to appear in the ice, the visiting salesman is warped into a being of cosmic horror. The record harks back to a time when electronic music sounded genuinely alien and uncanny, and acts as a prism, allowing us to see the ghosts haunting the school piano and trapped in the wires. Yet despite the overwhelming sense of the Other, this may well be Ghost Box’s most inviting, accessible release.
13. Ghost – Hypnotic Underworld (2004)
Japan’s Ghost realized that there was still plenty of mileage to be gotten out of psychedelia and prog, and that one need not be retro in the slightest to do so. Thus, Ghost channel the spirits of Syd Barrett, Dave Allen and Robert Fripp, as well as home-grown oddities like Brast Burn and Flower Travellin’ Band to make their entirely individual take on prog rock. Dreamy and lush, yet with a muscular menacing undercurrent, Hypnotic Underworld keeps up the pace brilliantly, through its epic, multi-part title suite through the Far East Family Band whimsy of The Piper and a very authoritative cover of Syd’s ‘Dominoes’. Anywhere else this kind of behaviour would get you laughed at, but because their Japanese they wind up being kind of cool. Righteous.
12. Rings – Black Habit (2008)
The most under-rated album of the decade? Rings released this singular masterpiece to general indifference last year, which is a great shame. It is, quite simply, the best Paw Tracks release by some distance. The problem with the post-punk revival is that instead of moving on from such unsurpassed sonic innovations as Metal Box, Hex Enduction Hour or Deceit, the groups were content to rehash other people’s ideas, so that Andy Gill’s guitar sound is merely another indie trope. Black Habit is the direct descendant of Cut and Odyshape, our girls here ready and willing to explore the sonic landscapes opened up by those albums. Haunting and spectral, the songs’ exploratory structure never loses site of their emotional core, whilst the sonic brew is broad enough to encompass folk and dub influences.
11. The Focus Group – We Are All Pan’s People (2007)
Ghost Box 008. This was the first Ghost Box release I heard, and in true GB style, it opened up an entirely new musical dimension to me, one I was unaware even existed. Drawing from the experiments of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, library music and dinky 70s electronica, The Focus Group epitomize the Ghost Box house style, using these elements to create a spectral alternate present, in which the futurist dreams of the 60s and 70s came to pass. But whereas Belbury Poly and The Advisory Circle use uncanny samples and arcane reference points to create a sense of temporal displacement in their essentially melodic compositions, The Focus Group achieve this via a jarring cut-and-paste aesthetic. We Are All Pan’s People flickers between hokey folk songs, found sound, electronics and disembodied voices like a radio switching randomly between stations. Upon hearing it I was immediately reminded of The Faust Tapes in the way the music creates its own internal logic through a mixing together of seemingly unrelated musical snippets. Pan’s People holds its own against such a monolithic and iconic work, and like Copey decribes in Krautrocksampler one can imagine kids in the playground doing skits of it, surely a sign of a record’s power to get under your skin.
10. Joanna Newsom – Ys (2006)
This record is quite simply astonishing. Precious little else released this decade can touch it for invention and musical ambition. Whilst the idea of a precocious female singer songwriter armed with a harp can arouse suspicion before you even see the medieval style painting on the cover art, Ys is a thoroughly well-realized song cycle. The record is, to all intents and purposes, a modern version of Roy Harper’s Stormcock. Like Harper, Newsom explores the mystical and the sensual with a rare warmth and good humor, whilst the music is dazzlingly complex. The 5 songs are packed full of melodic ideas, gorgeous chord changes and stunning melodies, adeptly supported by Van Dyke Park’s orchestral arrangement, which adds tonal colour but never gets in the way. In a world where music has increasingly become the background noise to aggressive commercials, and everyone is trying to undercut everyone else to appeal to the lowest common denominator, Ys’ delicate beauty stood out even more.
9. Burial – Burial (2006)
Burial’s self-titled debut conjures up a London of the not too distant future, submerged in water and populated by fleeting ghosts. The music is a spectral echo of rave, all empty spaces and pirate radio crackle. Burial is otherworldly and mysterious, something not even the revelation of his identity can shatter. Burial’s debut just edges it over the excellent follow up Untrue for one crucial reason – the voices are more disembodied and submerged, achieving a ghostly subliminal presence that gives the tracks more power. There is a real understanding of space and silence, creating an almost cavernous impression, like Joy Division playing in a mausoleum. The human presence in the music is numbed, lost, confused. As a result the music achieves a profound but never cloying sense of pathos. The album reflects perfectly post-millennial tension, the vague gnawing sense of dread triggered by too much information and too little sleep as the world spirals out of control around us.
8. Peter Gabriel – Up (2002)
Peter Gabriel has released music in 5 different decades, and is still going from strength to strength. Up shows just what a mature, confident and exciting musician the man is. Gabriel’s natural thirst for new sounds and sense of adventure has served him well. Here he creates a rich tapestry from cutting edge digital noise and traditional African and Asian instruments. Up sounds sonically gorgeous and ridiculously exciting. But at the heart of it all, Gabriel is still just an incredible songwriter, and the songs here sit comfortably with his best material, which considering the man’s track record is no mean feet. ‘More Than This’ and ‘I Grieve’ show him at his heartbreaking best, whilst ‘Signal To Noise’ uses a guest appearance by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to achieve its apocalyptic climax. ‘No Way Out’ and ‘The Drop’ are haunting and frightening in equal measure, whilst ‘Darkness’ switches from pools of quiet beauty to chasms of roaring terror in the flick of a knife. Throughout it all, Gabriel’s voice is in fine form. Always sounding curiously aged, he has grown into it know, and it has lost none of its warmth or its passion in the process.
7. The Knife – Silent Shout (2006)
“I caught a glimpse, now it haunts me…” The Knife’s second LP saw them move on from their merely excellent debut to produce one of the All Time Classics. Whilst not exactly a concept album, the songs feel linked together to form a cohesive whole in a way that the tracks on Deep Cuts just don’t. Dark and brooding, the songs have a common thread of unhealthy relationships and shifting identity. This is conveyed brilliantly by Karin Dreijer Andersson’s already impressive vocals, which are subjected to all manner of sonic manipulations and tricksiness to create a host of disturbed and disturbing characters, from the sirens on ‘The Captain’ to the violent misogynistic gangster in ‘One Hit’. The music backs her every inch of the way, from the haunted pulsings of the title track to the apocalyptic sonic bombing of ‘We Share Our Mother’s Health’. The Knife really show up all these crappy synth pop bands that have sprung up recently, because they are able to use electronics to their full potential, creating a detailed and absorbing sonic world, whereas most of these muppets with synthesizers and female lead singers with dubious haircuts have difficulty convincingly ripping off Duran Duran.
6. The Fall – Country On The Click (2003)
Seeing as it’s no longer the real new Fall LP by any stretch of the imagination, I’ve decided that this album can now revert to its original intended title. The Fall seem pretty much indestructible at this point, having come back from the brink and gone from strength to strength over a series of incredibly strong LPs. This remains the high point of 2000s Fall. After the fiasco of Are You The Missing Winner, easily their worst record since the dreaded Cerebral Caustic, only the faithful could have been getting fired up about this release, but they were proved right and then some. As soon as ‘Green Eyed Loco Man’ bursts through the speakers, it’s clear they mean business in a way that hasn’t been apparent since the heady days of The Infotainment Scan. The football hooligan anthem ‘Theme From Sparta FC’ is one of those classic Fall shoulda-been-a-hit-single songs, brutal, nasty and catchy as all hell. Townie anthem ‘Contraflow’ sees MES laying into the countryside over a crushing riff, whilst ‘Johnny, Janet and James’ and ‘Mountain Energei’ see the band successfully engaging with their reflective side for the first time in years. ‘Mike’s Love Xexagon’ sees Mark E Smith take the side of the world’s most hated Beach Boy over whooshing electronics and spectral chanting, proof that however prominent the band’s pop side becomes, they never let their experimental side rest either. The Fall would go on to produce three more great albums this decade, but Country On The Click remains not only the high point of this period of their existence, but one of the All Time Fall Classics, up there with Hex, Infotainment and Saving Grace.
5. Erase Errata – Other Animals (2001)
The post-punk revival promised so much, a return to innovation and experimentation in guitar pop after years of retro posturing. And initially it looked like it might be able to deliver, especially if you listen to Erase Errata’s stunning debut album. No mere rehash of other people’s ideas, Erase Errata’s stroppy, choppy and angular music is influenced by Gang of Four, The Fall and The Minutemen, but also a healthy dose of Captain Beefheart. Rather then just use these as clever reference points, the band incorporate them into their own individual sound, using improvisation as a basis for coming up with ideas. The songs are short and wonderfully economic, the longest song clocking in at just under three minutes, because the band use the old Wire technique of the song stops when the text runs out. The lyrical subject matter proves the band to be eloquent and politically aware, and able to talk about such issues without resorting to soap-box sloganeering. Bands in Erase Errata’s wake would dilute the original post-punk sound in order to achieve mass commercial success, but our heroes continue to plug away, as vital and as singular as ever.
4. Astra – The Weirding (2009)
In which prog rock returns to conquer the world. Astra’s debut arrived fully formed, as if our heroes had just fallen through a time rift from 1973. A double vinyl concept album (about some vague apocalyptic rumblings, I think) with gorgeous cover art, which is how you do these things if you’re doing it properly, the title track alone manages to sonically reference ‘Cirkus’ and ‘Echoes’ and still winds up sounding like its own beast. The album is suffused with gorgeous mid-period Floyd vocal harmonies, cosmic guitar and thunderous mellotron not heard since the heady days of Lizard. The group’s instrumental prowess is really second to none, and on the side-long cosmic instrumental ‘Ouroboros’ they all get a chance to spread their wings to dazzling effect. The album’s true strength is the way that the group manage to transcend their influences by the sheer strength of their cosmic vision. Thus, while you can hear echoes of prog rock heroes both famous and obscure (is that some Far East Family Band I hear in there?), Astra achieve their own individual sound. The album closes, in proper prog rock fashion, with the gloriously epic ‘Beyond To Slight The Maze’, which just keeps rising in grandeur and intensity. One of my albums of the year for 2009, and a definite highlight of the decade.
3. Electrelane – The Power Out (2004)
The way Verity Susman sings ‘Ave Maria’ at the end of ‘Gone Under The Sea’, somehow both spiritual and wistful, is one of the most moving moments in music of the last 10 years. Electrelane were true greats, an inspired mix of Stereolab, Raincoats and Neu!, always delivered with passion and intensity and a knowledge that louder and faster doesn’t necessarily mean better. Despite having a well-defined sound, The Power Out shows just how versatile that sound was, and how far removed they were from the mere Stereolab copyists some of the press had them pegged as. The choir on ‘The Valleys’ is one of the most inventive uses of choir in pop music, utterly unexpected the first time you hear it and singularly powerful. ‘Oh Sombra!’ sees the band tear it up in style, and elsewhere the band never drop the ball, moving deftly from lyrical instrumentals to songs with lyrics taken from Nietzsche and Siegfried Sassoon. Moves that would be pretentious in lesser bands’ hands come off here with surprising ease, as the band engage with the emotional core of their highly sourced texts whilst avoiding any pomposity or smugness. It helps that any intellectual pretension in the lyrics is offset by the glorious heady rush of the music, full of fun, energy and vitality. The perfect mix of sonic experimentation and oblique pop songwriting, why Electrelane remain to this day hideously under-rated is something of a mystery.
2. Belbury Poly – The Willows (2004)
Ghost Box 003. In many ways the label’s defining release, Belbury Poly took their name from the evil institution striving to bring about apocalypse in C S Lewis’ That Hideous Strength and named their debut album after Algernon Blackwood’s greatest horror story, immediately setting out the Ghost Box aesthetic. Sonically the album covers all their musical bases as well, from library music to BBC Radiophonic Workshop via stilted 70s electronica. But more then that, the album, both in the music and with its distinctive house style art work, arcane quotes on the back and blurred photographs, solidified the Ghost Box world – strange goings on in the fictional town of Belbury, locked in an alternate reality populated by the specters of 60s futurism and the worst nightmares of Machen and Lovecraft. The album acts as a distorting portal, briefly superimposing their world onto ours, in much the same way as the eldritch forces in Blackwood’s story encroach into our reality. The title track summons those very forces by name, all sinister buzzing and analogue synthesizers, whilst ‘A Warning’ sends out distress signals across the vastness of space. The sense of menace never actually manifests, instead it is hinted at through the music’s hokey Otherness, summoning buried memories of 60s British science fiction and public information films fractured and incorrect, to create a sense that something is naggingly, intangibly wrong.
1. Diagonal – Diagonal (2008)
I saw Diagonal play live a couple of years ago supporting Acid Mothers Temple. I had never heard of them before and wasn’t really expecting all that much, but they came on and just completely progged out. Most neo-prog is simply over-produced AOR masquerading as a poor man’s Genesis, but this was something completely different. These guys clearly knew their Soft Machine and their King Crimson. Brutally complex, the musicianship was quite astounding, but what really struck me was how much fun these guys were having. Here was a bunch of musicians who really loved what they did, and that sheer joi de vivre crossed over to the audience as well. I remember thinking how great it was in this day and age where most bands just want to cynically chase the dollar that there were people making music like this. I then promptly forgot about them until my brother said to me one day, ‘You must hear this new prog band I’ve just discovered, they’re really something else.’ And the album he had found was Diagonal’s self-titled debut. Sure enough, the songs came bursting through the speakers with the same unbridled joy and invention. It’s just so refreshing to know that there are people who realize that Soft Machine and Crimso’s work is not finished, that there are still new and exciting things to do with it. Thus ‘Semi Permeable Menbrain’ comes on like a direct descendant of ‘Larks Tongues In Apic Part 1’, except with added Canterbury Sound keyboards and whooshy electronics. But this is no mere pastiche of prog rock past. Diagonal sound entirely individual. Nowhere is this more apparent then on album highlight and indeed one of the All Time Great Songs, the all-conquering epic ‘Deathwatch’. The song builds up from quiet vocal harmonies to a stunning instrumental climax with each melodic line interweaving and rising through a number of twists and turns to its glorious conclusion. Diagonal are a new band with immense promise, and we can only wonder at where their flights of imagination will take us next.
posted by New Puritan at 2:15 PM
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