Intelligent Life On Planet Rock
Albums of the Decade
Posted by Martin Chinnery on 10 January 2009 - 12:05am.
Is it too early to discuss the best albums of the decade? Surely not!
Here are some for starters:
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Elbow - Cast of Thousands
Sigur Ros - Takk
Fleet Foxes- Fleet Foxes
Joanna Newsom - Ys
Radiohead - In Rainbows
St Germain - Tourist
Go on, Massive go on, you know you want to!
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You're right,
it's too early!
I disagree...
I know where you're coming from but it's better than talking about squirrels! I'm sure that Andrew Collins would agree with me on this point now, even if he thought differently 6 weeks ago...
I'd rather talk about squirrels
There will be enough end of decade stuff at the end of the year, please let's not start in January.
Good choices, but ...
... I have over half of those on the list, and I don't think I'd put any of them in my top ten. "In Rainbows" I have really tried to love. But there is something strangely impersonal about that record. For all the talk, I just don't connect with it.
Anyway, here's my list for tonight:
Durutti Column - Keep Breathing
Sigor Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - We just did what happened and no one came
Maps - We can create
The Library Trust - The A to Z of mathematics
Explosions in the Sky - The Earth is not a cold dead place
Brian Eno - Another day on Earth
Kate Rusby - Underneath the Stars
Roedelius - Works (1968-2005)
John Foxx - Glimmer
Finn Brothers - Everyone is here
Looking at the albums I still regularly listen to...
...the following would have to be included
The National - Boxer
The National - Alligator
Field Music - Tones of Town
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (although all four albums could be included)
Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
White Stripes - Elephant
Elbow - Cast of Thousands
Elbow - Leaders of the Free World
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Rufus Wainwright - Want One
Rufus Wainwright - Want Two
The Dears - No Cities Left
British Sea Power - The Decline of British Sea Power
Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
Hard-Fi - Stars of CCTV
Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves
Sons and Daughters - Repulsion Box
Richard Hawley - Cole's Corner
The Delgados - one of their three albums in the decade. Difficult to choose which
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Super Furry Animals - one of their albums in the decade.
Sigur Ros - again difficult to choose. Maybe a couple would have to be included.
I suspect Elbow's Seldom Seen Kid would be in there too but it's too early to say. Anyway, that list is already far too long. Looks like there's been some good stuff around this decade!
"In Rainbows"
The thing I struggle with is the pace of the songs. They're all very slow and ponderous, which is odd as everyone says its an upbeat happy album. "Hail To The Thief" is their pop album, "In Rainbows"* is funeral music.
* I reserve the right to change my opinion at any time on the merrits of "In Rainbows" as one day it's gonna click for me.
Let me have a think
Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (2000), Love Is Hell (2003)
Bob Dylan - Modern Times (2006)
Bruce Springsteen - Magic (2007)
Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya (2000), The Wind (2003)
Solomon Burke - Don't Give Up On Me (2002)
Shelby Lynne - Just A Little Lovin' (2008)
Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl (2000)
Brian Wilson - Smile (2004)
Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat (2006)
Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways (2006)
These could change
but for starters
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
Ryan Adams - Love is Hell
Bruce Springsteen - The Rising
Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig! Lazarus Dig
The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls of America
Divine Comedy - Victory for the Common Muse
I may be in a minority of
I may be in a minority of one on this forum, but I tried listening to Seldom Seen Kid yesterday and I had to turn it off. Guy Garvey may write great love poetry , but they are just too self consciously literary to cut it as rock lyrics. It spolit the enjoyment of the music for me completely; he might as well have been singing "I'm dead clever me" in a deliberately pronounced Northern accent all the way through.
I must need to get out more
I listen to music without checking the date first.
I downloaded a Julie Andrews LP from 1958 last year and it is simply...spiffing. Obviously I don't know my arse from my Elbow.
I have to say that
I cant understand anyone liking that Joanna Newsom album - I have it if anyone wants it. It is unadulterated garbage and i would be surprised to hear anything as bad anytime soon. Strange thing is it was lauded upon release and I believed they hype. You would need to be on serious drugs to get any pleasure out of it. Rest of the choices are okay though.
My top 10 would be:-
Bobby Charles - last train to Memphis
Felice Brothers - Felice Brothers
Nick Lowe - At my age
Nick Cave and the Bad seeds - Abattoir blues/The Lyre and Orpheus
Ali Farka Toure - Savande
Grand Drive - Everyone
Lucinda Williams - West
Juno - Soundtrack
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
Mavis Staples - We'll never turn back
i agree on Joanna Newsom
no one who has to pay for their music likes her album, I played it at home and it was so annoying I had to get out of the bath eject the cd and threw it behind the bookcase, if anyone wants it they can come round and fish it out.
I would have replied earlier...
...but I have only just emerged from the drug-induced torpor that Steve Turner generalises is the normal functioning state of all Joanna Newsom fans.
To give further insights into my undesirable condition I have reproduced a blog entry that I wrote yesterday:
Friday 9th January 2009
The phone rings. It's Joanna Newsom's management offering me £500 to listen to her second album - Ys - in its entirety, while pretending to enjoy it. Apparently a copy of the CD is on its way to my house by motorcycle courier. No, I don't have to pay for it.
The CD arrives half an hour later than scheduled; the sheepish courier proffering a complimentary order of garlic bread as compensation for the delay. I am a busy man and so take his peace offering without argument.
After he has gone I put the CD in the player. As I eat the garlic bread, I assume my professional role as a listener of music that can only be enjoyed by people who have been paid large sums of money to endure it.
I marvel at Newsom's seemingly intuitive fusion of William Blake and early Disney to create something personal to her, but also accessible to listeners, through a tapestry of vivid storybook images that stir the imagination. Momentarily I consider how her thoughtful and idiosyncratic approach towards making music bears comparison to this month's WORD cover star - Kate Bush.
55 minutes and 38 seconds later, it's all over. In the time honoured tradition I dispose of the CD by hurling it behind the nearest bookcase. I subsequently make a post on Ebay in which I offer the CD free of charge to anyone who is prepared to come and fish it out from its final resting place.
The working day now over, I detox my ears with repeated hearings of Noel Gallagher's creative tour de force - Be Here Now. Now that's what I call an album.
not sure what your point is
being an oasis fan I get lost confused by multi do dah words and that. I picked out summat about "william blakey" isn't he the one who just died who was on that "on the buses".
nope,
i have to pay for all my music, and i love all of joannas albums, particularly Ys. so ner...
I bet you like anthony worral and the thompsons
as well another only if you got them free do like it band......
I love the Joanna Newsom album
& the first one 'The Milk-Eyed Mender' & the live one too!
'Memory Almost Full'
by Macca.
'Illinois' and 'Michigan' by Sufjan Stevens.
'Rant' by Ian Hunter.
'At My Age' by Nick Lowe.
'Bewilderbeest' and 'Fizzy Lift' by The Sun Sawed In Half.
'Candylion' by Gruff Rhys.
Can't think of any others that particularly grabbed me.
I seem to have started something here....
Joanna N's a controversial choice, isn't she? It's not an album I'd listen to it every day; once or twice a year, in autumn and/or in winter is enough, but at least she's done something unique. I'm sure most Clash fans dismissed Kate Bush in 1978. A lot of people think Wagner goes on a bit too.
That wasn't my full list by any means as the decade hasn't ended yet. Just throwing around ideas, that's all.
Oh Clash fans
are lumpen and cloth eyed now the plot thickens.
I have nothing against The Clash per se, but..
....as I seem to recall, fans of "new wave artists" in the late 70s were hardly receptive to other musical styles were they? Perhaps I should have written Pistols fans instead as The Clash were more innovative than most. Please forgive me for ill-thought out comments posted after midnight.
Johnny Rotten loves Kate Bush...
as evidenced by his declaration "I love you Kate!" from the stage of a one lettered music magazine do back in 2001.
The best album of 2000-08?
I guess for me it's a straight fight between Tool's "Lateralus" from 2001 (dense obtuse prog-metal) and The Long Blondes' "Someone To Take You Home" from 2006 (kitchen sink dramas with a warped glamour). And I refuse to choose between them as I would feel dirty.
Joanna Newsom
is an odd one, came to love it in the months after its release, and was one of my fave lps of that year. Have not listened to it since then, so could it qualify as one of my great lps of the decade?
Anyway, it is too early