The decade’s ten best records

By Nathan Downey

The ’00s were incredible years for music. There’s absolutely no question that this decade will dictate the course of sonic innovation for eons to come. The ’90s were a sere landscape littered with bloated Brit-pop anthems, sludgy piles of proto-, neo-, and post-grunge manure, soulless hip-hop, and Marilyn Manson.

This decade, on the other hand, was a magical era in which relentless experimentation ruled and the masses embraced weird, great new music. Hip-hop came out of its coma and indie-rock royalty scored #1 hits. Hipster music became popular with the public and hipsters gobbled up popular music.

A whole new set of rules were written, re-written, and then discarded altogether regarding what flew as far as music went.

Picking ten of the decade’s best, then, is a truly difficult proposition. For the sake of fairness, I’ll be judging in a vacuum, disregarding imitators, album sales, and hype. Instead, I’ll base my choices on individual merit, technical prowess, originality, and all-round listenability.

Without further ado, here are the 10 best albums of the ’00s.

1. Blood Mountain, Mastadon; 2006.

Metal is notoriously under-appreciated in hipster circles, but 2006’s Blood Mountain had a near-universal appeal. The record clocks in at nearly 70 minutes, and it’s 70 minutes of face-melting riffs, riveting multi-tracked vocals, and thrilling percussion fills. Blood Mountain contains none of the aversive qualities of substandard metal: At no point is it cheesy or overdone, and the guitar tone is warm and crunchy, rather than abrasive and fractured. The album crushes Isis’s Oceanic, Boris’s Pink, and Black One by Sunn O))) for the title of the 2000s’ finest metal record.

1. Endless Summer, Fennesz; 2001

Austria’s finest musical export Christian Fennesz dropped one of the best noise albums of all time in 2001. His brand of reverb-drenched guitar expression combined with incredible ambient drone and intelligent mixing all came together on Endless Summer to create an album outstripping anything release by Tim Hecker, Wolf Eyes, Black Dice, or any other noise musicians active in the 2000s.

1. Feast of Wire, Calexico; 2003

Calexico’s 2003 outing Feast of Wire is a massive album, sprawling over numerous genres. In the record’s slightly under fifty minute run time, the band tackles dusty desert folk, mariachi, stoned-out pop bombast, sparkly pedal-steel anthems, and just about anything else you can imagine. For the first time in the band’s history, they managed to showcase their formidable instrumental talents adequately. Although subsequent releases from Calexico have come close, they’ve never quite managed to reach the perfection they demonstrated on Feast of Wire.

1. Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, Godspeed You! Black Emperor; 2000

Montréal enjoyed several stints as the centre of the musical universe this decade — the Arcade Fire-generated mid-’00s hype-orama, and the turn-of-the decade post-rock explosion. Antennas to Heaven, a double LP running nearly 90 minutes, simultaneously triggered scads of imitators and took its place in the pantheon of genre-defining records. The band combines towering guitar, strings, horns, percussion, and aleatoric samples to create a masterpiece of experimental symphonic rock. No other band has come close since.

1. Boy in da Corner, Dizzee Rascal; 2003

Dizzee’s 2003 debut album won the prestigious (though often misguided) Mercury Prize, bringing mainstream attention to the UK urban music renaissance. While hip-hop stagnated in North America, the British scene was flourishing and evolving into something completely distinct. Dizzee’s heavily accented delivery, dirty beats, and raw subject matter were unlike anything anyone had heard up until that point, and it scores points as one of the decade’s most original records.

1. Feels, Animal Collective; 2005

Animal Collective was the decade’s greatest band without question. Every one of the nine LPs they released in the 2000s was groundbreaking and thoroughly original in its own way. Feels is the best of the bunch simply because it’s the band’s most accessible album. For the first time, AnCo brought a pop focus to the fore of the record. Its lush, organic instrumentation and yelping vocals completely immortalized the band’s trademark sound on this mid-decade release.

1. Girls Can Tell, Spoon; 2001

I’m probably going to get angry letters for choosing GCT over Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as the decade’s best straight-up rock album. Spoon’s 2001 outing outdoes Wilco’s masterpiece by virtue of its tightness, focus, and all-round badassness. Britt Daniel’s husky voice merges with the aggressive riffs, keyboard flourishes, and robotically perfect percussion to form a near-flawless rock record, certainly one of the decade’s finest.

1. The Glow, Part II, The Microphones; 2001

Not only are the songwriting, melodies, and instrumentation of The Glow, Pt. II thrilling and wholly listenable, Microphones front-man Phil Elverum proves definitively that the studio is an instrument in and of itself. This album, which showcases Elverum’s gorgeous, boyish vocals, is intended for listening with a pair of stereo headphones so that the brilliant mixing can be optimally experienced. The Microphones’ 2001 release is a watershed of experimental pop and lo-fi.

1. The Moon and Antarctica, Modest Mouse; 2000

Modest Mouse, in scoring a number one hit with “Float On,” placed themselves in a precarious position: On one hand, they were indie darlings; their vitriolic anthems having been the soundtrack to many a tortured scenester’s adolescence. On the other hand, a number one hit meant that Modest Mouse had gained acceptance with the seething hordes of plebeian, Old Navy-shopping civilians. Unfortunately for Modest Mouse, they never regained their hipster cred, but having made a tour de force like Antarctica, with its psychedelic, nihilistic rage, they need never apologize.

1. Kid A, Radiohead; 2000

At this point in the decade, there’s almost no polarity: Kid A is the epoch-defining album, end of debate. As far as I’m concerned, the record is the best by sheer dint of that moment in April of 2000, when hordes of Radiohead fans, amped on the idea of a follow-up to Radiohead’s 1997 juggernaut OK Computer, put the disc into their CD players and had their minds simultaneously blown as the strains of “Everything’s in its Right Place” completely re-calibrated their collective definition of musical awesome.

Most overrated record of the 2000s

Funeral, Arcade Fire; 2004

Face it, after six years, this record sounds played, dusty, and small. Not to mention its rise to mainstream popularity was largely fomented by Pitchfork, the Internet’s hype hegemon, where would-be hipsters are breastfed their taste in music.

Most underappreciated record of the 2000s

High Society, Enon; 2002

Given Enon’s pedrigee — lead singer John Schmersal was a member of Brainiac, one of the most interesting ’90s musical outfits; Toko Yusada, lead female vocalist was a member of Blonde Redhead — it’s shocking that more people didn’t twig on to how awesome they are. High Society, the band’s catchiest, crunchiest, and most cohesive record to date flew under pretty much everyone’s radar. More for me, I guess.

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