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...AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY the TRAIL of DEAD: Source Tags & Codes (2002): Moving to a major label and then releasing your undisputed best album isn’t unheard of (there are several notable examples on this list), but it is rare. Of course, you’d never know that by hearing Trail of Dead’s Source Tags & Codes, but perhaps that’s because it doesn’t really sound like a major label debut. It’s gritty and fierce and obviously unpolished, with few gentle moments between the punishing assaults of guitar, drums, and vocals. There’s the occasional string arrangement or piano fill, sure, and the detail with which these songs has been crafted is remarkable, but Source Tags & Codes is far removed from standard radio fare in its noisy, unrefined execution. It’s also an album that not only improved greatly upon the band’s previous efforts, but continues to tower over their entire catalog to this day as one of the past decade’s most stunning rock masterpieces.
If there’s a better word than “epic” to describe the monolithic tour de force that is Source Tags & Codes, it eludes me. Walls of distorted sound build and crash together then subside, only to return with twice the intensity and volume as singer Conrad Keely delivers his emotional declarations with astonishing power. It’s not just noise, however; the record is an intelligently composed selection of hard rock tunes, with songs like “Another Morning Stoner” and “How Near, How Far” showcasing the band’s ability to be both raw and melodic. Using dynamic structures and brief instrumental segues to allow for maximum impact during the album’s grandest moments (of which there are really too many to count), Trail of Dead forged an album that delivered on every bit of promise they had previously shown and then some. It’s almost unfortunate for the band that they made something as spectacular as Source Tags & Codes so early in their career, as they’ve never come close to matching its success. But their mixed production over the past several years can’t dim the remarkable accomplishment that this is. CN
JOANNA NEWSOM: Ys (2006): I'd imagine that following-up The Milk-Eyed Mender—an album that quickly became the bestseller of the entire Drag City catalog—would be quite the challenge. But if it was, out-of-time renaissance harpist Joanna Newsom sure wasn't letting on. Ys, her five-song, one-hour sophomore album, represents one of the most substantial sonic leaps in modern music, charting Newsom's incredible development from spare, folksy singer-songwriter to epic orchestral goddess in only two years' time. It’s rather unprecedented on many levels, but Ys not only accentuated the inherent beauty in her previously modest tunes, it completely shattered popular notions of artistic development (even Radiohead had a Pablo Honey). Something of a conflation of folk intimacy and orchestral-prog excess—the latter guided by Brian Wilson muse Van Dyke Parks—Ys is entirely independent of any modern scene or movement, living and breathing on its own recognizance. Each carefully outlined piece manages to weave Newsom’s modest foundation of harp melodies into gloriously grand tapestries for strings, mandolin and even accordion. Thus, if it was an understandably daunting task to follow up such a wonderful debut, just imagine the mountain Newsom must now climb in order to meet expectations. Your move, music world. JC
SUFJAN STEVENS: Illinois (2005): As a songwriter, Sufjan Stevens always begins with a where—a specific spot on the map, a concrete place, a small town or big city in the proverbial Land of the Free. He then spirals outward, finding a who, a why, a when or a how, filling in his factual locales with fictional dramas. Waxing poetic about Illinois, his 2005 chamber-pop travelogue, I recently suggested that Sufjan’s brilliance lays squarely in this regional imperative, this mining of real geography for narrative profundity. Sam C. Mac, InRO’s fearless leader, shot back that maybe I was just stoked that it was my own geography being mined. Hell, he might have a point. There’s an eerie correlation between the trajectory of the so-called (and so dead) Fifty States Project and my own Midwest pilgrimage. 2003’s Michigan was the melancholy soundtrack to my last year in the Great Lakes State, a bittersweet farewell from a hometown hero. Two years later, settled comfortably into the gridlock of the Windy City, I was ready for the welcome wagon. And so here was Illinois, an intimate-epic overview of The Land of Lincoln, song after song devoted to the myth and the memory of my new stomping grounds. Whereas Michigan felt like a sobering first-person account of a state’s plummet into poverty and despair—the kind that only a true-blue native could write—this new record boasted the starry-eyed idealism of an outsider. Stevens was, like me, new to the place. Good thing he did his homework.
Packed to the brim with regional references, oddball signifiers and little tidbits of township trivia, Illinois takes its namesake as a responsibility, but also as a joyous jumping-off point. Like Dylan or Springsteen or Denver before him, Sufjan is a chronicler of American dreams, and he uses the Prairie State as a microcosm of a kind of collective national narrative. Illinois is all about our heroes and our monsters, our supermen and our serial killers, our poets and our politicians. It’s also about roadtripping to escape your past, cutting your stepmother some slack for a change, and grappling with a God who can take your loved ones away in the blink of an eye. As profoundly creepy as this sentiment is, Suf’s admission of affinity with John Wayne Gacy is also a unique expression of the shared American experience—there are secrets kept under all our floorboards. And when his weary whisper gets lost in a chorus of chanting voices, on brassy epics like “Come On Feel the Illinoise!” and “The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders,” it’s as though he’s become one of them, one of us, just another regular joe shouting his tale from the rafters. None of which, of course, has anything to do with the actual music—you needn’t speak a word of English to feel your heart swell to these strains, to be lifted by the swirling mix of horns, strings and flutes, of piano plinks and banjo plucks, of sing-along choruses and rapturous refrains. These aren't just the headiest but the most ornately jubilant pop songs of the decade. No geographical biases required. AAD
ARCADE FIRE: Funeral (2004): Some may find this confession blasphemous, but Arcade Fire’s universally acclaimed debut, Funeral, didn’t overwhelm me on first listen like it seemed to do the rest of the world. My feelings toward the record have obviously improved since that rather lukewarm introduction, and I'm not just convinced of its absolute genius; the album has also proved itself an incredibly influential record since its release in 2004. In fact, I’m a little worried that, in years to come, people might lump the band in with their great league of imitators, so quickly did the Canadian collective change the landscape of indie music with their first effort. I think it’s more likely, however, that such a musically accomplished and emotionally powerful album as Funeral will continue to stand apart as one of the decade’s monumental successes.
Fronted by husband and wife duo Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, and featuring an impressively gifted bunch of musicians, Arcade Fire had a wealth of talent at their disposal to begin with. More importantly, they had the inspiration and ambition to turn that talent into something, and their first attempt is an accomplishment on any level and by any standard. Considering its overarching concept (manifested in part by its song titles) and recurring themes of loss and grief, the album almost by definition should have been dense and forbidding. It’s a testament to the skill of its creators that Funeral smoothly transfers its emotions and ideas to the listener. And though it’s a decidedly uneasy listen at times given the subject matter, the record also provides plenty of hooks thanks to Butler’s earnest delivery and the stunning, cinematic instrumental arrangements that characterize the band’s sound. Beautifully sad yet ultimately triumphant, Funeral is an engrossing story and a superb album, one that I’m confident will continue to stand as a testament to the inventiveness and accomplishments of the last ten years in music. CN
THE FIERY FURNACES: Blueberry Boat (2004): A lot of masterpieces in music are designated as such due to their crystalline perfection, their distillation of a band's sound to its most—to put it bluntly and to over-generalize—accessible ends. People everywhere clamored for the m-word last year when Animal Collective released what was arguably their least adventurous album to date (members of our staff included) because it was so damn easy to love. And a lot of folks rejected this nautical-themed work of progressive art-rock because it ain't. But patience is a virtue, and deliberate structural rigor is too often cast off in favor of repetitive immediacy. At the outset of Blueberry Boat, you won't be dancing—hell, you might not even like what you hear. The album kicks off sicker than a dogfish, wheezing its way through the first five minutes of "Quay Cur" supported by broken piano and heavily processed dissonance, a lone singer earnestly crooning in start-stop bursts amidst a tempest of noise. The singer is Eleanor Friedberger, one of two siblings (the other is Matt) who make up The Fiery Furnaces. They are one of the most singular acts to emerge in music during the last ten years, and 2004's Blueberry Boat follows a comparatively accessible debut (Gallowsbird's Bark) released just one year prior.
The album clocks in at over an hour in length, and its thirteen tracks can be split into more than thirty individual musical motifs, stitched together in the form of song-suites. Needless to say, Blueberry Boat would be an ambitious (and audacious) undertaking for any band, but for one so early in their career—without the cache of, say, Radiohead—it's downright inspiring. Even more inspiring is that they pull it off: this is an album with a depth to match its scope, stuffed to the rafters with dense lyrical allusions and, um, product placement (that Pepsi lines always slays me). And wading through its more dirge-like passages nearly always rewards us with pop both pretty and pulverizing enough to K.O. any hook produced by your favorite buzz-band. The aforementioned "Quay Cur" may start out awkward, but wait 'til it finds its sea-legs—a killer rock attack characterizes the song's mid-section, a furious climax of coiled energy which intuitively gives way to pristine, acoustic-led balladry before folding in on itself and reprising the odd dissonance of its extended intro. Let's review: playful experimentation, roaring guitar-rock and delicately strummed folk encompassed in a span of ten minutes and just one song—that’s more progression than takes place during the entirety of Is This It.
Elsewhere, Blueberry Boat proves even more generous. You don't have to wait very long for "Chris Michaels" to become your favorite song ever, with its anthemic chorus, bluesy piano melody and ample bombast. And the warbling "Bird Brain" likewise pins down its immaculate melody and strips away indulgence for a comparatively more conventional pop song. But it's the album's most risky experiments that tend to provide the greatest payoff. Mini-epic "Mason City" kicks off with an infectious groove, but before a word is spoken it drowns out said groove with a haze of feedback, leaving in its wake only that broken piano again. Over the course of its eight minutes, the song explodes with guitar solos that would make Jimi Hendrix blush, changes tempo at least eight times and presents almost as many indelible, memorable choruses. Is it indulgent? Of course it is, but because of that indulgence, the Furnaces mine a whole lot of good ideas. Is Blueberry Boat perfect? No, not every moment of its hour-plus runtime entirely works. But perfection shouldn't be the only measure of success, and it too often is. Blueberry Boat takes you on a journey through seven seas of sonic texture, some rougher than others—but oh the places you will go. SCM
WILCO: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002): Even if you don’t love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the album (like many on this list) demands a healthy amount of respect and can certainly be classified as essential listening for anyone who wishes to understand the decade in music. It’s an album that played a major role in defining indie-rock over the past ten years and set a standard by which many records are still compared. It also vaulted Wilco from alt-country mainstays to rock legends, bringing them a new degree of popular success and critical attention. Looking back, it’s strange to think we didn’t get to hear Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for a year because Reprise Records deemed it “unworthy” of a major label release, which Jeff Tweedy and company proved was a terrible business decision. But it’s best to approach Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with as few expectations as possible (if that’s possible) in order to really understand what makes it great; underneath the acclaim, hype, and cool origin story is a truly exceptional album that will quickly make a believer of most anyone. It’s not an exaggeration to say Yankee Hotel Foxtrot manages to come across as perfect in every conceivable aspect of its creation. It’s detailed and carefully arranged with everything in its right place, but it also somehow sounds raw, natural and free, with clever lyricism and technical virtuosity throughout. And the songs themselves are nothing short of magnificent. The melancholy opener “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” the smooth, jazzy “Jesus, Etc.,” and the upbeat pop of “Heavy Metal Drummer” are just a few examples of what happens when a band gets everything right—but you could literally pick any of the 11 songs on the record to make a point about its quality as a whole. When experienced together, these tracks work coherently despite the amount of variance in style, revealing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to be every bit the triumph so many claim it is. CN
SIGUR RÓS: Ágætis byrjun (2000): Though the record provided most everyone’s first exposure to Sigur Rós, the enigmatic Icelandic band had in fact released music prior to their decade-ushering masterpiece, Ágætis byrjun. This, however, was the record that not only captured the imagination of an American audience still willing to indulge in the limitless possibilities of post-rock, but also solidified a lot of our perceptions of Iceland as a barren, icy tundra of heretofore unheard of sounds. A decade has now passed since its initial release, and it still feels like it simply dropped out of the Icelandic ether, a lightning-in-a-bottle moment where influence proved non-existent, and all that remained was the sighing sound of a violin bow on guitar strings and Jónsi Birgisson's angelic howl. It also speaks to our dearth of quality songwriters that “Hopelandic,” the band's made-up language consisting solely of alien harmonies and ghostly exultations, not only proves more evocative but also speaks greater volumes than the work of most of the era's solo artists. There's nary a note out of place over the course of the record's lengthy run time, but the indisputable run of classic tracks which open the album—particularly the cinematic vistas conjured by and grafted from “Svefn-g-englar” and the idyllic pastures painted by “Starálfur”—perfected a formula that many had hinted at but few had truly realized. And Ágætis byrjun still somehow manages to leave the listener with the feeling that there's even more to explore amidst the band's canyon-sized creations. Like the hesitant first steps onto a lunar surface, or the blurry-eyed wonderment of a child’s first vision, Ágætis byrjun felt like something entirely new. “A good beginning”? Yeah, you could say that. JC
PANDA BEAR: Person Pitch (2007): Noah Lennox's first widely available solo album under the Panda Bear moniker, 2004's Young Prayer, is stark and acoustic-based, consisting of ten hymn-like tracks that are so personal and cut so close to the bone that the recording as a whole can be painful to listen to. Lennox's follow-up would come three years later, and it would have little in common with what preceded it; Person Pitch is a major departure, so out-of-left-field brilliant, so hypnotically addictive, that it immediately staked a claim as 2007's most impressive and important record. Built on a foundation of infinite loops and samples, Person Pitch is a painstakingly assembled collage of noise, disembodied voice and boundless pop hooks. The ghost of Brian Wilson haunts its every margin, as Lennox's majestic vocals conjure both the cadences and tone of the former Beach Boy. As co-writer/drummer/general noise-maker in his parent band Animal Collective, Lennox kicks up a fury of percussive and electronic intensity to balance out his overt melodic tendencies. Not so on Person Pitch, however, as each of the record's seven songs revel in their pop accessibility.
The record is now barely three years old and yet nearly every song already feels like a classic. "Comfy in Nautica" is an exalting opener, hypnotizing in its steady repetitions and peaceful self-harmonizing; album centerpiece "Bros" is a 12 minute hallucination of forgotten 60s pop and ambiguous nature samples; "I'm Not," which initially amounts to a breath-catching, revolving door loop, is notable as the record's most immediately pretty song; and the two-part, ten minute epic "Good Girl/Carrots" is Person Pitch's most abrasive track, building a cacophony of sound from propulsive percussion in its first half and passing through two distinctly different but equally indelible pop songs in its second. Even the obtuse and uncharacteristically formless "Search for Delicious" features a manipulated, wordless vocal melody that can (and will) unwittingly worm its way into any listeners subconsciousness. But Lennox saves the simplest, most straightforward (and straightforwardly catchy) piece for the record’s finale: "Ponytail" sends Person Pitch out with the chill inducing refrain, "When my heart starts glowing/When my heart starts growing/I am as I want to be/And I know I will never stop growing." Wrapping one's head around the fact that Person Pitch is the vision of one human (or bear) is difficult to do, since this music manages to gather all the emotions great pop should—sadness, hope, joy, peace, love—and weave them into a seamless kaleidoscopic fantasia of lush soundscapes. Mr. Bear’s trippy and transcendent solo work somehow manages to top everything he produced with his ever-progressive Collective this past decade. JC
MODEST MOUSE: The Moon & Antarctica (2000): On The Moon & Antarctica—more than on any other Modest Mouse release—Brock and Co. manage to channel their unique and strange identity into something fully realized and truly brilliant. The record’s status as one of the decade’s most ambitious and beloved rock epics has only been cemented in the ten years since its release; Moon stretches out across 60 consistently inventive minutes with each of its 15 songs differentiating in style and substance, yet it always feels cohesive. Critically, it should be mentioned that Modest Mouse has yet to create such a satisfying full-length since—which makes this effort all the more special. Moon has everything from meandering epics (“The Stars are Projectors”) to odd little ballads (“Perfect Disguise”), and it takes a number of rather dramatic turns as it progresses, with each change up serving to deepen your involvement with the music. Lyrically, too, Brock immerses us in his world—one of infinitely more questions than answers—with introspective writing that’s often cryptic but somehow identifiable. To have heard it in its year 2000 context would have been a revelatory experience—but not all of us had that luxury. Fortunately, The Moon & Antarctica is much more than an important timepiece and provides, I’m confident, just as spectacular an experience now as it did at the time of its release. To call it timeless is perhaps premature, but I’m willing to extend such a label to a record that will undoubtedly sound just as vibrant and relevant in another ten years. CN
RADIOHEAD: Kid A (2000): If the revelation of Kid A as our number one album of the decade is a bit anti-climactic, it’s only (and I do mean only) due to the fact that this record’s influence and authority has seeped so fully and inexorably into the indie consciousness. Which, if you think about it, is very odd, since this band’s ascendancy to the top ranks of modern music, up until the turn of the millennium, charted a very different and seemingly preordained arc than this record would suggest. Radiohead’s derivative and mostly forgettable genre exercise of a debut, Pablo Honey, preceded a full-flowering, post-Brit Pop follow-up, The Bends, which hinted at what would come on 1997’s OK Computer. The fact that the latter album would probably top a 90s edition of this list might suggest something of an artistic glass ceiling, which is exactly why Kid A continues to resonate as such an astonishing success, having arguably topped the band’s previous high (very high) watermark. Of course, those buyers who first laid down their twelve bucks for this album no doubt hoped that the heroic prog-leanings of OK Computer would be extended. Instead, what they got were no real singles and, on top of that, barely any guitar to speak of—in short, no alarms but plenty of surprises.
Around the time of OK Computer, Radiohead were undoubtedly mindful of their position as torchbearers for a classic strain of guitar rock in the changing face of the late-90s electronica anti-boom. And yet, on Kid A, gone were the winding prog suites and heavily orchestrated modern classical touchstones of its predecessor, replaced instead with healthy doses of jazzy musique concrète in the vein of Squarepusher, glitch-y IDM flourishes directly descendent from prime-era Aphex Twin, suggestive pools of ambience heavily indebted to Brian Eno, and the unmistakable headlong pulsation of Krautrock originators Neu! and Cluster. Thus emerges the reputation of Kid A as the most alien-sounding document of a rock band in-flux ever set to tape. And nearly ten years on, Kid A remains beyond critical reproach; it's a difficult record to pin down or properly classify (those forebears listed above don’t seem even close to definitive). It so intently subverts the concept of “singles” or standalone songs, and yet its indelible moments still come at a furious clip. The lunar snippets and disembodied vocals announcing the arrival of "Everything In Its Right Place"; the formless, modulated ear-worms of the title track; the free jazz horn breakdown of "The National Anthem"; and the DAT-derived, sample-based tech-march of irreproachable centerpiece “Idioteque.” But the album is so much greater and has come to represent so much more than the sum of its individual, groundbreaking parts. Kid A quite simply broke the mold and never bothered to rebuild it for those left reeling by its ambiguous implications. We still haven't caught up. JC
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