Rolling Stone Top 100 Albums of the 00s listening thread

Great post.

 

Hope this isn't a threadcrap - it's meant to help discover good recent music, which I assume is the point of this thread.

Since the RS list is so obviously flawed maybe we can list some glaring omissions to give Mike more to chew on after he tortures himself with goes through the RS list.

These are all virtually unquestionably stellar albums of their ilk and easily better much (almost ALL, IMO) of the stuff on the RS list (I didn't bother listing additional albums from artists that are represented on the RS list, like Black Keys, which deserve more than one album on there):

Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
The Fall - "The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On the Click)"
The Church - After Everything Now This (others could be listed also, such as Uninvited Like the Clouds)
Sonic Youth - Murray St.
British Sea Power - The Decline Of
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot it In People
Robert Pollard - From A Compound Eye
Drive-by Truckers - 'Decoration Day' or 'The Dirty South'

and for some high quality metal:

Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier (very solid album, and their best in years IMO)



FYI, if you want to dig for yourself, each of these lists for that decade is way better than the RS list. You'll find a fair amount of crossover, especially the Paste list, but they eliminate some of the trendy/major acts that seem to be on the RS list merely to cowtow to the industry:

Glide Magazine (Top 50):
http://www.glidemagazine.com/articles/55436/glides-best-albums-of-the-decade.html

Paste Magazine (Top 50):
http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/11/the-best-albums-of-the-decade.html

Pitchfork (Top 200):
http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/

AV Club (Top 50)
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-music-of-the-decade,35540/

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I only own one album and it's the number one record on the list!

 

i own 14...

 

I'm quite surprised that I own 12 of these. I don't listen to much new music, other than keeping up with Robert Pollard, Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub etc.

 

Excellent points.

 

I surpisingly have 8 of these 100...
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky, Beck Sea Change & Norah Jones (love them)
Ryan Adams heartbreaker, Flaming Lips Yoshimi, Coldplay A Rush, Bob Dylan Love & theft and Wilco Yankee Foxtrot (all of which I don't listen to much)

It has made me want to add: Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, Elliot Smith, Amy Winehouse and Bob Dylan Modern Times to my "soon to buy" list though.

I think it left off Elton John The Captain & The Kid, Mark Knopfler ShangriLa, Jack Johnson In Between Dreams, and John Mayer Continuum which all were highlights for those folks within the decade.

 

I was a bit surprised that neither Animal Collective's "Merriweather Post Pavillion" or Panda Bear's "Person Pitch" made the list.

 

Bob Dylan recorded too many "classics" to include those albums.

 

I am a Dylan fan. I only have 9 of the titles on the list and two of those are Dylan but I am left shaking my head that they are included. Good albums, yes. great albums of the decade? Come on not even a die hard Dylan fan can believe that.

 

Yes. Yes, he did

 

Mike, it is great to see you doing this again. I was just thinking of the old thread the other day and was going to bump it. The most enjoyable thread I have read on this site in a long time.

I'm coming in a bit late here, but I just want to add two cents that I love the TVOTR album mentioned above. Return To Cookie Mountain sounds incredible, and is one of the most original and creative albums I've heard in a long time. I still give this album a frequent listen. Looking forward to upcoming reviews. Keep it up.

 

That's a pet peeve of mine: when it's time to promote an unusually young artist, what's marketed is always how unbelievably talented they are, with no mention of whether it's actually stimulating to listen to their record or see them perform. Which I guess is what you need to do for cases where raw talent is really all there is, but it diminishes cases like Alicia Keys, who hasn't just got talent, but can actually use it to entertain people, too.

 

Of course, but all of them belie the notion that female pop singers these days are all autotuned automatons; the hype could be a reaction to that.

One way or another, a lot of fans enjoy what Alicia does, and she even charmed Dylan...

 

Surprised there is no Deerhunter on the list.

 

I don't get TV on the Radio. I wish I did. I feel like I'm missing out on something.

 

I kind of dig them now. The vocals were an issue at first but definitely a grower for me (Cookie Mountain).

 

This was also the biggest surprise for me. To my ears these are some the finest albums ever made.

 

#94: Up the Bracket- The Libertines

I dunno.. kinda like the Boomtown Rats, where it's cool enough while playing and it's loud rock 'n' roll and that's fine but trying too hard to be cool?

Look, can I just write one review that covers The Hives, the White Stripes, the Strokes, the Libertines, etc? I mean it's like there was some sort of conference of young rockers to create/recreate one sound and then they were unleashed on the world at the same time.

Ok, here's the beginning of each of those reviews at least:

I'm going to assume that everyone reading this thread or listening to these records loves the guitar rock and roll, right? Fast beats, loudness, yelling, snarl, style, coolness, guitars crashing and strumming away- awesome. It is, it is totally awesome.

It was also totally awesome like 45 years ago. So I guess after metal/post-punk/alternative/grunge all went as far as they could go, it was time for another "revivalist" movement. Seems every generation needs to go through that. This just happens to be mine.

And while it's not terribly necessary (because the Libertines sound like the Stranglers and Oasis had a drunk baby), it's still a lot of fun. So I guess one's opinion of each band/album in this here style will depend on how the singer appeals to you, if enough the songs are catchy, how much obvious filler they make, etc. None of this music will be bad, none of it will be great.

ctrl-c…

Now for me, the Libertines are alright. I think one's regard for this band is inversely proportional to how much they wish the singer had sobered up before singing Horrorshow.

 

Spot on Mike!
The Libertines (and Arctic Monkeys and the Strokes, etc.) already haven't aged very well. I have the self-titled album by them and have no urge to play it ever. The songwriting on the whole just isn't memorable enough- I can't think of a Libertines song to save my life. It's better than freakin' Gaga and Bieber though.

 

Hmmm. I couldn't disagree more about the Libertines. To me, the other bands you mentioned are more upbeat, catchy, happy-ish punk/garage stuff. The Strokes, Hives, etc... and Arctic Monkeys were by far the worst-sounding of the bunch. There are also other bands like Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, The Bravery, etc. that all had a similar vibe but way more synthesizers.

I would put the Libertines in a different category. To me, they sound truly dark. The whole vibe is a mess of self-destruction, cause as much havoc as possible, then burn out. In between a ton of guitar mess, there were some really great melodies. The dynamic between the singer and guitar player adds to the whole thing. For some reason they just sound more "real" to me.

Not on this album, but the song "Don't Look Back Into The Sun" is a perfect song, and one of the best I've ever heard.

 

Let's get one thing straight: the Vines were THE WORST.

Always thought it was cool that Mick Jones produced the Libertines. And "The Boy Looked at Johnny" is a great song as well as required reading if you're into punk rock books (The Boy Looked at Johnny, The Obituary of Rock and Roll, by Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons).

 

Come on, that isn't fair to the White Stripes, who had the best discography in the aughts. (Obviously just my opinion, as if that needed stating.) The six White Stripes albums are too novel and unusual to be called "revivalist". Even years later, they still sound kind of weird, not conspicuously, but in a way that challenges the listener.

It probably isn't fair to the Strokes, either. They are overrated and probably do deserve "revivalist", but certainly they should get some extra distinction for their songs being good?

(Respect for making the statement in the first place, though...the point of having this thread is to generate discussion and debate...)

 

I treat this "Best Of" like any other, be it from a magazine or individual... it's all subjective.

I do read them just for things I might have missed, or for genres I am very unfamiliar with -- i.e. when I was re-discovering Jazz some years back, "Best Of's" were helpful to get a general picture of some of those must-have albums to sample.

 

You can kill The Strokes for a lot of things (silver spoons, bad haircuts, lame follow-ups, overhype), but Is This It is a monster, one of the defining albums of the decade. And "Last Night" is 3:17 of New York's finest scuzz.