Spin's "Ten Recent Albums That May Also Stand The Test Of Time" (2005)

my mind is telling me no, but my body is saying TAKE ME OUT

uh hahahahahahahaha

i guess electric version vs. arular

The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free (2004)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA and this wasn't even a british publication

it's really obviously dizzee to me and not even close, that album still sounds incredible and is also very ~important

Objectively it's Funeral and Dizzee but voted Arular

Just listened to Dizzee again. Still the worst rap I've ever heard, but then I went and listened to the Streets.

Albums from this era that have demonstrably stood the test of time but seemingly overlooked by the prognosticators at Spin: Weezer's Maladroit, A Perfect Circle's Thirteenth Step, the White Stripes album with Seven Nation Army, and that first TV on the Radio ep.

Arular.

have never heard Rilo Kiley am i missing owt?

voted for Coldplay, "Clocks" owned all this shit back then and still does now

Grand Don't Come for Free a perfect concept album imo, I listen to it a couple times a year, always from start to finish. Perfect persona, great storytelling, nice beats. Never listened much to OPM, maybe that's why I like this album so much.

Never got into Lifted, but Wide Awake It's Morning would be a good pick for a record standing test of time.

i'll go with Electric Version for escaping relatively unscathed, a decade after the event, as the least self-consciously histrionic & "important" release of the bunch. really don't remember anything about Rilo Kiley though. maybe the awful band name deterred me from ever actually listening to them.

Boy in Da Corner or Electric Version.

well, at least they hedged their bets with "may". actually, that's what headlines looked like before the advent of clickbait, isn't it?

i still enjoy all these albums!!

i guess i never listened to the dcfc

yea I cant say I really go back to it but that coldplay album is classic fuiud

Ten years is an unrealistic time to reassess pop culture artefacts imo, as this is when they're at a nadir in fashionability/popularity. There's a case to be made for every album on this list as being irrelevant. What'll be more interesting will be looking at this in another ten years' time and seeing which of these is being excavated by young shavers and which have been completely forgotten about.

I only bought and owned Arular, the Streets and Arcade Fire from this list. Enjoyed them all but I can't stand the majority of AF's stuff that came after, Arular was nice while it lasted and yet I cooled on MIA for subsequent releases, while I was only saying the other day it was high time I revisited AGDCFF and I've goit good nostalgic associations with it.
Plus it'll annoy Lex if I vote for it, so that.

Ten years is an unrealistic time to reassess pop culture artefacts imo, as this is when they're at a nadir in fashionability/popularity.

At first glance, I thought this was a hackneyed notion but maybe theres some truth to it. Didnt FF release an album last year and no-one cared...same cant be said for Arcade Fire though, they're still pretty popular.

Dizzee easily the best here. MIA album is great too. I dunno if that Streets album has stood up, I got tired of it after a while. I will still rep for 'original pirate material' though.

Arular without much deliberation.

Few albums have left me feeling more burned/what-the-fucking-fuck-are-my-so-called-peers-thinking? than the M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal discs. (I actually bought them both!) Probably gonna vote Coldplay here. Franz Ferdinand's debut was good, but their third album is the best one.

Funeral holds up better than Reflektor and Reflektor was only released a year and a half ago.

Would be interesting to make a list of albums that actually did stand the test of time from that era, cause the only ones that really seemed to hit on in this list are Dizzee, Arcade Fire and MIA.

kanye's "college dropout"?

strokes "room on fire"

Bright Eyes hype most mystifying, at least MIA and Dizzee sounded new and different at the time.

I still listen to Electric Version regularly and I haven't even bought any other NP albums since then.

why so pessimistc y'all? pop has won, the enemy vanquished etc.

The first two Mars Volta albums (2003, 2005) hold up quite well.

I don't know if I agree with this either: <i>this is when they're at a nadir in fashionability/popularity</i>.
Personally, I may be sick to death of AF, but there are a gazillion bands still trying to bottle that record.

Postal Service? Kish Kash? First Yeah Yeah Yeahs album?

The nadir is probably closer to 15 years on average, but the overall theory is pretty true imo. It's not like the bazillion current Arcade Fire wannabes are "fashionable" per se. Xp

Dizzee in a walk

voted Blueberry Boat

I think part of the reason the Electric Version has come unscathed is that it's reasonably solid sophomore effort that came between two albums that have probably gotten a lot more acclaim, so we never really got burnt out by it too much.

I don't know if I agree with this either: <i>this is when they're at a nadir in fashionability/popularity</i>.
Personally, I may be sick to death of AF, but there are a gazillion bands still trying to bottle that record.

― campreverb, Monday, March 2, 2015 2:06 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sort of, sure, it's had lasting influence on a few dull-as-fuck chamber pop acts. But on the whole, 2005 hasn't been away long enough for people to get properly nostalgic about. A lot of hot mid-2000s trends and cultural signifiers have only just finished being fully integrated into majority culture, getting co-opted by mainstream music artists and TV ads etc... It's hard to objectively reassess a genre like freakfolk for example, which in 2005 meant Devendra Banhardt or Animal Collective, but soon begat Bon Ivor and Fleet Foxes who in turn begat insufferable indie-folk ukelele couples being used in banking commercials.

Similarly, unless you were a Baile Funk aficionado, Arular sounded very fresh when it first came out. But in the context of the last ten years - the pervasiveness of Diplo collabs, Azealia Banks, Shamir, the dance-ification of mainstream hip-hop, EDM, dubstep and the popularity of more exotic dance rhythms from afro beats to footwork etc - make it seem much less remarkable.

doesnt that make it more remarkable? not so much that it was overshadowed by these trends but that it influenced/spawned them.

Electric Version, easy.

And 2005 albums specifically that sound just as fresh as they did ten years ago (how was this ten years ago?):

Jackson & His Computer Band - S/T
Kanye West - Late Registration
Mary Timony - Ex Hex
Paavoharju - Yhä hämärää
Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak Of It Again
Howling Hex - All-Night Fox
Giant Drag - Hearts and Unicorns
New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Deerhoof - The Runners Four

Funeral holds up better than Reflektor and Reflektor was only released a year and a half ago.

Michael B, i think a lot of the time, you have to go away to come back. Arular is harder to enjoy in 2015 because it is competing with a whole decade of music the way for which likely had some hand in paving. But in twenty years time I can see more people looking back and appreciating it on the level you're talking about, as well as for nostalgic reasons.

I spent a lot of time in charity shops this weekend, and there's a reason nearly all the CDs and a whole heap of the clothes seemed to date from roughly ten years ago. Anything half-decent from 20 years has become hot property and snapped up by vintage hunters and collectors.

IMO

1-5 years after release: newish
5-10: the uncanny valley of pop where you're neither new or old (think hair metal in mid 90s)
10-15: nostalgia can begin (think when spin put axl on the cover in the late 90s)
15-20: somebody if not everybody misses u (rocklahoma)

So we're at the cusp where some of this still seems wack but soon it will all be sweet to reflect on

^ this

like, i couldn't imagine wanting to have a conversation about, or even really listen to, any dubstep in 2015, but i could imagine a full-blown revival in maybe just a few years time.

2003/2004/2005 surely the years that spawned a shitload of 80s synth revivalists. what records from that period are still perceived as relevant anyway? goldfrapp's black cherry? cut copy's bright like neon love? hot chip's coming on strong? chromeo's she's in control?

if green day plays "american idiot" the woos will be there, if they play "basket case" the woos will REALLY be there, but if they play "know your enemy" the woos are a little tempered

Arular but I love More Adventurous as well

i think funeral will be the most listened to one of these in 20 more years if that's what we're voting on

it's probably my favorite here too, let's be real

Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground might not get any love but i have a story. when i moved from San Francisco back down to SoCal, was still in my walk phase. so i walked around neighborhoods in this vast area called Los Angeles as the CD was over an hour long. they called him the Bob Dylan of this generation and at that time i believed it.

after saying that, it probably has aged horribly.

I think Lifted is a great album. It's a perfect collision of early Oberst 9-minute angst-folk jams and his later, more chilled, more conventional stuff that came into focus on Wide Awake.

In other words: more accessible than the stuff that came before it, but more ragged and pissed than the stuff that came after.

Wither Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot?

The Streets is the only inclusion that's embarrassing; the rest of these have held up pretty well

xp Back to Black wasn't out yet when this list was assembled, and don't try to tell me you're talking about Frank.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, 7 March 2015 05:35 (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heh this is what I get for posting while drinking. didn't pay attention to the date.

though I do love Frank

coldplay and arcade fire seem like the only ones among these that were even interested in 'standing the test of time'

voted lifted over arular

i mentioned clocks last night and someone (~25) asked what it was and i was like cmon you know clocks, it's the one that goes DA da da DA da da DA da DA da da DA da da for five minutes. she looked blank and apologetic. and that's clocks! if you try to tell me a single human alive w the possible exception of "apple" knows how "green eyes" goes in 2015 i'm gonna buy this place and burn it down.

my problem with more adventurous is it's really uneven and not remotely as good as the execution of all things

i like the fake country song a lot but i think it's "the absence of god" i can't deal with.

this is the band Jenny Lewis was in, right

The "test of time" is a stupid, pointless test IMO.

Time will tell if we pass the test of time.

The music goes thru yr typical wear and tear over time. Just gotta take it in for a tuneup

extremely confused by all the coldplay love in here

Likewise.

if you try to tell me a single human alive w the possible exception of "apple" knows how "green eyes" goes in 2015 i'm gonna buy this place and burn it down.

i remember! i loved that record when it came out

it coincided with the first huge world destroying break up i ever had

imo the great enduring coldplay record is viva la vida tho

only the Pet Shop Boys version of that song is worth the listen.

i prefer Viva La Vida as an album too but Rush O' Blood is definitely their big canonical blockbuster

extremely confused by all the coldplay love in here

― flappy bird (spazzmatazz), Saturday, March 7, 2015 1:56 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to clarify my mild affection for Coldplay itt is being expressed out of extreme indifference to all the other options

it really is kinda weird to be saying "lol these albums don't stand the test of time!!" when I did think we'd generally agreed that "the test of time" is some rockist horseshit

the test of time is some rockist horseshit

regardless i listened to lifted on repeat when i was 16 and doubt i could make it through a single listen now

I'VE BEEN SENT TO MY ROOM I'VE BEEN SAT IN A CHAIR

so i guess it didn't survive a shift in my tastes, which makes me feel disenchanted toward it bc most things do

such a depressingly narrow and tepid selection. over the same four-year period, we also got:

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops
Clipse - Lord Willin'
Orchestra Baobab - Specialist in All Styles
Sleater-Kinney - One Beat
Erykah Badu - Worldwide Underground
Jay-Dee - Vol. 2: Vintage
Jay-Z - The Black Album
Sleep - Dopesmoker
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
Björk - Medúlla
Deerhoof - Milk Man
Electrelane - The Power Out
Madvillain - Madvillainy
Mastodon - Leviathan
Moodymann - Black Mahogani
Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
Xiu Xiu - Fabulous Muscles
Amadou & Mariam - Dimanche à Bamako
Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
Common - Be
DJ Quik - Trauma
High on Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Beanie Sigel - The B. Coming
Sleater Kinney - The Woods
Sunn O))) - Black One
Kanye West - Late Registration

read music/speak spanish is a classic tho

xpost with myself

"green eyes" is one of my favorites from that album lol

boy in da corner has some really dated sounding stuff but much more really prescient sounding stuff, imo

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow @ breadth

b but does it stand the test of space??

can i suggest ban anyone who voted for death cab for cutie

also i understand the value of the streets as a punchline even if i don't agree with it but can we just ban outright ppl who want to tar the first dizzee record with the same brush

that was the last good DCFC

i liked transatlanticism a bunch in high school but the best thing i ever read about it or death cab breakup songs in general was an early-pitchfork thing that said something like "the thing about glove compartments: what you get out of them depends on what you put into them"

Musically the Mia record aged terribly imo

Garbage

rong

I mean, I don't really like the 2015 version of that sound, but Diplo is still working the same formula he lifted from working with MIA and apparently has some level of success

Spin won't stand the test time.

Sick burn.

This thread reminded me of peak love for Bright Eyes (2002-2005?) and while I never followed the sensation, I keep wondering what happened to him, he was such a media darling. Everyone loved the dude.

Not unlike Justin Vernon today.

He got boring.

got

goat

I was on board with him up until about his first solo record, and I still think that I'm Wide Awake It's Morning is a masterpiece. Since then, though, he's become far too comfortable to play to the NPR/Paste crowd. I was unable to get all the way through his most recent solo disc; he sounds positively middle-aged on it.

dude's hype usually revolved around his youth so once that was gone you just had a elvis costello-type making real music for real millenials

read music/speak spanish remains his "politically outraged pinkerton fan" testament, beyond that i only need a few tracks

it's funny that both he and john mayer wound up walking around california in a big floppy hat