ILM Top 100 2000-2004: ALBUMS

I'm still sorta amused.

Points: 264
No. of votes: 13
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: MF DOOM & MADLIB PRESENT...
Title: MADVILLAINY
Label: PIAS
Year: 2004

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/madvillain.jpg

Comments: The Madvillain project found an uncanny chemistry between the schitzo pastiche style of Madlib's production and the smoked-out ease of MF Doom's flows, a pairing whose music is full of amazing contradiction - futuristic and rustic, dark and vibrant, a piece equal parts cartoonish fantasy and gripping realism. nickalicious

Recommended tracks: Figaro, Fancy Clown, All Caps

Points: 264
No. of votes: 17
No. of #1 votes: 0

Artist: SUFJAN STEVENS
Title: GREETINGS FROM MICHIGAN...
Label: Rough Trade
Year: 2003

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/greetingsfrommichigan.jpg

Comments: A pretty accessible record; nearly everyone who hears it will take a liking to at least three or four songs simply based on the beautiful vocal melodies. Don't listen to Pfork: it's no political statement, as much as they want it to be. It's a record of love for one's birthplace and a record lamenting it's decline. But it's not impersonal, which is the wonderful thing about the record. Sufjan doesn't treat the state as a _state_, he treats it like a deteriorating family member. A project of love if I've ever heard one. Gentry Boeckel

Recommended tracks: For the Widows in paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti; Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head

Points: 265
No. of votes: 15
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: SONIC YOUTH
Title: MURRAY STREET
Label: Geffen
Year: 2002

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/murraystreet.jpg

Comments: ...every time I listen to it I enjoy it more. and that's after initially thinking, oh, sonic youth, chime chime chime, drone drone drone etc. listening more and enjoying more isn't unusual for me with sonic youth...o'rouke's production is nice. and I like his bass playing, at least what I often assume is his. some sonic youth albums, the production feels too flat and dead to me - makes it harder to appreciate the sounds of the guitars. here even the fairly boring guitar parts are more interesting to me because of the production.
...every time I listen to it I love it more. it's my favorite record of the year. it makes me feel stable and rested, and at times it makes me jump around or cry or shiver or smile or swagger or have minor transcendental experiences. Josh

Recommended tracks: Rain On Tin, Plastic Sun

Points: 265
No. of votes: 17
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: LIGHTNING BOLT
Title: WONDERFUL RAINBOW
Label: Load
Year: 2003

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/wonderfulrainbow.jpg

Comments: The best part about Wonderful Rainbow is that it takes all of the best parts of Lightning Bolt's sound and magnifies them. The songs are, one the whole, a lot catchier than those on Ride The Skies. The production is heavier and emphasizes Gibson's ability to throw down monster riffs. The changes are all tight, showcasing the Bolt's prog side. Combined with the playful and goofy packaging, this is much closer to a funhouse for kids with ADD than it is the soundtrack to the apocolypse (the territory being mined by 90% of "noise" bands today). Ian Johnson

Recommended tracks: On Fire, Two Towers, Duel In The Deep

Points: 266
No. of votes: 16
No. of #1 votes: 0

Artist: THE LIARS
Title: THEY THREW US ALL IN A TRENCH AND STUCK A MONUMENT ON TOP
Label: Blast First
Year: 2002

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/theythrewusallinatrench.jpg

Comments: n/a (anybody?)

Recommended tracks: Mr Your On Fire Mr

Also I had no idea MF Doom had actually made a Dr Doom mask.

All good bracing stuff this, I'm sure.

20. Fennesz - Endless summer
19. NERD - In search of
18. Interpol - turn on the bright lights
17. Radiohead - Kid A
16. Richard X - X factor volume 1
15. Boards of Canada - Geoggaddi
14. White Stripes - Elephant
13. Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash
12. PJ Harvey - Stories from the city
11. Radiohead - Amnesiac
10. Kanye West - College dropout
9. Wilco - YHF
8. Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird bark
7. Missy Elliot - Miss E...
6. Daft Punk - Discovery
5. Jay Z - The Blueprint
4. Streets- OPM
3. Belle and Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe waitress
2. Dizzee Rascal - Boy in da Corner
1. Streets - A grand don't come for free

Radiohead, Jaxx and Streets suffering from split voting.

Points: 270
No. of votes: 11
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: THE RZA & VARIOUS ARTISTS
Title: GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE SAMURAI (OST)
Label: Epic
Year: 2001

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/ghostdog.gif

Comments: n/a (anybody?)

Recommended tracks: Strange Eyes, Walking Through The Darkness, Fast Shadow

Points: 276
No. of votes: 13
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: ROYKSOPP
Title: MELODY AM
Label: Wall of Sound
Year: 2001

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/melodyam.jpg

Some albums attract criticism precisely because of how inoffensive they are. Melody AM blends solid if unremarkable beats with pleasant strings and digital quarks for a very modern romance with one eye on the future and the other half closed (let's hope the wind hasn't changed for their forthcoming follow up) as twilight turns to darkness. The funk and disco leans tend to be overlooked but they are there (the closing washed out loops of Poor Leno, the prog-stomp of Royksoppp's Night Out arguably standing up to classic soul interludes like Marvin Gaye's T Plays It Cool or a cinematic Schifrin sweep). Like Air's Moon Safari before it, the soundtrack of choice for hipsters with graphic art tomes littering their coffee tables, saturation taking effect as track after track was used in trailing all kinds of TV programmes. All in all a surprisingly high showing, but it suggests the popularity and often sublime beauty of this album will endure.

Recommended tracks: So Easy, Eple, Royksopp's Night Out

Points: 279
No. of votes: 14
No. of #1 votes: 0

Artist: THE BETA BAND
Title: HOT SHOTS II
Label: Regal
Year: 2001

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/hotshots2.jpg

Comments: The Beta Band were always pretty depressed. If the first album saw their manic obsessive side getting very out of hand, and this year's blanded-out Heros To Zeroes sounded like it was on anti-depressants, then Hot Shots II is their most sucessful balance of profound melancholy with a desire to turn it into something redemptive.

It sounds like a series of intensely lonely love songs sung from the
one-bunk cabin of a rickety spaceship. R'n'b producer C-Swing captures
the music's cosmic reach with a delicate layer of electronic gloss
that transforms a simple folksong like Gone into something celestial
and vast. The more mind-bending tracks (the star-spangled Al Sharp,
the rumbling Life and the bug-eyed kitchen sink dancehall Broke)
become more gloriously futuristic than we had any right to expect from
a guitar band in 2001. Oh yes, and it's all very, very pretty.

Of course, this adventurous, sonically joyful music belies the fact
that most of the songs are about misery, loss and confusion. The Beta
Band had seen something about sadness and they made a record as
gorgeous as this. I love them for it. Peter Brown

Recommended tracks: Al Sharp, Life, Broke

Points: 280
No. of votes: 17
No. of #1 votes: 0

Artist: ANDREW WK
Title: I GET WET
Label: Mercury
Year: 2002

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/igetwet.jpg

Comments: Sincerity redefined as something you can turn up to 11. Tom Ewing

Recommended tracks: Party Hard, She Is Beautiful, I Get Wet

Is there a thread where we talk about why many of us (myself included), probably owing to our bourgeois discomfort about being bourgeois, talk about why we need to qualify and rationalize listening to records that might be considered "the soundtrack of choice for hipsters with graphic art tomes littering their coffee tables"?

Points: 286
No. of votes: 11
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: MCLUSKY
Title: MCLUSKY DO DALLAS
Label: Too Pure
Year: 2002

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/mcluskydodallas.jpg

Comments: Mclusky Do Dallas is for me the best mix of melodies, hooks, and insanity from this decade so far. It's just crazy, jumping around the room fun. Even the song titles are best. There's something about the Strokes, the way that all the instruments are in metronome-perfect rhythm and Julian's voice is scrawled all over them, that gets me everytime. It's some kinda weird, inside out, reverse emotion through coolness effect.Maciej Kasperowicz

Recommended tracks: Day of the Deadringers, Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues, Alan Is A Cowboy Killer

20. Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
19. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
18. M83 - Dead Cities...
17. Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters
16. Missy Elliot - Miss E...So Addictive
15. Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas
14. Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash
13. Belle & Sebastian - Dear Catastrophe Waitress
12. Radiohead - Amnesiac
11. Fennesz - Endless Summer
10. Junior Boys - Last Exit
9. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
8. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
7. Jay-Z - The Blueprint
6. Basement Jaxx - Rooty
5. Avalanches - Since I Left You
4. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
3. Dizzee Rascal - Boy in Da Corner
2. Radiohead - Kid A
1. Daft Punk - Discovery

yeah, that looks about right. I guess we'll see.

Points: 289
No. of votes: 14
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
Title: MASS ROMANTIC
Label: Matador
Year: 2002

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/massromantic.jpg

Comments: I bought this because of Neko Case and stuck around because of Carl Newman. I'm not sure they'll ever do anything better than "The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism", which is constantly about to fall apart as it goes along but somehow never does, and sometimes I'll find myself singing "salvation holdout central" to myself for no reason at all. And the guitars! The piano! All over this album! When emo doesn't suck and therefore is not called emo, it's called whatever the hell this is. Powerpopsupergroupindie? Doesn't matter. I heard this and finally came to love Canada..Gear!

Recommended tracks: Mass Romantic, Letter From An Occupant, Jackie

Points: 293
No. of votes: 9
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: LIFTER PULLER
Title: FIESTAS AND FIASCOS
Label: French Kiss
Year: 2000

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/fiestasfiascos.jpg

Comments: There is a deeper understanding of the universe that comes from having heard this album hundreds of times. Lifter Puller fans keep it cooped up inside, unable to express it\'s jaw-dropping rockitude more articulately than the thing itself, waiting for opportunities like this list to spread the gospel. Go! Listen! Be one with the nightlife and you will understand.Sonny A

Recommended tracks: Lonely In A Limousine, Lake Street Is For Lovers, Space Humping $19.99

(x-post)

Lifter Puller! 2 albums from my list in a row! Exclamation points!

Points: 305
No. of votes: 14
No. of #1 votes: 0

Artist: TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS
Title: HEARTS OF OAK
Label: Lookout
Year: 2003

http://base58.com/ilx/ilm/top100/20002004/albums/heartsofoak.jpg

Comments: Hearts Of Oak is wonderful. The reason why I prefer it over stuff like the Pernice Brothers is it's danceable, energetic, enthusiastic, full-bodied pop-rock backing up thoughtful, witty lyrics whose playfulness makes up for any pretentiousness. Ok, evidently some people are bugged by the fact that the guy uses his higher register so much, but I haven't heard "indie-rock" that grooves like this in a long, long time. If ever..Anthony Miccio

Recommended tracks: Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?, The Ballad Of The Sin Eater, I'm A Ghost

Your description has totally opened up this album for me. It took me ages to get into simply because of the lack of weird Welshiness but taken out of context it's probably one of their best - I can't stop listening to it now!

because of how inoffensive it is you mean?

(I am a bit confused by this bandwagon thing - I always think of myself as far too slow on the uptake to catch any bandwagons)