ILM Top 100 2000-2004: ALBUMS

Points: 517
No. of votes: 32
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: THE WHITE STRIPES
Title: ELEPHANT
Label: XL
Year: 2003

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

Comments: The sound of a band turning its image into a mythology, and its gimmick into an arsenal. Gardner Linn

Recommended tracks: Seven Nation Army, The Hardest Button To Button, Little Acorns, Well It's True That We Love One Another

Points: 529
No. of votes: 29
No. of #1 votes: 2

Artist: EMINEM
Title: THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP
Label: Interscope
Year: 2000

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

Comments: I think Eminem is some sort of idiot savant, a fool and a fucking genius at the same time, writing the most interesting lyrics since Dylan's prime - you could pen a whole thesis from the one line "I am whatever you say I am," bringing in the way celebrity is constructed, and of course Jesus and Popeye (not an order of preference) and a thousand other things. He's also as good a rhymer as rap has ever produced, with complex and seemingly instinctual internal rhyming and chiming that he delivers beautifully. A colossal talent. (And obviously working with one of the great producers of the last decade-plus helps too.) Martin Skidmore

Recommended tracks: The Real Slim Shady, The Way I Am, Stan, Bitch Please (Part 2)

Points: 529
No. of votes: 29
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: THE JUNIOR BOYS
Title: LAST EXIT
Label: KIN
Year: 2004

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

Comments: Call The Junior Boys blue-eyed garage or swingbeatclash; Last Exit is a tantalizing introduction to the JBeez aesthetic. "High Come Down" is the not-at-all-impossible meeting place between Hall & Oates and Timbaland. "Birthday" rigs up a rainy day 2-step pattern and chills it the most with nuvo wavo romanticism. "Last Exit" bristles with thickets of beats as spiny and spare as those of recent garage, but the bruised fruit vocal hiding within couldn't be less grimy. But it's reductive to call the Junior Boys the alternative to Dizzee/Wiley/et al. They simultaneously invoke a half-dozen other genres (heroin house, synth pop, electro, modern US R&B), and grime's ruffneck soldiers are very much slaves to the vibe of London town. But the Boys seem to have soaked up all the nimble fluency and sheer beauty garage sloughed off escaping the pleasure principle. Like AR Kane in the late 80s, who smeared their post-Mary Chain guitar spuzz over then-current house pianos and hip-hop breaks, the Boys' combo of neutered soulboyisms and jiggy electronics give the impression they could be the start of something new for indie rock. Or the public could settle for another wave of emotionally constipated electroclash crypt robbing. In which case, fuck you all, I'm moving to Neptune. Jess

Recommended tracks: High Come Down, Birthday, Last Exit, Bellona

Stevem why is Eminem #22 and JBeez #21 if they got the same points and number of votes, is it a 'listmakers decision is final' thing? ;)

They might not overlap fully, but the two aren't mutually exclusive either. There's a bit of a tricky relationship there.

blount did you get my e-mail request for a comment yesterday btw?

Wolf Eyes at #1??

Coulda been worse, coulda been the Sigur Ros album that's named after some dumb ass brackets...

But that's a far better album!

Putting it another way, I wonder how many people who voted for one Radiohead album voted for all three? I'm just curious.

(There has always been a big pro-'Head contingent on ILM, I'm not saying their (apparently) high placings are in any way illegitimate!)

I voted for 2 of the 3 Radiohead albums.

(Mind you, if, say, Bill Frisell and Meredith Monk and Oren Ambarchi and Phil Jeck and Derek Bailey or Kid Koala or . . . were on there I might not have voted for so much Rhead. Or if Sean Paul or motherfucking Outkast were on there. Or maybe even the Darkness. Or System of a Down. Or Bjork. Radiohead definitely wouldn't have placed so high. And I do want to check out lots of the rap and dance records I haven't heard.)