ILM Top 100 2000-2004: ALBUMS

But that's still a good question: I mean, I like both bands, and probably for some similar reasons. Junior Boys have more "mood," though, and the album's more cohesive. Then again, "Such Great Heights" is probably catchier than anything on Last Exit. What exactly does the Postal Service do wrong (other than be liked by indie asshats)?

Plus the asshattery

Also, I suspect all ILM anti-pitchforkers will defend their favorite indie as not a part of the problem.

Spencer otm ... omg some indie is actually pretty good, oh no how can i live with myself for thinking that ...

(xpost)

I don't know if they'd be your thing but I like Yanqui U. X. O. and (obv) List Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven.

Setting aside the Junior Boys for the moment -- the Postal Service just bug me (in contrast, a band like Joy Electric distinctly UN-bug me, so the fact that they get no attention and haven't for something like ten years while TPS are seen to be something special reminds me how hate is as important as love).

I recall thinking Yawnspeed You Goddamn Chain-Smoking Quebecois Fuckups's second full album did actually have some major keys on it. It was not enough.

Points: 545
No. of votes: 26
No. of #1 votes: 0

Artist: PJ HARVEY
Title: STORIES FROM THE CITY, STORIES FROM THE SEA
Label: Island
Year: 2002

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

Comments: n/a (argh!)

Recommended tracks: Good Fortune, A Place Called Home, You Said Something, We Float

Stories... (which I didn't vote for): Polly's worst album, but not because it's commercial or poppy or a rip-off of Patti Smith (all these things are responsible for its best moments); only because there is more filler than there normally is on PJ Harvey albums. It's still great, of course: heavily stylised, using the juxtaposition of a familiar sound with glorious, novel emotions (throughout, the overriding mood Polly expresses is surprise - surprise that she's capable of beautiful feelings and good fortune) to superb effect.

Recommended tracks - This Is Love, This Wicked Tongue, Kamikaze

Points: 554
No. of votes: 33
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: THE RAPTURE
Title: ECHOES
Label: Mercury
Year: 2003

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

Comments: A band forever being judged in terms of trends and influences nevertheless made both the defining single and album of an underground cross-genre that never fully lived up to its potential. The trick the DFA worked with the Rapture was to take a post-punk revivalist outfit and have them play modern updates of revivalist early 80s mutant disco and late 80s bleepy and acid house at the same time. But as an experimental band with all the jamming and instrumentation (both traditional and electronic here) and meandering that goes along with it. Personal mismatched reintepretations rather than wilful genre-mashing. How else do dancefloor retro-workouts like 'Olio' and 'I Need Your Love' work with Luke Jenner's overcommented on Robert Smith vocals when Smith himself sounds massively uncomfortable teamed with Junior Jack? On their dance tracks, Luke is as much the unique house diva as the nervy punkboy, riding over the bleeps and the loved-up warehouse bliss keys and injecting just the right amount of spiky angularity (remember, they're still post-punk). Overall, they take what they want and somehow keep things fresh and almost always livened up like any group of skill should with the DFA as ever-watching overseers. 'House Of Jealous Lovers', 'Olio' and 'I Need Your Love' are perfect dance songs in any year from 1981 onwards, and there's some great choppy, urgent and danceable white funk (Spandau alert!) on 'Killing' (punk r'n'b?), 'Echoes' (PiL*), 'The Coming Of Spring'(Go4*) and 'Heaven', which has the best hands-in-the-air chant since 'So Much Love To Give'. Closest to being weak links would be 'Sister Saviour', which uses the 'More, More, More' intro without any of the flair the better tracks have with their own rips, and is far too dirgey - the key is to balance out the aching and breaking tension in the vocals with either energy or a more stripped down, workable arrangement - the ballads, excepting 'Open Up Your Heart', which does take the stripped down route. Echoes is about love; love of people, love of experience, differences, dancing and music. And if you take it as it is and let it in, you too might feel love. (* Because I need to pretend I've down my homework)
Barima

Recommended tracks: House Of Jealous Lovers, I Need Your Love, Olio, The Coming Of Spring

Points: 566
No. of votes: 29
No. of #1 votes: 2

Artist: BOARDS OF CANADA
Title: GEOGADDI
Label: Warp
Year: 2002

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

The thing that always hits me about Geogaddi when I listen now is * depth *. It's one of those records where...I mostly put it on at night, you know? Like, right before I go to bed. So I'm lying there, half-dead to the world, drifting in and out of consciousness. And everything sounds so rich and full, like you could trip into one of the spaces between the beats and fall forever. And then I invariably fall asleep halfway and wake up and it seems like the thing is BOOMING out of the speakers but in reality the stereo is on fairly low (or otherwise someone would be banging on the floor.) It's stadium ambient. "This is BOC in Technicolor," I said in my review back in 2002, where I was ambivalent about the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" lack of progression in the basic sound. But now I hear that as a strength; BOC are a group where a slight tweaking of basic values, filtered through improved production nous, makes every new album the new "best BOC album." Preferring Twoism to this seems like preferring an Apple IIE to an iMac: you're just being willful. Jess

Recommeded tracks: 1969, Julie & Candy, Sunshine Recorder, The Devil Is In The Details

Points: 573
No. of votes: 32
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: MISSY ELLIOTT
Title: MISS E...SO ADDICTIVE
Label: Elektra
Year: 2000

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

So Addictive is the first Missy album I really can love as a whole. The others somehow dind't work for me as a whole. Hard to explain why. Nothing else to add than Classic and i'll second Glitch-hop, it's the fututre of rock 'n roll you know. Omar

Recommeded tracks: Get Ur Freak On, One Minute Man, Lick Shots, Step Off

Two words: Jesus ballads.

Points: 679
No. of votes: 29
No. of #1 votes: 1

Artist: BELLE & SEBASTIAN
Title: DEAR CATASTROPHE WAITRESS
Label: Rough Trade
Year: 2003

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

Indie sucks in 2004, and it’s all about the money. Too much money spent on rent-an-addiction frontmen, vintage tee-shirts, and overly coiffeured bedhead. Belle and Sebastian, on the other hand, consist of a chorister, a fat girl, and some other members who all look like Games Workshop employees. In a time and age where their peers are topping album charts and selling out arenas with The Jam and Stooges vulturisms, B&S take their cues on “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” from Thin Lizzy and Sir Cliff Richard. Whilst the rest of the indiegentsia are sucking from Zane Lowe’s teat, B&S speak with eagerness about how much Radio 2 got behind “Wrapped Up In Books”. Whilst Starsailor and The Vines expected you to care that they’d dug Phil Spector up from his tomb, B&S employed Trevor Horn, who’d just come off the back of getting Russian jailbait popsters to cover The Smiths. The topics of this album include: a homage to Robin Askwith movies interspersed with anti-Thatcher commentary, gay baseball stars, ex-girlfriends preferring their clothes to you, single people should praise God more, drag queens, and “Stay Loose”, which the entire history of popular music down to The Police and Squeeze, and when it hits you realise that that’s all there really is. They have a song called “Roy Walker”. Whatever the future of rock and roll is, you can be sure that Belle and Sebastian sound absolutely nothing like it. Dom Passantino

Recommeded tracks: I'm A Cuckoo, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Stay Loose, Wrapped Up In Books

Points: 681
No. of votes: 24
No. of #1 votes: 2

Artist: BOREDOMS
Title: VISION CREATION NEWSUN
Label: Birdman
Year: 2001

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

Vision Creation Newsun offers what it's title suggests: it creates a universe of its own, inviting the listener to step inside and enjoy the view on this spaced-out trip along its infinite borders and into its billowing core. Willem

Recommended tracks: 1, 3, 7, 9

Points: 682
No. of votes: 31
No. of #1 votes: 2

Artist: WILCO
Title: YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT
Label: WEA
Year: 2002

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

All right, let's get it out of the way. This album is not a
masterpiece. And it's not nearly as avant-garde as the record-label-got-scared hype would have you believe. But it's still Wilco's best record, because for the first time they managed to break out of the boring Midwestern songs-to-drink-microbrews-to formula, which never once did it for me. (Okay, once: I liked the twangy "Box Full of Letters," from "A.M.") Above all, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" knows how to use space and breath, with songs that start all open-skied and lonely and devolve into ramshackle pots-and-pans percussion (courtesy of new drummer Glenn Kotche) and shortwave static. But it's also got great tunes, from the plaintive violin-and-whiskey-tinged "Jesus, Etc." to the jangly, upbeat "Heavy Metal Drummer." It may not be canon-worthy just yet, but I'd say it's a winner. jaymc

Recommended tracks: Jesus Etc., Heavy Metal Drummer, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, Pot Kettle Black