100. Alcest: Souvenirs d'un autre monde
Alcest is really a remarkable band. Beginning as a female-fronted black metal trio before losing two of its members and becoming a one-woman project. Everything you hear on the album, except guest vocals on one track, is performed by French musician Neige. The sound is a mix between harshly produced shoegaze and dreamy folk. Heavy riffs are interspersed with gentle passages and layers of distortion pile up endlessly. Neige's wispy vocals are pretty standard fair by themselves, but combined with her spectacular and odd vocal melodies, they become one of the albums strongest points. The sound amounts to what the heavy side of Mogwai would sound like playing shoegaze with a female singer.99. The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumn & Fifteen Winters
Whenever I hear James Graham's vocals, I always think what a perfect barroom voice he has. That's not to say that I think he has an amateurish voice only good for serenading drunks, far from it, what I mean is his voice is has that somber singer-songwriter voice of someone whose talented, but plays for the common folk and not the critics. And by doing that, he and his band have gained the favor of critics. On the line of singer-songwriters, the band does a good job of never being too flashy but instead accenting the vocals and the lyrics, but doing so in a way where they clearly show their songwriting talent and setting themselves apart from most bands.98. Pamela Why Shannon: Courting Autumn
Courting Autumn really has the makings of a timeless record. It's appealing enough to keep garnering new fans, it's intriguing enough to keep people interested, it's fairytale lyrics resound with anyone with an imagination, and the albums combination medieval and modern folk has a lasting power. It's only been released for a few months and it's already a record I return to constantly. Though Pamela Wyn Shannon is a pretty much unknown musician, she is a very talented singer and very interesting songwriter and someday, you can bet on it, she'll be much better known and music fans worldwide will be investigating her back catalog and getting a pleasant surprise.97. Akiko Shikata: RAKA
Ethnic music is really a tricky thing to analyze. Rock music is universal, but ethnic music varies from country to country and unless you are born in that country or invest an incredible amount of time, you'll never know what's really good. I can't tell you if Akiko Shikata is a great Traditional Japanese performer, since no matter how I know about the Japanese psychfolk and noise genres, it helps me nothing with some that is so localized. All I know is I very much enjoy what I hear and I can tell that Akiko Shikata is a great composer and singer in comparison to American singer-songwriters. Her arrangements, the combination of pounding world percussion and a full orchestra, are massive while her vocals, assisted by a group of background singers, evoke ancient Japan and immediately remind one of a wuxia film.96. Gregor Samsa: 55:12
Gregor Samsa perfectly bring together, post-rock, slowcore, and shoegaze on this album. The reverb heavy, post-rock arrangements mesh perfectly with mid-tempo beats, droning strings, and the best male/female harmonies short of Low or Yo La Tengo. There's also a lot of ambiance going on here too, the first couple minutes of "Even Numbers" sound like something from a Set Fire to Flames of even Stars of the Lid album. The whole album wrestles between ambiance and grand explosions of sound. Which I suppose is standard fare in the post-rock genre, but it's the gorgeous vocals and interesting structures of that style that make everything sound so perfect.95. LCD Soundsystem: LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy may borrow most of his ideas from other sources and influences, but he does a darn good job of piecing them all together. I mean, anyone who argues that James Murphy is original needs only to listen to the end of "Losing My Edge" to hear him list the artists where most of his ideas come from, but since 99% are from before 1990, he serves as an updater, using the technology that the 21st century gives him to make an great, undulating dancefloor album full of classic dance and rock ideas with some of Murphy's own little twists put in. Just try not to shake it while listening to either version of "Yeah" or to not bob your head to "Daft Punk Punk is Playing at My House". But also recognize where it's coming from. It's the beat connection, as Murphy himself says.94. Stars: Set Yourself On Fire
Set Yourself On Fire is a pop record. Nothing more, nothing less. But it is a brilliant pop record. Here are collected some of the best pop songs on in the 00's. "Celebration Guns" "Set Yourself On Fire" "Reunion" "What I'm Trying To Say" to name only a few, are all chock full of everything that makes a great pop song: beautiful harmonies, driving rhythms, massive hooks, and witty lyrics. The albums true gem, "Ageless Beauty" is without a doubt the best song on the album and one of the best songs of the decade. Amy Millan's vocals have never sounded better and the music, though outwardly simple, hides depths that never make it sound repetitive. Even after many listens. Something the song share with the entire album.93. Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity
Deerhoof is, and always will be, one of those special bands. There one of those bands that you sit around and talk about with your friends about how awesome and ridicules they are. From album to album this mystique has grown. From noise rock, to their odd song structures, to "Panda Panda Panda", to Satomi Matsuzaki oddly memorable vocals, and finally to Friend Opportunity's indie-nowave-post-noise-prog-pop. The variety of sounds produced here are incredible. It's by far the bands most diverse album with no song sounding quite like any of the others, and in some case no song sounding anything like the others. The album is just a pleasure to listen to and really must be experienced in full to be understood.92. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Colin Meloy is a storyteller in the guise of a songwriter. In previous albums he had shown us this, but he had never full committed to it. He'd always held back for a song or two, never truly giving in to it until The Crane Wife. Perhaps it was the idea of forming a multi-part story in an album that allowed him to completely indulge, but regardless of why, ever song on The Crane Wife is a story. The obvious one is the three part Crane Wife story, but there is also "When the War Came" about The Siege of Leningrad, "The Island" cycle, inspired by The Tempest, and "Shankill Butchers" based on real life serial killers. Meloy draws from his imagination as well as real stories with "Summersong", "Sons & Daughters", and "Yankee Bayonet". Perhaps it is this that make the album so lasting, it's a perfect mix of reality and imagination, presenting us with things we know about and things we can only dream about.91. Clinic: Internal Wrangler
Clinic is a rather ironic band; one might say they were ahead of their time by going back to old things before everyone else. Clinic predates the mainstream post-punk revival by a few years, but unlike the bands that followed in their footsteps following in others footsteps, they refused to be tied down in the basic post-punk, new wave, and "dance rock" genres ala bands like Franz Ferdinand or The Killers. Indeed not, Internal Wrangler may have a base in post-punk, but listening to the first two tracks you could never tell it. They sound more like 60s psychedelia mixed with African tribal rhythms. Elsewhere, "The Second Line" is dry funk-punk and "2/4" sounds synth-pop. The band messes with all types of styles that unified by their use of classic keyboards and vague post-punk roots.Stay tuned for 90-81, coming soon!
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