Best Albums of the 00's: 10-1

10. The Mountain Goats: The Coroner's GambitI don't think I could put The Mountain Goats' discography into any ranking, there's just too many gray areas and similarities to get any kind of hierarchical order. The only thing I know for sure is that The Coroner's Gambit would far and away be number one. It's just that much better of an album compared to the Goats' 18 other albums, all of which are no slouches in the quality department themselves. This album is the best lyrically and the best musically, songs like "Jaipur" and "Family Happiness" are perfect examples of John Darnielle's skill as a songwriter and his ability to mix the trippily fantastic and the disturbingly real. Musically "Island Garden Song" shows of his ability to write memorable and surprisingly complex acoustic guitar parts, while tracks like "Baboon" show the first signs of Darnielle's expanding palet, with it's accordion and drums, but for the most part he lets the lyrics own the show and keeps the accompaniment simple and lo-fi on his acoustic, just the way we want it.

9. James Yorkston: Moving Up Country
While most of the folk world is embracing "freak folk" and "New Weird American" and distancing themselves more and more from the listener and the lyrics, James Yorkston struck back into the traditions of artists like Nick Drake and other big figures in the British folk movement with lush arrangements and deep lyrics. Guitars and pianos provide the base, while fiddle and accordion swell and light percussion give things a little rhythm and other touches such as harmonica, pedal steel and various other folk instruments help Yorkston avoid the great folk pitfall, that such acts as Iron and Wine have fallen into, that is laziness which leads to boring arrangements. Lyrically Yorkston also does a great job of keeping things interesting, whether the subject be love ("I Know My Love"), loss ("St. Patrick"), or faith ("Sweet Jesus") or all three ("Moving Up Country, Roaring the Gospel") Yorkston balance cleverness and realness perfectly, always seeming like the every-man going through hard times, albeit and every-man who can turn a phrase with the best of them.

8. Jens Lekman: Oh You're So Silent Jens
Jens Lekman, much like Paul Simon (an acknowledged influence), has a nact for clever lyrical twists and pop music with lots of surprising instrumentation and arrangement. Lekman balances piano ballads and chamber-laden twee-pop perfectly, wearing his heart on his sleeve and infusing loads of witticisms, throwing you of balance with lines like "I can't say that you are pretty, that would make me a liar but you turn my my legs to spaghetti and set my heart on fire" that you can't tell if he's being insulting or sweet. His view of love is so simple "Now there's nothing left but love enough to feed a family, but I just want to feed Emily, with lukewarm English beer and vegan pancakes" but it stresses home a point that love isn't grand or magical, it really is simple and plain, but that makes it even more special. Much like the way Stephin Merritt can break your heart with just his voice, Lekman can make you melt in you shoes, and it doesn't help when he's singing stuff like "I killed the party again, I ruined for my friends". No Jen, you didn't kill the party, you are the party.

7. Belle & Sebastian: Push Barman to Open Old Wounds
Push Barman to Open Old Wounds spans 4 years in Belle & Sebastian's career, but you can't tell. That's because the band's sound is timeless. If I could compare them to anyone it would be Love, they both make complex yet catchy pop masterpieces, but Belle & Sebastian get the slight edge lyrically, since in Stuart Murdoch they have one of the most clever and skilled crafters of memorable melodies and intimate lyrics. The first five tracks of the album make up one of the best five song runs in music history, and ending it all is the best song the band's ever recorded; "Lazy Line Painter Jane" is a retro sounding track with it's handclap rhythm, humming guitar, throbbing bass, and shimmering organ, while other songs like the seven minute "This is Just a Modern Rock Song" display all three of Belle & Sebastian's singers in their full glory. The whole album is almost two hours in length, a tall order for a pop album, but the band's shifting focus and downright skill make it completely enrapturing the entire time.

6. Islaja: Palaa aurinkoon
Psychedelic music played itself out pretty fast in the 60s, and though it lives on in some artists like The Flaming Lips, for the most part it's gone except for as an influence added to other styles. And even then, most of what's being made isn't really very psychedilic, but listen to just one Islaja song and you'll never call The Mars Volta trippy again. The opening track on the Finnish singer's album is made up of clanking bells and gentle horns, and that's about it, except for Islaja's voice, which is a treasure all it own. Her voice is hypnotic and otherworldly, (think Björk meets Vashti Bunyan on acid) and when it's combined with the downright weird arrangements (panpipes and clarinet?) it makes for a downright otherworld experience. Islaja is really an artist you must hear to understand, there's not any real reference points to her music, except a lose tie to Finnish folk music, but even then that's just surface. The title track is has something that sounds like poorly recorded stomp music with recorder and off-kilter piano accompanying. Like I said, you really just have to hear it.

5. David Thomas Broughton: The Complete Guide to Insufficiency
David Thomas Broughton's debut album follows a pretty simple formula: single acoustic guitar, voice, loop pedal of vocals and guitar being played over and over while more guitar and vocals are being added. He does it on all of the album's five songs, each of which average around eight minutes, and it works perfectly every time. The small amount of songs allows Broughton to create five memorable guitar melodies that are easily recognizable from each other, but it's not the guitar you're focused on for the most part, it's Broughton's vocals and what he's singing that fascinate so much. His voice is as melodramatic (nearly operatic) as they come, but it doesn't sound at all put on, it sounds completely natural and the lyrics, well they're something very special. Perhaps the greatest love song ever written "Execution" consists of only a few lines: "I wouldn't take her to an execution. I wouldn't take her to a live sex show. I would piss or shit on her, would I? Because I love her so." while one of the saddest songs I've ever heard, "Unmarked Grave" will tear your heart. The album was recorded live in a church in Leeds, and during the climax of the aforementioned song, you can hear the church bells ringing; though incidental it sounds perfect, as does the whole album.

4. Broken Social Scene: Broken Social Scene
To me, this album is the pinnacle of indie rock in the 21st century, and Broken Social Scene the Pavement of this generation. They already defined the scope of the decades slant with You Forgot it in People, but instead of resting on their considerable laurels, they pressed forward into new experimental territory, lining up colossal trip-hop beats, multiple fuzzed-out guitar layerings, throbbing bass, and horn section freak-outs all around the vocal work of the likes of Feist, Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell of Stars, Emily Haines of Metric, Andrew Whiteman of Apostle of Hustle, Jason Collett, as well as Broken Social Scene's two core members Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, and that's not even counting guests like K-OS and Murray Lightburn of The Dears. The size and loose make up of Broken Social Scene allows the band to use as many instruments or as few as they want in the songs, for example "7/4 Shoreline" has five guitars in it, while "Bandwitch" is little more than guitar and percussion. "It's All Gonna Break" closes out the album as a reminder of why the album is so great, it's ten minutes of crunchy guitars, pounding rhythm section, a multi-part vocal track, and a final triumphant horn crescendoing coda, blaring like the herald of the new indie rock.

3. Sun Kil Moon: Ghosts of the Great Highway
The human voice is a powerful thing. Think about how a simple three-letter word like "yes" can have radically different meanings depending on the tone of the voice saying it; such is the power of the voice. God must have given Mark Kozelek's voice a little extra or something because his is a voice that can sell any song. The term "selling" however, does not apply here, since these are songs straight from Kozelek's heart and the ring as true as true can be. When he sings about being lonely, empty, heartbroken, and tired he sounds like he is those things, and you in turn feel lonely, empty, heartbroken, and tired. Kozelek also has a particular talent for fusing vocals, lyrics, and music such that he makes the music match what and how he is singing, so when he's sad the music swells with mournful guitars and strings behind him, furthering the affect of the already incredibly affecting song. Kozelek can even make five minute guitar solos sound sad, now that's talent.

2. Patrick Wolf: Wind in the Wires
Considering my love of electronic, classical, and folk music, it should come as a huge surprise that one of my most treasured albums is a perfect mix of the three. Take just the music of Wind in the Wires, violins and violas play not as an accessory to the music, but as a solo or lead instrument, the electronic beats are fuses of normal electronics and organic sounds such as birds, twisted together, pianos tinker while ukuleles, mandolins, and dulcimers are plucked or strummed. The whole album is unlike anything ever made, it's mixture of things modern and antiquated is unprecedented and honestly, there's nothing that sounds much like it. And the just the music, Patrick Wolf himself is an eccentric figure, a sort if character from the past who brings with him tales of folk tales of old and recites them with a dark melodrama. His delivery of lines like "Today I woke and my spirit was gone; still on the shore where he truly belongs" might sound stupid coming from anyone else, but from Wolf they sound frighteningly real. He fills many of his songs with such a longing that you really begin to believe that he, to quote Brian Wilson "just wasn't made for these times".

1. Okkervil River: Black Sheep Boy
What really, is there to write about this album? What can be said about it that won't sound stupid when compared with music? How does one describe such brilliant and inspired songwriting? What words are there to give an idea of how perfect each instrument, each note, each word, each syllable, is? Is it possible to say how perfect "A King and a Queen" is? When the strings start to swell just a little, the trumpet comes in, and Will Sheff starts to launch into his final declaration of love, will anything I say really matter? No, my words can't do one iota of justice to this music, so instead of doing it a disservice, I'll simple stop and tell you to go listen to it.


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