[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

010: The Streets
Original Pirate Material
[Vice; 2002]

Mike Skinner remembers the halcyon days of England's rave culture: the underground parties, the DJs, the big tracks, the pianos that loop over and over and over. He remembers following rave into superclubs, and tolerating sketchier drugs, skyrocketing prices, and massive queues. Now he sees those same superclubs shuttering up and, like rave itself, Skinner feels himself getting older. He still occasionally dabbles in pills but when he does, it feels like he's fumbling for past glories. He turns his attention instead to more earthly delights-- booze, women, weed, takeaway-- all of which he leans on to divert him from the creeping realities of depression, his bank balance, the government. Like anyone with affection for a long dead scene, he flits between indulging his nostalgia and pushing things forward. Luckily, when it comes to the latter, there's hope-- Mike Skinner feels something happening with 2-step and garage and wonders if he can happen with it. If he does, will it be the same? Probably not. Will it be as wonderful? Absolutely. --Mark Pytlik

009: Animal Collective
Sung Tongs
[FatCat; 2004]

After many walkabouts through the far reaches of sound, noise, and melody, Animal Collective released what you could call their "breakthrough" record in 2004: Sung Tongs was surprisingly accessible, an herbal ear bath that still satisfied their die-hard followers. While Animal Collective are sometimes mocked for their "sticks and stones" naturalism, Sung Tongs succeeds by tempering its spontaneity. With percussion and guitars that sound like they're made from tree branches, they built a single with Hollies-esque vocals ("Who Could Win a Rabbit"); every sung line of nonsense here yields a straightforward hook, and the naturalistic aesthetic comes to life in a sparkling, almost surround-sound production that lets the extended instrumentals build and ebb like gusts of breeze on your face. With no manic avant-gardisms to hide behind, Panda Bear and Avey Tare looked naked and even naive making this music; but for all the new listeners who dismissed it as just so much chanting and banging, still more were startled and pleased to discover something so original that still sounded so simple. --Chris Dahlen

008: The White Stripes
White Blood Cells
[V2; 2001]

Hard as it may be to remember now, there was a time when the rock stardom of the White Stripes was not a foregone conclusion. But that was before White Blood Cells came along, delivering on the tender promises made by the duo's first two albums. Jettisoning much of the more traditional blues-based material of De Stijl, Jack White lashed his massive, pile-driving riffs to lyrics of genuine emotional heft, lending "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" and the Citizen Kane-quoting "The Union Forever" a level of expressive depth that the average garage rock band-- grid-locked in the hoary clichés of hot rods/girls/beer machismo-- could never match. Nor would most bands ever attempt to muster the sensitivity and songwriting acuity necessary to make "The Same Boy You've Always Known" or the sweet nostalgia of "We're Going to Be Friends" the new classics they deservedly are. --Matthew Murphy

007: Modest Mouse
The Moon & Antarctica
[Sony; 2000]

Isaac Brock's universe is dark, cold, and lonely. But at least some of his desolation is self-defense, balancing the higher order he glimpses everywhere-- in microcosms, in nagging phone calls from the Lord-- against his underlying suspicion that all is "water and shit." It's the secret that Snowden gave Yossarian: Man is matter. Or, man doesn't matter. The Moon & Antarctica proved that the dark center of the universe isn't a Nissan minivan. ("Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank.") It's the self, fucking up everything as everyone watches. Yet, for me this album always evokes "The Land of Nod", Robert Louis Stevenson's short poem depicting a child's nocturnal journey into a frightening kingdom. Stevenson writes: "Try as I might to find the way/ I never can get back by day/ Nor can remember plain and clear/ The curious music that I hear." Dude, it's Modest Mouse. --Marc Hogan

006: Sigur Rós
Ágætis Byrjun
[Smekkleysa; 2000]

With one or two too many aesthetically bankrupt soundtrack appearances (Vanilla Sky?), sold-out performances, and hackneyed Iceland-has-a-scene feature stories, Sigur Rós lost a bit of the white magic, but when Ágætis Byrjun appeared, its mesmerizing secret falsetto and magisterial bowed-guitar patience arrived like an unexpected icestorm with unbelievably moving aftershocks. At the time, I found "Svefn-G-Englar"'s foggy/wraithlike night buoy so all-consuming that I locked myself in a room and listened to each ripple for hours, my head resting against the buzzing speaker trying to translate faerie speak. From the glowing angel fetus to the moving boy-on-boy doll-toss of the slow-mo video for "Vidrar vel til loftarasa", there isn't a single misstep, and plopping Ágætis Byrjun back on the record player today, the attendant cloudburst feels just as new as it did during marathon No. 1. --Brandon Stosuy

005: The Avalanches
Since I Left You
[Modular; 2000]

A Napster classic. The Avalanches started in Australia in late 2000 and took the slow boat west, moving from one 56k modem to the next during 2001 and 2002-- a time when, as with LSD in 1965, file-sharing was still legit and above ground. The idea of stitching together songs using nothing but samples was far from a new idea by the time the group formed, but the Avalanches were on a completely different tip from someone like DJ Shadow. Instead of fetishizing breaks or searching for the elusive cool, the Avalanches mined for AM Gold, uncovering the simple joys of on-the-one-hand cheesy songs. The Avalanches applied the sampledelic technique inspired by the same idea as John "Plunderphonics" Oswald: to improve on the past. A record comprised of old records that was thick with nostalgia on the day of its release has only grown more poignant; the Avalanches have been silent, and Since I Left You remains frozen in time. --Mark Richardson

004: OutKast
Stankonia
[LaFace; 2000]

Upon its release in October 2000, prescient critic/author Chris Ryan called Stankonia "the brazen, cotton-mouthed blood transfusion you'll need to get through the next four years if Gomer wins the party." One term and a double album later, that statement feels eerie like the tarot: Stankonia, with all its joy and fusion, was the final great document of the Clinton years. Its classic joints ("So Fresh, So Clean", "Ms. Jackson", "B.O.B.", and "We Love Deez Hoez") defined the era's Southern shine, dished generously the daddy-love, and sounded the parallel sirens of the hood and the warzone, while OutKast made itself at home among funky freak-da-tweeter tweakers, spacefunk, soul snappin'/trappin' and the heartbeat-thrum of the speakerboxxx. Congealing the pimp and the poet, Dre and Big Boi equated Hendrixian feedback impulse with low-end theorizing, and leveled the upward push of the playas game with the ground-level rhymes of boho dreamtime. Aquemini was OutKast's pressing together and Speakerboxx/The Love Below was their peeling apart; Stankonia was one last missive of unity before their values divided. --Julianne Shepherd

003: Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights
[Matador; 2002]

The following are excerpts from transcripts of the chat forum maintained by the Fall 2099 section of the required course "The Debirth of Cool" at Quilted Northern State University.

Professorbot: Why is this considered a seminal artifact from cool's last days?

Stud A: Because that word 'seminal' has something to do with semen, and this album is seedily obsessed with man-rock lineage? It writhes in anxiety over its influential fathers. I still expect Lou Reed to start singing on "NYC". I still expect Johnny Marr to sue for "Say Hello to the Angels."

Stud B: Who's the father of the deliberately awkward "Obstacle 2", then? A nerdy sperm donor or test-tube enthusiast?

Stud C: Why are we asking this album "who's your daddy?" when the more interesting question is why it seems invigorated by rivaling its British brothers in bombast and self-seriousness? Look at the big Matador band from the previous decade, Asphalt or Concrete or whatever they were called: They dressed so dumb, like they were afraid of themselves, or of success. I love that Interpol aren't "just kidding, man." They crave/mimic authority; this album exudes post-punk as much as it does Wall Street.

Stud D: The brouhaha over their poses, clothes, and underwhelming shows is a false consciousness, a foggy defense against this anxious work of art. The record's audience needs-- pathologically, almost-- to cite the artists' mortality.

Stud E: The cavernous production does sound like the music was recorded in some throne room for humorless gods. I am naming my thesis "Atmosphere and Aura in Early American" something.

Stud F: What about those lyrics, investigating the difficulty of dating and loving while being a smart person? The title of a popular "tele-vision" show from the early 2000s seems to rank this album's concerns, respectively: "City and the Sex".

Stud A: I still think that Turn On the Bright Lights is evidence of ancestor worship-cum-graverobbery.

Professorbot: Yah, but what a gorgeous pyre they built with the digitally remastered bones. Type together with me, class: "Baby, my heart's been breaking..." --William Bowers

002: Jay-Z
The Blueprint
[Roc-A-Fella; 2001]

Curiously, our #2 album, The Blueprint is almost completely the inverse of Kid A, our #1. One is the work of a band looking to distance themselves as far as possible from their pop-culture image; the other the work of an artist declaring his supremacy over the music world. Kid A was consciously designed to be radio-allergenic and promoted as elliptically as possible; The Blueprint is as radio-fertile as albums come these days-- it was, in fact, virtually a concept album about self-promotion.

Hopefully, you'll need no convincing that The Blueprint is any less an artistic achievement for its directness. The record found Jay-Z eschewing the space-filling crutches of skits and guest stars (excepting Eminem) and recruiting the hottest producers of the present and future (excepting Eminem). Beatmakers Just Blaze, Kanye West, and Timbaland laid down their most complicated tracks to try to snare Hov, but Hov couldn't be stopped: sludgy Doors loops, horror-movie soundtracks, Mexican dancehall, all are easily taken down by his effortlessly melodic, charismatic ruminations on arraignments, drug dealings, and of course, smacking down Nas (was there ever a more productive rap battle?). Here, Shawn Carter ascends his throne with apt regality, backing tracks appropriately cinematic, soul strings swelling, fanfare blasting, everything in its right place. --Rob Mitchum

001: Radiohead
Kid A
[Capitol; 2000]

Exactly how and why Radiohead's Kid A has come to stand as the definitive artistic statement for rock consumers born after 1975 is almost ridiculously difficult to discern. People believed (and continue to believe) in the metaphysical heft of Kid A: in its aesthetic worth, its innovation, its meaning. In 2000, Kid A felt true and inscrutable; five years later, it somehow still does: From its chilling opening organ figure to its closing silence, Kid A is enormous-- a huge, sweeping testament to Radiohead's ever-swelling worldview.

Kid A was an obvious departure from its predecessor, the guitar-swollen OK Computer, and it alternately challenged and confounded Radiohead's core audience. Regardless, the record's supposed difficulty also lent it a certain sense of gravity: Kid A is confrontational and insistent, mysteriously capable of convincing some of the most stridently anti-electro guitarheads that inorganic flourishes can feel bloody and real. Consequently, in the months following its release, Kid A transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts, a surprisingly ubiquitous signifier of self. Owning it became "getting it"; getting it became "annointing it." The record's significance as a litmus test was stupid and instant and undeniable: In certain circles, you were only as credible as your relationship to this album. And that kind of intense, unilateral, with-us-or-against-us fandom felt oddly, uncomfortably apropos in the face of all that sound.

It is in this weird sense that Kid A was (and continues to be) the perfect record for its time: Ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial, its revolutionary tangle of yelpy, apocalyptic vocals, glitchy synths, and beautiful drones is uncertain about both its past and present-- and, accordingly, timeless. --Amanda Petrusich