Top 10 Albums I Enjoyed This Decade

Despite the very obvious decline in the abundance and quality of music, this decade still had some gems. The following is a list of albums I very much enjoyed, in order of release. Please note this is entirely according to my own personal tastes and just for fun.


Radiohead
Kid A 2000




A popular choice for everyone's favourite album of the decade, but not mine. As much as I dig this record, it's hard for me to listen to it without finding the praise a bit overrated. I guess the homages to Eno and Underworld are a little obvious for me.

Boards of Canada
Geogaddi 2002




This album scares me. Satanic overtones and hidden messages make for a dense and exhaustive trip to take in from start to finish. Definitely the up there with their first record.

Four Tet
Rounds 2003




I'm still looking for a vinyl copy of this one. I've heard this played in more coffee shops and pubs than any other electronica album. For an electronic record it's wonderfully organic and human sounding.

Ulrich Schnauss
A Strangely Isolated Place 2003




A discovered this one walking into Penguin Music one day; it was playing and I liked what I heard but it was on import for 25 bucks. I went home to try to download it, with very little success. Finally found it when it was back in stock a month later. Two years later it received a much wider release and everyone fell in love. My favourite album of the decade.

The Arcade Fire
Funeral 2004




A bit of an obvious choice, but that doesn't make it any less of an excellent album. Five years on, it doesn't date in the least and it always reminds me of summertime in Montreal.

Bloc Party
Silent Alarm 2005




"The Bends" of the naughties. I listened to this record an insane amount of times. In terms of sheer songwriting, this record was bursting with an energy and maturity that these guys never really showed again. For shame.

Sigur Ros
Takk 2005




As much as I enjoyed their earlier work, as an overall album Takk shone through with a more uplifting and accessibly varied palette. I think they got a little too accessible with the next record, at times spiraling into New Age corniness, but for me Takk was Sigur Ros at their peak.

Deerhunter
Cryptograms 2007




This record flows along, soaked in atmosphere. The guitars go whoosh on everything from Smiths pop to Eno ambiance.

Radiohead
In Rainbows 2007




Whether you consider it a return to form or another victory lap, the sound and feel of these recordings hold true again and again. This is a beautifully written, beautifully played and beautifully mixed album. This is the sound of the band not trying so hard, and sounding all the better for it.

Cut Copy
In Ghost Colours 2008




What started out as a guilty pleasure of mine became the record I couldn't deny. Sure we've heard it all before and so much of this material is heavily scripted(The New Order track, the Tears For Fears one), but this is a perfectly honed Summery Synth Pop masterpiece.

Honourable mention:
Broken Social Scene - Your Forgot It In People 2002
Air - Talkie Walkie 2004
M83 - Before The Dawn Heals Us 2005
Death Cab For Cutie - Plans 2005
Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel 2005
The Knife - Silent Shout 2006
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver 2007
Working For A Nuclear Free City - Businessmen & Ghosts 2007
James - Hey Ma 2008
Portishead - Third 2008

Onward

And In The End...

Just look at that image. Doesn't it look so powerful and revolutionary? Fear not, mes amies, the revolution is in full effect. This borrowing of a portion of the famous painting Liberty Leading the People leaves a bold impression. It's on. But what does the music sound like? And...why the French connection, "Viva la Vida" is Spanish.

So here come Coldplay once again, bursting out of the gates with a highly anticipated follow up to their last highly anticipated follow up. I've been devoting a lot of my thought process to them as of late in due to their inevitable summer saturation being highly topical. You see, I've always had quite the opinion of Coldplay. They are the kings of the pretenders: bands that aspire to be much more, but crumble under microscopic analysis of the sum of their parts.

To think this group's opening track of their first record was titled "Don't Panic", after the famous line of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While I did enjoy this initial tune and a few that followed it, I would say the collective body of Coldplay's work would best be exemplified by Adam's description of earth: "Mostly Harmless". By Coldplay's own admission, they take the best bits of other, more progressive and respected artists and graft the catchy, easily digestible bits onto one another in a veritable Frankenstein of arena worthy soft rock delivered with serviceable songwriting. The edgy, more interesting bits are abandoned, left twitching on the cutting room floor.

For their most recent release Chris Martin and the boys have enlisted some pretty heavy hitters, by way of Brian Eno, Markus Dravs and Jon Hopkins. They all do their best to polish the collective turd of a band known best for repeating themselves and taking few, calculated risks. What we are left with is an interesting middle ground that still delivers Coldplay's vision of a PG Radiohead, but often channels late 80's and early 90's era U2 in more regularity. This is their "throw it all out and start again" album, their Kid A or Achtung Baby. What it really sounds like is a safe, diluted attempt at keeping the formula the same while dressing things up in new clothes to keep the faithful still interested.

The big buzz of Latin influences and 90 degree changes in direction don't ever come, other than a couple bits of exotic percussion on "Gone!", a guaranteed sappy if lyrically trite future anthem for dad rock fans everywhere. Their aspirations of one day pleasing the arty and underground music fans that abandoned them long ago take over for numbers like "Chinese Sleep Chant", with it's My Bloody Valentine aping "shoegaze lite" tones, and album opener "Life in Technicolor", in which Jon Hopkins creates a nice electro-ambient Ulrich Schnauss-esque atmosphere for the band to play after.

The Achtung Baby connection can be heard on "Death And All His Friends" and "Lovers in Japan", their sweeping Edge mimicking guitars diving and frolicking while Martin tries with great urgency to articulate the gravity of it all with recurring themes of war, politics and death. Elsewhere Marcus Dravs ads his share of assistance in dressing bits of the title track and "Reign of Love" up in Arcade Fire production with grand strings and lots of reverb.

All of this ads up to a marked improvement over previous terrain Coldplay have tread. I am quite sure the unwashed masses will clamour on about how this is a breakthrough, but for me--it's just pretty OK. As a fan of Eno and others, there are some nice sounds and atmospheres here. But if anything, even when the band does a good job of scoring up a nice ballad or rock number, things fall flat when splattered with Martin's amateur and snore inducing lyricism. He still hasn't got much or say, or an interesting way of saying it. The political and religious messages all contradict or confuse as if penned by a man not wanting to offend anyone. He may still dream of a seat at the table with Bono, Yorke, Hutchense, Stipe et all, but he's still nowhere close.

Martin sings "And in the end/We lie awake/And dream of making our escape"on the set closer "The Escapist". One might surmise this as being the collective sentiments of all of Coldplay, in the grand conclusion of creating this record, hoping of attaining a level of artistic appreciation and identity that matches their record sales. The rest then, is up to us. 5/10.