Top 100 Albums of 2000-2009: #70 - #66
Five more!
---#70---
Tom Waits - Alice
(singer/songwriter)
2002
Emotionally driven and lyrically quite beautiful, Alice presents a side of Tom Waits that's remained reasonably well hidden over the years. Certain unavoidable idiosyncrasies remain in place - Waits still sounds like he subsists on a diet of cheap liquor, cigarettes and gravel - but they're harnessed in new directions that make this album something of an unexpected delight. Those looking for grimy, "The World Died Screaming"-esque songs and clunky, kitchen sink instrumentation can find them on the same-year companion release Blood Money (another great album), which leaves Alice mostly populated by dignified story-songs and tender ballads of surprising sincerity. There's an abundance of great material here, including the fantastic title-track, the authentic tearjerker "I'm Still Here", the grand-yet-slightly-uneasy "Lost in the Harbor" and the demented "Kommienezuspadt", one of the album's few madcap stompers. It's a must for fans, but as something of a departure from his usual sound, even detractors may find something they enjoy.
---#69---
The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent
(post-punk, experimental-rock)
2008
It's almost impossible to talk about Imperial Wax Solvent without focusing on its 11-minute highlight "50 Year Old Man", Mark E. Smith's snarling, acidic ode to being exactly that. With its ferocious guitar assault, sneering lyrical challenges ("I'm a 50 year old man / What you gonna do about it?") and surprise banjo-solo interlude, it makes for an incredible centrepiece. Pleasingly, the rest of the album measures up, trading in lean runtimes and snappy hooks which perfectly offset "50 Year Old Man's" excesses. Plenty of stylistic ground is covered: "Alton Towers" sounds like The Fall in a haunted house, and opens the album in a cool and arty way; "Wolf Kidult Man", "I've Been Duped" (featuring Smith's wife Eleni Polou on lead vocals) and "Tommy Shooter" all veer into boozy-but-tempered post-punk; "Strange Town", "Can Can Summer" and "Is This New" are closer to rumbling garage-rock; and "Tourig" springs up out of nowhere with a detour into thumpy electronica. In the end, though, it comes back to "50 Year Old Man's" themes of age and experience, as "Exploding Chimney" winds up the album with Smith coolly claiming "Believe me kids, I've been through it all." By all accounts, he has, and to still be making albums as brilliant as Imperial Wax Solvent is damn impressive.
---#68---
Bobby Previte - The 23 Constellations of Joan Miro
(avant-garde jazz, classical)
2001
The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró is a collection of creative jazz snippets by New York musician Bobby Previte, utilising a variety of instruments (both traditional and somewhat unconventional) and some subtle electronic touches to achieve a lush, theatrical aesthetic that strikes a range of emotional chords. Keeping things uniformly short and sweet, each one of his sonic concepts is given just enough time to establish itself and whirl around the listener's mind for a quick spell, and is then elegantly concluded to make way for the next one. Previte deserves some major kudos for knowing exactly how much space any given concept deserves when he commits it to record - when you're trying to cram 23 individual pieces into a single recording, each of which with their own distinct style and personality, it's inevitably going to be difficult to avoid sounding cramped and chaotic. Nothing on The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró ever wears out its welcome, though, nor does anything ever feel underdeveloped or clash with a neighbouring piece, which is really quite remarkable when all of your songs fall in the 90-180 second range. Instead, the songs fit together quite beautifully, fulfilling their purposes flawlessly, both as distinct jazz concepts and as the combined elements of a colourful tapestry.
---#67---
Jack Rose - Kensington Blues
(American Primitivism)
2005
Jack Rose pretty clearly establishes himself as a disciple of John Fahey on Kensington Blues, his fifth and best known album of American Primitivism. The fascinating instrumental guitar style, a method which combines neo-classical and avant-garde approaches with country/blues finger-picking techniques, was invented by Fahey in the 1950s, and Rose makes an exceptional contribution to its continued development. He does a terrific job straddling that fine line between the style's melodic aspects and it's more "musically academic" ones, making for an album that's quite breezy and easily listenable, yet at the same time impresses with its complexity, masterful playing (Primitivism often showcases some pretty nimble fingers, and this album is no exception) and attention to detail. The three-minute title track opens the album, and serves its purpose beautifully as an accessible, concise introduction and a taster of what's to come, with the remainder of the album shifting between self-contained songs of similar brevity and longer passages of more overtly ambitious work. Rose suddenly and unexpectedly died in late-2009, at just 38 years of age, bringing premature closure to a career that had already delivered one masterpiece and certainly had the potential to deliver more. Kensington Blues ensures that he will always hold a place in the upper-echelon of players of American Primitivism, and of guitarists in general.
---#66---
M.I.A - Kala
(electropop, hip-hop)
2007
M.I.A's first album, Arular, never really gelled at all for me. It was musically jarring in a manner that rubbed me the wrong way, and I found it to be frustratingly inconsistent in quality. After a handful of listens it was finally relegated to the big pile of music I rarely bother to revisit. Because of this, I steered clear of Kala upon its release, assuming that I'd be in for more of the same. It wasn't until I had a brief obsession with the ubiquitous single "Paper Planes" that I finally decided to check the album out, and even then I was hesitant about being drawn in by a standalone hit. Better late than never, though, as Kala brings together Arular's more promising aspects - punchy rhythms, dynamic vocals, wry humour and political awareness - refines them, tidies them up and streamlines them through a Indian-pop-meets-Western-dance-party sensibility. The results are a bevy of creative, dancefloor-burning tunes: "Jimmy" is a swirling Bollywood gem, "Bird Flu" and "Hustle" are both pleasingly feisty, her reworking of "Mango Pickle Down River" takes the didgeridoo samples and vocals from the original by young indigenous Australian group The Wilcannia Mob and adds a couple of Maya's own verses, a cool London grime backdrop and some sharper production, and "Paper Planes" and "Boyz" - the latter being my personal favourite - are bouncy, anthemic and brimming with attitude in a manner that makes them two of the decade's most impossibly addictive singles.
---#70---
Tom Waits - Alice
(singer/songwriter)
2002
Emotionally driven and lyrically quite beautiful, Alice presents a side of Tom Waits that's remained reasonably well hidden over the years. Certain unavoidable idiosyncrasies remain in place - Waits still sounds like he subsists on a diet of cheap liquor, cigarettes and gravel - but they're harnessed in new directions that make this album something of an unexpected delight. Those looking for grimy, "The World Died Screaming"-esque songs and clunky, kitchen sink instrumentation can find them on the same-year companion release Blood Money (another great album), which leaves Alice mostly populated by dignified story-songs and tender ballads of surprising sincerity. There's an abundance of great material here, including the fantastic title-track, the authentic tearjerker "I'm Still Here", the grand-yet-slightly-uneasy "Lost in the Harbor" and the demented "Kommienezuspadt", one of the album's few madcap stompers. It's a must for fans, but as something of a departure from his usual sound, even detractors may find something they enjoy.
Click to view---#69---
The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent
(post-punk, experimental-rock)
2008
It's almost impossible to talk about Imperial Wax Solvent without focusing on its 11-minute highlight "50 Year Old Man", Mark E. Smith's snarling, acidic ode to being exactly that. With its ferocious guitar assault, sneering lyrical challenges ("I'm a 50 year old man / What you gonna do about it?") and surprise banjo-solo interlude, it makes for an incredible centrepiece. Pleasingly, the rest of the album measures up, trading in lean runtimes and snappy hooks which perfectly offset "50 Year Old Man's" excesses. Plenty of stylistic ground is covered: "Alton Towers" sounds like The Fall in a haunted house, and opens the album in a cool and arty way; "Wolf Kidult Man", "I've Been Duped" (featuring Smith's wife Eleni Polou on lead vocals) and "Tommy Shooter" all veer into boozy-but-tempered post-punk; "Strange Town", "Can Can Summer" and "Is This New" are closer to rumbling garage-rock; and "Tourig" springs up out of nowhere with a detour into thumpy electronica. In the end, though, it comes back to "50 Year Old Man's" themes of age and experience, as "Exploding Chimney" winds up the album with Smith coolly claiming "Believe me kids, I've been through it all." By all accounts, he has, and to still be making albums as brilliant as Imperial Wax Solvent is damn impressive.
---#68---
Bobby Previte - The 23 Constellations of Joan Miro
(avant-garde jazz, classical)
2001
The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró is a collection of creative jazz snippets by New York musician Bobby Previte, utilising a variety of instruments (both traditional and somewhat unconventional) and some subtle electronic touches to achieve a lush, theatrical aesthetic that strikes a range of emotional chords. Keeping things uniformly short and sweet, each one of his sonic concepts is given just enough time to establish itself and whirl around the listener's mind for a quick spell, and is then elegantly concluded to make way for the next one. Previte deserves some major kudos for knowing exactly how much space any given concept deserves when he commits it to record - when you're trying to cram 23 individual pieces into a single recording, each of which with their own distinct style and personality, it's inevitably going to be difficult to avoid sounding cramped and chaotic. Nothing on The 23 Constellations of Joan Miró ever wears out its welcome, though, nor does anything ever feel underdeveloped or clash with a neighbouring piece, which is really quite remarkable when all of your songs fall in the 90-180 second range. Instead, the songs fit together quite beautifully, fulfilling their purposes flawlessly, both as distinct jazz concepts and as the combined elements of a colourful tapestry.
---#67---
Jack Rose - Kensington Blues
(American Primitivism)
2005
Jack Rose pretty clearly establishes himself as a disciple of John Fahey on Kensington Blues, his fifth and best known album of American Primitivism. The fascinating instrumental guitar style, a method which combines neo-classical and avant-garde approaches with country/blues finger-picking techniques, was invented by Fahey in the 1950s, and Rose makes an exceptional contribution to its continued development. He does a terrific job straddling that fine line between the style's melodic aspects and it's more "musically academic" ones, making for an album that's quite breezy and easily listenable, yet at the same time impresses with its complexity, masterful playing (Primitivism often showcases some pretty nimble fingers, and this album is no exception) and attention to detail. The three-minute title track opens the album, and serves its purpose beautifully as an accessible, concise introduction and a taster of what's to come, with the remainder of the album shifting between self-contained songs of similar brevity and longer passages of more overtly ambitious work. Rose suddenly and unexpectedly died in late-2009, at just 38 years of age, bringing premature closure to a career that had already delivered one masterpiece and certainly had the potential to deliver more. Kensington Blues ensures that he will always hold a place in the upper-echelon of players of American Primitivism, and of guitarists in general.
---#66---
M.I.A - Kala
(electropop, hip-hop)
2007
M.I.A's first album, Arular, never really gelled at all for me. It was musically jarring in a manner that rubbed me the wrong way, and I found it to be frustratingly inconsistent in quality. After a handful of listens it was finally relegated to the big pile of music I rarely bother to revisit. Because of this, I steered clear of Kala upon its release, assuming that I'd be in for more of the same. It wasn't until I had a brief obsession with the ubiquitous single "Paper Planes" that I finally decided to check the album out, and even then I was hesitant about being drawn in by a standalone hit. Better late than never, though, as Kala brings together Arular's more promising aspects - punchy rhythms, dynamic vocals, wry humour and political awareness - refines them, tidies them up and streamlines them through a Indian-pop-meets-Western-dance-party sensibility. The results are a bevy of creative, dancefloor-burning tunes: "Jimmy" is a swirling Bollywood gem, "Bird Flu" and "Hustle" are both pleasingly feisty, her reworking of "Mango Pickle Down River" takes the didgeridoo samples and vocals from the original by young indigenous Australian group The Wilcannia Mob and adds a couple of Maya's own verses, a cool London grime backdrop and some sharper production, and "Paper Planes" and "Boyz" - the latter being my personal favourite - are bouncy, anthemic and brimming with attitude in a manner that makes them two of the decade's most impossibly addictive singles.