Top 100 Albums of 2000-2009: #65 - #61
---#65---
Common - Like Water for Chocolate
(hip-hop)
2000
Like Water for Chocolate contains some of the more intellectual, thought-provoking hip-hop I've heard, not just because it contains "serious" content, but also because Common has a real knack for structuring and delivering his lyrics in a manner that makes them stick in your mind with a lasting impact. He achieves this over and over again throughout the album (just check out this line from "The 6th Sense" - "I'd be lying if I said I didn't want millions / More than money saved, I wanna save children / Dealing with alcoholism and afrocentricity / A complex man drawn off of simplicity / Reality is frisking me" - just one excellent snippet of many). What's more, his flow is amongst the smoothest, mellowest and most charismatic I've had the pleasure of hearing, and the production is absolutely slick throughout. Personal favourites include album-opener "Time Travellin'", "The 6th Sense", the hilarious "A Film Called (Pimp)" and the moving biographic track "A Song for Assata". A standout album that's got a decent chance of appealing to non hip-hop fans as well as those who dig the genre.
Click to view---#64---
Ringo Shiina - 加爾基 精液 栗ノ花 (Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana)
(art-pop, pop/rock, j-pop)
2003
Pop songstress Ringo Shiina, who enjoys huge mainstream popularity in Japan yet remains relatively obscure to Western audiences, is regularly cited as an example of a pop musician with a flair for the experimental. To this end, she finds herself being compared to similarly-minded female musicians like Bjork. In a career forged on blurring the line between infectious melody and extensive creativity, Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana - her third album - stands as her most overtly left-field work, but don't let that scare you - those tags of "experimental" and "left-field" are 99% indicative of Shiina's firm desire to achieve a unique sound via her broad palette of musical influences, encompassing genres which are grounded firmly on the listenable and accessible side of the spectrum. There's flourishes of jazz, electronic-pop, girl-group, rock, balladry, singer/songwriter and (of course) j-pop littered throughout the album, and these frequently overlap with one another in the course of a single track, and while the album's production aims for a big, bright, polished sound, it never becomes cluttered, overbearing or weird for weird's sake. This is the kind of music where the individual parts making up the whole are simple and familiar but the overall result is something all-together unexpected and delightful. Between her solo work and her releases with group Tokyo Jihen, Shiina released a number of knockout albums during the decade, enough to put her in serious contention to be regarded as its finest solo artist. You can be sure this won't be her final appearance on the list.
---#63---
Juana Molina - Un Dia
(singer/songwriter, folktronica)
2008
After first encountering Juana Molina with her utterly gorgeous 2006 album Son, I tracked down and hungrily devoured the rest of her catalogue, which included 2008's lovely Un Dia. It stands firmly as her finest release to date, and everything you'd expect to hear from the Argentinian singer/songwriter is still in full effect - buoyant vocals, traditional South American instrumentation mixed with glitchy post-production and the airy atmospherics that seem to permeate all of her work - and it's as lovely and inviting as ever before. Molina doesn't stick entirely to the status-quo, however, as these eight songs have been injected with a bustling, cyclical rhythm (sometimes percussive, sometimes vocally driven) that's somewhat uncharacteristic of her earlier work, which was so floaty it bordered on ambient. It's a welcome addition, as it pushes Molina's work forward into previously uncharted waters, but never robs it of the earthy warmth we expect from her music. A couple of the album's most noteworthy highlight tracks are "¿Quién? (Suite)" and "Un Dia", the latter of which might be my favourite Molina song to date.
---#62---
Squarepusher - Go Plastic
(electronic, drum 'n' bass, IDM)
2001
While Music is Rotted One Note would be my pick for the best Squarepusher album, I think Go Plastic might be my favourite, if that makes any sense. It's one hell of a weird album, a Frankenstein's monster of breakbeat electronica that shambles its way through 2-step garage-parody ("My Red Hot Car"), sublimely moving ambiance ("Tommib" - which you might have heard floating by during one of the hotel-room scenes in Lost in Translation), cool-as-ice chillout vibes ("Plaistow Flex Out"), surprisingly emotive D'n'B ("I Wish You Could Talk") and insane, go-nowhere noodling (the oft-skipped "Greenways Trajectory", which sounds like a "made up as I went along" monstrosity intended for masochists with 6-second attention spans). It's arguably Tom Jenkinson's least cohesive album, so how is such an unfocused wreck worthy of such praise? Well, it certainly doesn't hurt that at least seven of the album's ten tracks are individually flat-out great, and there's a certain "deformed charm" about the whole mess, but I'll tell you the real reason: "Boneville Occident", "Go! Spastic" and "The Exploding Psychology", three of the greatest pure electronic songs of the decade. That sort of quality is just impossible to ignore.
---#61---
Tom Zé - Danç-Êh-Sá (Dança dos Herdeiros do Sacrifício)
(Brazilian, experimental-rock, samba, MPB, forró)
2006
Tom Zé is one of the most incredible cases of long-running musical creativity you could ever hope to discover. A major innovator throughout the late-60s and 70s, Zé languished in obscurity for decades, being overshadowed by more well-known Brazilian counterparts like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben and Joao Gilberto, and it wasn't until David Byrne happened across and re-released his material during the 90s that he finally found a more substantial following. Zé turned 70 in recent years, so you could certainly forgive him for releasing safe, comfortable retreads on an irregular schedule. You could forgive him for retiring all-together. He's never been one to take the easy route, though, and the 2000s have marked one of the most prolific and creative periods of his career, seeing the release of half-a-dozen (really great) albums during that span. Danç-Êh-Sá, a homage to rebellion and sacrifice throughout Brazil's history, is my pick for the best of the lot, and it ranks amongst the best work of his career. The combination of styles on display here is mind-boggling, as Zé not only borrows from a handful of existing genres (samba, avant-garde rock, tropicalia, bossa, hip-hop, afro percussion styles, electronic music and a-capella to name a few) but also manages to create invigorating sounds and textures that are totally unfamiliar (even in the context of Zé's body of work) and maddeningly hard to pigeonhole, with his boundary-pushing use of vocal sounds in particular being just amazing. Immersing yourself in his mad creation is like stumbling into a immense festival full of colourful characters and technicolour mayhem.