When the same band released In Rainbows in 2007, many of those same people headed to the internet and paid whatever they wanted, then listened to it on a computer file on their phone. Steve LaBate, More convincingly than anyone in the last decade, Welch and her partner David Rawlings dipped their ladle into the pot of old-timey American music. We had dozens of critics vote for the best new albums, movies, TV shows games and books, and then we argued some more until we’d focused our spotlight onto the very best pop culture created during the aughts—whether it was wildly popular or is still waiting to be discovered by the masses. It rewards your attention. Deerhoof are a case in point: the Bay Area quartet makes music that’s punk, but pop; noisy but pretty; thoroughly composed, but explosively performed. By Radiohead (2000); Tracks: Morning Bell, Kid A & Optimistic. Murphy is a self-aware chef; he knows his melting pot contains all the finest ingredients from music history, and he’s happy to sprinkle fly disco beats on top of them. 4. So the sounds, hypnotic and magnificently textured in their own right, were literally falling apart and vanishing into the air as the pieces progressed, resulting in music that feels heavy with sadness and loss even as it feels spectral and weightless. Rachael Maddux, A wistful letter to girlfriends past, his aging father and perhaps even that long-gone Roman candle of a former Replacements bandmate, Bob Stinson, this warm, well-worn, acoustic-anchored “folk”-rock record chugs along as Westerberg ruminates on middle age, endearingly toggling between heartbreaking sincerity and wise-assed self deprecation.


Forget the collective shriek of a thousand red-carpet fashion know-it-alls. When I see the swan, my eye drifts past its beak to those pillowy white feathers, recalling the plushness and warmth of a down comforter. Michael Gira’s spartan production and strong editing distill the power of Banhart’s vibrato and vision while giving the songs the space such oddball beauties deserve. –Joe Tangari. The result: an overpowering acoustic album brimming with sadness and soul.

“Some of it at the time seemed very topical,” Bither says. ?” actually became Oklahoma’s official state song. left off, shaking off the hangover to face whatever comes next. The result is a gorgeously dark album featuring the trippy and beautiful “I Was a Lover.” Elsewhere, David Bowie sings backing (!!!) Real affection, real reverence, real melodies, real songcraft.

Nowhere to go!” Mother Nature on birth control? –Joe Colly, On The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride create a deep pool of drone so heavy that its gravity pulls in sounds around it, swallowing them whole. Not condescension. indirectly echo the sumptuous opening of Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, one of the most ethereal pieces of music ever written. A true sleeper phenomenon, Jay Reatard’s breakout record is still creeping up on critics and fans well after its release. Not quite as intimate as his earliest records and not quite brash and bombastic like its immediate predecessor. The Mysterious Production of Eggs is the greatest statement to leak out of that world onto a record. Josh Jackson, David Bazan’s Seattle indie rock is well played, and his voice is perfectly restrained, but his most unique gift lies in storytelling—vivid images and a thoughtful perspective create a deep, dark feeling of sadness. Fast forward to 2005’s Multiply, and he’s found it: As Mark Pytlik notes in his Pitchfork write-up of the album, Multiply is most definitely reverential to its antecedents, and they’re often worn proudly on the sleeve of each track. But with The Crane Wife, The Decemberists really take flight. And on the more concise follow-up, Decoration Day, the Truckers distilled their new sound from 80 to 100 proof. –David Raposa, Listen: Jamie Lidell: “When I Come Back Around”, Before he would construct dream-pop anthems out of John Hughes’ celluloid teen angst, Anthony Gonzalez (and then-bandmate Nicolas Fromageau) gave us this behemoth of sound. He wrote about temp labor, old vinyl, amino acids, and, oh yeah, girls. to Four Tet, Kanye West to Joanna Newsom—and the many sides of Radiohead, too—here are the albums who defined the decade. Kate Kiefer, If you were to crown a 2000s band King of the Indies in terms of sheer rise to hipster notoriety, you’d be hard pressed to pick a group not called Animal Collective. Despite that standing, their carefully manicured and occasionally over-polite music tends to be respected by critics rather than revered. The beats and Matmos audio samples scattered across Vespertine are precisely executed; their subtle pop and crackle drawing you into an impossibly delicate, refreshingly sparse interior world: plucked harp strings, sparkling celeste, boy choirs, music boxes. © 2018 Condé Nast.

Four years after Art Brut (went for) broke, way too many bands are still doing it wrong. In 2005, when Sufjan Stevens released Illinois, the second album in his planned 50-state project, American pride was at a record low—especially among young people. But if The Fix proves anything, it’s that Scarface is a world unto himself, the rare rapper whose utter musical weight, gravitas, and gravitational pull is so strong that an entire city’s aesthetic bends in his direction when he deigns to subsume it. It could have been a sad affair, the desperate yawp of a legendary Nashville madam teetering into an aged cliché of herself, but with the help of rock ‘n’ roll upstart Jack White, Lynn made the greatest record of her career. It’s hard to say where this band will go in the next decade, but there are two absolute truths: a) Merriweather Post Pavilion is the band’s breakout record and b) “My Girls” is so the jam. Daft Punk and Justice reveled in gloriously superficial properties of rock, the Aqua-Net, and motivational platitudes. With his precocious debut, the collar-popping, Jesus-walking, beat-making provocateur became a kind of hip-hop prophet, venting about his interior life in a way that spoke for millions.
And what a great time to be covering it all. Is This It, it turned out, was—and is—as dynamic, soulful and enduring as the city itself. So looking back over the first 10 years of the 2000s feels like looking back over our own history. –Joe Tangari, Stars of the Lid: Requiem for Dying Mothers Pt.1, Scarface aficionados might question Facemob’s sole New York-focused Def Jam record as a representative of the artist’s best work.

This was dance music about hostage situations. –Marc Masters. The United Colors of Benetton. The lyrical gravitas of religious iconography and damn-the-man slogans gave the Portland pop-punk band renewed purpose, but it could have been just more hot air if it wasn’t married to such incendiary riffs, sexy, throbbing basslines, and urgent, earnest melodies. sang like a schoolgirl skipping through a hopscotch court while sniper fire rang out overhead—not oblivious to the danger, just defiant. After three promising albums, the masterpiece arrived. The Truckers have never been more themselves than they were on Decoration Day, and they’ve never been better. Assertive but not boorish, charming but not sleazy, ironic but not empty, The Strokes’ debut was as cool and arrogant as it had the right to be—as it suddenly seemed, once again, that rock music had to be. Craig Finn’s story songs about desperate losers and God-obsessed hedonists were as literate as ever, Tad Kubler rocketed power chords to the back of the arena, and Franz Nicolay added vintage E Street Band keyboard fills. The songs that follow are guileless and spirited, as equally dependent on wry winks (“This Beard Is for Siobhan”) as uncloaked sentiments (“Autumn’s Child”).