(The Great Destroyer, 2005)
I have literally no idea what this is about. The intense, claustrophobic, bass-heavy instrumentation swirls around a monotonic boy-girl duet, punctuated by shards of distorted guitar. So I'm guessing it's not a love song, then.
There are some tracks that evoke a feeling so powerfully that for their duration they override whatever situation or feelings you have. My favourite example of this is Portishead's Roads, which I can't hear without being dropped into a film noir for three minutes. In Monkey's case, it's a night drive in a road movie. To a Destiny. With DEATH. Er, no, it's not a zombie film though.
I'm not sure it really matters what it's about, anyway. Like I said in my intro piece, often words are just pegs to hang a tune on. As long as the lyrics don't actively intrude, they're OK. "Tonight you will be mine", they sing, "Tonight the monkey dies". Well, it all sounds portentous enough to match the music.
I've just watched the video for the first time and it shows the band playing in the middle of a road, at night, in winter (hey, I wasn't far wrong!) before being abducted by a UFO. See, I told you - no zombies!
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
19/01/2010
5. Kate Rusby : No Names
(The Girl Who Couldn't Fly, 2005)
I came across this on a Word magazine compilation from 2005, although I didn't actually listen to it properly until about three years later. It probably came up when I was randomly playing tracks from my collection I hadn't listened to. Initially, the tune just captured me - simple, unadorned and direct, sung with purity and possessing a freshness because the lack of a fake American rawk accent.
After a few listens the fullness of the track sunk in. It's a goodbye song. The end of a relationship. "We were drifting, year after year", she sings. "When we tried our best to fly, my dear ... let me go, now - let me go." The straightforward melody just highlights the sadness of the situation. The accompaniment is sparse - a couple of acoustic guitars.
Kate is joined on vocals by Roddy Woomble of Idlewild, who also sings on a couple of the other tracks on the album. I did buy the album but I'm ashamed to say I haven't listened to it as much as I should. However, it does have Little Jack Frost, which I was pleasantly surprised to hear over the credits of a BBC children's animation during Christmas.
The track isn't available on Spotify but it is on Youtube.
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
I came across this on a Word magazine compilation from 2005, although I didn't actually listen to it properly until about three years later. It probably came up when I was randomly playing tracks from my collection I hadn't listened to. Initially, the tune just captured me - simple, unadorned and direct, sung with purity and possessing a freshness because the lack of a fake American rawk accent.
After a few listens the fullness of the track sunk in. It's a goodbye song. The end of a relationship. "We were drifting, year after year", she sings. "When we tried our best to fly, my dear ... let me go, now - let me go." The straightforward melody just highlights the sadness of the situation. The accompaniment is sparse - a couple of acoustic guitars.
Kate is joined on vocals by Roddy Woomble of Idlewild, who also sings on a couple of the other tracks on the album. I did buy the album but I'm ashamed to say I haven't listened to it as much as I should. However, it does have Little Jack Frost, which I was pleasantly surprised to hear over the credits of a BBC children's animation during Christmas.
The track isn't available on Spotify but it is on Youtube.
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
15/01/2010
4. Snow Patrol : Set The Fire To The Third Bar
feat. Martha Wainwright (Eyes Open, 2006)
Apparently the big track from this album was Chasing Cars (it was number 1 in Channel 4's top 20 of the noughties) but that passed me by completely. The reason I bought the album was this duet, which painfully evokes the powerless yearning of separation. The plaintive melody meanders above the brooding soundscape* but never reaches any kind of conclusion in either narrative or melody. Some things are out of our hands.
I like the parent album but as a whole thing I prefer 2004's Final Straw (see #37).
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
* eek! sonic cathedrals of sound alert!
Apparently the big track from this album was Chasing Cars (it was number 1 in Channel 4's top 20 of the noughties) but that passed me by completely. The reason I bought the album was this duet, which painfully evokes the powerless yearning of separation. The plaintive melody meanders above the brooding soundscape* but never reaches any kind of conclusion in either narrative or melody. Some things are out of our hands.
I like the parent album but as a whole thing I prefer 2004's Final Straw (see #37).
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
* eek! sonic cathedrals of sound alert!
3. Mint Royale : Don't Falter
feat. Lauren Laverne (single, 2000)
Don't Falter is pop at the poppest of the poppermost pop. Light and frothy yet paradoxically embued with enduring substance in the way that only good music can be, it fills the atmosphere with sunshine, sweetness and light. I love it.
The divine Lauren Laverne, when she was in Kenickie, was also responsible for another of my all-time favourite songs: In Your Car, which encapsulates and embodies the heady, hormone-fuelled adrenaline rush of adolescent sex like no other sound. "Give me a lift - I get so tired of walking" - oh, baby ...
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
Don't Falter is pop at the poppest of the poppermost pop. Light and frothy yet paradoxically embued with enduring substance in the way that only good music can be, it fills the atmosphere with sunshine, sweetness and light. I love it.
The divine Lauren Laverne, when she was in Kenickie, was also responsible for another of my all-time favourite songs: In Your Car, which encapsulates and embodies the heady, hormone-fuelled adrenaline rush of adolescent sex like no other sound. "Give me a lift - I get so tired of walking" - oh, baby ...
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
2. Muse : Map Of The Problematique
(Black Holes And Revelations, 2006)
This is a song that creates a very palpable atmosphere and plunges you head first into it. I see a man driving through the night on wet city streets, over flyovers, hours along deserted motorways, to reach his love. Clearly something apocalyptic (there's always something apocalyptic about Muse) has separated them and now he will not stop before he reaches his destination. I can see the film now.
The music has a restless, seething, barely restrained power that always seems on the verge of an explosion but never indulges in it. The soaring anguish when Matt Bellamy sings
There's a hint of Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence about the chord sequence, but where Enjoy The Silence has a stripped down, oiled up elegance, Map Of The Problematique throbs with a desperate obsession.
I enjoyed Muse's previous albums but with this one they polished their formula to a gleaming shine. It accompanied me on the daily commute to Coventry a couple of years ago when I was working on a project there and this song remains my most played according to my stats on last.fm.
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
This is a song that creates a very palpable atmosphere and plunges you head first into it. I see a man driving through the night on wet city streets, over flyovers, hours along deserted motorways, to reach his love. Clearly something apocalyptic (there's always something apocalyptic about Muse) has separated them and now he will not stop before he reaches his destination. I can see the film now.
The music has a restless, seething, barely restrained power that always seems on the verge of an explosion but never indulges in it. The soaring anguish when Matt Bellamy sings
Loneliness be overcontrasts magnificently with the circling chords and insistent beat.
When will this loneliness be over
There's a hint of Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence about the chord sequence, but where Enjoy The Silence has a stripped down, oiled up elegance, Map Of The Problematique throbs with a desperate obsession.
I enjoyed Muse's previous albums but with this one they polished their formula to a gleaming shine. It accompanied me on the daily commute to Coventry a couple of years ago when I was working on a project there and this song remains my most played according to my stats on last.fm.
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
1. Queens Of The Stone Age : In The Fade
(Rated R, 2000)
It starts with an eerie, high pitched whine, part intoxicated bee and part hellish dog whistle. A resigned voice describes the final stage in a broken relationship. Then a dissonant, downtuned guitar revs up like a demon Harley and boosts us down the highway of the chorus and we learn that everything was doomed, doomed.
Mark Lanegan's vocals are wonderfully resigned, attractively devil-may-care and beautifully restrained, but the killer hook is Josh Homme's intense, compressed riffage cruising through the chorus before the gutsiest, ballsiest guitar tone ever lifts the track and places it firmly onto the two-lane blacktop and Out Of Here.
Rated R was my introduction to QOTSA and despite the stoner rock rep, is just pure pop in places. Presumably this is why they tried beating their listeners round the head on their next album, Songs For The Deaf. Didn't put me off though; see 10.
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
It starts with an eerie, high pitched whine, part intoxicated bee and part hellish dog whistle. A resigned voice describes the final stage in a broken relationship. Then a dissonant, downtuned guitar revs up like a demon Harley and boosts us down the highway of the chorus and we learn that everything was doomed, doomed.
Mark Lanegan's vocals are wonderfully resigned, attractively devil-may-care and beautifully restrained, but the killer hook is Josh Homme's intense, compressed riffage cruising through the chorus before the gutsiest, ballsiest guitar tone ever lifts the track and places it firmly onto the two-lane blacktop and Out Of Here.
Rated R was my introduction to QOTSA and despite the stoner rock rep, is just pure pop in places. Presumably this is why they tried beating their listeners round the head on their next album, Songs For The Deaf. Didn't put me off though; see 10.
Back to the complete Best Tracks of the Noughties
Best Tracks of the Noughties
There were a lot of "best songs" lists going round at the end of last year. Everyone loves a list, don't they? Some of them have been more valid than others. Channel 4's 20 "Greatest Songs of the Noughties" was enjoyable viewing and represented a good mainstream selection. On the other hand, Absolute Radio's "Song of the Decade" top 100 has been amusingly spammed by extremists. Apparently, thirteen of the greatest songs of the last ten years have been by McFly. Who knew?
Although most critics talk about "songs", I think the wrong word is used. A song is a melody line and a set of chords on sheet music. When we talk about our favourite songs, we're probably thinking of a specific track. A track is a performance. It's the way the singer's voice cracks slightly in the third chorus, the way a guitar line weaves across the beat; it's the bass drum and bass guitar locked together, the crack of the snare through a retro 80s gated reverb (thanks Phil). And, yes, sometimes <sigh> it's even the truck driver's gear change, god help us.
Like most people, I listen to a wide range of music but what I really love is pop. That means two things to me. Firstly, "pop", which stopped meaning "popular" a long time ago and now describes a combination of elements, which together produce the potential for mass appeal. For all but the most masochistic listeners, it requires a tune - the old grey whistle test. If I can't sing along, I'm not interested.
Secondly, "music" means just that - and not words. The best lyrics in the world cannot save a mediocre tune or production. There's a reason why only Dylan zealots can remember his original version of All Along The Watchtower - as a musical performance, it's dreadful. (I'd argue the lyrics are pants too, but that's a separate discussion.) However, Jimi Hendrix surpassed himself with the arrangement and performance, and so it's his cover we remember.
Music will take you places that words cannot; it will spin you above the clouds and drop you in an abyss. It must be well arranged, played and recorded. I have no patience with lo-fi amateurs. The best words match the performance perfectly, but such symbiosis is rare. As far as I can tell, most lyrics are just there because scat singing is art-jazz wank. (FWIW, the tracks with the best lyrics - ever! - are "Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3" and "The Winner Takes It All".)
So, clearly that's enough words from me. The world has been waiting; ladies and gentlemen, I present the best tracks of the noughties.
Also available as a:
Although most critics talk about "songs", I think the wrong word is used. A song is a melody line and a set of chords on sheet music. When we talk about our favourite songs, we're probably thinking of a specific track. A track is a performance. It's the way the singer's voice cracks slightly in the third chorus, the way a guitar line weaves across the beat; it's the bass drum and bass guitar locked together, the crack of the snare through a retro 80s gated reverb (thanks Phil). And, yes, sometimes <sigh> it's even the truck driver's gear change, god help us.
Like most people, I listen to a wide range of music but what I really love is pop. That means two things to me. Firstly, "pop", which stopped meaning "popular" a long time ago and now describes a combination of elements, which together produce the potential for mass appeal. For all but the most masochistic listeners, it requires a tune - the old grey whistle test. If I can't sing along, I'm not interested.
Secondly, "music" means just that - and not words. The best lyrics in the world cannot save a mediocre tune or production. There's a reason why only Dylan zealots can remember his original version of All Along The Watchtower - as a musical performance, it's dreadful. (I'd argue the lyrics are pants too, but that's a separate discussion.) However, Jimi Hendrix surpassed himself with the arrangement and performance, and so it's his cover we remember.
Music will take you places that words cannot; it will spin you above the clouds and drop you in an abyss. It must be well arranged, played and recorded. I have no patience with lo-fi amateurs. The best words match the performance perfectly, but such symbiosis is rare. As far as I can tell, most lyrics are just there because scat singing is art-jazz wank. (FWIW, the tracks with the best lyrics - ever! - are "Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3" and "The Winner Takes It All".)
So, clearly that's enough words from me. The world has been waiting; ladies and gentlemen, I present the best tracks of the noughties.
- Queens Of The Stone Age : In The Fade
- Muse : Map Of The Problematique
- Mint Royale : Don't Falter (feat. Lauren Laverne)
- Snow Patrol : Set The Fire To The Third Bar (feat. Martha Wainwright)
- Kate Rusby : No Names
- Low : Monkey
- Calexico : Red Blooms
- Mark Ronson : Stop Me (feat. Daniel Merriweather)
- Kings Of Leon : Sex On Fire
- Queens Of The Stone Age : Go With The Flow
- Sugababes : Stronger
- Junior Boys : In The Morning
- Linkin Park : In The End
- Smashing Pumpkins : Stand Inside Your Love
- Radiohead : Everything In Its Right Place
- Goldfrapp : A&E
- Antony and The Johnsons : Hope There's Someone
- Martha Wainwright : Jesus And Mary
- PJ Harvey : This Mess We're In
- M83 : Teen Angst
- Primal Scream : Shoot Speed/Kill Light
- Ian Brown : F.E.A.R.
- Friendly Fires : Jump In The Pool
- Goldfrapp : Number 1
- The Flaming Lips : In The Morning Of The Magicians
- Gonzales : Real Motherfuckin' Music
- Kasabian : Processed Beats
- Alfie : You Make No Bones (Revisited)
- Neon Neon : Dream Cars
- David Gray : Please Forgive Me
- Midlake : Head Home
- Radiohead : Reckoner
- Radiohead : Videotape
- Elbow : The Bones Of You
- Doves : The Cedar Room
- Outkast : Hey Ya!
- Snow Patrol : Run
- The Clint Boon Experience : White No Sugar (New Improved Bascombe Mix)
- Passion Pit : Sleepyhead
- The Flaming Lips : Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung
- Klaxons : Golden Skans
- Radiohead : I Might Be Wrong (Live)
- White Lies : Death
- Interpol : Evil
- Kylie Minogue : Love At First Sight
- The Feeling : Helicopter
- Supergrass : Diamond Hoo Ha Man
- Elbow : Powder Blue
- Burial : Archangel
- The Avalanches : Since I Left You
- Jose Gonzalez : Heartbeats
- Will Young : Leave Right Now
- Loney, Dear : Violent
- Doves : Jetstream
- MGMT : Time To Pretend
- Girls Aloud : Sound Of The Underground
- Keane : We Might As Well Be Strangers
- Coldplay : Shiver
- Daft Punk : Face To Face
- N.E.R.D. : Rock Star (Jason Nevins Remix Edit)
- Interpol : PDA
- The Music : Getaway
- Lowgold : Beauty Dies Young
- Madonna : What It Feels Like For A Girl
- Franz Ferdinand : Auf Achse
- Kalomoira : Secret Combination
- High School Musical Cast : Breaking Free
- Rilo Kiley : Close Call
- Bloc Party : Helicopter
- Badly Drawn Boy : Disillusion
- Stereophonics : Dakota
- Blonde Redhead : 23
- The Streets : Turn The Page
- Sufjan Stevens : Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois
- Aimee Mann : Save Me
- Noonday Underground : London
- The High Fidelity : IThankU
- Girls Aloud : Call The Shots
- Vast : Free
- Miracle Fortress : Have You Seen In Your Dreams
- Mansun : I Can Only Disappoint You
- Fleet Foxes : White Winter Hymnal
- Benjamin Diamond : Little Scare
- Crashland : New Perfume
- The Darkness : Love Is Only A Feeling
- Liberty X : Just A Little
- Turin Brakes : Underdog (Save Me)
- Richard Ashcroft : A Song For The Lovers
- Unamerican : The Closer You Get
- Death In Vegas : Scorpio Rising (feat. Liam Gallagher)
- Daniel Bedingfield : If You're Not The One
- U2 : Electrical Storm
- Hercules & Love Affair : Blind (feat. Antony Hegarty)
- James Morrison : Wonderful World
- Hot Chip : No Fit State
- Spiller : Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)
- Seth Lakeman : How Much
- Sia : Taken For Granted
- The Supernaturals : Life Is A Motorway
- The Feeling : I Thought It Was Over
- Kylie Minogue : Spinning Around
- British Sea Power : Carrion
- St Deluxe : New Wave Stars
- Melanie C : Never Be The Same Again (feat. Lisa “Left Eye”Lopez)
- Birth : Last Night
- Joe Bonamassa : Happier Times
- Liberty : Thinking It Over
- Manu Chao : Mr Bobby (Live)
- Flight Of The Conchords : Ladies Of The World
- Carlene Carter : Why Be Blue
Also available as a:
- Spotify playlist (missing 9 tracks sadly)
06/01/2010
My 2009
"So this is ChristmasCalendrical oddities aside - apparently, the new year started on Christmas day in the Lennon household - it's a relevant quote for me. What have I done? It's all too easy to forget, I find. How's my 2009 been? Pretty much the same as the four or five years before it. This is my attempt to preserve a few impressions of the year before they slip away.
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun"
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