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The best albums of 2000
Aside from the temptation to do some
impossible
top x albums of the millenium list, I think I can
restrain myself here to top 10 or so albums from
2000.
I did not listen to every album released in the
year
2000, of course, but thank to Napster and a DSL
line, I
heard the most popular songs from anything that
got a
semblance of good press.
My primary interest is musical, not literary or
cultural, so unlike most lists of this sort you
see, I
am definitely not including crap like Badly Drawn
Boy,
Modest Mouse, Coldplay, or sadly, the new
Radiohead
CD. After Radiohead's first three albums, I thought
they
were one of the best things going, and I did like
about half of Kid A a whole lot, but it's just
not a
very strong listening experience for me. Not
that I
can't appreciate new directions, but the massive
non-hype hype has left critics in the lurch and
scrambling for justifications on what is
essentially a
mediocre output. Sorry.
As I look at my notes, I am having a hard time
directly comparing many of my candidate albums to
each
other, and luckily they are just about all from
different genres, so I can simply award bests in
breed, and conclude with best in show.
| BEST ROCK ALBUM PJ Harvey, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea She moves to New York and makes it there. She can now make it anywhere. Really really strong album all the way through. |
 |
| BEST LIVE ALBUM Jeff Buckley, Mystery White Boy Mystery white boy indeed. These tracks from beyond his deep blue grave are deeply touching and affecting music. |
 |
| BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM Edgar Meyer, (Bach) Unaccompanied Cello Suites Performed on Double Bass OK, this may have something to do with me being a bassist. 30 years ago, Edgar Meyer started teaching himself to play bass by playing through theses suites. He now has a reputation as the best non-jazz double bassist in the history of the known universe, and he attributes it directly to continuously attempting to play these pieces for the intervening 30 years. They're very hard to play on cello, and basically impossible on bass (I know; I've been trying to play them for seven years and still can't do it to anything like a performance standard). I've heard all the notable cellist's interpretations of these suites, and to me Meyer is preferrable to all but the amazing Janos Starker. Really a stunning achievement considering the names I didn't list (Casals, Rostropovich, DuPre, Ma,....) |
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| BEST JAZZ ALBUM Christian McBride, Sci-Fi OK, again with the bassist thing. But seriously, Christian is one of the few real identifiable voices in jazz today (Or in the last 25 years for that matter.) On this album, he finally totally lets loose and tells us who he is. |
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| BEST COUNTRY ALBUM Neko Case and Her Boyfriends, Furnace Room Lullabies I hate country music, except for a real few people that are such phenomenally communicative artists that they could play balalaika and I would buy it. Neko Case is just an amazingly forceful singer / musician / songwriter / whatehaveyou. |
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| BEST R&B ALBUM D'Angelo, Voodoo For those really in the know, this almost counts as another bass-oriented pick. Pino Palladino is a monster. But D'Angelo has really achieved so much more here than a phat groove. He has put the soul back in popular Soul music. The extent to which he cares for his craft completely coats this recording. |
 |
| BEST RAP ALBUM Outkast, Stankonia OK, to talk about rap, I have to get into the lyrics at least a little bit. Outkast take on serious topics of modern urban life like inequal opportunity, teen suicide and the responsibilities of fatherhood. Put that together with a seriously deep groove and the few requisite songs about hos, and we have a winner. Eminem's a hell of a rapper, but wouldn't know a groove if it pistol-whipped him. (What happened to Dre?) |
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| BEST METAL ALBUM Deftones, White Pony The Deftones should never be lumped in with most of the other bands listened to by the mook horde. The primary thing that separates them from your standard noxious rap metal is a lack of hatred. Aggressiveness in spades, but tempered with a humanity and tenderness entirely lacking in any sincere way in their cousins. On this, their third album, they reach their highest level yet. |
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| BEST PUNK ALBUM Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One Yes, it's an all girl band. Yes, they're lesbians. No, they don't have a bassist in the band (but the drummer kicks major ass). This is kind of a sell-out radio-friendly album, their punkest of punk riotgrrl fans would say. But dogma aside, the music is like a shiny new puppy. A pit bull bitch puppy. |
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| BEST SHAMELESS EAR CANDY ALBUM Dexter Freebish, A Life of Saturdays Kind of this year's Third Eye Blindesque guilty pleasure. Except without the great bass player ;-) |
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| BEST SOUNDTRACK Bjork, Selmasongs I didn't see the movie, because it is just idiotically emotionally manipulative, but the soundtrack is terrific. Basically, it's a musical. A real Rodgers & Hammerstein type deal. But with Bjork. See? Anyway, it's cool as hell. |
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| BEST HARDCORE ALBUM At The Drive-In, Relationship of Command Rage Against the Machine is the inevitable comparison. Instead think FIREHOSE, and you'll be happier to listen. |
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| BEST COMEBACK ALBUM U2, All That You Can't Leave Behind OK, that's not really a category, but the five or so exquisite singles on here demand it make any list. |
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And the winner is...Sleater Kinney! They just revel in exuberance, and their unstoppable force cannot be denied.
--Cody Stumpo plays bass in the band Smear, whose single "Winter" is steadily climbing the MP3 alternative rock charts. He lives in Detroit, Michigan.
By Cody Stumpo
011601