Albums that are 20 years old.
While the economics and delivery system for music saw a lot of changes in the first decade of the 21st century, the options for bands and artists to self-record and self-release also expanded, resulting the number of albums released per year from about 40,000 to over 100,000. The album didn’t die, it multiplied like rabbits. From my perspective, that meant whatever style, flavor, subgenre you were into, you could find it. But it turns out many got paralysis from the increased volume, and simply stopped listening.
The excuse was that nothing was original anymore, everything had been done first in the 60s to 80s. While it’s true that none of these albums made my overall top 200 of all time, that has more to do with my age. The albums that I grew up with through my mid 20s are the ones seared into my brain and soul, like a lot of people. But unlike a lot of people, I did not stop listening to new music at the age of 33 (which was, coincidentally, 2003-04). I was listening to more new music than ever, with just under 1,000 albums making my list that year. Innovation and creativity never stopped, it simply expanded the parameters of the major genres established in the 20th century.
1. TV On The Radio – Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
From the first ten seconds of “Staring at the Sun” from their Young Liars EP (2003), which was re-recorded for the debut album, it was love at first listen. I recognized Tunde Adebimpe from the 2002 indie movie Jump Tomorrow, which apparently no one I’ve met has ever seen. It’s a great little movie, and Adebimpe perfectly played the nerdy wallflower who would fantasize about being some kind of Latin Lothario. Over time the thrill of discovery and passion for the band has faded, but they still hold an important, bittersweet place in my life from those years. It’s been a decade since their last album, yet no breakup was ever announced. I hope they come back, they’re greatly missed.
2. Colour Haze – Colour Haze
After producing a double album masterpiece six albums into their career, most reasonable bands would collapse in exhaustion and dutifully begin their long, slow (or quick) artistic decline. Instead, Colour Haze gets better. Who does that anymore? Recorded and mixed in analog in just a couple days, the album sounds incredible. The opening trio of “Mountain,” “Tao Nr. 43” and “Did Êl It” are some of their heaviest songs, with the latter employing some really tricky time signature acrobatics. The band are reaping the benefits of being together for over a decade. “Love” has some gorgeous quiet passages before it explodes and Stefan delivers some righteous MC5-style sermonizing. “Solitude” and “Flowers” features some fabulous acoustic guitar, making Colour Haze [XII] sort of their Led Zeppelin III. Oh, and “Peace, Brothers & Sisters” is their longest, most epic track yet at 22:11, destined to be the centerpiece of their live set for the next several years, with Hawkwind style space-rock synthesizer effects and mind blowing guitar solos. Another triumph nailed. Can they top it?
3. Witchcraft – Witchcraft
Sweden’s well documented 21st century love affair with Sabbathian proto-metal (e.g. Pentagram), heavy psych and doom can be traced back to 1995, when a band called Norrsken formed. They didn’t really lift off, having only recorded a demo, a single and contributions to two tribute albums for Blue Cheer and Trouble. By 2000, they had split, with vocalist Joakim Nilsson and bassist Rikard Edlund going on to form Albatros, who then became Graveyard. Drummer Kristoffer Sjödahl took the mic to lead the underrated Dead Man, and guitarist Magnus Pelander also took on vocal duties for the first time in Witchcraft. Adding more obscure elements from 70s Swedish psychedelic folk to the original Norrsken formula, the band scratched an itch that I and many others had for some witchy hard rock that sifted out the heavy metals. A fine debut, the band would go on to improve the sound production on their second album, and reach a peak on their third and fourth. They seem to have lost their way since then, making this debut all the more a valuable artifact.
4. Dungen – Ta Det Lugnt
While Swedish stoner psych bands like Spiritual Beggars, Terra Firma, Dozer, Mammoth Volume, Lowrider and Demon Cleaner were already active in the 90s, and the country spilled over with another several dozen bands in the early 00s, Dungen was the first to really cross over to get significant attention in North America, thanks to their catchy single “Panda” from their second album. It’s all the more remarkable that it stuck, because it’s sung entirely in Swedish, a practice that Gustav Estjes stuck with. It’s probably what prevented the band, with virtuoso guitarist Reine Fiske, bassist Mattias Gustavsson and a couple drummers, from staying popular. The incredibly tight ensemble that takes on psych prog and jazz-rock are renowned in Europe, with members like Fiske also serving time in Motorpsycho.
5. Ufomammut – Snailking
I dabbled in a lot of early sludge metal, from Fudge Tunnel, Zeni Geva, Eyehategod, Crowbar, Harvey Milk, KARP and Boris, to Corrupted, Acid Bath and Neurosis, but Tortono, Italy’s Ufoammut (pronouced ofoo-mamut) is the first I fell in love with. They elevate their particular brand of sludge to the stars, infusing the menacing Electric Wizard style cosmic doom with Hawkwind’s space rock and the early psych of Pink Floyd. The trio (Urlo, Poia and Vita) are also visual artists who make up the Malleus Collective, creating their own album art and posters. Their second album was my introduction to the band, as Godlike Snake (2000) was impossible to find at the time.
6. Mastodon – Leviathan
In the 90s, like a lot of people, I checked out of the metal scene beyond the stoner variety of Melvins, Monster Magnet, Kyuss and Sleep. The last real metal show I saw that decade was Bolt Thrower in 1992. That was a mistake. Not Bolt Thrower, who were awesome, but missing out on, for example, Iron Maiden in a small club during those lean Blaze Bailey years. The extreme metal underground continued to progress and mutate, with Death, Coroner, Acid Bath, and Neurosis pushing things forward. Entombed’s Uprising (2000) and Opeth’s Blackwater Park (2001) started to shake me out of my metal slumber, as did Mastodon’s Remission (2002). By the time Leviathan came out, I was fully onboard with seeing metal shows again. While the Atlanta, GA band’s debut saw them bursting out the gate at full strength with their sludge and prog metal formula fully formed, the whole presentation of Leviathan with it’s ambitious literary concepts, gorgeous cover art and the distinct personalities of the band members emerging that had me thinking this band might reach Metallica level popularity. That didn’t happen, but they still remain one of the most highly regarded metal bands of the 21st century, along with Opeth and Gojira. And Leviathan has aged like a great barrel aged bourbon.
7. The Hidden Hand – Mother Teacher Destroyer
Named after Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market,” The Hidden Hand’s second album finds Wino in one of his peaks of his four decade career. Brimming with political rage and experimentation, Mother Teacher Destroyer is a monster, a masterful hybrid of psychedelic stoner doom. Wino’s guitar perfectly reflects the ebb and flow of moods between fury, augmented by the heaviest, thorniest tones he’s ever done, and hippie optimism (“Wash our weapons in the sea”) with some of his trippiest psychedelic flourishes. The immediate “The Crossing,” liquid “Half Mast,” crushing “Desensitized,” and one of Wino’s greatest songs, “Sons Of Kings,” that deftly balances protest and fantasy.
8. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
This Scottish band did little to dispel the sense of impermanence with the post-punk revival by shooting their wad on their first album. Normally I would have found this hybrid of Josef K and garish dance-punk a bit headache inducing, but it’s the quality of their songwriting that has me keeping them around and out of the indie landfill. While the double-entendre of “Take Me Out” is still their signature statement, most of the songs are not far behind. And while the consistency slipped over their next four albums through 14 years, their art rock/glam collaboration with Sparks (FFS, 2014) is pretty damn delightful.
9. Motörhead – Inferno
It’s easy to take 21st century Motörhead albums for granted. Over the course of 22 albums, Lemmy did not change up their sound very much. And yet, I can understand why Lemmy was visibily irked by people focusing on their trio of Overkill, Bomber and Ace of Spades while ignoring later material, when the band sounds better than ever, and Lemmy’s songwriting is at it’s sharpest. He laments the dumb, clumsy metaphors in their most popular song “Ace of Spades,” and he’s right. He’s written a lot of songs that are much more clever. But as he also must have been aware of, dumb endures in rock ‘n’ roll better than clever. But so does killer guitar licks, and Phil Campbell, who’s been in the band since 1984, is on fire here. Drummer Mikkey Dee has been at it for 12 years, and there’s just enough special sauce here that edges their 17th album over pretty much everything in the band’s last three decades.
10. Razorlight – Up All Night
Of all the early 00s UK garage punk bands that popped up in the wake of The Strokes, Razorlight is probably the least cool. Johnny Borrell has the kind of punchable face where you have to consciously unball your fists any time you see him in a video. It also doesn’t help that after they lost their great drummer after their first album, the band sucked rotten eggs. However, I still love this debut. I love it so much I even tracked down all the B-sides to the singles, including a cover of “Hey Ya.” While The Clash-worshipping Libertines were more popular, I preferred Razorlight’s homage to early CBGBs sounds of the Patti Smith Group, the Heartbreakers and the Voidoids. And then there’s “Golden Touch,” their underrated crown jewel.
11. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) may have been Wilco’s highest regarded album, but this features the best lineup of the band. Jay Bennett was gone, but they’ve expanded with Mikael Jorgenson on keyboards, Pat Sansone on guitar, and most importantly drummer Glenn Kotche and guitarist Nels Cline, both of whom have impressive avant-jazz credentials. Jeff Tweedy put their talents to creative use on the band’s fifth album, which sheds nearly all the alt-country of their past, adding experimental drones, post-rock and even what would later be considered ambient Americana to their art rock arsenal. This didn’t scare off as much as their old audience as I predicted, though it certainly didn’t help further their cause to cross over to the mainstream. But it’s certainly a great album that held up over time.
12. Isis – Panopticon
On their third album, the student (Isis) have surpassed the master (Neurosis’s eighth album). All five of the band’s albums are consistently strong, but Panopticon is their peak, evolving from sludge metal to post-metal with their influential hybrid of post-rock atmospherics, and electronic enhanced shoegaze textures.
13. Interpol – Antics
While I had mixed feelings about many of the albums in the early 00s post-punk revival, it turns out a good many have held up well over the past two decades, at least to my ears. I’m still enjoying Interpol’s second album, which doesn’t quite match the hooks of their debut, but isn’t far off, along with the likes of The Killers, The Futureheads, Franz Ferdinand and even Razorlight.
14. Electric Wizard – We Live
The bombed out out low-end and evil sounding, sludgy stoner doom of Electric Wizard’s third album and masterpiece Dopethrone (2000) gave out an acrid whiff of compulsive drug consumption and seething misanthropy. With bandleader Jus Osborn, this was no act, and it’s not surprising that he wasn’t exactly a people person. Let Us Prey (2002), as Dan Franklin in Come My Fanatics: A Journey into the World of Electric Wizard (2023) put it, was “a blackened chemical stain after Dopethrone.” It was the sound of the band falling apart and by 2003 drummer Mark Greening and bassist Tim Bagshaw, two-thirds of the original trio, were gone. Incredibly, during this tumult, Osborn found his person in Liz Buckingham (Thunderpussy 13), and they’d eventually marry. With Justin Greaves (Iron Monkey) and Rob Al-lssa on bass, they became a quartet, and We Live took a new direction with twin guitars and more raucous, propulsive and brutal sound. The new quartet’s debut at Roadburn Festival alongside High on Fire was triumphant, and the band that had been written off seemed to have entered a new stage.
15. Tom Waits – Real Gone
It’s serendipity that I happen to be in the middle of reading Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskins (2009). I’m at the point where he had completed Swordfishtrombones (1983), in which Waits stepped outside of the mainstream narrative completely, and formulated his own unique style that is both out of time and timeless. That holds true through his sixteenth album, his gnarliest since Bone Machine (1992).
While Waits was already undergoing an artistic transformation, growing beyond his piano driven Tin Pan Alley ballads into something distinctively more prickly and cranky on Heartattack and Vine (1980), he credits his wife Kathleen Brennan (the Grim Reaper to his Grand Weeper), who he met while working on the set of Francis Ford Coppola movie One From the Heart (1982) with helping form his new artistic direction, and has been a creative partner ever since.
Real Gone is a heavy, gnarly log of an album. Those tough enough to withstand the rough bark of its exterior will be rewarded with beautiful detailed rings of its rich imagery, and in the smooth center, its lone, lovely ballad, “Day After Tomorrow,” a timeless, heart wrenching protest song.
- Witchcraft – Witchcraft (Rise Above) | Sweden
- TV On The Radio – Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (Touch And Go) | USA | Bandcamp
- Colour Haze – Colour Haze (Elektrohasch) | Germany | Bandcamp
- Dungen – Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds) | Sweden | Bandcamp
- Ufomammut – Snailking (Music Cartel/Supernatural Cat) | Italy | Bandcamp
- Mastodon – Leviathan (Relapse) | USA
- The Hidden Hand – Mother Teacher Destroyer (Southern Lord ) | USA
- Wilco – A Ghost Is Born (Nonesuch) | USA | Bandcamp
- Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand (Domino) | UK
- Motörhead – Inferno (Sanctuary) | UK
- Razorlight – Up All Night (Vertigo UK) | UK
- Isis – Panopticon (Ipecac) | USA | Bandcamp
- Stereolab – Margarine Eclipse (Elektra) | UK | Bandcamp
- Electrelane – The Power Out (Too Pure) | UK
- Interpol – Antics (Matador) | USA | Bandcamp
- Marianne Faithfull – Before the Poison (Naive UK) | UK
- Electric Wizard – We Live (Rise Above) | UK
- Tom Waits – Real Gone (Anti/Epitaph) | USA | Bandcamp
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus (Anti-) | UK/Australia
- Circle – Forest (Ektro) | Finland | Bandcamp
- The Sand Pebbles – Ghost Transmissions (Raoul) | Australia
- The Killers – Hot Fuss (Island) | USA
- The Futureheads – The Futureheads (Fantastic/Sire) | UK
- Joanna Newsom – The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City) | USA | Bandcamp
- The Black Keys – Rubber Factory (Fat Possum) | USA | Bandcamp
- The Fiery Furnaces – Blueberry Boat (Rough Trade) | USA | Bandcamp
- The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike (Memphis Industries) | UK | Bandcamp
- The Flaming Stars – Named And Shamed (Alternative Tentacles) | UK
- Orange Goblin – Thieving From The House Of God (Rise Above) | UK
- Pagan Altar – Lords Of Hypocrisy (Oracle/Shadow Kingdom) | USA | Bandcamp
- Deadbird – The Head and the Heart (Earache) | USA
- The Pillbugs – Happy Birthday (Monclavian Innernatural) | USA | Bandcamp
- Amplifier – Amplifier (Music For Nations) | UK | Bandcamp
- Saxon – Lionheart (Steamhammer) | UK
- Bark Psychosis – ///Codename: Dustsucker (Fire) | UK | Bandcamp
- Jesu – Jesu (Hydra Head) | UK | Bandcamp
- Earthling – Humandust (Discograph) | UK
- The Magnetic Fields – i (Nonesuch ) | USA | Bandcamp
- El Hombre Trajeado – Shlap (Human Condition) | UK | Bandcamp
- J.J. Cale – To Tulsa And Back (Sanctuary) | USA
- Rocket From The Tombs – Rocket Redux (Smog Veil) | USA
- Boredoms – Seadrum / House of Sun (Warner Japan) | Japan
- Black Eyes – Cough (Dischord) | USA | Bandcamp
- Oneida – Secret Wars (Jagjaguwar ) | USA | Bandcamp
- Juana Molina – Tres cosas (Domino ) | Argentina | Bandcamp
- Ozric Tentacles – Spirals In Hyperspace (Magna Carta) | UK | Bandcamp
- The Sadies – Favourite Colours (Yep Roc) | Canada | Bandcamp
- Ocean Chief – Tor (12th) | Sweden | Bandcamp
- Björk – Medulla (Elektra) | Iceland | Bandcamp
- Brian Wilson – SMiLE (Nonesuch) | USA
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