Album Reviews: Web in Front’s 25 Best Albums of the Decade: 10 – 6

This is our fourth  installment of our favorite albums of the ’00s (the rest being here). As always, this list is entirely subjective–be sure to leave all rants and missives on the comments wall. And if you don’t own any of these records, remedy that immediately.

The entire list is broken up into five parts, which will run daily throughout the week, continuing with today’s 10 – 6 entrees. Oh, and our top 250 songs of the decade are here. 10 – 6 after the jump.

A raw, blood-geyser’d implosion of noise, rage and hooks, Fever to Tell hits you just like that–a fever–as Karen O and Co.  breathlessly sprint through a series of red-lined rock and punk songs marked by Nick Zinner’s endless barrage of spiky, clever riffs and Karen O’s bile-spewing howls before settling down with a handful of experimental tracks and moody, affecting ballads.  And while the roiling mantis rage that fuels such tracks as the chiming cacophony of “Rich,” the rhythmic noise frenzy of “Date with the Night” and the militaristic chop of “Black Tongue” is powerful enough to earn Fever to Tell a place as one of the decade’s more memorable rock albums, it’s the inclusion of “Maps” at the record’s end that drives the disc to the best of the decade.  Propelled by Brian Chase’s insistent drumming, a dreamy and melancholic melody along with the surprising, wounded fragility of Karen O’s unforgettable plea (”Wait–they don’t love you like I love you”) “Maps”, and Fever to Tell, not only gave the decade it’s greatest ballad, but it’s greatest song.  Period.

Listen to “Maps”

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Listen to “Y Control”

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One of the decade’s most unrelentingly sad, moving and simply beautiful albums, Chan Marshall’s (aka Cat Power) You Are Free is the sound of a woman staring into a dark void for 53 minutes, but carries with it the implication that she’s been doing so long before the album began and will continue to do so long after it’s bleak, piano-laced end.  Opening with “I Don’t Blame You,” a track which more or less investigates and empathizes with Kurt Cobain’s motivations for suicide, Free is a shattering document of Marshall’s slide into depression and addiction, held together by harrowing, yet still gorgeous, songs like the aching farewell of “Good Woman” and the simply disturbing, near-monotoned “Names,” a roll call of Marshall’s childhood friends whose lives were overtaken by molestation, drug addiction, and death.  And while the disc is buoyed by the very occasional up-tempo track (”Free,” “He War”), You Are Free remains a haunting and haunted study of a lost soul, far from free.

Listen to “Good Woman”

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Listen to “I Don’t Blame You”

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What is there to say about Funeral, and to a greater extent, Arcade Fire, which hasn’t already been etched in neon hyperbole?  An earnest roar of pain and joy intermingled, Funeral eschewed indie-cool irony for a chaotic and thrilling whirlpool of autobiography etched by widescreen’d hope and despair–forget Brandon Flowers’ tepid, schlocky attempts to outboss the Boss, as this is our Born to Run.  Or, rather, one could easily declare after having heard the elegiac urgency of “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels),” the thrilling art-disco of “Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” and the classicist, rousing anthem “Wake Up,” that Funeral is our generation’s Funeral–that this is a benchmark record, one that will be imitated, remembered, and treasured for decades.  Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss–and in a good way.

Listen to “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”

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Listen to “Wake Up”

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It would be easy for hipster elitists to decry Modest Mouse’s major label debut, The Moon & Antarctica, as a slicked-up and sell-out move by the edgy indie band, marked as it is by a general sense of moody quiet that largely ignored the band’s noisier experimentalism.  Easy, yes, but also quite wrong–The Moon is Modest Mouse’s most successful, cohesive and risky venture, a sustained and artful investigation of mortality that feels as much like an interconnected series of brilliant short stories as it does a rock record.  Moon is the album that best captures and reveals Modest Mouse’s singular weirdness and excellence, their ability and desire to follow their muse down whatever rabbit hole appears before them, be it the simply strange and lovely (”3rd Planet”) to the bracing and terrified (”Tiny Cities Made of Ashes”).  While subsequent discs may have made bigger splashes, The Moon & Antarctica is the band’s definitive statement of purpose–that this is a band unwilling to follow any trajectory beyond their own, no matter where it will take them.

Listen to “3rd Planet”

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Listen to “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes”

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Coming quick on the heels of the cathartic and excellent Girls Can Tell, Kill the Moonlight should have been at least a lateral slide for Spoon, a quick and catchy break before returning to the business of being a serious rock band.  It’s a testament to Spoon’s knack for being, well, excellent that Kill the Moonlight not only avoided becoming a post-masterwork bit of filler, but allowed the minimalist disc to flower as their masterpiece.  Spare and honed to a fine point, Moonlight is a half-hour blast of hooks, melodies, and more catchy pop than any one band should be allowed on a single record–it’s as if the Kinks were blown forward in time as an indie rock band.  It’s a giddy ride of insistent pop delights given a serrated rock ‘n roll edge, and an album that confirmed Spoon’s promise and established them as one of the decade’s Great Rock Bands.

Listen to “The Way We Get By”

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Listen to “Don’t Let it Get You Down”

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December 10, 2009 | Filed Under Album Reviews, Best of the Decade, Exclusive Features 

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