Our best of the decade concludes today in the US! Here’s my essay on our #1 pick:
On Is This It, the exhaustion arrives before the party. We open on young Julian, bleary-eyed, fashionably disaffected and soggy with alcohol, following a leggy brunette to her 3rd story walkup, collapsing on her couch and sighing, “Can’t you see I’m trying? I don’t even like to,” before concluding, “I’m just way too tired.” It’s a 21st Century Peggy Lee routine, forcing yourself to try to drink and joke and fuck when all you feel is blown-out and exhausted. Even the record’s first few notes are indicative: a tape deck running at top speed — a party in progress — that suddenly, grinds to a sickening halt.
It doesn’t take much philosophical acrobatics to find the metaphor here. Released just four weeks after September 11th (forcing the song “New York City Cops” to be dropped from the record), Is This It seemed eerily poised — when we were all ready to think about such things again — to tap into our collective numbness. “Hard times opened their eyes,” Casablancas presciently moans before the album is even 10 minutes old, “Saw pain in a new way, high stakes for a few names.” It’s a moment of lazy revelation, peeling back the hypnotic trance brought on by years of routine to find there’s nothing underneath but a gaping chasm.
But a strange thing happens to Is This It round about the halfway mark: the clouds break. The static, sluggish tempos start to restlessly kick, and the pinprick guitars start twitching. It’s the sound of a band suddenly finding hidden stores of reserve and stumbling wide-eyed into the moment where you stop going to parties to fill up the blank spaces on your calendar and you start going because parties are fun. Is This It is a snapshot of a generation moving from desperation to — dare we say it — wary optimism.
These conjectures are loose outlines at best. To attach too much significance to Is This It is to saddle it with a pretense it doesn’t want. In fact, one of the things that stands out about the record now, 8 years removed from its initial release, is how tidy it is. There are no grandstanding sentiments, no labored orchestral passages, no arty lyrical constructs, no naked bids for the loose ends of your heartstrings. It doesn’t portend to any great insights, and it defies generational longevity — your grandsons? They won’t understand. It is, simply put, a ruthlessly minimal and impressively un-flashy record, the kind of record made by a band raised by Other Music and whose first few gigs found them opening for Guided By Voices and establishing weeklong residencies in grotty former movie theaters in Philadelphia. It may have come out on a major label, but Is This It has got all the reserve and stubborn austerity of a mid-period Spoon album. The group even neatly sidestepped a ‘Rock is Back!’ clusterfuck at the 2002 VMAs, declining to perform as part of a package that included both the Vines and the Hives, two bands that from this distance seem even more scripted and cartoonish than they did at the time. The Strokes, though, despite their idiotic good looks and Gatsbyesque backstories, still feel strangely human. And stripped from all the petty bickering that surrounded the band upon their arrival — chiefly, their famous families and ridiculous privilege — what’s remarkable about Is This It is just how unlikely a chart hit it is. And critics at the time may have been summoning Television and the Velvet Underground to describe the group, but neither of those bands managed to turn bloodshot sarcasm into box office gold the way the Strokes did. Credit that to the zeitgeist: Radiohead had technological anxiety down cold and OutKast mastered flop-sweat paranoia, but Is This It was the sound of young boys bred on disaffection, apathy and diminished expectations taking one last, cautious shot at engagement.
And, if anything, this was the aughts: opening on a note of despair and slowly, steadily, confidently, working toward a measure of levity and possibility and hope. It’s hard to capture the feeling the moment the corner turns on the album, and the clanging, shameless, impossible pop hit “Last Nite,” with its admonishment, “Baby, don’t feel so down,” rushes in. Twice over the last few weeks I’ve caught myself grinning and whispering, “finally!” the second the drums kick in. The album’s final half whips by with barely a pause between the songs, as if the band is rushing toward daylight. “I lost my page again….but I’ll try my luck with you,” Casablancas sings near the album’s conclusion. And then, voice ragged and stern, he makes his decision: “This life is on my side — believe me, this is a chance.”
Reiterating what I said in the comments on the prior post: I wouldn’t have made Is This It? No. 1, but I really like the Top 10 overall. Good work, tho I would have been happier if the order of Nos. 1 — 5 had been completely reversed.
I hear you, Daniel — I was actually nervously anticipating your reaction to this, but I tried to use my essay to justify our choice! There was serious, days-long debate in the editorial department — there’s such an insane gravity to proclaiming something Best of the Decade that’s not there when you’re just talking about best of the year! Hope you’re at least happy to see Burial cracked the Top 5.
Very happy about Burial’s placement. And I totally understand choosing The Strokes at No. 1. It’s just not an opinion I share, despite my liking the album. “Tidy” is a good word for the disc. It’s too regimented and controlled an album for me to hear either “desperation” or “wary optimism,” but maybe I need to listen to it again.
I know I have lumped The Strokes in with The Vines, The Hives, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The White Stripes, bands that prompted the NME to breathlessly claim “Rock is Back!” around the turn of the century. Except for The Strokes and The White Stripes, that claim seems especially silly now. Rock is back, but in strikingly different ways than The Vines or The Hives suggested (it’s in the druggy stories of The Hold Steady; the narcotic genre-blender of Animal Collective; the uplifting power-pop of The New Pornographers; the fractured art-rock of TV On The Radio; the elegant power of Radiohead; and the mostly vapid and calculated rage of mainstream rock radio acts). Anyway, it isn’t really fair to associate The Strokes and The White Stripes with those other bands, so I should give it another go.
You know, I was surprised at how rewarding Is This It was when I returned to it — it’s such an economical package. And, yeah, stripped from all that packaging, it feels like almost a different record. It’s got a very particular and, I’ll just say it, strange aesthetic.
Bridging off of this: you know what might be a fun discussion? I’d love to hear everyone else’s personal choice for #1 of the decade — whether or not the album in question is on eMusic. For me, my personal #1 of the decade is MIA’s Kala, but close contenders are Turn on the Bright Lights and, yes, I admit, Kid A.
I love KALA. My No. 1 changes almost from day-to-day, but lately it’s been Burial’s Untrue. Other contenders: Kid A, Silent Shout and maybe FishScale. Personal favorites that I suppose wouldn’t be in my “objective Top 10″: Richard Hawley’s Cole’s Corner and Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego’s performance of The Sinking Of The Titanic.
Pedantic question: did NME use the phrase “rock is back”? I didn’t read it at all regularly this decade so I wouldn’t know. I knew Rolling Stone did (on a friggin’ Vines cover), and I realize NME’s remit is what you’re referring to more than anything, but I am curious if RS jacked it from the Brits.
Yeah, I thought that’s what it said in the NME. I’d have to double-check to be sure.
I look forward to some label signing young, prodigious metal guitar player Ronald Back, so that the headline can be “Back is Rock!”
My eMusic No. 1 for the ’00s: Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
My non-eMusic No. 1 (even though it’s on an eMusic-carried label, Kompakt): Triple R, Friends.
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s a good choice. I think that minimalist “Spoon sound” will be mimicked by a lot of bands in the next few years, and they still sound vital and kind of raw on GGGGG. I love them, but something’s always kept them from being my absolute favorite.
(One example of the mimickers is whoever sings that new song, “I Think My Will Is Good.” I’m a little afraid it’s Spoon’s song — which would make me look like the idiot I am — but I don’t think it’s Spoon).
For me the contenders for #1 are: The Sunset Tree, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Alligator/The Boxer (I can never decide which I prefer), and Bitte Orca.
Going off eMu, I need to put a plug in for Atmosphere’s When Live Gives You Lemons… that album is freakin’ fantastic.
Craig
#1 as I’ve professed here before is Madvillainy.
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is definitely my favorite Spoon album. Could it be said that someone’s entire top 10 consists of contenders for the #1 spot? Maybe? Madvillainy was a pretty easy choice for me but Fishscale and — believe it or not — Amnesiac were definitely tugging at my snobby heels. I completely forgot about Silent Shout, how the hell did that happen? I’ma put on the vinyl tonight and fit it in somewhere probably at the top of my list.
Off of eMusic? Blood Money, yes.
Wow. Really? Best of the decade? I must be completely out of touch with what other people think is good. I got this album when it first came out and was barely able to force myself to listen to it more than a few times. Even after repeated attempts to “get it” over the past decade, I still fail to hear anything remotely compelling or interesting about any of these tracks. Not sure what I would pick as best of the decade, but I am sure this wouldn’t be it. Oh well.
I agree with you, Rob (see upthread). To be fair, tho, you’re going to see Is This It? at (or very close to) the top of a lot of the forthcoming Best of the Decade lists.
Ilya,
Blood Money? Please tell me this is not the same Blood Money that Mobb Deep made with G-Unit.
Oh, no. God, no.
Tom Waits, man.
I know my list is kinda on a hip-hop bent, but … c’mon. Scary.
Albums I wish had made the list:
• Lewis Taylor – The Lost Album
• Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego – The Sinking Of The Titanic
• William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops, Vol. I – IV
• The Advisory Circle – Other Channels
• Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
• The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
• The Books – The Lemon Of Pink
• The Bug – London Zoo
• Calexico – Feast Of Wine
• Various Artists – After Dark (Italians Do It Better Compilation)
• The Clientele – Suburban Light
• Clinic – Internal Wrangler
• Deerhoof – Milk Man
• DJ/rupture – Uproot
• Dungen – Ta Det Lugnt
• Earth – The Bees Made Honey . . .
• Espers – The Weed Tree
• Flying Canyon – Flying Canyon
• Grizzly Beart – Veckatimest
• Gui Boratto – Chromophobia
• Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye
• Kathy Diamond – Miss Diamond To You
• Low – Things We Lost In The Fire
• M. Ward – The Transfiguration of Vincent
• Mingering Mike – Super Gold Greatest Hits (quite serious about this, BTW)
• The Mountain Goats – Sweden
• Osmo Vanska – The Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1 – 9 (BIS)
• A Place To Bury Strangers – A Place To Bury Strangers
• Rachid Taha – Diwan 2
• Odori – Radicalfashion
• Rahsaan Patterson – After Hours
• The Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust
• Rodrigo y Gabriela – Rodrigo y Gabriela
• Set Fire to Flames – Signs Reign Rebuilder
• Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
• Stars of the Lid – And The Refinement of Their Decline
• Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts of the Great Highway
• Terence Trent D’Arby – Wild Card
• Various Prod. – The World Is Gone
• Various Artists – Panama!2
• Various Artists – Hyperdub 5
• Wilderness – Wilderness
• Various Artists – Ghost World OST
• Various Artists – Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump
• Various Artists – People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913 – 1938
• Various Artists – The Roots of Chicha
• Stone Jack Jones – Bluefolk
Whew. I guess I’d like to have seen a Top 200.
Your inclusion of Mingering Mike warms my heart, Daniel. I still love that record.
I loved almost all of the records you’ve listed here, especially that Sun Kil Moon album. Just gorgeous.
That The Real New Fall album is not anywhere on the list is ridiculous.
giant surprise. A Sony (RCA) band wins album of the decade.
Cue sad trombone.