30)
Grandaddy –
The Sophtware Slump (2000)
In short, this is a concept album about a suicidal humanoid robot named Jed. Blissed out electronics and fuzzy guitars clash with Jason Lytle’s high, vulnerable singing voice in an album-long juxtaposition of nature versus machine. Sure, Radiohead and The Flaming Lips often tackle the same topic, but neither do it as beautifully as Grandaddy.
29)
Daft Punk –
Discovery (2001)
I tried hard not to like these guys. Cheesy French dance music that became one of the hipster darlings of the decade. Well it turns out that dance music is at it’s best when at least a little cheesy, and these French guys know how to break it down. Yo Kanye, I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish, but Daft Punk made the best version of “
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” of all time!
28)
Extra Golden –
OK-Oyot System (2006)
It’s a tough case to sell an album as one of the decade’s greatest for just one track, but when that track is eleven minutes of pure afro-blues-rock bliss it becomes a bit easier. “
Ilando Gima Onge” is without a doubt one of my favorite tracks from the 2000s. Just turn the volume up, sit back, and prepare to be soothed. The fact that there are a few more very solid, lengthy grooves on the album makes it a must-listen.
27)
The White Stripes –
White Blood Cells (2001)
Jack White tears his way through this album with a slicing yelp and a serrated guitar. What do you get when you cut off the extra fat rock & roll has been carrying around for decades? A slew of blistering 2-3 minute tracks about boys, girls, and what happens when they mix.
26)
Big Boi –
Speakerboxxx (2003)
Sure, Andre 3000 is the better rapper, and sure, “Hey Ya” is a better song than anything on Speakerboxxx, but then why is Big Boi’s half of Outkast’s Speakerboxxx / Love Below release so much better? Mind-blowing production and unbelievable consistency is why. There’s the club staple “
The Way You Move”, but my personal favorites are “
Ghetto Musick”, “
Unhappy” and “
Church”. When it comes to a track after track fantastic album, Speakerboxxx wins hands down.
25)
The Flaming Lips –
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
How can you argue with a happy, funky, goofy, existential, and unabashedly inspirational concept album? That’s right, you can’t.
24)
The Shins –
Chutes Too Narrow (2003)
This album reminds me of the fall every time I hear it, perhaps because I first heard it around that time of year. But there’s something about James Mercer’s clear voice, the sublime melodies, and quite possibly the “cold and wet November dawn” line that opens “
Young Pilgrims” that reminds me of my favorite season. It sounds so crisp and effortless that I want to listen to it on repeat all day.
23)
Mouse on Mars –
Idiology (2001)
Each time I listen to Idiology I see an alien planet full of gooey, amorphous, glowing green life forms. The first track (“
Actionist Respoke”) focuses on one in particular, a secret agent carrying out a mission on a futuristic spacecraft. Cut back to his family on his home planet in the second track (“
Subsequence”), and pull out for daybreak over their glowing orb, floating in an alien solar system in the third track (“
Presence”). You get the idea. God knows what other people see when they hear this crazy organic electronica.
22)
Broken Social Scene –
You Forgot It in People (2004)
What’s telling to me about this album is that I know several very different people who love it, but each of them has a different favorite track. I’ve gone through different favorites myself over the years. It started with the dreamy “
Stars and Sons”, moved to the blissful rocker “
Almost Crimes”, and has finally settled on the heartbreakingly sublime “
Shampoo Suicide”. And guess what, none of those three are even my friend’s favorites.
21)
Drive-By Truckers –
Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (2008)
When your band is built around three outstanding songwriters it’s almost impossible to make a bad album. DBT lost one member of the triumvirate (
Jason Isbell, arguably their best) before making this album but went right out and found a new one (Isbell’s ex-wife, ironically). However, the real heart of Brighter Than Creation’s Dark comes from Mike Cooley’s incredible slew of down-and-out rockers and hard luck tales. “
Perfect Timing”, “
Bob”, and “
Ghost to Most” are a few of my favorite Truckers songs ever, and Patterson Hood comes up with a bunch of really solid tracks to fill out a brilliant, intimate album.
20)
John Frusciante –
Shadows Collide With People (2004)
Frusciante, the lead guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and infamous heroin addict, took opportunities on his solo albums to try some crazy shit. Some of them turned out absolutely terribly, but Shadows Collide With People is one of those beautiful cases where almost all the risks that were taken work, and work really well. Aside from one boring four minute drone of a track (“
Double-0 Ghost 27”), all the other electronic/noise tinkering brings the whole album into focus, enhancing the plethora of more traditional but fantastic rock songs (“
Omission”, “
This Cold”) interspersed throughout. You’re never sure where the next track will take you, but it’s always a good ride.
19)
Dizzee Rascal –
Boy in Da Corner (2003)
Sounding like he just burst out of the cage he’s lived in for his whole 18 years, Dizzee arrives spitting fire and taking no prisoners. His off-kilter, rabid release tears up every track and I can’t help but get goose bumps from the earnestness of his ambition and the utter confidence in his ability to change the world. I can honestly say that this kid is one of my heroes; a life’s worth of experience and he’s two years younger than I am.
18)
DJ Signify –
Sleep No More (2004)
Sleep No More is one of those rare DJ albums that uses guest MCs while staying incredibly unified and cohesive. I don't know how Signify got
Buck 65 and
Sage Francis to write their lines the way they did, but from what I can tell, it's a story told backwards, part dream, part reality. And if there's one thing Signify can do, it's create a mood. The rhymes over his dark, industrial beats are just perfect. The tracks with Buck and Sage on them are spread out around moody, ominous instrumental tracks, resulting in one amazing album.
17)
Manu Chao –
Proxima Estacion: Esperanza (2001)
A review I read once referred to Manu Chao as “wily” and I’ll be damned if that doesn’t describe him perfectly. Unpredictable, ADD, and refusing to be pinned down, Manu takes street noise, rock, reggae, punk, calypso and several other musical styles to construct 17 flowing tracks (many under two minutes each) that come across sounding more like a summer radio show than an album. Never afraid to be a little cheesy with his music and lyrics (in several languages), his boldness translates into plain old fun and you can’t help but be in a good mood whenever this album comes on.
16)
Arcade Fire –
Neon Bible (2007)
Darker and more aggressive than their first album, Neon Bible hits you right in the gut with its desperation and grim resolve. With all their foot-stomping, organ swelling, soaring vocal power, the band pushes through one strong message: the age we live in is fucked up and we should take notice. While I listen to this album I actually do.
15)
Avalanches –
Since I Left You (2000)
Since I Left You is almost all sample-based, and must have been incredibly painstaking to create. But you sure don’t notice when you listen to it. New sounds crop up every few seconds but somehow it all melds together into one fun, dancy, uninterrupted eargasm. Not to mention some tracks, especially “
Frontier Psychiatrist”, are downright hilarious.
14)
Amadou & Mariam –
Dimanche a Bamako (2004)
What do you get when you combine Manu Chao with this renowned blind Malian duo? An absorbing, enchanting, soothing, and brilliantly produced album, full of beautiful multi-lingual vocals, gorgeous guitar lines, and Manu’s signature collage of found sounds and syncopated rhythms. It’s hard to pick favorite tracks, but I’ll have to go with “
Coulibaly”, “
Camions sauvages”, and “
Politic amagni (La Politique, C-est Pas Bon)”. I can also credit this album with opening up to me the incredibly rich world of contemporary Malian music.
13)
Born Ruffians –
Red, Yellow, and Blue (2008)
My friends and I had to wait two or three years after first seeing these guys live before they finally put out a full album. And when they did they sure didn’t disappoint (I suppose that goes without saying seeing how I’m writing about them here). Youthful innocence (“
Foxes Mate for Life”) meets foot stomping sing-alongs (“
Barnacle Goose”, “
Kurt Vonnegut”), and just when I thought east Canadian indie rock had petered out, along came one of the best albums of the decade.
12)
Four Tet –
Rounds (2003)
I have several powerful memories of listening to Rounds on long car rides when exhausted. One was at daybreak in central Maine, by myself heading several hours away to give a science talk to rural high school students, the morning after a heavy ice storm had left every tree, branch, and shrub frozen and sparkling. Another was a road trip down the length of Minnesota late at night, returning from a ski trip, half of the car’s occupants sleeping and the other half silent and mesmerized. Rounds creates such an immediate, poignant atmosphere that it seems easier to describe through experience rather than directly. Delicate, shifting, and utterly beautiful, it is at its best during the quiet parts of your day, when it makes loneliness feel pleasurable.
11)
Modest Mouse –
The Moon and Antarctica (2000)
Before Wolf Parade there was Modest Mouse. Off kilter yet cohesive, conceptual yet visceral, and overwhelmingly existential, The Moon and Antarctica is Modest Mouse at their best. Isaac Brock’s star gazing musings lead to one epiphany after another, swept along by the band’s driving jangle of guitars and drums, soft and loud, fast and slow. From the first track, “
3rd Planet”, there is no doubting the epic scope of the album. While Brock’s revelation that “the universe is shaped exactly like the earth” doesn’t resonate with me now quite as much as it did when I first heard it as a college freshman, his other eyes-upwards track, “
The Stars Are Projectors”, still does. This nine-minute track is the climax of the album, asking the biggest questions and containing some of its most beautiful moments. The bold, unapologetic attempt to ask deep questions about why we are here, where we came from, and how everything will end makes me want to go back to the days of teenage curiosity when we asked the big questions and had the confidence to think we could answer them.
10)
Circulatory System –
Circulatory System (2001)
I remember it only took a couple listens to this album before it sounded deeply familiar, like it had been a part of my childhood or I had heard it somewhere in a dream. In fact, the way it is so incredibly dense and unfathomably cohesive, it really does remind me of dreaming. Elements and melodies pop up that just seem to work, and feel part of something much bigger, but you have no idea why. The hazy dream opens into a few brief moments of clarity, especially “
The Lovely Universe”, with it’s 70s psychodelic and pop influenced melodies that is as close as this album comes to having a single. Themes and melodies crop up in new ways throughout the whole album, and just when you think you're about to make sense of it all, it ends and you wake up.
9)
RJD2 –
Deadringer (2002)
The first bit of this album I ever heard was in music theory class in college when one of my classmates had the professor play the intro to “
Smoke and Mirrors.” The professor went on to talk about the time signature, but I was instantly hooked by it’s thick, dark atmosphere, the funky drum track, and one of the most haunting, soulful voices I’d ever heard (turned out to be a sample from little known soul singer
Marion Black). Mixing hip-hop beats with soul vocals and horn samples, and throwing in samples from anywhere else, RJ turns the usual DJ formula into an atmospheric, funky, balls-out celebration of the old and the new, while never being afraid to bring each track to a sublime climax. Must-listens include funk/soul stompers “
Good Times Roll Pt. 2” and “
Two More Dead”, the haunting “
The Horror”, “
Smoke and Mirrors”, and “
Cut Out To FL”, and finally perhaps my favorite track of the decade, the triumphant horn-laced blend of Betty Wright and Elliott Smith, “
Ghostwriter.”
This album would easily be in my top five except for RJ’s unfortunate taste in guest MCs. Despite fantastic production, “
Final Frontier” and “
F.H.H.” feature untalented, angry MCs, spending all their words complaining about how everyone else sucks and they don’t get enough respect. It’s no wonder why.
More than any other album on this list, Deadringer opened me up to the most new music. Through RJD2 I discovered the worlds of underground hip-hop, electronica, and classic soul music. Those genres are where I’ve found some of my favorite music ever, and it all goes back to this fantastic album.
8)
Drive-By Truckers -
Decoration Day (2003)
The Truckers are so damn consistent that it’s very difficult to pick a favorite album. Maybe I like Decoration Day the best because it had just came out when I saw the band play a music festival Birmingham, Alabama, opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock. Maybe it’s because I find
Southern Rock Opera and
The Dirty South, while both amazing, to be a bit too conceptually heavy-handed. But mostly I think it comes down to the fact that Decoration Day doesn’t have a single weak track on it, is incredibly cohesive without attempting to be a narrowly focused concept album, and finds all three songwriters hitting their stride. Many of my favorite Patterson Hood tracks are here, especially the incestuous tale “
The Deeper In”, the subversively melancholy “
My Sweet Annette”, and the poignant “
Your Daddy Hates Me”. Mike Cooley, who has always written the best lyrics of the three, provides his lyrical acrobatics in the down-and-outer “
When the Pin Hits the Shell” and the starkly lonely “
Loaded Gun in the Closet”. Despite only contributing two tracks to the album, it’s Jason Isbell who pushes Decoration Day ahead of their other albums. The slow earnestness and honesty of “
Outfit” is a perfect counter to Hood and Cooley, but it’s the captivating tale of an old southern feud backed by swirling guitars in “
Decoration Day” that provides the monumental climax of the album. Turn the volume up on this one; it’s quite possibly my favorite track of the decade.
7)
Ratatat –
Ratatat (2003)
There’s no denying it, Ratatat’s music is pure ear candy. It’s sweet and superficial (in an addictively awesome way), never lasts as long as you want it to, can be consumed while doing other activities, and has no deep underlying conceptual or emotional nutrition. But there’s one quality where it differs from real candy: I never get sick of it. Just look at my Last.fm charts; Ratatat is far and away my most played artist. Happy, soothing, and exhilarating, their debut album begins with one of the most ass-kicking intros of any album on this list with “
Seventeen Years” and ends with the sweet soothing ecstasy of “
Cherry”. In between is pure auricular bliss. Each subsequent album by this duo tweaks their sacred formula here and there, but it’s still the 2003 original that sounds the best to me, keeping everything sweet and simple.
6)
J Dilla –
Donuts (2006)
Lots of DJs put together instrumental albums showcasing their skills, but most of them come off as random demos for MCs to pick beats from. Donuts blows away all other short-track instrumentals albums, interweaving found sounds and samples to the point where track markers hardly matter. Dilla just let go of "songs" entirely and went straight for the feeling. The immaculately constructed stream of consciousness flow creates a never ending mix tape, gliding through the past and the present and coming back into itself.
While Dilla has created an album structure the likes of which I’d never heard before or have ever heard since, it’s Donut’s emotional weight that I find so devastating. I’d like to think I would find this album as powerful without a back story, but the fact that Dilla literally created it on his death bead in the hospital brings into sharp focus it’s go-for-broke creative scope. All at once it’s funky, soulful, melancholy, and desperate, but at the same time overwhelmingly happy and uplifting.
5)
Wolf Parade -
Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005)
There are only two weak tracks on this album, and those are the two slow ones. Forget those, and you have a blistering, heart-wrenching, off-kilter ride from the opening cymbal-crash march of “
You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son” to the foot-stomping “
This Heart’s on Fire”. Just when you think you’ve heard the best song on the album, it’s followed by one even better. Swirling synths buzz over catchy, loose guitar riffs as Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner take turns racing towards a beautiful mirage. Their songwriting is remarkably cohesive, yet their distinctive personalities shine through clearly in both lyrics and musical style.
The album peaks at an unbelievable three-song stretch, starting with Boeckner’s throbbing, wistful rock song “
Shine a Light”, as “our hearts beat time, they’re waiting for something that will never arrive”. “
Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts” begins with a delicate synth line and suddenly opens into a rollicking, crashing march, topped off by Krug’s off-kilter voice and delightfully cryptic lyrics, my favorite lines being “I got a hand, So I got a fist, So I got a plan, It's the best that I can do, Now we'll say it's in God's hands, But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does he?” This song transitions smoothly into the best track on the album (and one of the best of the decade), “
I’ll Believe in Anything.” Building off the momentum from his last track, Krug’s urgent, impassioned lyrics, backed by crashing drums, guitars, and synths, builds into a cathartic climax, offering escape from one’s ghosts, to a place where “nobody knows you, and nobody gives a damn”. Another band could’ve been more than content with following these three tracks with a couple slow comedowns, but Wolf Parade still has two fantastic rockers left, “
It’s A Curse” and “
This Heart’s on Fire”.
4)
OutKast –
Stankonia (2000)
It’s not rock, it’s not hip-hop, it’s not R&B, pop, or alternative. It’s Outkast. Combining experimental, playful production, two of the best rappers in the world, and brilliant, insightful, acrobatic lyrics and rhymes, the duo of Andre 3000 and Big Boi rip, float, and strut through twenty three mind blowing tracks of skits and songs. It’s not quite on par with 1998’s
Aquemini, yet it’s still easily good enough to be in my top five of the 2000s.
Let me explain what I love about this album through a specific example, the song “
I’ll Call Before I Come”. Perfectly backed by a sparse, funky drum track and catchy synth lines that could’ve been made with a toy keyboard, the track takes a well-worn theme, the heartbreak of discovering that you have been passed over for another lover, and turns it on it’s head. Instead of languishing in agony or guilt as a classic soul singer may have, Andre confidently suggests rules for this “dirty, dirty game”, declaring to the ladies that he will “Call before I come, I won’t just pop on over, I hope that you do too”. Simple and catchy, yet nuanced and unpredictable, it’s production and lyrics like this that characterize Stankonia.
There are too many other many fantastic tracks to describe, each much different than the next. My favorites are probably the startlingly clever hit single “
Ms. Jackson”, the hilariously dirty and funky “
We Luv Dez Hoez” featuring the best rapping on the whole album, and the funny but heartbreaking tale of a young girl ashamed of her pubescence in “
Toilet Tisha”. Of course there are also the electric guitar-driven, insightfully political and sociological “
Gasoline Dreams” and “
B.O.B.”, and the floating, reflective, Cee-Lo-featuring “
Slum Beautiful”.
3)
Arcade Fire –
Funeral (2004)
It was some time in October 2004, our college radio station had had Funeral on it’s shelves for only a month or two, and one of the station managers tipped us off that this amazing new band was playing a private show at the tiny College of the Atlantic, several hours north in Bar Harbor, Maine. Someone emailed the band and got us on the guest list. Forgoing the campus Halloween debauchery of the last Saturday night in October, we borrowed a car and drove north through swirling wind, fog, and leaves. The show turned out to be in some sort of castle-like academic house, the instruments set up in the largest space on the first floor, which really didn’t look much bigger than someone’s living room. We stood up near the front, with fifty or so other people in the room, and then the band came out in full Halloween décor; bloody black suits for the guys, gothic black dresses for the two girls, and zombie or vampire makeup on all. I was standing almost directly in front of Win Butler, so close, in fact, that we kept having awkward eye contact while he sang. The show was amazing. They must have played through the entire album, whose desperation, yearning, and visceral foot-stomping resolve couldn’t have been performed in a better setting. They banged on guitars, various percussion instruments, an accordion, and an old piano, while harmonizing into surging background vocals. More and more people packed in behind us, while the earthy, alternative students of College of the Atlantic gathered outside the house, watching in through the huge bay windows the band had their backs to. Towards the end, the band snaked its way through the indoor crowd, eventually leaving out one of the doors. Afterward they mingled with everyone, and my friend Lucy went up to the tall energetic red headed guy and told him she wanted to be him when she grew up.
This was easily the best live show I've ever seen. Despite all the hype and era-defining pressure the band got in the coming months, the truth of the matter is that they deserve every bit of money and fame they earned because Funeral is by far one of the best few albums of the entire decade. Listening to it still sometimes reminds me of the Halloween show, especially when I listen to the intensity of “
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” or the album’s climax, “
Rebellion (Lies)”. This is one of those albums that will only get better with age.
2)
The Unicorns –
Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?(2003)
I think everyone (the more music-obsessed, the more likely) has one album or musician that they have proudly (and perhaps a little smugly) introduced to many new listeners. This is that album for me. It came out just as I had become taken with pitchforkmedia.com, where I read its intriguing and glowing review. I downloaded a couple tracks from the label’s website, and immediately fell for the innocent, goofily morbid, occasionally (but succinctly) serious lyrics and catchy electric guitars, noodling synths, and back and forth duets. I talked about it with everyone I knew, burned it for anyone who seemed interested, and even gave the soft-cased cd to a couple people as gifts. That it caught on in a big way among my friends and my friend’s friends (and who knows how many friend’s friend’s friends) is no surprise. The album is immediately catchy, not quite like anything you’ve heard before, and holds up incredibly well to repeated listens.
But let’s get to the point; this is an album about death. In fact, it’s not so much about death as it is obsessed with death. After their introductory confession “
I Don’t Want to Die”, a trilogy of ghost songs (literally songs about ghosts) kicks off an album-long fascination with the fantastical and the morbid. “
Ghost Mountain” and “
Sea Ghost”, two of my favorite tracks on the album, are delightfully simple, devastatingly catchy, hilariously innocent, and captivatingly unpredictable. Just give “
Sea Ghost” a listen and tell me you don’t like it, I dare you. “
Jellybones” begins with a long, noodling synth intro, and collapses into catchy, rolling indie rock, with new hooks popping up faster than you can keep track of. By “
Child Star” and “
let’s get known”, the band’s two singers/songwriters (Alden Penner and Nick Diamonds) have discovered how hilariously effective they are in a duet, while simultaneously threading in their own innocent (or ironic?) dreams of fame and stardom to the album’s overall themes of death and make-believe. “
I Was Born A Unicorn” sums up the band in a nutshell. A short duet, as catchy as any track on the album, it’s filled with lines such as “I was born a unicorn, I could’ve sworn you believed in me, then how come all the other unicorns are dead?” The next couple tracks build on this, with “Inoculate the Innocuous” containing the most poignant moments on the album. It reaches its climax on “
Les Os”, a sublimely catchy track introducing so many great hooks it leaves you wondering how the band could have had any left after so many other outstanding tracks. And before you know it, it all ends with a Biggie Smalls reference and a quick cough on “
Ready to Die”.
This was the only album the Unicorns ever made. In retrospect, there was really no other way things could have turned out. The band’s implosion is written all over the album, which, after all, is about ghosts, death, stardom, and the inevitability of endings. For god’s sake, they claimed to be imaginary creatures while simultaneously pointing out that Unicorns do not exist. How do you follow that up? The Unicorns disappeared as mysteriously as they came, but thankfully they left us these forty minutes of brilliant indie rock.
1)
Prefuse 73 –
One Word Extinguisher (2003)
I’ve probably listened to One Word Extinguisher all the way through at least fifty times, and yet each time I put it on it blows my mind. With layers upon abstract layers, there’s a lot to listen for, but try to follow just one piece and you’ll lose it without even realizing. Rather than try to focus on one darting element, your ears can’t help but relax and absorb the sound collage as a whole. Strutting hip-hop beats, unpredictable syncopated glitchy rhythms, sliced and bent vocals and horns, synthy fades, and interspersed sound clips come together to make something entirely new.
But don’t let the technical prowess and virtuosity mislead you; this is a break-up album. Far from just a showcase of technical superiority, this album brings me back again and again because of the vivid, temperamental feelings that bleed through all 23 tracks. After a couple opening tracks, the album kicks off with its one rap song, the strutting “
Plastic” featuring the rapper
Diverse, spitting his usual “mainstream sucks” rhymes, and leading directly into “
Uprock And Invigorate”, a chill, grooving instrumental track introducing melodies that pop up again later in the album. “
The Color of Tempo”, one of my absolute favorites, continues more rhythmic left-turns, while also introducing a more melancholy tone. Over the rest of the album, confident, strutting, glitchy rhythms fade into moody flute and horn samples, reflective minor chord synth washes, and delicate, inscrutable female vocals. Confidence fades into reflection, reflection into melancholy, and melancholy into pain. It cycles around and around, in and out, all through the album. It makes me wonder if all the precisely arranged glitchy rhythms were hammered out simply as a release. Locking himself up in a room for days, months even, to pour out all this feeling into his editing software. The album culminates around track 18, “
Choking You”, a thumping, buzzing track that hits a beep so high on every off-beat that it almost hurts your ears. And yet it’s impossible not to keep listening, impossible not to feel the frustration and release that oozes from every blip, bleep, and buzz. This track fades away and is replaced by “
Storm Returns”, an overwhelmingly beautiful and reflective piece of sound punctuated by an interplay of funky rhythms and delicate moments. We realize the cycle has no abrupt, concise ending, but continues on, each time a little more hopeful.
What bugs me, looking back on this album seven years after its release is just how groundbreaking it still sounds. Why did this not birth a new genre? Why have I never heard anything ever come close to sounding like this (aside from, of course, the fantastic outtakes album, “
Extinguished: Outtakes”)? The answer is rather simple: how could anyone (including Prefuse himself) have followed this? On One Word Extinguisher, Prefuse has mastered his brilliantly unique style, while pouring years of emotion into a seamless masterpiece. Aside from the outtakes, Prefuse has never come close to touching this album again, and neither has anyone else. It’s a shame it hasn’t been more influential, but a list of the most influential albums of the decade would be much different, and much less interesting (for that, go
here).
Arcade Fire
