The 50 Best Albums of the 2000s: Numbers 22

The 50 Best Albums of the 2000s: Numbers 22 – 21

December 18th, 2009 MUSIC Cory Maidens

The double oughts are about to be over. Featured author and music obsessive Cory Maidens takes a look back at the first decade of the 21st Century in music, and lists his picks for the 50 best records to be released during its ten years

22. The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)
At the beginning of the decade, The Flaming Lips were still best known for their 90′s novelty hit “She Don’t Use Jelly.” After the revelation of The Soft Bulletin though, many came to realize that Wayne Coyne and company had much more to offer. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a Pet Sounds-esque album of beautiful and melancholy pop, crafted with utmost care under layers upon layers of lush orchestration and audio manipulation. Uplifting highlights like “Fight Test” and the epic “Do You Realize?” are balanced out by psychedelic freakouts and existentialist pop ditties. The band’s live shows were celebrations of the band’s goofily child-like tendencies, carnival-like performances that included elaborate video displays and dozens of audience participants dressed in various plush costumes. This all might have seemed like showmanship at best and gimmickry at worst were it not for the grandeur of the music itself. The songs of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots demanded a visual spectacle to match their fantastical nature.

21. Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005)
I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning begins with Conor Oberst telling a minute-long music-less story about a plane crash that tastefully sets up the forty-five minutes of remarkable country & folk that follows. This crown jewel of Oberst’s extensive catalog dresses his plaintive songs in country drag and the result is an oddly obvious sort of perfection. Oberst has spent his entire career playing with different sounds and this was the one he was looking for. Backup vocals by Emmylou Harris add both a soulful counterpoint to Conor Oberst’s uncertain voice and a helpful air of experience to the music’s occasional fits of youthful naivete. Perhaps because he was so accustomed to writing outside the genre, Oberst managed to avoid the songwriting pitfalls that plague many roots music performers, creating as rich and varied an album as the genre has seen in recent years. While Bright Eyes’ earnestness threatens to derail many of their endeavors, it feels truly welcome in this setting. I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning is a sequence of emotional ups and downs, each one presented with the hopefulness of youth and the understanding of age.

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Cory Maidens

Cory Maidens is a proud son of the American Midwest, a man of letters and an incorrigible bastard. Since acquiring his BA in English Literature, he has proudly avoided non-comic books as an apathetic eye-roll at intellectual elitism. He thinks that arguing is highly underrated as sport and engages in it more often than might be advisable to compensate for that perceived deficiency. He believes in gay marriage, The Daily Show and Bruce Springsteen. He enjoys hearing Southern voices read Civil War-era correspondence aloud.

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