Another Treble

Number 40

‘Come Away With Me’ by Norah Jones

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2002

UK Chart high : 1 in 2002

Might as well complete this 'fairly-easy listening' triptych with the ultimate example of the decade.  Ever so slowly this album took over the world in the same way as it's atmospheric, velvet vocalising and smokey-late night bar strummings crept into my head.  It's so laid back, dreamy and chocolatey that it might as well be advertising Cadbury's Flake (actually it probably did at some point).  I'm no big fan of jazz, country and western or the blues (understatement alert!) but the songs on display here shied away from self-indulgence and just were...well, indulgent in the best sense.  Norah, no doubt, will spend the rest of her life trying to get out of the shadow cast by this debut and the public may question whether they need more than one Norah Jones album in their collection.  But everyone certainly has this one anyway.  I'm no record producer but every now and then a piece comes out that makes you marvel at exactly _how_ a certain mood was captured and put down for the listener to feel transported elsewhere effortlessly - this is one of the finest examples of that at work.  It's an old cliche, but even the spaces between the notes seem to be laden with atmosphere and the video for 'Come Away With Me' captures that wide, expansiveness beautifully without a coffee table in sight.

Look at Come Away With Me ; Don't Know Why

Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Number 41

‘Parachutes’ by Coldplay

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2000

UK Chart high : 1 in 2000

Okay, I can hear your trendy groans from here, but before Chris cut his curly hair, took up a macrobiotic diet and married a weeping actress, Coldplay released a fine atmospheric, moody debut that promised much and delivered a fine array of indie anthems, not least the universal 'Yellow' which is unarguably the student disco-crossover hit of the decade (tm) despite it's wilfully discordant guitars.  It was their appearance at Glasto in 2000 showcasing songs from their debut that hinted at the stadium-filling future to come.  'Shiver' was the track that made me take notice of these unremarkable-looking indie posho's and demonstrates the 'you either like it or you don't' nature of Mr Paltrow's falsetto warblings to a tee.  For those who can't stand the band, you'll enjoy the video for 'Trouble' which has Chris tied to a chair and beaten up.  See!  I cater for all your tastes here.

Look at Yellow ; Trouble ; Shiver
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Number 42

‘The Optimist LP’ by Turin Brakes

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2001

UK Chart high : 27 in 2001

Balham's finest as Mr Teasdale would no doubt remind us.  They were (unfairly) highlighted in a renowned music mag's review of the decade as exactly the sort of band that were swept aside by the arrival of a certain set of New Yorkers in the early days of the new century.  However, with Mumford and Sons and recently Bombay Bicycle Club taking an acoustic folk angle into the top ten it seems as timely as ever to sing the praises of Turin Brakes.  'The Optimist LP' is another great example of an album standing up to scrutiny as a whole, not just having a few hits and album fillers.  They'd get a bigger hit with Ether Song's 'Painkiller' a few years later, but their debut is better if you ask me - particularly 'Slack' (even with a terrible 'story' video) and 'Mind Over Money' - still a favourite track of mine ten years on complete with it's 'windy day at Center Parcs' video.  And we haven't even mentioned the force of nature that is Olly's hair!

Look at Mind Over Money ; Underdog (Save Me) ; Slack
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Just the one for Monday...

Number 43

'Finelines' by My Vitriol

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2001

UK Chart high : 24 in 2001

Can you remember when there were plenty of post-grunge British indie bands at the baby-end of the 21st century (probably far too many really) all with their moody expressions and effects pedals but very little else?  Then you're as old as me - congratulations!  My Vitriol could have easily been bracketed into that fledgling 'indie-landfill' especially with their rockstar good looks and hip connections like bad boy du jour Vincent Gallo (who starred in their Grounded video).  Fortunately they had talent and melodies to back up the hype and caused a little bit of a stir in the NME hallways.  A few years later though, even before they could release a second album, they went on 'hiatus' and have only recently started rumblings of returning.  The actual album's not even on Spotify for feck's sake!  Here's hoping for a comeback - and in the meantime give them a bit of love by checking them out below.

Look at Always: Your Way ; Grounded ; Losing Touch
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

oh my god - a woman!

Number 44

'Auf der Maur' by Melissa Auf der Maur

Trotter’s Top Ten position : 7 in 2004

UK Chart high : 31 in 2004

Sooo, political-correctly minded individuals will have noticed that it's been a rather skewed male gender bias up to now (I know I have).  I'd like to think this is the fault of the music industry not giving fair representation to female artists rather than me being a complete and utter misogynist however, so to vaguely support this....look, here's a girl holding a bass in a phallic manner!
 
Despite the obvious, MadM proved one of the decades absolute surprises in terms of producing a quality album out of nowhere.  Clues, I suppose, were there - bass duties (and scene stealing vid appearances - see Malibu for instance) in Hole and a dalliance with Nicest Man in Rock (tm) Dave Grohl put her on the radar, but I honestly never expected her to produce such a great debut.  Ironically this also came out the same week as Courtney's solo effort and it absolutely wiped the floor with it.  Fair do's Melissa had the likes of Tom Morello from RATM to assist, but hey, ultimately it's your name on the cover ain't it?  Catchy tunes, great guitar driven rock and (in the case of 'Taste You') pure filth for lyrics (especially, it seems, in French) and a new star is born!
 
Look at Followed the Waves ; Taste You ; Taste You (French version) ; Real a Lie
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

And now a threesome...

Number 45

'Relationship of Command' by At the Drive-In

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2000

UK Chart high : 33 in 2000

So far we've only had albums from 2000-2003. That's entirely coincidental and we'll get onto some newer stuff for you yoof out there soon, promise! It's been a fair few years since I'd listened to AtDI but it's the sign of both a good band and album that it hasn't really dated and been stuck into either 'grunge' or 'emo' genres. The tracks are visceral and cerebral (think Rage Against the Machine covering Pavement), the lyrics (like the music) almost incomprehensible on first listen but repetition opens up new sounds and meanings all the time. That said, the energy the band had (before their regrettable split to form The Mars Volta and Sparta) made them far more than a beard-stroking exercise - see the clip below from their appearance on Jools for evidence of that. They're probably in my top five 'what might have been' bands who ended before their time and at the height of their creativity - but that's a different countdown altogether. The video clips really don't do their sound justice either - go to Spotify or buy the fraggin' album! Oh and they had cool hair.

Look at One Armed Scissor ; Invalid Litter Dept. ; Rolodex Propaganda (live on Jools)
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Number 46

'Lost Souls' by Doves

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2000

UK Chart high : 14 in 2000

I have friends who will kill me if there aren't any Doves albums on here and while I don't feel the need to own all of them and even though I prefer later singles, it's their debut album that both means the most to me and creates its very own atmosphere (right from the intro) and therefore makes it to Number 46.  So far on this countdown it's certainly the best at ticking the 'cohesive collection of songs to form a whole' box rather than being a few tunes tagged together in some sort of predictable order.  The entire album, but particularly 'Catch the Sun', was both beautiful and laddish all at once - a trait that Guy Garvey would go on to copyright and that Wikipedia calls Dream Pop apparently!  There, a whole conversation about Doves and I didn't even mention Sub Sub once....oh.

Look at Catch the Sun ; The Cedar Room ; The Man Who Told Everything

Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Number 47

‘Highly Evolved’ by The Vines

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2002

UK Chart high : 3 in 2002

I read an online US review of this album today which scoffed at the British music press for once again overhyping a new band by calling the Vines the ‘next Nirvana’ and that certainly seems daft in retrospect but at the time I compared them to the Beatles on the strength of this album (oops!). Now I don’t think that view quite stood the test of time, but what I think I meant was the breadth of styles used here was reminiscent of something the Fab Four found so easy and was far more than the range shown in their single releases. Nine years on and this is still a fine piece of catchy indie with bucketfuls of melodies over three minute (sometimes 1.5 minute!) guitar fuzz. And the ‘Outtatheway’ vid is great for two reasons – reminding you of when folk used to jump about at gigs rather than stand still and take photos on their phones; and for the poor lad hitting himself with his own shoe until he’s red in the face. For that alone – Number 47!

Look at Outtatheway ; Get Free ; Homesick
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Number 48

Number 48

'Toxicity' by System of a Down

Trotter’s Top Ten position : Top Ten in 2000

UK Chart high : 3 in 2000

On no!  Not another Armenian-American, politically charged, bonkers thrash band!  SoaD were just one of those bands that sounded so unique to what was currently going round at the time (even amongst their thrashy peers) that it was difficult not to at the very least stop, listen and try to figure out what they were singing and playing.  Putting their Middle-Eastern influences against a traditionally jock-type genre was a brave move but really helped them stand out from a fairly stale scene - helped all the more by their 'unusual' look and bizarre videos.  At the very least I'd also like to imagine there were a minimum of a dozen dumb hicks who copied the all-over-body-tattoos of the guitarist in the 'Chop Suey' vid only to find it was only temporary.  They also get bonus points for putting the line 'eating seeds is a pastime activity' to music.

Look at Chop Suey ; Aerials ; Toxicity
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Numbers 49 and 50

Number 49

'XTRMNTR' by Primal Scream

Trotter's Top Ten Position : Top Ten in 2000

UK Chart high: 3 in 2000

From an album taking its influence from My Bloody Valentine to one having a member in the band, this is Primal Scream’s ‘other’ classic album. Here they metaphorically steamroller over the trippy-hippies they courted on ‘Screamadelica’ under a military manifesto drawing on conspiracy theories, revolution and...Bernard Sumner and the Chemical Brothers. Creating a completely darker Wall of Sound this pummels you into submission and, ten years on, shows Pendulum up for the lightweight copyists that they are. They would continue to flip flop between dance terrorists and bluegrass rockers on future releases but this caught them at their angriest and mightiest.

Look at Accelerator ; Kill All Hippies ; Swastika Eyes
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Number 50

'Deftones' by Deftones

Trotter's Top Ten position : 9 in 2003

UK Chart high : 7 in 2003

Drawing comparisons to Limp Bizkit is never a good thing, but considering their breakthrough hit ‘Back to School’ (unfairly) put them in the nu-metal or ‘long shorts, baseball cap-wearing 30+ year old rocker complaining about their mom’ category, this self-titled 2003 album served to move them as far away from Little Fred and the likes of Good Charlotte as was physically possible. There’s always been as much My Bloody Valentine in their tunes as there is heavy rock and ‘Deftones’ shows this off expertly. Album opener ‘Hexagram’ is as good a statement of intent as any on this Top Fifty list and lead single ‘Minerva’ actually is epic enough to mean a video of the band performing in the desert doesn’t drop into Spinal Tap territory. But please do turn up to 11.

Look at Minerva ; Hexagram

Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go

Trotter's Top Fifty of the Noughties

Those of you who’ve known me for a while will know that I put together a top ten list of singles and albums of the year just coming to an end (preferably before most of the music media does exactly the same so that I can look ever so slightly original) and I call these Trotter’s Top Tens in a Ronseal sort of fashion.

This isn't my list!

I do this for my own sick list-making pleasure, your amusement, ridicule and agreement* and to start a debate on my favourite topic - music, that is, not top tens. This always throws up some interesting chatter and can also lead to discovering work from artists that may have passed me by or I’d not given much shrift to previously.

Towards the end of last year I started thinking about doing a round-up of the decade intending to put it out just after the 2009 top tens. Unfortunately, work, life and well...Christmas got in the way and I only just managed to get the 2009 list out let alone start the mammoth task of reviewing a decade’s worth (music mags have a team of staff to do theirs remember!) Q even called theirs 'the review of the century’, which I suppose while strictly true, is a tad premature. Boy, are they going to be embarrassed come 2099.

I then thought I’d do it during that ‘quiet’ time after New Year but somehow couldn’t be bothered to go through it all when all the media had put their lists out. So I put it off...and off...and off.

Thing is, if I don’t do it now, before starting the 2010 list then it’s just never going to happen and have pretty much no relevance whatsoever – already some of the 2000 albums seem like ancient rock history believe me.

So, over the course of the next month or so I’ll be counting down the top 50 albums of the ‘00’s (2000-2009) at something approaching one or two a day (so, yes, I’m making it up as I go along).

As always, there’s rules in them thar hills – all the albums are ones that were previously in my Top Tens of the year. This is firstly to keep me sane by limiting my choices, but also to make me stick by the choices I made in the first place and stop me from shoehorning in kewl stuff like Burial’s ‘Untrue’ just because it made the Observer’s Top Ten. It also means though, that there are notable absences from the Libertines, MIA, Fleet Foxes, The Streets, Queens of the Stone Age – all folks that never made the cut in the first place, some of which probably even deserved it – but I couldn’t listen to everything could I? Even now I’m still guilt-tripping over not including The Longcut, Hot Chip, The Raconteurs – all of which DID make my top tens but there just wasn’t the room – sorry chaps.

Secondly I’m allowing more than one album from an artist. It doesn’t seem fair to ‘just pick one’ if someone’s output is so much better than the competition does it? Because of this, there are 39 artists featured in the Top Fifty – which still isn’t too bad a haul I don’t think. There’s a fair spread over the decade too – 2000, 2001 and 2007 seem to have delivered especially well, though only two have survived from 2006’s top ten so let’s all make a note to not time-travel back to that year when we get the chance shall we?

I'll also be putting links to videos where they exist after each entry and a smattering of tracks I'm putting together on Spotify for those of you that are down with that sort of thing.

So with a fair bit of ado, the starters for ten...er, fifty, will follow shortly...

* I’m counting silence as agreement alright!!