DiS is 6! Our 66, part 3

My, you’re patient sorts, dearest DiS faithful. We ran part two of our run down of DiS’s favourite/most inspirational/bestesteva albums almost two weeks ago, and yet you’re still champing at the bit to find out who has, and more importantly who hasn’t, made it into the top twenty of Our 66. Well, the time has come to quit your champing: we’re here, this is the penultimate countdown.

Just t’other day we ran our pick of the records that so narrowly missed the cut for Our 66 – click here if you’re yet to read that Idlewild and Animal Collective won’t feature below. As you can see from the quality of the albums that were ultimately omitted, reaching the point where a concrete top twenty was in place required the spilling of no little sweat; blood, too, may have seeped from our pores as we deliberated over the long-players that mean the most to us, that touch us there. You know where: that place that’s tickled and tingled only ever so rarely, by the music of mere mortals who dare to tear the fabric of time with compositions that will never, ever go out of style. Their significance won’t wane, and while not every album listed below is a massive-selling affair, each and every selection has made the top twenty because we can’t live without it.

These are records that inform and influence our behaviour day in, day out; they are records that comprise substantial foundations for the towering, out-of-control being that DrownedinSound.com is becoming. These are albums that each and every DiS reader, be you a regular, message-boarder or complete first-timer, should bend an ear toward; these are albums that excel in too many areas for such brief read-them-below blurbs to do anything like justice to. But maybe that’s the point to this: we don’t want to tell you why you should love these albums, we just want you to hear what we hear and come to your own conclusions. We want to share our most precious loves, our obsessions, with you. So DiScuss our choices, please.

The top six will be revealed next week, once we’ve properly formulated a plan of how to best present them to you: simple summarisations simply won’t do for the records we’re keeping back. They’re the bioelectric lifeblood that courses through DiS’s digital veins. This, we’ve said before though, way back in Part 1. So enough with the introduction: read on and enjoy…

Part 1 of Our 66 is here, Part 2 here, Writers Choice here, and 20 That Missed The Cut here. Remember, you can submit your own reviews of any of the below albums – just click where it says ‘review’ or ‘listing’. You can also add the albums to your online collection by following that simple instruction and clicking where indicated.

Words: Colin Roberts (CR), Raziq Rauf (RR), Mike Diver (MD), Sean Adams (SA)

20
Explosions In The Sky
How Strange, Innocence (DiS listing)
(Temporary Residence/Bella Union – released 2005)
Imagine swimming, in a drunk-dream, into a whirlpool only for a whale to toss you from the water while you’re desperately trying to swim down into the geyser-ing fountain shooting from its blowhole. If you can picture yourself coming up for air and opening your eyes and gliding through deep space with nothing but stars for company, then maybe you can imagine what this sounds like. It’s maybe the most uplifting, close-your-eyes-and-float-away record of the last six years. Any uninitiated readers with a penchant for Sigur Rós are advised to obtain this immediately. SA

19
Cat Power
You Are Free (DiS review)
(Matador – released 2003)
Chan (pronounced Sean) Marshall isn't your average girl with a guitar. She doesn't want to be your friend, least of all your hero; she simply wants to help herself and the rest of the world feel and deal with the ache of modern life. For all the pain which was poured into this, her best album to date, there's a sense that she had a renewed hope in the world whilst also finding her voice, and then some. Despite the fact she could be singing anything with that amaretto-soaked breathy-husk and your average indie fan (read also: indie boy) would go weak at the knees, it’s her lyrics – rich in playful metaphors and stories which can break 'n' heal your heart - that make this album one of the best of the last six years. You Are Free puts Chan at the forefront of the singers and songwriters of our generation, and also sets her apart as one of the inspirational female icons in contemporary music. SA

18
My Morning Jacket
Z (DiS review)
(BMG – released 2005)
Wig out! Massive chorus! Heart-wrenching quiet bit! Massive crescendo! Hair bigger than Cedric & Omar! All of these things make up Z: not only My Morning Jacket’s most accomplished work thus far, but also an astounding achievement overall. Doused in stadium reverb, but with the kind of intimacy you’d expect from a solo acoustic record, Z is quite simply a MASSIVE album, the scope of which is only actually outstripped by the eventual execution. From the bass rumble of the opener ‘Wordless Chorus’, through fields of delay and joy, the album would plot a glorious bar graph, all the way until ‘Dondante’ hits the breathiest of quiet depths, before erupting in one of the most evocative musical mushrooms you can imagine. Skyward-facing introversion coupled with a penchant for soloing and accomplished musicality ensures Z a rightful place in Our 66. CR

17
Cursive
The Ugly Organ (DiS listing)
(Saddle Creek – released 2003)
Like an instrumental revelation, The Ugly Organ comprised Cursive’s evolution from respectable (and certainly likeable) hardcore kids to widely revered and adored songsmiths and musicians. Lyrically angry, musically untouchable and texturally thick as hell, The Ugly Organ introduced the cello as a viable instrument in rock n’ roll. Tim Kasher’s pained vocal inflections and wry outlook upon life exaggerated what could have been a musically-engrossing LP that lacked integrity into a fully-loaded package that still surprises at every twist and turn. Personally, it never ceases to amaze me, and I live in hope that in years to come it will be looked back upon as the classic I consider it to be. CR

16
Radiohead
Kid A (DiS review)
(EMI – released 2000)
There was an unholy level of expectation building prior to the release of this, piling atop a band that had not only become an outfit seminal to a generation of indie kids, but who had also expanded beyond national treasure status to become a worldwide success. After 1997's OK Computer, Radiohead had become the new pretenders to the crown that Nirvana had vacated - they hated it just as bloody much as their predecessors. Resenting their worldwide smash hit of 'Creep' and stepping away from the formula that’d informed their previous three albums so brilliantly, Radiohead did everything they could to create a brand new, totally unrecognisable masterpiece. After receiving mixed reviews it seemed as though they had succeeded in stumping the critics at first, but over time this has become yet another classic in the band’s canon of work. RR

15
The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg
Everyone’s In Love And Flowers Pick Themselves
(DiS review)
(Undergroove – released 2003)
Any album that can simultaneously strike fear and joy into the soul of the listener is one to behold, and the sole (almost) Long-player from Worcester’s greatest-ever band is guilty of this pleasure and so much more besides. From the penetrative death swell of ‘Slap the Cubo-Futurist’ to the blissful instrumental meanderings of ‘Jack and Oscar Have a Fight’, this is a record so pure in its arrangements and yet so blindingly adventurous that it leaves the work of many other guitar bands floundering in its wake. Sadly disbanded, The Murder Of… live on in this writer’s heart as one of the most important bands of the personal growing-up process, musically not physically – it acted as a perfect stepping stone to things harder, more electronic and more ‘out there’. CR

14
Saul Williams
Saul Williams (DiS review)
(Wichita – released 2005)
Hip-hop has rarely meant much to me during my lifetime – too young to be swept up and away by the politick of Public Enemy and too old, beyond my fresh face, to be swung by any of that gangsta braggadocio, I was an indie-rocker through and through, raised on a steady diet of the products of angry punks dissatisfied with their lots. They weren’t bigging anyone up or shouting anyone down – they were laying their arses on the line for a necessary dose of reality. Saul Williams was the first album to have an impact upon me on a deeply personal level that wasn’t exclusively driven by riffs and solos. This is the life so real you daren’t even dream it set to rough beats and boisterous sirens, the voice that shines through the fog one that simply won’t be silenced by convention or cliché. This is hip-hop that strides beyond hip-hop, beyond the expected and the tried-and-tested; this is hip-hop like I’d never heard it before. And I’ve never stopped listening to it, and learning from it, since. MD

13
Four Tet
Rounds (DiS review)
(Domino – released 2003)
Or: how to make exclusively instrumental music that lasts for a neat forty-five interesting – nay, heart-stoppingly arresting and inspiring – in one easy lesson. Rounds may not possess a human voice, but within its staccato beats and flurries of cymbal rushes, its grandiose orchestral swoops and microscopic click-click symphonies, lies every organ that you or I call our own. Press an ear close to a cone during Rounds and you’ll feel a breath, constant and unfaltering, on your cheek; hold two fingers to the cable that connects stereo to speaker and a pulse is easily detectable, regular and reassuringly human. Kieran Hebden managed with Rounds something that he’d failed to wholly realise with its preceding long-play brethren: a true connection between man and machine was achieved, and ever since he’s been struggling – if we’re being absolutely fair – to produce material that is so instantaneously engaging and emotionally affecting. Still, even if no future Four Tet albums successfully merge biological brainwaves with electric pulses and crackles, we’ll always have this: Rounds is a timeless masterpiece that simply can’t be categorised conventionally and refuses to lessen in brilliance with endless repeat plays. MD

12
The Icarus Line
Mono (DiS listing)
(Sweet Nothing – released 2001)
I’ve no memory of what it was I had all bottled up inside o’ me prior to hearing this, but once I returned from a weekly shopping trip to the local town I called ‘almost home’ in my early 20s and slipped this little unassuming beauty into my stereo, it fucking exploded across my bedroom like a wonderful rainbow of middle-finger fuck-yous and acerbic, barely-discernable lyrics about who-cares-what. A plain compact disc and no song titles on the record’s sleeve gave little away: Mono kept its many trump cards well hidden ‘til it was absolutely necessary to release them, violently and spectacularly. The first twelve seconds of ‘Love Is Happiness’ – the first twelve seconds of the record, full stop – acted like a fist-in-the-face wake up: forget all the posers and the half-hearted in-it-for-the-moneys, as this had The Real Deal stamped all over its jaws like little before or after it. This was the breaking of a humungous punk-rock wave, the crushing devastation that followed just part of the essential purification process. After Mono, no ‘punk’ band could ever call themselves such without fucking substantial evidence. Mono makes me want to fight a policeman whenever I hear it – it’s the aural equivalent of Popeye’s spinach ingestion, and keeps me on edge from start to finish. Steer clear if black eyes aren’t your thing. MD

11
Interpol
Turn On The Bright Lights (DiS review)
(Matador – released 2002)
The ‘what’s the best Interpol album’ debate raged long and hard at DiS: this, or the Tim Burton-ish otherworldly and UFO-esque Antics? Their debut – this – proved that the four-piece were the coolest, bravest and most innovative new band in New York at a time when the city’s kids, and those across the ocean, were squeaking feverishly about retro-rock bands, many of which are notably absent from this list. Interpol went against the jangle-rock grain when they introduced this searchlight-in-a-catacomb indie-pop record to the world. For every rigid Joy Division-ism there's an epic dancefloor pleaser - 'PDA' for one! And for every milligram of head-pumping joy, there's a perfectly-balanced expansive post-rock flavoured nod to the life-death line, where mortality becomes a bleak streak of big black sunglasses across the face of our high-rise, low self-esteem, anticipation-driven, accelerated realities. Put succinctly: a must own. SA

10
Ryan Adams
Heartbreaker (DiS listing)
(Lost Highway – released 2000)
There aren’t words, expressions or movements that I could use to sum up what Heartbreaker means to me. An album that upon a cursory listen could be summarised-cum-dismissed as a solid alt-country effort and nothing more, Heartbreaker’s layers upon layers of song craft slowly reveal themselves as Ryan’s soul is laid bare on the table, his heart jumping off his sleeve and into your conscience. Personally, I am incapable of thinking of a better album from the last six years, an album that can do all of this to me and still be an album that is listenable at the dinner table with the family and equally perfect for a drunken sing-along with friends. Ryan’s solo career began with this masterwork: it’s hard to imagine him bettering it –though he’s come damned close – and in my mind this album is his passport to ‘legendary’ status. The greatest songwriter of our generation? No question, personally. CR

9
Bright Eyes
Lifted or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground
(DiS review)
(Wichita – released 2002)
There are few musicians active during DiS’s lifetime as important as Conor Oberst. Like most of us, he's tired and weary of the ways of the modern world, yet tirelessly he attempts to make sense of the myths and the madness. Within Lifted... there's the sense Conor put down his punk-cock acoustic handbook, quit his moaning and decided to aurally encapsulate a sidestepped world within which he wished we bathed and lived. Some might call it a coming of age, some just that it represents the end of his growing pains. Gone was the often close-to-embarrassing student poetry; in came gigantic statements, luscious usage of metaphors and arrangements built for much bigger things. One of the many addictive extras was the wonder with which this was assembled as a body of work - it ebbs with production suss, with moments of changing rooms and dementia. You can throw as many Neil Young/Bob Dylan comments-cum-references at Conor as you like and raise a bar based in an old world, but the times have changed and this is the howl of now. It’s the result of a truly godless, science-spirited, civil-less global society of superstars and nihilistic escapism never previously seen nor lived through. If folk told stories and punk broke the capitalist status quo then this was the first truly heart-broken expression against futuristic poverty on a globally visible scale. SA

8
And You Will Us By The Trail Of Dead
Madonna (DiS listing)
(Domino – released 2000)
Here’s a dare for you, try it at home whydon’tcha: pluck this record from whatever rack it rests upon while silent, place it neatly inside your CD player/onto your record deck, and remain perfectly still for the duration of first track proper ‘Mistakes And Regrets’. Can’t be done, seriously – don’t think I’ve not tried, ‘cause I wouldn’t have challenged you to execute such a command if I hadn’t already failed to achieve a statuesque state myself. Each and every time I play this album, my body simply spasms itself into a sweaty heap; I wind up crumpled in a position that even a Moscow State Circus contortionist would require three years’ training to pull off on a regular basis, with no memory of how I got there nor any particular inclination to remedy the intense ache such a situation spreads from toe-tip to split end. Somewhere about the ten minutes from home mark I recall being subjected to the substantial uppercut that is ‘Perfect Teenhood’, but I think I passed out totally around the eightieth “fuck you”. Successfully stay still during that first song, though, and I’ll buy you lunch. Really. Once I manage to unwind my arm from around my lower colon, anyway. MD

7
The Shins
Chutes Too Narrow (DiS review)
(Sub Pop – released 2004)
Few bands can lay claim to anywhere near as much CD player hi-jacking time over these past six years than The Shins, be said player’s owner a founder of DrownedinSound.com or the female lead in the film Garden State. Choosing between The Shins’ albums to date is a tough enough call, but we've opted for the saccharine sunshine and hook-filled bird of prey-like melodies of this, the quartet’s second long-play offering. There are many reasons why this record became an obsession to many, but for me it's mostly James Mercer’s lyrics that keep me coming back: they’re some of the most metaphorically humbling, gently sentimental, profoundly human and downright beautiful words anyone has ever written. It is a great modern tragedy that the Albuquerque-spawned and Oregon-based outfit are not the biggest band in the world today, but things could be worse: any self-respecting fan of music that doesn’t eventually discover and become smitten with this knowingly dumb-grin joy of a record surely knows the true feeling of tragedy. Chutes Too Narrow is an absolute triumph of an album. SA

The final part of Our 66 will run next week; in the meantime, DiScuss…