Drowned In Sound's best Albums of the 21st century - VOTE! (closes 9am Weds 25th Sept)

Hi guys. The first in a new series shamelessly stolen from the Guardian, as per DrownedInSound's Best Things of the 21st Century!.

Since we’re on a nominally music based website and I’m ignoring the idiots who want to choose our favourite 21st century dates, I’m going with albums as our first category.

How it works:

  • You rank the best 5, 10 or 20 albums of this century so far in order.
  • Post them in here or DM them to me by 9am next Wednesday.
  • For my ease, include artist name as well as title (and year if there’s multiple albums by the same artist with the same name!)
  • I’ll do some mathematical gubbins and produce the definitive DiS best albums of this century!

Rules:

  • For the purposes of these lists, the year 2000 is included in the 21st century. Yes, I know it’s not technically correct, no I don’t care that it’s making your eye twitch.
  • For an album to qualify, it’s original UK release date must have been on January 1st 2000 or later. If you’re unsure and want to check, let me know and I’ll check for you :+1:

Get arguing!

Neutral Milk Hotel was 1998
jfc

1 Like

Have you not heard any records since?

13 Likes

:smiley:

Records? It’s not 1988, Grandpa

4 Likes
  1. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
  2. Arcade Fire - Funeral
  3. Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight
  4. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of the City
  5. The National - Boxer
  6. Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
  7. The Wrens - The Meadowlands
  8. The Strokes - Is This It
  9. Sun Kil Moon - Benji
  10. Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring
1 Like
  1. Squarepusher - Go Plastic
  2. Everything Everything - Get To Heaven
  3. Sigur Ros - Takk
  4. Radiohead - Kid A
  5. Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
  6. 65daysofstatic - The Fall Of Math
  7. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
  8. Prefuse 73 - Vocal Studies & Uprock Narratives
  9. Susumu Yokota - Sakura
  10. Burial - Untrue
  11. Shackleton - Music For The Quiet Hour
  12. Let’s Eat Grandma - I’m All Ears
  13. Deerhunter - Microcastles
  14. The Decemberists - Picaresque
  15. Alva Noto - Xerrox vol. 2
  16. Biosphere - Shenzhou
  17. Bvdub - Serenity
  18. Everything Everything - Fever Dream
  19. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
  20. Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness
6 Likes

I’ve just built my first ever pivot table to do this. It’s wonderful :+1:

9 Likes

Using a pivot table is one of the genuine joys of my job along with concatenating. Rays of excel sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day.

1 Like

The Wrens - The Meadowlands
Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight
The National - Boxer
65daysofstatic - The Fall Of Math
Arcade Fire - Funeral
The Decemberists - Picaresque
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - No More Shall We Part
TV On The Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Wolf Parade - Apologies to The Queen Mary

4 Likes
  1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
  2. The Wrens - The Meadowlands
  3. 65daysofstatic - The Fall of Math
  4. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
  5. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
  6. Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me (sorry)
  7. Outkast - Stankonia
  8. Mos Def - The Ecstatic
  9. Frank Ocean - Blonde
  10. Why? - Elephant Eyelash
  11. 65daysofstatic - Wild Light
  12. Noname - Telefone
  13. Young Fathers - Tape One &Two
  14. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
  15. Little Brother - The Listening
  16. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreaks
  17. Electric President - Self Titled
  18. The Hotelier - Home Like Noplace Is There
  19. Modern Baseball - Holy Ghost
  20. Muse - Origin of Symmetry

Some self-indulgent blurb, some of which is C&Pd from the Albums of the Decade thread

1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

Probably a strong case for this gatecrashing my favourite album of all time tbh. An unbelievably rich, complex piece of work that is immensely personal but also a far-reaching social commentary. It’s a showcase for one of the greatest technical rappers of all time but over beats that offer him a framework to experiment with his delivery in a less constricted way than a lot of “rap beats” ordinarily would. It’s a fucking masterpiece.

2. The Wrens - The Meadowlands

I was introduced to this album by the first girl I fell in love with who was from the same town as the band in New Jersey and who I dropped out of uni to pursue an ill-fated long-distance relationship with after we had an “affair” whilst she was living in London. It is impossible for me to separate my feelings for the album from the sentimentality of living through all that at an absurdly formative period of my life. However, I think that, regardless of all that, it’s my favourite “guitar band” album by a very long distance. There is so much going on in every track with layers and layers of different lead melodies overlapping with each other and crescendoing absolutely perfectly. The band themselves are extremely lovely human beings as well which helps. Yeah, this is a very special and important album to me.

3. 65daysofstatic - The Fall of Math

When I first heard this band it made me no longer want to make or play music because there was already a band that was making music that sounded exactly like what my idea of the music I’d want to make was. Since that point they have been by far and away my favourite band of all time. Every album grows and hits in a different way but their debut is still the most visceral for me as it was just exactly what I wanted to be hearing. I love them so fucking much, their new album is out next week and they’re one of the few remaining artists that this gives me a teenage amount of excitement for. I’ve seen them more than any other band and I love them more than any other band.

4. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

The most compelling person of our generation and (probably) his most compelling piece of work. An album that seems to sound like him coming to terms with his flaws as a human being but working through them in the most absurdly egotistical way possible. Full of absolute bangers on a surface level but all of them contribute to an overall arc for the record despite working on their own as well.

5. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city

Was gonna try and restrict myself to a one album per artist rule but would have been stupid to leave this off. It’s the best autobiography I’ve ever read and the best biopic I’ve ever seen but it’s something I’ve only actually listened to. It’s amazing how evocative it is.

6. Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me (sorry)

Yeah, fuck Jesse Lacey. Sorry for picking this but it would be completely disingenuous of me to try and pretend that this band and this album weren’t hugely important to me for the vast majority of this century. Can’t imagine myself ever wanting to listen to it again though and I find that devastating.

7. Outkast - Stankonia

The group that showed me how creative hip-hop could be. Not my favourite of theirs by a long way but even then it still makes it comfortable one of the best of the century. Gasoline Dreams > So Fresh, So Clean, Ms Jackson is a pretty untouchable opening run of tracks on an album.

8. Mos Def - The Ecstatic

A stunningly eclectic, jet-hopping stream-of-consciousness of a record that is so much fun to settle into and go with. It’s full of “moments” as opposed to individual tracks to fall in love with and that’s why I’m so into it. Every time you listen to it there’s something else that you had forgotten about or hadn’t locked into before that excites you. I wish he was more prolific but maybe it’s more special because he’s not.

9. Frank Ocean - Blonde

A testament to how much better albums that grow on you are to ones that you love immediately. This did nothing for me for the first few times I heard it and then I just decided it wasn’t for me. When the Dissect podcast announced they were doing a season on it I went back and listened just to see what it was I was missing and for whatever reason I fell in love with it just in time for the podcast to go track-by-track and highlight how much depth there is to the whole thing. It’s fucking incredible to think how completely it failed to hold my attention to start with but how compelling I find it now.

10. Why? - Elephant Eyelash

For a while there I was completely obsessed with Why? This and Alopecia and to a lesser extent Eskimo Snow are all masterpieces but I think I’ve landed on the fact that Elephant Eyelash is my favourite. My obsession was all about the lyrics and very little to do with the music and this is very, very unlike me but yeah. He’s a very special lyricist IMO.

11. 65daysofstatic - Wild Light

They’re my very favourite band and this record feels like everything I’ve loved about every era of them but combined into one album. The closing salvo three tracks are their absolute peak I think. I love them so fucking much.

12. Noname - Telefone

She makes words flow together like water being poured or something. Usually I’m all about rappers being in the pocket and the rhymes hitting at the same point as the drums and all that but this just washes over me in such a gorgeous way. Probably one of the voices (in every sense) I’m most excited to hear for the next decade as well.

13. Young Fathers - Tape One & Two

Might be a bit of a cheat but it got released as a combined vinyl at some point this decade so I’m having it. Young Fathers are gonna go down as the last “new band” that I’ll ever fall in love with. You get disillusioned with new music when you head towards your thirties as everything sounds like something you’ve already heard (and doesn’t match the love you have for the stuff you already love) or it sounds like they’re trying too hard to do something different. Young Fathers sounded like nothing I’ve ever heard before or have heard since. They’re the best live act in the country as far as I’m concerned and any one of their releases could have appeared in my list. Went with these tapes as they were the ones that caused the excitement for me.

14. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns

I have no idea how I love this band when that vocal is so obviously irritating. I think it’s mainly to do with the drummer though who is absolutely fucking ridiculously talented. I’ve increasingly settled into the fact that the common factor with the vast majority of music I love is percussion and that, boring drumwork = boring music to me. This album is probably the most overt example of that because I shouldn’t like the band but I love their first two albums.

15. Little Brother - The Listening

I think this is just everything I love about hip-hop in it’s most packaged together format for me or something? Rappers in the pocket over really fucking solid beats made up of soul samples and boom-bap. There are acts I love more and there are probably albums I love more as well but this album is the equivalent of settling in to a comfy armchair to me. Familiar and comforting.

16. Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreaks

The world’s biggest rap star, takes the genre to a whole new level of superstardom, becomes one of the most famous and controversial people on the planet. Loses his Mum to a botched cosmetic surgery that his new-found superstardom facilitated, suffers a break-up of his long term relationship and responds with a record that completely throws out everything that made people fall in love with him. It’s dark and depressing and moody, there’s basically no rapping on it, the autotune renders it unlistenable for vast swathes of people but it’s a fucking masterpiece and is probably the most influential album of the century in terms of it’s impact on popular music. It’s so fucking fascinating and so fucking good.

17. Electric President - Self Titled

Ben Cooper has been quietly churning out really great stuff in loads of different genres for a long time now. I think this record is my favourite thing he’s done (although Radical Face - Ghost would be up there as well). It’s like the Postal Service album everyone loves but better.

18. The Hotelier - Home Like Noplace Is There

Nostalgia for a new record was an odd feeling. Basically this album made me feel like a teen again in the best possible way. Losing Brand New was fucking devastating, the fact that this album exists kind of makes it easier.

19. Modern Baseball - Holy Ghost

Kind of a bit “as above” but in a different way. Not sure what it is that makes this album work for me when so much of it would just irritate me on paper (especially those nasaly vocals) but it’s so fucking good. One of those rare albums that forces you to listen to it again the moment it’s finished. “We still leave our shoes at the door, before we wring out our wet clothes across your floor and future, stitch the gaps that destiny eschewed, with floral sutures, are you hiding or have I abandoned you?” is probably my favourite bit of a guitar based song of the decade.

20. Muse - Origin of Symmetry

Fuck it. I haven’t listened to it or them for years now but it would be completely disingenuous of me to pretend that they weren’t the biggest thing in music for me at my most formative years. Think I saw them 12 times over the mid section of the century. I maintain that their live shows are some of the most fun you can have at a gig. Their tongue is firmly in their cheek as far as I’m concerned and I don’t care how embarrassing they are now, they were fun at the point of my life where having fun was important to me.

15 Likes

Annoyed I missed this one.

We have very similar tastes (except for hip-hop it seems) there’s only four of your ten that I don’t also love.

1 Like

wait what

4 Likes

Your write ups are lovely and you’re spot on about RAA, that voice should really piss me off, but it doesn’t.

3 Likes

Thanks for voting for this and the write-up. I may have to include it for exactly the same reasons

3 Likes

Original Pirate Material – The Streets
The Seldom Seen Kid – Elbow
Coles Corner – Richard Hawley
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
Let England Shake – PJ Harvey
Fever To Tell – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A Grand Don’t Come For Free – The Streets
Whatever People Say I Am… - Arctic Monkeys
Pale Green Ghosts – John Grant
Back To Black – Amy Winehouse

1 Like

I think it’s probably important to acknowledge the impact that “cancelled” (for want of a much, much better term) work had on you. Just ignoring it or retconning it out of existence feels a bit too easy or something? I dunno, it’s absolutely not my place to be commenting on it frankly but yeah.

1 Like

Absolutely, and given it’s a personal list its a bit different to whether a publication should include it anyway. I think there’s also a difference between a record release "pre-"cancellation as to happening at the time, like the last album, which great as it was quite rightly got dropped some most people’s consideration given how raw the situation was.

I forgot to put Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on my list :frowning_face: