195. The Anniversary - Designing A Nervous Breakdown (2000)




I believe the Anniversary are another band that I first heard about through the CMJ board. 'All Things Ordinary' could be in the top quarter of my favorite songs of all time.

If all emo bands had had the substance and quality of the Anniversary and the Get Up Kids, it could've been a bonafide genre as rewarding as "indie rock", instead of the crybaby bands of the late '90s and the transvestite bands of the early '00s.

twentieth century goes through year 2000, correct?

1-100 = 1st century
...
1901-2000 = 20th

just sayin'...

If it starts with "19", then it's the 20th century. If it starts with "20", it's the 21st century. No?

Not exactly. If it starts with a "19" it's the 1900s, but if you want to count the centuries then the 20th century is 1901-2000, because there was no year 0. As paladisiac said, the 1st century was 1-100, so therefore the 20th must be 1901-2000 or else which century along the way was only 99 years?

What annoys me is when people insist that the 1990s were 1991-2000. The name "1990s" isn't referring to counting, but a name. That's 1990-1999. If you want to refer to the 200th decade, then that would be 1991-2000, but nobody says that.

Huh. I really didn't think it was possible that this thread could get any nerdier.

But you kept coming to find out.

196. The Smashing Pumpkins - Machina/The Machines Of God (2000)




Confession: I didn't listen to the entire album before writing this. I have tried to with every other album on the list but this one is just so bad that I couldn't bring myself to. And it's long. 73 minutes. 73 minutes of suck.

'Stand Inside Your Love' is alright. So is 'Try, Try, Try'. Most of the rest of it is just godawful. Like 'The Everlasting Gaze', for example.

I only own this as a completist. And, seeing as how this thread has made me question whether I truly like any of the full Pumpkins discs in their entirety, I might very well be selling this off in the near future.

197. Eels - Daisies Of The Galaxy (2000)




With the third Eels album, E set out with the sole intention of making an upbeat, happy record. After the heaviness of Electro-Shock Blues, he just wanted to rebound and be optimistic and cheerful. With songs like 'I Like Birds' and 'Packing Blankets' and lyrics like "cross when the drawbridge light is green / don't look back to that messed-up scene", he succeeded.

His skill and adeptness at writing music, and pop songs in particular, is so great that he can choose a specific theme or idea (a task which might pigeonhole and frustrate a lesser artist) and easily turn out a fantastic album. This is a fantastic album.

It's not entirely cheerful; his natural moodiness won't be denied. 'It's A Motherfucker' is a longing, tender piano ballad, and probably the most beautiful song you'll ever hear with the word 'motherfucker' in the title. 'Selective Memory' and the aforementioned 'I Like Birds' are among some of the best songs he's written up to this point.

Also tacked on as a hidden track is their blockbuster single 'Mr. E's Beautiful Blues'.

Just a fabulous album and another stellar chapter in the book of one of the greatest songwriters out there today.

I don't own any Eels albums, but I remember hearing a lot of good tracks off this album. Only one I can recall now, besides the aforementioned "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues", is "Flyswatter", which always reminded me of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I just looked up 'Flyswatter' on AMG because I thought you were mistaken. I just listened to this album this evening and I don't remember hearing that track at all. And it's one of my favorites by them.

transvestite bands of the early 00's?


I agree with you on that Smashing Pumpkins disc. That's when they began to bring the suck.

I'd totally forgotten about that song. I'd love to hear it again.

A friend of mine used to be a huge Eels fan. He used to sing that song a lot (I think - maybe it just got stuck in my head, and I attribute it to him), and he was the one who convinced me to buy Electro-Shock Blues, which I still like.

My dad subscribes to Rolling Stone and I see the Spin issues on the shelf whenever I'm picking up Filter or Under The Radar. My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco... they seriously all look like girls. Ugly girls but still. There were honestly at least two instances where I had to ask my sister whether or not it was a guy because I honestly could not tell.

198. The Salteens - Short-Term Memories (2000)




Short-Term Memories is a shot of pop into your stereo. Ten songs in twenty-five minutes. Full-on power pop that their label, Endearing Records, is known for. 'Bubba Da', 'Crash The Market' and 'Nice Day' are the highlights though the whole record's a blast.

199. Headstones - Nickels For Your Nightmares (2000)




Headstones' fourth album continues their evolution from hard rock to alternative rock, employing a number of mostly-acoustic ballads mixed in with their fast rockers and catchy alt.rock numbers.

I won this album, actually, through a contest in The Toronto Sun. All you had to do was send in a small form cut out from the paper and check whether you wanted to be eligible for the free Headstones tickets or Blue Rodeo tickets. I won two tickets to their upcoming show at The Warehouse as well as a copy of this. I believe it was my third time seeing them live, out of the eventual five.

The album itself is strong, if you're a fan of the band. 'Pinned You Down' and 'Exhausted' are short, fast numbers chugging along. 'Settle' and 'Blonde And Blue' were radio smashes here, deservedly so. I remember B&B especially for the music video parodying Mission Impossible, South Park, and a couple of other current (at the time) phenomenons. 'Mystery To Me' is my favorite Headstones songs out of their entire oeuvre. 'Above Ground Swimming Pools' is a longish, epiclike number that references all their idols from Alice Cooper to Steven Tyler to Ozzy Osbourne to Lou Reed (and even Wayne & Garth) complete with a chorus of backup vocals. 'Fuck You' was probably their biggest live crowd favorite, with a simplistic but overly singable chorus, made up for by the really good verses. And the album closes with the title track, a long spoken word-like number with lyrics like "the sound of fucking when I'm walking down the hall in a hotel room".

200. Juliana Hatfield - Juliana's Pony: Total System Failure (2000)




This actually marks the first time I've ever listened to this album. I'm a big Hatfield fan so, when I found it used for $4 I had to buy it, but I've been buying her albums in chronological order so I didn't want to listen to it before hearing Bed. However, for purposes of this experiment, I did.

AllMusic gave it two stars. I wouldn't be that harsh but it is an odd one. The first half especially goes farther into the hard rock camp that she's always had one foot in than any of her other, more alternative-rock based albums. The opening track is fifteen seconds of noise called 'White Thrash', for example.

'Houseboy' repeats the line "little white boy, would you be my slave?" over and over. 'Breeders' is, I assume, about the band with lyrics like "scary breeders / they run me out of town / creepy breeders".

It's an interesting album, that's for sure, and one I definitely would like to know the backstory behind. An easy assumption would be it's a response to critics. But there's more to it than meets the eye.

I'm guessing it's not about the band but about what the band name means--it's gay slang for heterosexuals.

By the way, this album was released simultaneously with the much quieter Beautiful Creature, so the louditude on Juliana's Pony isn't a response to critics, it's just the noisy half of the full project.

201. Belle And Sebastian - Legal Man [EP] (2000)

[img][300:300]http://website.lineone.net/~london.burning/gfx/belle.jpg[/img]


'Legal Man', a song inspired by their lawyer, was supposed to be Belle And Sebastian's attempt to make their ultimate pop song, something that would get rampant commercial play and have people singing it everywhere they go and stuck in their head all day.

That clearly wasn't the situation. It's an alright song, but it doesn't have much replayability. I get sick of it if I hear it twice in a certain period of time. But it's different than most of their stuff, so give them credit for that.

'Judy Is A Dickslap' is an instrumental piece and I don't care for instrumental songs either. They always feel incomplete to me like "okay, that's good, now finish the vocals and we'll be good to go."

'Winter Wooskie' is the third track and it's pretty good but nothing too special. My favorite off the EP but this is one of their weakest EP's.

202. Bright Eyes - Fevers & Mirrors (2000)




'The Calendar Hung Itself' is the first Bright Eyes song I ever heard and this album is still my favorite by him.

Where his earlier material was less consistent and his later stuff is more trite and cliche, I feel like this disc (and, to some extent, the next one) is pretty much the highpoint of his career.

There's definite themes and repeated imagery which makes it feel like a complete work, a single piece. Songs like 'Something Vague', 'When The Curious Girl Realises She Is Under Glass', and 'A Song To Pass The Time' are all fabulous.

I only have two real complaints with the album. One, the fake interview at the end does not bear repeated listenings. But the hidden track is really good so I always have to skip through it. Two, I hate artists who don't provide tracklistings on their back cover.

I think the second album is just about as good, maybe an '8' to the first one's '9'

203. Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump (2000)




Usually I'm a big fan of concept albums about robots. This is a pretty good one. It tells a story. It includes robot poetry. It's got significant chapters to it. And I do really dig this album. Just not as much as some of their others.

But this isn't the first album I heard them by, either. That may have something to do with it. 'The Crystal Lake' was the first song I heard, though. It came on randomly on MuchMusic at some point, probably right when this came out, because I wasn't into indie rock at all at that time. And I just remember thinking the video was kind of cool but the song itself was just really weird and nothing like I'd heard before. I didn't know what to classify it as. So I put it to the back of my mind.

Years later I ended up seeking it out again and falling into the Grandaddy camp. I picked up Sumday first and I still like that one more but this is a pretty great disc.

204. The Weekend (2000)




The Weekend are a new wavey (re: keyboard-driven) pop punk band from Toronto. This is their self-titled debut album. It's not the greatest.

While many of the tracks on here are pretty mediocre, 'The Single', 'What I Die For' and 'High School America' are standouts. Singer/guitarist Andrea Wasse has a vocal styling that's interesting and engaging, which helps to raise the quality of the tracks.

There's nothing inherently bad about the other seven tracks, just nothing particularly compelling either.

205. The Aislers Set - The Last Match (2000)




This album is fantastic. It's indie pop in the veign of the Field Mice, Talulah Gosh, or Tiger Trap. But it was released on Slumberland so what do you expect?

If you're into the C86 scene, you'd love this. I do. A lot.

206. Belle And Sebastian - Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant (2000)




This is universally known as the "forced democracy" album. And considered by many to be their worst album.

'I Fought In A War' is the archetypal B&S album opener. It starts with Stuart's hushed vocals before the rest of the band (in this case, string section, also) joins in. 'The Model' is one of the best songs on this album and can also be considered classic B&S in its structure and style. It also includes one of my favorite lines on the disc, "and if you think you see with just your eyes, you're mad." It's track three where the problems begin.

'Beyond The Sunrise' features Stevie on vocals in his deepest voice imaginable. Then Isobel joins in with her schoolgirl-lite voice. The song itself is barebones. Stevie's vocals are so strange and Isobel's are so fluffy that it's almost a preview of her later collab with Mark Lanegan. In this case, however, it's just really out of place and not very good.

'Waiting For The Moon To Rise' is a Sarah song and Sarah is not a lead vocalist. Or rather, shouldn't be. She's not a very strong singer and she's best suited to harmonies and back-ups. On lead, her whispering doesn't hold together very well.

However, that's really the only two bad tracks on the disc so I don't quite understand the reputation it has.

'Don't Leave The Light On Baby' and 'The Wrong Girl' are fabulous. 'The Chalet Lines' is tender, emotive, and nakedly real.

'Nice Day For A Sulk' is kind of inconsequential, but 'Women's Realm' is excellent and it features lots of hand-clapping. Come on.

'Family Tree' and 'There's Too Much Love' round out the album and there's nothing bad about either of them. If you equate average with bad, I guess these are bad B&S songs, but only when compared to the band's own material. Compare to any other band and they're excellent.

Honestly, I like this album more than Sinister, Storytelling, or The Life Pursuit.

207. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica (2000)




I have to be in the mood for this one. I loved it when it came out. Completely adored it. And I still do sometimes. But not always, like some of my favorite albums.

I still prefer the first few MM albums more than this one, but you can't argue with tracks like 'I Came As A Rat', 'Wild Packs Of Family Dogs', 'Tiy Cities Made Of Ashes', and 'Gravity Rides Everything'. This is probably the best Modest Mouse album. And, yeah, probably the one I'd recommend to newcomers. It manages to incorporate pretty much all their styles. It's just not my favorite.