LIST: Mid-Decade Review: The 50 Best Albums of 2000-2004

I fully intended to present a mid-decade review nearer the end of this year at what I imagined to be the end of the beginning of the decade. Then I did the math and realized we're there! Plus I saw that Sylus and Pitchfork already had their halfway to 2010 spots up and thought gee, might as well. So I hemmed and hawed and thought good-n-hard on it and I came up with this here list: a Mid-Decade Review of The Best Albums released between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2004. (The sticklers among you may notice some revisions of rankings from earlier lists - Best Albums of 2003, 2004. These have occured in full knowledge of the numeric discrepancies and with the full benefit of time and new entries...)

1. Radiohead "Kid A" 2000
2. Wilco "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" 2002
3. Gillian Welch "Time (The Revelator)" 2001
4. The Flaming Lips "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" 2002
5. Ryan Adams "Heartbreaker" 2000
6. Iron & Wine "Creek Drank the Cradle" 20027. Arcade Fire "Funeral" 2004
8. The Shins "Chutes Too Narrow" 2003
9. Secret Machines "Now Here is Nowhere" 2004
10. The Books "The Lemon of Pink" 2003
11. Queens of the Stone Age "Songs for the Deaf" 2002
12. Modest Mouse "The Moon & Antarctica" 2000
13. Liars "They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top" 2002
14. Jurassic 5 "Quality Control" 2000
15. The White Stripes "White Blood Cells" 2002
16. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy "Master and Everyone" 2003
17. God Speed, You Black Emperor! "Lift Your Skinny Fingers Like Antennas to Heaven" 2000
18. Spoon "Kill the Moonlight" 2002
19. Interpol "Turn on the Bright Lights" 2002
20. Franz Ferdinand "s/t" 2004
21. The Microphones "The Glow Pt. 2" 2001
22. A Frames "2" 2003
23. The Strokes "Is This It" 2001
24. Sufjan Stevens "Seven Swans" 2004
25. The New Pornographers "Electric Version" 2003
26. The Wrens "Meadowlands" 2003
27. My Morning Jacket "It Still Moves" 2003
28. Interpol "Antics" 2004
29. Jay Z "The Black Album" 2003
30. The Jayhawks "Rainy Day Music" 2003
31. The Black Keys "thickfreakness" 2003
32. Outkast "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" 2003
33. Ryan Adams "Gold" 2001
34. Wilco "A Ghost Is Born" 2004
35. Sufjan Stevens "Greetings from Michigan" 2003
36. Loretta Lynn "Van Leer Rose" 2004
37. Loose Fur "s/t" 2003
38. Greg Davis "Curling Pond Woods" 2004
39. Super Furry Animals "Phantom Power" 2003
40. Iron & Wine "Our Endless Numbered Days" 2004
41. Damien Rice "O" 2003
42. The Postal Service "Give Up" 2003
43. Beck "Sea Change" 2002
44. Joe Henry "Scar" 2001
45. Modest Mouse "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" 2004
46. Norah Jones "Come Away With Me" 2002
47. Various Artists "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack 2000
48. The Six Parts Seven "Things Shaped in Passing" 2002
49. Billy Bragg & Wilco "Mermaid Avenue Vol. II" 2000
50. Apples In Stereo "The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone" 2000

REVIEW: Damien Rice "O"

Rating: 8

Has anyone ever seen Damien Rice and Ryan Adams together?  Side by side in the same place at the same time?  I'd be curious to know.

Saying the two sound alike is the kind of understatement Rice specializes in.  At their best he and Adams are unparalleled craftsmen of the down-tempo and bittersweet.  However Adams' recent swerve into The Prolific opens a door for Rice and other urban provincials (I'm looking at you Bright Eyes) to cement their place near the top of a growing americana field.

Rice's wavering tenor cuts romantic folds from familiar cloth, draping listeners in his confidence and tying you to his point of view.  All in all this is a gorgeous piece of hushed singer-songwriting with dramatic nods to opera on "Eskimo" and tinges of jazz-lite throughout.  These flourishes as well as a consistently restrained use of violins (not fiddles) lend heartfelt ballads a polish few achieve without coming across as showy.  It was good enough to earn the young Irishman 2003's Shortlist Music Prize over everyone's darling in their big "Turn on the Bright Lights" release year and it's good enough for me.  I just hope future efforts show the same balance of candor and restraint as heard on "O" lest we end up with more drunken shouting and ubiquitous EP releases (I'm looking at you Ryan Adams).

A note: The Shortlist Music Prize may also be known by his full name, The MTV2 Shortlist Music Prize.  Shortlist understandably drops the MTV2 on most occasions in order to distance himself from his older brother's embarrassing obsession with Jessica Simpson.

More note: Not to give too much time to an artist besides the one being reviewed, but I give Ryan Adams a hard time, like so many others, because "Heartbreaker" was exactly, perfectly, beautifully that, and "Gold" very nearly lived up to its namesake as well.  I will try to have in patience what he clearly has in productivity.