Tag: The 2000’s
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The Long Winters ‘Putting The Days To Bed’ (2006)
The Long Winters never fail to remind me of my college years for a handful of reasons. Putting The Days To Bed was released during my senior year of high school and was a mainstay during that summer as well as my freshman year in the Francisco Torres dorm rooms (6th floor represent!) at UC…
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Something Corporate ‘Leaving Through The Window’ (2002)
In the early aughts pop punk scene Something Corporate stood out for one distinct reason– lead singer and songwriter Andrew McMahon. His use of piano as both a composition tool and for lead hooks was unique in the genre and immediately set the band apart from their peers sonically in a way that was similar…
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor ‘Lift Your Skinny Fists’ (2000)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor has built a pretty hardcore cult following over the past two decades for their blissfully meandering chamber rock. We’ve discussed previously how some music is felt not necessarily heard (see Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago for a sterling example) and Lift Your Skinny Fists To The Sky Like Antennas to…
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Alkaline Trio ‘From Here to Infirmary’ (2001)
Alkaline Trio has always held a special place in my heart for one simple reason– their obsession with the macabre. Combining relatively simple and straight forward skate punk chord progressions with references to corpses, rotten milk, scars, chainsaws, and alcohol (yes, lots and lots of alcohol) has always been a recipe for success for primary…
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Death Cab For Cutie ‘Plans’ (2005)
Death Cab For Cutie’s lead singer and songwriter Ben Gibbard has been such a fixture in the Indie Rock scene for so long now that it’s easy to forget in 2005 Death Cab was just beginning to reach their star power. Following 2003’s excellent Transatlanticism that was released independently and saw the band achieve cult-like…
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Dashboard Confessional ‘The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most’ (2001)
Chris Carrabba was the poster child for emo music during its formative years. He single-handedly made the introverted kid lacking self-confidence blessed with a penchant for observational insights cool, and doubly so when that protagonist was armed with an acoustic guitar and an earnest approach to telling his story. This Holden Caulfield from Catcher In…
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Fear Before the March of Flames ‘Odd How People Shake’ (2003)
Fear Before the March of Flames is the kind of band that parents around the United States heard playing from bedrooms 20 years ago and collectively were like “this doesn’t even sound like music, this is just noise” and for the first time in forever they were probably right. They’re the definition of that teenage…
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Phoenix ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ (2009)
If you went to college in the late 2000’s there was no escaping Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. This was one of those glittery boppy Indie rock albums that was custom-made for the coming-of-age college demographic, fun and carefree and subtly sophisticated in the sort of way that made you feel like a child and adult all…
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Brand New ‘The Devil & God Are Raging Inside Me’ (2006)
It’s hard to put into words what Brand New meant to me during my late teens and early 20’s. They were undoubtedly one of my favorite bands for a long period of time, held the top spot for a good chunk of that, and spanned multiple groups of friends. Deja Entendu was the soundtrack to…
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My Chemical Romance ‘The Black Parade’ (2006)
The Black Parade was emo’s answer to The Who’s Tommy, a concept album that sounded more like a Broadway musical production than a standard rock record. From soaring guitars to a rollicking rhythm section to Gerard Way’s distinctive gritty falsetto and dramatic enunciation, The Black Parade was Vaudeville on steroids and one of the most…
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Daft Punk ‘Discovery’ (2001)
If you went to college at some point in the 2000’s you knew exactly who Daft Punk was. In the late 2000’s mash-ups were absolutely taking off, in large part to the prodigious sampling capabilities that Daft Punk brought to the dance world. Sampling of course had been a major keystone to the genre of…
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Jay-Z ‘The Blueprint’ (2001)
New York City has long been a landmark in hip-hop, from its humble beginnings during the early 70’s in The Bronx to the infamous East/West feud in the late 90’s to the NYC Drill Movement that’s been prominent since Bobby Shmurda’s rise to fame in the mid-2010’s. Put simply, New York City is the home…
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Feist ‘Let It Die’ (2004)
My first exposure to Feist was through the excellent Broken Social Scene, effectively an art collective doubling as a massive musical experiment. The group has boasted nearly 25 members over the past two decades (at one point having 16 at a single point during the early 2000’s). Feist was one of the throng, played a…
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The Streets ‘Original Pirate Material’ (2002)
British hip hop has always been a sort of guilty pleasure of mine. As a high schooler my brother and I had a side project called “The Wankers” where we threw down silly rhymes and rapped in faux British accents, a project based off our shared love for the wonderfulness of the British accent and…
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Cartel ‘Chroma’ (2005)
The late 90’s through the mid aughts were a five year period that defined pop punk. You had Blink 182’s Enema of the State, Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler, and Green Day’s Dookie that by and large defined the genre, and then the variety of subsequent offshoots which took that formula and tweaked it…
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Aesop Rock ‘None Shall Pass’ (2007)
Aesop Rock has been a fixture on the alternative/underground hip hop scene for years. His 2007 album None Shall Pass lays out all the traits that have made him such a fixture in that scene– his cavernous vocabulary, dense musical arrangements, and production style that mimics the sound of an artist recording alone in their…
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Bruce Springsteen ‘The Rising’ (2002)
Bruce Springsteen’s music has always had this beautiful sense of unease around it, a struggle of finding meaning in mundane circumstances, and explored the difficulty of keeping the flame of hope alive in trying times. It’s what makes him my favorite artist of all-time and one of the definitive musical orators of American history during…
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Jamey Johnson ‘That Lonesome Song’ (2008)
Jamey Johnson is a country throwback in nearly every way– a deep voice that booms like a bass drum with a bit of a marble mouthed drawl, meandering acoustic guitars that tell a story all to themselves, and a backing band that understands when to hit their spots and when to take center stage. 2008’s…
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No Use For A Name ‘Hard Rock Bottom’ (2002)
During 8th grade I was just beginning to get into punk music. Bands like The Ataris, NOFX, MxPx, Blink-182, Green Day, and Pennywise were my gateway into the genre. Listening to those bands today has a way of transporting me back almost immediately– and while some albums have aged well (and others not so well)…
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Millencolin ‘Pennybridge Pioneers’ (2000)
If you played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater as a kid it’s an absolute guarantee that you’ll recognize the first song off Pennybridge Pioneers. That game was a defining part of my childhood and many of my generational peers, and “No Cigar” was a mainstay on the game’s soundtrack. It’s a perfectly put together skate punk…
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Chiodos ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ (2005)
Chiodos’ 2005 All’s Well That Ends Well is a deep cut for anyone who was a hardcore screamo fan in the mid aughts (guilty as charged!). This was one of those bands that was so damn weird and unique but it all just seemed to work. Lead vocalist Craig Owens pushed his vocal range to…
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Underoath ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’ (2004)
Three albums into their career Underoath was at somewhat of a cross roads. Their first three records had received limited commercial success, and following the departure of then lead vocalist and band co-founder Dallas Taylor (who went on to form the excellent Southern heavy metal band Maylene and the Sons of Disaster), they had to…
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Anti-Flag ‘For Blood and Empire’ (2006)
Anti-Flag has enjoyed a 35-year extensive career in the punk rock scene, dedicating their music to activism and left-wing politics since forming in Pittsburgh during 1988. If their name didn’t give it away already, their songs are focused on political discourse and the horrors of war, governmental overreach, corporate greed, and animal cruelty (all members…
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The Shins ‘Oh, Inverted World’ (2001)
During the indie pop folk craze that dominated the early 2000’s, The Shins were gigantic. It’s pretty much impossible for anyone in my generation to not at least be vaguely familiar with the two singles “Caring Is Creepy” and “New Slang” based off their prominence in the Garden State film featuring Zach Braff, Natalie Portman,…
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Pennywise ‘Land of the Free?’ (2001)
As a middle schooler Pennywise was one of my first forays into politically oriented punk rock, with Land of the Free? being one of the most prominent albums in my rotation. I spun this specific CD too many times to count on my blue Walkman, and later in high school actually covered “Fuck Authority” with…
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Tiger Army ‘Music From Regions Beyond’ (2007)
Produced by the late great Jerry Finn (whose contributions to late 90’s / early 00’s punk rock were unparalleled, as we covered relatively extensively in our writeup of Blink 182’s Enema of the State), Music From Regions Beyond is an album that draws significant inspiration from horror punk and goth rock. A great reference album…
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Terminal ‘How The Lonely Keep’ (2005)
Terminal is one of those deep cuts that I’ve forgotten about as the years have gone by. It’s been about 20 years since I’ve even thought about them, let alone listened to them. By happenstance I just stumbled upon them a few months ago and ended up taking a spin of their lone album 2005’s…
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Andre Nickatina ‘Conversation With A Devil’ (2003)
Yesterday we discussed Mac Dre’s massive influence on putting Bay Area Hyphy music on the map. In re-listening to that album it brought back a ton of memories surrounding Bay Area hip hop during high school and sent me off on a quest to find a lesser-known rapper I couldn’t immediately place but knew was…
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Mac Dre ‘Ronald Dregan’ (2004)
Growing up in the Bay it was impossible to avoid Hyphy music during its heyday during the mid aughts, which coincided perfectly with my formative years in high school. And Mac Dre along with E-40 were indisputably the most influential figures in that scene. I honestly don’t know how much the Hyphy movement translated nationally…
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Augustana ‘All The Stars and Boulevards’ (2005)
It’s only fitting we kick off the month of August with a band that bears the month’s namesake. Just putting that out there. Augustana’s 2006 All The Stars and Boulevards was released during my junior year of high school, a period of time in which college selection really ramps up and prospective college students like…
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Jimmy Eat World ‘Bleed American’ (2001)
I love a great album opener. It is a manifesto for an album that not only sets the stage but also defines what comes after it. Bleed American has an incredible opening song. The title track is hands down my favorite Jimmy song of all-time for about a million different reasons, the primary one being…
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Spitalfield ‘Remember Right Now’ (2003)
Spitalfield is one of those emo bands that you sort of had to go to high school in the mid-aughts to really appreciate. They were the hip emo band that influenced a ton of bands in the scene but never really had their big break like fellow Midwest emo bands The Get Up Kids and…
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Plans For Revenge ‘Burns, Scars, And Memories’ (2004)
In high school I was in a band called The Days of Stillness (awful name, yes). We were marginally successful in a high school garage band sort of way– played 10+ live shows in the local area, recorded a four song EP, and had our crowning achievement by playing at a rally in front of…
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Clipse ‘Lord Willin’ (2002)
Real life brothers Pusha T and Malice started their rap career in 1994 following Malice’s return from serving in the armed forces. However, it would take eight years for their debut album Lord Willin’ to come out after their original LP Exclusive Audio Footage was shelved by then record label Elektra following a disappointing reception…
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Missy Elliott ‘Miss E… So Addictive’ (2001)
From the top of 2001’s Miss E… So Addictive it’s clear Missy Elliott is here to have a damn good time. And have a good time she does, spitting sexual innuendo and club drug references at reckless abandon throughout the 63-minute runtime. The instant classic “Get Ur Freak On” is what Elliott will always be…
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Bon Iver ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ (2008)
The story behind the recording of For Emma Forever Ago is almost mythological in nature. Bon Iver (who at that point was simply known as Justin Vernon) had just gone through two particularly nasty breakups– the first with his band of childhood friends that had been together for over a decade, and the second to…
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