Like their peers the Strokes, the quartet made rhythm guitar the lead and foregrounded the bass, but cast them in sombre black suits rather than artfully distressed denim.
#Rihanna anti album download album jams driver
Theirs was the New York of Taxi Driver or Midnight Cowboy: fraught with rain and danger, energy crackling like the wires of a vandalised phone box. Overlapping acoustic guitars blend like plumes of smoke, and inspired snatches of melody flit by – but bursts of noise and distortion herald danger deep in the woods. Pharrell at his horniest ever – Truth or Dare hints at an orgy before Tape You records the sounds of one – but Bobby James is one of his loveliest ballads. Matching Jonathan Richman for wry, detail-heavy storytelling and Sufjan Stevens for orchestral whimsy, Lekman elevated romantic mishaps in his Gothenburg home town to cinematic proportions. 60 Jens Lekman Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007) Infectious ego, unknockable confidence and hysterical commentary: a relic from lighter days that did not foresee West’s extraordinary evolution. Gothic and abrasive in equal parts, the Swedish brother-sister duo’s third album offered ceaseless electronic invention at a time when their synth-minded peers were content to till their way through music history’s trash. Supposedly Jay-Z’s last album before a retirement that never arrived, The Black Album was the apotheosis of the rapper’s self-mythologising, establishing him as an old-school classicist and innovator. Lascivious, soulful and compellingly weird, Kelis was ahead of her time – though it’s still thrilling to remember that the extremely unsubtle Milkshake was a No 2 hit. Twenty-five years after forming, the Congolese group made their name with this rhythmic explosion of likembes (thumb pianos) put through junkyard amplification. The album that ushered in the moody, neon-lit synthpop that would define the rest of the decade, Ruth Radelet playing Nico to Johnny Jewel’s Velvet Underground-worthy cool. Smith’s final album followed his brief adoption by Hollywood, and added a cinematic grandeur to his work – but, thankfully, it didn’t swamp his haunted songwriting.
The finest boyband breakout since Robbie Williams’s Life Thru a Lens, and that’s not damning with faint praise: Timberlake’s Neptunes/Timbaland-helmed debut was slick, sexy and most importantly, convincing. Photograph: Startraks Photo/Rex Features 87 Justin Timberlake Justified (2002) Listen to the album.īreakout … Justin Timberlake. No disposable vocalist or featured artist, the charismatic, club-savvy south Londoner gave dubstep its first real star. Two Malian greats met for this soothing, spontaneous record of guitar and kora that is as subtly textured as it is generous. 91 Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté In the Heart of the Moon (2005) Part state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu’s brain. 92 Erykah Badu New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)
93 Low Things We Lost in the Fire (2001)įilled with crushing, funereal dirges and a song about wanting to encase a newborn baby in metal to prevent its growth, the Duluth group’s fifth album was nonetheless inexplicably beautiful. Merrill Nisker grafted sweaty, human filth on to the clean machine shock of electroclash on her hilarious, titillating debut as Peaches. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian 94 Peaches The Teaches of Peaches (2000) XCX stopped waiting around for mainstream acceptance and showed the normies what they were missing with this bracingly eclectic, guest-laden mixtape. 96 Missy Elliott Miss E … So Addictive (2001)ĭrawing from house, psychedelia and even Bollywood soundtracks, Missy’s third – the one responsible for Get Ur Freak On – forced pop to catch up with her yet again.
Trip-hop duo Moloko was dead, and Murphy teamed up with Matthew Herbert for this eclectic, saucy – and still underrated – pop record that anticipated the arrival of Lady Gaga by three years. The Malian guitarist set a new career benchmark with this intimate set, adding classical western harp and African ngoni to her subtle, bluesy electric guitar. The first album album from an artist whose records had previously propped up killer singles with passable fillers turned her disaffection and disappointment into generational anthems. Seven years after her previous album, Apple’s return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly.
0 kommentar(er)
