#3 Sail. (repost from Substack)
Sail.
This is how I show my love. Blame it on my ADHD, baby.
We have officially left the docks of Twitter and have entered the open sea. [ETA 1/1/24: We have also left the docks of Substack.]
As I’ve stated before, my operating metaphor for what’s happening is that Twitter is on fire and falling apart, and I’ve tried to gather you all into my giant cruise ship to take you away from there to another place. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that other place is, yet. (I would like it to be Bluesky, but it’s not ready for us yet. I’ve been told Threads has a polling function, but I haven’t inspected it as of this writing.) [ETA 1/1/24: as you can see, we are now on Buttondown.] Since we don’t know where exactly we’re going yet, we’re going to be on the high seas for a time, and we’ll need to entertain ourselves during that period. (I’m not just your captain, I’m your cruise director.) I have some ideas for that, but for the most part, I’m going to use this time to prepare for the Best Album of 2000 tournament. So, here are five albums I’ve listened to relatively recently, what I thought of them, and if I’m going to nominate them. If you have some 2000 releases you’d like me, and everyone else, to hear, let us know in the comments! [ETA 1/1/24: I genuinely have no idea if Buttondown has comments.]
This Week’s Five Albums from 2000
A quick note on ratings: my rating systems goes Love, Like/Love, Like, Interesting/Like, Interesting, Lukewarm/Interesting, Lukewarm, and Leave It. Generally, I nominate anything with a rating of Like or higher, and don’t nominate anything rated Interesting/Like or lower. However, it’s my choice and will violate those “rules” whenever I feel like it. Albums marked with an asterisk (*) are albums I’ve heard before, whether that was 23 years ago or last week.
Outkast, Stankonia*
My favorite OutKast; also, the only OutKast I’ve ever owned, and have owned since it came out. I haven’t been overly impressed with the other OutKast albums I’ve heard (one time for each tournament they’ve been in), so I wonder if I’d feel the same about Stankonia if I’d only encountered it once, just now. And you know what? I don’t think so. I really think this might be their best collection of songs. “B.O.B.” and “Ms. Jackson” are certified classics, “Humble Mumble” should be a certified classic, “Red Velvet” samples Kate motherfucking Bush, and I wish “?” was even longer, as I find it as musically adventurous and gripping as “B.O.B.” The histrionics that close out “Toilet Tisha” would probably ruin any other song, but the tale it tells is so devastating that I can forgive it. Even the skits, which aren’t very good because skits never are, are pretty tolerable, because each of them end with a clap and voices saying “Break!” as if we had been listening to an improv performance or like a hiphop version of Laugh-In. It alienates us from the “reality” of the skit, acknowledging that they are artificial, that they are in fact skits. And for whatever reason, it makes all the difference.
Rating: Like/Love
Stankonia is available on Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube.
Immolation, Close to a World Below
I’ve heard Immolation’s Dawn of Possession a few times, and as I recall, it’s okay but a little too torpid for my taste. (When it comes to metal, I usually find doom and stoner metal a bit too downtempo; sludge can be good if it sounds as filthy as its name.) (Unrelated, but I get Immolation confused with Suffocation and Incantation. Can’t even use point of origin as a differentiator; they’re all from New York!) Anyway, wasn’t expecting much here, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this an accessible slab of mostly-midtempo death metal. Death metal can get so wrapped up in being heavy and skull-crushing that it can forget to be interesting apart from that. There’s quite a few repeated, hooky riffs here, something to latch onto while the admiring the looming tidal wave of destruction. It’s like Cannibal Corpse with the doors and windows open. (This isn’t suffocation.)
Rating: Like/Love
Close to a World Below is available on Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube.
Kylie Minogue, Light Years
Even before the halfway mark, it seems clear to me Minogue’s organizing principle is a kind of historical survey of dance and disco; you get nearly all the decades and styles. (The ‘70s one is particularly well done. Don’t ask me which title it is, it’s been a week.) That’s both the strength and the weakness. You get the novelty of hearing Minogue tackle these different sounds, and if one’s boring, the next one will be different. But I prefer her dive into late 90s style “electronica” with Impossible Princess, if forced to choose. Still, this Best Album project has revealed to me that I like not one, but two Kylie Minogue albums, something I’d never predicted, or likely would’ve discovered on my own.
Rating: Like
Light Years is available on Apple Music (Deluxe Edition only) and Spotify and YouTube.
Karate, Unsolved
What if indie post-rock, but jazz? Well, this. Shouldn’t work; not sure it actually does work. Certainly, I prefer my jazz to be on the skronky side of things, not the tasteful, and this is as clean and tasteful as a table setting at an Olive Garden. But some albums have a certain something, an annoying piece of sand that if given enough time, turns into a pearl. If I’d given this 23 years instead of 51 minutes, I wonder which I’d have.
Rating: Interesting/Like
Unsolved is available on Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube.
Kid Koala, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Biggest disappointment of the batch. I generally like turntablism and such, but this was like listening to DJ Shadow practice and I’m yelling, “Get to the songs!" Nothing sounds really thought-through; like the album cover, it’s just a bunch of sketches. At best it’s vaguely…
Rating: Interesting
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is available on Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube.
