Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#7 Gorillaz, GORILLAZ

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#122 Clearlake, LIDO

Listen on YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have dueling Designated Cheerleaders today! First up, for GORILLAZ, and it’s from @kezme.bsky.social. Take it away, kezme!

Of the 2001 albums I bought at the time, GORILLAZ is likely the one I’ve listened to in full the most, having never really gone out of my rotation in the time since then. At the time, I came to the album the way most of us probably did – through the big singles Clint Eastwood and 19-2000 being flogged to death on radio at the time – but when I played it I found an album that was a lot stranger and more experimental than those more commercially-friendly tracks would lead you to expect.

This is of course the legend of Gorillaz – Damon Albarn wanting a side project in which he could have a free hand to explore musical ideas outside the pressures that come along with the mainstream success of Blur, a side project which ultimately ended up garnering more commercial / mainstream success than Blur itself as the 2000s unfolded. But this self-titled album comes before that success, and you can feel that freedom to experiment all the way across it, unconstrained in a way that future Gorillaz albums aren’t. This might sound like a warning, but be reassured this is all still very accessible – it’s not Fennesz, Albarn does still have a pop sensibility.

Now I’m certainly not qualified to point out everything going on musically on this album – my own music theory education being almost entirely in a classical tradition – but what I do recognise ticks a lot of boxes for me. There’s interesting samples used in a musical way, there’s a lot of playing around with time signatures – 5/4 features the lead guitar playing in 5/4 over a standard 4/4 drum pattern, and New Genius (Brother) does something similar with the cymbals. There’s deliberately dischordant intervals and notes that warble off-key, but in a way that’s clearly musical and not just cacophanous. It all reads as ‘art’, but I think without crossing the line into pretentiousness.

Speaking of art, I know this album was part of a wider project involving the animated film clips and other media featuring the “virtual band”, but I’ve personally never really engaged deeply with that part of Gorillaz (I do have their DVD projects in my collection somewhere) – I think GORILLAZ the album stands on its own as a complete work. It does work very much as an album – there aren’t really any tracks here I’d rather play on their own than as part of a full album listen. I’d consider the one or two remixes at the end, depending on the version of the album you have, as bonus tracks rather than part of the album proper, though.

2001 was clearly a time when a lot of popular music was trying to make a break with the past and figure out what the future was going to be. GORILLAZ didn’t turn out to be what the future of music looked like; it’s not even really what the future of Gorillaz ended up looking like. I don’t think that takes away from the album, though – it’s something that I’ve been listening to for more than half my life now, and easily one of the standout albums released in 2001.

Thank you, kezme!

Then next, for LIDO, it’s @megabrow12.bsky.social. Take it away, Shamp!

In 2001 I took several months unpaid leave from my employer to go a-travelling with my girlfriend.  Details of this trip can be found in the bestalbum archives (subs please check) for the 2000 PJ Harvey album.

Returning to the UK in 2002 (for that is where I live) my employer decided that having managed perfectly well without me for 4 months, they would like to make the arrangement permanent and I was politely made redundant.[1]

This was, broadly speaking, quite good news.  Being a moron, I had gone round the world on my credit card. Getting made redundant meant I could pretty much clear my debt with the payout and I didn’t have to go to a job I no longer liked.  Also, had they refused my request for unpaid leave I’d have quit.  Idiots could’ve saved themselves £7k.  Also, quite importantly, 2002 was the world cup in Japan and Korea which meant daytime matches.  I had no dependents. I moved back in with my parents at age 27 and did very little job searching until the world cup was over.[2]

As well as watching football with 11am pints, I listened a lot to Lido by Clearlake.  It fit my life at that point like a glove.  It’s not a concept album by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely has a theme.  If Seinfeld was the ‘show about nothing’ then Lido is the album about nothing.  There’s loads going on here musically, there’s even some proper pop songs. But the songs are about jumble sales[3], a day when you might take a break from your current malaise, living in a lazy mans dream – a whole lot of nothing. It is an album for students, wasters and the recently unemployed.[4]

In a world where Sunday evening was just another one of those washed out days, and there really wasn’t much on except Songs of Praise[5] in my parents living room, the album matched my mood and matched my pace of life.  I would be nice to have something to look forward to. But there was no rush. I lived a life where a 7 minute song about Jumble sales absolutely matched my mood.  Listening today, as I have done most months since 2002 my life is very different, but the songs hold up.  The little turns of phrase, a clever lyric here, a pop song there…it’s a really good, if slightly twee, indie album. It deserves it’s place in the 128 best albums of 2001 – there were certainly more ‘worthy’ picks[6] but when I think of 2002 this is the album that most resonates with who I was then and is the album from 2001 I’ve re-visited often (only Kings of Convenience and Roots Manuva would have more plays probably).

I write this on Sunday evening (of course). Tomorrow Lido takes on Gorillaz, possibly the worst draw it could’ve got.  It will lose. It will lose by a big margin – I’m aware writing this DC is a massive waste of my time. But it’s nice to reflect on a time when I had so much time available to waste by wasting some of the little I had this weekend. And to reflect on a time when there was so much more to look forward to.  And who knows? Maybe a handful of you will listen to this with an open mind, and think, yes..this is very much for me, because that’s always nice, isn’t it?

¹ Note for Americans, here in the UK as well as free healthcare we also have things like redundancy payments, which are quite handy for when you get fired and need to pay for food and rent and stuff.

² I did not, in the English parlance, sign on. Just did enough temp days to keep in beer money/petrol.

³ Note for American readers. Jumble sales are a bit like a yard sale, expect people bring their unwanted possessions to a village hall (usually donated for charitable causes) and people turn up there to buy second hand belongings and very weak orange squash.

⁴ I have been all 3 at various points. Strong recommend on all of them.

⁵ Note for younger & American readers, back in the day there were only 4 TV channels in the UK. On Sunday evening the BBC would show Songs of Praise. It was literally a televised church service from a random town, the hymns interspersed with little segments about the vicarage or an interview with the church warden’s wife who presses flowers or whatever. It was prime time viewing and if we wanted to watch the one TV in our house as kids, it was that or nothing.  I assume it’s not on anymore cos of woke or whatever. Update! It’s still on BBC 1! Take that woke mob! *

*jk jk I love woke obviously. I’m on Bluesky.

⁶ Susheela Raman would’ve been a ‘safer’ pick here if I wanted to avoid the seemingly prevalent anti-indie negativity from some of the bestalbum crowd. I also think that Robbie Williams swing album should be here but whatevs.

Thank you, Shamp!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

BONUS ANNOUNCEMENT!

Best Album Bracketeers @lanna.bsky.social (Keeper of the Yearly Master Lists, plus Website) and @nanette.bsk.social (Co-Blogger of The Best Thing, where she and @putnam39.bsky.social are currently blogging every 2001 match) are planning something special — The Best Album of 2001 Karaoke! That’s right, it’s a Zoom party, and you’re all invited! More information as it develops, but please mark June 14th on your calendars. See you there!

Thanks,

Kent