Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#42 Ladytron, 604

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vs.

#87 My Morning Jacket, AT DAWN

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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 one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for 604, and it’s from @bobbker.bsky.social. Take it away, Robert!

As a cis white man who just turned 50, a divorced dad, a guy who lives in Maine and has been known to sport a beard and imbibe the occasional IPA, who has a favorite weed dispensary and keeps his hiking boots close at hand, it’s pretty clear who I’m voting for between Ladytron and My Morning Jacket, right?

It’s got to be Ladytron.

Sure, it’s true that because of my particular identity, I’m not as qualified as some to question the general “Meet Me in the Bathroom” narrative that frames the Return of Rock as the realm of straight white dudes and Karen O, and how the queer spaces became largely gentrified and the queer artists largely erased in the process (no Scissor Sisters?).

It’s also true that I’m not as qualified as some to frame the electroclash moment alongside an rise in transgender visibility and a coming-of-age moment of transgender identity. How bands like Ladytron (whose very name, in addition to the Roxy Music origin story, evokes Wendy Carlos’ work on the Tron score) followed a blueprint of how new wave and synth-pop artists like Annie Lennox and Gary Numan bent the very concept of gender into more nebulous, androgynous areas.

Instead I’ll reflect on Ladytron’s impact my own identity as a middle-aged cis white guy who spent his 50th birthday with divorce lawyers. I’m well aware that this makes me a walking cliché, but I was surprised at how all of the clichéd music choices bounced off me like bullets off Superman. No Bob Dylan, no Elliott Smith, no Wilco (OK some Wilco), no Fleetwood Mac, and my god no National or Bon Iver or (pick your own indie-rock poison).

For about two months, all I listened to were the Bee Gees. Pricey production, propuslive rhythms, absolute gibberish vocals. When that grew tiresome, I blew the dust off of my Ladytron and Goldfrapp CDs and lugged them into the car, where I spun them for the first time in years.

The pull was clear: I needed something to numb the senses, to sink into a cocaine stupor without actually doing cocaine. That’s another thing electroclash is good for. One of the biggest songs to come out of the early 00s movement is called “Fuck the Pain Away.” On “Another Breakfast With You” (from “604”) Helen Marnie sings “I didn't feel anything when you told me that you didn't feel a thing when I told you that I didn't feel a thing, another breakfast with you.” What the lyrics are trying to say is that neither party felt a thing.

Marnie speak-sings the lyrics, as she does throughout the album, sometimes feigning indifference through vocal distortion, sometimes pitching her voice up a tad into what could almost be a caricature of the feminine. Across the pond, Julian Casablancas used vocal effects to give his voice an unbothered masculine tone closer to Lou Reed’s character than his natural voice could likely get. Here, Marnie often aspires to Laurie Anderson, notably on the department-store announcements of the capitalism-prodding satire “Paco!”

While Ladytron’s best work would be just ahead of them, they would never sound as ugly as “604” again. There are sounds here that you don’t find on too many other records—percussion that sounds like shaking a garbage can; squelches and belches that sound like Donald Duck beatboxing (“Commodore Rock” is a prime example). The record is a hangover in search of a buzz, and younger critics inventing terms like “indie sleaze” likely found this album to be one of the dots worth connecting. Which is to say, when you take a retro aesthetic from the past and extend it forever into the future, the moments melt away and a timelessness takes over. “604” feels as vibrant as ever today, particularly when you turn to it to feel nothing at all.

Thank you, Robert!

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

Yesterday, #23 Drive-By Truckers, SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA defeated #106 Tricky, BLOWBACK, 110-57-3.

Thanks,

Kent