After all the electronica and ambient pop, it’s nice to get back to a straightforward alternative rock album. My next critically-acclaimed record from the year 2000 is PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea.
This was the English singer-songwriter’s seventh album and remains her most successful commercially and critically. It was nominated for multiple Grammys and won the coveted Mercury Prize, given to the United Kingdom’s best album.
Critics in 2000 fell for some pretty weird shit. Maybe it was a reaction to the boy band explosion, but many of the albums I’m digging up that were critically acclaimed that year seem like an overcorrection, a deliberate attempt to celebrate the unconventional.
Case in point: The Avalanches, an Australian electronic band, whose album Since I Left You shows up on scores of critics’ year-end lists.
My choice for Counting Crows’ best album is a close contest between their 1993 debut August and Everything After and their fourth release, 2002’s Hard Candy. Forced to choose, I would likely side with Hard Candy.
Today’s random SOTD, ‘Carriage,’ is a big reason why. This is a beautiful and poignant song that plays to Adam Duritz’s strengths as a lyricist and vocalist and gives the band plenty of space to fill a rather sparse song with moments of musical grace.
Of all the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series releases, volume 11 (The Basement Tapes Complete) is definitely the most impressive.
Spanning six discs and 138 tracks, this volume contains all of the unreleased tracks recorded by Dylan and The Band in the basement of a house called Big Pink between May and October of 1967.
I’m most excited by the Decades series when I’m served up albums like this one. One of 2000’s most acclaimed releases is by a band called Godspeed You! Black Emperor with the glorious title Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven.
As I write this I haven’t heard a single note, but whether it’s a disaster or a new favorite, I’m excited to live for a little while in the bubble of uncertainty before I dive in and figure out what this thing is. Here goes!
