rolodex propaganda

Anyone who knows me will know that music has been a fairly intense topic for as long as they have probably known me. And whilst I may share my musical knowledge ad nauseum, I do like to think that it is somewhat appreciated, maybe as a learning device, maybe as a tool that reaffirms to everybody that maybe I'm just a knob who thinks he knows far too much about far too little. Regardless of your ignorant posturings, or wise appreciation (as the previous sentence dictates) I have decided to reflect on the music that has meant the most to me over these passing ten years. Whilst few of these bands may make the critics list, all I know is that each of these albums has managed to reach inside my (atheist) soul, and become a part of me, much like Akira becoming a giant ameobeotic destroyer of Tokyo (or something). So I will post over the next few weeks in a particular order to please the people who are into that kind of thing, my most significant 25 Albums of the waning decade that is 2000-2009. Today - 25 to 21.

25 - The Dresden Dolls - Self Titled (2003)
This album was not the kind of music I would usually go looking for at that particular time of my life, and in fact it found me. Around this time I was persevering in a band that just couldn't seem to find the right sound, and that was pretty indicative of how the rest of my life was going. I was swapping from job to job I didn't care about, went through several relationships with girls that, despite how great they each were, were not really my kind of girl, and I was moving from place to place for god knows why. I was also disenchanted with music too, so-cal punk was dead, emo had evolved into this grotesque pantomime of absurd hair, ridiculous piercings and empty teenage angst, and hardcore was infiltrated with metal guitar riffs and double kicks. Everything was changing, and I was drifting to nowhere. So when I heard Girl Anachronism on the J's, it hit me like the proverbial between the eyes. In everything was changing, here was something I could grab onto to drag me forward with the changing world that was accelerating ahead. The album had a punk DIY ethic that was so raw and powerful (a purely percussional band that makes rock music), and emo sensibility in Amanda's disjointed lyrics. By realising I could find new music from outside my cloistered reality, maybe I could find new life in other facets of my life too.
key track - half jack

24 - Milemarker - the Satanic Versus (2002)
Via my brothers Punk Planet subscription I had been made aware of this band (as several members of milemarker were columnists for the influential and now defunct publication) , and I had enjoyed the album frigid form sells for what it was, a furious blend of electro-punk. But when the hipster doofus at the local Movies Plus in Vermont South noted my badges on my backpack, insisted that this was THE milemarker album. So a trip to Missing Link was warranted, and damn was he right. This album bursts with an intensity I have seldom seen since, punk rock you can dance to, to rejoice in, to cower from. The full gamut of emotions could be released from 6 tracks inside 33 minutes, and changed the way punk was made in my head.
key track - Idle Hands

23 - The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (2006)
At the end of 2006, racked with depression, I decided to throw away much of who I thought I was and decided to do what I wanted to do when I was 17, and tried to start again. And with that I quit my job (again) and enrolled for uni. So come early 2007, I'm trekking via the public trolley from Cheltenham to Frankston almost daily in an attempt to become a primary school teacher. Whilst the uni experiment didn't last, it did allow me to become very well acquainted with this album on those tedious rides (and in those tedious lectures, and during those tedious study sessions in the library etc). As far as indie bands are concerned the Decemberists aren't high up in the hipster crowd, but for the art and craft of constructing songs this album remains a pinnacle in my mind. Each song has it's own true mood, yet the album still flows as one, which is an astonishing achievement. If I could make music, this is a flag bearer to look up to.
key track - The Crane Wife 1 & 2

22 - Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)
Sleater-Kinney have always been a band I admired, listening to the burnt copy of the album Call The Doctor whilst studying for my HSC was a standard. But when 2005 rolled around Janet, Carrie and Corinne turned around everything that I thought about this band. More in common with Fugazi than anything done previously, Sleater-Kinney took their angular twin guitar play to a new level with sharp solo's, voices that sounded like they had been summoned from some dark apex of the soul, and some of the best drumming on any album ever, bar none. Whilst the album split the opinion of the fans more harshly than maybe any album since the Bee Gee's went disco (ahem), in my opinion it opened up to me the idea that you can make an album that is more than just a collection of songs, but an entire statement of who you are.
key track - Jumpers

21 - Bad Religion - New Maps of Hell (2007)
If one band defined what I thought was the pinnacle of perfection when it come to music when I was a teenager it was Bad Religion. However, it never really twigged to me that the stuff that I really loved was already a decade old (or more) when I discovered it in the mid nineties, and that the albums being made in the then and now were rather rubbish. So when Mr Brett rejoined the band in 2002 to produce and play on the Process of Belief, suddenly Bad Religion were not just an encyclopedia of kick ass so-cal punk, but a current day band worth paying attention to. 5 years later and this album ends up in my record player, and after 28 years as a band Bad Religion prove they are as powerful, relevant and brilliant as anytime in my life. The previous two albums had built to this masterpiece, with Greg's and Brett's lyrics as angry as ever, Baker and Hetson (with the help of Brett) finally getting those guitars synching together after 12 odd years, and Brooks Wackerman bringing an energy to the drums probably not heard since No Control. I can listen to this album alongside Suffer or Against the Grain and it holds it's own, and shows that even if you are getting old, you can still make it matter.
key track - Before You Die

Albums 20-16 when I damn well feel like it!

Don't forget to tell your mum you love her,

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