Alt and Indie Gems from the 2000s (Music Notes) (OT)

[Comments have been added.]

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Cat Power

Feeling old yet, fortysomethings? Get prepared, you will.

Here's a collection of songs from the vanished aughts that deserve more listens. These are just random personal faves, among many...no big claims for the list. I've linked to YouTube versions, but of course you can find them in whatever source you use for music (I use Roon and Quobuz for the sound quality). In no particular order:

The Streets [Mike Skinner] — Could Well Be In. A rap song by a white Englishman with a thick accent that constructs a narrative of a hookup in a bar that's surprisingly dimensional and moving. Don't watch the video—better to picture them in your head. The link is to the longer (4:22) uncensored version (so beware profanity).

Autolux — Great Days for the Passenger Element. I think I've mentioned this one before. At some point I got allergic to BDR ("big dumb rock") drumming and started to search out more interesting rhythm work. I guess I learned that from hip-hop. Always loved how this moves.

The Mountain Goats [John Darnielle] — Dilaudid. A "perfect little poem of hate," to borrow what Walker Evans said of Lee Friedlander's photographs. Darnielle, a mercurial and reflexively prolific songwriter, at his most quirkily brilliant. (And no drums on this one.)

Yo La Tengo — You Can Have It All. A blissful, rompy, genial little song built of sublime harmonies.

Athlete — El Salvador. Upbeat sing-a-longer from a band that came, made a splash, and went.

Beck — Ghettochip malfunction (Hell Yes). Hard to say what my favorite Beck song is, but when I listen to this, this is. I like you Ace, your beat is nice.

Beauty Pill — The Cigarette Girl From the Future. A cult classic that might be too experimental/weird for some, but check out the lyrics: the song nails the conundrum of futurism in very few words. Beauty Pill had a hit with the exquisite "Goodnight For Real" from The Unsustainable Lifestyle, which is how I found them.

Jeff Beck — Nadia. I was besotted with this beautiful track during the time I was in love with Sara and listened to it like 600 times. Had to keep away from it for a year after the breakup.

Cat Power — Lived in Bars. Gorgeously sung ballad about the loneliness of the party life. And William Eggleston has a cameo in the video.

Maximo Park — Graffiti. The line "I'll do graffiti if you sing to me in French" makes me laugh. And you have to like a song that ends with the phrase "and that's enough."

Pixies — Bam Thwok. Recorded for but not used in 2004's Shrek 2 and eventually released as a download-only single on Apple's iTunes, this "endearingly daft" song is one of the subset of Pixies songs on which Kim Deal sings lead.

Laura Veirs, Riptide. Wistfully spooky (or spookily wistful) tune from the Portland, Oregon, singer-songwriter's first Nonesuch album, Carbon Glacier. I like the way this melts into an instrumental.

Badly Drawn Boy — A Minor Incident. English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Damon Michael Gough has a clever stage name. Elegiac, from-the-heart folk-tinged song.

Massive Attack — Risingson. The foreboding dirge-like first single from Massive Attack's massive hit Mezzanine sampled The Velvet Undergound.

J Dilla — Workinonit. Donuts was released three days before the hip-hop producer J Dilla's death from TTP and lupus; most of the tracks were recorded in his hospital room using a 45-rpm record player and a Boss SP-303 sampler. The album, which had its moment, is a pared-down sketchpad of notes and ideas for songs that could never get made.

Modest Mouse — The World at Large. The ying to the yang of the more popular "Float On," into which it flows on the album Good News for People Who Love Bad News.

Ray Davies — Morphine Song. Underrated gem from the Kinks frontman describes his stay in an Emergency Room after being shot by muggers in New Orleans. Moral: Don't chase muggers; but if you do, you might encounter some characters in the ER.

Sondre Lerche — Two Way Monologue. No idea how this guy is viewed in his native Norway, but Lerche "is consistently experimenting with alternate chord voicings and more complex song structures" (Nick Sylvester) on this album, and this title track rollicks right along.

Blind Boys of Alabama — Way Down in the Hole. This Tom Waits cover, by the famous gospel group founded in 1939 that features a revolving cast of mostly visually impaired musicians, was used as the theme music for Season One of HBO's The Wire.

Howe Gelb — Get To Leave. A token track from one of my favorite albums of that decade, "'Sno Angel Like You." Howe Gelb (of Giant Sand...well, not "fame," but of Giant Sand!) is an acquired taste, but this album, for which he realized a longtime dream by hiring a gospel choir to sing backup, is pure gentle quirky fun.

I hafta stop. It sure was fun to go back and revisit these old songs, and a lot more besides. I haven't heard some of them in many years. By the way, if you're wondering why so few things from the last years of the decade, I was working full steam on TOP by that time and didn't have much leisure time to check out bands and music.

Hope you discover a thing or two here you like!

Mike

P.S. This kind of post is surprisingly difficult to pull together. If you happen to see any mistakes, please let me know!

[UPDATE: Andreas Sakka helpfully created a public Spotify playlist of 16 of these 20 songs...thanks Andreas!]

Book o' the Week

Our National Monuments: America's Hidden Gems by Q.T. Luong. Just out! Brand new. Publishing isn't easy. Our friend QT (Tuan) Luong tells me that his new book will have to sell 6,200 copies out of a print run of 7,500 just to break even! And that's not including the labor and time it took to make the photographs. Fortunately, the predecessor book, Treasured Lands, has done exceedingly well. It has won 12 international awards and is now in its 6th printing.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Tom Burke: "Re 'Feeling old yet, fortysomethings?' Never mind them, they’ve got years to get used to it. Wait till you read a 'it happened 50 years ago today!' article about a concert you went to and remember like it was last month. Stones in the Park, summer 1969, and The Guardian did a loving reminiscence about it in 2019. Well, thanks. Still comes as a shock, even three years on. I mean, it cannot possibly be 50 years since that afternoon because I haven’t changed at all. Not really; not inside. Maybe."

Tex Andrews: "I work with Drew Doucette of Beauty Pill. He's the head of AV at the Hirshhorn, handles all the editing of our main video stuff, along with working with all of the time-based media we exhibit. Lots o' troubleshooting there, lemme tell ya. He also obviously consults with the curators and exhibition designers about all of our capabilities/incapabilities, where the projectors need to go, the audio, etc. Real good guy. You'd never know he was a rock star...and Grammy winner (but not with BP)."

Peter Croft: "Huh. I've heard of Jeff Beck and Ray Davies (if it's the same Ray Davies I used to know), but none of the rest of them. I think they stopped writing good music around that time. I'm gettin' old (75)."

Nigli: "Mike, thanks for that. I opened the Spotify playlist and it made my day. It's right up my alley."

Ian Provan: "Thanks for the list Mike! A few songs there I already love, and a few I look forward to checking out. And I second Tom Burke's comment. I saw a few months ago that it's 50 years since Hunky Dory was released, which means next year will be the 50th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust! That was the album that changed me from someone who liked listening to music to someone utterly besotted with rock 'n' roll."

Carlos Quijano: "And the winner is: Howe Gelb. Great. And digging around I found his band Giant Sand: great too. Thanks Mike."

Stuart Phillips: "Thanks for sending me off down a Massive-Attack-shaped rabbit-hole. Re: Tom Burke's comment, it's only 25 years since they were the soundtrack to my undergrad and postgrad studies, from Blue Lines to Protection to Mezzanine. While it's a shock, it's not yet that big a shock!"

Mike replies: Sounds like you might be interested in this:

The 30th anniversary reissue of Nirvana's Nevermind. On vinyl, and, at the same link, also CD, and also a deluxe multi-disc vinyl set, and the same in CD.

Another landmark album recently (in July) turned 25, Sublime's self-titled third album, released three days after Brad Nowell's death, but I think they're gone now; and here's a hot tip if you happen to collect vinyl (I don't, any more, although I have earlier versions of those two): Porcupine Tree's Deadwing is just about to come out on vinyl. Those will go very fast. That's the album with the amazing 12-minute Pink-Floydesque "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here" on it.

Comments

[Mikael G]

Funny you didnt mention the Photo connection: William Eggleston seems to appear in the video Cat Power, Lived in Bars !

[Thanks! I added this to the post. I didn't even realize because although I've heard the song dozens of times, I've never watched the video. --Mike]

[David]

As an on-topic bonus, William Eggleston is in Cat Power you linked to.

[David]

... in the Cat Power video you linked to.

[Dan]

Nice list. I love checking out the songs David Simon chooses for his shows. One favorite is Assume the Position by Lafayette Gilchrist that he used in The Wire and The Deuce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-gi9p93ZLs

[Andreas Sakka]

I've compiled as many of these as I can find (all but a couple) into a Spotify playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7hBiXSN8lfeevZ74jFfdsa?si=fbcf17efcf524e04

I hope this works!

[Sean]

Last Sunday my wife rested her head on my lap while we listened to the entirety of A Grand Don’t Come for Free, which features Could Well Be In. We know the world Mike Skinner mines; the language he uses to describe it is our own. 30 years after meeting a green-eyed girl wearing a black catsuit in a dark corner of a club, she is having her hair stroked to the sound of The Streets. It's one thing to be well in, it's another thing to stay in.

[Arg]

…and that’s enough

[Lawrence Plummer]

Nice list, Mike! On a side note, if you have yet to listen to a rather nice little station, here in Seattle, I urge you to give it a try. I'm speaking of KEXP, FM 90.3. They are on the internet, with worldwide listeners. I know, because I've spoken to many listeners in Europe, Mexico, Japan, etc., during phone drives. I'm a huge supporter, as well as a volunteer at the station.

Internet : KEXP.ORG

[Xf Mj]

Oh, Cat Power. All of The Greatest and also watching Jim White of the Dirty Three drum anything carefully, including Cat Power’s songs.

[Jim Arthur]

Thanks for the list. I appreciate the effort. It’s always nice to have a reason to crank the stereo. I see a few artists I like but have lost touch with and a few who are new to me and remind me of other artists. The disjointed free association that happens with new music is always interesting. The Autolux song reminded me of Elliot Smith and the Jeff Beck song reminded me of Joe Satriani’s, Always With Me Always With You for some reason. Must be their guitar hero status.

Here’s a few from the late aughts that are nice.
Bon Iver & St. Vincent – Roslyn

Feist – Sealion

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Inspiration Information

Jose Gonzalez – Cello Song

[Edward Taylor]

There are only a couple of songs on that whole list that I would have guessed that you would like. And I thought I knew you!

Very interesting. I knew only a few of them myself and learned a lot. Thanks.

[Nico]

Feeling old, indeed.

Marco Cavina just published an article on the Nikon F2, with lots of technical drawings. Mechanical engineering of days bygone, that can bring tears to your eyes.

Nico (62 in two weeks time).

p.s. The website is in Italian, but there's a 'Google Translate' tool built in.

[Dogman]

Excepting Jeff Beck, Ray Davies and the Blind Boys, I had never heard of any of these performers. Then I realized why. In the early 1990s, I started to get interested in classical music and opera and I totally immersed myself in these genres. By the 2000s, I had stopped listening to the radio completely and also started to redevelop an interest in jazz, the seeds of which were sown in my high school days. I somehow managed to avoid a generation or two of popular music. Now THAT makes me feel old (which I am).

[David Glos]

Ahh, thanks for relighting my musical journey. It seems the Venn diagram of our tastes have a good bit of overlap.

Finding great new stuff was actually easier in days past. WOXY 97X ("Bam, the future of Rock and Roll" was their catchphrase) was one of the original alternative stations, and broadcast out of nearby Oxford, OH. It always required a bit of antenna fiddling to pull in a good signal, but effort was well rewarded. Later, they morphed into a fantastic online presence, but just couldn't make a long term go of it.

We also had WNKU, the college station just across the river at Northern Kentucky University, which was firing on all cylinders, just as the university decided it costs too much to continue.

Kim and Kelly Deal are somewhat local, and we are occasionally treated to a revival of the personal project, The Breeders, which is always a treat.

I deeply miss the connection to a local music scene and seeing live music, particularly of the under the radar, non-Ticketmaster connected, variety.

[Inaki]

Maverick a Strike, Finley Quaye. Specially, "Even after all".
:-)

From the same year [say 1997], that forgotten gem of "Underwater Love", by Smoke City.

My 2.56 [inflation adjusted] cents.

[I love "Even After All." Beautiful song. I'll check out "Underwater Love." Thanks for that Inaki. --Mike]

[Moose]

"Feeling old yet, fortysomethings?"

ROTFLOL

From seventy-something, that's funny!

[David Elden]

"Mike Skinner...a white Englishman with a thick accent"
Hmm, thick accent? Sounded almost RP to me. Really enjoyed the track anyway.
Dave.