Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

For a single that Rolling Stone chose as the #1 song of the decade, "Crazy" doesn't seem particularly significant or profound. Which is fine by me, but I thought only I was allowed to like songs for that reason, not Rolling Stone. Nevertheless, as someone once said about Shakespeare, it's really very good in spite of the people who like it.

First of all, the band name is great. Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse, the two members of Gnarls Barkley, were also kicking around "Prince Gnarls" and "Bob Gnarley," either of which could have worked just as well. Cee-Lo has described their music as "electric industrial Euro soul." Count me in.

As I think is the case with many of my other favorite songs of the 00s, Gnarls Barkley didn't appear to be taking their enterprise very seriously, but that sort of attitude is precisely what allowed them to surpass their own expectations. On the surface, "Crazy" is quite silly and nonsensical. But the pull of the melody and Cee-Lo's soulful vocal delivery manage to make this little bit of goofing off resonate on a deeper level. Or am I crazy?

The Avalanches - "Frontier Psychiatrist"

Almost all music videos, since the dawn of time, have made at least some attempt to show the the actual musical artist featured in the video pretending to be performing the actual song that is being promoted by said video. Often these "performances" don't even follow the rules of logic. Where's Britney's microphone? If she's doing all that dancing, how come she doesn't sound out of breath?

But what if, in the case of the Avalanches, there's just one problem: there is no performer? What if your song is just a bunch of kitschy '50s soundbites strung together?

Never fear. The video for "Frontier Psychiatrist" is an endearingly literal interpretation of what is actually present on the recording. For every absurd sample, there is the corresponding image of a psychiatrist/ape/horse/parrot/Peruvian folk ensemble "performing" what is heard. The video reminds me of those creative writing or acting workshop exercises where people are given a random set of words and are supposed to slap together something cogent out of that randomness. The Avalanches probably created this song in their basement with no intention of ever passing it off as something that anybody would, or even could, perform live. But when it came time to make a video, I guess they figured, "Hey, what if there was an actual band that had to perform this song? What would it look like?" Ladies and gentlemen: it would look like this. You can even see the microphones!

The Beatles quit touring because they didn't think they would have been able to play Sgt. Pepper in concert. The Avalanches would have at least tried to put together a video. Imagine their take on "Good Morning, Good Morning." Given their experience with barnyard animals, I think they would have been able to come up with something appropriate.

Justin Timberlake - "Rock Your Body"

Justin Timberlake is cooler than you think he is, but not quite as cool as he thinks he is. He's cool enough to name his album FutureSex/ LoveSounds as an homage to OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, but maybe not quite cool enough to realize that, as Stephen Thomas Erlewine puts it, "the OutKast album bore that title because it was two records in one." He's cool enough to try beatboxing, but maybe not quite cool enough to pull it off with credibility intact.

I was enjoying a leisurely countryside cruise with my brother a few years ago, listening to tracks on his iPod at random, when a catchy little R&B ditty came on. It sounded like prime late '70s Marvin Gaye or Michael Jackson. "Hey, this is good," I said. "Who is this?" "It's Justin Timberlake, 'Rock Your Body.' " Oh shit me. Did I really just admit that I liked...a Justin Timberlake song? He was in that boy band! Ewwww! But see, it was OK, because later I discovered that Pitchfork Media had chosen "Rock Your Body" as #23 on its year-end Best Songs of 2002 list. Liking a Justin Timberlake song could still be cool - but not too cool. Honestly I might like this song more than their choices for #1-#22.

There's a reason why "Rock Your Body" sounds like a rejected Michael Jackson song: it was a rejected Michael Jackson song. The bridge also reminds me a bit of Earth, Wind and Fire's "Let's Groove" (whoa - talk about a YouTube Clip That Lived Up To My Expectations). Apparently at one point in 2003, The Neptunes, the production team behind "Rock Your Body," were responsible for the production work on 43% of all songs being played on American radio. Encouraging, or disturbing? You decide.

I must also not neglect to mention that this was the indeed the tune that Timberlake and Janet Jackson were performing during Super Bowl XXXVIII when he proceeded to rip off her bodice and supposedly "expose" her right breast to untold millions. And what is cooler than offending millions of Americans en masse?

The Greenhornes featuring Holly Golightly - "There Is An End"

I'm a sucker for great credit sequences. But a great credit sequence is nothing without a great credit sequence song. Think of Pulp Fiction and "Misirlou." Or Mean Streets and "Be My Baby." Sometimes I come across a great credit sequence where I least expect to find one. For example: Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. I had never seen a Jim Jarmusch movie before. All I knew when I came into the theater was that everybody considered him some kind of acclaimed "indie" filmmaker. So here's what kind of credit sequence I was expecting to see: a crappy low-fi indie punk song with lots of grainy hand-held out-of-focus shots and text written out in shaky imitation scrawl. Instead, there was this sharp, hypnotic collection of imaginative graphics, all gliding along to a haunting, moody '60s retro garage/R&B number. It would not be the first time I would underestimate Jim Jarmusch.

The song was "There Is An End" by a band called The Greenhornes, with guest vocals by Holly Golightly. As AMG's John Duffy writes, "the Greenhornes so perfectly nail the careening, rough side of 1960s pre-psychedelic rock & roll that they leave almost no room to consider the music in any other context. They even add gimmicky harpsichord to more than one tune, a trend that was dated as soon as the Yardbirds did it." "There Is An End" is like a great unreleased Rolling Stones single, but with vocals by Nancy Sinatra. Aside from this song, I only know Holly Golightly from her cameo on The White Stripes' Elephant. Unlike many female rock singers of today, she sounds mysterious and complicated, but effortlessly so. I get the impression she wouldn't give a rat's ass whether you liked her or not. She seems like she'd be just as comfortable singing in a darkened corner all by herself as she would be at a crowded concert hall. I like it.

The Greenhornes haven't just nailed the style of the mid-60s here; they've nailed the production. Notice the absence of today's requisite hideously overproduced drum sound. And don't tell me those "ooh-ooh" backing vocals aren't straight out of "Heart Of Stone."

So after seeing the movie (which I really liked, but would not recommend to Zrbo as it features the latter-day "serious" Bill Murray that so gets on his nerves and yet thrills Yoggoth to the bone) I downloaded the song, and then I decided to download the full Greenhornes album. Maybe lightning could strike more than once, eh? What a surprise: Jim Jarmusch had picked the best song! Thanks for leading me on, Jim.

Air - "Don't Be Light"

Air clearly put a lot of effort into 10,000 Hz Legend, their follow-up to Moon Safari, which is bad if you're Air, because you probably want your music to sound completely effortless. What were they supposed to do, make Moon Safari Part II? Not exactly. But "different" doesn't necessarily mean "better." So 10,000 Hz Legend is a hit-or-miss album from a great band - which means that if you're grading on the "curve of the 2000s," it's terrific. As John Bush puts it in his AMG review, "Air are still tremendously effective producers, and have actually expanded their palate with a surprising array of pop instrumentation" and "Fans and involved listeners are definitely rewarded with increased dividends after multiple listens." That's not how you talk about an album you really love. "Increased dividends"? What, are we trading stocks here?

There is one track, however, that to me is the epitome of pure, effortless Air, and that is "Don't Be Light." What does "Don't Be Light" have that the rest of the album does not? It has that hypnotic, relaxing quality to it. I can space out and relax to "Don't Be Light." I can't space out and relax to "Wonder Milky Bitch." The chord pattern is more than a little similar to "La Femme D'argent," but hey, you're allowed to rip yourself off now and then, are you not? Besides, surrounded as it is by decidedly "Un-Air-like" material, it's a soothing blast of the familiar. Like Moon Safari's immortal lead-off track, "Don't Be Light" makes me think of the sublime terror of the vast galaxy that we inhabit. And what does "Don't Be Light" mean anyway? How can I not be light? Maybe they're talking to a black hole, in which case the black hole would say "OK, I won't be light." Or maybe they mean, "Don't be thin, don't be skinny." Maybe it's the first Anti-Anorexia pop song.

It's certainly got a terrific video. Which I am not allowed to post here because embedding has been disabled. Thanks EMI. Instead I've posted an edited version from their hilariously named Everybody Hertz remix album. Unfortunately, nowhere to be found on YouTube is the actual 6:19 version that I know and love, which features, among other things, an odd soliloquy from Beck (!). You'll have to seek it out on your own, I'm afraid.

Gorillaz - "Dare"

See, Damon Albarn's got the right idea. He knows just as well as I do that the conventional "rock band" is dead. Including...his own. So what better way to subvert the tired old formulas than to create a cartoon band? There's no possible way you can take a cartoon band seriously. Which is a nice change of pace considering the endless parade of new "World's Greatest Guitar Band" pretenders that keep cropping up (or as Zrbo calls them, "the The bands"). Gorillaz is a side project that is more rewarding than most of today's main projects - and they're not even trying!

I really do get the feeling that Damon Albarn just sits around in the studio and invites whomever the hell he feels like inviting onto Gorillaz albums. The great thing about Gorillaz is that it's not even an actual band, so what is a "guest spot" in a fake band anyway? In the case of "Dare," the legendary guest is former Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, a man who, like Mark E. Smith of The Fall before him, has managed to become incredibly famous without seeming to possess, as far as I can tell, any discernible musical talent. It's been rumored that the song was actually supposed to be called "There," but the way it came out in Ryder's impenetrable Mancunian accent, it sounded like "Dare," so they just decided to call it "Dare." But when the synthesizer riff is that ingratiating, who cares what they call it?

We can thank Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley and The Grey Album fame) for the electro-pop magic. As with "American Boy," "Dare" sounds like a song that I've heard before, and yet I don't believe that I actually have. Maybe it's the World's Great Long Lost Madonna B-side. Like many a dance-pop classic, the track does not appear to make a whit of sense :

You've got to press it on you
You just think it
That's what you do, baby
Hold it down, dare

Jump with them all and move it
Jump back and forth
And feel like you were there yourself
Work it out

What is this, an aerobics video? Who cares. It's catchy!

Note: Half of Gorillaz' claim to fame is their videos, and while I do enjoy the clip for "Dare," would I consider it a "YouTube Clip That Lives Up To My Expectations"? Probably not. When you tout your videos as some sort of extra special deal, I have to say I expect more than an anorexic Japanese ape gyrating around Shaun Ryder's big fat robotic head.

Estelle Featuring Kanye West - "American Boy"

Could this really be? A modern day R&B song that doesn't make me feel like I need to take a long, cold shower after listening to it? Soothing minor key melody, intelligent lyrics - am I dreaming? No, I'm listening to Estelle's "American Boy."

The highest compliment I can pay "American Boy" is that when I first heard it, I thought I'd actually heard it before. "Hmm, that's interesting, an old R&B song from the '70s that I don't immediately recognize." I overheard it again at the mall and I stopped and concentrated on the lyrics so that I could try to download the song later. "Ah, it's probably called 'American Boy'." I figured it was at least a cover, or built around an old R&B sample. According to Wikipedia "the song uses samples from 'Impatient' from will.i.am's 2007 album Songs About Girls as well as '& Down' by Boys Noize." Neither of those songs appear to be old. Well I'll be damned. Somebody actually came up with a good hook that flows with an effortless grace and they didn't just lift it from some song that was a hit 30 years ago. It reminds me more of something you'd hear in a vintage Earth, Wind & Fire or Kool & The Gang single. So it makes you wonder: is it really that hard, people?

Well OK, I thought, the melody's good but that probably means the lyrics really stink. Not so fast. There's only one swear word in the entire song. The naughtiest sexual reference is actually quite subtle: "I like the way he's speaking, his confidence is peaking/Don't like his baggy jeans but I'm a like what's underneath them." Maybe it's the British touch. In conjunction with the music, the lyrics are a throwback to a classier style of R&B. They exude romance, and I don't just mean in the "boy/girl" sense, but in the "promise of being young and dressing up and going out on the town for an evening in New York City" sense. It invokes the same spirit as Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out":

Can we get away this weekend?
Take me to Broadway
Let's go shopping maybe then we'll go to a café
Let's go on the subway
Take me to your hood
I never been to Brooklyn and I'd like to see what's good
Dressed in all your fancy clothes
Sneaker's looking fresh to death, I'm loving those Shell Toes
Walking that walk
Talk that slick talk
I'm liking this American Boy

Take me on a trip, I'd like to go some day
Take me to New York, I'd love to see LA
I really want to come kick it with you
You'll be my American Boy

It makes visiting New York or LA honestly sound exciting, and when was the last time you could say that? When she switches it around and gives a shout-out to "San Francisco Bay" it makes me feel like I live in some exotic, happening holiday locale. But instead of coming off as hedonistic, the vibe is almost bittersweet. It's as if Estelle just wants to hold on to this feeling of intangible possibility forever, even though she knows that one day it will pass.

Kanye West is not a rapper I find very impressive, but here at least he makes me laugh, and if his presence might have helped the song become a bigger hit, then fine. Unlike Estelle, who exudes charm and mystery, Kanye exudes ego and sleaze, although he does seem to be at least slightly self-aware. I might summarize his main verse as follows: "Hey Estelle, I know you think I'm just a shallow American who's obsessed with wearing fancy designer clothing, but that's what my audience expects of me, and you've got to give the people what they want, right?" Methinks the Kayne doth protest too much.

Boards Of Canada - "1969"

This is a very creepy song about my favorite year in music. I think if I had a stroke, all music would sound like "1969." Boards Of Canada created that unsettling little warble in the synthesizer melody by, so I've been told, deliberately making the synthesizer jam. As John Bush writes in his AMG review, "Boards of Canada specialize in evocative, mournful, sample-laden downtempo music often sounding as though produced on malfunctioning equipment excavated from the ruins of an early-'70s computer lab." And how!

Bush states that "the samples apparently originate from a David Koresh follower," but after perusing the YouTube comments, I believe the sample is from a news broadcast regarding Amo Bishop Roden, a fellow Branch Davidian and rival of Koresh, in which the newscaster says "Although not a follower of David Koresh, she's a devoted Branch Davidian." However, the band took the "David Koresh" portion of the audio and played it backwards. What's unnerving is how this random vocal sample appears to be singing along with the melody. Finally at the end, as if we're not quite creeped out enough as it is, we're treated to a stereophonic pair of menacing, disembodied robotic ladies chanting "1969 in the sunshine." Not exactly taking me back to Woodstock here.

I first heard this song not long after 9/11, and its hypnotic, shimmering dread really matched my sense of that era's technology-driven fear and loathing. What am I talking about; we're still in that era. And this song is one of the few I've heard that really captures my impressions of "now" in a way that most of our current music does not, and none of our older music really could. It conjures up images of a thousand cable news channels constantly replaying videos of terrorist atrocities in a never-ending loop. And it's catchy.

Note: The YouTube video is fan-made, not band-sactioned, but as "xparfum" in the comments puts it, "they [the fan] understood." Also, the AMG reviewer has the same last name as our former president. Coincidence? I think not.

Belle & Sebastian - "If She Wants Me"

Barring some unforeseen critical turnaround, my favorite Belle & Sebastian material will always remain their output from the '90s. Nevertheless, I'll admit that they have managed some gems in the '00s. Simply by virtue of the weak competition, perhaps, even substandard Belle & Sebastian songs probably rank among the last decade's best. Their crap is better than most bands' greatest hits.

At the time, critics hailed Dear Catastrophe Waitress as sort of a "comeback" or a "return to form" for B&S after the inconsistent Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, mostly because Stuart Murdoch reclaimed lead singer/songwriter duties. It's not one of my favorite Belle & Sebastian albums though, and I wouldn't even necessarily say that it's better than Fold Your Hands, come to think of it. Sure, the songs are well-crafted, but can't you hear the craft a little too much? Dear Catastrophe Waitress is the sound of a really talented band with a great record collection not really feeling the need to make particularly consequential music. Stuart sounds like he's happy - which is great, but maybe not for his art.

The band released three singles from the album, but my favorite track, "If She Wants Me," was actually not one of those three. It's not an obvious "standout track." Maybe that's why I like it more than the others.

I believe someone once coined the phrase "retrogressive" to describe Belle & Sebastian, and that phrase is quite applicable here. The song has a wonderful English blue-eyed soul vibe. Witness the funky bass line and rhythm guitar, the jazzy piano, the Philly Soul strings, and the Music From Big Pink-esque organ solo. And yet the song does not sound like a recreation or a facsimile. Belle & Sebastian aren't a "60s revival" band. They are a '00s band with judiciously chosen '60s influences. I must also add that there is one particular note in this song which allows Murdoch to display the loveliest, most delicate falsetto in the whole wide universe.

As with most Belle & Sebastian material, I appreciated the music long before I ever bothered paying attention to the lyrics. I figured they were chirpy and pleasant, like the melody. They're actually rather enigmatic, with a touch of apathy and frustration sorely missing from the rest of the album:

I wrote a letter on a nothing day
I asked somebody “Could you send my letter away?”
“You are too young to put all of your hopes in just one envelope”
I said goodbye to someone that I love
It’s not just me, I tell you it’s the both of us
And it was hard
Like coming off the pills that you take to stay happy

Nice. I'm always a sucker for Stuart Murdoch anti-depressant references. Not so big on the Christianity references however:

Someone above has seen me do alright
Someone above is looking with a tender eye
Upon your face, you may think you’re alone but you may think again

Murdoch has always dropped a Christian turn of phrase here and there, but on this album, for some reason, he decided to go all-out: "At the time I was writing it I thought, well, should I be so overt? Because I've often couched any religious overtones within characters in the past, but this is a bit more out there. And then I just thought, come on, you've been doing this for years, why not? Why not just be a bit more straightforward?"

I can tell you why not. Because it's silly is why not. I sincerely hope Murdoch's faith doesn't rest on the notion of "someone above," which I personally think is a dangerous concept because it encourages people to think that the events in their life happen for some deep, all-powerful reason, which sets them up for a huge philosophical crisis once something terrible and seemingly "pointless" happens. But this is the only, and I mean only, aspect of Stuart Murdoch's art that I don't cherish with every fiber of my being. So like Jesus, I'll forgive him.

Besides, the song's final verse is one of those beautiful Belle & Sebastian verses that manages to say nothing and yet say all there is to really say:

I took a book and went into the forest
I climbed the hill, I wanted to look down on you
But all I saw was twenty miles of wilderness so I went home

Scissor Sisters - "Comfortably Numb"

In his review of Lawrence Of Arabia, Roger Ebert writes:

What a bold, mad act of genius it was, to make Lawrence of Arabia, or even think that it could be made. In the words years later of one of its stars, Omar Sharif: ''If you are the man with the money and somebody comes to you and says he wants to make a film that's four hours long, with no stars, and no women, and no love story, and not much action either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to go film it in the desert - what would you say?''

Likewise, if you are the man with the money and somebody comes to you and says he wants to make a peppy dance-pop cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" with an opening guitar lick stolen from Stevie Nicks' "Edge Of Seventeen" and a vocal style heavily indebted to Barry Gibb's glory days - what would you say?

I would say you were mad. And yet, like David Lean, Scissor Sisters dared to dream.

Scissor Sisters managed to do something with "Comfortably Numb" I would have never thought possible. They managed to strip the song of all its angst, its passion, its dread. If it weren't for the lyrics, I'm not even sure I would recognize the song at all. And yet, they didn't exactly turn the song into something "happy" per se. Instead it's rather nervous and jittery, like the perfect anthem for today's high-strung Wall Street entrepreneur. It's a little more "cocaine," a little less "morphine. " In other words, while not quite as despairing, it's still on the disturbing side. Let's just say that Scissor Sisters didn't cover "Comfortably Numb" for laughs or irony. They took this weird tangent and they committed to it.

Come on, let's see a show of hands. Who thought this was going to be a good idea? What a bold, mad act of genius it was, to make a disco cover of "Comfortably Numb," or even think that it could be made.

Note: Apparently Vevo has blocked the official video for "Comfortably Numb" in my country on "copyright grounds." Here's a remix that at least features clips of the video, if not the original audio. While not bad on the whole, I wouldn't quite say that the video is a "YouTube Clip That Lives Up To My Expectations."

Peter, Bjorn and John - "Young Folks"

The best use of bongos in a pop song since The Beatles' "You're Going To Lose That Girl"? Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright"? Tommy James and the Shondells' "Crystal Blue Persuasion"? The best use of bongos in a long time, I can tell you that.

From top to bottom, everything about this song screams out "insignificance," which is why I like it. Victoria Bergsman sounds like she just woke up on the floor, rolled over a pile of heroin needles, and then promptly recorded her vocal track. Really that's just a result of her first language probably not being English. The non-native speaking issue could also explain grammatically incorrect turns of phrase such as "Usually when things has gone this far" and "Hours seems to disappear." But the "strung-out junkie" effect remains.

The animated video is perfectly in line with the song's whole G-rated aesthetic. Peter's thought bubble says "It's easy...just put your lips together!" Are they going to kiss? Victoria's thought bubble says "I'm not sure..." Peter's thought bubble says "Look - just watch what I do." He starts...whistling! How pre-teen. I love it when the video turns kaleidescopic at about the three minute mark. And who can forget the thought bubbles of the partygoers: "This is good!" "I like the drums..." "I like the bassline..." This is one serious party.

Ladytron - "Playgirl"

"Playgirl" seems to be one of those songs that everybody knows about, and yet, as far as I can tell, was never actually a hit anywhere. Personally I have to admit that I tried my best to turn it into one. As a college radio DJ in the summer of 2000, I was flipping through the "currents" section when I came across an EP by a band named Ladytron. Want to know how to get into Little Earl's good graces? Name your band after an early Roxy Music song (also, name your EP Commodore Rock; I have a fond place in my heart for my childhood Commodore 64 computer). Roxy Music are guitar-heavy band, however, and Ladytron are not in particular. Yet when I gave the song a listen, the homage seemed fitting, for like Roxy Music's best, "Playgirl" struck me as sleek, ironic, futuristic, deadpan, and almost suffocatingly, shamelessly catchy. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!" I proclaimed to myself, and proceeded to play the song on my show every chance I saw fit.

And yet, I still couldn't tell if Ladytron were morons or geniuses. Years (and many albums) later, I'm definitely inclined to think the latter, although the band's intentions still remain rather opaque. I don't honestly know that much about the members of Ladytron - and I think I like it that way! I've been led to believe that there are two guys and two girls; the girls sing and the guys write the lyrics (like ABBA?). On "Playgirl," the lead vocalist, Helen Marnie, sounds like she might not be able to go another five seconds without completely losing interest in the track. The lyrics border on joke territory without quite working their way up to that all-too-frequently-used "we don't really mean it" cop-out:

Playgirl, why are you sleeping in tomorrow's world, hey playgirl
Playgirl, why are you dancing when you could be alone, hey playgirl
Playgirl, why are you sleeping in tomorrow's world, hey playgirl
Playgirl, choking on cigarettes to get you along, hey playgirl

Hey playgirl, hey playgirl
Northern lights catch you coming down
Sleep your way out of your hometown

Ladytron's lyrics manage to be vaguely sexual without being explicit. The "playgirl" in question here seems more disappointed than fulfilled. I can relate. The song conjures up images in my head of European airport lounges and dingy metro cars and some sort of all-encompassing urban art school ennui. Some might find the whole presentation too campy, too tongue-in-cheek, too insincere. Personally, I don't know if a pop song could ever be "too campy" for my taste. I'm laying down a challenge, folks.

Now, I listened to "Playgirl" for years (and I mean years) without ever seeing the video. I didn't even think the band had enough budget for a video, let alone a video worth watching. Oh Ladytron, how I underestimated you. It turns out the video is everything I might have hoped for and more. Helen Marnie actually looks quite photogenic in this clip. She should try this haircut more often.

The Avalanches - "Since I Left You"

Now here is a perfect example of a band not trying very hard to make music of any particular significance and yet creating something I quite enjoy. The Avalanches are an Australian electronica duo consisting of Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann. You might describe them as a more whimsical DJ Shadow. Around the fin de siecle, Chater and Seltmann essentially decided to goof around with samples, on their own, apparently just for the hell of it. According to Wikipedia:

To create the songs on the album, members Darren Seltmann and Robbie Chater spent countless hours sampling the chords from many records. Chater estimates the numbers of samples on the album to be over 3,500. After sampling and arranging, the pair would swap their tapes, listen to each other's ideas and expand on whatever struck their ear. Despite working separately, both Chater and Seltmann had nearly duplicate studio set-ups. Seltmann and Chater didn't keep track of what tracks were being sampled when creating the album, with Chater stating that they "were really unorganized and were just sampling on the fly as tracks progressed. We had no idea the record would get such a wide-scale release so we saw no need to keep track of what we were using — we were definitely guilty of harboring a 'No-one's going to listen to it anyway' sort of attitude."

Little did they know! Let this be a lessen to you, kids. Just fart around on your own, and you may make something I'd actually want to listen to someday.

While the entire Since I Left You album is very enjoyable, I think there are a couple of standout tracks that make me wonder whether or not the rest of the album could have been even better than it is. Despite this inconsistency, the album would probably make a Ten Best Albums of the '00s list. However, that is not a list I intend to make.

Now on to the title song itself. AMG's Andy Kellman writes, somewhat pretentiously:

Endless summers for many youths don't consist of beaches and surfboards. Instead, they're spent on blacktops and jungle gyms. More gritty and halfway between the curb and the hoop than anything celestial, the Avalanches remind you of a point in your life when you could blissfully hang upside down from monkey bars and just dangle. Like recklessly riding your BMX or skipping rope after downing a sugar-laced pitcher of lemonade, the un-mawkish Since I Left You thrives on making you feel youthful and mighty ... Some origins can be immediately placed, and those that can't trigger an impulse that you've heard it somewhere before. You're at least familiar with the tone as it relates to a long-lost feeling of childhood bliss -- whether it's staring at a clear blue sky from a fresh-cut lawn or the first time you heard "Rock the Bells."

The first time I heard "Rock The Bells," I thought, "How did LL Cool J ever become so popular?" But never mind. Kellman is on to something. I love the track's opening seconds (buried substantially in the video mix). The distant chatter of the unwashed masses. An acoustic guitar. A vaguely Brazilian voice shouting in the right channel. Enter flute, strings, vocals, the beat. "Get a drink, have a good time now, welcome to paradise-paradise-paradise-paradise." Paradise indeed. The song reminds me of an outdoor barbeque where all the various sounds would be competing simultaneously for your attention, if only you were bothering to pay attention. Somehow the Avalanches managed to mix the "doo-doo-doo" sample so that it sounds like it's being played from a stereo on the patio, only you're actually hearing it from underwater in the pool.

Ultimately, "Since I Left You" is not a proper song at all. And yet it seems to have verses, a chorus, and a bridge, and all the usual amenities, and then you stop and realize that ... it's just a bunch of samples! These guys are good.

Equally hypnotic is the video. Now, you and I (and the Avalanches) know that the song's main vocal hook ("Since I left you, I found a world so new") is probably just a random sample that they thought sounded interesting when they were playing around and that's it. Ah, but The Avalanches excel at giving new life to meaningless phrases taken out of context. The video treats the phrase as if if were full of great emotional import. They've taken a sentence that essentially means nothing, and have turned it into something silly, magical, and a little bit moving.

So think about what's going on here. Not only have The Avalanches created a genuine song out of bits of songs that were never ever intended to coexist together, they've also created a complex narrative story out of a song that was never actually intended to be released.

Musicians of today: think small.

Songs From The '00s That I Like

A couple of months back I was thinking of compiling a "Ten Best Albums of the '00s" list, but I couldn't actually name ten albums I'd feel like putting on a list. Yes, my enthusiasm for recent popular music runs that low. These days I consider myself lucky if I find one song per album I'd want to hear more than once. And usually I don't even find that. "But enough of your whining," you say. Over the course of ten years, some winners are bound to pop up here and there. I mean, a terrific song from the '00s is just as terrific as a terrific song from the '60s or '70s. There just aren't very many of them. The bottom line is that I refuse to grade on a curve. We may simply be past the era of "Great Albums." So allow me to inaugurate a new series: Songs From The '00s That I Like.

This will not be a "Ten Best" list. I find "Best Song" lists rather arbitrary, and I don't feel like stopping at ten either.

There are some common features to a Song From The '00s That I Like:

1) It tends to be more dance/electronic-oriented
2) When it is not, it tends to sound a touch "retro"
3) It tends to have a softer, more echo-laden percussion sound as opposed to the more prevalent "hit the cymbals really hard for five minutes" style of drumming that is popular these days (I've concluded that hitting the cymbals really hard and really often is sort of a cheap, lazy way for a band to try to put "energy" into a song; Moe Tucker didn't even seem to have cymbals in her drum kit, and yet do Velvet Underground songs lack energy?)
4) They tend to have a more tossed-off, fun quality, and aren't trying to be any sort of "major statement" or "new thing"

In sum, to make a great song in the '00s, it's almost more about what you don't do than what you actually do. Does your song not sound like a suffocating aardvark? You may be halfway there. Mostly I tend to look for what Bruce Swedien, the engineer for Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," called "sonic personality." For reasons that remain somewhat mysterious to me, it seems that in 1967 a band could record a song and it would sound great without any particular effort on the band's part. In 2010 the only way to make a song sound great is if the band a) puts a lot of effort into the production, or b) happens to get really, really lucky. It's gotten to the point where when I hear a catchy melody in a new song, my first thought is, "Man, that's catchy, I wonder where they took that sample from?" Because there's no way that that really catchy melody was actually written by somebody currently making music, right?

The songs that I've enjoyed are, for the most part, not the songs that have received all the "buzz," or the songs that have ended up topping all those "Best Songs of the Decade" lists. Missy Elliot will not be making an appearance. LCD Soundsystem will be M.I.A. (as will M.I.A.). Which is not to say that hit singles or critically praised tracks will not be among my choices. Just don't expect anything like this.

I will not deny it: there is something about the feeling of hearing great music that is being made now - the sensation of knowing that an artist who you like is out there somewhere, possibly writing another great song for you this very evening. I do think that there are probably many great songs from the '00s out there that I've simply missed. The problem is that, because my tastes seem to differ from contemporary critical tastes, I feel like I would have to listen to every single damn album that came out in the past decade myself. I need to do what I did as a college DJ, which was to grab a random stack of CDs, give each song 15 seconds, and go through three months' worth of music and find the five great songs within the stack of 200 CDs. Because the critics lie. They say an album is good and then I listen to the album and that album is bad. I figure I'm almost better off not trying to search for new music anymore. In some cases that has actually worked. One entry in this series caught my attention while playing over the opening credits of a movie. I discovered another entry while walking around in a mall.

Maybe great songs are now going to have to find me.

Note: The Songs From The '00s That I Like series will occasionally dovetail with my YouTube Videos That Live Up To My Expectations series, although not every Songs From The '00s That I Like selection will feature a video that has actually lived up to my expectations. Some videos of great songs are disappointing, but I will post them nonetheless, simply for reference. And yet, more often than not, a band that is capable of making a memorable song is also capable of making a correspondingly memorable video. When I consider a video to qualify for both categories, I will label the post as such. There are procedures that must be followed!