The 200 Best Albums of the Decade, or, the 200 Best Albums of the Zeros
We’ve been promising you this for months now, so here it is. Maybe we’ll put up some descriptions after all the disruptive renovations here at Lucid Culture HQ are finished, around mid-month in October if all goes well. If you’re viewing this page prior to January 1, 2010, this list is subject to change – the best album of the decade may not even be released yet…
1. Steve Wynn – Here Come the Miracles
2. Rachelle Garniez – Melusine Years
3. Rachelle Garniez – Luckyday
4. Botanica – Botanica vs. the Truth Fish
5. Randi Russo – Solar Bipolar
6. Bob Dylan – Love & Theft
7. LJ Murphy – Mad Within Reason
8. Mary Lee’s Corvette – True Lovers of Adventure
9. DollHouse – Touch the Moon
10. Mary Lee’s Corvette – Blood on the Tracks
11. Black Box Recorder – Passionioa
12. Jenifer Jackson – Outskirts of a Giant Town
13. Coffin Daggers – s/t (third album)
14. Brooklyn What – The Brooklyn What for Borough President
15. Matthew Grimm & the Red Smear – The Ghost of Rock n Roll
16. Dan Bryk – Pop Psychology
17. Bobby Vacant & the Weary – Tear Back the Night
18. Matt Keating – Quixotic
19. Curtis Eller’s American Circus – Wirewalkers & Assassins
20. Paula Carino – Aquacade
21. Erika Simonian – All the Plastic Animals
22. Chicha Libre – Sonido Amazonico
23. The Hangdogs – Wallace ‘48
24. Big Lazy – s/t (2nd album)
25. The JD Allen Trio – I Am I Am
26. Joy Division – Les Bains Douches 12/18/79 Live
27. The Jentsch Group Large – Brooklyn Suite
28. The Mofos – Supercharged on Alcohol
29. The Beefstock Recipes Anthology
30. Black 47 – Iraq
31. Balthrop, Alabama – Subway Songs
32. Steve Wynn and the Dragon Bridge Orchestra: Live in Brussels
33. The Oxygen Ponies – Harmony Handgrenade
34. 17 Pygmies – Celestina
35. Steve Wynn – Burgerhaus Heilbronn 4/3/2000
36. Tammy Faye Starlite – Used Country Female
37. Jay Bennett – Whatever Happened, I Apologize
38. Asylum Street Spankers – What? And Give Up Show Business?
39. Botanica – americanundone
40. Church – Untitled #23
41. Larval Organs – Posthumous
42. Marty Willson-Piper – Nightjar
43. McGinty & White Sing Selections from the McGinty & White Songbook
44. Kelli Rae Powell – New Words for Old Lullabies
45. Ivo Papasov – Dance of the Falcon
46. Amy Allison – Sheffield Streets
47. Erica Smith & the 99 Cent Dreams – Snowblind
48. Marcel Khalife – Taqasim
49. Kayhan Kalhor & Brooklyn Rider – Silent City
50. Greta Gertler & Peccadillo – Nervous Breakthroughs
51. Aimee Mann – Fucking Smilers
52. Elvis Costello – Momofuku
53. Randi Russo – Live at Sin-e
54. Black Sea Hotel – s/t
55. Willie Nile – Streets of NYC
56. Jenifer Jackson – Birds
57. Aimee Mann – Lost in Space
58. Botanica – With All Seven Fingers
59. The Church – After Everything Now This
60. RL Burnside – Burnside on Burnside
61. The Coup – Party Music
62. Richard Thompson – Semi-Detached Mock Tudor
63. The Wirebirds – Past & Gone
64. Steve Wynn – Static Transmisssion (double album)
65. Amy Allison – No Frills Friend
66. Neko Case – Blacklisted
67. Steve Earle – The Revolution Starts…Now
68. Steve Earle – Just an American Boy
69. Nina Nastasia – The Blackened Air
70. Ward White – Pulling Out
71. Greta Gertler – The Baby That Brought Bad Weather
72. The Moonlighters – Live in Baden-Baden
73. Randi Russo – Still Standing Still
74. Twin Turbine – Jolly Green Giant
75. Mamie Minch – Razorburn Blues
76. Alice Lee – Lovers & Losers
77. Serena Jost – Closer Than Far
78. Radio Birdman – Zeno Beach
79. Rasputina – A Radical Recital
80. Botanica – Berlin Hi-Fi
81. Sharon Goldman – Semi-Broken Heart
82. Ward White – Maybe But Probably Not
83. Elvis Costello – My Flame Burns Blue
84. Richard Thompson – Sweet Warrior
85. Big Lazy – Postcards from X
86. Love Camp 7 – Sometimes Always Never
87. Teslim – s/t
88. Natacha Atlas & the Marzeeka Ensemble – Ana Hina
89. Black Fortress of Opium – s/t
90. Randi Russo – Live at CB’s Gallery
91. Ljova & the Kontraband – Mnemosyne
92. Metropolitan Klezmer – Traveling Show
93. Lee Feldman – I’ve Forgotten Everything
94. Monika Jalili – Elan
95. Linda Draper – Bridge and Tunnel
96. Bee & Flower – What’s Mine Is Yours
97. Aimee Mann – The Forgotten Arm
98. Randi Russo – Shout Like a Lady
99. Melomane – Look Out!
100. The Moonlighters – Dreamland
101. Matt Keating – Tiltawhirl
102. Steve Wynn – …tick…tick…tick
103. Willie Nile – Live from the Streets of New York
104. Greta Gertler – Edible Restaurant
105. Carol Lipnik – Cloud Girl
106. Willie Nile – Beautiful Wreck of the World
107. Elisa Flynn – Songs About Birds & Ghosts
108. System Noise – s/t (second ep)
109. Satanicide – Heather
110. The Moonlighters – Surrender
111. Tandy – To a Friend/Did You Think I Was Gone
112. Dina Dean – 4 songs (ep)
113. Mary Lee’s Corvette – Love, Loss & Lunacy
114. Jenifer & Julian Jackson – Together in Time
115. Black Box Recorder – The Facts of Life
116. Patricia Vonne – s/t (first album)
117. Elvis Costello – When I Was Cruel
118. Eleni Mandell – Afternoon
119. The Hangdogs – Beware of the Dog
120. Mavrothi Kontanis – Wooden Heart
121. Barbara Brousal – Pose While It Pops
122. Laura Cantrell – Not the Trembling Kind
123. The Stagger Back Brass Band– s/t
124. The Dog Show – Hello, Yes
125. Rosanne Cash – Black Cadillac
126. Graham Parker – Songs of No Consequence
127. Douce Gimlet – s/t
128. Mascott – Art Project
129. The Dixie Bee-Liners – Ripe
130. Devi – Get Free
131. The Roulette Sisters – Nerve Medicine
132. Rev. Vince Anderson – The 13th Apostle
133. Champagne Francis – I Start to Daydream
134. Steve Wynn – Crossing Dragon Bridge
135. The Auteurs – How I Learned to Love the Bootboys
136. Hazmat Modine – Bahamut
137. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
138. Everything Is Illuminated soundtrack
139. Eric Ambel – Roscoe’s Gang/Loud & Lonesome/Knucklehead box set
140. The Moonlighters – Enchanted
141. Ninth House – The Eye That Refuses to Blink
142. Patty Ocfemia – Heaven’s Best Guest
143. Mark Sinnis – Into an Unhidden Future
144. The Roots of Chicha compilation
145. Gogol Bordello – Gypsy Punks
146. Moisturizer – Moisturizer Takes Mars
147. Rachelle Garniez – Crazy Blood
148. Mark Steiner – Fallen Birds
149. Florence Dore – Perfect City
150. Dead Prez – Let’s Get Free
151. Peter Tosh – Live and Dangerous Boston 1976
152. Sounds of Taraab – Zanzibar, NY
153. System Noise – Give Me Power
154. The Go Go’s – God Save the Go Go’s
155. The Slackers – Peculiar
156. Sally Norvell – Choking Victim
157. 9th Wave – Hurricane
158. Amanda Thorpe – Union Square
159. Barbara Dennerlein – Spiritual Movement No. 2
160. Nick Cave – B-Sides and Rarities box set
161. Leslie Nuss – Round 3
162. Rasputina – Cabin Fever
163. Big Lazy – New Everything
164. Salaam – s/t (7th album)
165. Les Chauds Lapins – Parlez-Moi d’Amour
166. Zach James – Album 3
167. Linda Draper – Patchwork
168. The Church – Uninvited Like the Clouds
169. The Jack Grace Band – The Martini Cowboy
170. Matt Munisteri’s Brock Mumford – Love Story
171. The Yayhoos – Fear Not the Obvious
172. X – Live in Los Angeles
173. The Dirty Three – She Has No Strings Apollo
174. American Ambulance – Streets of NYC
175. Roxy Music – Live
176. Pink Floyd – Is There Anybody Out There [live album from 2000]
177. Laika & the Cosmonauts – Laika Sex Machine Live
178. Demolition String Band – Pulling Up Atlantis
179. Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 – Live at Big Mama
180. The Lost Crusaders – Have You Heard About the World
181. Burning Spear – Live at Montreaux Jazz Festival 2001
182. Sade – Lovers Live
183. Los Straitjackets – Damas y Caballerros
184. Angie Pepper & the Passengers – It’s Just That I Miss You
185. Tom Warnick & World’s Fair – May I See Some ID
186. Jan Bell – Songs for Love Drunk Sinners
187. Penelope Houston – Pale Green Girl
188. Luminescent Orchestrii – Neptune’s Daughter
189. The Bedsit Poets – The Summer That Changed
190. Martin Bisi – Son of a Gun
191. Linda Draper – Ricochet
192. Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band
193. The Dog Show – Demo
194. Revlover – On Ordinary Days
195. Tinariwen – Aman Iman: Water Is Life
196. Secretary – Secret Life of Secretary
197. Pinataland – Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2
198. Maynard & the Musties – So Many Funerals
199. Si Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Vol. 2
200. Jenifer Jackson – So High
CD Review: Black 47 – Iraq
By turns fierce, fervent, brilliantly lyrical and subtly witty, this is an album that needed to be made and it’s a good thing Black 47 were the ones to do it. To say that this is an ambitious project is an understatement, but it works, brilliantly because frontman Larry Kirwan’s songs tell the story of the war through the eyes of those stuck over there fighting it: the songs here have a ring of desperate authenticity. Whatever the reason for anyone being over there, the inevitable refrain is “just get me out of here alive.” Being an Irish-American rock band that spends most of its time on the road in front of a heavily immigrant, sometimes right-wing audience, Black 47 have heard from both the antiwar and the pro-Bush camps (and until Cindy Sheehan took up the cause of sanity, the band caught considerable flak at live shows for their consistently strong antiwar stance). But there isn’t much editorializing going on here: this album simply recounts the often grisly day-by-day lives of the men and women inadvertently risking their lives for the benefit of the Bush family and Halliburton. The implication – a very subtle but powerful one – is that this is the cost of war profiteering. The characters in the songs on this album didn’t go to Iraq with high and mighty ideals: they either ended up there because they either saw a good payday, or simply some kind of payday, because they couldn’t find one here.
Set to bright, major-key, generally upbeat meat-and-potatoes rock melodies spiced with motifs from traditional Irish music, the songs here paint a bleak picture. Kirwan’s songwriting is typically replete with rousing, crescendoing choruses and plenty of high drama, and within these songs it all works spectacularly well. The album’s opening cut Stars & Stripes appropriates the melody from the old calypso standard Sloop John B., whose chorus – not used here – is “let me go home, please let me go home,” turning the song into a fiery backbeat rocker. “Hey President Bush, what’re you doing to us,” the narrator asks quizzically, as he encourages his dying buddy to hold on, just hold on til the helicopter comes. The big anthem Downtown Baghdad Blues begins with sound of a helicopter fluttering overhead over ebow guitar. “Me I don’t care much about Jesus and Mohammed,” sputters its protagonist, a baseball fan who’d rather be home watching the Padres. “I didn’t wanna come here, I didn’t get to choose,” he adds sarcastically. The following cut, the bluesy, sax-driven Sadr City tells the eerie tale of a GI going out for some R&R guy in all-too-familiar territory: “I’ve got one thing on my mind, I’ve gotta get out of this city alive.”
But all is not so harrowing, in at least such a predictably gruesome fashion, in Sunrise on Brooklyn. “I can’t believe it’s so peaceful…I hope I see the sunrise in your eyes again,” laments a soldier, amazed by the natural beauty of Iraq yet dreading the inevitable attack which could come at any time. The slow, heartwrenching Ballad of Cindy Sheehan paints her dead soldier son as something of a naïf, who would never have believed that the draft dodgers who led this country to war would have ever used false pretenses to do so. The pace picks up with the scorching, sarcastic The Last One to Die, the bridge punctuated by a sample of Bush declaring that “major combat operations are over in Iraq.” The album’s high point, The Battle of Fallujah is a towering 6/8 anthem, something that Black 47 does enviably well: “Don’t let em know that they used ya/ Kicking ass at the battle of Fallujah…if there’s a draft you know damn well yourself this war would be over by dawn…your tax dollars can go to building it all back over again.”
The album’s requisite soldier-missing-home ballad Ramadi begins by nicking the acoustic guitar intro from Graham Parker’s Watch the Moon Come Down and builds from there. In Southside Chicago Waltz, a GI discovers to his horror that for the first time, he’s been sent to the one place where even the police and firefighters in his family are powerless to save him. The album closes with an instrumental that mimics the sound of falling bombs. Not just a great rock record, this is an essential piece of history. Every band ought to be doing what Black 47 has done here. What Frankenchrist by the Dead Kennedys was to 1985, what Wallace ’48 by the Hangdogs was to 2002, Iraq by Black 47 is to 2008. A classic. Five stars, without stripes. Available in better record stores, online and at shows. Black 47 next play New York at B.B. King’s on St. Patrick’s Day.
