ben’s album of the decade: lambchop – nixon
It was a tough call between this and the Strokes’ first album, which I danced to at my school leavers’ ball, throughout university, in house parties beyond and even at a friend’s wedding this month, and I know I’ll be dancing round my residential care home to. They reminded us that traditional cool signifiers are still the coolest – cigarettes, hair, leather, denim, staring, New York. And they made them human with a faint undertow of desperately wanting all the uncool human things – acceptance, friendship, love. And all with sensational, sneer-resistant songs. I deeply, deeply love it, and it will certainly provoke the most vivid Proustian rushes in the future.
But Lamchop’s Nixon still has the edge for me. Discarded by a family I babysat for aged 15 because the singer “couldn’t sing”, this is a seemingly bespoke album, designed to exactly my specifications. Unapologetically sentimental, with Disney strings and last-dance guitars, and a man ruminating cryptic American poetry across gutteral mumbles, tender baritone and cr0oning falsetto. Nixon’s world is the obtuse American bleakness of Carver tempered and given meaning by the happy stoicism of Garrison Keillor; it’s the sound of the observer falling in love and becoming observed. Though not without difficultly: take the boozing couple in Nashville Parent, and the freaky American Gothic of the last two tracks, which bring it to a disturbing and brilliant end.
Lambchop – What Else Could It Be?
It’s a completely realised masterpiece, whose naked vulnerability and twisted humanity is checked and consoled by immaculate, full-bloom music. Buy it.
Check below for the rest of my favourite albums of the noughties…
1. Lambchop – Nixon
2. The Strokes – Is This It
3. Cee-Lo – Cee-Lo Green…Is The Soul Machine
4. Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights
5. Joanna Newsom – Ys
6. The Rapture – Echoes
7. The Sea And Cake – Everybody
8. Arcade Fire – Funeral
9. Aloe Blacc – Shine Through
10. Radiohead – Kid A
11. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
12. Phoenix – United
13. Metro Area – Metro Area
14. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – The Letting Go
15. Kings Of Convenience – Riot On An Empty Street
16. Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom – The Days Of Mars
17. Ricardo Villalobos – Fabric 36
18. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
19. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
20. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
21. Cat Power – You Are Free
22. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
23. At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command
24. The Knife – Silent Shout
25. Mos Def – Black On Both Sides
26. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People
27. Jim O’Rourke – Insignificance
28. The Notwist – Neon Golden
29. Boards Of Canada – In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
30. Outkast – Stankonia
31. The Libertines – Up The Bracket
32. Jamie Lidell – Jim
33. Arve Henriksen – Strjon
34. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
35. Saint Etienne – Sound Of Water
36. Primal Scream – XTRMNTR
37. Foals – Antidotes
38. Ryan Adams – Cold Roses
39. Bird By Snow – Sky
40. Romanthony – R. Hide In Plain Site
41. The Avalanches – Since I Left You
42. Maximo Park – A Certain Trigger
43. Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury
44. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
45. Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala
46. The Bug – London Zoo
47. Fennesz Sakamoto – Cendre
48. The Microphones – The Glow, Pt. 2
49. Godspeed You Black Emperor! – Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
50. Junior Boys – Last Exit
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