The Go-Betweens - The Friends of Rachel Worth (JetSet, Sept 2000) There's a timeless quality it, and I have little doubt it will still sound awesome in 2020. Listen to 'The Way to Market Station' and you can building blocks of Crystal Stilts sound.

With Henry's Dress and, later, The Aislers Set, Amy Linton was the sound of Slumberland Records in the '90s and early '00s, and has proved highly influential on the label's new crop of bands. The Aislers Set - The Last Match (Slumberland, June 2000) Initial pressings came with a second CD's worth of songs (also all in Welsh) that was nearly as good. Released in early 2000, less than a year after their last album (1999's Guerrilla) and the height of their creative peak, Mwng might be my all-time favorite SFA album, a relatively stripped-down affair - not much in the way of electronics, but some of their catchiest songs ever. From 1995 to 2005, no band expanded the boundaries of guitar rock while remaining what you could call 'commercially viable' than Super Furry Animals. Super Furry Animals - Mwng (Placid Casual, May 2000) I think the records that didn't get played to death in public are the ones you come back to the most. (I also listened to Louis XIV and Hot Hot Heat.) But, for the most part, these are a little more buried treasure-ish. I listened to Radiohead, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire, The Knife, The Strokes, Phoenix and whoever like everyone else. PLEASE NOTE: This is not a Best of the '00s, because lists like that have to include Important Albums, Influential Albums and the like.

Different Times.) There's also way more from 2000 than I woulda thought before I spent the last month trying to figure out this list. (Though in 1999 I knew The Soft Bulletin and Mos Def's Black on Both Sides were among the decade's best and that's not changed.

That said, there was no shortage of good music, though I don't think anything hit me quite as hard as the previous decade - partly due to age, party due to aforementioned information overload. There's nothing from this year, as I feel it's too close to really tell how a record is gonna hold up over time, and only a couple from the last four years. (Maybe not my parents but everyone else.) We had more access to everything, and less to to spend with it. What a decade, huh? This one's notable as having been spent entirely in NYC, and entirely of the digital age which changed the way everybody listened to music.

Murray lightburn damon alborn