Vikings & Beekeepers

40. Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

We all know the story behind Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: the interband strife (mainly between the late Jay Bennett and the rest of the band), the label ignorance and, finally, the ascension of the underdog (and double pay day!). It’s a wonderful story, but it’s a little too perfect. At times it seems that the YHF fable is more intelligent marketing than anything. With YHF, Wilco’s reputation jumped from “really good alt-country band featuring the other guy from Uncle Tupelo” to “the greatest American band of the 21st century.” The hyperbole was excessive and the urge to backlash is understandable, but dammit, YHF really is a terrific album. Sure, it’s reputation as a difficult album is overstated (“Reservations” is schmaltzy pap and “I’m The Man That Loves,” for as much as I love it, is just a really straightforward pop song with some skronky Crazy Horse guitar shoehorned in for effect) and the legitimately difficult moments can go overboard (the final third of “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” is not a lot of fun to listen to), but YHF still remains the best album by a truly great band. YHF is a fairly fascinating snapshot of post-9/11 America, which is deeply ironic considering the album had been completed well before the World Trade Centre attacks. But since the album didn’t see the light of day until 2002, it’s hard to hear cryptic songs like “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, ”“War On War,” “Ashes Of American Flags” and “Jesus, Etc.” in any other context. But maybe that’s the way it was meant to be. Thanks to all the headaches leading up to this album’s delayed release, the album grew into something meaningful and Wilco became the band of their generation.

“Poor Places”

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50. The Evens Get Evens (2006)

Let’s just face it, Fugazi aren’t getting back together. It sucks, I know, but the sooner we can accept that sad fact, the sooner we can open up to The Evens, Ian Mackaye’s pared down post-Fugazi venture along with Warmers’ drummer Amy Farina. Fugazi were always revered for their economic approach to music and performance, but The Evens make Fugazi look positively indulgent. With Mackaye on baritone guitar (essentially a two-in-one for bass and guitar) and Farina on drums, The Evens created a model for where the overhead couldn’t possibly be any lower for a hard-rocking band. Sure, there are few sonic sacrifices that come with a more intimate and economic model - Farina’s drumming is skittery where Brendan Canty’s was bold and pronounced and Mackaye’s guitar and voice don’t roar like they once did - but The Evens are no less powerful. In fact, Get Evens may be Mackaye’s most seething record since he was X-ing his wrists. Get Evens is fiercely politically and pointed, far more overtly than anything Fugazi did. True, songs like “Everybody Knows” and “Dinner With The President” are as subtle as a brick to the face (they might as well be titled “George W. Bush Is A Big, Stinky Turd, Parts I and II”), but they’re effective and it’s a ton of fun to sing “You’re fiiiiiiiiiirrrred!” followed by “Let the door hit you on the ass.” The quieter model also allows for some tremendous harmonies between the two (especially on the moody “All You Find You Keep”) and some winsomely tender moments for the normally bulldoggish Mackaye (“Cache Is Empty”). So yes, it’s not Fugazi – nothing is. But even a reserved Mackaye is not a neutered Mackaye. The Evens are more than a consolation prize. Farina and Mackaye make an enchanting pair. As Farina puts it at the onset of the album: “It’s just electricity.”

“Cache Is Empty”

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60. Godspeed You Black Emperor! Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000)

No one knows how to work a crescendo like Montreal’s Godspeed You Black Emperor! The band’s screeching strings, bubbling drums and winding guitars build and build past a point you would have thought even possible. Sure, at some point, after more than one Godspeed album, you start to get the idea, but taken in a singular setting, their isn’t much that manages to be as transcendental (the build to the 16-minute mark of “Static” is insane). Lift Your Skinny Fists, a double album comprised of four songs with no track titles, is their finest work. It also might be the high point of post-rock. Pairing raging dissonance with moments of hushed grandeur, chilling drones and heart-wrenching (“Sleep”) and discombobulating (“Storm”) spoken word samples, GSYBE! created an album that is huge, terrifying and emotionally wrenching. Plowing through these two discs in one setting could result in your demise. The notoriously media-unfriendly collective would fragment into smaller factions soon after the release of this, their magnum opus, thereby slightly diminishing their prominence in the soon-to-be-huge Montreal music scene. Without this multi-member, chamber rock collective, the Arcade Fire probably wouldn’t exist. Listening to Lift Your Skinny Fists, you can hear the dramatic sensibility that remained in that scene, although the Arcade Fire would condense these stretched out compositions into bite-size chunks and add a distinctly emo element to it. But even without its influence, even though post-rock had no room to go after GSYBE! charred the landscape, Lift Your Skinny Fists remains one of the most emotional and emotionally draining experiences ever put to tape. And notice how I didn’t use the word “Apocalyptic” even once?

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70. Wilco A Ghost Is Born (2004)

And you thought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was difficult? After the “American Radiohead” talks started up with that much-ballyhooed 2002 album, Wilco decided to follow through on YHF’s promise and make an album that was legitimately difficult. A downer album in the vein of Tonight’s The Night, The Idiot and, yes, Kid A, A Ghost Is Born seems to exist on two poles – the cracked, barely audible whisper of Jeff Tweedy’s drug-addled voice (this is a rehab album if there ever was one) and the all-out skronk of the crazy tight band. Palatable numbers like “Hell Is Chrome” and “Hummingbird” are sung like afterthoughts, as if Tweedy has forgotten the songs before he’d even finished singing them, while “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” dives guitar first into particularly noisy motorik and “Less Than You Think” is just plain noisy. Upon AGIB’s release, Wilco began to lose a little critical cache. Critics took AGIB to task for its indulgence, before taking them to task an album later for not being indulgent enough. By that end, Wilco’s post-YHF is highly underrated, with AGIB being the high water mark, delivering on its predecessor’s promise and then some. A Ghost Is Born is a stark and difficult album that pays dividends.

“Hummingbird”

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80. Boris Akuma No Uta (2003)

While Akuma No Uta may be the best entry point into the expansive Boris universe, it’s far from the band’s most accessible work. Like much of the band’s work before and after, Akuma provides a spectrum of sounds, some of it exceptionally difficult. “Introduction” is nearly 10 minutes of guitar drone, while the wailing wah and acid rock breakdowns of “Naki Kyoku” run for over 12 minutes. They’re both good songs, but they ain’t exactly welcoming. But Boris were never the type of band to withhold rewards, which come in the form of “Ibitsu” and “Furi,” two ridiculously explosive blasts of biker punk sneering. Elsewhere, you’ll get the druggy classic rock throwback “Ano Onna No Onryo” and the rifftastic title track both kicking all kinds of ass (they’ll skip having to take names). Akuma No Uta is a strange and dangerous record to be considered a good entry point, but Boris are a strange and dangerous band. You’re always bound to get a few war wounds when listening to them. Also, bonus points for having the best cover of the decade.

“Ibitsu”

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