Music of the '00s

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In Québec, Malajube is a great band that became popular in the last decade. Here is the video from one of their best songs (the lyrics are in french, but you don't understand what he says anyhow...)

 

The 00's has been pretty good for me. This thread prompted me to check back through my epic music collection, and some fantastic albums have been released this decade.

Ones that have already been mentioned (or at least referenced) already:
Muse - Absolution, Origin of Symmetry - after Absolution I dislike pretty much everything they've done.
Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
The Killers - Hot Fuss - again, after this they pretty much became crap.

And others:
The Answer - Rise
Cynic - Traced In Air
Black Tide - Light From Above (guilty pleasure - it's cheese-tastic)
Phish - At The Roxy - 8-disk live album, 83 tracks - what's not to love?
Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos - ok, not as good as some of their 90's stuff, but still very good
*shels - Sea of the Dying Dhow
Damone - Out Here All Night
The Butterfly Effect - Imago
Stone Sour - Come What(ever) May
Silversun Pickups - Carnavas
Rise Against - Siren Song of the Counter Culture
Emanuel - Soundtrack to a Headrush
HIM - Dark Light
Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want To Be
Velvet Revolver - Contraband
Clutch - Blast Tyrant
Incubus - A Crow Left Of The Murder
Sonata Arctica - Silence
Hell Is For Heroes - Neon Handshake
Funeral For A Friend - Casually Dressed And Deep In Conversation
Million Dead - A Song To Ruin
Reel Big Fish - Cheer Up!
Biffy Clyro - Blackened Sky
Blue Oyster Cult - A Long Day's Night
Alkaline Trio - From Here To Infirmary

Granted, a lot of that is from when I was in school so by definition had awful taste in music, and were it not for nostalgia some of these I might regard as terrible. Never mind.

 

Muse's Black Holes and Revelations is enjoyable at times. It isn't as legendary as some claim it to be, but it is enjoyable and certainly doesn't deserve to be compared with Tokio Hotel.

I think the 00's have been a good decade for music. Of course there was its share of crap, but there were some very good albums.

Firstly of course there's the majority of Johnny Cash's awesome American Recordings series. After two American Recordings cds in the 90's, they might had less of an impact when it comes to originality, but man those last 3 are amazing.
Tom Waits' Orphan box set is one of my favorites from the decade, but admittedly, a lot of the material was probably previously recorded. Still, it was released in the 00's so it counts in my book.
I wouldn't want to compare Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome with the previous two, but it fits in the list of great new music by legendary musicians.

Enough of the old stuff, what was new in the 00's. I'm just gonna list a few of my favorites, which haven't been previously mentioned.
Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere. I'm sure a lot of you hate the song Crazy, I'm not too sure I like that song that much either. The album has quirky lyrics, it's poppy and pretty much unlike anything else in my collection, but over the last few years I found myself listening to this album a lot.
Anything done by The White Stripes in the 00's, but I still think their 1999 debut album is their best.
The Gaslight Anthem's first album Sink or Swim; I've recently picked this one at a suggestion of a friend and it's awesome, and luckily pretty much overlooked.
The last I will mention in this far from exhaustive list is The Good, The Bad and The Queen. Forget the Gorillaz, this is Damon Albarn's masterpiece of the decade (or perhaps it just fits my music taste better). I was a bit surprised it wasn't in any of the top 100 or top 250 lists of the decade's best albums. Oh well, it ranks pretty high on my list.

 

I love The Killers but I didn't think any of the albums quite made the cut. I made a conscious decision to only choose albums that were great the whole way through, or near enough. Hot Fuzz had two fabulous tracks but a lot of the rest was only good or very good. Certainly not filler but not fabulous either. Sam's Town was much more consistent but didn't really have any absolute classics on it.

One point on this is that albums with 'interesting' tracks that don't work on their own outside of it don't make the cut. I'd put the White Stripes other albums in this category. I broke the rule for Gorillaz as that was the whole point of the album. I'm probably taking in the whole concept of it, with the videos and so on rather than just the album music.

 

There's also The Ponys. Great band! The songs Get Black, We shot the world, Sad Eyes and Double Vision are very very good!

 

Terrible decade. Some good albums by old bands, sure, but no good new bands. And with the old ones getting, well, old, it doesn't look good for the future.

 

How could I forget: Stadium Arcadium. One of the best albums by the Red Hot Chili Peppers thanks to its size (28 tracks, which is more than The Wall) and consistent quality. Also I like how they kept on evolving the maturing style which they have had since Scar Tissue: songs are no longer directly about simple things like sex and heroine, but now they show the soul which was there all along but hidden beneath that hard shell.
In other words: They're getting old but that is not a bad thing.

Also Tool's Lateralus is an album that I like very much. They have dropped the demons of the previous albums and now show a positive 'spiritual' message that peaks at the song Lateralus. I really like the constant shifting between soft and loud, slow and intense, that marks Tool's unique style as well as the fact that almost all the tracks blend into each other thereby creating an almost solid whole.