Best Decade Tournament 2000s: mike wins for realz!

[epilogue]

Oh, and The Garden State was a cool movie.

[BigRedLedbetter]

Maha festival tomorrow (Death Cab, Head & the Heart, Local Natives, Icky Blossoms, etc) I should go to bed but fuck that noise.

[epilogue]

I suck a lot at math, but I'm pretty sure it's my turn.

[William Bloke]

Righty-ho then.

Not sure why this was such a difficult pick for me to make. I've taken him in the 80's, I took him in the 90's, and Godamit Ima gonna take him in the noughties too. This was on my Lament-thread mix as well. And if I wasn't able to get TV on the Radio's Wolf Like Me on my team, this is the next best thing.

Grinderman - Honey Bee Let's Fly To Mars


And here's the studio version for good measure also:

[William Bloke]

I suck a lot at math, but I'm pretty sure it's my turn.

If you're up go for it. I have LMS's last 2, as does Rangi.

[William Bloke]

Alright, times well up. Here's LMS's last 2 picks, and we are now officially on the long roll home:

Driving for a few hours.

9. Midlake - Roscoe


10. Lambchop - Is A Woman

dct is then skipped again and can pick his last 2 whenever he gets here;

Same goes for bart;

PryTo is up but as per his own wishes we can move on to Kaius after 15 minutes.

Let's go, R M, let's go.

[PryTo]

Bon Iver - Re: Stacks

[William Bloke]

That whole album is just lovely.

Top 10 of the decade for me.

[Heathen]

It is my understanding that Kaius is skipped and Bada is up.

[bada]

The Darkness - Growing on Me

[William Bloke]

I fucking love The Darkness. Choice.

[stip]

probably wont be around for my last pick

Sun Kil Moon - Carry Me Ohio

[stip]

The Dresden Dolls/Amanda Palmer was easily my favorite new band/artist from this decade (thank you SLH16 for those who remember her). She actually reminds me a bit of a female tom waits. I knew I was going to take a song from them, but they're not necessarily an easy band to dive right into. I love Amanda Palmer's voice and her odd vocal phrasings, but I can see how it takes some time to get used to. There's also two sides to the band. There's the howling/stomping side of them (which I'm less a fan of--it's often a bit too over the top) which they tend to push in their singles. But there's also the softer and more introspective stuff that can be immensely powerful.

So long story short, I wanted to draft Slide or The Gardner, which are both pretty harrowing songs (if you like Tori Amos I'd check those out). But I'm gonna go with this one, which was the song that made me want to learn more about them.




Dresden Dolls - Shores of California

[stip]

and just for a different side of them

[stip]

Alright, times well up. Here's LMS's last 2 picks, and we are now officially on the long roll home:

Driving for a few hours.

9. Midlake - Roscoe

I liked this one quite a bit. Reminded me a bit of Thom Yorke but without the excess I increasingly find offputting

[stip]

Driving for a few hours.


10. Lambchop - Is A Woman

This was oddly compelling, especially once the full band kicked in

[stip]

Bon Iver - Re: Stacks

he's another artist where I don't know that i'd want to listen to a whole album's worth of stuff, but I tend to like the individual songs as they come up.

[stip]

The Darkness - Growing on Me

very late 70s/early 80s hair metal. Not for me. Good video though

[stip]

probably wont be around for my last pick

Sun Kil Moon - Carry Me Ohio

I feel like I've heard this before. was this on a secret mix?

It was a nice song.

[Brett]

Brett takes:

Evangelista - Hello, Voyager!

is this really 12 minutes of a band tuning with a jack white impersonator squawking on a soapbox?

Seriously, what was the draw of this song for you? This is baffling.

Jack White impersonator? How do you equate Carla Bozulich's voice with his? That's what's truly baffling. Did you finish listening to it? I admit it does have a bit of a "tuning-up" feel at the beginning, but it evolves into a pretty dark drone for most of its duration.

The biggest draw for me here is a bit on the unusual side as it's the lyrics first followed closely by the mood. I can relate to them in a small part, as I can to most of Carla's lyrics, because I've dealt with depression, and I've dealt with being a bit of an outsider. Granted, I've not had even a fraction of the difficulties she speaks to in this song, and many others. I'm not gay, I'm not a woman, I've not had a history with drugs and homelessness, I'm not part of any number of other oppressed groups or classes, besides growing up poor and not being much better off now. But I can still relate to a point, and I can still empathize. So that's the draw.

The lyrics, if anyone's curious:

Spoiler: show

Voyagers! Open your cramped legs locked in that flying suit of lights. Open your eyes. You are with us now. Adjust your eyes to the dark. We are all the same. A small group of lucky aces bound together in black air burning out our hopeful eyes. Dust and wind bleed out the skies. Monuments, architecture,flat at our feet. Rubble and blood, rubble and blood, rubble and blood. Still! Still I stand before you, dear stranger and I say: Yes! Yes, we can climb out from the tangled metal and cement and say: Yes!. Yes, we can look upon the dark sky of day and say: I never was who I seemed to be.

When there's no hope. When there's no hope left, there is only one word, one word, one word that has dried on your parched lips. Can you say it with me? Can you say it with me? Can you say it with me? The word is love! The word is love! The word is love! Love! Tell the truth and be free. This is my hit and run. This is my porn collection. This me feeling superior to you. This is me selling you out when you needed me most. This my huge, diseased, throbbing prick. This is my homosexual inclinations. This is me loving someone I'm not supposed to love. Is this me? This is what I don't want people to see. Look upon them and let me be free, let me be free, let me be free, let me be free.

This is me I don't think normal people, doing things, doing things I don't think normal people do. But I can see you. Haha. You're dirty too, you're dirty too, through and through, you're dirty too. We are reigning in the dust. And when there's no hope, when there's no hope, there's only one word. There's only one word that hasn't dried on your parched lips. The word is love. Can you say it with me? Love! Can you say it with me? Love! Can you say it with me?

There's only one word that has hasn't dried completely in your parched throat. Can you say it with me? The word is love.