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#39 (2000 Part 2) D'Angelo, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Avalanches & more

from The Album Years

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#39 (2000 Part 2) D'Angelo, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Avalanches & more

This transcript captures a wide-ranging conversation between two music enthusiasts reviewing notable albums from the year 2000. The discussion begins with D'Angelo's "Voodoo," which both hosts admire as a masterpiece. They explore how Jay Dilla's rhythmic experiments influenced the album's deliberately loose, out-of-time grooves, performed by Questlove and Pino Palladino. D'Angelo's layered falsetto vocals and organic reinvention of soul and funk are praised, with comparisons drawn to Prince and Sly and the Family Stone. The conversation then shifts to The Avalanches' "Since I Left You," a plunderphonics record built from thousands of samples. While clever and successful, the hosts feel it would not sound as revolutionary today. Ryan Adams' "Heartbreaker" receives a more critical response, dismissed as too traditional and derivative of Dylan and Springsteen. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's sprawling double album is celebrated as a post-rock masterpiece, though one host finds its formula repetitive. The episode also covers Grandaddy, Songs: Ohia, Smog, Lambchop, Eels, and At the Drive-In. Songs: Ohia's "Ghost Tropic" and Smog's "Dongs of Sevotion" are highlighted for their dark, emotionally raw outsider folk qualities. The hosts reflect that 2000 was a remarkable year when experimental music could still achieve mainstream commercial success.

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Speaker 1Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade Electrolytes, Zero Sugar, and Vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. Now, this next
Speaker 2record I want to talk about, Tim. Now, I didn't know this record too well. I remember hearing it at the time, a couple of the big videos. I've listened to it probably over this last weekend, and I actually think it's a masterpiece. I say that, and it's not really the kind of music I would listen to normally, but D'Angelo's Voodoo. Now, he's a fascinating character. This record was big, sold like 1.7 million copies, according to Wikipedia. Because it's one of the few albums. I didn't buy on this list as well, even though it's huge. I didn't buy it at the time, but I have to say, listening to it now, and maybe it's something to do with listening to an album from 2000 in 2024, it sounds incredible. So just to give people a little bit of a background to this album, D'Angelo was an artist who'd made one album previous to this, which had been a big R&B, soul, funk, breakthrough record. He took five years making this follow-up record called Voodoo, in which he completely reinvented his hat. He wanted to get back to a more organic palette. And the big thing about this record is the use of Dilla time. Now, what is Dilla time? Most people are probably asking. Some people maybe know. There was a DJ called Jay Dilla, who I do have some albums by, who experimented with the idea of combining different rhythmic feels simultaneously. And it's something that comes from hip-hop, which is where hip-hop artists were using breakbeats from different records. And sometimes those records, those breakbeats would be overlaid and they would have completely different feels. So one would be really pushing the beat and another one would be really behind the beat. So what you'd get when you put those two beats together as a DJ would be this natural kind of out of timeness, for want of a better expression. And what happened was a lot of live musicians were listening to these hip-hop records with these kind of very messy, loose out of time grooves and learning how to play. So this album, the main co-conspirators Questlove, who people may know he's a documentary maker now, he's made that brilliant Summer of Soul documentary. Brilliant drummer. The rhythm section on this record is Questlove and Pino Palladino, the bass player. The grooves are incredible because they have these natural loose things you would listen to superficially and say it's all out of time. And one of the anecdotes I love about this record is Lenny Kravitz apparently was booked for a session to come in and play guitar. And he said, I can't play on that. Your drummer can't play. And he said, and it's Questlove is the drummer. He said, no, it's deliberate. That's and he stormed out. So I'm not going to play on that shit. Sort it out, get the drum, get the drums content. And when you listen to this music, it's fascinating because the bass drum and the snare drum and the high all seem to inhabit a different place in
Speaker 3time and space. Well, you get that, I think, on the tricky albums, you know, in the nineties where he is overlaying so many rhythms samples that you don't know where it's, you know, the music constantly shifting and I listen to it. Based on you putting on the list and yeah, I think it's really good. It sounds fantastic. It's sort of reminded me of an updated version of Prince. It is most soulful and withdrawn very much.
Speaker 2Prince is the obvious. He's the obvious successor to Prince.
Speaker 3Yeah. And, and maybe as well, I was thinking Sly, some of the early seventies Sly and the Family Stone stuff as well.
Speaker 2So when they were making this record, apparently spent a lot of time listening to there's a riot going on also to Prince. So you're spot on. Also, his voice that he sings in falsetto in a way that Prince, you know, when Prince sang a falsetto very similar, but what D'Angelo does is he overlays his voice into these huge blocks, like overdubbing his voice seven or eight times. So you get these huge blocks of falsettos, soul singers, a brilliant singer. It's, it's almost like the first, I mean, I'm no expert at all. I have to say, I'm saying this in ignorance as someone that grew up listening to heavy metal and progressive rock and post post-punk, it seems to me, like this might be the first post hip hop attempt at creating live soul and funk music. And of course you do have bands like Fugees just around the corner, Lauryn Hill, all those other artists coming at do so. So it's this kind of neo soul music, which is they're getting back to a more organic palette, playing it live the way Sly and Prince did, but it's post hip hop. So they're playing in a way that is informed by people like Jay Dilla, who've been experimenting with these loops that shouldn't go together and you get these natural kind of, you know, strange rhythmic inaccuracies.
Speaker 3Well, that's a sort of more interesting version. I think, you know, we've both discussed this of how autotune on vocals. Now people sing naturally in an autotune style, some of them not even realizing what's going on in the record. And I guess it's, it's that. And whereas I agree with you, I think rhythmically, it's kind of fascinating. I'm not so keen. On the natural voice attempting the autotune, you know? No,
Speaker 2I'm not either. And just to be clear, that's not on this record guy. You're talking guys, you're talking about like the general, yeah, pop, modern pop music.
Speaker 3I mean, it was really interesting. I think what, again, it made me think of is that, you know, this D'Angelo album and the Radiohead album, they really sold in an era when things really sold. And you know, we always talk about this golden era of rock music and pop music as being sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, but actually it bleeds into 2000, the 21st century. Where not only are great albums selling in massive quantities, experimental albums are getting to number one. You know, I just, because I think again, you know, when I was a kid, I remember we were teenagers when things like Ghosts were in the top five, you know, Japan's Ghosts was top five and Laurie Anderson's those Superman. And I think of that as a golden time, you know, Gary Newman, our friends electric were extraordinary seismic musical shifts were in your top five, but actually it was still happening in 2000. Kid A, D'Angelo, even tool in the metal world around this time we're getting number one records where music, which absolutely reinvented the vocabulary of music is huge to be fair.
Speaker 2As we speak, the smile wall of wall of wall of eyes is number three in the album charts, but they are the anomaly. They are the anomaly. Yeah, absolutely. And again, we go back to that. That's the kind of magic and they're in the late fifties. That's the magic trick that Tom and Johnny have managed to pull off, you know, which is, it's almost like, you know, it's almost like, like beyond belief how they've managed to do that. Okay. So I mean, I have to say I'm, I was pretty blown away with, with the D'Angelo album and he's also very interesting characters. He's quite troubled. He's almost got that Scott Walker thing where he disappears the 10 years and then comes back with another record, which will be another reinvention. Does he do the Scott Walker go painting and decorating? Does he do that? Well, I don't know. Maybe he goes painting, decorating between our, that's what I do.
Speaker 3I, you know, maybe become a toilet cleaner for a year
Speaker 2or so 2000 since he made this album, he's made one further record. It's called black Messiah in 2013, which again takes the whole aspect of dealer time even further, you know, but I think, you know, this album is definitely something if people have not heard it, it's fascinating. If, if you don't like it musically, just listen to the way they're using rhythm on this record. I've never heard anything like it. I'm all, I say that I have got some J dealer albums in my collection, but J dealer was a DJ. He was using big break beats. This is a live drummer. I said to Gavin, I said, is it easy to, is it easy to play? You know, and he says, it's fucking hard. Gavin, Gavin, the drummer in my band, pocket country, my band in our band,
Speaker 3pocket country in your band pocket.
Speaker 2I said, I said to him, is it easy to do that? J didn't. He says, no, it's fucking hard, you know, cause you're basically as a drummer, you're unlearning. Yeah. Everything you've learned to do, you know, play in time, get the groove in the pocket. No, this is the opposite of that. This is like, make everything sort of sound like the shags. Um, uh, anyway, absolutely. I was absolutely fascinated by this.
Speaker 3I mean, again, I think it's, it's tied together because the material is good. His voice is strong. And as you say, those layered vocals sound sumptuous.
Speaker 2Yeah. And the production is, is amazing. Yeah. Since I left you by the avalanches, this Australian, but I kind of, I guess you'd call them a plunder phonics band in a sense that everything is, is made up of, you know, we talked about J Dilla being a DJ and using only samples to create the music. Here's a band also, you know, making music entirely. I think almost, is it almost entirely? Or is it entirely? I would think it might be entirely entirely constructed from samples. And I think I read on Wikipedia something like three and a half thousand uncleared samples on this record. Right. I listened to it. I mean, I'm a big fan of the DJ shadow records from this time introducing, which also is a, is a plunder phonics record entirely constructed. This is almost like a slightly dreamier poppy aversion of that approach in a way to me. It's for me, it's the way fat boy slim was, you know, creating sample based music.
Speaker 3It's got a feel good on the beach quality, hasn't it? I think.
Speaker 2Yeah. Which man, I kind of, it, it wasn't, I like miserable music as you know, Tim, and I think you like miserable music too. It was, it's clever. It's nice. It feels a little bit frivolous.
Speaker 3My personal taste. I suppose that the one thing I'd say, you know, in its favor beyond its massive success is given it comes from, let's say 3000 different sources. It's plundered. It's
Speaker 2kind of got its own sound, actually. absolutely it does yeah i mean it's very very clever it's very clever i wonder if also there's a sense that in 2000 it would have sounded revolutionary in 2024 yeah those kind of records just don't anymore the two a
Speaker 3penny these days them records well i
Speaker 2don't have a two a penny but i think people have stopped making that kind of music in in a sense because um it's almost so easy now you just buy you buy some software and you get a bunch of you know loops and you you know you know what i mean whereas at the time it would have been revolutionary i mean when introducing came out the dj shadow record came out the fact that he this crate digger was sampling tangerine dream the monkeys uh yeah pekka pohola i mean you know this is true crate digging and putting these samples together um i found that really refreshing but i don't think it would sound refreshing now because it's been done and also
Speaker 3now you've probably got the copyright problem that whereas at that point it was kind of it was the wild west now everyone's after your money you
Speaker 2know yeah that is true true yeah people people have cottoned on that that uh you can't you can't just sample whatever you like anymore heartbreaker by ryan adams this was another record i over the years people have waxed lyrical to me about in fact only a couple of nights ago i had a friend over for dinner and i mentioned we were going to be talking about this record and he said to me oh my god that was my jam you know that at that time in my life heartbreaker by ryan adams it's alt americana isn't it but it's not as old as i'd like it to be is is um is my jam i don't know i don't know my line on this it's very traditional isn't it very traditional it sounds great the production is great he's a great singer the the the songs are really strong but it's all very very familiar the the whole musical vocabulary is very very familiar to me to me it's not as old as i would need it to be to to interest me you know you
Speaker 3joked last time about pitchfork albums of the year and this has just kind of got mojo album of the year written on it and and to me it just sounded like i don't know 1960s to early 1970s dylan most of it with the with the harmonica to me it was yeah the chords are so obvious to me it's springsteen um it's it's yes it's the early springsteen i i don't you
Speaker 2know we've talked about this on the show before we both think springsteen is brilliant but neither of us really like it so he does it really you know yeah don't get me wrong
Speaker 3he does it really well and it sounds great and as you say he's got the voice he's got the harmonica chops he's got those chords he's got it all oh he's got the looks he's beautiful man but anyway um amy i thought was interesting there's one track that was a kind of yeah amy it's got a little melatron that was one yeah again melatron which is used in a lot of albums this year but um that i thought okay god if he'd have done an album like that i'm in but most of it i just kind of i'd been there with bob dylan i'd been there with neil young i'd been there with bruce springsteen and there wasn't that kind of coloration that just woke me up you know whereas when you're listening to the d'angelo even though i've heard the sly and the family so i've heard the prince he was doing something slightly off with it exactly yeah you can hear keys into what you know but yeah there are things that you don't know and i guess that was it it just i didn't feel there was anything i didn't know yeah no i'm sorry if that's you know
Speaker 2i mean listen we're saying a bit like we said with springsteen a bit like we said with dylan see why people like it and i don't mean this to sound like i'm damning it with faint prose i'm not i'm not meaning to sound patronizing in any way it's just not my kind of thing it's brilliant but to me it's not alter it's not alt enough there's not enough in there that makes me think oh you know wow that's interesting i've never heard that
Speaker 3exactly it's like when i think you know something we might discuss but when mark kozilek does the same because he does he operates in that territory there are some really unusual chord voicings or that voice which is
Speaker 2other all that little lyrical sort of epithet yeah it's like that's just so what we're saying
Speaker 3is heartbreaker get off my record i feel like i mean i
Speaker 2might be doing a disservice but i feel like having listened to ryan adams album i've heard him talk a lot about with drinking whiskey yeah pontiacs and hanging out with girls in the bleachers which we
Speaker 3all did in warren which we
Speaker 2all did in hamel hemstead yeah yeah it's a very american sounding record isn't it yeah so maybe that's partly a reason that's that's kind of the reason why springsteen has never really spoken to even though i know he's a brilliant lyricist it's never really spoken to me because i don't recognize that well then mitchell does it
Speaker 3doesn't he have the blonde in the bleachers and it's poetry well
Speaker 2then taylor swift is doing it now to me i think some of her lyrics are amazing they're very american as well but um yeah horses for courses anyway let's talk about post-rock slowcore and american indie we kind of lumped them all in together yeah yeah um because they do cross over quite a bit obviously they do um so post-rock's been around for a few years by now um tortoise seemed like they were the kind of you know standard bearers for post-rock for a while they released their album called standards this year which i thought was quite weak by their standards but there are some new there are some new artists kind of coming through um godspeed you black emperor's big epic masterpiece lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven came out this year double cd they kind of got their gag haven't they i love their gag you know their gag is is kind of um build up build up build up build up build up build up build up crescendo breakdown ambient ambient field recording field recording field recording build up build up build up build up build up build up crescendo ambient bit ambient bit some violins and cellos with lots of reverb make it a little bit posh and it's a great gag and i love it and and they kind of explore it from every possible sort of perspective on this one sprawling double album it's very cinematic it's it's beautiful um so that for me this is the kind of masterpiece of of post-rock for for want of want of a better word what do you feel about this album tim i mean it's
Speaker 3all right i've owned it it's all right i don't know it just sounded like an early genesis rehearsal at times to me um what's wrong with that you like genesis you like early genesis you know pretty primitive military drums the build up the build up it just to me it's beautiful even from the off i was never blown away by it okay no i think it's really beautiful i
Speaker 2mean it listen it doesn't it doesn't sort of captivate me or hold my attention for long periods of time it it does become a bit backgroundy after a while and and the and the gag does kind of play itself out time and time again this sort of slowly building up crescendo with the sort of ambient sections in between and the use of field recordings i think is really quite interesting and fresh i mean that's not something i'd heard in any other post-rock bands at that until that point as far as i remember the use of sort of found you know like capturing sort of religious um evangelists on the street and almost having them in place of a a vocalist you know they become they kind of become the voice of the music don't they those kind of those monologues
Speaker 3i mean i'm being obviously you know i'm playing the devil's advocate on this one being deliberately critical how dare you but i think it was just one of those albums that that didn't grab me in the way i felt it should do you feel that way about any of the records
Speaker 2or you feel they're all i
Speaker 3mean they all pretty much everything i've i've heard there's kind of there's a real formula and yeah and it's also more traditional than people think and again out of those other than as you said maybe the overall combination lots of i've heard you know i've got the minimalist classical albums i've got the post-rock albums it doesn't quite but you know for me if i'm listening thinking of post-rock weird it's not a post-rock band but i think of the way in which the swans can go from using one note or a chord lifting lifting lifting lifting explosion so i think that what they did i'd heard it in a more intense way in other bands so i was thinking you know again it's like i'm going to be blown away by this and i was kind of slightly perplexed because i'd got it already in my collection maybe the way in which they combined elements was the original factor i
Speaker 2think they transcend that more than you give them credit for they definitely have their own sound that's sort of very canada from montreal's canada they have something which is i don't know really what i'm saying here but it seems to me they have something that is very distinctly french canadian about what they do which which i hear in other music from the same region including all of their own so i'm clearly
Speaker 3very talented and they've clearly got fantastic record collections and yeah as a collective i think they've put something together that's interesting and once more i think what works for them is it's the combination i think mogwai did this as well very much the combination of title artwork music created a world and itself and building
Speaker 2crescendo but mogwai very good at that too creating sort of euphoric crescendos from slowly building and again i possibly preferred it in
Speaker 3mogwai maybe this is you know i'm unfairly comparing things in a way what else do we
Speaker 2have this year we have uh god i'm sorry no it's okay you're allowed tim you're allowed i'm not quite sure whether you're god or them but anyway there's going to be lots of other stuff coming up that we don't like either we've kind of focused on the stuff we do like so far yeah that's true yola tango and and then nothing turned itself inside out this i mean this is an example of a band i've never done anything for me uh critics darlings tastemaker darlings listen to it it's all right it's all
Speaker 3right i mean i for me it's a little more than all right i'm like you know the cover artwork's fantastic the title's great um and there's some lovely pieces you know nice use of primitive drum machines and a few kind of post-rock elements um i like the combination i think i was more excited about it at the time than i am now it's one of those albums that i bought liked re-listened to for the show and it didn't grab me in the way that it did maybe because that vocabulary again like we're saying with godspeed it's been used elsewhere and maybe in a more intense
Speaker 2way possibly even by some of the other bands on this list which we'll go through now so uh fevers and mirrors by bright eyes came out this year i've got a few bright eyes albums i like i don't know this one though to be fair mark koselek our old favorite released his album of acdc cover versions um this year and made it sound like exactly like every other mark well this one is
Speaker 3only got three acdc covers it's the album after this that he does all the acdc okay there are a couple of originals and so on i i've got to say um i think the positive about it was it showed you how good the acdc songs and actually that some of the lyrics are really good as well i mean and i really do like early bond scott acdc i think are fantastic and underrated band but um as much as i love underrated that's
Speaker 2the first time i've heard anyone say acdc yeah what a shame they never sold many records i know i feel sorry for them yeah you know what a shame back in black didn't do better than it did i mean for that's not bond scott and that's not a schoolboy era just so it happens to be their
Speaker 3best selling but anyway um i don't know it was a mark koselek album i wasn't that impressed it just seemed a bit casual a bit offhand no i
Speaker 2think i think this was the beginning of mark koselek to a groove where where he everything he did sounded like almost a parody of himself with a few exceptions of the records he's made since then i think are beautiful but he's very prolific and a lot of his music feels like it's by the yard these days and this this felt like it at the time felt like a bit by the yard yeah eels days of the galaxy i've always found eels really
Speaker 3interesting yeah interesting they are one of those bands where there is something vocally lyrically texturally there's an intelligence there's also the thing
Speaker 2with eels is it's incredibly depressing lyrics with this quite joyful music yeah it's this almost cognitive dissonance between the music and the lyrics uh which i kind of like it works it works quite well um what's his name e isn't it is the main guy yeah yeah um also lamb chop lamb chop released an album called nixon this year i used to quite
Speaker 3enjoy again one of those bands i loved at the time don't listen to as much but i think they have a real quirkiness a sweetness i think he's got such a distinctive voice kirk wagner isn't it um but yeah incredibly distinctive voice this kind of american short story set to music and it sort of fits this um kind of singer songwriter americana post rock nicely but yeah they were definitely one of the most distinctive bands in that territory at the drive-in release
Speaker 2relationship of command which was the last album they they released before they kind of fractalized into sparta and more significantly perhaps for us mars volta the mars volta and it kind of gives a little bit of a hint of what's going to come um tim did you want to talk about this because i think you you mentioned in when you sent me an email you want to talk about this album by granddaddy the software slump i don't know this record i thought this is one where i just let you talk about it well i'm
Speaker 3not really going to say very much about it but i liked it you know it was a strong album it's still a strong album it had a bit like you know we're talking about the sea song that had that kind of beautiful melancholy anthemic quality on the doves album they had something on this called the crystal lake which has got kind of simples of a similar trick in that it manages to be rousing anthemic accessible but really quite bittersweet as well i mean my issue is it's a strong album um but it's maybe too much in awe of flaming lips and mercury rev and i know you're not as much a fan of them as i am and i love flaming mercury rev this doesn't quite operate on the same level for me but it's a really good album it shows you what happened in the slipstream of the success that you know they created a bit of a mini industry going forward in the way that radiohead did in
Speaker 2britain and it was very highly rated by the yeah the usual taste it was major album of the year major album of the year let's talk about a couple of artists i think we can talk about them together in a way they are big favorites of mine um songs are higher and smog who are essentially these are essentially uh collective identities for individuals and they're not just for the individuals so yeah songs are higher jason molina and smog is uh bill callahan come from the kind of old folk old country scene but i think the one thing they both have in common is they're incredibly dark lyrically incredibly dark bill callahan smog has more of a black comedy going on in fact there are some lyrics on this album from this year dongs of servotion is the name of the album which itself is a terrible pun which gives you an idea but he's obsessed with death black comedy one of the songs on this album is called dress sexy at my funeral there's a lyric on this album i love without her clothes she looked like a leper in the snow i mean this is classic bill callahan and at the same time we have songs are higher releasing an album called ghost tropic which to me is like the spirit of eden of outsider folk yeah it's a 51 piece of music which seems to be obsessed with the specter of death it has a haunted tortured quality to it it is that sense of outsider musicianship i don't think either of these guys are great singers or great guitar players but there's something with incredible integrity about what they do that seems to be torn from their very being maybe i'm imagining this but the fact that jason molina died a few years after this from alcoholism tells me a lot um about about his state of mind when he was so you know almost like a sense of exercising something in but this is the music is reveling in his own misery and melancholy isn't it and of course for that reason alone i love it folks that won't surprise you what did you feel about these well bill
Speaker 3callahan has got more of a kind of signature voice in the sense he's got character he reminds me a bit of johnny cash weirdly who had a great album out this year so will oldham is a yeah um so i think there's kind of a nice quality to his work and there's there's more obvious irony and humor at play in what he does sure although it was the songs a higher one out of those that really got me i thought ghost tropic was very beautiful masterpiece um as you say there's one track i think it's the final piece that's 12 incantation with again melatron which seems to be an instrument being brought back by everybody this year but it's it's absolutely gorgeous and as we it's kind of it's almost like this sweet in a sense this sweet of misery um and i rather like it for that so yeah and he's got as you say this kind of he's got a more vulnerable he's close to he's got
Speaker 2the high-pitched neil whiny voice bill callan's gone more as you say more of the sort of john johnny cash baritone sort of register jason melina's voice is more the sort of fragile
Speaker 3he's more believably
Speaker 2broken broken as i was just going to say it's almost like the voice is on the verge of breaking into tears at any moment a bit like you have with some neil young i find yeah yeah almost on the verge of breaking into tears but again he i don't know what kind of state of mind when you state of mind he was in when he wrote this he was an alcoholic the specter of death is never far away no and there is a sense the bill callahan record the smog record where there's still a sense of the discipline of songwriting yeah here the songs just ramble don't they i think the
Speaker 3difference is that bill callahan you can believe in the confidence in his delivery and the quality of songwriting that this is a game whereas with the songs ohio this is higher this is not a game this is real life and i think that's the difference you're
Speaker 2right that's i feel that i do feel that i'm sure bill callahan writes a lot from from his own life and stuff but you're right i think he has a very wry acerbic kind of wit there's always
Speaker 3a distance in a sense
Speaker 2whereas with ghost tropic you feel like this guy is seriously in need of some counseling and and i mean to me i don't make the spirit of eden comparison lightly it almost feels like the spirit of eden of of sort of outsider music it's rambling it's not obeying any rules and it feels like it's almost rent from this very tortured place and it's
Speaker 3more and it's funny because it's more so than you know the stuff i know that we really like gastro del sol and jim o'rourke during this period and they had very open references to things like spirit of eden and robert wyatt um but this is more broken you know this is more again you kind of feel and i love those gastro soul and o'rourke albums especially the arrangements but you can hear the intelligence as they're being made you can hear the thought process intellect yeah whereas with this you just kind of feel this is straight to take
Speaker 2absolutely and i think that's exactly in fact this is one of three albums he released this year so he's making these albums very quickly and as you say it sounds like it's just capturing a moment again the neil young thing yeah it sounds like it's capturing a moment in time and you know what it doesn't matter there are flaws and they're out of tune notes and there are moments when his voice breaks because it adds it does not detract it adds to the the kind of outsider emotional kick that the record this is
Speaker 3you know because sometimes they're kind of like you know they're kind of like you know they're going to come back to it so there's certain vocal styles and certain vocalists who can benefit from this so it does not mar the work if anything enhances it robert wyatt it does that neil young it does that weirdly very good very good
Speaker 2reference point i think too for this
Speaker 3record you know kozilek he's one of those who i do know him i know him yeah i know him yeah do you know i do yeah no anyway mark kozilek when he slums it his voice and i know this was my own my own voice isn't this if i slum it in that way i don't know if i slum it in that way i don't know if i slum it in that way there are certain voices where if they're slightly off they sound awful and so when kozilek slums it as he does i think on this album it really does you say by the yard kind of just sounds wrong it's like mark go back re-record that and if i do something as well it's like go back re-record it or get melodyne on it straight away because it's going to kill the listener but when you've got neil young doing this or jason melina doing this or wyatt so natural it sounds right or morrissey yeah they're out of tuneness is part of their essential character yeah
Speaker 2name name your own post-punk icon but there are there are some people who don't do howard devoto
Speaker 3where if they're just ever so slightly out it doesn't know scott walker if scott walker is off you would notice that yeah so much it's not right for the music but yeah so it is fragile it's broken but it really works for it mr monopoly here miss me
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Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The transcript is a music discussion podcast reviewing albums from the year 2000, with D'Angelo's "Voodoo" praised as a masterpiece built on Jay Dilla-inspired loose, off-kilter live rhythms.
  2. The hosts highlight D'Angelo's layered falsetto vocals, Questlove and Pino Palladino's rhythm section, and the album's reinvention of organic soul and funk in a post-hip-hop context.
  3. The Avalanches' "Since I Left You" is discussed as a plunderphonics record assembled from thousands of samples, praised for its cleverness but considered less revolutionary by 2024 standards.
  4. Ryan Adams' "Heartbreaker" is criticized as overly traditional alt-country, with familiar Dylan, Springsteen, and Neil Young influences that fail to surprise the hosts.
  5. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven" is called the post-rock masterpiece of the year, though one host finds its crescendo formula eventually background-like.
  6. Other albums covered include Grandaddy's "The Software Slump," Songs
  7. Songs: Ohia and Smog are compared as dark, outsider folk artists, with Jason Molina's fragile voice and Bill Callahan's wry black comedy both admired for their emotional authenticity.
  8. The hosts note that 2000 was a golden era when experimental albums like Kid A and Voodoo could still achieve massive commercial success.

Summary:

This transcript captures a wide-ranging conversation between two music enthusiasts reviewing notable albums from the year 2000. The discussion begins with D'Angelo's "Voodoo," which both hosts admire as a masterpiece. They explore how Jay Dilla's rhythmic experiments influenced the album's deliberately loose, out-of-time grooves, performed by Questlove and Pino Palladino. D'Angelo's layered falsetto vocals and organic reinvention of soul and funk are praised, with comparisons drawn to Prince and Sly and the Family Stone.

The conversation then shifts to The Avalanches' "Since I Left You," a plunderphonics record built from thousands of samples. While clever and successful, the hosts feel it would not sound as revolutionary today. Ryan Adams' "Heartbreaker" receives a more critical response, dismissed as too traditional and derivative of Dylan and Springsteen. Godspeed You! Black Emperor's sprawling double album is celebrated as a post-rock masterpiece, though one host finds its formula repetitive.

The episode also covers Grandaddy, Songs: Ohia, Smog, Lambchop, Eels, and At the Drive-In. Songs: Ohia's "Ghost Tropic" and Smog's "Dongs of Sevotion" are highlighted for their dark, emotionally raw outsider folk qualities. The hosts reflect that 2000 was a remarkable year when experimental music could still achieve mainstream commercial success.

FAQs

Dilla time is a rhythmic approach inspired by hip-hop producer J Dilla, combining different rhythmic feels simultaneously to create a loose, off-kilter groove. It often involves layering beats that push and lag against each other.

Voodoo is groundbreaking for its use of Dilla time with live musicians, creating organic yet rhythmically complex grooves. It also features layered falsetto vocals and a reinvention of neo-soul.

Plunderphonics is a style of music constructed entirely or almost entirely from samples of other recordings. The Avalanches' Since I Left You is a famous example with thousands of uncleared samples.

Post-rock often features long instrumental builds, crescendos, ambient sections, and field recordings. Godspeed You! Black Emperor are known for their epic, cinematic compositions with a distinctive formula.

Songs: Ohia (Jason Molina) delivers raw, vulnerable, and emotionally broken music, while Smog (Bill Callahan) uses wry black comedy and a more detached, confident songwriting style.

Heartbreaker is praised for strong songs, production, and vocals, but some critics find its musical vocabulary too familiar and derivative of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen.

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