By Cam Charron

Special to KTW

editor@kamloopsthisweek.com

So far, the 2000s has been a diverse decade for music and one that changed how we listen.

The start of the decade brought the end of the golden age of hip-hop and pop-rock, while the middle of the decade revolutionized how we paid for and listened to music.

Compact discs changed to mp3s.

The radio became the iPod dock and the record stores that flourished in the past gave way to file sharing and sellable Internet downloads.

Independent music, existing well back into the 1970s, became widely available online and, by extension, commercial.

The following pays tribute to some of the most outstanding and influential albums of the decade so far.

To look back on the decade, I sought out opinions about the top albums from Vancouver-based drummer Daniel Klenner, best known for his work with indie-pop band Hey Ocean!; bassist Cam Mayhem from the hard rock and metal band Stryker Strikes; Alec Frost, a new artist on the Kamloops scene who plays guitar and keyboards for the alternative rock band Pablo Alto; and representing the music fan, Victoria record collector Robert Bushby, who’s built up a 1,000-strong collection across a myriad of genres.

Voodoo – D’Angelo



“This is one of the greatest R&B hip-hop albums since I don’t know when,” says Klenner, who cites this neo-soul album by D’Angelo as the record he left in his player the longest.

Klenner says he’s been influenced by classical and jazz drumming, something Voodoo offers.

“It’s pretty much live music in the studio and very organic. That’s something that few hip-hop albums offer. But this one was very technical.”

Voodoo did not have a single to define it — or even a popular cut — but it did get platinum status within a month of its release.

It was praised by critics for its broad musical experimentation and was listed at 488 on Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums of All-Time.

Absolution – Muse



Along with fellow British bands Coldplay and Radiohead, Muse is credited as one of this century’s big acts in alternative music.

Absolution was the album to bring Muse into the mainstream, spawning its first-ever Top 10 hit on the U.K. single charts with Hysteria and reaching the top of the Billboard Heatseeker Chart.

Musically, it’s fresh, relaxing and progressive.

“They have the most metal they’ve ever got on this album and there is also a classical piano passage on it,” Frost says.

“The quality is just so consistently high. Every song becomes the favourite on the album at some point,” he says.

“You can listen to it straight through because each song seems to be just what you want to hear next.”

That seems to be the starting point for the majority of alternative and progressive albums, crafted by artists like front man Matt Bellamy, that are designed to keep the listener into the record for the full hour — something that has become difficult in the age of iPods and shuffled tracks.

I Get Wet – Andrew W.K.


If you like carnal pleasures, excitable riffs and all-out general mayhem, this record is full of it.

“The first time I seriously listened to it,” says Mayhem.

“I honestly felt like I was on speed for a month straight.”

That’s pretty lavish praise from a metalhead who has made a name for himself with his own on-stage presence.

“I was seriously twice as happy, confident, energetic, excitable and friendly as I usually am, all the time,” Mayhem says.

“There’s no slowing down on that album. All the songs are all party, all the way through.”

Any questions about the hardness of this record can be directed to the cover.

Andrew W.K. made headlines by smashing his face with a brick to get exactly the right cover shot for his debut recording.

I Get Wet is known for its hit singles Party Hard and She Is Beautiful, but the 10 other tracks are every bit as driven.

It never slows down, sucking you in from the opening riff and forcing you to hold on for dear life for 35 minutes, until the final note is played.

Neon Bible – Arcade Fire



While the group’s debut album, Funeral, released in 2005, sent shockwaves through the music industry and opened to better reviews and served up a number of indie pop anthems, to me Neon Bible is a more complete record.

It focuses on the theme of the collapse of Western civilization.

Neon Bible is about the commercial religion of the new century.

(Antichrist Television Blues) is a plea to God from the father of a young, talented singer to make her know the family name.

Intervention is the story of a peasant who’s coerced into hard labour by the church.

But the album really comes together for the penultimate track, No Cars Go, an amped-up rendition of a track from their first EP, which pushes away the negatives of civilization and allows Butler and his bandmates to find solace in a beautiful area untouched by the hand of man.

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not – Arctic Monkeys



“One of the first groups to get big through the Internet,” Bushby says.

He cites this record as one of the biggest reasons independent music seemed to take over during the last half of the decade.

At its earlier shows in Britain, the band would literally give away its music on un-finished demo discs, which fans would take home to upload onto their computers and share with friends.

This led to the group’s massive popularity in Britain and the record’s first two singles hit No. 1 in Britain even before the record’s release.

“It’s a fun record that catches you right away and should be considered a classic already,” says Bushby.

The album kicks off with frontman Alex Turner’s thick Sheffield-accented drawl in The View from the Afternoon with a hard guitar riff.

Cam Charron is a journalism student at Thompson Rivers University.