Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

"Ha Ow! Ow!" yes with those words the greatest dance track of 2005 and one of the greatest albums in recent memory kicked off and took the world by storm. The track itself Daft Punk Is Playing At My House needs no description, I know it's awesome, you know its awesome, it might has well have been an ironic statement because as of 2005 its not

Daft Punk that everyone wants to play their house party its James Murphy. Seriously how cool is this man? He can't be real can he? No one human can make records this slick, this cool, and this credible its not fair is it. I'm listening to Tribulations as I write this and it's just better than everything else. Seriously BETTER electro/dance no one can touch this man, it's got the cool vocals of the Eurythmics and one of those nonchalantly ice cool beats that Murphy seems to have copyrighted its incredible. Does the album have weaknesses? Yeah a couple, like all dance records the tracks are looooooong (especially towards the end) but not pointlessly so, and Murphy doesn't appear to have that much to say or much of a voice, however both these issues would be washed away by Sound Of Silver and now as a companion piece LCD Soundsystem stands out as his ice cool ironic party record. But let's not end on a weakness lets end on a strenght, Losing My Edge could there be a better track than this? No its awesome, and as Murphy of course knows he's not losing his Edge he's miles ahead of the nearest competition.

There's a golden rule when it comes to rap music: rappers should never produce, and producers should never rap. It holds pretty true just look at Timberland and Doctor Dre, but Kanye broke the mold, not only is he one of the world's greatest producers, for a three year patch he was the greatest rapper alive. This his debut album showed thatt not only did he have mega slick production, cool and crazy skills on the mic but Kanye was someone with something to say. Before he was slamming President Bush he was telling us heartbreaking stories none better than the sublime Behind The Wire. Finally we had our replacement Eminem someone would could give us a party stomper just as easily as he could give us a scathingly vital work of songwritting genius. Whatsmore, just like Em he could do both at once, and he did it sublimely on the earth shaking Jesus Walks a contender for rap track of the decade. Even when Kanye was being silly he still provided scathing social comentary, see Workout Plan, Kanye gives us a bouncy singalong while simultaniously critiquing the Heat magazine/gold digger/weight loss society. Kanye had it all, and he came flying out of the blocks and overtook all the competition.

Noah Lennox of Animal Collective fame is one of those guys who can't just settle for being in one mind blowingly awesome band he has to step out on his own and blow our minds all over again. Person Pitch is a masterfully created work, tying together some intriguing loops of music to created some beautiful sun drench psychodelia. The vocals are reminiscent of the Beach Boys, seriously on a side note if your American psych you have to sound like the Beach Boys, if your British its Beatles or Bowie, seriously someone has to create a new vocal style for this genre. Anyway back to topic this is a true artistic album, and that does start the alarm bells of inaccesibility ringing, and it isn't the most engaging album ever, but it is very uplifting and the arrangements and the way the samples come together are very special. Take a listen to Search For Delicious it starts with a down pour of rain and ends up as a huanting ghostly spectre stuck inside a video recorder, trippy as hell but utterly brilliant. The fact that that mind trip then blends straight into the hazy sunny folk of Ponytail is beyond delightful. Person Pitch will be a tough nut to crack for some but believe me its worth the investment.

So who won the Brit Pop War? Who was the best band? The Best Artist? Well the answer is simple BLUR by a country mile and in particular Damon Albarn (although Graham Coxon's solo albums beat anything Oasis have done in the last ten years hands down). It's not even close after the mediocre start of Leisure all those years back, Damon has never released a bad album, everything he's done has been awesome. He knew Brit pop and lame lad rock had had its day by 1996 and in 13 and Think Tank produced two great albums, he was being Radiohead before Radiohead were Radiohead. Damon didn't stop their he created Gorillaz and set about reshaping pop music with what seemed like a novelty concept A Cartoon Band but it was genius, he could stop being Damon Albarn of Blur and start doing whatever the hell he wanted. This of course had mixed results and ups and downs but on Demon Days the hits really stacked up and he brought us some of the best pop music of the decade, whether it was concouring the dance floors with Shaun Ryder or blending Rap and electronic beats or whether it was the genius of whatever the fuck Feel Good Inc. is supposed to be. Depressed lyrics + Del A Soul + beautiful melodic chorus = Mind Boggling Genius. Results may vary, but they vary from Brilliant to awesome.

What were we (well not me, I was smart) smoking in 2003? How did this album go underapprecaited? Too samey they said, not enough development they said, it came around too fast? Honestly what the fuck? Well they all look like fools now because beyond the Strokes backlash, because God knows if a band is great, save music and put out a killer album, 50% of people have to suddenly start disliking them, because shock horror their not my little secret anymore, well those scenester deuches have all turned around seemingly, as when a DJ drops Reptillia the dance floor goes from deserted to filled in less time than it takes Amy Winehouse to shoot up. Anyway rant over, the dust has settled and what remains is a mind blowing album, that perfectly compliments Is This It. The grass roots cool production is still there, this feels like a proper indy record. Julian has certainly learnt some new tricks, that's right he fancy himself a soul crooner (Between Love Hate, Automatic Stop, Under Control). Nick in the meantime continues to lay down some cool arse riffs, on an album that really kicks hard. What Ever Happened? Is possibly my favorite album opener of all time, it so immediate and so well written "I wanna be forgotten, And I Don't Want To Be Reminded" Julian has a knack of dropping these killer cuplets out of nowhere. He still has pretty much nothing to say though, he subsequently admitted and parodied himself on Ask Me Anything crooning "I've Got Nothing To Say". However on Room On Fire this is beside the point, what the Strokes produced is a sharp, minimalist and suprising soulful record. A true classic that flew under the radar.

Its a tough job but if I had to pick the best Rap act of the decade but for me Outkast win it hands down and its mostly because of this album. This was a total electic suprise of an

album, it has seemingly bottomless death, they can go from a viseral audio assualt to a funk pop odyssey in the space of two tracks. This is apparently from the world go you put the album on and you get your electro intro and then WHAM!!! you get punched full pelt in the face by the raw primal rage of Gasoline when Big Boi and Andre get angry and have something to say no one can stop these guys, but before you can get your moshing boots on they slide right into the

ridiculously sublime So Fresh So Clean and you'll be finger clicking and sliding with a big wide smile on your face. The album is full of contrasts going from the pop gem of Ms. Jackson to that gangsta ragga of Snappin' and Trappin'. Its great stuff, throughout but while Outkast are pretty much awesome at whatever they turn their hands to they remain at their best when they have fire in their belly and Gasoline and Bombs Over Baghdad remain their best tracks. Its a real tragedy that the aggressive element has slowly dissapeared from Outkast records. This was a career high

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Some times you have to go backwards to go forwards, or more accurately, in Justice's case, sometimes you have to go backwards to stop other people from going forwards in the wrong dirrection. When Justice started lighting up the world in 2006/7 with the remix of Simain Mobile Disco's We Are Your Friends there was a certain air of familiarity, two french dudes with ice cool stainless steel beats tearing up the dance floors of the nation with the coolest beats around. Yes there's is absolutely no secret that Justice's biggest influence is those loveable french Robots Daft Punk, and while normally this fargrant lack of a originality would be a weakness, this is dance music where everything is recycled and everything ultimately ends up back with Kraftwerk anyway. While Daft Punk were away making Avante Guard art house films Justice got on with rocking our socks with some of the hotest dance music ever dropped, just like Daft Punk they loved the cheesey hooks and D.A.N.C.E, DVNO and Flithy Party became instantly bedded in anyself respecting Deejay's setlist. However it was the Robot Rock of Phantom Part II that really thrilled us, with its siving steaming beats. So they may not be all that original but thank the lord for Justice they saved our beloved dancefloors from Cascada, and for that we will be forever grateful.

It must be so frustrating for Oasis, Blur, Arctic Monkeys and hell even Kings Of Leon that no matter how hard they try, how big popular and brilliant the records they make are, over the pond in US they just don't care, they can't really catch fire for more than a month here and a fortnight there. What must make it even more frustrating that out of all the great bands in the world, the American's chose to get Radiohead. It's a suprise really, it's not at all American, its very subtly, moody, depressing and paranoid, I mean it's hardly Creedence. Even more baffling the US loved Amnesiac more than they love Whatever People Say and Parklife. Why exactly? I'm not exactly sure, everything about Radiohead and thier 21st Century output says its inaccessible it shouldn't be liked, the mainstream shouldn't embrace it, but they do. Ultimately it comes down to two things, one Radiohead are bloody brilliant, but secondly Radiohead are universally cool. No I'm not joking Radiohead are cool, trust me tell someone you love Amnesiac and you get instant cool points, they same way you get kudos for slamming whoever the current media darlings are. How many people really get Amnesiac no one really knows, but the sparse and beautiful sister record to Kid A is filled with delights for those willing to commit. It's chaotic, detached and has an uneasy flow seperating it from the brilliance of Kid A however this record is far beyond inaccessibly. One listen to the sublime guitar hook of I Might Be Wrong and you instantly become a slave to the rythem, then of course there's Pryamid Song possible Radiohead's best song, and certainly there most beautiful. Amnesiac will always be the ugly stepsister of Kid A but if you spent the time to get to know her she's got a great personality and true inner beauty.

This has been a pretty sorry decade to be a metal fan. Look around survey the scene where have all the heroes gone? The world straddling alchohol fueled pomp of hair metal died long ago when Axl Rose went insanse, the heart wrenching honesty of Grunge burnt out with a shotgun blast, and Rap metal, well rap metal was anything but heroic. I'm mean sure Limp Bizkit were heroes to some (and I'd be lying if I tried to deny accusations of having done the rollin' dance in a club or two) but honestly can you really glorify idiots shouting "I did it all for the Nookie, so you can take that cookie and shove it up your arse"? No of course not, to make matters worse the heroes of old either became embarsingly bad (see Metallica) or become reality TV parodies of themselves (see Ozzy Osborne), the new crop showed some promise but never quite delivered Linkin Part were big enough but not good enough, and Bullet & Trivium for all their promise never threatened to be great. However in the background a series of hard working talented bands just got on with doing what they do and producing great records until people were forced to take notice. Mastadon are the perfect example of this, their too weird, to be as big as Linkin Park or My Chemical Romance but by churning out consistantly awesome albums; Megalodon, Blood Mountain and finally Crack The Skye they've made it as close to the big time as their ever going to get. Finally a band Metal fans can love and respect, by all rights Blood Mountain should have made the list on merit but it's their most resent opus that sees them take top spot among (non emo) metal bands in the top 100. With there isnanely techinical guitar playing, expansive prog and some non screamy and suitably widescreen vocals they've craved out a niche atop the metal mountian. This is their most accesible record to date with the prog reigned in on singles Oblivion and Divinations to dare I say it make for catchy songs, and then the prog is free to roam free on the albums centrepeice The Czar which serves as a microcosm of the album as a whole. The decade started badly for metal but it ended on a high note thanks to Mastadon.

So here's a question for you? How do you go from cooky critic's favorites to mainstream superstars without losing a jot of credibility? How do you get pretentious Camden scenesters and loud mouth football fans to sing your anthems in the same breath? The answer? Release Elephant. Because with this release Whites Stripes did all of the above and much much more. It seemed improbable coming out of the 1990s that a guy who looks like he hasn't seen the sun in his entire life, who has a fancy for old school blues and ye olde country/folk music and his wife/sister/lover who can't drum a lick would end up the world's biggest rock superstars and be headlining Glastonbury without a single descenting voice. It's was a truely amazing occurance. But then again the White Stripes are a truely amazing band. Jack White's haunting voice that can display tender fragility, aggresive wrath or jokey sing along irony ticked all the boxes. Pop fans could sing along, metallers could mosh or roar and the critics could reveal in his soulful song writing. Then there was Jack's guitar, whether it was primal blues, supersized riffing or relentless shredding, it always hit the spot. Jack White is this decades guitar hero, he doesn't wank off like Slash or Hammett, Jack just rocks with dirty bluesy passion. On Elephant the Stripes sandwhiched classic song writing inbetween monsterous pop anthems everytime their was an eloquent There's No Home For You Hear or I Want To Be The Boy there was a poptacular Seven Nation Army or Hardest Button and if the album was getting a bit slow a ligthening bolt in the form Black Math or Hypnotize was ready and waiting. Elephant: how to make friends without alienating people, or comprimising your intergrity.