Noughties By Nature #42: The Libertines - Time For Heroes

Not the spuriously-compiled Best Of issued in 2007 by those intent on picking clean the bones of a band long-buried, but the five-years-younger standout single from a band lean, hungry and arrestingly articulate. Its guitar-led opening clamour was urgent enough to turn heads away from the barren wastes of contemporary indie and onto the sea of possibilities and passions that swirled in the space between stumbling drumbeats and Doherty's smoothly confident evocation of a once and future urban utopia. Amidst flashes of modern May Day folklore, Time For Heroes forged its own mythology of young bloods, obscene scenes and stylish rioters, its lyrics rich with in-jokes, countercultural cast-offs and quietly camp wit. How long had it been since the charts were troubled by a piece of such grammatical, political and aesthetic perfection as the line "There are fewer more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap"? The song throws open the doors to a kingdom of self-reference and self-reverence and, with a knowingly urchinish doff of the cap, ushers you into Arcadia and urges you to consider yourself at home. The Libertines flame was soon to be extinguished in a whirlwind of smack, self-destruction, supermodels and speculation on Pete and Carl's domestic harmony, but while it lasted, this was a band on fire.
Rhian Jones

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Up The Bracket]

Noughties By Nature #41: Mint Royale feat. Lauren Laverne - Don't Falter

Who would have expected the decade's best love song to come from as strange a pairing as this? The cross between the sweeping end-credits strings and breezy, pseudo-tropical horns and shuffling breakbeat work far better than it does on paper, while Miss Laverne swoons and sighs her way through some of her most charming, optimistic lyrics ("When you're with me, it's always summer") as if Kenickie never broke up. What's more astounding is that this is one of only two times she's been involved with a 'major' single in the last ten years (the other being The Divine Comedy's gorgeous, and remarkably similar-sounding Come Home Billy Bird): proof if proof be need be that, great though she is at that presenting lark, the pop charts are a sadder place without her around.
Alex Wisgard

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: On The Ropes]

Noughties By Nature #40: The Delgados - Everybody Come Down

The Delgados made probably my favourite song of the 90s with Under Canvas Under Wraps and made a series of critically lauded and Peel adored records for much of the next decade, though real popular acclaim eluded them. To some extent this song, the lead single, from their final album, can be seen as a last throw of the dice, a simple bouncy song with a catchy chorus that moves away from the complicated arrangements of previous records.

However, the happy tune belies a darker lyric with a familiar musical theme of unhappy life in a small town - “Got a slap in the face from the mafia who ran the place” - in this case Castle Douglas in southern Scotland, and wanting to escape. But the song itself is a superior example of guitar based pop music, with Emma Pollock’s gorgeous voice to the fore as the instrumentation drops away towards the end before the whole thing comes to a grinding halt as if the power had been turned off.
Matt Gaynor

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Universal Audio]

Noughties By Nature #39: Colour - Unicorns

Having split up earlier this year, there's been there's inevitably been a fair bit of eulogising about Colour's untouchable brilliance in recent months. In my opinion their back catalogue was patchy at best, but this song (along with a couple of others i could almost as easily have chosen) is as perfect a pop song as you could hope for. Blissfully catchy lyrics that pass in an instant and hooks that are as fleeting as Colour's career (proportionally, anyway) - but the song is always pulling you back in time for the next one. This is the kind of tune you'll leave on loop for hours once it clicks.
John Helps, Maybeshewill

[YouTube (live)] (Also on their Myspace)

Noughties By Nature #38: Dizzee Rascal - I Luv U

It's been a startlingly fruitful decade for underground urban music, with UK garage ready to claim British cultural dominance at the turn of the century – a strain of fortified R'n'B that, despite having future laughing stock Craig David as a figurehead, and having limited itself from its eclectic origins in Larry Levan's Paradise Garage years earlier, still maintained its sleek edge. While it had its own seminal cuts that still stand the test of time – Wookie's slinky Hot Chip-approved Scrappy, Lisa Maffia's ukulele-tinged Brit-crunk banger All Over, and of course 21 Seconds – the overall impression of two-step now is of a tame catalyst for what was to come. Contemporary history is already telling us that 'garridge' morphed into a bassier, brasher, more intimidating sound with some haste, and while a track like More Fire Crew's incendiary Oi! or Wiley’s Eskimo can perhaps claim to be the first instance of grime reaching the overground, it was a boy from Bow who would kick the trap door off its hinges.

Hearing I Luv U for the first time was, I'd wager, perhaps the only instance this decade that could readily be likened to hearing, say, Afrika Bambaataa or Sex Pistols for the first time, the pop-cultural equivalent of an atomic bomb going off; you got the sense, within the first few bars of woofer-threatening bass stabs, firecracker-like beats and Dizzee’s hectic, accusatory flow that things would never, ever be quite the same. While it displayed evidence to why grime got its name, forsaking the sheen of two-step with aplomb, I Luv U also narrated a frank and often despicable glimpse into the minds of the a promiscuous, nihilistic Brit ‘yoof’: “I like your girl so you better look after your girl, or I might take your girl and make your girl my girl” etc. Yet somehow it became liberating, especially since both male (played by Dizzee) and female (“That boy’s some prick y’kna”) got their side of the argument in this three-minute explicit soap opera, escalating to the point of no return. A fictional tale perilously close the bone – convincing enough to prompt an open-letter remix response from another rising grime star Shystie – I Luv U alone painted Mr Rascal as the sharp, thrilling poet laureate of broken Britain. The startled lad handed the Mercury gong has now transformed into the darling of party-minded UK electro-house instead, but for making a startling first impression Dylan Mills can at least claim with sincerity that he gave the ringtone generation an opening gambit of considerable dexterity and substance.
Thomas Blatchford

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Boy In Da Corner]

Noughties By Nature #37: Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends

The best dance track of the noughties. We Are Your Friends started off as an entry into a college radio dance remix competition and ended with murderous stabbing synths and the funkiest bass line that Daft Punk never wrote. There are very few electronic dance tracks that can feel as hands in the air celebratory as We Are Your Friends, yet despite the enormous happy vibes it spits out the song never sounds like a big slab of cheddar in a keyboard sandwich. We Are Your Friends is designed to make you feel deliriously happy, unless your name is Kanye West, who launched an outburst at the MTV Europe Awards when the Justice vs. Simian video beat his own video to an award.
Robin Seamer

[Spotify]
[YouTube]

Noughties By Nature #36: Robbie Williams & Kylie Minogue - Kids

The art of great pop is that it plays on the artist's personality. For example, Mis-teeq had an in your face attitude, and their music slapped you about the face for 3 minutes, making you pay attention. Sugababes' back catalogue is based on the fact that they're fairly good looking girls who might be sexual deviants, and their music is the equivalent of a bondage session with Jessica Alba. Which brings us to the topic of Robbie (the cheeky chappie of British pop) and Kylie (the sexy antipodean minx).

And that's where Kids is truly brilliant. Originally written by Robbie and Guy Chambers for Kylie, and then turned into a duet on Robbie's request, it works for both these two characters. Robbie gets his rocky, anthemic chorus and (if you have the extended version) his funny, cheeky boy persona on the rap at the end. Kylie makes teenage boys across the land feel funny in their pants with the line 'I couldn't do what I wanted to do when my lips were dry' and gets her seduction on throughout. It almost, almost shouldn't work, but somehow it does, and two of the biggest popstars of the decade collided to produce pure pop perfection.
Oliver Billenness

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Sing When You're Winning]

Noughties By Nature #35: Saturday Looks Good To Me - Meet Me By The Water

Some songs are just dangerous. Meet Me By The Water is one of those songs. It's a three-minute piece of indie-pop propaganda that makes you wish to be by a riverbank with a battery-powered record player and a scene-girl pulling at her laddered tights as the sun goes down. All of which sounds incredibly romantic when you're trapped in a tiny room with a bed, hunkered over a computer at 3am trying to finish writing a miniature programming language. I can tell you that the reality of the situation involves a lot more ants, forgetting to bring a spare set of batteries and bickering over a vinyl collection than this song indicates.

The brainchild of Ann Arbor's Fred Thomas, a virtual band with an ever-changing line-up (though they're currently on an extended hiatus), SLGTM is one of the decade's hidden gems, an American indie-pop band that owes as much to Dexy's Midnight Runners as they do to any of their contemporaries. All Your Summer Songs (where this song is culled from) is probably the highlight of their career so far, a kitchen-sink blend of Motown and Phil Spector with a disarming dash of indie hipsterism that'll make your heart bounce and your mind whirl. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find some batteries.
Ian Pointer

[Spotify]
[YouTube (live)]
[Album: All Your Summer Songs]

Noughties By Nature #34: Stars – Your Ex-Lover is Dead (Final Fantasy Remix)

I nearly went for One More Night or This Is The Dream Of Win And Regine as the finest respective individual moments of this pair of Canadian acts, but this meeting of minds actually trumps both.

The song casts singers Torquil and Amy as the ex-lovers, unexpectedly reunited and confronting their feelings through the course of an awkward taxi ride. They don’t want to give too much away (not least because he can’t remember her name), but by the conclusion they’ve reached a cautious but touching acceptance that things turned out for the best. It’s the opener from Set Yourself on Fire, setting its tone of sweeping romanticism with a bittersweet edge perfectly.

Owen Pallett takes the song and strips out all of the horns and drums and drums that propelled it, replacing them with a gorgeous piano and strings arrangement that ramps up the tension. The alternating verses of the pair already felt like a drawn out dance around how they really felt, but in his hands it sounds satisfyingly like one too.
Iain Forrester

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Do You Trust Your Friends?]

Noughties By Nature #33: Snow White - Bored, Somewhat Detached

Perhaps the most defiantly runty of the decade's squalling angular litter, the late and disappointingly little-lamented Snow White were always too good for relegation to a residency at Nathan Barley's Nailgun Arms. Their comparative strength lay in a Sonic Youth-derived lo-fi sensibility, song titles like It's Not Art, It's Paedophile Porn and a preference for sneering over self-aggrandisement. Debut single Bored, Somewhat Detached sticks out like a spike through the floorboards, the recording's muffled and murky quality making the band sound as though they're being held hostage in a coal shed. Full of densely scribbled white-hot guitar overwriting staticky bass and a buzzsaw vocal drone, rarely has a song done so exactly what it says on the tin with such bloody-minded and furious aplomb.
Rhian Jones

(If anyone knows of commercial availability or a legal stream, let us know in the comments)

Noughties By Nature is - hey, new people join in all the time - the crowdsourced 120 greatest songs of this decade. And, frankly, unless you get involved it'll come to a stop well before we reach anywhere near 120. In simpler terms, while thankful for what we've had so far we urgently need further contributors.

You've seen what we're looking for in terms of writing quality - get in touch via sweepingthenation(at)dsl.pipex.com with the sort of songs you think should be included, remembering it's one entry per artist.

Noughties By Nature #32: The Bobby McGee's - Ivor Cutler Is Dead

Although originally called No Friends it seems entirely appropriate that the opening track to The Bobby McGee's’ first EP should lament the recent death of one of Britain’s finest poets, musicians and gentlemen; fitting because The Bobby McGee's are akin to, and yet somehow simultaneously absolutely nothing like, Ivor Cutler. They’re alike because, as Ivor Cutler Is Dead attests, when they want to they can channel the same sort of charm, tenderness and beauty that even when singing about depression and loneliness can be warmly comforting. But they’re different because it’s difficult to imagine Cutler lamenting his solitude with such direct, astute, open-hearted melancholy, vocalists Jimmy and Eleanor playing two Smiths-loving hopeless romantics doomed to a life of arrested development and unrequited love. No wonder they’re the inventors and embodiment of tweecore (not in the Los Campesinos!-referenced sense of mixing indie-pop with hardcore metal, but in the sense that they’re just very, very twee), seeing as their lyrical Peter Pan complex – where the hallmarks of close companionship are sharing drinks and watching Top Of The Pops together – is a lot more disarming than it is cloying or mawkish. This cutesy ditty plays the Jekyll to the Hyde of some of their more boisterous songs – Billy & Tracey and Molly’s Lips, off the same Yes Please! EP, have the chorus “Fuck you!” and “Kill yourself!” respectively – but like a sigh can replace the need to scream it dissolves the desperation and yearning of its content to become almost anthemic; all this despite being a tranquil campfire song accompanied by the band’s trademark lilting ukuleles. Jimmy says it’s the best song ever written, because his mum says so – she’s definitely got an ear for a tune, then.
Thomas Blatchford

[EP: The Bobby McGee's? Yes Please!] (Also on their Myspace as No Friends)

Noughties By Nature #31: Pelle Carlberg – Clever Girls Like Clever Boys Much More Than Clever Boys Like Clever Girls

Whilst the British charts were full of fake RnB for 12 year olds, if you wanted to find some pure pop in the 2000s then Sweden was the place to look. Taking some cues from the C86 generation and mixing it with the shiny pop sensibility of St Etienne, Labrador records led the way with the Acid House Kings at the forefront. Pelle Carlberg featured on their highly recommended Sound of Young Sweden series as Edson, but it was when recording under his own name he hit perfection.

Seemingly a cautionary tale of falling for the wrong person - “Should have listened to what mama said” - this is unashamed pop music with handclaps from the first beat. It’s catchy as hell and does what pop music should reminds you of summer and makes you happy, it gets to the chorus and you need no more, variations on the chorus repeating til end.
Matt Gaynor

[YouTube (live)]
[Album: In A Nutshell]

Noughties By Nature #30: Hot Hot Heat - Bandages

Bandages is the great forgotten guitar pop record of the decade. It’s a nutty blast of a tune that scrapes away at the surface and makes the listener want to bounce bounce bounce. It is the ultimate drunken student indie disco soundtrack, full of frazzled riffs, shrieking vocals and a structure that grows and grows until it orgasms in a hot sweaty climax.

There is nothing particularly unique about this song. Everything you hear during its three minutes and thirty seconds of thrusting at your earlobes you will be familiar with, but it’s a familiarity that is delivered with such passion, that you can’t help but wilt and give in. The Canadian band have never produced anything as good as this since, which is probably just as well because we don’t think we could take much more without passing out.
Robin Seamer

[Spotify]
[YouTube (live)]
[Album: Make Up The Breakdown]

Noughties By Nature #29: The Research - C'mon Chameleon

Pop music: a series of grand treatises on the human condition (or, at least, the part of it that involves getting off with someone, not getting off with someone, and all possible variants thereof), interspersed by people going "la la la", "ba ba ba" and possibly "shooby dooby doo" if the opportunity arises. I don't think The Research have ever gone "shooby dooby doo", but they were very good at going "la la la", and so good at going "ba ba ba" that they called a song it. The first The Research album features lots of splendid wonky keyboard tunes, delightfully cooey girly backing vocals and much in the way of faux-innocent treatises on the human condition, essayed by a chap calling himself Russell The Disaster; all of these are good things. However, it is C'mon Chameleon that we turn to here as the intro to the single version is really quite stirring (particularly for those of us who always assumed that playing the keyboards would be easy and were never able to produce anything better than, well, the intro to C'mon Chamelon by The Research) and because it is the only song that dares to ask the all-important question: "What's the scientific name for truth serum?"

Sadly, record company shenanigans followed (there is the possibility that someone at EMI thought that The Research could sell millions of records; it's impossible not to admire the optimism of everyone involved) and some time later there was a second album with the wonky keyboards and girly backing vocals largely ditched, as if they'd somehow lost track of the point. Shame, that.
Matt Sullivan

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Breaking Up]

Noughties By Nature #28: Billie The Vision And The Dancers - There's Hope For Anyone

I used to be pretty smug about my Billie the Vision & The Dancers standom, on some “Hah, the wider world isn’t yet ready to embrace a mixed-race transvestite tweepop act featuring nobody called Billie and a chick who looks like Jessica Stevenson’s corpse, I am soooooo liberal” tip. But then they went and had a #1 hit in Spain off the back of a beer commercial, and I kinda felt like the legions of fans who’d supported Bran Van 3000 through the underground must have felt at the turn of the previous decade. Happy that they’re getting paper, a little annoyed that fucking with this music doesn’t make me special.

I think BtV&tDs are special, I’m not 100% sure. They’re precious, certainly: this isn’t your disarming Glaswegian mumble school of twee, it’s straight outta Stockholm with songs about “a crazy night in Oslo” with The Pipettes (you remember, they did that cover of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”), a song that namechecks Bree Van de Kamp, and endless references to a fictitious character called Pablo: Wes Anderson injected with Sunny Delight.

They work best when they’re downbeat, though. “There's Hope For Anyone” is just a wondrous plea bargain from a man who’s corrected his mistakes and can’t see why someone wouldn’t take him back. “Lily, look at my hands, I am not shaking anymore”. “I am willing to change, and I would pledge my hands to get back to you somehow”. “Lily, look at my bank account, I am not gambling any more”, a line that especially rings true for anyone who has wished terminal illnesses on Kieron Fallon’s immediate family at any point this decade, all spread over a track that sounds like the music Tullycraft would make if they were real people. Let’s just hope they’ve invested that beer cash wisely, they deserve a comfortable retirement after making tracks like this.
Dom Passantino

[YouTube]
[Album: Where The Ocean Meets My Hand]

Noughties By Nature #27: Amanda Palmer - Oasis

It’s the fag-end of the future's first decade and, in the land of the free, darkness is spreading under the shadow of a right-wing fundamentalist ascendancy that threatens reproductive rights and freedom of information. Who you gonna call, if not Boston’s finest punk-cabaret force of nature? On Oasis, Amanda hammers out a relentlessly breezy Beach Boys clap-along, face set in a rictus grin as her teenage protagonist recounts My Rape and Consequent Abortion: the High School Musical Version. This satire on received expectations of feminine behaviour sees life’s little misadventures pale into dismissible insignificance before our heroine's life-affirming receipt of a signed photograph from Oasis. And why not? Described by Palmer as ‘pro-choice but anti-stupid’, the song's strength lies not in trivialising real and immediate horrors, but in rendering them absurd enough to laugh at, and by extension pointing up the equal absurdity of their treatment in the social and political sphere. In a predictable if appropriately head-desking twist, the song’s subject matter meant that both the single and its Palin-baiting video were subject to an airplay ban in the UK. God knows what the Gallaghers made of it, but Oasis remains a jaw-dropping counterpunch for times when laughter is the most powerful weapon to hand.
Rhian Jones

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Who Killed Amanda Palmer]

The Weekly Sweep

Animal Collective – Brother Sport [Myspace] (Where their current profile picture teeters between 'pleasing' and 'awkward')

Au Revoir Simone – Another Likely Story [live YouTube]

The Bitter Springs - And Even Now [YouTube]

Bombay Bicycle Club - Always Like This [YouTube]

Brakes - Why Tell The Truth (When It's Easier To Lie?) [YouTube]

Broken Records - Out On The Water [live YouTube]

Camera Obscura - The Sweetest Thing [YouTube]

Felix - Death To Everyone But Us [Myspace]

Field Music - Measure [Myspace]

Florence & The Machine – You've Got The Love (XX remix) [YouTube]

Frankie & The Heartstrings - Hunger

Future of the Left - Arming Eritrea [YouTube]

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks [YouTube]

Internet Forever - Cover The Walls [liveish YouTube]

Lucas Renney - These Same Stars [live YouTube] (Ex-Golden Virgins singer gets his Bill Callahan-ish acoustic lament on, with some of Midlake backing)

Los Campesinos! – There Are Listed Buildings [YouTube]

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Higher Than The Stars [Myspace]

Rose Elinor Dougall - Fallen Over [Myspace]

Wojtek Godzisz — Rosette Nebula [Myspace]

The XX - Islands [live YouTube]

Noughties By Nature #26: Ash - Clones

Ash, then. Probably the best singles band of the last fifteen years, if we're honest. Meltdown was bigged up by everyone in Ash as being a departure for them to a heavier direction. It turned out that, of course, it was basically pop music with louder guitars and twiddlier solos than before. But Clones stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest - it was, as described by the band themselves, 'some heavy shit'.

The near tribal drums in the tracks intro are so deep as to invoke irritable bowel syndrome in the most hardy of listeners, and then the song quite literally explodes into a riff the Muse fans wish could have been on their last two albums. All the while, Tim Wheeler's lyrics touch on what a shame it is that everyone looks the same, a feeling that can only have increased amongst people as the decade has worn on. Of course, it's still got the singalong-a-chorus that almost all Ash songs have, and it's still, in essence a pop song. But that propulsive riff lifts it above almost everything that Ash have done post-1977. It's properly, actually brilliant.
Oliver Billenness

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Meltdown]

Noughties By Nature #25: Mclusky - To Hell With Good Intentions

In 1968, Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich gave an address to middle class American students on a mission service in Mexico about the hypocrisy of their charity, with a speech he called “To Hell With Good Intentions.” Illich was known for his often sarcastic, but clearly angry tone. That’s also a damned good description for the music of Mclusky. While it’s possible the members of Mclusky could be unfamiliar with the work of Ivan Illich, lines in their ferocious classic of the same name as Illich’s speech like “My love is bigger than your love” are fitting for the imposed benevolence of America’s middle class on poverty in other countries that pissed Illich off. As the old saying goes, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. Mclusky and Ivan Illich would surely agree that we’re all going straight to Hell.
Nick Olsen

[Spotify]
[YouTube (live)]
[Album: McLusky Do Dallas]

Noughties By Nature #24: New Order - Crystal

The last ten years have seen New Order finally come to terms with their previous history, embracing Joy Division in a way that they had never done so previously, cementing their place in British music folklore with the films 24 Hour Party People and Control, and releasing yet another Greatest Hits collection with half the tracks being incorrectly labelled or pulled from the wrong source. Business as usual, then. We even got another split with a similar level of acrimony as their post-Republic break-up. This time it looks like they'll never play together again. But back to happier times, and their first single from Get Ready, their comeback album released long ago in 2001.

Yes, it's partly responsible for The Killers. Please don't hold that against Crystal. It's a celebration of all that New Order have ever been; twenty years of dance and rock reflected in a mirrorball. Everything is in its right place - the keyboards, the drums, Barney's gibberish lyrics, and yes, the bass of Peter Hook, driving things along just like it always does. It's the sound of a band remembering just why they were so good together. Nothing else on Get Ready or the follow-up Waiting For The Siren's Call came close to recapturing the old glories, but Crystal showed that they could still be as good as they were in the Factory era.
Ian Pointer

[Spotify]
[YouTube (live)]
[Album: Get Ready]

Noughties By Nature #23: Los Campesinos! - You! Me! Dancing!

All you ever need, in the field of creative endeavour, is to have a brilliant idea, and to do it brilliantly. The rest takes care of itself. Los Campesinos! are a band who have a lot of brilliant ideas. Whether you believe they execute all of them brilliantly would normally depend on the kind of music you're into, as it's clearly a taste thing. However, on this song, you're either with me or you're wrong. Sorry.

You! Me! Dancing! is blessed with a brilliant central refrain, one which sounds grand on twinned distortoguitars, it sounds grand on glockenspiel, it sounds grand on keebs, it just. Sounds. Grand. When it begins, happiness descends from on high, like a tortoise from an eagle's claws, right between the eyes.

Naturally, this being a pop song from an uncompromising, lyric-driven hardcore indie band (albeit an uncompromising lyric-driven hardcore indie band with an abiding love of Kenickie), this is a song which a lot of the band's fans dismiss for being slight, or throwaway. THAT'S how good it is.

Not that it IS slight, you understand. How could it be, with lyrics like this?

"I always get confused, because in supermarkets they turn the lights off when they want you to leave, but in discos they turn them on"

Or this?

"on the way home, it seems like a good idea to go paddle in the fountain, and that's because it IS a good idea, and we're all like how Rousseau depicts man in The State of Nature - we're undeveloped, we're ignorant, we're stupid, but we're happy."

Hardly 'I Like To Move It, Move It', is it?

Apparently Los Camp's third album is gonna be their masterpiece, but it's not out until next year, which gives us just enough time to play this until the mp3 is worn smooth. And believe me, we WILL.

PS: Extra points are awarded for having an incredibly exciting introduction, which I've always meant to use as an alarm clock ringtone thing. Imagine the kind of productive day you'd have after a start like that.
Fraser McAlpine

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Hold On Now, Youngster...]

Noughties By Nature #22: Kate Nash - Foundations

Some songs have a structure and style that instantly defines them as ‘classics’. No doubt many end of decade lists will feature songs by The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, White Strips, Arcade Fire etc. All the kinds of songs that journalists wet themselves over and will discuss in future years in Q/Uncut/Mojo type publications. It’s pretty damn likely that Foundations by Kate Nash will not be considered by many as such a classic. If you do, let me come round and make love to you, for we have a massive connection.

So why choose Foundations? Well, from the moment Nash kicked and skipped out of Myspace it was love at first listen for this writer. From the early gigs where we first met her before she signed a major label, to the day she sent me a message saying "OMG I’m number 2 in the mid-weeks," I felt an unexplainable bond with the music of Kate Nash that I haven’t felt before or since. "You said I must eat so many lemons ‘cause I am so bitter, I said I’d rather be with your friends mate ‘cause they are much fitter," is one of the funniest, cleverest, cockiest and most memorable lyrics we have ever heard. No argument. Yes of course the My Fair Lady gawd blimey LDN accent may have irritated the pants off many, but Foundations was an edgy, poignant and brilliantly constructed pop song that stood out like a sore thumb in a chart full of R‘n’B footballers wives tosh.
Robin Seamer

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Made Of Bricks]

Noughties By Nature #21: The Unicorns – Les Os

At first I was pretty hesitant as to whether I should actually put this forward as one of my songs of the decade. You see, like the rest of The Unicorns’ first (and only) album, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone, Les Os isn’t really a ‘song’, in the conventional sense; no verse, chorus, or middle 8 here thank you sir.

While The Unicorns might wilfully reject such trifles as ‘conventional songwriting’, on Les Os they rattle along playfully, throwing away killer hooks the likes of which so many self-consciously ‘kooky’ indie bands (here’s looking at you, The Wombats) would die for. The vibrant, sprawling pop these boys peddle on tracks like this only show how much of a shame it was that they split up so quickly; had they gave it a few more years, right now we could be looking at something really, really special.
James Edwards

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?]

Noughties By Nature #20: Lupen Crook - Junk N Jubilee

Reportedly recorded in Mr Crook’s hallway, presumably during one of his rare fixed-abode phases, Junk n Jubilee is scene-savaging par excellence, flecked with spit and sarcasm. Its tune is built around a steely scrape and skitter that sounds like the malfunctioning of a music-box, and a spray of squealing laughter that makes you tense with the urge to put your fist through the window of the Hawley Arms. Lupen’s pinched-tight vocal squeezes itself through the gaps between, with all the disgusted Cassandrine despair of the only sober passenger on a nightbus home from Dalston.
Rhian Jones

[YouTube]

Noughties By Nature #19: Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi - Hear The Air

My downstairs neighbours aren't bad people - they were incredibly decent when the boiler flooded their kitchen, for example - but they do have the unfortunate habit of arguing very loudly on a regular basis, often late at night when I'm trying to sleep. Alas, unlike the bickering couple in Hear The Air their hollerings tend not to involve disgust at the other's habit of listening to Pavement; then again, if they were to involve gallons of semen I'd rather not know about it. I'd imagine that if their rowing was set to relentless guitars, occasionally bolstered with some pleasing keyboard noises and the odd dramatic silence, this would probably improve matters as well. And if only they'd realise that the rhythm is soothing we'd all get a lot more sleep.

It was all the more surprising that Hear The Air was so thoroughly ace, because Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi were deeply ordinary. I saw them a few times, usually as second band on in a Camden backroom, and was never exactly impressed. Perhaps it was the presence of guest vocalist/guitarist Rachel Tomsk (of whom I know precisely nothing, other than that I saw her play the song with the band once and that she was introduced as being in another band, and that she was quite cute) that raised them to a level they'd never come close to again, or maybe it was that anything more than insults and rollicking guitars was beyond them. Still, one great single is more than [insert name of the terrible yet inexplicably successful band of your choice here] ever managed, so good for them.
Matt Sullivan

[YouTube]
[Album: Vague Us]

Noughties By Nature #18: Brakes – Cheney

On holiday in New York with a mate, looking for a band to see. I want to go and see The Besties, he wants to see Brakes. I’d just finished explaining how a band formed by the spare drummer in BSP were unlikely to be great, when we realised the venues were next door to each other and we could do both.

Brakes are good, then they play Cheney and i’m hooked.

If you are trying to make a point don’t faff around and include some cryptic line in the third verse, just tell us what you think and move on (or play it again). “Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, stop being such a dick.” Eleven seconds of perfection. Point made, there is no need for anymore. And it reminds me of Napalm Death.
Matt Gaynor

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Give Blood]

Noughties By Nature #17: Bearsuit – Hey Charlie Hey Chuck

Although the death of John Peel prompted countless obituaries to cite his love of the White Stripes as evidence of his continuing relevance, really it was Bearsuit who exemplified the reason his place at Radio 1 still mattered – they made sweet, raucous, heart-breaking and bone-rattling kitchen-sink indie-pop (“In an era when almost everything is quite like something else, Bearsuit are not quite like anything”, lest we forget) that would not have been heard anywhere else other than, say, Norwich Arts Centre and yet so quickly would mean so much to so many. Their earliest singles still retain both a charming pop sensibility and a thrilling clatter of noise and screams that their occasional stage get-up of teddy bears swilling around in fake blood provided an apt metaphor for. Hey Charlie Hey Chuck, starting with the sound of (apparently) a toy turtle on the floor that – due to the opening line “There’s been an accident, oh no...” – instead sounds like panicked heavy breathing, perhaps reinvents the loud / quiet dynamic the best, making something sometimes sounding so serene simultaneously seem so sinister. Considering the lyrics are said to be about the human race having to ditch Earth and travel to a planet shaped like Charlie Brown’s head, that’s no mean feat. They may not quite have juddered the planet from rotating on its axis, but try and tell me that the Norwichcore scene at least half of, say, the last Indietracks line-up would even exist were this song never written.
Thomas Blatchford

[Spotify]
[YouTube]
[Album: Team Ping Pong]