Playlist : August 23rd - 27th, 2010 : The Noughties

We're almost home kids. It's the 00s and here we are with the final themed playlist. Next time I'll be back to randomly throwing together albums I haven't listened to in a while, albums I always listen to and whatever I've managed to discover the week before.

My 00s list seems to contain a lot less critical acclaim than previous lists, but maybe that's the decade...

• Counting Crows - This Desert Life : Where the early 90s had seen August and Everything After on high rotation for me, the long wait for Recovering the Satellites had made sure I still got excited about a Crows release. They've fallen out of favor with my ears through no fault of their own, but these early tunes still make sense. I especially enjoy the poetry of Mrs Potters Lullaby and the ruckus of hidden track Kid Things.

• Paul Kelly - Ways & Means : Ever since an old friend slipped me a Bali copy of Under The Sun, I have appreciated Paul Kelly; Australia's greatest songwriter. Ways & Means was released in 2004, around about the time I first started relief teaching at Atwell PS with my wife. The following year (I think) Paul Kelly toured the album and did a free gig on the South Perth foreshore that my wife and I attended. Not only was it my introduction to the Sensitive New Age Cow Persons (a great band if you ever get a chance), it was the last concert I went to with my wife since our first child was born in 2006. Needless to say, the tunes and the memories are dear.

• Hilltop Hoods - The Calling : As uncool as it is amongst even some cynical devotees of Australian Hip Hop, I can't say enough good things about the Hoods. At a time when I had abandoned my deeply ingrained old school culture for grunge and then folk, it was Hilltop Hoods who made the music that brought me back. It was thanks to them that I dug out my old cassettes and LPs and went buying everything on CD again - albums like Paid In Full and Fear Of A Black Planet that I couldn't live without. It's the guys from Adelaide who restored my faith in Rap and old style positive lyrics with funk and soul breaks. They led me to Pegz and The Herd and Bias B and the other 'skip hop' artists who I'm glad I found. If you check my last.fm stats, The Calling is most likely my most played album. If not, it will be Hard Road.

• Radiohead - In Rainbows : I chose this album not because I listened to it a lot (that would be OK Computer), but because it was an important album in the context of the decade. It seems a bit passe now, but when Radiohead dropped In Rainbows and told people to pay whatever they wanted, even nothing, it was a big statement and a radical plan. By all accounts it has worked out for them. If more bands did things that way, I think piracy would decrease. You'll always get cheapskates and non-fans downloading the music for nothing, but more people would pay than not were it made available this way instead of for $30 at some poxy Sanity store, I believe (or at a crappy bitrate from iTunes).

• Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker : Back when I was a devoted Counting Crows fan, I searched high and low for bootlegs and such from the band. One tune they covered live was Come Pick Me up. To hear Adam Duritz tell it, the horror of Come Pick Me Up's tale of dysfunctional love was not that the narrator's girlfriend slept with his friends but that she stole his records. I could relate to that, so I hunted down the original version. What has followed since is album after album by Ryan Adams, The Cardinals, Whiskeytown, Patty Duke Syndrome, Sad Dracula, Caitlin Cary, Neal Casal, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and a bunch of other Alt Country artists who had nothing to do with the Radams juggernaut. Grizzly, you da man.
  

• Whiskeytown - Pneumonia : I will always be grateful to my mate @sunky for introducing me to Whiskeytown. When I started working with him, I had just discovered Ryan Adams via Heartbreaker and hadn't done my homework yet and so didn't know of Radams' former life. This is probably my most favorite album and it sounds exactly like my 00s.

• Beck - Sea Change : I was late to Sea Change, because Beck lost me for a while. I don't know what album it was, but I was into One Foot In The Grave and Mellow Gold and something after that didn't do it for me. Then I read a review of Sea Change and it sounded good, so I bought it. I really like it. It made me a Beck fan again. Funny aside; I used to hear the chorus in Lost Cause as "Baby, I'm a lost cause" instead of "you're" That one word makes a heap of difference to the whole song. Try it.
  

• Eminem - The Eminem Show : The 2000s belonged to Eminem as far as mainstream rap went. The gigantic success of The Marshall Mathers LP, the hotly anticipated 8 Mile movie coming out and the deeply personal lyrics of #1 hit Cleaning Out My Closet really did make the whole world into Eminem's audience. Back in the mid 00s, Em really put on a show. Then he wen missing and only just reemerged - to what extent is arguable.

• Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad : Through a nineties obsession with Dylan, I grew to appreciate folk music in many forms. As a fan of Springsteen's starkly sparse and raw Nebraska album, it was only a small step to Tom Joad. The album weaves tales of illegal immigrants, homeless drifters, racist small town rednecks, broken dreams and desperation in modern settings that bring to life the 1930s dustbowl and the titular man of the hour, Steinbeck's famous protagonist.
  

• Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis : Another album introduced to me via @sunky. For me, our friendship has always been heavily steeped in music. From song of the week to catching Radams at metro, we've tended to open up new and old tunes. This album is worth the admission price for Running The World alone, but then you get the brilliance of From Auschwitz to Ipswich thrown in.
  

And that's it. All you need to remember now, if you're Australian and voting this weekend is the all important rule of life and of politics - Keep Left.

Damn the man. That is all.