360 records from the year 2000: 290 - 281

290. Toru Takemitsu: I hear the water dreaming

It’s a great soundworld, but someone forgot to turn on the light.

289. Los lobos: Run away with you

A bootleg of a December 1999 show. I quite like Los Lobos, but they were very right not to release live stuff like this – an unremarkable set of amped up Mexican r&b played too fast and blustering blues guitar solos.

At its best: Angel dance, This time

288. Thievery corporation: The mirror conspiracy

What’s wrong with the tail end of trip hop in 2000 is that it’s all so impersonal, more like a creation of etiquette circles than of artists. All the fancy middle eastern flavors and bossa nova influences are just window dressing on a stale slate.

At its best: So com voce

287. Ten Benson: Hiss

Sub-ZZ Top garage rock. Could’ve been entertaining, but oh, they forgot the songs.

At its best: I don’t buy it

286. Januaries: Januaries

A bid for post-modern Blondie?

At its best: Love has flown, a great pop song in the midst of overly self-aware retro’kitsch’.

285. Six by seven: The closer you get

Shoegazer throwback, in the heavy rocking 2000 vein (rather than the ethereal revival these days). A couple of good tracks, but overall, a little too light.

Edit: Forget about those good tracks – on closer inspection I couldn’t find ‘em anymore.

At its best: 100 and something Foxhall road

284. Mojave 3: Excuses for travellers

Today's special is British indie slowcore
We sell so much of this people wonder what we put in it
We're going to tell you right now
Give me about a half a teacup - of Neil Young acoustic guitar strum
Now I need a pound of preciously literate lyrics about writing letters from the frontlines of love
Now give me four tablespoons of boiling overblown arrangements without rhyme or reason
This is going to taste all right
Now just a little pinch of painfully white gospel backing vocals
Place on the burner
And bring to a simmer
That's it, that's it, don’t let it boil
Let it simmer
Let it simmer
Now simmer
Simmer some more

At its best: She broke you so softly, Prayer for the paranoid

283. U2: Million dollar hotel OST

‘Million dollar hotel’ was a Bono vanity movie project that went nowhere. The soundtrack has vanity written all over it. A high quality cast of players, of course, but in service of what? A couple of nice enough U2-by-numbers, ‘Falling at your feet’ and ‘The first time’. A number of drifting vague compositions that exploit mood for all their worth but end up sounding like the middle of nowhere (one has Bono crooning ‘weightless…stateless…’ for a long time, another begins with a movie dialogue ‘It was just when I jumped that I realized life is perfect. It’s filled with magic, beauty, opportunity…and television’). At that point it hits me that Bono may be semi-talented, he’s not half as talented as he wishes he was. After that it’s further downhill with Milla Jovovich purring and screeching through ‘Satellite of love’ like a real movie star acting like a singer, and a Spanish cover of ‘Anarchy in the UK’.

At its best: Falling at your feet, The first time
At its worst: Milla Jovovich does awful things to the last minute of ‘Satellite of love’.

282. Jill Scott: Who is Jill Scott?

It’s my belief more people than you think go to psychologists not to have better relations, but to have relations – but more about that later.

We’re quick to point out impoverished musicianship in rock, but it’s just the same in black music. This record’s self-aggrandizing intro finds Jill explicating her inspirations (I mean, really, why tell us on your own record? I’m listening to it already - I can hear it):‘listening to jazz’, while the whole set up of the ‘Jilltro’ is to make us buy into the notion of Jill Scott as a jazz poet, orating her sharp thoughts and declamations in an underground club. Don’t believe it, jazz has been narrowed down to a couple of electric piano thrills, the jazz poet is reciting Carly Simon. 

I don’t know many records so completely obsessed with the artist’s vision of him/herself as a lover (except for one song about the familiar underground jazz poet staple ‘are we watching tv, or is the tv watching us’, titled… ‘Watching me’). All of this is about relations, and with relations she means sex, and boy, sex changes her life all the time. It’s so intense and meaningful and sexy. I have a normal relationship and I don’t need to hear about this stuff. This record might just as easily be called ‘The 18 orgasms that changed my life’ or even ’18 orgasms that changed my life’ (cause who knows how many outtakes there are). But don’t expect to hear anything about the orgasms, right, just about how her life was changed – cause that’s what you should be interested in, you pervert, her life!

One thing Jill has in common with Carly and other early 70s soft singer-songwriters, is a complete immersion in contemporary psychology gobbledygook. So you get heavy breathing and whispering in some guys ear to release his inner warrior and stuff like that (it’s on there, I’m not looking up the song title, I’ve suffered enough – Edit: oh alright, it’s ‘Show me’). Another track (edit: ‘Honey molasses’, just so you know) contains an answer machine message from Jill: ‘Hey… last night was… (heavy breathing again)…it was (god, this woman is getting off on just remembering her orgasms)…look, just don’t…be scared’. Run, brother, run and never set foot in an underground jazz poetry club again! I understand, we all want to eat strawberries after sex once, but you can’t trust anyone who buys ‘em wholesale.

At its best: ‘Do you remember’, I guess

281. Tangerine dream: The seven letters from Tibet

Pretty, but I won’t miss it. Wallpaper.