360 records from the year 2000: 300 - 291

300. Sinead O’Connor: Faith and courage

On the basis of this record I’d say Sinead O’Connor has her heart in the right place. I hope she makes it through her issues, but she needs to stop making records as plainly autobiographical as this. Or at the very least I need to stop listening to them.
By the way, that late ‘80s sophisticated, lightly electronic, Nellee Hooper sound (you know, pillows of synths, polite ‘beats’, not much else going on) may have sounded ok back then –‘may’, because I’m not a fan – it sounds very plastic now.
And by the way, the Christian New Age Celtic Reggae tracks (‘The lamb’s book of life’, ‘Kyrie eleison’) that pop up at the end of this album are not an acceptable alternative.

At its best: The healing room, Jealous (the first great song we encounter in this list), Dancing lessons
At its worst: Daddy I’m fine – Alanis Morissette lives.

299. Courtney Pine: Back in the day

Funky soul-jazz with some classic soul covers, but…smooth and shallow.

298. DJ Food: Kaleidoscope

Tries so hard to be ‘Endtroducing’’s heir. Intermittently successful, but this one can’t squelch that question at the back of my head: ‘Does all this cut and paste, besides point at some great stuff other people did in the past, really add any new meaning in the now?’ If jazz is so cool, why doesn’t he go out and play some? The moody second half which strives for greatness, falls flat. Still, it has ambitions, nothing wrong with that.

At its best: The riff, The ageing young rebel, The crow…, Nocturne (sleep dyad 1) – on consideration, all of these are still too long

297. B.B. King / Eric Clapton: Riding with the king

There’s no reason this should have gone any further than every other Saturday in the garage. Maybe one show at the House of Blues. But not this record.

At its best: the title track has some groove to it

296. Armand Van Helden: Killing puritans

First I thought it was comically bad, but I grew into its blunt, caveman like qualities. Still, a little goes a long way, and most tracks are a long way.

At its best: Full moon
At its worst: Little black spiders

295. Bad religion: The new America

These guys are just never going to let the music breathe. It’s a solid set of songs, but every one of them is at the same level of intensity, has the same arrangement and the same speed. That’s not what I was hoping for from a Todd Rundgren production. It’s all so predictable.

294. Joan Osborne: Righteous love

I’m not giving in to the impulse to ridicule Joan Osborne. It’s just too easy. You know her (at least as well as I do – ‘One of us’, and that’s about it). Truth is, there’s nothing to ridicule on here. It’s perfectly competent, but it’s obviously the product of seasoned studio vets jamming it out. That’s not what I want. Here and there you get a couple of seconds of pleasant George Harrison-style slide guitar which is always over much too soon. And a perfectly serviceable cover of Dylan’s ‘Make you feel my love’. Serviceable.

At its best: Make you feel my love

293. Joi: We are three

A record made in tragic circumstances: Brit Haroon Shamsher of Joi travelled to Bangladesh to record local sounds to include on this, Joi’s second album in the short-lived Asian Underground genre. 6 weeks later he died, leaving the record unfinished. His brother finished the mix of British beats and Indian traditional melodies that became the record.
Story aside, there’s something wrong with this picture. The immediately appealing tracks here are those that have the most Indian sounds inserted (compare the otherworldly ‘Prem’ and ‘Triatma’ with the familiar, irritating and seemingly endless ‘Don’t cha know that’ or ‘Tacadin). In fact, it makes me wish to just hear the unadulterated recordings from India, which – I suspect from the excerpts – possess a spiritual, yearning quality (Course they could be singing about gambling and whoring for all I understand - but that’s what it sounds like to me). What (let’s cast this PC global village gibberish to the wind immediately) to make of this no doubt well-meant marriage of traditional, spiritual material with the pump of secular pop, stiff and precise, almost militaristic, Chemical Brothers-TM big beat, I do not know. I can’t really help but sound shallow and unwise. (That the writing credits for all this mix ‘n’ match music remain solely with Joi doesn’t help).

Edit: As time goes by, this record is starting to annoy me more and more.

At its best: Prem, Triatma, Flying with you

292. Lou Reed: Ecstasy

Ugh, pack it in Lou. Is it wrong to expect so much more?

At its best: Modern dance, Turning time around, Big sky

291. Los amigos invisibles: Arepa 3000

Too kitschy to be of any use. Aims for fun, but is just too boring.