2000

03.
Radiohead
Kid A

When Radiohead released this I was pretty shocked and more than a little disappointed. OK Computer had been so good, and so important to the music scene I was into that this felt like a betrayal. Where were the damn guitars? It took me a while, but Kid A is as good as OK Computer (I won’t go so far as to say better), just very different. Of course Amnesiac was utter toss, but that’s by the by. ‘The National Anthem’ builds brilliantly around that simple bass line, and ‘Idioteque’ is one of their finest moments, with its “ice age coming” refrain. This proved that Radiohead could do whatever they damn well pleased: in fact it showed that they were great precisely because they did what they damn well pleased. How to change your entire career completely…

02.
Queens Of The Stone Age
Rated R

Their debut had passed me by, so it was not until I saw ‘Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret’ being played on the big screen on the last night of the 2000 Reading Festival (the day after they’d played), that I took any notice of the Queens. It wasn’t long before I bought this a fell deeply in love with it. Including the spiky riffing of tracks like ‘Monster In the Parasol’ and ‘Tension Head’ mixed with the acoustic dirt of ‘Autopilot’ and the progressive ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’. This had it all. Except…they went on to surpass it with a similar blueprint on Songs For The Deaf: but at the time this was utterly essential. What made it all the more important was that the Queens were damn cool. And in 2000, I thought I was too…

01.
At The Drive In
Relationship Of Command

Stupid hair, insane lyrics, passion, power and an unmistakably original take on ‘punk’, At The Drive In changed everything in 2000 with what was both their breakthrough album and their swansong. It still sounds fantastic to me. Aside from ‘Enfilade’ I still have no idea what any of the songs are about, but it doesn’t matter, because the passion translates. Every track is genius, and the inclusion of an Iggy Pop cameo on ‘Mannequin Republic’ rounds things off very nicely. This has been copied millions of times since, but nobody has come anywhere near. The most influential album in rock music since Nevermind, even if there has been others that are arguably better. Such a shame that this was the end. Although Cedric and Omar went on to glory with Mars Volta, this was their masterpiece.