You might end up accidentally getting this post twice, because it turns out I’m not actually sure how the internet works. But I do know how writing about bands works, so away we go-go. And yes, this is gonna be a whole ton of ‘00s bands, because I am nothing if not a product of my time.
15: System of a Down. I loved these guys in my teens, logged them as a cheesy embarrassment of my dorkus-malorkus adolescence in my twenties, and came back around to them in a big way in my thirties. The work started a couple winters ago, when me and my shithead buddies got wicked drunk and moshed to “Sugar,” as responsible grownass adults will. And the rest came in slowly. Serj Tankian’s incredible pipes (best showcased on “Chop Suey’s!” heartstopping chorus), the neverending tempo shifts that’ll forever keep you on your toes (“B.Y.OB.,” the shockingly jazzy “Question!”), and power ballads reflected through the funhouse mirror (“Aerials,” “Spiders,” and “Toxicity,” which I’m sure you’ve heard; “Forest” and “Sad Statue,” well worth revisiting if it’s been a while). Hell, their randomass and eminently stealable album full of goofy nonsense throwaways is somehow almost as good as Toxicity, and Toxicity stands out as a landmark of its era. And I haven’t even mentioned “Hypnotized,” which just. Fucking. Slams.
Note: finulanu’s Substack does not endorse the theft of Steal This Album! I will not vouch for you, cover your legal fees, or otherwise bail your dumb ass out should you get caught stealing it. I get it, vinyl is costly as hell these days, but either shell out the thirty bucks or play it on Apple Music. You fucking weirdo.
14: Gorillaz. I can already see the Britpop heads bristle at this next one, but we could expand this out to a Top 200 bands and I still might not find space for Blur. “Tender’s” a good one, absolutely, but to my ears Damon Albarn really got there when he teamed up with Jamie Hewlett, cooked up a bunch of cartoon characters, and made whatever the fuck music he wanted. I’d call them the Clash of the internet era, but they’re so much more than that. Entire worlds of music became accessible to me because of these dudes. It was hard for me to keep up my “I don’t like rap” facade while simultaneously jamming “Dirty Harry,” “Clint Eastwood,” “Feel Good Inc,” and “Rock the House,” all of which made it easy for me to transition into trip hop. Harder still for me to diss remixes when the second take on “19/2000” outstripped the original. All those twiddly synths and club beats my dumb ass used to dunk on? Shit, I sure changed my mind when I first heard “Dare.” And while I knew a little bit of roots reggae thanks to, yup, Bob Marley, I only learned of dub via the underrated peripheral project Laika Come Home. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve come around to Plastic Beach, which is easily on par with those first two albums, and their more recent Song Machine work sparkles as well. But those first two albums? Formative. I’ll toot my own horn and say I turned my younger brother onto a lot of great music when I was in high school; he returned the favor the day he brought Demon Days home.
13: Wilco. Without the aid of hit singles, eye-catching videos, or social media stunts, Wilco has quietly built one of the great discographies of my lifetime. At first this came courtesy of the unstoppable Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett partnership, which matched great songwriting with imaginative arrangements; the dudes MacGyvered excellent songs together, using everything from Stonesy horns and gutbucket clavinet (“Monday”) to mellotron strings (“I Can’t Stand It”) to skronky noise guitar (“I’m the Man Who Loves You”). And even after Bennett’s untimely exit (right after 2001’s brilliant Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), Tweedy kept it going, mining fractured pop (“Handshake Drugs”), ‘70s AM (“Impossible Germany,” complete with an excellent guitar solo), and vintage Dylan (“One Sunday Morning”). They’re still seeing the rewards today; as their debut A.M. approaches thirty, they’ve yet to release a record that’s any less than good. Hell, 2022’s Cruel Country offers a bevvy of rootsy gems, just like they gave us all the way back at Being There. How many of rock’s long runners can you say that of? Well, a couple more, but keep reading the list for more.
12: The Velvet Underground. They never made it in their time because they were the band that did everything wrong. And I’m not just talking about the taboo subject matter, which let’s face it is sort of the least interesting thing about this band anyway. They weren’t supposed to supplant guitars with screechy viola, but John Cale spun that into gold with “Venus in Furs” and “Heroin.” Drummers were generally encouraged to use their full cymbal kit, but pop on “Run, Run, Run” or “What Goes On” or “Beginning to See the Light” and try to resist dancing to Mo Tucker’s all-thump style. Virtuoso solos were rapidly becoming the order of the day, but Sterling Morrison’s stripped-down melodicism sounds all the more beautiful on “Pale Blue Eyes.” And it’s a good thing Lou Reed never learned how to croon or anything, because I hate the idea of an “I’m Waiting for the Man” or a “White Light/White Heat” without his sneering half-spoken drawl. Even when the dude writes proper pop songs, he fucks with them more often than not, and you come to see the brutal beauty in “Sunday Morning’s” cranked-up celeste or “Here She Comes Now’s” sputtering coda or “After Hours’” beautifully barren arrangement. And when they wrote pop songs the pleasant way, you got classics like “Sweet Jane” or hushed hymns like “Candy Says.” All the better that they interspersed the straighter stuff with weirdo freakfests such as the orgiastic “Sister Ray” or the imperious squall “All Tomorrows Parties” or even the so-bad-it’s-awesome “Murder Mystery.” Gotta keep them guessing, after all.
11: The Rolling Stones. So ok, you might ask yourself. How did I, born square in the middle of the millennial cohort, so connect with a band who has been old longer than I’ve been alive? Same way I connect with any other band: I took it back to their peak. There I found a great rock band, certainly - it’s hard to resist a Keith Richards riff, and Jagger’s outlaw charisma speaks for itself - but more to the point, an incredible dance band. Keith talks a big game about the “ancient art of weaving,” but to my ears, he sounds most in tune with drummer extraordinaire Charlie Watts. “Honky Tonk Women,” “Tumbling Dice,” hell even as far back as “Satisfaction.” Pocket. That’s what it sounds like, and it leaves Bill Wyman all kinds of room to sketch out subtle but powerful countermelodies. And Jagger was the master of suggestion, his tricks of emphasis and well-honed irony lending grace to even a song as outwardly crude as “Starfucker.” Which is secretly one of the greatest love songs ever written. It all came together on Exile on Main Street, a masterpiece of Americana made by a bunch of Brits in France, an album whose song about Jesus sounds like it’s about a demon and whose song about a drunken womanizer sounds like it’s about a saint. I was fourteen when I first heard that record, which put it at thirty-three, and those rhythms rumbled across fucking decades to get my ass shaking. I’m thirty-three now, and Exile’s fifty-two, and I’ve only grown to love it even more.