080: Liars
Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like EP
[Mute; 2002]

By the time their first album reached us, Liars had established themselves as unfiltered, incendiary, furious, cacophonous, barely-containable dance-punkers. But above all that, they wanted to subvert expectations. Liars are natural pranksters, and the Fins EP was-- along with the 30-minute track that closed their debut-- proof that the band was comfortable defying expectations. "Pillars Were Hollo and Filled With Candy So We Tore Them Down" foreshadows the creepy noise-chants (and the Halloween-esque themes) of We Were Wrong, So They Drowned while retaining bits of their former ESG funk and frantic delivery. The lurching "Everyday Is a Child With Teeth" borders on atonal. Their one concession to dancepunk is a cleaner recording of "Grown Men Don't Fall in the River, Just Like That," a snapshot of the band's former dynamics. With this single, Liars' plan of attack was explicitly laid out, meaning it was inscrutable. --Jason Crock

079: Gorillaz
"Clint Eastwood"
[Parlophone; 2001]

The most perverse thing about "Clint Eastwood" is that it doesn't quite need its whaa-whaa-whaa spaghetti-western sample (nor, consequently, the title "Clint Eastwood", since the sample provides the only tenuous connection between the song and the erstwhile mayor of Carmel, Calif.). God knows there's enough going on otherwise, even before Del the Funky Homosapien takes over with his vague oration: "The essence the basics/ Without it you make it/ Allow me to make this/ Childlike in nature." The story is simple to a fault: someone (Damon Albarn) had come across one of those elemental hooks ("Tom's Diner", the "Jaws" theme etc.) that appear to exist somewhere in nature, like ore, to be found rather than composed, and the rest of the gang did nothing to screw it up. It's hardly worth discussing the Gorillaz themselves-- a weak concept that would have made sense only if the members had the nerve to stay anonymous; suffice it to say that "Clint Eastwood" appears poised, and perhaps carefully positioned, to outlive the whole deal. --Michael Idov

078: Alan Braxe & Fred Falke
"Rubicon"
[Virgin; 2004]

While Paris' Alan Braxe and Fred Falke normally concern themselves with straight-up French house, the bloodline of one of their most popular tracks is a little more up for debate. Based around a swirl of insistent synths that squeal like car tires, "Rubicon" eschews the functional 4/4 glide of regular house for a more agitated, coked-up rhythm. Sounding like Jan Hammer by way of The Rex Club, it invokes the gaudy, glorious confidence of 80s cop show themes and comes out sounding positively triumphant. A definitive break from the normally gushy, effervescent timbres of French house, "Rubicon" is very much its own thing-- a surefooted ode to 80s American excess as refracted through a distinctly French sensibility. --Mark Pytlik

077: Talib Kweli
"Get By"
[Rawkus; 2003]

When Nina Simone passed on April 21, 2003, she left more than a half-century of spit and soul. Her wandering spirit still skips poles with ease and class. A month before her death in France, Simone embarked on another musical divergence, only this departure would transplant the sonorous vox behind the holy incantations of "Sinnerman" onto Kanye's galloping snare and John Legend's collapsing piano.

"Get By" is wrapped in the power of desperation. Already well-versed in the griot's exhortations, Brooklynite Talib Kweli revisits the storyteller ethic to weave a tale of real pain stripped of New York Post fanaticism. Painting vivid soliloquies that range from his grandmother's trials as a single mother to the tragedy of gangsterism, Kweli mated his socially responsible former self with his commercially viable necessity. The resulting irony was delicious. "Get By" had kids in the club screaming Nina Simone between sips of Grey Goose while teens at the prom high-stepped to the epilogues of the welfare state. Now that's some crazy shit. --Jamin Warren

076: Interpol
"Obstacle 1"
[Matador; 2003]

Despite harboring the infamous "Her stories are boring and stuff/ She's always calling my bluff" couplet (see also frenzied bellows of: "It's in the things that she puts in my hair!"), Interpol's "Obstacle 1" is a strange, thoughtful meditation on love and time, anchored by throbbing post-punk guitar and Paul Banks' deep, tottering vocals. Banks' slippery lyrics rub up against anxious, aggressive guitar bits (themselves engaged in prickly interplay, all ups and downs, highs and lows), creating a song as bewildering as it is engaging. In 2002, Interpol had to endure an entirely absurd amount of comparisons to Joy Division, but "Obstacle 1" proved that they were standing on their very own suit-clad legs: "Obstacle 1" is a dynamic, unpredictable, and wholly distinct triumph. --Amanda Petrusich

075: Radiohead
"There There"
[EMI; 2003]

Such is our love for Radiohead that "Creep", instead of haunting the band well into their sine-wave phase, has been-- in a rare show of fanboy magnanimity-- quietly dismissed as juvenilia. That's too bad, actually, because it contains more than a germ of the Radiohead to come. The song's biggest hook, for instance, was not the Explosive Chorus (a sad cliche by 1993) but the two terrifying string slaps that preceded it: A device so simple it had every guitarist in the world surprised how in the hell hadn't they thought of it first. On "There There", Radiohead manage to top themselves in the same department: the nervous center of the song is, unbelievably, a drum fill. You know which one: it ends the tune. Composed of two robotic, Dave Grohl-style snare rolls, three 16th-notes each, it sounds almost exactly like Greenwood's "Creep" figure; the rest of the song is so accomplished it's a yawn to describe-- a gorgeous vocal singing about a siren singing you to shipwreck (!), terrifically twisty changes, complicated yet totally lucid mix-- but it's this weird little self-salute reaching from 2003 to 1993 that makes it, well, perfect. --Michael Idov

074: Destiny's Child
"Say My Name"
[Sony; 2000]

The fact (1) that every man, woman, and child in America can sing the vocal hook from this song despite the fact (2) that the beat and bassline sequence underneath that hook is so deeply tricked out and bizarre (we're talking deliriously fast doubletime offset snare runs on top of wah guitar, Martian sleighbells, lite classical string stabs and acoustic fingerpicking, y'all) could be called a testament to the ideological triumph of Ms. Knowles and company's yummy vocal delivery over the icily brilliant formalism of Rodney Jerkins' programming, were it not for the fact (3) that both the singing and the programming are shot through with the exact same precision-tooled logic of control-freak paranoia. Which is why this is such a distinctly American anthem. Facts are facts. --Drew Daniel

073: Belle and Sebastian
I'm Waking Up to Us EP
[Jeepster; 2001]

On "I'm Waking Up to Us", Belle and Sebastian make manifest their long-latent adoration of Love's Forever Changes as Stuart Murdoch expertly channels Arthur Lee's sleepy-lidded romanticism. With the help of Mike Hurst (producer of such pop landmarks as Petula Clark's "Downtown"), the group slices a sliver of perfection from a lush confection of oboe, flute, and bassoon. And there's more homage paid on "I Love My Car", whereon Murdoch sings "I love my Carl/ I love my Brian, my Dennis, and my Al/ I could even find it in my head to love Mike Love" as the song's playful horns eventually join into a full-fledged Dixieland promenade. The closing "Marx and Engels" is the type of effortless piano-driven trifle that probably falls out of Murdoch's pockets when he's boarding the Metro, but packed alongside these companions it reflects a handsome glow. --Matthew Murphy

072: Luomo
"Tessio"
[Force Tracks; 2003]

Sneak preview time: Vocalcity unfortunately just missed our album list, but "Tessio" is a worthy avatar-- and one of the most debilitating tracks I have ever heard. Finnish tech-house producer Vladislav Delay initiated the Luomo project to examine his own bouts with love; he's very thorough, and his heart is quite deep. Over cold, fleshy clicks-- winter hands without gloves-- at one point a man and a woman sing in duet: "I'm trying to be all yours/ Although I ain't answering your calls/ Don't say, it's false/ I'm only following my thoughts." A bit feta-cheesy on their own, the lines teethe as "Tessio" grows longer, less fragmented, more cocksure in its purge. That's where the devastation lies: A lovesick purge is never 100%, and the only thing we can get over is that we will never get over. --Nick Sylvester

071: White Stripes
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground"
[XL; 2002]

"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" opened the White Stripes' breakthrough White Blood Cells with the same whiff of amp feedback and lunkheaded distorted riffing that launched a thousand Estrus Crust Club singles, and for those first few seconds it certainly didn't appear that anything noteworthy was about to transpire. That impression changed permanently, however, the moment Jack and Meg casually wrapped their meat hooks around this song's burly chords and methodically ground them into powder. Despite all the ink that's been spilled on the White Stripes, Jack remains a drastically underrated lyricist, and this track contains his most subtle and evocative portrait of the lonesome disillusionment that accompanies a fading relationship. "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most," he cries, but these two barely needed a microphone for you to hear this powerhouse of a song coming down the hall. --Matthew Murphy