For many music fans, 2000 is a year to forget. British rock was mired in mimsy, trad-rocking, say-nothing, Radio 2-friendly MOR, led by the mediocre likes of Travis and Starsailor. Meanwhile, the UK top ten was overrun by day-glow pop aimed squarely at the pre-teen market. The perma-smiling, happy-clapping likes of Steps and S Club 7 made The Spice Girls look like The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. In desperation, we looked to the US and what greeted us? The god-awful, misogynist frat-boy apocalypse that was Limp Bizkit, who promptly defied both sense and working ears to become a massive international success.
Yes, sad and depressing times all round, especially for those of us who’d never been over-enamoured with the 60s-worshipping twonks who brought down Britpop. Oh, how we wished UK alternative music would get over its tawdry little mid-life crisis. How we longed for music to be strange, fearless and a little dangerous once more. We’d have to wait a little for that, but in 2000 there were a few scattered gems in the slough of shite, postcards from a parallel universe where pop was infinitely sexier, louder and weirder.
There was Primal Scream’s Exterminator, which took garage rock, granite-hard electro-funk, Krautrock and even some jazz and mixed them into an insanely thrilling proposition. Even though the band’s newly politicised stance was, to be generous, a little fuzzy, the defiant pose and balls-out experimentalism of Exterminator were pin-point sharp.
Meanwhile, from totally opposing ends of the experimental spectrum, came Add N to (X)’s Add Insult to Injury and Godspeed You Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. The former were a trio of weirdos specialising in fizzing, squelching electronic freak-outs with nudge-nudge-wink-wink names like ‘Pok’Er’Ole’ and ‘Brothel Charge’. The latter were a collective of shadowy Canadian post-rockers whose slowly unfolding, often elegiac music seemed to be as complete a rejection of 21st century consumer culture as one could wish to hear.
Unless, of course, you were a disciple of Our Blessed Gods of Alienation, Radiohead, and had been waiting faithfully for a communication from their hermetically sealed isolation pod since 1997. In 2000, our prayers were answered and what we received was the supremely, wilfully obtuse Kid A which promptly divided critical and fan opinion and, staggeringly, continues to do so 10 years hence. Whatever your opinion of the album, however, there’s no question that it stands as one of the landmark releases of the 00s as well as a testament to what can happen when a mainstream rock act decides to say ‘no’ often enough. Pay attention at the back, Chris Martin.
Elsewhere we had the warm amniotic glow and possessed elf singing of Sigur Ros, the raw, raggedy rock of The White Stripes and Queens of the Stone Age and the skewed pop genius of Outkast’s ‘Ms Jackson’. All of which was just enough to remind us why we still gave a big, fat fuck about music and, if turned up loud enough, served us well in drowning out the soul-deadening noise of Steps’ excremental cover of The Bee Gees’ ‘Tragedy’.
