THE TOP 100 GREATEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

Yeah, they’re one-trick ponies alright, but what does that matter when they’re the prettiest mares in the paddock

Read the original NME review from 2005:

There’s an old adage that states The Ramones only have one kind of song. Pah! You know what? People who say that are wrong. What’s more, they’re silly and reek of wee. See, da bruddas actually had two variants of their musical palate. Songs you could jump around like a giddy dog to (‘Blitzkrieg bop’, ‘Carbona Not Glue’) and then songs you could make with girls to (‘I Wanna Be Well’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’). Wanna know something else? Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah make The Ramones look like Radiohead at their eclectically eccentric, genre-hopping ‘Kid A’ era peak.
See the Brooklyn-based band really do only have one song. It’s a shuffling, organ-led number, with jingle jangle guitars, and whimsical, wry lyrics about girls that look like David Bowie, the quest to capture Bigfoot and the growth of beards. It’s both cordial and charming, the kind of song that plays in your head while you’re sat reading Sartre in the library and that foxy librarian comes over to tell you off for chewing gum. Yeah, we’ve all been there.
It’s a brilliant, brilliant song. As good as any Smiths album cut, or anything their spiritual peers REM have recorded in almost 20 years. And, like flumps, blowjobs and trying to sneeze while keeping your eyes open, partaking in it’s consumption is a devoutly enjoyable experience you’ll want to return to again and again. There’s a warmth and familiarity about singer Alec Ounsworth’s garbled lyrical mush that recalls the literature lyricisms of The Cure’s Robert Smith, yet is delivered via the nasal whine of Talking Heads’ David Byrne.
Likewise their chiming indie guitar, driven by the pounding of drums seemingly borrowed from Velvet Underground percussion goddess Moe Tucker, and low frequency bass parts that rumble like an expectant, long-dormant volcano. They create a sound in thrall to beauty and romance and youth, like Catcher In The Rye: The Musical, or an everlasting evening smoking spicy cigarettes with friends in the park as the sunset seeps into the ether. As the songs weave into the fabric of each other, it daubs a visual listen that’s both pretty and pouty. CYHSY’s is a veritable swoon of a record.
Through ‘Details Of The War’, ‘Is This Love?’, ‘Heavy Metal’, or indeed any of the songs that come after a clunker of an opener, would work brilliantly in their singularity, these are songs that would make fine single fodder, tunes that would make your shins skip as you go about your day. It’s just when they’re segued together, with little in the way of dynamic to alter the current of the record’s spin, they become one and the same. As we said, it’s a good song. A beautiful listen. A good record. With a peppering of variation it could have been a moment-defining one, a great record. Here’s to album number two then.
Where they go next time round is a troubling question. You’d hope they would craft another style of song, or molest their existing template into new, challenging ways. Yet circa their debut, CYHSY make the world seem silly and quaint, stylish and aloof, and as a document of beauty, 2006 should see them as peerless for much of their year. Yeah, they’re one-trick ponies alright, but what does that matter when they’re the prettiest mares in the paddock.

James Jam

This list is taken from the ‘End Of The Decade’ issue of NME magazine (on sale November 18th) where each album included is reviewed again from a 2009 perspective, alongside brand new interviews and a look back at the defining musical moments of the past 10 years.

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