The Best Psychedelic Rock Albums of the 2000s
Contents
A list of the best psychedelic rock albums of the 2000s, including records by The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, and MGMT.
The Best Psychedelic Rock Albums of the 2000s
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Led by the inimitable Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips have always had one foot firmly in the avant-garde, and that approach to music-making led to some of their best work on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The album’s eponymous heroine does battle with, you guessed it, pink robots, and throughout the course of the record, she learns some valuable lessons about life, love, and loss. Musically, the album is all over the place, veering from delicate acoustic ballads to full-on noise rock anthems, but it’s held together by Coyne’s knack for writing catchy hooks and memorable melodies.
The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium
De-Loused in the Comatorium is the debut studio album by American rock band the Mars Volta, released on June 24, 2003 by Universal Records. The story of the album is told through the fictional character Cerpin Taxt, and is based on the suicide of Julio Venegas, a close friend of Omar Rodríguez-López. It is a concept album about Cerpin Taxt’s coma and his death.
The album received critical acclaim upon its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 87, based on 27 reviews, which indicates “universal acclaim”. Steve Huey from Allmusic gave it 4.5 stars out of 5 and said that “The Mars Volta’s full-length debut is an ambitious effort that largely succeeds in its vast scope”.
TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain was one of the most important and acclaimed albums of the 2000s. It was a critical and commercial success, and it helped to cement the band’s place as one of the most innovative and exciting groups of their generation. The album features a unique blend of styles, including rock, electronic, and experimental music, and it is full of catchy hooks and memorable melodies. return to Cookie Mountain is an essential album for any fan of psychedelic rock.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell
Fever to Tell is the debut studio album by American rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, released on April 29, 2003 by Interscope Records. The album was produced by David Andrew Sitek and mixed by Mark “Spike” Stent.Sitek also contributed his own instrumentation to the record, notably the bass guitar and keyboards.
The album’s artwork was designed bytag teaming with members of the art collective e-Xplo. It features an image of a woman with a third eye and two snakes wrapped around her body.
The first single from the album, “Date with the Night”, was released on April 28, 2003. The second single, “Maps”, peaked at number 33 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart in November 2003. The album’s third single, “Y Control”, was released in 2004 and peaked at number 30 on the same chart.
Fever to Tell received positive reviews from music critics, who praised its raw energy and punk rock influences. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 82 based on 26 reviews.
In 2012, NME ranked Fever to Tell at number 309 in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2013, Fever to Tell was ranked at number 906 in Pitchfork’s list of top 1000 albums of all time from 1963 to 2013.
Tame Impala – Innerspeaker
Hailing from Australia, Tame Impala is a psychedelic rock band that has been active since 2007. The band’s debut album, Innerspeaker, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim. The album was nominated for several awards, including the prestigious Mercury Prize. Innerspeaker is often cited as one of the best psychedelic rock albums of the 2000s, and it is certainly one of the most influential. The band’s unique sound, which blends elements of shoegaze, pop, and electronica, has inspired numerous other artists to experiment with psychedelic rock.
