Lists documenting the top albums of the year are always a bit sketchy. After all, how’s one supposed to compare two very different things? Can you compare apples and pork tenderloin?
Now, of course, there were albums that I missed. They are not listed. (What are they? Let me know.) And there are albums that didn’t make the cut, for various reasons. Some of them are compilations of old songs recorded new (Greatest Palace Music, Acoustic Citsuoca), some of them are nixed because they weren’t the best I’ve ever heard, and most because I needed to round off the list at an even number and I have time constraints. Unlike some bloggers, who have nothing but free time on their hands, I do work. I also didn’t want a top 47 albums of 2004.
So – without further a due, please enjoy my top 25 albums of 2004.
25. Of
Of the Elephant 6 collective, Of Montreal always stuck out as the one band flying much too high on Zoloft and mushrooms – a lethal dose that usually wore thin by an album’s end, unable to keep up with its own giddiness and ADHD. On this year’s Satanic Kevin Barnes and company finally streamlined their hyperactivity tendencies into fluid songs and wrote their mainstream (circa 1969 San Fran, of course) masterpiece. The album is a blast, full of fuzzy guitars, bubbling synths, handclaps and restrained, but sugar-sweet melodies. Satanic is perfect pop music accessible to any generation, perfect for any era, no matter how nostalgic it wants to sound or you want to make it.
24. Air – Talkie Walkie – Astralwerks
And so we may once again breathe sexy life back into the dull, dusty world of lounge. After too many Ibiza Chill Out compilations, it almost seems supernatural of the Frenchmen to sweep down and rescue us from mediocrity all while making us moist. I also love that this is a soft rock album marketed as electro/indie-cool. Must have the Avants up in arms.
23. Growing – The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light – Kranky
This is a spectral record, bright with pinks, purples, and yellows, but smart enough to use white (and black) light, and hot enough to singe your ears. “Onement” has an ebb and flow of drone (from guitar and bass? Oh, nein!) floating so gently overtop, until you’re pummeled by cymbal and set up for a brainmelt in “Anaheim II”. I never thought Sunn O))) could/would play Windy & Carl songs!
There’s not much more that I can say about this album that hasn’t been written and rewritten all year. But a cocksure, self-conscious MC/DJ? Fucking sweet. Never thought I’d see the duality of man exemplified in a rapper. The songs are good too.
21. Sonic Youth – Sonic Nurse – Geffen
20. Tom Waits – Real Gone – Anti-
Weird belchy blooze, another swift left turn for Mr. Waits. Making the most of the mouth, this record gets rid them bossy drum kits. Sounding like it was recorded by some insomniac down the hallway, Waits gives us some full-flavored late night admissions, complaints and tall tales that never sound so sweet, seductive and scary. This is garage rock – guitars all covered in oil, vocals choked on carbon monoxide, built out of scrap metal.
19. Jack Rose – Raag Manifestations – VHF
Rising above the chaotic fingerpicking of Mr. Rose’s Octopus Hand is the sweet, sweet sound of melancholic bliss – a wonderfully hopeful sadness. He plays fast, fierce yet serenely at the same time – I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Jack Rose is an unbelievably great talent set on transcending the listener’s experience of both middle-eastern and American folk guitar music. As organic and breathtaking as daybreak.
Not nearly the furiously bloody Michigan Haters, and thank goodness (panic attack). NYC’s Sightings have taken a step back – there’s actually space here, not the full bore, senses assault noise of previous efforts. We get still get that freaky shit, just more time to think about it: rusted razor-wire strung guitars gagged and shoved in a wah pedal, bass played inside the cabinet with exposed electric wires buzzing at 10,000 Volts threatening to electrocute (you can hear them), and drums like pistons pumping black rotten blood, not oil/cymbals made from ban saws. This is Metal, Son.
17. TV on the Radio – Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes – Touch & Go
The amazing thing that I keep forgetting about this album is how seductive a simple song can be. Most of the songs off of DYBTB are nothing really more than a 4-note fuzz-bass line and a drum machine. But, FUCK, this is some dank, dirty dog shit. Them gettin all funky and sweaty to some doo-wop! They hot like that barbershop shit dawg! Takin the breath out my chest! Soul music never really left, but its back.
16. Interpol – Antics – Matador
15. 90 Day Men –
Never have I seen cover art so perfectly fit a band’s sound. This band freaks me out with how right on they were with their field + pink flowers + acid-drop sky. The music is at once pastoral, naturally sculpted and psychedelic in the best late 60’s, early 70’s sense of the word. The music is prog, but is at once fluid and poppy, not strenuous, over-bearing or pretentious. Space music – needs to be tech-savvy to get up there, but once it does: zero gravity.
14. Liars – They Were Wrong So We Drowned – Mute
Worlds different than their debut, They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, this concept album about witches was fucking gonzo. Ramshackle instrumentation, organically forming in
13. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free – Vice
I question the fact that there’s a better power-pop album that came out all year (I didn’t hear The Slow Wonder.) Undeniable 3-part harmonies are the captain driving this cigarette boat right through the swimming area. Guitars are the fuel, going 100 miles only to stop on a dime. Everything here seems to be going in a different direction, but came together so damn perfectly. Undoubtedly one of the best singles record of the year, could’ve been released in 1982, but wasn’t. I can’t wait to see this band live. If you haven’t heard it check: “A to B”, “Decent Days & Nights”, “The City is Here For You to Use” and “Hounds of Love”, but listen to it all if you can.
11. Joanna Newsom – The Milk-Eyed Mender –
Another great acoustic folk records coming out this year. Newsom’s voice is one of the strangest, best things to ever happen to music. Part 12-year-old innocent, part scary 80-year-old mystic, it never fails to color her collection of lush, organic, harp-driven songs. Close to being the most human record I’ve ever heard – it takes a heartless bastard to not well up with emotion at the sound of “The Sprout and the Bean”.
10. Animal Collective – Sung Tongs – Paw Tracks
After people heard last year’s Hear Comes the Indian everyone expected big things. But probably not a sunny
9. Modest Mouse – Good News for People Who Like Bad News – Epic
Ok. Mr. Brock stopped being depressed? Not really. The music got more accessible? Not much. Modest Mouse had a hit record? What? How this happened, I’ll never understand. Granted, “Float On” is a rock-solid song, should’ve always been on modern-rock radio. But it still makes no sense. Is the world getting it? This record for all its semi-optimism finally makes me think that it’ll be ok, we’re not all that dumb. It’s a record, like Emergency & I before it, that deals with maturity and acceptance – something everyone can get down with every once and a while.
8. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti 2 – The Doldrums – Paw Tracks
John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats wrote that this record was “re-encrusting the diamond.” As hard as I can think, I can’t come up with a better way to say what this sounds like. The songs sound exactly like they came out of a dream – I’ve heard them: they’re 80’s roller rink slow songs, 70’s lite disco pop, muzak, something familiar but so distant. I don’t know how fucked up Ariel Pink is, how much of a genius he is, but its damn scary how perfectly he nailed a soundtrack everyone’s heard but no one owns. Every song is covered in layers of bad production, detuned guitars, ghetto Casios and choppy structure, but shining through is the work of an unbelievable songwriter ruining my late nights.
7. Brian Wilson – Smile – Nonesuch
For a record that birthed an entire indie label, Elephant 6, the hype and expectation surrounding Smile had to be huge. Was it going to be weird, avant music? It’s a teenage symphony to God – is it going to be (gasp) Christian? Is it going to be nothing what it should have been now that its 37 years later? Is it going to be bad? Put the record on and suddenly all those questions disappear. Brian Wilson’s got his shit together, can still sing like a bird, and can put a song, make that record, together like no one in rock music has ever been capable of doing. Is this the way Smile was really envisioned back in the day? Hell if I know, but if this is it, it sounds great to me.
6. Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands & Nino Rojo – Young God
The gypsy guitar ballads contained on these volumes are all the resin these ears need to get stoned. Psychedelic folk music has never sounded so fluent and organic – Mr. Banhart has an undeniable gift for the cerebrally comforting. His voice is another strange mixture, this time a crow and man, but succeeds better than anything in conveying the universal message in singing a song about teeth or spiders. His songs are meant to send you onto a different plane, but still keep you grounded in the fascination with the natural beauty of music. “At the Hop”, by the way, is one of the best singles released all year: a beautiful tune about returning home, even if you can’t.
5. Comets On Fire – Blue Cathedral – Sub Pop
For all the psych music I listened to this year, no one made as cohesive a statement as Comets On Fire’s Blue Cathedral. The album starts out like any good rock album should: threatening to tear your tits off. But real sly-like, the Comets stop every once and a while stroke your inner thigh. It’s a perfect album: hott riffs, damp, spacey lows, and mind-bending psychedelic guitar willing to takeoff or float you along at its will. You have no say at this record’s mercy. The Comets take their cues from all good things psych: tye-dyes and bellbottoms, 70’s prog, Sabbath, Haight-Ashbury acid tests, heavy metal, Inna-Gadda-Da-Vidda organs, caterwauling vocals, echo, echo, echo. For anyone that has ever taken a bong hit: this is the dank shit.
4. Madvillain – Madvillainy – Stones Throw
Often times collaborations fail. Something about the star power or egos of two (or more) people colliding usually leads to underdeveloped, but promising things. Fortunately, none of that is even remotely seen here. There’s no overshadowing, there’s no dominant force and there’s virtually no failure here at all. What could have been a huge swing and a miss for hip-hop turns into a sexy new step in the right direction for all music. At first we get the prerequisite warm up (“The Illest Villains”) followed by the unreal one-two of “Accordion” and, my favorite, “Meat Grinder” (dig that fat bass thunder, guitar slides and tipsy percussion). Madlib’s beats are mostly taken from lost jazz and soul looking through an outer space lens, perfectly fitting MF Doom’s “buttery flow”. Listen to this one: no one can put words together like Doom can (“Whip up a slice of nice verse pie/Hit it on the first try/Villain/The worst guy”), and no one’s ever been ever to sonically match that flow as well as Madlib has here.
3. Iron & Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days – Sub Pop
Sam Beam plays simple American folk music that could’ve been written at any time. Its sound is lost in time. His voice sounds like it’s covered in dust. He’s an everyman that sings of the world he sees in the terms he sees it. His music is birthed in the South, but doesn’t just exist there. Mr. Beam isn’t reinventing anything with Our Endless Numbered Days. But he is creating the most beautiful music I’ve heard all year. His songs are about God, our land, family, escaping, death. Oh. And love.
2. The
Who hasn’t written about this record? I’m at a loss for words, for trying to say something new. After all every damn website has an opinion on this “emotional masterpiece”. You all know the back story, where the band is from, how well they’re doing, etc. So what more can I say? In truth, I don’t want to write about this. For me, it’s an amazing record that everyone should hear. Something that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck every time you hear it. This is the record that got you excited about music in the first place.
1. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born – Nonesuch
Maybe I missed the boat this year. Maybe this was an album of undercooked ideas with grand ideas. Maybe they shouldn’t have started with such a slow song. Maybe Wilco had their day in the sun, its time to turn to something new. Maybe they’re not the great indie hope. Maybe they’re too all over the place for their own good. Maybe they’re not perfect. Maybe Jay Bennett was integral to the band. Maybe they should stick to what they were good at: pop songs, not 10 minutes of noise.
Pretty much all I heard this year about this album can be summed up in “it’s not as good as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. No, no it’s not. But it isn’t YHF. It isn’t striving to be YHF. It’s striving to be something so completely different.
A Ghost Is Born is a beast of an album. It’s too big, its erratic, its heavy-handed, sometimes its too light, etc., etc. But one thing you can’t deny: it’s wholly American. Like the proverbial melting-pot that
