Best of the decade

My list:

1. Radiohead, Kid A (2000)
2. Spoon, Kill the Moonlight (2002)
3. M.I.A., Arular (2005)
4. Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)
5. 50 Cent, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003)
6. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
7. Nick Lowe, The Convincer (2001)
8. The Shins, Oh, Inverted World (2001)
9. Kanye West, The College Dropout (2004)
10. Cat Power, The Greatest (2006)

(Average is 2002.8, slightly on the fogy side.)

The next 10:

11. Webb Brothers, Maroon (2000)
12. Salif Keita, Moffou (2002)
13. Feist, The Reminder (2007)
14. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca (2009)
15. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand (2007)
16. Teenage Fanclub, Howdy! (2000)
17. White Stripes, White Blood Cells (2001)
18. Beyoncé, Dangerously in Love (2003)
19. Grandaddy, Sumday (2003)
20. Camille, Le Fil (2006)

Decade postmortem: 2007 and 2008

Having gone through a decade of old top 10s, I’ve been thinking about the two contrary motives involved in putting these things together. On one hand, the lists express personal tastes, more emotional than analytical. And since they are usually cranked out on deadline at the end of the year, they can be inexact, first-draft statements reflecting a moment in time; it’s like a postmortem temperature taken while the body is still warm. This gut-level impulse tends to favor more unpredictable, less popular picks: fanboy plugs, showoff-y picks, oppositional stances.

On the other hand, you’re making broad statements about the state of music, and there have to be real criteria for that judgment. Less impressively, critics want to look smart to other critics, and that means balancing a certain number of obscurities with a certain number of choices in common, which function as trade credentials. This is the more calculating approach, and it’s the mindset of collective editorial lists at magazines and websites. With the imprimatur of a publication, personal feelings are minimized (as is the blame for erroneous or lame picks), and these lists end up being more official and predictable, in line with the consensus; in fact, they establish consensus.

Neither approach is right or wrong; they work together. But looking back years later it’s hard to hold on to those random, contrarian choices, since the vibe you felt making them in the first place has probably faded, and the weeding process of history has rearranged the field. For example, from our point of view 10 years later, Kid A towers over the releases of 2000, but at the time it was somewhat more controversial: Pitchfork put it at No. 1 that year, but it was only No. 5 in Rolling Stone, behind Eminem, U2, D’Angelo, even Madonna’s Music.

What this means for me is that as I’ve revised my lists they have probably become more “correct” but also less interesting: fewer surprises, fewer argument-starters, less defiant advocacy. One of my favorites for 2008, for instance, was the Jonas Brothers, which caught me some shit. (Hi, Jake.) I can’t say now whether I was right or wrong about it because I haven’t listened in a year; that fact alone, however, is reason to edit that album out, since it can’t have been so great if after 12 months I don’t care.

But it’s also one of those self-correcting, conformist moments, an opportunity to replace an honest but risky lark with something safer, more familiar, “stronger.” At the same time, you’ve got to hold on to your individuality and avoid succumbing to the groupthink that can make so many of these lists tediously identical at the time they’re drawn up but then uselessly out of fashion once X number of years pass and nobody cares anymore about Northern State or Arrested Development. That, and the fact that you need to listen to lots and lots and lots of music, is why it’s hard to do this.

❧

That’s theory. Now for practice. Here’s my original list for 2007 (and original blurbs):

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Battles, Mirrored
5. Feist, The Reminder
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. M.I.A., Kala
8. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
9. Avril Lavigne, The Best Damn Thing
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows

Scorecard: Pretty right-on, I think. Dirty Projectors blew my mind in 2007, and I still like them now. Plant/Krauss is magnificent, and Spoon added another reason for being the best band of the decade. I’m moving Feist and M.I.A. up, bumping Battles down, and replacing Avril with Deerhoof, who deserve more credit than they’ve been getting at decade’s end. Otherwise not many changes. (Nos. 11 through 20 would include Black Lips, Yeasayer, Linda Thompson, Kanye, the Frames, Miranda Lambert and Nick Lowe. And Avril.)

Kind Reader, I present my revised list for 2007:

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Feist, The Reminder
5. M.I.A., Kala
6. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
7. Battles, Mirrored
8. Radiohead, In Rainbows
9. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
10. Deerhoof, Friend Opportunity

❧

2008 is a little trickier for me. My original list (and blurbs):

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
4. Metallica, Death Magnetic
5. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
6. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Black Kids, Partie Traumatic
9. Jonas Brothers, A Little Bit Longer
10. Beach House, Devotion

Looking at this, Randy Newman now feels more like an 8 or a 9 than a 6, and Black Kids and the JoBros belong in the mid-teens. But what to replace them with? The records that didn’t make my original cut were:

• Al Green, who made a gorgeous, vibrant record with ?uestlove. Cut because Newman was more topical and exploratory, and I didn’t want two fogies.
  
• Jamey Johnson. Omitted as a reaction against critical groupthink, and because I’m just not a country guy. But it’s undeniable that this is a very strong record.
• Coldplay. Good, but it’s Coldplay.
• She & Him. Nice, but at the time it didn’t seem terribly significant. Still doesn’t, although it’s just as sweet.
• Lykke Li. Sort of the year’s Bjork/Feist/Regina/Fiona/Emiliana quirky-girl entry. Which “shouldn’t matter shouldn’t matter,” as Gwen would say. But it does matter because her album is not half as clever as anything by Bjork or Feist or Regina or Fiona or Emiliana.
  
• Nick Cave. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is great, but ... I dunno.
• Joe Jackson. Rain is as good as anything he did 25 or 30 years ago, but you’ve got the fogy problem again. What’s 2008 about it? Why could it not have been made in 1983 or 1992 or 2005?
• Magnetic Fields, Distortion. Another consensus choice, and despite a couple of fantaaaastic songs (“Drive On, Driver,” “California Girls”), it felt like a trifle.

Three more you see on every other list from 2008 are Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, Fleet Foxes’ debut, and Tha Carter III. I still snooze thinking of Fleet Foxes, and don’t feel fully qualified to judge Lil Wayne. But Kanye’s Auto-Tune essay on isolation and misery was visionary; shoulda been in my list to begin with. He and Jamey Johnson make the cut.

So, 2008 revised:

1. Vampire Weekend
2. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
3. Metallica, Death Magnetic
4. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
5. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
6. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
7. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
8. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
9. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
10. Beach House, Devotion

❧

And that’s our show, folks! My 2009 list will be posted soon. Make that eventually. Well, pretty soon. Happy New Year!

Decade postmortem: 2004 and 2005

My original list for 2004:

1. Arcade Fire, Funeral
2. Franz Ferdinand, s/t
3. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
4. Kanye West, The College Dropout
5. Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
6. Wolf Eyes, Burned Mind
7. Vietnam, The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street
8. Usher, Confessions
9. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Like Bad News
10. William Shatner, Has Been

In terms of how music is made and distributed, the early 2000s weren’t hugely different from the late ’90s. There were still megaplatinum albums (7.4 million for The Eminem Show in 2002, 6.5 million for Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2003), MTV still wielded the hitmaking wand, and the Internet was still more of a nuisance/question mark than the Third Horseman. (The iTunes store opened in 2003, to no small amount of skepticism.) But 2004 was the year things started to look truly transitional.

It was actually a good year for album sales. They went up 2 percent in 2004, after slipping the previous three years. Usher’s Confessions was tops with a remarkable 7.9 million. After sweeping the Grammys and moving 5.1 million copies of Come Away With Me in 2003, Norah Jones continued to sell by the truckload: another 3.8 million in 2004. What could be wrong, right?

In hindsight there were probably a million indicators of what would come, but here are two obvious ones: First, Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, a big flaming copyright violation released online with no label. It proved that this crazy new distribution model could actually work, and while the labels were used to challenges from the consumer/pirate side, this one came from an artist. Second, the Arcade Fire. They scaled the peaks of blog hype, but their sales were still peanuts by biz standards. Lesson: the days of plucking a Kurt Cobain out of indie-rock are over. Consequence: the indies dry up as a farm league and spin totally out of orbit.

❧

I think I was pretty dead-on with my list. Aside from a few position changes, the only change I want to make is to cut Vietnam, which made an impression on me at the time but hasn’t held; Joanna Newsom replaces it. Notes: Nix on The Grey Album, a curiosity that I never got much out of musically, although I recognize DM’s ingenuity. I’m also omitting U2, the Killers, Gwen Stefani, Interpol and Wilco for various reasons, the biggest that I don’t love the albums. And yes, the Shatner record is good!

What does all that biz analysis have to do with my favorites? Nothing. It’s just interesting.

So, 2004 revised:

1. Arcade Fire, Funeral
2. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
3. Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
4. Kanye West, The College Dropout
5. Usher, Confessions
6. Franz Ferdinand, s/t
7. Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
8. Wolf Eyes, Burned Mind
9. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Like Bad News
10. William Shatner, Has Been

❧

And now for 2005. I don’t have much more to say about the biz or the larger culture. It was the year in which, despite everything, George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term, having won a decisive majority. Maybe it’s appropriate, then, that the best album of the year was an uncompromising, politicized cry from the third world.

My original list:

1. M.I.A., Arular
2. The Frames, Burn the Maps
3. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box
4. High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
5. Kanye West, Late Registration
6. Decemberists, Picaresque
7. White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
8. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
9. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
10. The Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike

I’m going to give myself the groupthink test on these — i.e., looking back after four years, which ones am I certain I was voting for out of love, and which might be the result of that invisible consensus peer pressure we were talking about earlier?

1. Not a chance. Loved it, listened over and over.
2. Nope. It didn’t even make Pazz and Jop.
3. Ditto.
4. Ditto, not that metal would make that list anyway.
5. Some groupthink is inevitable, but to my 2009 ears it still sounds completely solid. And it’s amazing just how much of a fully-formed star Kanye was right from the get-go. He had years of practice with Jay-Z, Twista, Jadakiss et al., but none of those guys had the gumption to look into a live network TV camera and say, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
6. Probably some, but it’s easy to forget how fresh the Decemberists sounded in the first half of the 2000s. Picaresque is what their major-label debut should have sounded like; as I’ve said elsewhere, it got stale pretty fast after this point.
   
7. Nah, check my other lists.
8. Probably. It is an excellent album, though, and I have no regrets about including it.
9. Nah, I fell for it all on my own. This one also didn’t make Pazz and Jop.
10. Yeah, makes me wince. What can I say, sometimes you make a bad call.

So that’s pretty good, I think, overall. I’m cutting the Go! Team, as you might guess, but otherwise leaving my list pretty much intact.

For me, the big contenders I had originally excluded are: My Morning Jacket’s Z, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, Feist’s Let It Die, Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, Teenage Fanclub’s Man-Made, Amadou & Mariam’s Dimanche à Bamako, Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary, Van Morrison’s Magic Time, Lee Ann Womack’s There’s More Where That Came From, Teddy Thompson’s Separate Ways and Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy.

Of those, the only ones I have unequivocal feelings about are My Morning Jacket, Wolf Parade and Okkervil River. And I think MMJ wins out. Sorry, Sufjan, your big breakthrough was beautiful but a little too precious for me. Sorry, Feist, Spoon and Teenage Fanclub, I love you guys, but your albums were flawed. Sorry, Amadou & Mariam, you handed Manu Chao the keys. Sorry, Teddy, I still think you can better. Sorry, Van and Lee Ann, you made gorgeous records but they feel lost in time.

So, 2005 revised:

1. M.I.A., Arular
2. The Frames, Burn the Maps
3. Kanye West, Late Registration
4. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
5. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box
6. Decemberists, Picaresque
7. High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
8. White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
9. My Morning Jacket, Z
10. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine

Waiting for Big Booty Godot

The video for Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights” is pure brilliance, and not merely because of the undulating orbs inside Rita G’s [NOTE: LINK NSFW!] satiny bra. Directed by Spike Jonze and West himself, it is a strange drama that begins in medias res, with our well-endowed heroine stepping out of an expensive sedan at dusk (or dawn?), somewhere on the desert outskirts of a city emanating neon. She takes a short walk, removing and then burning her fur and skirt.

You’re going to have to watch it for the rest of the story. (Please note that the video is somewhat risqué too. Perhaps you could guess this from the title.)

The video ends abruptly at 2 minutes 47 seconds, more than a minute shorter than the album version of the song. The puzzling brevity raises all sorts of questions. Who is this woman, and why does she murder poor Kanye? Did he screw her over? Or was he just the naive loser in some wicked con game? And what’s her phone number?

Jonze and West have simply given us too little information to analyze the story. It’s the Beckett theory of drama: the important action has taken place before the play itself begins, and we are left with the aftermath. Our Vladimir and Estragon here are (1) a big booty fertility goddess slash stripper and (2) Kanye as a tuxedo-clad hostage who bites it on the wrong side of her heavy shovel. Fucking awesome, yes. And those tantalizing plot gaps? We can only use our imagination. The backstory scenarios are infinite; so far I’ve got four.

❧

SCENARIO 1. It’s Vegas, the city built on broken kneecaps. It’s an “Ocean’s Eleven” situation, the big heist, and Kanye is our Danny Ocean. Somehow the showgirl was supposed to be the mule here, or the distraction, or something: she was a bit player and he was the mastermind. Or so he thought. Turns out she was a double agent, and as Andy Garcia waits back in the penthouse suite — grinning like a motherfucker because his money remains secure in the vault — his killer queen disposes of the shithead out in the desert somewhere at 4:45 a.m. Kanye looks up at her from the trunk so innocently. He never saw it coming. He was a good lay, she thinks, and as he lies there bound and gagged she lets him know she appreciates that: the last thing he sees will be her boobs bursting out of that lingerie, her heavenly kiss the last thing he feels. But there’s some serious vagina dentata action here as she bludgeons him to death in the trunk of her own car. It’s going to be dirty back there! Why didn’t she pull him out, dispose of him less messily? Is she going to dig a hole with that shovel?

SCENARIO 2. It’s still Vegas, only this time he’s the Andy Garcia, and Ocean is the one grinning like a motherfucker back at the bar. It worked. Not only is she a fantastic lay, she’ll even take out the fucking trash. How much do you love this woman! Kanye was an easy mark. Gave no struggle as the goons tied him up. They were just about to drive off when she showed up, said she wanted to take care of it herself. Fine. The goons looked her up and down — you’re going dressed like that? — but handed over the keys. Kanye didn’t know who was going to whack him until she opened the trunk, and at first he thought he had been rescued by a bosomy angel. Her! Such a fantastic lay, so innocent when he spotted her dancing at his casino. He remembered the look on her face when he laughed at the word “marriage” and she realized his sweat and $200-an-ounce cologne were smeared on every call girl in the house. He thought he could buy her off with a fur. It was chump change. You insult me, you son of a bitch. She held up the shovel, smashed that lying mouth and just kept on smashing. Ocean is back at the bar. He said he was going to take care of her. He couldn’t believe how gullible she was. But what a fantastic lay.

SCENARIO 3. It’s L.A., and it’s Grammy night. The parties are still raging at 4:45 a.m., and even though Herbie and Amy won all that shit, it’s still good. He’s in a smart tux, king of the world if only because there are no challengers to the throne. He chuckles as he takes off in a black Bentley with Rihanna and a bunch of young sisters from somewhere or other: that British skank is probably being led back to her padded cell right about now. The Bentley pulls up at somebody’s place in the Hills — Jimmy? Clive? — and Rihanna slinks off to the pool house, leaving him with a wet kiss and “hold that thought” eyes. Five minutes later he had a sista sandwich going when she opened the door in a long fur and full Victoria’s Secret getup. Get the hell out of here, bitches! Farnsworth, gimme a hand with this asshole! That’s it, tie him up! Tie the motherfucker up! Nobody does that to fucking Rihanna!

SCENARIO 4. It’s L.A., and it’s Grammy night. It’s been a good year, but not good enough. Nobody knows how this game really works. You’ve got the biggest opening-week sales and still it don’t mean shit. He crushed 50 Cent, and yet who made the real money? The guy with the fucking sugarwater endorsement deal who hasn’t had a hit in four years, who spends half his time with captains of industry and the rest with gangsters. He had Jam Master Jay whacked, everybody knows that. Only reason the Game is still alive is all the heat. He’s no idiot. Neither are the loan sharks who run this town, who hand out deadlines and then beatings; 2 million records is dandy, but without green it don’t mean shit. He should have known that the big booty beauty who cornered him at that party in the Hills was a setup. Her hand was in his crotch and her chest was exploding out of that fur when she pushed him through the pool house door. He never saw the goons back there. 50 was sweating, shouting, as if he were the one about to get it. Don’t be an idiot, just get the money! Our hero squirmed like a girl as they put the gag on him. Fuck you, he shouted. I’m Kanye West!

Any other reads?

---

UPDATE: Thanks to Jesse for pointing out this interview with Rita G on MTV, which I cite as advance approval of my plot projections:

“I just think it’s great to have a cliffhanger,” she said. “It’s great when the mother goose doesn’t have to chew the food up for you and then feed it to you. Use your motherf****ing mind. It’s abstract. It’s whatever you want it to be.”

Great moments in Grammy history: An industry with its head in the sand

Anyone bored or depressed enough to have watched the Grammy Awards last night witnessed the “surprise” “upset” of Herbie Hancock taking album of the year over the presumed favorites Kanye West and Amy Winehouse. Kanye and Amy were two of 2007’s most critically acclaimed, commercially successful and closely watched performers, and represent important archetypes of current popular music: an innovative hip-hop auteur and a strong and individualistic young woman. As big stars who have a great deal of artistic credibility, Kanye and Amy fit those roles better than almost anyone last year. So one of them should have won, right?

They did win a number of awards: Kanye took four and Amy five. (Complete list.) But why did album of the year elude them? For the very reasons that you like them and pay attention to what they do: They are bold, creative artists who have colorful and unpredictable lives. And as always, the roughly 12,000 voting members of the Recording Academy — who are much older than the pop audience, and whose ranks swell with no-name songwriters, backup singers, engineers, etc., whose livelihoods depend on safe and orderly work routines — were too reluctant or scared or clueless to give Amy and Kanye their biggest endorsement. As was clear from the broadcast itself, the music industry needs its aging, doddering heroes, people whose seats in the pop-culture pantheon are safe; it’s an insecure cult in many ways, and its fear of the new has only gotten worse as the market for recorded music has rapidly been eroded.

Grammy history is rife with ridiculous victories of the conservative and mothballed over the young and vital: “Somewhere Out There” beats “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as song of the year in 1988, Lionel Richie’s “Can’t Slow Down” wins over “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Purple Rain” for album of the year in 1985, and so on. As Jon Pareles observed, “The album of the year award, as often happens — from Tony Bennett’s ‘MTV Unplugged’ to Natalie Cole’s ‘Unforgettable ... With Love’ to ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ — went to the album with the oldest and most familiar songs.”

This nostalgic escapism and willful incuriosity is more than just a once-a-year joke; it’s a disease that is eating the industry from the inside out. A few months ago Doug Morris, the chairman of Universal Music Group and perhaps the single most powerful figure in the music business, gave this preposterous interview to Wired magazine in which he claims he did not see the Internet revolution coming, and even as it was pounding at the door he had no idea what do to about it. “We didn’t know who to hire,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.”

Two weeks ago at the MIDEM conference in Cannes, Morris’s boss, Jean-Bernard Lévy of Vivendi, said that “today there is an exaggeration in the industry” and that his company remains “strongly attached” to CDs and the otherwise largely abandoned DRM. What he’s saying is that the biggest record company in the world is sticking with a digital security system that doesn’t work and a format whose sales have been dropping steadily since 2000. (Last year alone CD sales plunged almost 19 percent, and this year has started off miserably.)

In other words, ignore the here and now; don’t listen to what you can’t understand — don’t even try to understand it. Instead, cling to the comforts of the past and to an outmoded, self-destructive game plan. And when it comes to honoring the artists whose music pays your salary, put aside everything that says “this is what pop music sounds like now” and just give the trophy to Tony Bennett or Ray Charles or Herbie Hancock or whoever did the Starbucks duets record this year.

Best of 2005

ALBUMS

1. M.I.A., Arular
2. Frames, Burn the Maps
3. Sons and Daughters, The Repulsion Box
4. High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
5. Kanye West, Late Registration
6. Decemberists, Picaresque
7. White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
8. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
9. Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is
10. Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike

THE NEXT 10

Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Keren Ann, Nolita
Feist, Let It Die
Spoon, Gimme Fiction
Teenage Fanclub, Man-Made
My Morning Jacket, Z
Magic Numbers, s/t
Kings of Leon, Aha Shake Heartbreak
A Band of Bees, Free the Bees

18 MORE

LCD Soundsystem, s/t
Lee Ann Womack, There’s More Where That Came From
Okkervil River, Black Sheep Boy
Teairra Mari, Roc-A-Fella Records Presents
Stars, Set Yourself on Fire
Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako
Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary
Van Morrison, Magic Time
V/A, Meridian 1970
Kraftwerk, Minimum-Maximum
Laura Veirs, Year of Meteors
Gruff Rhys, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth
Mastodon, Leviathan
Lightning Bolt, Hypermagic Mountain
Jenny Scheinman, 12 Songs
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Howl
Low, The Great Destroyer
Juan Maclean, Less Than Human

SINGLES

Mary Gauthier, “Mercy Now”
Lee Ann Womack, “I May Hate Myself in the Morning”
Gorillaz, “Feels Good Inc.”
Kanye West w/ Jamie Foxx, “Gold Digger”
Amerie, “1 Thing”
Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”
Weezer, “Beverly Hills”
Laura Veirs, “Galaxies”
R. Kelly, “Trapped in the Closet (Chapters 1-12)”
White Stripes, “My Doorbell”
Juelz Santana, “There It Go (The Whistle Song)”
Nickelback, “Photograph”
Brad Paisley, “Alcohol”
Keyshia Cole, “I Just Want It to Be Over”
Teairra Mari, “Make Her Feel Good”
Pussycat Dolls, “Don’t Cha”

REISSUES

Dungen, Ta Det Lungt
Herb Alpert series on Shout Factory
Numero series
V/A, Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows 1926-1937
Coltrane finds
Dinosaur Jr.
Terry Reid

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Pelican
Brazilian Girls
Boredoms
Bloc Party

DON’T CARE

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Mountain Goats
Hold Steady
Fiery Furnaces
50 Cent
Beck
Shakira (her music, anyway)
all “American Idol” alumni
Foo Fighters
Rolling Stones
Paul McCartney

BLANK STARE

Antony

WORST ALBUM COVER

Korn, See You on the Other Side

WORST SONG

Black Eyed Peas, “My Humps”

WORST ALBUM OF 2005

Bright Eyes, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn

Best of 2004

ALBUMS

1. Arcade Fire, Funeral
2. Franz Ferdinand, s/t
3. TV on the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
4. Kanye West, The College Dropout
5. Regina Spektor, Soviet Kitsch
6. Wolf Eyes, Burned Mind
7. Vietnam, The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street
8. Usher, Confessions
9. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Like Bad News
10. William Shatner, Has Been

THE NEXT 10

Mr. Airplane Man, C’mon DJ
Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
Devendra Banhart, Rejoicing in the Hands
Liars, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Mosquitos, Sunshine Barato
Bang on a Can Meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing
Nick Cave, Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
Tom Waits, Real Gone
Futureheads, s/t
Hot Snakes, Audit in Progress

26 MORE

Cucumbers, All Things to You
Tilly and the Wall, Wild Like Children
Caetano Veloso, A Foreign Sound
Blonde Redhead, Misery Is a Butterfly
Comets on Fire, Blue Cathedral
Laura Veirs, Carbon Glacier
Faun Fables, Family Album
Mouthus, s/t
Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill
PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her
Walkmen, Bows + Arrows
Bright Eyes/Neva Dinova, One Jug of Wine, Two Vessels
The Divine Comedy, Absent Friends
Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
Division of Laura Lee, Das Not Compute
On Air Library, s/t
John Cale, HoboSapiens
Black Dice, Creature Comforts
Pink Grease, This Is for Real
Blood Brothers, Crimes
Chingy, Powerballin’
Beastie Boys, To the 5 Boroughs
Danger Mouse & Jemini, Ghetto Pop Life
Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse
Hem, Eveningland
v/a, Lif Up Yuh Leg an Trample

REISSUES

Brian Eno (8 albums)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly soundtrack
Eccentric Soul series on Numero

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Hives
Mos Def
Magnetic Fields
Sondre Lerche
Air
Destiny’s Child
Secret Machines
Wilco
Northern State
Talib Kweli
Mooney Suzuki
Le Tigre

DON’T CARE

Morrissey
Scissor Sisters
Jadakiss
Libertines
Jet
Drive-By Truckers
Courtney Love
Prince
Polyphonic Spree
Rufus Wainwright

BLANK STARE

The Streets
Velvet Revolver

WORST ALBUM OF 2004

Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart, Alfie: Music From the Motion Picture

EX POST FACTO

Apparently I didn’t make a list of singles for 2004.