The '04 Music Hierarchy
And I'm still missing so much -- mainly all the stuff that everyone else was excited about this year. I suck.
Ranked by Preference:
10
ISIS - Panopticon [It was a great year for hard rock, and this is the best specimen. The band's aesthetic has now been honed to an extraordinary point. Incredible, absorbing, beautiful... plus it can still kick your ass.]
THE ARCADE FIRE - Funeral [Everybody and their mother loves this album... and for once, everybody's right. Astonishing, dense indie pop is a beautiful and affecting experience (most bands would give up their genitals to write a song as close to perfect as 'Wake Up'). Can't wait to see what they come with next.]
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus [The Seeds's best work since "Let Love In". Includes my favorite couplet of the year: 'Eurydice appeared brindled in blood and she said to Orpheus / If you play that fucking thing down here I'll stick it up your orifice'.]
9
CIRCLE TAKES THE SQUARE - As the Roots Undo [Brain-busting noisecore for those disappointed with "Crimes" (see below). The brief, perfectly timed sound dropout during 'In the Nervous Light' stands as my favorite musical moment from '04.]
CONVERGE - You Fail Me [Not as good as "Jane Doe" but then what is -- this is still furious, precise and devastating. The one-two punch of 'You Fail Me' and 'In Her Shadow' elicits a reaction that would shame most so-called emo bands.]
NELLIE MCKAY - Get Away from Me [Eclectic collection of snarky piano pop from a smartassed blond chanteuse might be unbearable if Ms. McKay wasn't so ridiculously talented and the songcraft wasn't so spot-on. Even when she whiffs (her rhyming flow on the hip-hop track 'Sari' is a bit wiggity-wack), it's thrilling to see her trying. An extraordinary debut.]
THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN - Miss Machine [The DEP discovers the hook, moves one step closer to taking over the whole damn world. Who woulda thunk that parts of this album would be, you know, hummable? If radio programmers had any interest in actual hard rock, 'Unretrofied' would have been the biggest single on earth.]
8
PLANES MISTAKEN FOR STARS - Up in Them Guts [More than just your average hardcore band, this group tempers its bludgeoned attack with some surprising emo flourishes (and if you doubt their credentials, ask Cursive's Tim Kasher -- he cameos on one song). A raw and emotionally blistering album; if the production wasn't so hollow (leaving the album, ironically, with a lack of guts), this would be the album of the year.]
THE ICARUS LINE - Penance Soiree [The party-rock album of '04.]
THE TWILIGHT SINGERS - She Loves You [Greg Dulli covers Bjork's 'Hyper-Ballad'... and somehow makes it better. More proof that he's a musical titan, as if we needed it.]
FIREWATER - Songs We Should Have Written [Good year for cover albums -- this, oddly enough, is way more satisfying than Firewater's last album of original material. Maybe Tod Ashley needs to go on hiatus or something, but at least his arrangements still rock my socks.]
MCLUSKY - The Difference Between Me and You is That I'm Not on Fire [Slightly less dynamic than 'Mclusky Do Dallas'; still awesome though. Andrew Falkous's lyrics are the kitten's tits.]
SINCE BY MAN - A Love Hate Relationship [Anger, power, precision, volume: Why aren't more people listening to these guys? This four-track EP might be a prelude to greater things, but even on its own it can still level your house and break your windows. Get whatever you can from these hardcore monsters before they burn themselves out.]
JELLO BIAFRA AND THE MELVINS - Never Breathe What You Can't See [The most interesting thing Jello's put out since the EP he did with D.O.A. way back in 1990. Next time you're cut off in traffic by some putz in an SUV, just scream out the chorus to "Yuppie Cadillac". I guarantee you'll feel better.]
MASTADON - Leviathan [I believe AAA put it best when he said, "Roar! White whale!" In other words: This rocks your grandma's earmuffs off.]
7
MODEST MOUSE - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
VAUX - Plague Music [Both sides of Vaux -- the melodic side and the throat-shredding side -- come into play on this compelling EP. Kinda makes me wish there was more, really, since the disc ends just as it seems to be getting started.]
MOS DEF - The New Danger
BJORK - Medulla
MURS - 3:16 (The 9th Edition)
PJ HARVEY - Uh Huh Her
TOM WAITS - Real Gone
RILO KILEY - More Adventurous
JEAN GRAE - This Week
DAUGHTERS - Canada Songs
HELLA - The Devil Isn't Red [If I heard any one song from this instrumental chaos on its own, it'd sound like the greatest thing ever. A whole album, on the other hand, is a bit much; still, the exhilarating and inventive machinations of these guys can't be denied.]
6
BURNING BRIDES - Leave No Ashes [Trades the hazy, lazy vibe of their debut album for a brawnier style of ear-beating hard rock, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's also cleaner, slicker production, which also isn't necessarily a bad thing. The slickness, though, reveals that the songwriting this time around is a little pale, which is a bad thing. Still pretty cool, but a step down.]
RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke
MADVILLAIN - Madvillainy
VARIOUS - Bring You to Your Knees: A Tribute to Guns 'n' Roses
FEAR BEFORE THE MARCH OF FLAMES - Art Damage
BATTLES - EP C
EL-P - Collecting the Kid
CEE-LO - Cee-Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine
LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES - The Venenzuelan Zinga Son, Vol. 1
5
THE BLOOD BROTHERS - Crimes
LICKGOLDENSKY - Lickgoldensky [The best bands in the extreme-metal genres (grind, death metal, spazzcore, etc.) have an internal cohesion in their music that keeps their offerings from just sounding like shapeless noise. This band lacks that cohesion. It's definitely loud, but since it never goes anywhere, it's also definitely boring.]
OOIOO - Kila Kila Kila
HEAD AUTOMATICA - Decadence [Darryl Palombo, frontman for hardcore titans Glassjaw, teams up with hip-hop producer extraordinaire Dan the Automater; somehow, the result is a funkier Fall Out Boy. Not exactly bad, but not worth listening to more than once, either.]
4
KID606 - Who Still Kill Sound?
3
BATTLES - Tras
PENDING
HANDSOME BOY MODELING SCHOOL - White People
HOT SNAKES - Audit in Progress
NEUROSIS - The Eye of Every Storm
STINA NORDENSTAM - The World Is Saved
P.O.S. - Audition Ipecac
RECOVER - This May Be the Year I Disappear
THE STREETS - A Grand Don't Come for Free
KANYE WEST - The College Dropout
Some things you missed that i liked from last yeat:
Tom Waits: Real Gone
Nellie McKey, or is it McKay: Get away from me, my personal pick of the year.
Prince: Musicology.
Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand.
Air: Talkie Walkie.
Belle and Sebastian: Dear Catasthrophe Waitress.
William Shatner: Wannabe, yes really its very funny, it has an explosive cover of Pulp's Common People, what's not to like?
The Polyphonic Spree: Together we're heavy.
The Beta Band: Heroes to Zeroes.
Mos Def: The New Danger.
Jolie Holland: Escondida.
Don't know when it was released, but from obscure hipster indie bands, i like Chk Chk Chk.
Well, I have "Real Gone" coming in the mail (thanks Scott!), and I just heard "Ding Dong" for the first time the other day so I think I'll be checkin' me out some Nellie McKay. Not big into Belle and Sebastian, though (and even the diehards didn't much care for "Waitress", as I understand), and the underwhelming reviews kept me away from "The New Danger". I might still check the latter out though -- I do like Mos Def.
And I've never heard !!!, but they do kinda fall into the NYC hipster scene. And I haven't been too impressed with anything coming from there.
And before it sadly closed down, I heard part of the Shatner album in my local indie hip-ass music store. It's either the best or the worst thing I've ever heard. Maybe both.
The Belle and Sebastian album is completely different from their old boring stuff, that's why their die hards fans don't like it much, it actually has a full orchestra production that sounds awesome, unlike their old acoustic ones.
But then, i never heard them until this last album, liked it so much that i start downloading their old stuff, and was really dissapointed when i heard them.
Yeah Mos Def old stuff is better, but is still Mos Def, and he kicks ass.
William Shatner is just hilarious, my guilty pleasure of the year.
So you don't like Interpol, or The Strokes, or Yeah Yeah Yeahs?.
Oh i forgot aboput College Dropout its pretty good too.
I've never heard Interpol (I know, I'm not a "hip" kid), but "Is This It" is one of the dullest albums I've ever heard, and I've not been impressed with what I've heard from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs either. And don't get me started on frickin' electroclash. (A.R.E. Weapons can suck my weapon.)
So, the Nick Cave is pretty good, eh? I sorta lost interest in him & the Bad Seeds around the time of "Murder Ballads."
He's been slowly coming back to form after blowing his load on "Murder Ballads", and the new two-disc is pretty much the perfect synthesis between old Cave (violence, noise, distortion) and new Cave (beauty, love, high-flown lyrics, violins and choirs). It's awesome. "Hiding All Away" is the best song he's written since "I Had a Dream, Joe".
Excellent. I will have to pick this up. God, has it really been over a decade since "Let Love In"?
Yes, yes it has. Oy vey.
(And hey, I think I owe you a CD anyway -- thanks for the Pogues, BTW. So I could send you the pair, if yer interested.)
You don't owe me anything. :-)
But, if you don't mind, I'd love those discs!
Okay, question for you, Cosgrove, and all Listologists:
Which bands are leading the way toward an abandonment (or disintigration) of genre?
I'd say DAAU makes sense, but they can't 'lead' because nobody's ever heard of them. But what about Radiohead? The Go! Team? Kenna? TV on the Radio? I'm sure somebody else can come up with better examples than that. You know, the bands that defy the question, 'What kind of music do they play?'
I'm not sure that question has an answer, per se. If you assume the existence of genre, then everything will eventually fit into a genre. Just because, say, "Crimes" assimilates pop, hip-hop, Negro spirituals and electronica into its hardcore framework doesn't necessarily make it something other than hardcore. I think there's a lot of artists pushing the boundaries of what their particular genre can handle. This trend is especially prevalent in hip-hop these days -- albums like "Speakerboxx/The Love Below", "Fantastic Damage" and "The New Danger" seem designed expressly to challenge the listener's perception of what can and does constitute hip-hop. So maybe that's the answer you're looking for. Look to hip-hop for the borderless future of music.
Maybe that's why I'm reletively clueless about it... I haven't been looking to hip-hop at all. And if hte future of music lies with hip-hop, I'm screwed because I don't usually care for hip-hop.
Ah, but if the future of music assumes a dissolution of genre, then by definition you'd be screwed anyway. If genre dissolves, then all music would incorporate wildly disparate influences -- including several from genres you wouldn't have a taste for. Here's the litmus test: What's your take on Frank Zappa?
(Funny thing is, if you'd asked this question five years ago, I probably would have just answered with "The Boredoms" and been done with it.)
Oh no, there'll always be artists that play genre music, even 'dead genre' music. When I refer to the 'future of music,' I don't mean what every band will play, just what the next 'movement' will be. For every Boredoms and DAAU, there's always plenty of AC/DC and The Darkness and The Wildhearts and Shivaree and Michael Buble, etc.
Frank Zappa is probably an excellent litmus test. Alas, I don't really care for most of his work. And actually, my favorite artists are clearly genre artists, but I can still be excited about what's new on the horizon. Especially while Radiohead are still kickin' :-)
For the record, I'm incredibly excited by rock/electronica combinations, and pretty meh about hip-hop/whatever or rap/whatever fusion. But where's my trance/heavy metal? Guess it'll show up eventually if I wait long enough. I'll survive till then on Transmutator's cover of 'Orion.'
I had a talk once with a musician friend, about what the future of music genres would be, fusions and the like, and then i said, it would be kinda cool to make Punk with scratching.
Then, Crazy Beat by Blur came out, the future of music came, an is Damon Alban, wether is Gorillaz or Blur.
You're a seer!
The highlight of my own future-predicting past arrived when my friends and I were making a crappy James Bond/Jackie Chan home movie. We were deciding what kind of corny James Bond-ish title to slap on it. I suggested 'The World Dies Another Day,' and we all thought it was hilarious. 'Die Another Day' was released the next year.
Well i had a feeling too, that Rap would fusion with Rock in the early 90's, but i didn't think it was going to suck like that Nu metal crap, Linkin Park Blech.
It didn't suck for quite some time (remember Rage Against the Machine? the Beatnuts? Biohazard? late-80s Anthrax?). It was only after the mooks got ahold of it that it went south. And even now, there are people trying to rehabilitate it (I refer you to the first half of "The New Danger" -- and, BTW, you're right, it is pretty damn good).
Yeah Dog, i think is better than College Dropout which some list just said it was number 1 according to music critics.