Making these lists is always weird for me. I remember in high school I was way more hyped about it, maybe because I was just younger and less self conscious about my taste than I am now. It seems like I've dreaded the listmaking time of year ever since 2000, the year that I briefly worked for Pitchfork. I was real broke that year and didn't buy many albums at all, and they wanted a top 20 albums list from everyone (they didn't have the singles poll yet), and I don't think I even had 10, which was one of the reasons I was more relieved than anything else when they fired me shortly before doing the year-end poll. And this year they asked for a top 50 from their staff! Holy shit! I mean, I'm sure if I downloaded constantly or had a steady stream of promos being mailed to me or made more than $7/hr, I'd have a lot more albums to put on my list. But as it stands, I heard less than 30 albums this year, and more than half of them were by artists that I'm loyal to and bought in good faith and was disappointed by (including, to some degree, some of the artists in the top 10). I just happened to digest music in a lot of different ways this year, through radio, through mixtapes, especially writing for Government Names (though I did manage to cough up
my top 10 hip hop albums for the GN poll). But I still do listen to albums all the time and I'm a big nerd about the sanctity of the album form (I never skip tracks, etc.) And this year did have some albums I really enjoyed. So without further ado, here's the 10:
1. Kanye West - The College Dropout
I feel a little corny putting this at the top, because it's kind of become this year's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the token hip hop album that people who aren't really up on it rally around, while a lot of people whose opinions I respect have hated on it, or have chosen to damn it with faint praise, slipping it in the lower half of their lists or not at all. But fuck it, I love this shit. In 2003 Kanye went from being one of my favorite producers to becoming one of my favorite MCs too. I collected every single mixtape he dropped, every track that leaked, following every release date delay, knowing that with Roc-A-Fella's release schedule it might never come out at all. I figured that if it ever did drop, it would get some nice reviews and sell modestly, like all super producer pet projects. As much faith as I had in Kanye, I didn't expect multi-platinum sales and hit after hit single and 10 Grammy nominations. It's not a perfect album (I tend to find reasons to leave the room during the block of three (three!) skits surrounding "School Spirit), but there's far more good than bad or played out. He did it. And I was there first, and I've got bragging rights, so fuck you, he earned his spot at the top.
2. Spymob - Sitting Around Keeping Score
Spymob got screwed. Most people have only heard of them because of N.E.R.D., and they were mainly resented for their role in the inferior 'live' version of In Search Of. Then they kept getting mislabelled as "funk metal" or whatever because of that and the unrepresentative song on the Clones comp. And, like all Neptunes-affiliated artists, label troubles hounded Spymob, to the point that this album (which was recorded mostly before they even met Pharrell) kept getting delayed until long after any residual interest in them from N.E.R.D. had dried up, and the album was finally released in April of this year, quietly, 3 years after it was recorded, and not on Star Trak (although, oddly enough, on another rap label, Ruthless Records). But it's hands down the best rock albums I heard this year. Alt-rock records with a total absence of any resemblence to indie rock tend to do one of 2 things these days: either get some VH1 exposure and sell a ton like Maroon 5, or go absolutely nowhere, like Spymob. The most flattering comparison that's popped up in most reviews has been Steely Dan, and while that's maybe too kind and a little misleading, it does a good way toward understanding their appeal. There's an element of perverse humor here, like "It Gets Me Going", which is written from the perspective of a dog, but there's also "National Holidays", which is the catchiest and most touching song I've ever heard about child custody battles. I really can't reccomend this album enough to people who aren't too cool for it.
3. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake The Sheets
Ted Leo is the kind of singer/songwriter whose essentially meat-and-potatoes punk and rock is informed by a diverse enough set of influences that it seems like he's in constant danger of the inevitable slide into either dreaded 'maturity' or hopelessly indulgent experimentation, determinded to make his own Sandanista. But, knock on wood, that hasn't happened yet, and instead he continues to deliver his 3rd solid rock album in a row, and it's the most no-frills and straight-ahead yet, stripping away the touches of keyboard and violin from the last one and narrowing his pallette down to just the core power trio, which his biggest recording budget yet for the wonderful hi-fi sound that Hearts of Oak's songs deserved instead of that horrible fuzz bass and weak drum sound. By comparison, this record stomps, especially on "Little Dawn", which begins with a spiraling guitar figure that reminds me of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck", and builds to a glorious crescendo before winding down with Ted repeating the hypnotic mantra of "it's alright" 151 times (I counted). The first 5 songs are maybe his best run since the first 5 songs on The Tyranny of Distance (he has a tendency to frontload his records with the good stuff), but "Walking To Do", ends the record beautifull with some perfectly executed a-little-bit-softer-now, a-little-bit-louder-now dynamics.
4. Trick Daddy - Thug Matrimony: Married To The Streets
Daddy Dollars has always had a gruff papa bear voice, and he's been running it long enough now to be an elder statesman of the new South. But he doesn't just sit back and collect features and follow the new style. There's some crunk, yeah, but there's also his classic mix of bass, sex jams, and tough guy songs, along with a block of songs to reaffirm that Trick luvs the kids, especially the wonderful "I Just Wanna Sang". Six albums deep and he's still deeper than anyone in the deep South.
5. Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
I'm a bigger fan of SY's output over the last 10 years than most, but after the nadir of NYC Ghosts & Flowers, even I was caught off guard by the low key grace of Murray Street, after which the almost as good Nurse feels a little anticlimactic. Steve Shelley is about as slept on as a member of such a canonical band can be, and he's the biggest reason that the ever mellowing tempos of the aging Youth aren't a bummer. He may not pummel the toms like he did on Sister or bring thunderous fills like on Dirty, but he's got a way with those relaxed midtempo grooves that just kills me. Much has been made of Kim doing something other than screeching or mumbling nursery rhymes for the first time in too long (although there's still the Mariah screed, which is slightly less annoying than the Britney screed from the last album, but still essentially just a sluggish version of Dirty-era Kim jams). But as far as I'm concerned, it's all about Thurston's creaky hippie vox (although I can do without some of the "electric guitar strings buuuuury flowers" lyrics) and long instrumental midsections. I'm very happy with the fact that "Wildflower Soul" seems to be the blueprint for most of his songs on the past couple albums. I really do want Sonic Youth to keep making albums like this of varying quality for as long as they're physically capable, and there aren't many artists I can say that of.
6. Travis Morrison - Travistan
Pitchfork shat on Travistan from atop the same perch from which they once praised the Dismemberment Plan to the heavens, and the backlash followed elsewhere without much opposition. Albums like this don't have fans, they have apologists, but I'm more than happy to be in that camp. I kind of have to forget my sentimental attachment to the Plan (and ignore how much better the Plan versions of "Angry Angel" and "Change" were) to really enjoy this, but it's far from the disaster it's often cast as. Breaking with the D.C. indie/punk tradition of strident politics and sloganeering, Travis uses and humor and warmth while taking shots at white male privelege ("Born In '72") and the liberal impulse (the amazing "Che Guevara Poster") while everyone else spent the past year firing off witless "fuck Bush" tirades (all respect due to Ted Leo, who made a better record with political commentary, but all I hear when I listen to him is the hooks and riffs and vocabulary-enhancing lyrics, whereas Travis is doing something much more interesting than preaching to the converted). It's just a shame that he didn't package some of the best lyrics of his career in an appealing spazz-dance-punk package to make the kids listen.
7. Beauty Pill - The Unsustainable Lifestyle
Like Travis, Chad Clark is the ex-frontman of a 'weird' 90's D.C. post-punk band (Smart Went Crazy) who's moved onto something gentler, if not kinder. His increasingly delicate, homespun production style and naggingly memorable melodies are wrapped around maybe his most barbed lyrics and jaundiced worldview yet. And while the languid tunage is more appealing than some of Travistan's downright awkward attempts at similiar terrain, Travis's lyrics have a sense of purpose and viewpoint that gets lost in some of Clark's cheap gags and cheaper cynicism. But when he gets properly fired up, talking about Mark David Chapman or "those countries where they come up and starve right in your face", his black humor becomes black anger and Beauty Pill's pastoral tones become much more compelling. At first the album registered as a disappointment, but I don't think there's any other album I reached for more often late at night throughout the year.
8. Nas - Street's Disciple
Complaints about how it's not Illmatic or it could've been better as a single album are wasted breath. If you're listening to a new Nas album, you have to be up for all of it, the less than ideal beats, the weird pretentious song concepts, the gross sex talk. So if you can deal with that, you'll get a huge, comprehensive statement from one of the most opinionated, hypocritical, greatest motherfuckers of all time. God's Son did a lot of the same things, but the sheer bulk of this gives it more force. There's a bunch of songs for his wifey, a bunch of songs for his family, a bunch of songs dissing other rappers and the industry, a bunch of songs paying tribute to the old school, hitting everything he wants to talk about from multiple angles. And like Trick Daddy or Jadakiss, Nas's voice gets better every year, thickening and deepening into a grandpa voice to match all his "back in my day" rants.
9. Cam'ron - Purple Haze
I loved last year's Diplomatic Immunity, which was an absurd statement of epic proportions from Cam's crew, and as Cam's next album continued to be delayed for over a year, my passion for it slowly dwindled, figuring that all the best tracks were the ones that had already leaked to mixtapes ages ago. But then, a couple weeks ago, it finally dropped, and I was blown away with how consistent it is. Label complications and bad single choices will probably stop it from being the peak it was hyped up to be, but the album itself is fire.
10. The Nels Cline Singers - The Giant Pin
Nels Cline's stock as a hired gun may have shot up this year with his drafting into Wilco, but he's not one to build his sideman resume at the expense of chasing his own muse. So 2004 saw yet another windfall of his own projects as a composer, collaborator and improviser, chief among them the 2nd album from his latest stable touring unit, the Nels Cline Singer. While I still carry a torch for the original 90's incarnation fo the Nels Cline Trio and have been slow to warm to the Singers, this album gradually won me over with a cohesive collection of lovely ballads and effects-pedal-crazy noise workouts.
Labels: hip hop, lists, Nels Cline, Sonic Youth, Spymob, Ted Leo, Travis Morrison
