quote:

---

Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Copyright � Las Vegas Mercury

Best Music of 2004
After a year of listening--and bickering--Mercury scribes sound off on the best music of 2004


Geoff Schumacher

1. The Black Keys, Rubber Factory. Rock 'n' roll comes full circle. If Robert Johnson had an electric guitar and a fuzzy amp, he might have conjured "10 A.M. Automatic."

2. Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South. Forget genres. These Southern rock vets are the smartest songwriters in America.

3. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Quintessential indie band hits its stride, and it's indie no more.

4. U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Old pros deliver one more time. First single "Vertigo" is album's weakest song.

5. The Hives, Tyrannosaurus Hives. Should have been the rock sensation of the year.

6. Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken. The voice, the songs, the live performance. "Train from Kansas City" is amazing.

7. Cross Canadian Ragweed, Soul Gravy. Genre-busting Oklahomans rank with Drive-By Truckers for most underrated band in America.

8. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose. Jack White successfully resuscitates a country legend. Best track: "Portland, Oregon."

9. Green Day, American Idiot. Appreciation for this concept album grows with every listen.

10. The Libertines, The Libertines. One of Britain's most talented rock bands. Bright future if they can escape self-destructive tendencies.

11. Burden Brothers, Buried in Your Black Heart. Undervalued hard rock from Texas. Wisely canceled ill-advised Fiesta Rancho gig.

12. Los Lonely Boys, Los Lonely Boys. Inviting mix of Spanish/English vocals and kick-ass guitar.

13. Guitar Shorty, Watch Your Back. Blues journeyman finally gets a chance to strut his stuff in the studio. Download "I'm Gonna Leave You" immediately.

14. Willie Nelson, It Always Will Be. Country legend shows he's still on top of his game.

15. Rich Robinson, Paper. Former Black Crowes guitarist shows brother Chris how to do a solo album.

16. The Killers, Hot Fuss. Vegas pop rockers impress hometown skeptics with best-selling, Grammy-nominated debut.

17. Eagles of Death Metal, Peace, Love, Death Metal. Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Josh Homme's irresistible side project.

18. Steve Earle, The Revolution Starts...Now. He couldn't turn the tide on Election Day but political folk rocker delivers fine anti-war anthems.

19. Aerosmith, Honkin' on Bobo. Back to blues rock basics, to excellent effect.

20. Tift Merritt, Tambourine. If it weren't for Neko Case, this would be the year's best female folk album.

21. Nirvana, With the Lights Out. Long-awaited box set offers fascinating moments for Nirvana diehards.

22. Eric Clapton, Me and Mr. Johnson. Homage to blues master Robert Johnson is respectful and solid, but can't beat the original.

23. Young Heart Attack, Mouthful of Love. "Mouthful of Love" and "Starlite" are as good as rock gets.

24. Mastodon, Leviathan. Breathing new life into heavy metal.

25. Secret Machines, Now Here Is Nowhere. Channeling classic Rush and other art rock pioneers.

26. Spiderbait, Tonight Alright. "Black Betty" cover can be played 20 times straight without getting tired.

27. Interpol, Antics. Doesn't beat 2002 debut album, but when you're in a certain mood, Interpol is the answer.


Mike Prevatt

The following were my 10 favorite albums of 2004, listed in alphabetical order as opposed to numerical rank:

The Arcade Fire, Funeral. I might've never given this album a second listen had the hype of this sweeping Montreal band not been as deafening as a hardcore show at the Huntridge. But I'm glad I played the sucker--this evocative album gets more and more absorbing with each spin.

Joseph Arthur, Our Shadows Will Remain. With every album this New York wunderkind releases, he further cements his reputation as one of the greatest singer/songwriters of his generation. His balancing of palpable atmosphere and irresistible tunefulness is a gift so few of his peers are blessed with.

Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand. There wasn't a more pleasurable rock experience this year than on this Scottish quartet's ebullient debut, which coalesced countless post-punk influences into one distinctive and often mischievous sound.

Green Day, American Idiot. Rock operas aren't supposed to be this addictively listenable, but Billie Joe Armstrong and cohorts stunned most onlookers with their most ambitious and well-written work to date: a smart, unflinching but never pretentious commentary of the political, spiritual and social climate found in George W. Bush's America.

Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose. Enough with crediting Jack White for the attention paid to this charming project. Lynn is so much the star here, you forget the celebrity producer is even in the same room--which was probably his goal all along. And as far as attitude goes, Gretchen Wilson could learn a thing or two from Loretta about being a lady.

Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News. I've already blown my wad talking about this band in "Aural Intercourse" this week. I'll just say this was one of the most welcome breakthroughs this year.

Patti Smith, Trampin'. You knew Ms. "People Have the Power" was gonna get all political on her new record, but it wasn't merely for the sake of protest. Humanity oozes from this work, perhaps the best of Smith's post-'70s output.

The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free. British rapper/producer Mike Skinner may always be a bedroom musician and an everyman MC, but his honest examinations of working-class life resonate beyond any cultural divide.

U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Like most U2 albums, Bomb eventually takes on the role of an old friend that comforts you when you most need it. Even when exploring themes of mortality, Bono expresses a hope so fearless, you can't dismiss it.

Kanye West, The College Dropout. West seems to drop a lot of things--in particular, the grating MC braggadocio and thug posturing that has made much of mainstream hip hop so predictable, and beats that captivate the listener as much as his life-affirming rhymes.

Honorable mention: Interpol, Antics; Felix da Housecat, Devin Dazzle and the Neon Fever; the Walkmen, Bows and Arrows; Sasha, Involver; Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse; Scissor Sisters, Scissor Sisters; the Album Leaf, In a Safe Place; Brian Wilson, Smile; the Killers, Hot Fuss; Belle & Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress.


Newt Briggs

"This is a man's world," James Brown fussed in 1966, and as far as the music industry goes, not much has changed since. Every year, annual best-of lists are chock-full o' dudes--hip-hop dudes, indie-rock dudes, goth dudes, old-school R&B dudes and, sometimes, Prince. This year, though--at least in this forum--it's pussy galore, vaginas aplenty, a labia lottery unlike any since Russ Meyer's Supervixens. While other critics turn prosaic cartwheels over Franz Ferdinand, Nick Cave, Elliott Smith, Modest Mouse, Wilco and the like, let's all take a moment to bask in the estrogen-soaked radiance of Simone de Beauvoir's "second sex." They are certainly worthy of the attention (and not just because of their shapely thighs and buttocks).

Jolie Holland, Escondida. Jolie Holland belongs to another era--a time when a dexterous fiddler could rock a party and people still believed in magic. In her Billie Holliday-by-way-of-the-Blue Ridge Mountains drawl, Holland sings of train yards, midnight rendezvous, ukeleles and morphine (although she footnotes the latter with the liner-note caveat, "I'm certainly not encouraging anyone to fuck up their life").

Jean Grae, This Week. Although South African-born MC Jean Grae can't read minds like her redheaded counterpart in the X-Men, she was definitely blessed with superhuman flow, which she puts to good use on This Week--a kinda-sorta concept album that charts a week in the life of the lib-spitting rapper. Like a tattooed Lauryn Hill on a federal work-release program, Grae rages on playas and hoochies in equal measure, unleashing couplets like, "I'll lick off the potshots and cut your dick off/ And sell it like it's porn to the pawn shop." Ouch!

Sam Phillips, A Boot and a Shoe. In my mind, Sam Phillips smells like lavender water and wild mushrooms and is privy to sexual secrets that not even Sting knows. She also seems like the kind of woman who would give you the silent treatment for like three weeks if you ever did her wrong. At least you'd still have A Boot and a Shoe, which is a little like having your own little gypsy cabaret (belly dancer optional but encouraged).

Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken. The perfect blend of pre-Jack Daniels Janis Joplin and pre-Little Debbie Linda Ronstadt, Neko Case could sing the whitewash off a picket fence if such was her wont. As it is, she seems content to skewer old boyfriends and celebrate man-munching jungle cats with a voice exponentially bigger than her modest frame.

Jill Scott, Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds, Vol. 2. Jill Scott is Norah Jones if she had Erykah Badu's social conscience and Mary J. Blige's gangsta lean. Scott treads the no-woman's-land between family and society with a no-nonsense wisdom that makes her sophomore album a repeat-play delight.

Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose. A decade ago, Johnny Cash turned to bearded wonder Rick Rubin to resuscitate his slumping career. This year, Loretta Lynn snatched up blues-rock messiah Jack White for the same purpose--a move that would have smacked of abject desperation had it not been such an unqualified success. White, who used to play in a Dee-troyt country band called Goober and the Peas, crafted the perfect backdrop for Lynn's half-sung, half-spoken tales of love, despair and murder. Alt-country hipsters, you have a new goddess; her name is Loretta.


Andrew Kiraly

I feel uniquely unqualified to say with any amount of authority what the top albums of 2004 were. I'm no principled cultural omnivore like my esteemed colleagues, no populist consumer willing to give everything a chance; for this, my character suffers. Rather, I've managed to cultivate a vigorous narrow-mindedness that writes off a lot of good shit, I'm certain. (For instance, I'm sure I'd be a better person if I listened to U2's new album). But musical provincialism does have an upside: It intensifies the enthusiasms you have to the point of comforting cultic delusion, and can lead to interesting party conversations in which you try to explain why you really, really do, without the faintest bit of irony, like Sepultura.

Anyway, listen to this shit:

1. Dillinger Escape Plan, Miss Machine. Math-rock gods DEP's new singer looks like an emo dude who discovered the joys of Gold's Gym, and the band seems to have taken a musical cue from that fact: Miss Machine brings a bombastic muscularity into the mathematical madness for an album that sounds like a trigonometry final given in a mosh pit. If you hate both jazz and hardcore, you'll love Miss Machine.

2. Blood Brothers, Crimes. Ever ask yourself what would've happened to indie rock if Pavement hadn't castrated it with oblique fake poetry and Steve Malkmus' chicken-chaw voice that sounded like he was floating in a maddening state of suspended puberty? Blood Brothers would've happened. Splitting the difference between acidic angularity and choking grooves, Crimes is an excellent follow-up to the band's debut, Burn Piano Island, Burn.

3. Mastodon, Leviathan. Brilliant technical chops meets old-school metal rip 'n' roar. Mighty.

4. Tortoise, It's All Around You. It's the band that finally answered the question, "What would it take for hipsters to get into Spyro Gyra?" It's All Around You is more musical, less experimental than other Tortoise albums, yet just as weirdly forgettable in the way that makes you immediately crave another spin.

5. Neurosis, The Eye of Every Storm. It's the band that finally answered the question, "What would it take for goths to get into Yes?" With The Eye of Every Storm, Neurosis puts forth another exhausting, emotionally overburdened, irredeemable black hole of mourning music. Hurray!

6. Pig Destroyer, Terrifyer. Grindcore at its grindcoriest. The first album I ever had actual nightmares about listening to.

7. Beep Beep, Business Casual. Not only highly amenable to name-dropping for instant dipster cred, but a fine indie rock album as well. Think Minutemen meets Fugazi with a generous sprinkling of John the Conqueror root.


Dave Surratt

Some years, the great albums come like locusts. This didn't exactly happen in 2004, but some fascinating things flew by nonetheless, starting in January with Stereolab's Margarine Eclipse. Down a core member (Mary Hansen died in a bicycle accident in 2002), Stereolab managed to stick it out and then some against a backdrop of loss, emerging in 2004 with grooves, innovation, and a rock 'n' roll stoicism that sharpened the band's wispier edges.

Brian Wilson came back to give the sincere and unforced Smile we hoped he still had in him. This was worth big celebration, as was the busting out done by septuagenarian Loretta Lynn, who kept more creative control than she ever had with Van Lear Rose, an album sparsely produced by Jack White and buzzing from Lynn's blend of wizened grace and the fresh, infectious energy of a much younger woman.

On the instrumental front, there was fusion guitarist Bill Frisell. Unspeakable is moody, sample-adorned and all over the place. It lingers patiently in that liminal region between background and active engagement, and does so with an easygoing distress reminiscent of the Miles Davis and John McLaughlin partnership--something to accompany bluish loops of cigarette smoke in the window light of a drizzly day.

In the same seethingly quiet vein, Robyn Hitchcock and Joanna Newsom released Spooked and The Milk-Eyed Mender, respectively. Both records sport subtle arcs, creepy deadpans and well-settled foundations of confidently affected voicework--just the thing we need against the advance of generic alt-rockers for whom carrying a tune is close enough. Newsom's sound is like Bjork and Kristen Hersh jockeying for the same channel through a precious-voiced Kansas housewife. She sounds as if she could wake up any second, and that's perfect.

The Alabama-based Drive-By Truckers did something oh-so nice: release a Southern rock album with Southern themes without being so Southern-sentimental. The Dirty South tells it like it is, walks with its head up and doesn't stoop to the trough of empty regionalist pride that's distracted many Southern musicians away from greater salience.

Lastly, The Fiery Furnaces seem like they should be here. It's an odd thing they've done on Blueberry Boat--occasionally irritating, often beautiful, always interesting. The clincher really might just be their name; it's fun to say "Fiery Furnaces," and its even more fun to say "Blueberry Boat" right after that.

Mad props go out to Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Wilco and Interpol for doing undeniably cool things this year. They'll head up many lists such as this one, just not this one.

---

quote:

---

Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Copyright � Las Vegas Mercury

Best Music of 2004
After a year of listening--and bickering--Mercury scribes sound off on the best music of 2004


Geoff Schumacher

1. The Black Keys, Rubber Factory. Rock 'n' roll comes full circle. If Robert Johnson had an electric guitar and a fuzzy amp, he might have conjured "10 A.M. Automatic."

2. Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South. Forget genres. These Southern rock vets are the smartest songwriters in America.

3. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News. Quintessential indie band hits its stride, and it's indie no more.

4. U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Old pros deliver one more time. First single "Vertigo" is album's weakest song.

5. The Hives, Tyrannosaurus Hives. Should have been the rock sensation of the year.

6. Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken. The voice, the songs, the live performance. "Train from Kansas City" is amazing.

7. Cross Canadian Ragweed, Soul Gravy. Genre-busting Oklahomans rank with Drive-By Truckers for most underrated band in America.

8. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose. Jack White successfully resuscitates a country legend. Best track: "Portland, Oregon."

9. Green Day, American Idiot. Appreciation for this concept album grows with every listen.

10. The Libertines, The Libertines. One of Britain's most talented rock bands. Bright future if they can escape self-destructive tendencies.

11. Burden Brothers, Buried in Your Black Heart. Undervalued hard rock from Texas. Wisely canceled ill-advised Fiesta Rancho gig.

12. Los Lonely Boys, Los Lonely Boys. Inviting mix of Spanish/English vocals and kick-ass guitar.

13. Guitar Shorty, Watch Your Back. Blues journeyman finally gets a chance to strut his stuff in the studio. Download "I'm Gonna Leave You" immediately.

14. Willie Nelson, It Always Will Be. Country legend shows he's still on top of his game.

15. Rich Robinson, Paper. Former Black Crowes guitarist shows brother Chris how to do a solo album.

16. The Killers, Hot Fuss. Vegas pop rockers impress hometown skeptics with best-selling, Grammy-nominated debut.

17. Eagles of Death Metal, Peace, Love, Death Metal. Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Josh Homme's irresistible side project.

18. Steve Earle, The Revolution Starts...Now. He couldn't turn the tide on Election Day but political folk rocker delivers fine anti-war anthems.

19. Aerosmith, Honkin' on Bobo. Back to blues rock basics, to excellent effect.

20. Tift Merritt, Tambourine. If it weren't for Neko Case, this would be the year's best female folk album.

21. Nirvana, With the Lights Out. Long-awaited box set offers fascinating moments for Nirvana diehards.

22. Eric Clapton, Me and Mr. Johnson. Homage to blues master Robert Johnson is respectful and solid, but can't beat the original.

23. Young Heart Attack, Mouthful of Love. "Mouthful of Love" and "Starlite" are as good as rock gets.

24. Mastodon, Leviathan. Breathing new life into heavy metal.

25. Secret Machines, Now Here Is Nowhere. Channeling classic Rush and other art rock pioneers.

26. Spiderbait, Tonight Alright. "Black Betty" cover can be played 20 times straight without getting tired.

27. Interpol, Antics. Doesn't beat 2002 debut album, but when you're in a certain mood, Interpol is the answer.


Mike Prevatt

The following were my 10 favorite albums of 2004, listed in alphabetical order as opposed to numerical rank:

The Arcade Fire, Funeral. I might've never given this album a second listen had the hype of this sweeping Montreal band not been as deafening as a hardcore show at the Huntridge. But I'm glad I played the sucker--this evocative album gets more and more absorbing with each spin.

Joseph Arthur, Our Shadows Will Remain. With every album this New York wunderkind releases, he further cements his reputation as one of the greatest singer/songwriters of his generation. His balancing of palpable atmosphere and irresistible tunefulness is a gift so few of his peers are blessed with.

Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand. There wasn't a more pleasurable rock experience this year than on this Scottish quartet's ebullient debut, which coalesced countless post-punk influences into one distinctive and often mischievous sound.

Green Day, American Idiot. Rock operas aren't supposed to be this addictively listenable, but Billie Joe Armstrong and cohorts stunned most onlookers with their most ambitious and well-written work to date: a smart, unflinching but never pretentious commentary of the political, spiritual and social climate found in George W. Bush's America.

Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose. Enough with crediting Jack White for the attention paid to this charming project. Lynn is so much the star here, you forget the celebrity producer is even in the same room--which was probably his goal all along. And as far as attitude goes, Gretchen Wilson could learn a thing or two from Loretta about being a lady.

Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News. I've already blown my wad talking about this band in "Aural Intercourse" this week. I'll just say this was one of the most welcome breakthroughs this year.

Patti Smith, Trampin'. You knew Ms. "People Have the Power" was gonna get all political on her new record, but it wasn't merely for the sake of protest. Humanity oozes from this work, perhaps the best of Smith's post-'70s output.

The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free. British rapper/producer Mike Skinner may always be a bedroom musician and an everyman MC, but his honest examinations of working-class life resonate beyond any cultural divide.

U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Like most U2 albums, Bomb eventually takes on the role of an old friend that comforts you when you most need it. Even when exploring themes of mortality, Bono expresses a hope so fearless, you can't dismiss it.

Kanye West, The College Dropout. West seems to drop a lot of things--in particular, the grating MC braggadocio and thug posturing that has made much of mainstream hip hop so predictable, and beats that captivate the listener as much as his life-affirming rhymes.

Honorable mention: Interpol, Antics; Felix da Housecat, Devin Dazzle and the Neon Fever; the Walkmen, Bows and Arrows; Sasha, Involver; Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse; Scissor Sisters, Scissor Sisters; the Album Leaf, In a Safe Place; Brian Wilson, Smile; the Killers, Hot Fuss; Belle & Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress.


Newt Briggs

"This is a man's world," James Brown fussed in 1966, and as far as the music industry goes, not much has changed since. Every year, annual best-of lists are chock-full o' dudes--hip-hop dudes, indie-rock dudes, goth dudes, old-school R&B dudes and, sometimes, Prince. This year, though--at least in this forum--it's pussy galore, vaginas aplenty, a labia lottery unlike any since Russ Meyer's Supervixens. While other critics turn prosaic cartwheels over Franz Ferdinand, Nick Cave, Elliott Smith, Modest Mouse, Wilco and the like, let's all take a moment to bask in the estrogen-soaked radiance of Simone de Beauvoir's "second sex." They are certainly worthy of the attention (and not just because of their shapely thighs and buttocks).

Jolie Holland, Escondida. Jolie Holland belongs to another era--a time when a dexterous fiddler could rock a party and people still believed in magic. In her Billie Holliday-by-way-of-the-Blue Ridge Mountains drawl, Holland sings of train yards, midnight rendezvous, ukeleles and morphine (although she footnotes the latter with the liner-note caveat, "I'm certainly not encouraging anyone to fuck up their life").

Jean Grae, This Week. Although South African-born MC Jean Grae can't read minds like her redheaded counterpart in the X-Men, she was definitely blessed with superhuman flow, which she puts to good use on This Week--a kinda-sorta concept album that charts a week in the life of the lib-spitting rapper. Like a tattooed Lauryn Hill on a federal work-release program, Grae rages on playas and hoochies in equal measure, unleashing couplets like, "I'll lick off the potshots and cut your dick off/ And sell it like it's porn to the pawn shop." Ouch!

Sam Phillips, A Boot and a Shoe. In my mind, Sam Phillips smells like lavender water and wild mushrooms and is privy to sexual secrets that not even Sting knows. She also seems like the kind of woman who would give you the silent treatment for like three weeks if you ever did her wrong. At least you'd still have A Boot and a Shoe, which is a little like having your own little gypsy cabaret (belly dancer optional but encouraged).

Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken. The perfect blend of pre-Jack Daniels Janis Joplin and pre-Little Debbie Linda Ronstadt, Neko Case could sing the whitewash off a picket fence if such was her wont. As it is, she seems content to skewer old boyfriends and celebrate man-munching jungle cats with a voice exponentially bigger than her modest frame.

Jill Scott, Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds, Vol. 2. Jill Scott is Norah Jones if she had Erykah Badu's social conscience and Mary J. Blige's gangsta lean. Scott treads the no-woman's-land between family and society with a no-nonsense wisdom that makes her sophomore album a repeat-play delight.

Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose. A decade ago, Johnny Cash turned to bearded wonder Rick Rubin to resuscitate his slumping career. This year, Loretta Lynn snatched up blues-rock messiah Jack White for the same purpose--a move that would have smacked of abject desperation had it not been such an unqualified success. White, who used to play in a Dee-troyt country band called Goober and the Peas, crafted the perfect backdrop for Lynn's half-sung, half-spoken tales of love, despair and murder. Alt-country hipsters, you have a new goddess; her name is Loretta.


Andrew Kiraly

I feel uniquely unqualified to say with any amount of authority what the top albums of 2004 were. I'm no principled cultural omnivore like my esteemed colleagues, no populist consumer willing to give everything a chance; for this, my character suffers. Rather, I've managed to cultivate a vigorous narrow-mindedness that writes off a lot of good shit, I'm certain. (For instance, I'm sure I'd be a better person if I listened to U2's new album). But musical provincialism does have an upside: It intensifies the enthusiasms you have to the point of comforting cultic delusion, and can lead to interesting party conversations in which you try to explain why you really, really do, without the faintest bit of irony, like Sepultura.

Anyway, listen to this shit:

1. Dillinger Escape Plan, Miss Machine. Math-rock gods DEP's new singer looks like an emo dude who discovered the joys of Gold's Gym, and the band seems to have taken a musical cue from that fact: Miss Machine brings a bombastic muscularity into the mathematical madness for an album that sounds like a trigonometry final given in a mosh pit. If you hate both jazz and hardcore, you'll love Miss Machine.

2. Blood Brothers, Crimes. Ever ask yourself what would've happened to indie rock if Pavement hadn't castrated it with oblique fake poetry and Steve Malkmus' chicken-chaw voice that sounded like he was floating in a maddening state of suspended puberty? Blood Brothers would've happened. Splitting the difference between acidic angularity and choking grooves, Crimes is an excellent follow-up to the band's debut, Burn Piano Island, Burn.

3. Mastodon, Leviathan. Brilliant technical chops meets old-school metal rip 'n' roar. Mighty.

4. Tortoise, It's All Around You. It's the band that finally answered the question, "What would it take for hipsters to get into Spyro Gyra?" It's All Around You is more musical, less experimental than other Tortoise albums, yet just as weirdly forgettable in the way that makes you immediately crave another spin.

5. Neurosis, The Eye of Every Storm. It's the band that finally answered the question, "What would it take for goths to get into Yes?" With The Eye of Every Storm, Neurosis puts forth another exhausting, emotionally overburdened, irredeemable black hole of mourning music. Hurray!

6. Pig Destroyer, Terrifyer. Grindcore at its grindcoriest. The first album I ever had actual nightmares about listening to.

7. Beep Beep, Business Casual. Not only highly amenable to name-dropping for instant dipster cred, but a fine indie rock album as well. Think Minutemen meets Fugazi with a generous sprinkling of John the Conqueror root.


Dave Surratt

Some years, the great albums come like locusts. This didn't exactly happen in 2004, but some fascinating things flew by nonetheless, starting in January with Stereolab's Margarine Eclipse. Down a core member (Mary Hansen died in a bicycle accident in 2002), Stereolab managed to stick it out and then some against a backdrop of loss, emerging in 2004 with grooves, innovation, and a rock 'n' roll stoicism that sharpened the band's wispier edges.

Brian Wilson came back to give the sincere and unforced Smile we hoped he still had in him. This was worth big celebration, as was the busting out done by septuagenarian Loretta Lynn, who kept more creative control than she ever had with Van Lear Rose, an album sparsely produced by Jack White and buzzing from Lynn's blend of wizened grace and the fresh, infectious energy of a much younger woman.

On the instrumental front, there was fusion guitarist Bill Frisell. Unspeakable is moody, sample-adorned and all over the place. It lingers patiently in that liminal region between background and active engagement, and does so with an easygoing distress reminiscent of the Miles Davis and John McLaughlin partnership--something to accompany bluish loops of cigarette smoke in the window light of a drizzly day.

In the same seethingly quiet vein, Robyn Hitchcock and Joanna Newsom released Spooked and The Milk-Eyed Mender, respectively. Both records sport subtle arcs, creepy deadpans and well-settled foundations of confidently affected voicework--just the thing we need against the advance of generic alt-rockers for whom carrying a tune is close enough. Newsom's sound is like Bjork and Kristen Hersh jockeying for the same channel through a precious-voiced Kansas housewife. She sounds as if she could wake up any second, and that's perfect.

The Alabama-based Drive-By Truckers did something oh-so nice: release a Southern rock album with Southern themes without being so Southern-sentimental. The Dirty South tells it like it is, walks with its head up and doesn't stoop to the trough of empty regionalist pride that's distracted many Southern musicians away from greater salience.

Lastly, The Fiery Furnaces seem like they should be here. It's an odd thing they've done on Blueberry Boat--occasionally irritating, often beautiful, always interesting. The clincher really might just be their name; it's fun to say "Fiery Furnaces," and its even more fun to say "Blueberry Boat" right after that.

Mad props go out to Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Wilco and Interpol for doing undeniably cool things this year. They'll head up many lists such as this one, just not this one.

---