Dear To Whom it May Concern,

I’m sitting here in Vancouver airport, on my way to Melbourne. I’ve
slept none in the past 30 hours except for 3 induced by Shark Tale on
the Montreal-Vancouver leg of the trip. I can’t tell if that smell is
my armpits or someone else’s. I have a headache, and I’ve realized
that I truly do hate myself: I bought a pumpkin spice latte at
Starbucks. I know. Just take note that what follows might make even
less sense.

I was supposed to write this give’er long-ass thingy running down all
my favourite music from this year. I was going to do categories such
as most overrated bullshit (Dizzee Rascal), most continually
disappointing genre (hip hop), bands that have made me cry (New
Buffalo, Arcade Fire, Iron & Wine), my subjectively bestest records of
the year (John Smith’s Pinky’s Laundromat, Ta Det Lugnt, Darren
Hanlon’s Little Chills), and stuff I really wish I reviewed but just
never got around to (Rob Sonic’s Telicatessen, Pitman’s Pit
Closure, and Dosh’s Pure Trash). There was a lot of
criticism-in-music (music that critiques music, either by way of
inadvertent accident or outright slander).

One of the best things I’ve
heard this year is M.I.A.’s “Fire, Fire” (b-side from her July
“Sunshowers” single) where she says “Fuck you, now, to Missy and
Timbaland.” For some reason I adore that kind of brashness coming from
an up-and-comer who performs in Mickey Mouse nightdresses and just
chats her little POW butt off. The Futureheads made fun of everyone
this year, as did Aqueduct, and Pitman’s record loogies all over
everyone’s Adidas.

Let me get into that because this thing got hardly any press in North
America. “Pic Closure” is not an “album” so much as it is a series of
short songs and very-musical skits ripping up everything from the
origins of hip hop to G-Unit. This record needs to be heard by anyone
who’s frustrated with hip hop’s circular stagnance, and dependence on
flashy attitude as a musical attractor. I’m frustrated with the fact
that more and more worth in hip hop is getting put on “posturing” and
looking/sounding “cool” and/or “full-of-attitude” when a lot of this
flashy wrapping contains a stale fart of substance on the inside.
That’s pretty much why I can call an album half-full of skits one of
the best hip hop releases this year (Pit Closure, not College
Dropout), because it poignantly indicates all the bullshit aspects of
hip hop as popular music in the ’00s. And the sad part is, this is
the only release from this year that really actually had any business
being a double-disc. Too bad it wasn’t.

I mean, doesn’t the fact that
the top single (“Jesus Walks”) from one of the top-selling hip hop
artists of the year (Kanye West) wasn’t even written by him?
Personality sells this genre, and when every artist’s expression of
personality relies on how far outward he can project his version of
“bad-ass” you actually end up with a lot of whiney/complainy
braggadocio based on not much more than the assets one’s marketing
team budgeted for him/her, we get that stale fart. Disposable more so
than any other music out there.

And back to Kanye: you release a song
called “Jesus Walks”, depict yourself as some sort of saviour,
automatically enhancing the self-referential/aggrandizing aspect of
the song, in a genre where authenticity and genuineness of
presentation makes or breaks your worthiness, and you didn’t even
write the thing. Need I spell it out: hip hop as pop music means
interchangeable artists. Just as we can all lump Xtina and Spears and
Gwen Stefani and Jo Jo and Lohan etc. etc. into one pastelled-up
marketed mulchpile, so heaps the cumulated hip-pop community. We’ve
got 99 rappers and they sound like 1.

But so long-lasting when done correctly. This is where John Smith’s
Pinky’s Laundromat comes in. Smith uses every rhyme-scheme style you
ever loved from the early ’90s and paints a picture of his town around
it. It ends up being a story of Winnipeg drug lore, somewhat
hippied-out (two of our protagonists own a huge house in which they
grow fields of marijuana), but the end product is a completist’s
fetish come to life. At once upon a complete listen to the record we
hear John Smith’s personality shine through without resorting to
typical bling fare or get-over-it complaints about how the media is
treating him (then again, the media hasn’t really treated John Smith
at all), he commands respect from his on-point delivery and creativity
(ie without having to demand it or beg for it outwardly in his songs),
and the beats are break-based and utterly brilliant. The album sounds
like a wised-up version of Mobb Deep’s classic “The Infamous”
cross-bred with the storyline of Mike Skinner’s latest but
more-complete because Smith doesn’t concern himself with creating new
slang words in order to better sell cell phone ring-tones to 12 year
olds. I will call this the most well-rounded, stylistically impeccable
and complete hip hop release this year, Madvillain be damned.

That said, as well, I think we gave MM..Food too hard a thrashing and
I don’t give a shit what anyone says, “Fried Friendz” is the jam.
Ghostface’s album is great if unitopical and if you’ll look closely;
Dizzee’s only different because he’s got an accent. Zzzzz.

Rob Sonic, on the other hand, is doomed to be underrated because he
uses the same drum hits on each song, but as far synth-beat hip hop
goes he’s made a gem of a record in Telicatessen, and while it isn’t
as immediately remarkable as Bazooka Tooth, Labour Days, or Fantastic
Damage, it is the equal of each in sheer amount of ideas and the only
thing keeping me from jumping on the “DJX fell off” bandwagon.
Actually, no, DJX is just doing what Heiro did back when the whole
crew was signed to Jive – getting everyone in the group-of-friends a
record deal while the getting is good. Out of their lower-profile
second-wave, Rob Sonic is probably the only one that deserves
first-trier Jukie status: at different points in Telicatessen he spits
fantastic punchlines, and crotchety social commentary: “all these
walls are not enough / TOO MANY PEOPLE IN ONE PLACE!” This is the
call-and-response showstopper for the overcrowded, diluted hip hop
market mentioned above, and links art to real life. I urge anyone
remotely interested to check out Telicatessen and spend a patient
afternoon parsing out and soaking in Sonic’s unique approach. I feel
like I’ve done our readers a disservice by not giving this record a
full review treatment.

I’m going to wrap this up now as I’m waxing blog and unrefined
blitherings like this probably aren’t how one should sum up a year in
music. I’ve opted not to state the obvious (Shugo Tokumaru, Frog Eyes,
SMiLE, Devendra, Sam Beam, Arcade Fire, Junior Boys, Dead Texan, The
Walkmen, Elliott, AC Newman, Mirah, Wilco all get high year-end
placements and I’m sure you’ll read about them elsewhere on the site).

Dead Texan deserves special mention as the only record I’ve found
worthy of replacing Agaetis Bryjun as a go-to-sleep wind-down album.
Mirah took it upon herself to echo Morrissey’s sentiment that “America
is Not the World” via her fantastic “Jerusalem” (“What other wars?”).
Out of all non-2004 records I played Neutral Milk Hotel and The
Russian Futurists the most. New Buffalo’s album is gorgeous, as it
Darren Hanlon’s and look for Sam Beam’s sound to get a lot more
intriguing in 2005. Mixel Pixel are eerily eccentric and a lot of fun.
Of Montreal. Oh yeah. Barnes deserves special mention too as probably
my fifth most-played album this year. And Destroyer—shit, every song
on that one goes from cheese-synth to fully-developed, orchestrated,
and rich blends of Tull-meets-Triumph; you have to love Bejar’s
repeated failed attempts to ruin himself. Your Blues sounds like he
set the bar at “make the best music possible from the tackiest ideas
you have” and it came off brilliantly, as if Lars Von Trier set up
synth orchestration as an “obstruction.”

What’s left? Well I’ll end it here: when two of the year’s most
heartwarmingly resonant albums are in Japanese and Swedish (Shugo’s
Night Piece and Dungen’s Ta Det Lugnt) it’s indicative of a couple
of things: 1) there’s a lot of gutless, soulless, substantially vapid
music out there; and 2) You don’t really need to glam it up/beat
listeners over the head for them to respond to your work: if you mean
it, it will be communicated. If all you mean is “I’m great,” that will
be communicated, too, and will be disposed of quite rapidly (have we
lost our patience with Franz Ferdinand yet?). 2004 was, for me, a
year-long chase for personality. Where I found it, I loved the music
that it was expressed in. On the other hand, the blob of homogenous
antisubstance is rapidly expanding into hip hop, grime, indie rock,
folk, whatever (“but hip hop is folk music, Newell!”). Right, and as
such it should come from somewhere, not anywhere.

This self-indulgent bloglike rant was apologetically “written” with a
significant lack of sleep (and therefore all errors and omissions,
while my own, are wholly excusable by you the forgiving reader and
pre-emptorily apologized for) in Vancouver airport on December 21,
2004, way past my deadline because I had to work like a dog this
week/weekend. Thanks to anyone who bought a record based on any of our
recommendations this year, and please come back to tear into us again
in 2005. And e-mail more. And enjoy the holidays. And buy that New
Buffalo album.