Our staff message-board at the original review archive often airs a familiar concern—a wariness of overrating the albums we review. Perhaps it’s out of fear that our enthusiasm for music will cloud our objective critical vision. Perhaps we tend to review albums we like a lot. Regardless, as someone who helped this site out at its infant stages and has taken such pleasure in it as its grown, these concerns are always of great importance to me.
But the fact is that we’ve been strenuously working to keep our ratings conservative ever since the first full year that the site was up (when I personally had something like twenty albums rated at 83% or higher). Back then, an impulsive liking could lead to astronomic ratings. Mr. Reid gave My Morning Jacket above a 90%, and I did the same for the Wrens. Now things have been toned down a bit. But whether it’s true just for me, there have been too many albums this year that I honestly couldn’t have given a lower rating because I would’ve felt like it would be a gross short-changing. Perhaps we are enthusiastic to a fault. Perhaps we do review more albums that we love than we should. But the more likely answer, for me, is that 2004’s releases have just been far superior to those of 2003.
I’m convinced that 2003 was one of the most unsteady, insecure times in recent music history, the adolescent year of the decade, as it were. IDM was sputtering to a close ushered on by the simple difficulty of creating inspired music with a laptop and a general exhaustion of ideas—Fennesz, O’Rourke, Keith Fullerton Whitman et al. had nailed each of their own particular IDM signature sounds, and were at the top of the IDM game (though Fennesz still manages to impress). Dancepunk was always so close to actually becoming a full-fledged movement. Yet, just the year before, Liars had done more with dancepunk than anyone would do to this day. Whereas 2002 was full of confident rookies and effortlessly great veterans (Wilco alongside Interpol, etc.), 2003 had a few standout gems amidst a throng of unsure artists hesitant to make a move. The result was a lot of decent, reliable releases, but very few standout releases, and little significant development in any direction at all. It’s fair to say that dancepunk is dead by now, at least, as of !!!’s underwhelming, criminally late Louden Up Now or even more recently, as of Chinese Stars’ debut LP.
Nor would it be particularly far off the mark to say that the insecurity, the lack of palpable forward momentum in 2003, still sits with us in 2004. The cardinal difference is that the veterans of the game have come back to supply key, even essential releases, to overcome a paucity of ideas and innovation on the part of the youngsters. Think Morrissey, Sonic Youth, and Mission of Burma. Even younger, though still heavily artists, have released excellent albums: Ghost, Air, Wilco, Destroyer, Fennesz.
It’s the fulfillment of earlier promises that’s been unreliable. Liars released a monstrosity, The Beta Band took another step back from the making the Great Album we’ve sworn they’re capable of, !!! reminded us to forget them, and The Killers were more along the lines of The Killers/Fillers. A few have turned out rather nicely: Madvillain kicked the shit out of hip-hop, overcoming an absurd hype-storm; Franz Ferdinand exceeded expectations, sexing up Brit-pop with a bit of post-punk; The Walkmen returned with their rhythm-section ablaze, pushing their album into certain top spots on year-end lists; and Animal Collective delivered on their earlier weird-pop promise (though it is overrated, much like the Unicorns’ Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? last year).
Overall, the general landscape, as I see it, has been one stabilized by older groups reminding the younger ones of what great albums are made of. Rage against it if you want. But I’ve got my arms open to whomever is going to give me the good stuff.
I’d love to do an extensive feature on all of the music that has been released this year, but naturally I haven’t gotten to much more than a fraction of it; that’s the necessary limitation of being a human music critic with only so much time and money and not enough labels sending you promos to save you time and research. But since we love to make lists (oh and we do), here are a few reflections of my thoughts on 2004 so far (limited to what we’ve reviewed on the site).
Superlatives (for the year so far):
Best debut LP: Junior Boys: Last Exit
Best geezer album: Sonic Youth: Sonic Nurse
Best album to have sex to: Junior Boys: Last Exit
Biggest headfuck of an album: Animal Collective: Sung Tongs
Best overall lyrics: Morrissey: You Are the Quarry
Album with the biggest penis: Icarus Line: Penance Soiree
Album with the smallest penis – Polyphonic Spree: Together We’re Heavy
Most beautiful album: Fennesz: Venice
Gayest Album (in a good way): Scissor Sisters: Scissor Sisters
Most overrated album: Animal Collective: Sung Tongs (I still like it!)
Most underrated album: Wilco: A Ghost is Born
Worst album: Liars: They Were Wrong So We Drowned
Worst overall lyrics: Days Like These: Charity. Burns. Green.
Worst album to have sex to: Liars: They Were Wrong So We Drowned
Why You Need this Mixtape:
It’s tough being a music snob. Your friends come at you saying something like, “Dude, At the Drive-In is the SHIT!” and you have to shake your head because you know that At the Drive-In is not, in fact, the shit, but rather, merely a stop towards bands that are the SHIT. And it hurts. It hurts you, it hurts them. After all, they just discovered the next step up from Rage Against the Machine. And back then, that was the shit. But to soften the blow – and teach, rather than merely ridicule – give them a mixtape like this, and with as little patronizing as possible, insinuate that this is the best kind of real shit. And voila! In no time you’ll have a friend that you’ve tried to educate who probably still listens to crap. It’s the thought that counts.
The Mixtape to kick your friends’ mixtapes’ asses:
Straight-Up Rock:
1) The Walkmen – “The Rat”
2) Ghost – “The Piper”
3) Franz Ferdinand – “Darts of Pleasure”
4) Sonic Youth – “Stones”
5) Morrissey – “You Know I Couldn’t Last”
6) Mission of Burma – “Prepared”
7) The Killers – “Believe Me Natalie”
8) The Beta Band – “Liquid Bird”
9) Wilco – “Muzzle of Bees”
10) Deerhoof – “Milk Man”
11) McLusky – “Falco Vs. The Young Canoeist”
Finally,
The 20 Best Albums of the Year so far:
1. Sonic Youth: Sonic Nurse
2. Fennesz: Venice
3. Wilco: A Ghost Is Born
4. Junior Boys: Last Exit
5. Franz Ferdinand: Self-Titled
6. Ghost: Hypnotic Underworld
7. Walkmen: Bows and Arrows
8. Morrissey: You Are the Quarry
9. Madvillain: Madvillainy
10. A.C. Newman: The Slow Wonder
11. Destroyer: Your Blues
12. Illogic: Celestial Clockwork
13. TV on the Radio: Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
14. Mission of Burma: OnOffOn
15. Jason Forrest: The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash
16. The Streets: A Grand Don’t Come For Free
17. Tangiers: Never Bring You Pleasure
18. Chad VanGaalen: Infiniheart
19. Animal Collective: Sung Tongs
20. Modest Mouse: Good News for People Who Love Bad News
