< PART ONE
24 JIM GUTHRIE NOW, MORE THAN EVER
Despite my not knowing him, Now, More Than Ever has me thinking that Jim Guthrie is a really nice guy. Take just the inviting, friendly and catchy guitar lick that opens and bases "Problem With Solutions," and listen to Guthrie's voice. The record is ravished in the most smooth but extravagant instrumentation, yes, but right there you have Now, More Than Ever. It doesn't hint at the violent violin jolts midway through the record, but it's always there, like a friend you could rely on-- and unfortunately I bet a nice guy like Jim Guthrie has heard that a lot.
23 TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS SHAKE THE SHEETS
22 ANNE LAPLANTINE DICIPLINE
Anne Laplantine takes the Books' style of cut-and-paste pop musique concrète and eschews the sometimes fascinating but often silly as hell reliance on speech samples, whittling the tunes down to bare-bones guitar melodies. Dicipline is happy to leave its tales unfinished, its songs without a finish. Instead of writing out a final chapter, Anne Laplantine just goes onto her next idea, making Dicipline one of the biggest flurries trapped in a supple record of unusual hooks and deceivingly simple composition.
21 LIARS THEY WERE WRONG SO WE DROWNED
2004 was better for Halloween music than it'll be remembered for being: Wolf Eyes' Burned Mind was the blood-soaked slasher flick, only without the obligatory tit-scene, and They Were Wrong, So We Drowned was... well, what? The idealized M. Night Shyamalan film? With a genuinely engaging atmosphere instead of cheap jump-scares? It might even make more immediate sense to liken They Were Wrong to House of Leaves ("Read the Book That Wrote Itself"?), at least more than Walpurgisnacht and Salem's Lot. But that doesn't work either: all the empty space between the damaged guitar and skittery percussion in "Broken Witch" doesn't eclipse its spiritual/devilish mantras; and while the house on Ash Tree Lane fits into the formlessness of "If You're a Wizard Then Why Do You Wear Glasses?," the demonic screams at the end do not. The tribal drums in "We Fenced Other Houses With the Bones of Our Own" seem less a product of Zampano's imagination and more like something from the infamous Italian cannibal films. All thsi huff'n'puff made They Were Wrong appear more concept-heavy than it actually is when, frankly, it dodges literal interpretation, for better or worse. Therefore, in its heavy mood, in its no-wave composition and architecture (or lack thereof), They Were Wrong, So We Drowned is the horror movie we'll never get to see.
20 DEVENDRA BANHART NINO ROJO
As you well know, 2004 was the year folk musicians decided to kick ass, in albeit their unique but sissy and wimpy sort of way. Rather than storm in, we had a whole lot of musicians singing songs about animals, plants, and insects, with some psilocybin mushrooms in between-- and Devendra Banhart is arguably (but barely so) the leader of the pack, with two albums full of material worthy of your time. Nino Rojo is so good that it deserves to be considered with its companion, Rejoicing In the Hands. Like the Use Your Illusions, only they sucked ass.
19 JOANNA NEWSOM THE MILK-EYED MENDER
I have a problem with people who have a problem with people who "can't sing", and that is the foremost complaint I have heard re The Milk-Eyed Mender and, specifically, Joanna Newsom's singular warble. It could, admittedly, be off-putting to people who are conservative about their ideals of vocal euphoniousness, but why bother to be that? Be that and you are, in this particular case, blinding yourself to the wealth of incredible songwriting Joanna Newsom showcases on this terrific but, again, warbly, debut. The call is yours.
18 BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW START A PEOPLE
Changing little other than the human quality of their vocal technique, BMSR have transformed completely from Falling Through a Field, evolving from an electronic pop band to a singular entity, a hazy, pastel distillation of dance, pop and electronic music, seen through the eyes of an idealistic eight-year-old and his robot friend. Astralwerks rejected this record because they "just didn't like it". I'm fairly certain they'll end up kicking themselves over that one.
17 BLACK DICE CREATURE COMFORTS
It's noisy, but it's quiet. It's abrasive and mechanical but melodic and natural. It's forty-odd minutes of pure unadulterated je ne sais quois, and yet you'll find yourself trying to whistle the melody to "Night Flight" on the bus. For fans of contradictions in terms, and also things that are awesome.
16 TARANTULA TARANTULA
I thought I was done with post-rock. I set down my Do Make Say Think for Stars and Metric, with Canada moving on and by gum I thought I was right with 'em. I left Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven in the CD rack and averted my eyes, lest I not break and thrust it ravenously into the stereo, and got on with my life. I thought I was done with all the bombast, the drama, the climax, man!, you hear me?? Fuck, I even bought Bee Thousand. Oh, but no! Here comes Tarantula to pick me up on the comedown of my (passionate) affair with the Godspeed and throw me into a half-hour of strings, cyclical movements, builds, crescendos -- you hear me! crescendos!!. "But it's classical," Zeff insisted. Maybe, man, maybe it isn't post-rock, and maybe I'll just learn to stop worrying and love Tarantula.
15 IRON AND WINE OUR ENDLESS NUMBERED DAYS
Another nice record that we loved so much (see: #24), Our Endless Numbered Days was a success in that it glossened over the production of its excellent predecessor while leaving Sam Beam's beautiful, raw voice untouched, which is so necessary because it makes even the most bungling lyric (not that there are many, ahem) seem golden and gorgeous. That's a feat in and of itself, but it also deserves note that the songcraft here is improved over its predecessor, showing Iron & Wine's gradual formation into a band rather than a dude with a tape.
14 DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 YOU'RE A WOMAN, I'M A MACHINE
Goddamn these guys. When the "Romantic Rights" video revealed itself on my television, I was repelled by the Vegas glam, the flashing lights and synth-bassist Jesse Keeler in the suit, coupled with the t-shirt and scraggily looks of drummer-vocalist Sebastien Grainger. The video came on again and I averted my eyes, only to want-to-hate-but-like the song, just in time for the pressure to kick in: as if from some oblique musical Keyser Soze, there was praise from all sides for You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, urging me to try it. I wanted to hate it, but damned if I could hold myself to do so: in the year of the folk and the Arcade Fire, Death From Above 1979 make sentimentality easy, adding (x)emo to (y)Lightning Bolt, glossing it over with I-can't-believe-it's-not-pop-production and dressing it in more attitude than you can shake a guitar at. Few albums have fucked with me as much.
13 ESPERS ESPERS
Year 2004 saw a small explosion of folk acts ranging from free to acid. Devendra Banhart and Animal Collective returned stronger than ever, but among the most interesting new artists was the Chicago group Espers, which includes the brilliant Greg Weeks. Driven by a deep cello and twilight tone, their self-titled debut was the most dramatic and moving folk effort of the year.
12 SHUGO TOKUMARU NIGHT PIECE
This is one of the only foreign-language albums I've loved in a while that hasn't felt foreign to me. I mean, you hear the vocals and can plainly hear that they are in Japanese, but it never really occurs to you to wonder what he's saying, or even to think that you don't know what he's saying. Something in the songwriting, the quiet nocturnality of it, seems familiar and homelike, and the syrupy mix blends together to create the sound of what we'd know had always been hidden away somewhere at night, close by but quietly out of the way, had it ever occurred to us to hold still for just a damn second and really listen.
11 THE FUTUREHEADS THE FUTUREHEADS
The Futureheads' debut is a pretty wonderful surprise after their forgettable demo recordings: a completely solid album that plays like a best-of compilation of a band with thirty years' worth of material to pick from. One after the other, each song is perfectly written, perfectly executed, every contingency planned for. You ask, is there something in this album's cocksure olde-fashioned punk-rock swagger for the barbershop-quartet fan deep down somewhere in one of our less popular organs? Look no further than the immaculately detailed three- and four-part harmonies in pretty much every song on this pretty much undislikable album. "A to B", "Decent Days and Nights", "The City Is Here For You to Use", "Carnival Kids", "He Knows", "Man Ray", the Kate Bush cover, "Hounds of Love", this is an album that doesn't quit, straight up to the truly pained little scream that marks its end. Bona fide as hell.
10 MINUS STORY THE CAPTAIN IS DEAD, LET THE DRUM CORPSE DANCE
This is everything that a debut record should be: shaky but impassioned, and with a voice all its own. From the swells of the opening number to the exhausted return trip of the closer, this record bursts with the energy of discovering, exploring, and owning one's medium all at once, and sounding like they're enjoying it the whole way through, while leaving something big unexplored for next time.
9 LE FLY PAN AM N'ECOUTEZ PAS
With this album, Le Fly Pan Am leaped out of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's inadvertently oppressive shadow and into their own spotlight. They are no longer a side-project; they are the project. N'ecoutez Pas, Le Fly Pan Am's newest about-face in aesthetic, might be their most accessible album to date, if certainly not their most focused and structured. Though that doesn't say a lot if you've heard their former records; and N'ecoutez Pas might be the most damaged, scatter-brained record I loved this year. It's full of fractured experiments that go right for the gut; Le Fly Pan Am does everything bizarre successfully.
8 DEVENDRA BANHART REJOICING IN THE HANDS
7 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS WE SHALL ALL BE HEALED
John Darnielle's second full-fledged studio album is, well, more of the same. But after 415 individual songs written and recorded and scattered across a veritable smorgasbord of full-lengths and EP's and compilations, more of the same is downright amazing. Especially when "more of the same" is as good as We Shall All Be Healed is-- it, in fact, features some of Darnielle's most outstanding songs to date: the hundred-Danielle chorus of "The Young Thousands" and the just downright blissful "Palmcorder Yajna", among others. WSABH is sleek and beautiful, is a mole, is reflective tape on our sweatpants. Get in the god damned car.
6 MICE PARADE OBRIGADO SAUDADE
5 SUFJAN STEVENS SEVEN SWANS
4 ROGUE WAVE OUT OF THE SHADOW
3 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE SUNG TONGS
As you know, Sung Tongs is: sun-drenched, psychedelic, beautiful, triumphant, vast, remarkable, Paul Simon meeting with Brian Wilson over a bit of No New York, organic like campfire singalongs but with laptops, catchy, pop-accessible but uncompromising-experimental, most lovable Animal Collective album yet, FIN. And that's true, but too obvious, and this record deserves better. 'Cause Sung Tongs' acoustic guitars sound like they are being played like harps by fairies; spectres melt and fade away or a chorus of furry animals go apeshit. The lyrics are oftentimes indecipherable, senseless wordplay, but be damned if they didn't catch on like wordless heathen chants during a tribal ceremony. But it is not so: there is no orchestras, no mass, for the voices are mere apparitions, and there are only two djinni are behind the curtain. But that's rendered moot when Sung Tongs whirs to life; could it be anymore electrifying? Any more emotionally bracing? It seems there's no stopping the Animal Collective: who knows what they'll do next.
2 SONIC YOUTH SONIC NURSE
1 THE GO! TEAM THUNDER, LIGHTNING, STRIKE
It seems unsurprising that many of my favorite records of 2004 pulled music out of its politics-laced, angst-ridden funk and made it fun. The Animal Collective struck gold with naive, Dada-lovin' nature and Brian Wilson imported his masterpiece from the 1960s and dropped it into 2004's din. Now the Go! Team strut in, with cheerleaders a-dancin', horns blaring into climaxes and choruses like Warner Bros. jazz caricatures from 1944, old school beats, obfuscating density, retro TV shows, morning cartoons, and a shit-kicking Japanese chick named Ninja. They merge live instrumentation with samples like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? does cartoon animation and live actors. And they continue the insistance that everything is alright: its pixie-stick high triumphs over all caustic politics. It was so great, in fact, that its detractors doubt its treble-charged, candy store euphoria like tragic wannabe-Volitaires. If the Go! Team are not superheroes, here to topple over the bad guys and get everyone back into the groove, then they are the very least Roger Rabbit.
quoth minormasses.
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