Best Music 2003

 

1. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People

It’s the year of the Canadian Cure -  pop alchemy for various sonic ailments.  Ample music, ingratiating, diverse and cohesive.  Big sound for melodic theme and instrumental (treated) variations.  Lyrics emanating from some middle-class melancholic midpoint between Raymond Carver and William Borroughs.   Small details and large themes.  Dark and poppy.  Suitable for all occasions if you ignore the scatology with canook blithe spirits.  In an old Volvo, driving away in the morning with both smile and self-loathing.

 

2. Califone –  Quicksand/Cradlesnakes

Post-lo fi that went in the other direction from the polished Notwist and Postal Service.  Messy and rootsy songs with layers of sound dropped by producers needing sleep.  Lot’s of appealing crippled instrumentals, dipped in electronics, and folk-rock earnestness.  Irony fully in tact, but hearts hanging by a thread from worn and soiled sleeves.  Baroque cornpone. Late at night with tea and a headache.

 

3. Four Tet – Rounds

Circular and gentle.  But not shallow, scratch the pretty surface and there is grand design.  Acoustic, spacey with a hitch in its chilly dance step.  Soundtracking with subtle precision.  On the beach in Mykonos.

 

4. Sufjan Stevens – Greetings from Michigan

A true 9-11 song cycle.  Stories in both the words and the monotonously delicious melodies.  Crisp construction and patient singing.  Banjos and a novelist’s ambition.  Truth about decay and rust, and that truth is beauty.  For all it’s potential sarcasm, there is a kind presence.  I think he loves the state in all its obese and drained glory.  So American it’s sad enough to make you cry.  Literate though literal. The kind of somber gravity Beck aspired to in Seachange.  On a plane to some better, dreamed, life.

 

5. Calla – Televise

Dark spaces and welcomed dead ends.  Unfinished ideas.  Reverb and

6. Lucinda Williams – World Without Tears
7. Juana Molina - Segundo

The Argentine Portishead. 

8. Yo La Tengo – Summer Sun

Solid songs, romantically classic.  Adult indie.

9. The Weakerthans – Reconstruction Site
10. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
11. Outkast – Speakerboxx/The Love Below

The Andre disc is brilliant.

12. Songs: Ohia – Magnolia Electric Company

Maybe he does sound like Neil Young.  Maybe the working class angst is a little too Steinbeck.  Maybe the crunchy chords and

13. Prefuse 73 – One Word Extinguisher
14. The Wrens – Meadowlands
15. The Strokes – Room on Fire
16. Josh Rouse - 1972
17. Arab Strap – Monday at the Hug and Pint
18. Tim Hecker – Radio Amor
19. Postal Service – Give Up
20. Stars - Heart
21. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Pig Lib
22. Blithe Sons – We Walk the Young Earth
23. The Books – The Lemon of Pink
24. Mars Volta – De-loused in the Comatorium
25. Clearlake – Cedars
26. Neil Young – Greendale
27. 1 Mile North – Minor Shadows
28. Angels of Light – Everything is Good Here
29. Elbow – Cast of Thousands
30. Fruit Bats – Mouthfuls
31. Aarktica – Pure Tone Audiometry
32. Microphones – Mt. Eerie
33. Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts of the Great Highway
34. Warren Zevon – The Wind
35. Kinski – Airs Above Station
36. TV on the Radio – Young Liars
37. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
38. American Analog Set – Promise of Love
39. Supersilent  - 6
40. Aerogramme – Sleep and Release
41. My Morning Jacket – It Still Moves Me
42. The Constantines – Shine a Light
43. Calexico – Feast of Wire
44. Manitoba – Up in Flames
45. Ester Drang – Infinite Keys
46. Erland Oye – Unrest
47. Shins – Chutes Too Narrow
48. Deadly Snakes – Ode to Joy
49. Grandaddy - Sumday
50. Johann Johannson -   Englaborn
51. Sidestepper – 3 AM In Beats We Trust

 

 

 

Biggest disappointments: Damien Rice, Cat Power, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, White Stripes, Earlimart, The Rapture, The Decembrists, Shins