Critics Poll 2003 ballot

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The Tris McCall Report

Critics Poll 2003 -- Butterfly ballot

The ferocious pollmaster, ruthlessly assessing another record.

This poll was born in defiance. We were just kids in '87; we had braces and bad marks on our algebra tests, and we were pissed off at the critical reception that Marillion's Clutching At Straws received at the hands of Spin and MTV smartasses. It was our own delusions of importance (ones, I am happy to say, most of us still possess in spades) that compelled us to get together at Syd's diner in Millburn and attempt to redress the balance by proclaiming to the world, or at least the waitress, that Marillion was the champeen.

From '87 through '91, we filled out our top ten lists on the back of Syd's placemats. I don't know where those greasy, Coke-stained placemats are now, but I remember the results: we always tried to buck current trends, come up with idiosyncratic picks, defend outrageous claims on behalf of reviled artists. It was a point of pride among the Critics -- as we unapologetically called ourselves -- to defend the declassé. There was no shame in being uncool, no shame in defending "bad" music; shame came only in overlapping with the dreaded Pazz & Jop.

After '91, the poll became more standardized. I came up with a form, and distributed it to other budding hipsters who were interested in opining wildly about pop music. This took the Critics Poll out of the hands of the Critics, and slowly but surely, the defiant tone of the poll ebbed. Since I am a contrary bastard, this pissed me off. But what I discovered, to my surprise, was that it was actually more interesting to get a snapshot of current indiepop sentiment than it was to impose my own bizarre worldview on my peers (or the waitress). As I stuck year after year's worth of completed forms into the black looseleaf folder with the Permanent Green Light sticker on it, I was pleased to feel that we were creating a geological record of ultra-hipster judgement.

Nonetheless, I stuck to my guns. I continued to put weird shit at the top of my polls. Some of those choices were defensible -- nobody is going to tell me Brian Dewan's Operating Theatre wasn't the most dynamic and fascinating album of 2001 -- some others, maybe not so. If you bought Black Foliage: Animation Music on my recommendation and entertained fantasies of choking me while sitting through the interminable third-side noise collage, I'm not going to say I blame you. But my Critics Poll was never meant to be a buyer's guide; rather, a compendium of oddball perspectives from a subversive joker imploring you to think differently.

So it is with great remorse that I must report that my Critics Poll ballot for 2003 is: fucking boring. In 2003, I liked the same damned records everybody else liked, and try though I might have, I could not find a way to say otherwise. To make matters worse, at least for me, 2003 marked the first year I have ever been unable to fit a single rap album in my Top Ten. This was not for want of trying: the lower reaches of my evaluative list is littered with old hip-hop favorites whose latest efforts I couldn't warm to: Mix-A-Lot (too scattershot), Lyrics Born (too ungrounded), Jay-Z (too defeatist and automatic-sounding), KRS-ONE (too unmusical), Gang Starr (too reiterative), Prince Paul (too everything). If the act of making year-end lists is, at heart, taking stock of one's own evaluative system and aesthetic priorities, 2003 was the year I finally lost touch with the music of my adolescence.

Then again, in making the boring choice to rank at #1 the same album everybody else in America had at #1, I applied the same standard I used to lionize rap records -- here was an full-length that presented a character, or a set of characters, and set them loose in a vivid world fraught with danger and illuminated by flashes of humor.

Enough with the cryptic stuff, here's what you've been waiting for.

Albums of the year:

The White Stripes -- Elephant

The Decemberists -- Her Majesty The Decemberists

Elvis Costello -- North

The Clientele -- The Violet Hour

Belle & Sebastian -- Dear Catastrophe Waitress

The Aislers Set -- How I Learned To Write Backwards

The New Pornographers -- Electric Version

Liz Phair -- Liz Phair

Lilys -- Precollection

American Altitude -- American Altitude

Metric -- Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

50 Cent -- Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

The Vitamen -- Mujer

The Ladybug Transistor -- The Ladybug Transistor

Outkast -- Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Hot Hot Heat -- Make Up The Breakdown

The Essex Green -- The Long Goodbye

The French -- Local Information

The Jessica Fletchers -- What Happened To The?

Mates Of State -- Team Boo

Singles of the year:

Lumidee -- "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh)"

Sean Paul -- "Get Busy"

The Webb Brothers -- "Ms. Moriarty"

50 Cent -- "In Da Club"

Nas -- "I Can"

Avril Lavigne -- "I'm With You"

All-American Rejects -- "Swing Swing"

Fountains Of Wayne -- "Stacey's Mom"

Liz Phair -- "Why Can't I?"

Missy Elliott -- "Pass That Dutch"

Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- "Maps"

Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz -- "Get Low"

Outkast -- "Way You Move"

Hot Hot Heat -- "Bandages"

Liam Lynch -- "United States Of Whatever"

Field Mob -- "Sick Of Being Lonely"

Rooney -- "Blueside"

Simple Plan -- "Addicted"

Kelis -- "Milkshake"

Bowling For Soup -- "The Girl All The Bad Guys Want"

Best album title:

How I Learned To Write Backwards

Best album cover:

The Long Goodbye. Are they preppies or are they hippies?

Best liner notes & packaging:

Team Boo for the lovely packaging. My record had the best liner notes.

Most welcome surprise:

I didn't expect North to be decent, let alone near-flawless.

Biggest disappointment:

Prince Paul's Politics Of The Business was too bitter even for me. Lyle Lovett's My Baby Don't Tolerate: fourteen new songs, zero new ideas!

Album that opens the strongest:

Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?

Album that ends the strongest:

Liz Phair

Worst song of the year:

Christina Aguilera -- "Fighter"

Song of the year:

Belle & Sebastian -- "If She Wants Me"

Outkast -- "A Life In The Day Of Benjamin Andre"

The Decemberists -- "I Was Meant For The Stage"

The White Stripes -- "I Want To Be The Boy Who Warms Your Mother's Heart"

Best singing:

Karen O

Best rapping:

Ludacris. I am convinced that the only reason Ludacris is not considered the best emcee in the country is because his name is Ludacris.

Best bass playing:

John Collins, for The New Pornographers

Best drumming:

Steven Keller, for Lilys (especially on "Mystery School Assembly"). This year's best rhythm section was Josh Winstead and Joules Scott-Key from Metric.

Best drum programming:

50 Cent's various production teams -- Dr. Dre, Eminem, Rockwilda, etc.

Best synth playing:

Damon Albarn. No, really; check out the "Brothers & Sisters" solo, just for starters.

Best piano/organ/electric piano playing:

Ivan Chr. Johansen of the Jessica Fletchers. He's the player Steve Bays wants to be (not that Steve Bays doesn't have other virtues...)

Best rhythm guitar playing:

A tie between Colin Meloy, major domo of The Decemberists, and Amy Linton, head honcho of the Aislers Set.

Best lead guitar playing:

Jack White. I know, I know, it's all tricks, anybody could do that whammy-pedal stuff. So why don't they?

Alistair MacLean of The Clientele doesn't really play lead or rhythm; that motherfucker is so good he transcends all categories.

Best use of a non-traditional instrument:

The Aislers Set's sleigh bells.

Best instrumental solo:

Any of Jack White's leads on "Ball And Biscuit"; pick one. Clears my nostrils like an electric shock.

Best instrumentalist:

Beyond all the a capella bell choruses and lesbian rage, it's John Collins's ridiculous bass playing that turns the New Pornographers from a bunch of standard-issue geeks into a Force.

Best arrangement:

Amy Linton & Aislers Set. Horn charts, puny guitar, reverbed percussion, wood blocks, unearthly harmonies; the Wall Of Sound as assembled by tripped-out art students whose scholarships have just been rescinded.

Most thoroughly botched production job:

Spiritualized -- Amazing Grace.

Best production:

Trevor Horn, on behalf of Belle & Sebastian. Somebody needed to kick those guys in the ass, and who better for the job than the new wave's senior ass-kicker on duty?

Best lyrics (on individual songs):

Liz Phair -- "Love/War"

The French -- "The Wu-Tang Clan"

Jesse Fuchs -- "I Am Not The Exception To The Rule"

The Decemberists -- "The Soldiering Life"

The White Stripes -- "Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine"

The French -- "Porn Shoes"

The Vitamen -- "Black Babies"

Belle & Sebastian -- "If You Find Yourself Caught In Love"

The Roadside Graves -- "Song For A Dry State"

The Decemberists -- "I Was Meant For The Stage"

Best lyrics (over the course of a full-length):

Not to belittle the Decemberists' massive achievement, but Darren Heyman's writing for The French was more coherent, and ultimately a little more trenchant.

Best songwriting:

Elvis Costello

Best sounding album:

The Webb Brothers

Best music video:

"Get Busy"

Best guest appearance:

Holly Golightly. "I would, but Holly, I really just don't know how...."

Sexiest people in pop music:

Sarah Shannon. The first step toward finding a cure is admitting you have a problem.

Emily Haines

Sasha Bell

Kori Gardner

Amy Linton.

Worst singing:

Andre Benjamin, "She's Alive". Look, Speakerboxxx is a really good album. The Love Below is dragged down by the absurd conceit that Benjamin can sing. He can't. God put that guy on earth to rap. Don't waste the miracle, Andre.

Worst rapping:

Jay-Z's ridiculously self-important phone-ins on "Crazy In Love" and "Change Clothes".

Worst instrumentalists;

Her Majesty's String Quartet's butcher jobs -- especially on "Los Angeles, My Love" -- nearly kept Her Majesty The Decemberists out of the #2 slot.

Worst lyrics:

"Angel" by Angie Martinez, and Good Charlotte's "The Anthem".

Rookie of the year:

Metric.

Worst song on a good album:

The Outkast drum 'n' bass reinterpretation of "My Favorite Things". The hardest four minutes to sit through of 2003.

Crappy album you listened to a lot anyway:

The Thorns

2003 album you listened to the most:

The Ladybug Transistor. That easy listening sound....

2003 album that wore out the quickest:

Amazing Grace

Song that got stuck in your head the most this year:

"Swing, Swing". That and "I'm A Terrible Person" by Rooney.

Artist you don't know, but you know you should:

Fiery Furnaces

Man, I wish I knew what this song was about:

"Choking On Air". If any of you Marlborough Farms types are reading this, please drop me a line and clarify, okay?

Album that felt most like an obligation to get through:

Robert Wyatt -- Cuckooland

Most romantic song:

Elvis Costello -- "Can You Be True?" Also, "Missing" by The Clientele. The most comparable album to The Violet Hour is Astral Weeks. You think I'm pulling your leg, but check it: slurred, crazy-romantic singing, long, mesmerizing songs, an emphasis on rainy-night mysticism, brushed drums, and an overzealous bass player who nearly capsizes the project.

Funniest song:

Sir Mix-A-Lot -- "Big Johnson". Also, there's that song Jesse Fuchs wrote about Denny's...

Most frightening song:

50 Cent -- "Gotta Make It To Heaven", "Heat"

Saddest song:

Anything on Meadowlands. "Everyone Choose Sides", maybe.

Best cover:

"I Don't Know What To Do With Myself"

Most unwelcome cover:

Adam Duritz & Vanessa Carlton -- "Big Yellow Taxi"

Best backing vocals:

Sasha Bell

Song that would drive you craziest on infinite repeat:

"Get Low"

Most consistent album:

Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

Most convincing historical recreation:

The Jessica Fletchers.

Song/album that should have been shorter:

The Ownerz, Politics Of The Business

Song/album that should have been longer:

Precollection

Album that turned out to be a whole hell of a lot better than you initially thought:

Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

Most overrated artist:

Cat Power. I can't get past the song where she's listing the ages of the abused children. The "N-n-n-nineteen" of our time.

Album that was the most fun to listen to:

Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Song/Album you feel cheapest about liking:

Matchbox 20 -- "Unwell"

Hoary old bastard who should spare us all and retire:

GBV. But I've been saying that since Alien Lanes.

Young upstarts who should be sent down to the minors for more seasoning:

Fannypack. Then again, that's their appeal.

2003 album you'll probably re-evaluate in 2004:

Chutes Too Narrow

Most overplayed song:

"Bring Me To Life"

Sexiest song:

Mates of State -- "An Experiment"

Place the next big pop music boom will come from:

Philly

Will still be making good records in 2013:

Liz Fucking Phair, you ungrateful bastards.

Will be a one-hit wonder (t.A.T.u. doesn't count):

Jason Mraz

Biggest musical trend of 2004:

Hair-metal nostalgia

Best album of 2004:

Roadside Graves full-length (don't let me down, guys).

Your album results:

Your singles results:

Your miscellaneous responses:

I love Tris McCall like a little brother.