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The Tris McCall Report

Critics Poll 2004 -- Diebold ballot

Arright, friends, you have seen the heavy groups, now you will see morning maniac music. Believe me, yeah. It's a new dawn.

 

I am stupefied by the amount of great music you all sent me this year.

Normally, rounding out a top twenty is a pretty easy task -- by the time you get down to fifteen or so, you're sifting through records that you enjoy, but ones with serious flaws. In 2004, though, I still can't believe the quality of the stuff that didn't make the cut. If you don't see yourself on this list, believe me, you're in good company. I could probably go all the way down to fifty without feeling like my list had been compromised by something that wasn't very, very cool.

As home recording technologies continue to improve, the impediments preventing musicians from realizing their most fucked-up sonic dreams are melting away. Records are getting weirder, more personal, more conceptual, and more interesting. At least three albums released in 2004 can stand aside the greatest I've ever heard in my lifetime. While two of those were put out by big music companies, all three share that tripped-out bedroom experimentalism that's becoming increasingly common in all musical genres.

If you've followed along so far, you probably think that Blueberry Boat is my album of the year. It isn't. My top spot goes to a record that was almost universally panned; one that got very little love on our poll despite my advocacy of it. It's a disturbing, violent record, for sure -- one with a short track (produced, not-so-coincidentally, by Kanye West) that was considered so offensive that it's been pulled from future pressings. I think that's a mistake. An album is often at its most effective and most communicative when its ugliness is preserved. Without "The Rape Over," my choice for album of the year is no less nasty, threatening, or violent. It also catches the choked spirit of 2004 -- all of the borrowed time and borrowed phrases, the missed chances, the blown opportunities and bitter disappointments, the sense of betrayal, the sudden lashings-out, the deaths, the killings, the speechifying, the flashes of hard humor and dazzling rhetoric, the scope of destruction, the broken bricks and empty bottles, the hypocracy and moral outrage -- better than any other record. When my imaginary grandkids ask me what 2004 was like, this is what I'm going to play them.

Album of the year

Single of the year

Best album title

The Mummies -- Death By Unga Bunga!!

Best album cover:

The New Danger. I know it's fashionable to say that Mos is a Hollywood star now, but he owes his prominence and his credibility to his music. So when he poses on the cover as a suicide bomber, it's possible that he recognizes that it's his own career and reputation he's taking down.

Best liner notes & packaging:

Elizabeth Harper. Best use of Eulalie Banks images, anyway.

Most welcome surprise:

Diana Krall. I had no idea what I was getting into there, and it's a good bet that neither did she.

Biggest disappointment:

The Pretty Toney Album. Ghostface's work with the Theodore Unit was less uneven, and that's saying something.

Album that opens the strongest:

Split The Difference, by Gomez. The second half is a different story.

Album that ends the strongest:

Seven Swans

Worst song of the year:

Eminem -- "Mosh". It's barely even a song.

Song of the year:

Best EP Releases:

Best singing:

Eleanor Friedberger

Best rapping:

Nas

Best vocal harmonies:

Nina Sky. They aren't even really harmonies -- just weird tricks of sound that happen when they sing in unison. But whatever they are, they feel like the elevated train over the Bronx on a midsummer evening, just as the sun is setting over the Hudson. See, Nina Sky makes me get all corny.

Best bass playing:

John Collins of the New Pornographers, my favorite bass player, gets a co-production credit for The Slow Wonder. He should have turned himself up in the mix. This year's award goes to whoever played on Tift Merritt's Tambourine. It's all cliched, third-generation Memphis stuff, but the execution is flawless.

Best drumming:

Chris Pedersen of Camper Van Beethoven

Best drum programming:

"Lose My Breath" by Destiny's Child. If there's nobody out there who can halt our slide into a paramilitary state, at least we can generate some funky marches.

Best synth playing:

Lil Jon. Sorry, guys; his hooks are undeniable. They might be stock analog-modeling sounds, but they roar out of the speakers with near-classical authority. Forty years from now, somebody's going to whistle the signature riff from "Yeah" to you, and wherever you are or whatever you're doing, you'll be pulled all the way back to Summer 2004.

Best piano/organ/electric piano playing:

Diana Krall, over Bruce Hornsby, who also had a big year on the piano. Krall is a dynamite jazz player, but it's the rock and gospel stuff she does on The Girl In The Other Room that really impresses me. There's a minute-and-a-half stretch of "Love Me Like A Man" where she's basically just driving a blues figure with her left hand and comping with her right, and it's so percussive and Jerry Lee-level slamming that it may take you a moment to realize that her band is resting.

Best rhythm guitar playing:

Matthew Friedberger

Best lead guitar playing:

Phil Wandscher of the Sweet Hereafter. He's almost too good: he makes parts of Oh My Girl sound like a demonstration CD for Gretch guitars or Silvertone amplifiers.

Best use of a non-traditional instrument:

Joanna Newsom, in the biggest slam-dunk on the whole poll. Some of you voted for the tap dancer from Tilly And The Wall, but really it isn't even close. Lots of people have played the harp and the harpsichord in bands; Newsom turned them into viable solo rock instruments.

Best instrumental solo:

Greg Lisher on "Civil Disobedience". Well, maybe Jonathan Segel takes the solo; I'm not sure, but it sounds more like Lisher. It's Segel's song, even if it owes its potency to Lowery's contextualization of it within his sci-fi story.

Best instrumentalist:

Phil Wandscher

Best arrangement:

"The Unbreaking Branch And Song" by Castanets. After laying a half hour of droning country psychedelia on you, Raymond Raposa starts another two-chord acoustic groove. Just when you expect the distant, reverbed kit to come crashing in, Raposa instead introduces a stiff, near-Germanic drum machine pattern. Next comes a Casio riff, some jazzy lead guitar, whispered backing vocals, and muffled saxophones. Then, right when the song reaches its climax, Castanets suddenly pulls the plug on the album. The whole thing clocks in at a fraction over two minutes, and it's all completely brilliant. Honorable mentions: Fan Modine for "The Back And Forth," The Sweet Hereafter for "Troubled Soul," and Cake for "Carbon Monoxide".

Most thoroughly botched production job:

McLusky -- The Difference Between You And Me Is That I Am Not On Fire. The whole point of this band was Andy Falkous's scathing lyrics. Anybody can plug in and make a racket; records like that are a dime a dozen. By drowning Falkous under a wave of "edgy" guitar, Steve Albini swamped McLusky's real edge. Now the band has broken up. Good job, Steve, you've cost us one of our finest.

Best production:

Madvillainy. Faux-superhero cartoon music for faux-superhero cartoon rhymes.

Rookie of the year:

Joanna Newsom

Band of the year:

Camper Van Beethoven, picking up right where they left off.

Best lyrics (on an individual song):

"Straight Street": the best song ever written about setting up mobile phone service in Damascus.

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

The Fiery Furnaces. A Grand Don't Come For Free is pretty remarkable, but not that remarkable. Mike Skinner's vision is broad and nuanced, but is also essentially cinematic. He hasn't shown yet that he can tell a story that doesn't borrow its tone and its tropes from filmed entertainment. Blueberry Boat, on the other hand, incorporated elements from children's fiction, classic rock lyricism, old magazine serials, pirate stories, daily newspapers, ad copy, conversations overheard and buried, textbooks, college lectures, even sportswriting. Blueberry Boat might be the first piece of truly American storytelling I've encountered in years that feels unmolested by contemporary Hollywood. Of all of the feats of imagination that the Friedbergers performed in 2004, that one might be the most amazing.

Best songwriting:

Diana Krall. Ripping off Joni Mitchell is not like ripping off Iggy Pop or Lou Reed. You can't just roll out of bed and do it. To write a Joni Mitchell song, you have to have attained a high level of compositional mastery. Before 2004, Krall was a dynamite piano player whith modest smooth-jazz aspirations and a nice way with a standard. After The Girl In The Other Room, we have to start taking Krall seriously as a big league songwriter -- no matter how indebted to Hejira her compositions are.

Best sounding album:

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter -- Oh My Girl

Best concerts of 2004:

Best music video:

Best guest appearance:

Butta Verses on The Grind Date

Sexiest people in pop music:

Worst video:

Kanye West, "The New Workout Plan". Funny in places, but also obvious, and very, very mean-spirited. It added nothing to the song, and just made West look like a supercilious jerk. Also, Mario's "Let Me Love You" is actually pretty decent, but there's no way to access that while watching the video -- his weird bird-dancing is so atrocious that you run for the remote halfway through the first choreographed sequence.

Worst singing:

Paula Kelley. She's a very good songwriter, but that nauseating baby-doll voice makes her albums nearly unlistenable.

Worst rapping:

I have a problem; his name is Santana. Santana!

Worst instrumentalist:

Davey Faragher, the replacement for Bruce Thomas. I know that Elvis Costello wanted to distance himself from his old bass player after The Big Wheel, but he's overcompensating.

Worst lyrics by a crap lyricist:

Simple Plan -- "Welcome To My Life"

Worst lyrics by a good lyricist who should have known better:

Kate Jacobs -- "Pete's Gonna Sell"

Worst song on a good album:

"In The Backseat," from Funeral. Yes, in the backseat is where Regine Chassagne belongs. Win Butler drives this bus. One Bjork is more than enough, thank you.

Crappy album you listened to a lot anyway:

Aberfeldy -- Young Forever

2004 album you listened to the most:

Probably i by the Magnetic Fields

2004 album that wore out the quickest:

Our Endless Numbered Days

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

"There Ought To Be A Law Against Sunny Southern California," from Juarez, Terry Allen's 1974 border history.

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

Jens Lekman

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

A.C. Newman printed his lyrics this year, and I still can't figure his songs out. (As for Devendra Banhart, I am not sure I want to know what his songs are about.)

Album that felt most like an obligation to get through:

De La Soul's The Grind Date, I am sorry to say. Not that it isn't excellent.

Most romantic song:

The Magnetic Fields -- "It's Only Time"

Funniest song:

The Streets -- "It Was Supposed To Be So Easy". Honorable mention goes to the criminally underrated (and always funny) Bruce Hornsby for "Hooray For Tom".

Most frightening song:

The Decemberists -- "The Tain"

Most moving song:

Kanye West -- "We Don't Care". Gets me every time.

Saddest song:

Tie between Bruce Hornsby's "Dreamland" and Diana Krall's "Departure Bay".

Best cover:

The best recorded cover I heard was Graham Parker's version of "Sugaree" (it's about time he discovered Jerry Garcia). But the best cover, period, done by anybody on earth in 2004 was performed by Elizabeth Harper and Scott Rosenthal at the Gershwin Hotel. Eight months later, their version of "God Only Knows" is still giving me the chills.

Best backing vocals:

Megan Smith

Song that would drive you craziest on infinite repeat:

Lady Saw -- "I've Got Your Man"

Most consistent album:

The College Dropout

Most vertiginously inconsistent album:

Camera Obscura -- Underachievers Please Try Harder. "Knee Deep In The NPL" may be heavenly, but that deathless Leonard Cohen rewrite stops the album cold.

Most convincing historical recreation:

Free The Bees, especially "Chicken Payback"

Song/album that should have been shorter:

The Elected -- Me First

Song/album that should have been longer:

Wild Like Children, and "Wake Up" by the Arcade Fire. It ends just when it really starts rolling.

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

Cathedral by Castanets

Most overrated artist:

DJ Dangermouse, and anybody else doing mash-ups. Look, I graduated from college a decade ago. Dorm room hijinx do not impress me.

Album that was the most fun to listen to:

Tambourine

Song/Album you feel cheapest about liking:

I have a problem; his name is Santana. Santana!

Hoary old bastard who should spare us all and retire:

The Beastie Boys

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

Jolie Holland. Give me that old fashioned morphine, indeed.

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

Rejoicing In The Hands

Most overplayed song:

"She Will Be Loved". I would like to hear Lil Jon cover this song.

Sexiest song:

The Finishing School -- "Destination Girl". What can I say, I go for that coy, geeky New England schtick.

Place the next big pop music boom will come from:

After the Louis Vuitton Don breaks Bol's heart and wins the Grammy for "Jesus Walks", expect lots of sin-surr Kanye West copy acts from the Midwest. Heartland emo rap is the wave of the future.

Will still be making good records in 2013:

Elvis Costello, obviously.

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

Finger Eleven

Biggest musical trend of 2005:

Hipster Christian, now your time has come. Also, I think we're going to see more commercial metal bands with female vocalists, a la Evanescence.

Best album of 2005:

50 Cent -- St. Valentine's Day Massacre

 

Poll album results

Poll singles results

Poll miscellany

Postscript

Check out my Critics Poll ballot for 2003

 

You can tell me anything that you want 'cept I started seeing Jenny.