The 31st P&J Albums Poll!

This one has old-skool ILM battle-lines all over it. I remember being really absorbed and hugely excited by music in 2003 but this list feels strangely underwhelming now.

I voted for Kish Kash obv.

Yeah, Kiah Kash over Dizzee for me. Although I would have voted for the Buck 65 record had that been an option.

Um, why did this thread end up on the Moderator Request Forum? Did I screw up somewhere?

Anyhow, please move to ILM, oh kindly moderators.

Haha, I just spent a confused couple of minutes wondering why this had disappeared from ILM.

Yep, same here.

Baffling! Fixed.

Kish Kash vs Echoes vs Deliverance

Dizzee.

Great year. Meadowlands by The Wrens is my favorite record of 2003, but not enough people heard it, or liked it.

Of the ones listed here, it's Decoration Day.

Yeah, I like lots of the second-tier guitar-band stuff: the Wrens, the Strokes' even better second album, the Shins, about 3/4ths of the Fountains of Wayne. And, of course, Liz Phair.

Thanks, Pash!

I suppose this particular aggregate of guitar bands created the base for SFJ's infamous essay.

Yeah, those are all really good to great. But you really prefer Room on Fire to the debut, Alfred?!?

xp

2004 poster boys Arcade Fire to thread.

I'm a Candy-O guy.

New Pornographers - just slightly ahead of the Fiery Furnaces.

Fever To Tell.

My opinion of these albums is basically the same as in 2003 except I like the Fiery Furnaces and Postal Service albums a lot more than I did at the time.

I voted for Neon Golden. It wouldn't be crazy to say that it's another of those bleak post-9/11 records, but unlike those the songs are exciting (still!); and the sounds still sound deep to me: deep bass, glitchy beats, unfathomable lyrics.

Forgot to rep for the Libertines album, which is actually my favorite guitar album of the year.

If it wasn't for the YYYs I'd probably vote for Outkast. Wonder if it has a chance of winning. Lurkers?

Judging from history, lurkers will vote for Zevon.

Who will be the first to shout me down if I state that Heartbeat City has always been my fave Cars album?

many xp's

Hearts Of Oak is probably my least favorite Ted Leo/Pharmacists album, but I'm gonna give it my vote since it's his only P&J appearance and pretty much the only album on here that I like besides The Black Album.

Junior Senior, not that I play it often but it sounds good when I do (unlike the disastrously bad follow-up).

haha--Zevon (or Rufus?) ftw!

Wait a minute--weren't you repping for Elephant on that other thread, Anthony?

i voted room on fire, followed by dizzee and broken social scene.

Echoes, still.

Bubba--which, I just realized when I listened again recently, features Tye Tribbett and GA on my two favorite songs. Which, since you asked, are "Nowhere" and "Overcome". And then Tye made my favorite gospel song of the past couple years, "No Way"...

See, this is what you get when you tell lurkers to leave comments.

But I tell ya, I listened to that 50 Cent again recently, and ick. New one's much better.

Hey, that's fine by me!

xp

Really? I always liked The Massacre best. Ok, here comes the ILM rap-squad beat down, in 5...4...3...2...1...

50 never made a classic, and the margin of quality between his albums is probably smaller than most people believe, so I won't argue that.

Massacre has good album tracks and awful singles.

I dig both.

you know, the album i've probably listened to and enjoyed the most on this list is the Pernice Brothers. Doubt that's going to get a lot of votes here, though.

As "Confounded" is a mere disguise for my real name, Justin Hawkins, I urge you to vote for my former compatriots in The Darkness.

Went with Neon Golden as it is my favorite album of this decade, but the Dizzee and Bubba albums are outstanding.

Hearts Of Oak is probably my least favorite Ted Leo/Pharmacists album

U SO CRAZY

that's like "masturbating on stuffed animals" wrong. what the heck did fun ever do to you?

kish kash over GRODT

I'm not counting that weird "tej leo" record, if it makes any difference. Hearts has the sharpest hits/filler divide and I just kind of hate the production and especially the bass tone. the last 2 benefit from cleaner production and Tyranny has better songs that suit the semi-lo-fi approach more.

Hearts has the sharpest hits/filler divide

should have been an EP.

lol

but really, "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?" is practically the only song from it that he still plays live, and I don't find myself missing the rest much. and no way is it more "fun" than Tyranny.

much needed clarity! your take has been reduced from bugfuck to RONG.

I keep going back to Tyranny every two years and fuck if I can ever remember hook one after its over.

he's a fool not to "ballad of a sin eater" live now if he actually doesn't.

Unearthed -- has about 2,000 songs.

what songs from it besides "Rude Boys" do you rate with/above the best songs from his other albums? I still like "2nd Ave" and "Bridges, Squares" and "Sin Eater," but not as much as I did then, or as much as my favorites from the last 2 albums.

(xpost yeah "Sin Eater" used to be awesome live, and I don't think I've seen him play it since the year the album was released. maybe he got tired of hitting himself on the head with a tambourine during the last verse, which was one of the reasons it was awesome live.)

those little under-two-minute songs and "Dead Voices" are the only ones on HoO I wouldn't be grateful to hear live if I ever saw him. I lost my copy of Shake The Sheets when I moved but 'Me & Mia' is the only one that fondly sticks out ('walking to do' is the only one i could probably sing most of). the new one's mostly good but I'll take basically every song off Hearts over every song on Tyranny, I simply don't get the appeal of that album at ALL.

ok "the anointed one" i could do without too but its ok

'walking to do' is the only OTHER one, though I'd like to hear the album again. hearts is really just his far-and-away peak for me.

and i dig the bass tone

the bass tone doesn't annoy me as much as it did then, but i still feel like the production and the performances failed the songs on that album, some pretty big clams on the part of the drummer on there too. but if you don't think at least the first 5 songs on Tyranny are among his best (or a "great EP" lol) then obviously we're approaching his catalog from pretty different wavelengths.

no one for Broken Social Scene? (didn't that come out in '02, anyways?) I think I'll have to vote for that. I pull it out every once in a while and I think it's a great album. I remember the craze over a lot of these albums (most of the indie guitar stuff), never got into most of them.

Heard the Dizzee Rascal album back then only once, I bet I'd like it more now.

i like that "anthems for a 17-year-old girl" song or whatever on the BSS album, but the self-titled one had a few more worthwhile purty tracks on it.

WTF fucking Led Zep?

people were REALLY excited for this triple live! cuz 2003 was HOT!

I remember being surprised that Led Zep wasn't higher!

i guess previously unreleased live albums, no matter how long ago they were recorded, don't fit in the reissues category, but i still kinda feel like they should.

Except 1999 was the last year reissues was a separate category.

It's good, I still have it. But the critical attention is kinda baffling now.

then again, kings of leon did better, which is REALLY baffling

BSS was released late in '02 in Canada but only really got airplay in '03. My favorite one here for sure.

The Zep CD thing is nowhere near as good as its DVD equivalent released that same year--which would probably be my favorite release of the year, actually, now that I think of it (and maybe my favorite release of the decade thus far; but then I'm really fuckin' old, see)!

New Pornographers again for me please. This one was more consistent than the debut but with less high points which latter, of course, are the highest point of the decade.

But second place goes to that divine Liz Phair record. I'm still baffled by the venom which greeted it. Is "Little Digger" REALLY a betrayal of...what, though? Some sort of indie purity that was never her calling card to begin with? (Exile sounded much more like well-made classic singer-songwriter rock than, oh I don't know, Pavement.) Could Avril Lavigne REALLY have come up with it? Or, ok, Soto fave Sheryl Crow?

Didn't realize there was some much love for Fountains. Terrific record that I didn't hear until much later. I keep wanting to play "All Kinds of Time" for my students. But on one level, that would be flat-out mean-spirited, no?

Kevin's trying to reignite the ILM wars! That Phair record isn't divine, but it seemed like a natural progression, and much more considered than even its partisans said (love how "It's Sweet," "Rock Me," and "Little Digger" are all about the same hot-boi relationship)

"All Kinds of Time" would have been perfect in the professor-student scenes in Lions to Lambs!

Basement Jaxx again. My meager addition to the Ted Leo argument is that I love Shake the Sheets far more than any of the others I've heard.

Shake the Sheets is the best yes.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

but it seemed like a natural progression

Exactly. I can understand Jewel fans (poor things) getting miffed that their folk pixie went all disco. But this album was Exile in slicker casing. And not all THAT slicker.

I haven't heard much of that Basement Jaxx album, so I'm voting Belle & Sebastian.

That White Stripes album sucks.

Wait -- Jewel and Liz had the same fans?

No, no. (Well, maybe.) I was just casting about for an artist whose career took a much more extreme about face than Liz Phair's ever did.

But Phair didn't make an about-face! The only change was her writing as if 900,000 listeners hung on her every utterance.

I know. I'm agreeing with you. But many of the haters CLAIMED that she did some horrible pop about face. Which is wrong.

Voted for Bubba.

Also like Darkness, Liz Phair, White Stripes, Junior Senior, Notwist, Led Zep, Drive By Truckers (their last album that I care about), a few other things.

What I voted for that year:

1 Brooks & Dunn Red Dirt Road Arista 12
2 Noir Desir Des Visages des Figures Barclay import 12
3 David Banner Mississippi: The Screwed & Chopped Album Universal 11
4 Ying Yang Twins Me & My Brother TVT 11
5 Justin Timberlake Justified Jive 10
6 Buck 65 Talkin' Honky Blues WEA import 9
7 Bubba Sparxxx Deliverance Beatclub/Interscope 9
8 A.R.E. Weapons A.R.E. Weapons Rough Trade 9
9 (Sic) The Broklyn Beats 7" Series Broklyn Beats 9
10 Clone Defects Shapes of Venus In the Red 8

the Liz Phair album is nice, but feels generic somehow, and doesn't even come close to the awesomeness of Exile

My favorites from this list are The Shins, Dizzee, Cat Power, BSS, Rapture, and "Fever to Tell", in that order.

I think The Wire top 10 from 2003 is pretty damn good:
1)Robert Wyatt - Cuckooland
2)David Sylvian - Blemish
3)John Fahey - Red Cross
4)Nurse With Wound - Salt Marie Celeste
5)Chris Watson - Weather Report
6)Rhythm & Sound - With the Artists
7)Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner
8)Fourtet - Rounds
9)Keith Rowe & John Tilbury - Duos For Doris
10)Bug - Pressure

These are all great, and among my favorites, esp the NWW and Rowe/Tilbury, which is gorgeous.
But my favorite recording of the year, no contest, is Prandit Pran Nath - Midnight, which I could listed to late at night every night...

Wait a minute--weren't you repping for Elephant on that other thread, Anthony?

Where on this thread did I say I didn't like Elephant?

My Pazz ballot was (in order) YYYs, Electric Six, Outkast, Ted Leo, DBTs, Neil Young, T.A.T.U., Northen State, Liz Phair, White Stripes. Drive-By Truckers is the one I'd definitely replace now, probably with Clem Snide.

I hit Led Zep, but I almost immediately regretted the decision, even though it's probably my favorite thing on this dogshit list. A LOT of great albums this year absent from the list:

Books - Lemon of Pink
Manitoba - Up In Flames
Prefuse 73 One Word Extinguisher
Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow
Deerhoof - Apple O'
Angels of Light - Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home
Justin Timberlake
Ricardo Villalobos - Alcachofa
R. Kelly - Chocolate Factory
John Cale - HoboSapiens

just to name a few

I'm still waiting for somebody to explain to me why Notwist finally replaced with Neon Golden, when their way meatier (but equally beautiful) earlier albums Shrink, 12, and Nook had been pretty much ignored by critics across the board. I like Neon Golden fine, as I said, but its success has always made me kind of suspicious -- like critics waited for the band to drain the metal from their music before deciding to like them. More likely though, it was some kind of bandwagon thing...I'm guessing plenty of people who voted for them had barely even paid attention to them before.

(With Ted Leo, I got the idea his critical following had been kind of snowballing over the years, until it finally reached P&J level, but with Notwist it seemed to come out of nowhere -- orchestrated by Pitchforkers, maybe? Or somebody like that.)

And btw, Hearts of Oak is the only Leo album I ever even briefly liked all the way through, though I'd definitely liked one solitary Thin Lizzy --reminiscent track on The Tyranny of Distance more at the time ("Timorous Me," I think? That CD is long gone, so there's nowhere for me to check it.) I guess I always wanted him to make a whole album of Thin Lizzy sounding stuff, or an album as good as those first couple Joe Jackson albums (or those best Graham Parker albums from the late '70s), but he never did, as far as I could tell. And I never got what was supposed to be so "political" about his lyrics, which generally struck me as really hard to untangle -- if he was trying to make a coherent point, why did he feel he needed to be so convoluted about it? So I always figured the "politics" stuff was more from his interviews than from his actual songs. But maybe I should go back and re-listen to his records sometime, though; I might be surprised.

60 other 2003 albums I like:

T. Graham Brown – The Next Right Thing (Intersound)
Toby Keith – Shock’N Y’all (Dreamworks)
Mensen - Oslo City (Gearhead)
The Exploding Hearts – Guitar Romantic (Dirtnap)
Sideburn – Gasoline (sideburn.ch)
Mu-ziq – Bilous Paths (Planet Mu)
Merle Haggard – Like Never Before (Hag)
FM Knives – Useless And Modern (Broken Rekkids)
The Hold Steady – Almost Killed Me (French Kiss)
Skew Siskin – Album Of The Year (Monongo/Ulftone)
Fannypack – So Stylistic (Tommy Boy)
Electric Six – Fire (Beggars XL)
Dropkick Murphys – Blackout (Hellcat)
Dusty Drake – Dusty Drake (Warner Bros.)
The Deadly Snakes - Ode To Joy (In the Red)
The Kentucky Headhunters – Soul (Koch/Audium)
Fefe Dobson – Fefe Dobson (Island)
Deep Purple – Bananas (Sanctuary)
Terri Clark – Pain To Kill (Mercury)
Elizabeth McQueen and the Firebrands – The Fresh Up Club (Gravitron)
Country Teasers – Full Moon Empty Sports Bag (In The Red)
Lyrics Born – Later That Day… (Quannum Projects)
David Banner - Mississippi: The Album (SRC/Universal)
Lifesavas – Spirit In The Stone (Quannum Projects)
Kill Me Tomorrow – Skin’s Getting Weird (GSL)
Black Lips – Black Lips! (Bomp!)
Art Ensemble Of Chicago – The Meeting (Pi Recordings)
The Blood Drained Cows – The Blood Drained Cows (Triple X)
Mahjongg – Machinegong (Cold Crush EP)
H.I.M. – Razorblade Romance (Universal)
Sara Evans – Restless (RCA)
The Dragons – Sin Salvation (Gearhead)
NTX + Electric – We Are The Wild Beast (Girlgang)
Mabool – Orphaned Land (Century Media)
The Fever – Pink On Pink (Kemado EP)
Fennesz – Live In Japan (Touch)
Dave Douglas – Strange Liberation (Bluebird)
Joe Budden – Joe Budden (Def Jam)
Warren Burt – Harmonic Colour Fields (Pogus Productions)
Rodney Atkins – Honesty (Curb)
A Thousand Times Yes – Michigan (Isoxys)
Gary Allan – See If I Care (MCA Nashville)
Chromatics – Chrome Rats Vs Basement Ruts (GSL)
The Hidden Hand – Divine Propaganda (Meteor City)
Martina McBride – Martina (RCA)
The Lizards – Rule (Hyperspace)
Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz – Part II (TVT EP)
Tom Hamilton – London Fix (Muse-Eek)
Richard Meltzer, Robert Pollard, Smegma Antler & Vom – The Complete Soundtrack For The Tropic Of Nipples (Off)
The International Playboys – First Album (Motron)
Gold Sparkle Trio With Ken Vandermark – Brooklyn Cantos (Squealer)
Rose Falcon – Rose Falcon (Columbia)
Dalek – Absence (Ipecac)
Cooper Moore/Assif Tsahar - America (Hipscotch)
Hella – Total Bugs Bunny On Wild Bass (Narnack EP)
Lacrimosa – Echos (Nuclear Blast)
Kwisp – Teriyaki Vest Oddysey (Pinephone Recordings)
Dierks Bentley – Dierks Bentley (Capitol)
Bizarros – Can’t Fight Your Way Up Town From Here (Clone)
Local H – The No Fun (Thick EP)

Actually, the Notwist album came out via Domino, didn't it? So it's possible that it just got into more critics' hands than their previous albums had. Also, if I remember right, it was a big critics-list hit in the U.K. the year before, which probably got the snowball rolling. (No idea to what extent U.K. critics had paid attention to their earlier albums.)

I can't speak for the voters for the Village Voice poll, but I'd never heard the Notwist before Neon Golden. If that makes me a bandwagon-jumper, so be it; but it's a pretty small bandwagon I think.

more good records from 03 not mentioned in this thread yet:

T.I. - Trap Muzik
Kenna - New Sacred Cow
Carla Bozulich - Red Headed Stranger
Steely Dan - Everything Must Go
Freeway - Philadelphia Freeway
Blink 182 - Blink 182
The Diplomats - Diplomatic Immunity
Beauty Pill - You Are Right To Be Afraid EP
Lil Mo - Meet The Girl Next Door
Apollo Sunshine - Apollo Sunshine
Grand Buffet - Pittsburgh Hearts EP
Chris Lee - Cool Rock

Yeah, I'm with Euler. Never heard of Notwist before 2002, then started reading about Neon Golden in various places (like Pitchfork, probably), sounded like it was up my alley, and indeed it was.

This is a tough poll. OutKast was my favorite at the time, and part of me feels compelled to vote for it again just because I think it gets too much shit. The rest of my top 5 was Radiohead, Prefuse 73, Belle and Sebastian, Basement Jaxx -- but I don't really listen to any of those that much anymore.

Other good stuff from this year not mentioned yet:

Keren Ann - Not Going Anywhere
Laura Veirs - Troubled by the Fire
Donna Summer (ie., Jason Forrest) - This Needs to Be Your Style

Kish Kash vs Echoes vs Deliverance

Kish Kash vs Echoes vs Deliverance

its like we're seeing the inner workings of your brain make decisions!

if you take into consideration the time of rev's posts, that's kind of a dis.

Oh, this is a terrible list.

Never understood the love for: Dizzee (Fix Up is the only song I'd keep from there), Notwist (Neon Golden is such a fucking boring album), Radiohead (second shitty album in a row), YYY (good, but nothing I ever return to), My Morning Jacket (boring Neil Young), Warren Zevon (best work was years prior, totally a legacy vote), Pernice Brothers (ugh, I bought this after being fooled by a good track on an Uncut sampler where they covered New Order), Grandaddy (sonic oatmeal).

I loved the Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, Deadly Snakes (still a great album), Exploding Hearts, Drive-by Truckers, and it was a great year for rap, but Christ, the P&J just shows how fucking bland the critic establishment was that year.

Oh, and I'm sorry that I slept on Kish Kash in 2003, so I'm voting for it now.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

O_O

http://warriorlibrarian.com/PICS2/eyebulge.jpg

Darkness?
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y211/Jduke666/wut.png

haha awesome

Time to check the ol' referral log.

ok thats weird

is this the biggest victory margin of all the polls?

by all the polls i mean all the p&j polls.

all of the current darkness fans voted. i don't mean all of their fans on ilm; literally every single darkness fan left on this earth voted.

Right?

o_O

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/images/avatars/morans.gif

i can't believe the shins finished so high

CELEBRATE

CELEBRATE

DANCE TO THE MUSIC

http://djbarney.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/we_win_cheers.jpg

lollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

and hey I fuckin love the darkness but one way ticket is my jam of choice

lurkers believe in a thing called love

pwned by lurkers

http://mindpetals.com/wp-content/images/think_winner.gif

Isn't it a bit odd that all these weird lurker votes all pile on for the same thing? It's not as if there's 9 for the Darkness and 10 for the Shins and 6 for Death Cab and 8 for Zep. It seems a bit too contrived to be coincidental.

its like we're seeing the inner workings of your brain make decisions!

-- deej, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 1:26 PM (Tuesday, November 13, 2007 1:26 PM) Bookmark Link

if you take into consideration the time of rev's posts, that's kind of a dis.

-- da croupier, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 2:23 PM (Tuesday, November 13, 2007 2:23 PM) Bookmark Link

It is altogether possible that I actually went back and listened to them today to make that decision, you know.

It seems a bit too contrived to be coincidental.

Haha...damn you!

:D

hahaha--good goin' poll haterz!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cD6evMg7L._AA240_.jpg

Of course, not counting the "winner", this poll's favorites turn out to be a pretty fair representation of more or less current ILM tastes. Apparently, near every possible Dizzee vote went to Basement Jaxx (I know mine did)--so that seems fair.

7 people voting a "winner" in sounds like a pretty fair representation of ILM.

"Lucky Star" is my second-favorite Dizzee Rascal song of that year.

BTW, only ten, Dom? What, did you get lazy or somethin'!?
(I guess that's what I get for giving the game away last time out.)

Et tu, Roxy?

Sadface.

xxp

on these meager polls, yes.

(After "Fix Up, Look Sharp. I am teh merkinz.) xp

I like the Darkness album better than anything else that got 3 votes, so I don't mind these results. (But the "results" are the least interesting thing about these poll threads anyway -- the threads always get a lot more boring as soon as the results go up -- so it's probably best just to ignore them.)

anyway, fwiw, 30 or so 2003 reissues I like:

Glen Campbell – All The Best (Capitol reissue)
(Various) – Monster Records: The Seventies Sampler (Monster reissue)
John Conlee – Classics (RCR reissue)
(Various) – New York Noise (Soul jazz reissue)
Hoosier Hot Shots – The Definitive Collection (Sony/Collector’s Choice reissue)
The Guess Who – Platinum & Gold Collection (RCA/BMG Heritage reissue)
Eric Moore and the Godz – Twenty-Five More Years (Outlaw reissue)
R. Kelly – The R in R&B Collection Volume 1 (Jive reissue)
Essential Logic – Fanfare In The Garden (Kill Rock Stars import)
Mylene Farmer – The Best (CDD reissue)
Minor Threat – First Demo Tape (Dischord reissue EP)
A Flock of Seagulls – Platinum & Gold Collection (Jive/BMG Heritage reissue)
King Sunny Ade – The Best of the Classic Years (Shanachie reissue)
The Human League – The Very Best Of (EMI reissue)
Sheryl Crow – The Very Best Of (A&M reissue)
Factrix – Artifact (Tesco Distribution reissue)
Chemical Brothers – Singles 93-03 (Astralwerks reissue)
New England – Greatest Hits Live (GB Music reissue)
No Doubt – The Singles 1992-2003 (Interscope reissue)
Isaac Hayes – At Wattstax (Stax reissue)
James Chance – Irresistible Impulse (single disc version) (Tiger Style promo reissue)
Metal Urbain – Anarchy In Paris! (Carpark reissue)
Walt Kelly With Norman Monath – Songs Of The Pogo (Reaction reissue)
Harvey Milk – The Singles (Relapse reissue)
Grupo Exterminador – Nuestra Historia (Univision/Fonovisa reissue)
M.O.P. – 10 Years And Gunnin’: Greatest Hits (Columbia reissue)
Mary Chapin Carpenter – The Essential (Columbia/Legacy reissue)
Cabaret Voltaire – Methodology ‘74/’78: Attic Tapes (Mute reissue)
April Wine – Greatest Hits Live (King Biscuit Flower Hour reissue)
Counting Crows – Films About Ghosts: The Best Of (Geffen reissue)

That Monster Records sampler was nice. Praise be to Popoff! (BTW, Chuck, have you checked out his recently released '90s metal book yet? Worth getting?)

the darkness album is awes!