My Baltimore City Paper "Albums" Picks, 2002-2005

Also: thank God for ILX, where all of these lists happened to be nestled, since the BCP site no longer seems to have them.

I really dig Pig Lib, which held up great recently... Face the Truth sounded kinda crappy to me now tbh

Elephant Eyelash. One of my faves of that decade.

An embarrassment of riches. A great period. Have to go with Feels.

I think if I had to prune this list down to 12 albums, it'd look something like this (not necessarily in order):

Aoki Takamasa + Tujiko Noriko - 28
Dead Machines - Futures
Excepter - Throne
Animal Collective - Feels
Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Pig Lib
Sightings - Absolutes
Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow
Neil Michael Hagerty - The Howling Hex
Yume Bitsu - The Golden Vessyl Of Sound
Guided By Voices - Universal Truths and Cycles

(sorry, SY and Kimya - and those two albums are still great but not the cream of this crop)

American Idiot is half great, half bleh

^^
TRUTHBOMB

Sharing this because, really, everyone who hasn't heard this album NEEDS to hear it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrn1K7GKUDw

Arular

I liked a lot of these at the time. Blueberry Boat might be the only one that has really lasted.

at the time i played wonderful rainbow, sung tongs and arular a lot but its been cloudy out and I'm going for mount eerie

Ten years is a tough time for records. They're too young to be regarded as classic, but too old to sound fresh.

Voted for The Doldrums but there's a lot of cool stuff here, that Yume Bitsu album for example.

Hate to miss a chance to vote for the great Graham Smith but Dear Catastrophe Waitress is the one I still play all the time from these

blueberry boat

all of these are great

Dead Machines - Futures
Billy Corgan - TheFutureEmbrace
Why? - Elephant Eyelash
Excepter - Throne
The Fiery Furnaces - Rehearsing My Choir
Animal Collective - Feels
Graham Smith - Final Battle
Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Kanye West - The College Dropout
Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums
Sightings - Arrived In Gold
Green Day - American Idiot
Yellow Swans - Bring The Neon War Home
Sightings - Absolutes
The Microphones - Mount Eerie
Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow
Cursive - The Ugly Organ
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Sonic Youth - Murray Street

'05 was the first year i did a ballot for Balt CP. i voted for Lupe Fiasco's first album, and then several years later made a joke about Lupe in City Paper that prompted Lupe to insult me on twitter. good times!

i only know a few of these albums, Murray Street over College Dropout i guess

man I loved that eyes adrift record at the time!!

Hail to the Thief, but this is a really cool list. One of those Malkmus albums I think contains the only song of his I ever truly adored: "Mama"

i think i was soured enough by the Cris Kirkwood-less Meat Puppets record that i never checked out Eyes Adrift or Volcano

ooh!

MIA, Walkmen, Clinic

Probably Walkmen because I was living in London at the time and I listened the shit out of that album and I have a lot of fond memories tied to it. Plus, Hamilton Leithauser's voice - ugh so good. MIA won't need my vote and that's not my favorite Clinic album even though they were so great and amazing live. So, yeah, Bows & Arrows.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot over Feels, Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Blueberry Boat.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Lightning bolt barely ahead of that cursive record

Probably one of these: Arular, Rehearsing My Choir, Murray Street

Haven't listened to them recently.

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

Interesting results. I'm not sure if I remembered to vote!

teh answer is always skullflower imo.

― ian, Monday, November 9, 2009 11:10 PM (6 years ago)

I voted for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. A truly resonating piece of work.