Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 2004 poll

lots of good choices here.

i am going to have to thrown on Last Exit this week.

this is a rarity for these polls, as it contains one of my own possible 30 favourite albums of all time

and that album is

blueberry

fucking

boat

only album i care about here is college dropout

Funeral, Hot Fuss and Antics are decent albums by bands I otherwise do not give a shit about.

LAST EXIT

Great year. Torn between the underrated Antics and Elliott Smith, who ILM just doesn't care for. Voted Antics bc I've spent more time with it than most of my friends.

L A S T E X I T

or leviathan

Of the things that were on my radar. . .

1 31 Arcade Fire - Funeral
Liked it alright at the time. I haven't heard it in probably a decade. I imagine it probably still sounds alright, but I just don't care enough to revisit.

2 197 Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
One of the least interesting, least original bands of the 2000's.

3 204 Kanye West - The College Dropout
Dreadful. I hated this album from the first listen. Just terrible.

4 363 Madvillain - Madvillainy
Overrated, but still somewhat enjoyable.

5 498 Green Day - American Idiot
Overwrought, derivative pop crap.

6 517 Brian Wilson - SMiLE
As someone who has zero knowledge of Beach Boys bootlegs, this was absolutely eye opening to me at the time. I swore off it when the original recordings were released 2011, but I've since come back to this version and I still find tons of things to love and be inspired by in it. Wonderful.

7 541 The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
I have never understood this music whatsoever.

8 622 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
I liked this. Haven't heard it in a long time and can't remember a lick of it, but yeah: I dug it.

9 809 Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
At this point, Wilco could do no wrong in my ears. I thought this was a gigantic triumph at the time and, while I've cooled on it a bit over the years, it still receives very high marks from me.

10 912 The Libertines - The Libertines
Kind of like fast food: satisfies while it's playing but leaves you feeling yucky afterwords.

11 930 Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill
Really nice album. Haven't heard it in forever, but a really good record.

13 983 The Killers - Hot Fuss
Fuck this band. Fuck this album. Derivative and awful.

15 1026 Morrissey - You Are the Quarry
Hasn't aged well, but a very good batch of tunes and surprisingly strong return for Mozzer.

16 1048 TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
I remember thinking this album was about two hours long while trying to get through it. Boring and tedious.

17 1112 Interpol - Antics
Hated their first album with a passion. This one was surprisingly inoffensive. A decent tune or two, but mostly pretty unexciting.

19 1212 Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Awful. Just bad.

20 1244 Björk - Medulla
Still my favorite album of hers. Bold and challenging, with some of her best vocals ever. Really excellent music.

22 1347 Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
I remember it sounding like not much else at the time. And, even though it lacked in good melodies, just the sound of it was pretty unique, so I liked it based on that. Haven't heard it in a really long time.

23 1404 Tom Waits - Real Gone
I remember the consensus being that it was kind of a letdown. But I still liked it a lot, regardless. It was a little overlong, but not like it's a bad spot in his discography.

24 1472 Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
Boring, tuneless music that was so purposely inoffensive that I was offended by it. No, thank you.

29 1641 Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak
Shite.

30 1710 Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters
And more shite.

Voted for SMiLE.

College Dropout vs Madvillainy vs the Go! Team

Funeral is tainted by what the Arcade Fire have turned into, but those songs hold up

Make a statue for: Madvillain, Milk Eyed Mender, Blueberry Boat, College Dropout

Great: Medulla, A Ghost is Born, Sung Tongs

Good: From a Basement on the Hill, Funeral, Antics

Meh: Good News, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, A Grand Don't Come for Free

Burn in a fire: Aha Shake, Hot Fuss, The Libertines, American Idiot, Franz Ferdinand

Never listened: The rest

xp otm about Arcade Fire, I wish I could hear Funeral like I did in 2005 again. "Wake Up" is the sound of a thousand copycat bands and car commercials. WOAHHHHH-OHHH! That song spawned its own genre: "epiphany-core." But yeah, song by song, it's a great, great record. I like the ones I came around to years later, especially "Laika."

Seems so easy to vote for Funeral, but I voted for Funeral, narrowly over Blueberry Boat, an album I love in a more _personal_ way, but I just can't deny those Funeral songs, so, Funeral.

My biggest problem with Funeral now is how much I've come to really dislike the sound of Win Butler's voice. "Power Out" and "Rebellion (Lies)" are still fantastic songs, though.

flappy bird otm on funeral.

A Ghost is Born is the best Wilco album.

Sung Tongs is really original, combining the warm textures of acoustic indie with depersonalized yawps that felt like they came out of repressed memories. Their career trajectory, looking back, is very unusual. It's like they tried to build a new sound from the ground up but their experiments organically led them to make synthpop. Anytime sung tongs is the last time they had the capacity to be truly frightening.

I voted for a bad album to heighten the system's contradictions though.

*Anyway

2004 was The Year I Burned Out on Indie Rock so reading this list gives me real vivid flashbacks

the only records here i haven't cooled considerably on are last exit, leviathan, medulla, and maybe milk-eyed mender and van lear rose, though i haven't listened deliberately to either in ages

idk how so many of y'all managed to avoid last exit but imo rectify that

I don't think there's anything here that I'd vote for.

Not a lot that I would still listen to here, I voted for Mastadon.

voted go team

I feel like this was a big year for me in my life, and the music's there to reflect it. I got my first job that wasn't a total joke and just felt a lot more 'adult' and in control over things. I was also a LOT more in touch with current music. I was going out to all-night underground free parties in London and I remember a bleary sunny Sunday morning popping into the local record shop and buying the Streets album. I went to bed with the sun shining through the curtains and listened to 'We Become Heroes'. I still think 'A Grand Don't Come For Free' is pretty great, despite being an artefact of its time.

This was the year American/Canadian indie music came into its own for me. 'Funeral' is the only Arcade Fire album I have any time for, but I pretty much like it all the way through. II was quite into the 'freak-folk' stuff that was coming out too - Joanna Newsome, Devendra, Fiery Furnaces etc. I heard the Animal Collective album at the height of my Beach Boys obsession and was immediately hooked. Sung Tongs is what I'm voting for. The sound of this kind of musicwould go on to oversaturate the market, but at the time it felt really fresh.

Speaking of which, Smile was really great and I think I prefer this version to the later finished Beach Boys version a little.

The Tom Waits album is perhaps the best of his third-phase 'howlin blues' material, if a little long. I might give it a listen today actually.

ILX was in its imperial phase too, with a good split of people between the US/UK/Aus and the rest of the world. There was a fantastic FAP day out with Ken Chu, Branwell, PinkPanther and a whole bunch of others out in Cambridge. We went punting and had a curry. A really lovely day that I'll always remember.

I Liked the Arcade Fire and Interpol album for about 10 minutes back then, Medulla is great but I voted for Leviathan, the rest ranges from indifference to fucking diabolical awfulness.

Actually the Tom Waits album isn't that bad (I remember my Dad playing it at the time) but is hardly one of his best

I know it's a comp of old work but by far the most important release of 2004 for me was The World of Arthur Russell.

Go! Team album is still all-time though, and Sung Tongs isn't bad either.

Actually the Tom Waits album isn't that bad (I remember my Dad playing it at the time) but is hardly one of his best

It was his best post 80s album until Bad As Me, imo.

But yeah doesn't come close to his peak work.

imago will hate me for not voting Fiery Furnaces, and it is outstanding, but I just can't look past this Elliott Smith album.

he wasn't even alive

:O

...

I will always like that Go! Team album as well. Their live shows in 2004-2006 were my favourite. So much video art

That Go Team album had the most horrible EQ'ing I've ever heard. I had to edit the whole thing in Soundforge and re-burn the disc. I don't know if later editions rectified it but it was practically unlistenable - all treble.

Elliott Smith narrowly over Junior Boys.

Loved Funeral at the time, but boy, it hasn't aged well to my ears. Someone upthread otm about Win's voice, it's become unlistenable to me. Antics, Milk-Eyed Mender, College Dropout and Ghost Is Born still occasionally playing here.

Junior Boys are one of those groups whose musical direction I can totally get behind, but whose style of vocals really puts me off. There are a surprising number of groups who fall into this category for me.

This is pretty low on stuff I really like compared to the previous '00s lists - I think 2004 was a good year but there's too much landfill indie here plus the way-past-their-best stuff from Cave, Waits and Morrissey. It's between Medulla and College Dropout for me, although I revisited Madvillainy recently and thought it'd held up really well.

Loved Funeral at the time

Yeah, that was a great concert. My interest in AF dwindled rapidly with every record since Funeral.

Last Exit is fantastic, though I might prefer So This Is Goodbye in the end.

xpost - I bought but could never get into Neon Bible, impenetrable wall of sound/mix imo.

This was the year I discovered Kompakt, some great 2004 mixes/albums (I know I know, 12"-es more relevant, but this is a thread about albums):
Superpitcher - Here Comes Love (flawed as it may be in spots, the highpoints are (still) amazing)
DJ Koze - All People Is My Friends
Triola - Im Fünftonraum
Kaito - Soul of Heart

(Soul of Heart is a 12"... I meant Special Love, but that's 2003...)

From this list I've gotten by far the most enjoyment out of the Go Team over the years.

I only wish I had discovered Kompakt in 2004...

I bought The Go Team and Junior Boys albums on the same day and have trouble deciding which one to pick right now. I do prefer So This Is Goodbye to Last Exit but they're both all time. Go Team peaked with this album but I still love them and they are one of the best live bands I've ever seen. Might go with them as Junior Boys will get plenty of votes already.

At the time me and mines tried to justify/ forgive Blueberry Boat as what we would surely look back on as a temporary diversion/ minor blip in the career of our new favourite pop band, haha remember when they disappeared up their own arses for the shitty second album with the stupid long songs and the rock opera pretension? Not so funny when it turned out that was what they wanted to be all along, Gallowsbird Bark and that singles comp the only artifacts worth rescuing from that wasteful dumpsterfire of a band.

But occasionally after dutifully sitting through that we would stick on the Go! Team album, mixed in the red AS AN AESTHETIC CHOICE, probably to reflect our lives, running wild through the streets and falling in and out of love like we were 17, even though we were more like 23 or something and Real Life was encroaching but those 35 or whatever minutes at a time we were young and alive.

Never listen to that album anymore. I did notice I had put the Junior Kickstart 7" in my record box for a hing last year I think as part of a drunkenly conceived (and hazily remembered) setlist stretch that also would have included Nickers Of A Girl by Skylab and Solomon by Natural Self, but I never played any of that in the end, so I cannot comment as to whether it holds up, or whether The Kids would dig it.

So basically: Madvillainy.

At the time me and mines tried to justify/ forgive Blueberry Boat as what we would surely look back on as a temporary diversion/ minor blip in the career of our new favourite pop band, haha remember when they disappeared up their own arses for the shitty second album with the stupid long songs and the rock opera pretension? Not so funny when it turned out that was what they wanted to be all along, Gallowsbird Bark and that singles comp the only artifacts worth rescuing from that wasteful dumpsterfire of a band.

ok, let me amend what i said earlier to 'blueberry boat is possibly the best album of the millennium so far' :)

Yes, because you equate long songs with good music, just as you equate long words with good poetry :)

This "love" thing
Yeah i read about it in books
I seen a lot of films about this
I heard a whole bunch of songs
(I still use our Spotify list, that makes one of us)
Don't paint me as some sort of amateur
And YES, I am aware of the etymology of that word
All this time and you still underrate me
Mute me all you want, that's fine
Pretend it was an accident, that's fine
I WILL NEVER GET THE PICTURE
I AM NOT GOING AWAY
Run away from me, that's fine
HA! You'd have to run to California
Or at least, I donno, London or something
Oh wait
OK, you win

"Be the Malky to my Aidan"
I wrote that in a song for you once
But I don't think you got the reference
And you never asked for clarification
To be honest, in a way I'm wasted on you
A thousand haikus tossed to the wind
Along with all those paper cranes
I'm folding penguins from now on
No real reason, stubbornness I suppose
But you took "obtuse" as an insult
So now... I donno
(It was meant as a compliment, by the way)
I'll stop speaking now
Like, forever
Pretend it's for a bet or something
Here, have a penguin

― Jonathan Hellion Mumble, Friday, April 1, 2016 3:45 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No offense, I like you and find you very personable, but your life is so far from my experience of such that it is hard for me to even envisage...

Sorry, donno where that previous post with the shitty poem came from, I musta hit a wrong series of buttons because vodka

I mean, you could have posted the good one at least

Came a card marked Mason City
From my forwarder.
Shut the door, don't let my dad see;
Read aloud dear sir:
Understanding you account an upright gent-
lemen Aetna Life agreed and lent.
By the way, my fee is 2.6 percent.
Write again the Riceville widow
SASE.
I would guess they'll be turned out though
I'll still make my plea:
If the Dunlay heirs cannot be seen to care,
Then the Banker's Trust will surely think it fair
To not give extensions, as they musn't dare.
Write Des Moines on several matters
And I near anoint,
Ladle thick the pleasant flatters,
And then comes the point;
Mr. Nelson wouldn't like to hear it said
As he's too proud, so I do it in his stead:
He shall need an extensionso it read.
--Take the Oregon Short Line to Salt Lake;
take the Pere Marquette, take the Michigan Central,
to West Madison for Christ's sake.
Forgemen, Molders, Blacksmiths, Boilermakers,
None on the make.
Up for shade on Crumb Hill
Get something to make my hands still.
But nowWait.
How are you my nabs?
Little tender footed crabs,
Meet my knuckle duster.
You geeched that gazoon's gow
Tried to break into the bow:
Go wipe your nose.
I'm just hanging out with some noler knockums,
Just passing time waiting till my stack comes.
Prussian who got jackered,
My snapper till your knockered,
Get on the snam.
The chivman wants your chip;
Better dummy up then go dip:
You're outta turn.
I learned that the lowest form of life is the buffer nabber,
Even worse than the dicer stabber.

― Jonathan Hellion Mumble, Friday, April 1, 2016 3:45 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A looby, a lordant, a lagerhead, lozel
A lungio, lathback made me a proposal:
Straight sail, top mast, astrolabe prospected
Down in his dry dock, erected, infected
Mocked up with silk strings and taffeta tricked
With nails out of driftwood already iron sicked
Now spy out the glass at whatever missteps me
And the press-gang's warrant's signed Sir Edward Pepsi

I mean... that right there is a line in the sand

this thread became everything I wanted it to be

back to yer Junior Boys now folks ;)

Junior Boys prolly my second choice here tbh.

Also truthfully I'm pretty sure those Wilco and Animal Collective albums are their respective peaks, but I've paid very little attention to those groups in the past decade or so that it's not really my place to comment

it p much is Wilco's peak yeah although subsequent albums have been better than you might think

AGIB and YHF were their nice midpoint between the early pointless stuff and the later pointless stuff. I do prefer their more Nels-y tracks generally, but I could do without that 10min track on this. Which I'm guessing is Imago's favourite.

Actually that live album is Wilco's best, the best performances of an allkillernofiller tracklisting, oh wait I just checked and Spiders (Kidsmoke) is on this, at least they stuck it at the end.

I don't have anything against tracklength btw, only when it comes at the expense of, yknow, stuff happening. But then plenty happens in them Fiery Furnaces songs, I just also object to buffer nabbers ansuch

there's a 15-minute track too! i like that as well but my favourite is the positively minuscule 'handshake drugs' (6 pathetic minutes)

Aw shit yeah, I never played the records just now and was just going by track titles and half scanned wikipedia, I think I like the Spiders one fine and it is the other that bores me, whichever one has no tune.
Handshake Drugs live version is pure Nels Cline awesomeness, so we are kinda on the same page, Wilco-wise. It's just I have a ruler under each line and a thesaurus on my desk...

I like the bad poem better.

^^ otm

2004 was The Year I Burned Out on Indie Rock so reading this list gives me real vivid flashbacks

same

a dreadful period for rock/postpunk/indie, not that that's such a bad thing

lots of good choices here.
― Bee OK, Thursday, 14 July 2016 01:54 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol

Voting for Franz Ferdinand brilliant debut album. Mainly for the homoerotic "Michael" song, just fun.

Though it gets kind of strangely ponderous towards the end, I still find the Scissor Sisters album to be a delight.

this was when i was getting into """weird music""" so i literally only heard arcade fire and madvillainy, destroy the former and keep the latter imo. i heard junior boys later thanks to ilx. it's ok? i'd like to hear the bjork album, maybe mastodon. the rest idc about. except tom waits, who i just, fuck he's the worstr.

imago is otm regarding Blueberry Boat.

This decade's music >>>>>>>>>>> last decade's music

"except tom waits, who i just, fuck he's the worstr."

probably nearly a fucking ton of ILM threads dedicated to this old chestnut, then you find the solitary Sonny Rollins thread etc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this was a good year. the mid-late aughts were great. love all of these:

Arcade Fire - Funeral
Kanye West - The College Dropout
Madvillain - Madvillainy
Green Day - American Idiot
Brian Wilson - SMiLE
Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill
Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Interpol - Antics
Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
Mastodon - Leviathan
The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat

Ended up voting Funeral

I don't know about the list as a whole, but 2004 definitely seems to have the largest number of albums I still dig of all the 2000s years polled thus far. Probably a toss-up between Kanye, TV on the Radio, Go! Team, Fiery Furnaces, and Joanna Newsom for first place. Might have to go Joanna.

Voted for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, but the majority of the albums here are utter crap.

that whole 'years ending in 7' thing people go on about, you could easily argue a better case for years ending in 4

Perfect songs on imperfect albums:
"Nature Boy"
"Tits on the Radio"

and "First of the Gang to Die", but more this version than the album's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxr8ELV8p-Y

xpost:

I completely disagree.

I'm all about the years that started with 19

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

We gotta make it so you have to post before you vote. Shame these knuckleheads. This is very important

missed this poll, but yeah this year has some albums i really love on it (bjork, madvillain, brian wilson, fuck it let's throw leviathan in there too) and some albums i like as well. finally starting to see a break from the early '00s indie-snoozefest.

uh top 3 is totally correct

The singing on the junior boys album is really beyond the pale. Good grief.

It's like old man hat being slowly castrated

haha otm

forgot to vote in this, would've gone with the streets

this was the year I got into p4k and loads of album downloading, probably the year poll so far where I've listened to most of the options

Kind of a weak year, IMO. Good year for jazz though: Mihaly Dresch Quartet "Egyenes Zene", Jenny Scheinman "Shalagaster", Jewels & Binoculars "Floater", Uri Caine "Live at the Village Vanguard". For pop, I'd probably go with the Newsom or Nellie McKay's excellent debut.

Destroy Rock & Roll and Set Yourself on Fire should have been in the Top 30 - both are better than a lot of the crap here. I would have voted for Destroy Rock & Roll with no hesitation, and I wish Mylo would hurry up and make a follow-up.

Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 2005 poll