Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2003

[a summary list, from Scott would be cool]

for the sake of fuck, rename this place ILPFM.

this page will not load...
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/2003/index5.shtml

Wait! I've got it!

Jamie Cullum.

there is still time for an exclusive scoop !

http://djmartian.blogspot.com/
summary list up

Clue.

"Let's all SING!!!"

.

That's it.

Okay, the Strokes @ 11, the Shins @ 7, Manitoba @ 5, and Radiohead @ 4 = asinine. Room on Fire is a bad case of the sophomore slump; why won't anyone fess up? The Shins are dull. Radiohead is drowning, fast, in a sea of tunelessness. And Manitoba's okay, but #5? None of these are as good as TV on the Radio. And where's Pig Lib? It kicks ass. (And where's Iron Maiden, btw?) I expected better from them.

uh, ok, here's what I voted for. Were I to do it all over again, Tatu and Sufjan would be much higher, Kylie would be much lower, and I wouldn't have completely forgot about David Banner. The top 35 or so (plus the ones praised above) are the ones I felt strongly about.

01. Basement Jaxx: Kish Kash  
02. Dizzee Rascal: Boy in Da Corner  
03. Michael Mayer: Fabric 13  
04. the Rapture: Echoes  
05. the Clientele: The Violet Hour  
06. Soundmurderer: Wired for Sound  
07. the Darkness: Permission to Land  
08. the Strokes: Room on Fire  
09. Broadcast: Haha Sound  
10. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: Hearts of Oak  
11. Junior Senior: D-d-don’t Stop the Beat  
12. Coloma: Finery  
13. Luomo: The Present Lover  
14. Goldfrapp: Black Cherry  
15. Libertines: Up the Bracket  
16. Tobias Thomas: Smallville  
17. Bubba Sparxxx: Deliverance  
18. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever to Tell  
19. George: The Magic Lantern  
20. Sean Paul: Dutty Rock  
21. Girls Aloud: Sound of the Underground  
22. Saturday Looks Good to Me: All You Summer Songs
23. Richard X: Presents His X-Factor, Volume One  
24. Fiery Furnaces: Gallowsbird’s Peak  
25. Alexander Kowalski: Response
26. Soundmurderer + SK1: Rewind Records  
27. Jay-Z: The Black Album  
28. Super Furry Animals: Phantom Power  
29. M83: Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts  
30. Archigram: Crydamoure Presents Waves II  
31. Enduser: 15 Tracks  
32. Kylie Minogue: Body Language  
33. Freeway: Philadelphia Freeway  
34. Villalobos: Alcachofa  
35. Tatu: 200km/hr in the Wrong Lane
36. Tok Tok vs. Soffy O: Tok Tok vs. Soffy O  
37. Exploding Hearts: Guitar Romantic  
38. Radiohead: Hail to the Thief
39. Manitoba: Up in Flames  
40. Sugababes: Three
41. Sufjan Stevens: Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State
42. Bugz in the Attic: Fabriclive.12
43. British Sea Power: The Decline of British Sea Power
44. Four Tet: Rounds  
45. Ellen Allien: Berlinette  
46. Matthew Dear: Leave Luck to Heaven  
47. Vybz Kartel: Up 2 Di Time  
48. Colleen: Everyone Alive Wants Answers
49. Erol Alkan: One Louder  
50. Missy Elliott: This Is Not a Test!

(which is why omar leveled his crit at dre from outkast and NOT jay)

i have plenty of gripes with the voice article on jay (in a friendly way) but it nailed how the black album IS for audience expectations:

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0348/berry.php

also i've come around to jay liking coldplayish stuff because it hit me that Dido's White Flag is totally for my singles list this year.

mullah on jay-z:

Remember last year, that track on the Missy album, and Jay's verse was okay on that declawed hyper-referential Mad Skillz kinda tip, but then the chorus was all "remember back in the day, blah blah blah, hiphop has chaaa-aaanged"? Thats what this is like, except its not the chorus, it's like Jay set out to reverse the old Meth rap critic dis and decided that its how critics talk should dictate his life more than the fans or the streets or himself. His lyrics are all about making records, and then VH1 confessional stuff. In the 1970s some people made singer-songwriter folk guitar records, and rock critics liked them, I think because they were about the singer-songwriter's life and because they were "true" instead of some universally-appealing artifice and (this is an undeserving parenthetical, and really I should avoid biting the hand that meagerly feeds me, but I was assigned the Eminem-produced track based on my "personality", what is this bullshit?! Embarrassingy Jay and Em both fell out my must-listen top five a long time ago and now I really can't get amped up by either, though at least Em doesn't hate hiphop) making thug rhymes or returning to the streests, because no this isn't a "return to the streets" for a damn minute, if he wants to be so gully why is he making moody, introspective home-listening songs? The whole retirement gimmick is fine with me too maybe if Jay's rock critic-happy ass stops making "albums" he'll actually make some club tracks and write some tight rhymes again instead of this total cop-out.

next.

anyway, just wanted to clarify where i got that assertion.

No Killing Joke, though, eh? Damn fools....they'll get theirs....!"

(haha, sorry)

1. Pluramon: Dreams Top Rock (Karaoke Kalk)
2. Sogar: Apikal.Blend (12k)
3. The Books: The Lemon of Pink (Tomlab)
4. The Clientele: Violet Hour (Merge)
5. Animal Collective: Here Comes the Indian
6. Manitoba: Up In Flames (Leaf)
7. Alejandra & Aeron: Bousha Blue Blazes (Lucky Kitchen)
8. Califone: Quicksand/Cradlesnakes
9. Fennesz: Live in Japan (Headz)
10. So: So (Thrill Jockey)
11. My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves
12. Tim Hecker: Radio Amor (Alien8)
13. Random_Inc.: Walking in Jerusalem (Mille Plateaux)
14. Polmo Polpo: Like Hearts Swelling (Constellation)
15. Jan Jelinek: La Nouvelle Pauvrete (~scape)
16. Mu: Afro Finger and Gel
17. Twine: Twine (Ghostly International)
18. Soundmurderer: Wired For Sound (Violent Turd)
19. Deadbeat vs. Stephen Beaupré: It’s a Crackhaus Thing
20. M83: Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
21. Kill Memory Crash: When the Blood Turns Black (Ghostly Inteznational)
22. Lowfish: 1000 Corrections Per Second (Suction)
23. Jóhann Jóhannsson: Englaborn (Touch)
24. Fonica: Ripple (Tomlab)
25. Christopher Willits/Taylor Deupree: Invisible Architecture #9 (Audiosphere)
26. Markus Guentner: Audio Island (Ware)
27. Cul de Sac: Death of the Sun (Strange Attractors)
28. Lithops – Scrypt (Thrill Jockey)
29. Luomo: The Present Lover (Force Tracks)
30. (Smog): Supper (Drag City)
31. Oren Ambarchi: Triste (Idea)
32. Basement Jaxx: Kish Kash (Astralwerks)

I think there are more people upset about our not including Xiu Xiu than about any other band, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or the White Stripes.

pluramon
http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/pluramon.feat.julee.cruise.html

Re-running the Sufjan review must have really helped - no doubt about it. I'd have guessed that having a sizeable % of the voting staff w/ties to Michigan helped, too, but Mark already said that he didn't get into the album, so maybe that's not true at all.

Norman Records
http://www.normanrecords.com/details.php?item_id=10794

http://www2.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/simpleSearch.do?pGroupID=1&simpleSearchString=pluramon&primaryID=1

1 Animal Collective: Here Comes the Indian
2 Angels of Light: Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home
3 Värttinä: Iki
4 Alejandra & Aeron: Bousha Blue Blazes
5 Ami Yoshida: Tiger Thrush
6 Deerhoof: Apple O'
7 George: The Magic Lantern
8 Volapuk: Where is Tamashii?
9 Bob Drake: 13 Songs & A Thing
10 MU: Afro Finger & Gel
11 Charalambides: Unknown Spin
12 Alamaailman Vasarat: Kaarmelautakunta
13 Toshimaru Nakamura/Tetuzi Akiyama: Meeting at Off Site Vol 3
14 Lightning Bolt: Wonderful Rainbow
15 Ellen Allien: Berlinette
16 Richard Chartier: Archival 1991
17 Soft Pink Truth: Do You Party?
18 Otomo Yoshihide: Blue
19 Mileece: Formations
20 Ellery Eskelin: Arcanum Moderne
21 Sachiko M: Derive
22 Supersilent: 6
23 Science Group: Spoors
24 Gary Lucas: Edge of Heaven
25 Alexander Kowalski: Response
26 Luomo: The Present Lover
27 Broadcast: Haha Sound
28 Gaji: 9pm at GFM
29 Ibrahim Ferrer: Buenos Hermanos
30 Hedningarna: 1989-2003
31 Thinking Plague: History of Madness
32 Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet/Tatsuya Oe: ONJQ+OE
33 Books - Lemon of Pink
34 Sylvie Courvoisier/Abaton: Abaton
35 Toshimaru Nakamura: No-Input Mixing Board 3
36 Hoahio!: Peek-Ara-Boo
37 Tetuzi Akiyama: Don't Forget to Boogie
38 Taku Sugimoto Guitar Quartet: s/t
39 Richard Chartier: Other Materials
40 Haco/Sakamoto Hiromichi: Ash in the Rainbow
41 Dave Douglas: Freak In
42 Jóhann Jóhannsson: Englabörn
43 Pachora: Astereotypical
44 Tujiko Noriko: From Tokyo to Naiagara
45 Robert Wyatt: Cuckooland
46 Tokyo Zawinul Bach: Vogue Africa
47 Satoru Wono: Sonata for Sine Wave and White Noise
48 Barbara Morgenstern: Nichts Muss
49 Susanne Brokesch: So Easy, Hard to Practice
50 Hecker: Sun Pandämonium

After my first few listens I found the music kind of samey and Stevens' voice, unaffectingly even; but what hooked me on it (when I got the blurb assignment and started to pound away on it) was the ambition, and how much he got from thinking about his home state. The record reminds me of taking a trip home (for the holidays, say) and realizing the place has gone to shit - then reflecting on it for an hour and in the end, not reaching much of a conclusion. He doesn't get anywhere but he dredges up some powerful stuff.

Plus, that "Detroit" song is a winner, and I dig how Mitchum and I both thought it sounded like the stool-making song from Waiting for Guffman. (Which is probably a better pitch than the Elliot Smith-meets-Stereolab comparison.)

"Like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot before it, the record had leaked to file-trading services in June and blown up dancefloors all summer long."

wilco blows up the dancefloor!

Both of those comparisons sound like the BEST THING EVER! I'm on it, chief!