Top Five list!

mg and jnf have more musical knowledge and talent in their pinkies than i do in my CD collection. so be sure to check with them to get a sense of what's good out there. but i thought i'd follow my own status quo and post a "Top Five New Albums I Have Loved in 2003" list a la my hero Rob Gordon of High Fidelity. I would like to make it a top ten or even top twenty-five list, but given budget constraints and the very cool complication that we got a record player and about 50 vinyl albums this year (from b's parents), i've been more on a classic rock kick than listening to new stuff. i apologize :-) [oh, just as a reminder to myself: this whole thing is opinion based and something one person loves could be a piece of crap album that you hate. they can still like it. and you can still hate it. settle down.] 5. Bleu, Redhead. Sure the lyrics might remind you of your angst-filled late teenage years. But man, he can sing. Bleu opened for Toad the Wet Sprocket at PromoWest. I thought he would suck. He didn't. B got an autographed album (groupie!) and we listened to it non-stop for about a month. 4. The Postal Service Give Up. I never would have even heard of these guys if it wasn't for jnf. Great suggestion--you may not have even known you suggested it. This album feels the way I was hoping Primitive Radio Gods would but then didn't. I had a copy for all of about 1 day before I lent it out. Great pop-electronica. 3. David Wilcox Into the Mystery. As is so often the case, I started off really disliking this album until about the 30th time I heard it. It pounds the Dark Night of the Soul theme pretty hard. The addition of Phil Keaggy and Pearce and Nance Pettit for many songs on the album improves the sound and the seamlessness of the album as a whole, but the majority of the endeavor rests on Wilcox's songwriting. I never get tired of his stories, even when they wax a trifle pedantic, just because they're crafted the way that a grandfather might craft a rocking chair for ten years before ever being able to sit in it. In my mind, Wilcox is to Christian music--even though he doesn't get marketed as CCM and really is unclassifiable folk--a classic Dylan. But there's no way he'll ever be recognized as such. He just doesn't do self-promotion very well. Nor does he speak soothingly to his audience like so much CCM does. 2. The Strokes Room on Fire. I was terrified they'd have that sophomore album thing like The Wallflowers and so many other promising bands do. Instead, they seemed to depart some of their more sing-song stuff and get down to brass tacks. I have no idea what that means, but it seems more mature than Is This It?. I really like the tempo changes on "You talk way too much." But then I'm no music critic. 1. (tie) Radiohead, Hail To the Thief and Christopher O'Riley True Love Waits. The only reason there can be a tie at number 1 is if the one covers the other and is a totally different genera. Man. My year was bookended by these two albums. HTTF seems to be adored or panned by everyone and here's why I love it: instead of becoming StereoLab (nothing wrong with that), Radiohead goes the other direction and becomes...well, Radiohead circa 1995 plus Radiohead circa 2000. I'm not sure how you do that. But somehow they manage to stitch together a bigger-than-life critique of America, wealth, violence, fatherhood...like a Frankenstein's Monster to set loose on their audiences. Much like Vitalogy was for Pearl Jam, this will be a watershed album. Some will turn away, shunning Yorke and the boys forever. Some will thirst for them even more. Although I love Coldplay, I think this album establishes Radiohead as the most mature, creative, thoughtful band in England. And as if God opened the heavens and poured forth much blessing upon me, this classical piano version of most of my favorite Radiohead songs issued in November. True Love Waits improbably recrafts certain significant points along Radiohead's musical career so wonderfully that I've found myself listening to it almost as much as the originals. If possible, the interpretation of Let Down is sadder and somehow more complete than the original. I would be jumping up and down on the keyboard if I had to put the same intensity into these songs as O'Riley. Good stuff in 2003. My runners up would have to be: Coldplay (live), White Stripes Elephant, Blur Think Tank, Yo Lo Tengo Summer Sun, GBV Human Assessments.... To be fair Cat Power You Are Free and The Shins Chutes Too Narrow may have made it on here, but I haven't listened to them all the way through yet.