ILM TOP ALBUMS OF 2004

#18.

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Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat

Every so often, a record comes along and I rate it so highly that it makes me question my own judgment. Maybe what Eleanor and Matt Friedberger do is just pull some trick that short circuits my critical faculties. I mean – this is just sublime, isn't it? Blueberry Boat manages to make just about every other modern rock group look short on ideas, flair and point. Every moment feels essential, like it's been mapped out, but in the most natural of ways, as though each note could be unpicked to reveal the DNA of the full 76 minutes hidden inside. You can sit there with your Inuit dictionary, your Hobson Jobson and your chord book and try to pin the whole thing down – some have, at length. I don't know if it's really a good idea, but I'm glad that it's an option. I'm happy just to immerse myself in it a looser way, the way I first heard it. As a giddily confident barrage, strewn with musical and lyrical phrases that made me grin from ear to ear, and which have been bouncing around my head ever since. The Fiery Furnaces somehow sound like they're casting an immortal story afresh for a modern audience. Some trick. God knows what they'll do next. -Alba

Other ILXors Say:

"The album feels a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get used to the rambling structures of the songs, it is just as tuneful and ingratiating as Gallowsbird's Bark." -Matthew Perpetua

"they're fucking great. My favorite 'new' band in a long, long while." -roger adultery

"i'm pretty sure it annoys the living shit out me now, but i'm gonna perservere for a couple more listens to see if it opens up to me." -

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Erlend Oye - DJ Kicks

Enough to make you wonder why all DJs don’t record themselves singing Smiths and Bananamrama covers over their sets. Or start their sets with Jurgen Paape’s “So Weit Wie Noch Nie,� for that matter. -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD. i listened to it three times before work today!!" -Vahid

"I think this album has every right to be good. But then I believe in freedom for all people everywhere." -Mark

"i love erlend. say what you will, but you can't fault him for lack of enthusiasm." -Lauren

PS have you heard the Justus version?

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The Go! Team - Thunder Lightning Strike

OK, bear with me here. Remember that old science experiment where an empty room would be filled with set mousetraps, each with a pair of ping-pong balls delicately balanced on it? And someone would drop a ball on one of the traps, setting the trap off, throwing the two balls into the air and setting off a chain reaction? And in a flash the room would be full of flying ping-pong balls ricocheting off each other?

Well, if you imagine each of those ping-pong balls as a different musical genre, and think of them all randomly flying about all over the shop and rebounding off each other... That's pretty much how this album sounds. A messy riot of crashing drum breaks, rapping, garage rock guitar, harmonica (!) and rope-skipping chants (!!), it is an unlikely yet perfect soundtrack for a hot summer day. -Haitch

Other ILXors Say:

"ALBUM OF THE YEAR" -Alex in Doncaster

"ALBUM OF THE YEAR" -Mike

"It's a bit relentlessly full-on, isn't it? Mostly instrumental, with Big Beat drums-of-death and insistent 60s-style melodies (cf. "Apache", stuff like that), plus shouting kids. I probably would have loved this when I was half my current age, but now it sounded to me like a recipe for a headache." -Jeff W.

PS have you heard the Justus version?

Obsession? I just really like the song.

and no.

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Girls Aloud - What Will the Neighbours Say?

"Since day one the pressure gauge on the Girls Aloud machine has been shivering in the red; at any given moment it could slip over into 'dangerous' and explode the whole group. But, 'The Show' erupts into the kind of epic orgasm you imagined was reserved for wildly breeding whales, possessing everything you could want in a Girls Aloud track. The signature Xenomania electro-pop sound, the last chorus that comes out of nowhere and drags you with it through a wormhole of euphoria, and a classic line - "shoulda hung around the kitchen in my underwear" (You won't read that gem in any self-help books). It's all there.
Amazingly, the entire record sustains this momentum for an entire 51 minutes (including the bonus material, which for once, is really "YES!"). One particular standout, “Graffiti My Soul,� is twisted through the Girls Aloud machine to sound like a 'Red Coat' take on The Prodigy, complete with liberal use of a stutter effect and a reference to 'fisting' (Zig-ah-zig-OUCH!).
Really, there was no better pop group 2004." -Hari Ashurst

Other ILXors Say:

"There isn't a bad moment on this." -Gravel Puzzleworth

"I'm growing to love the sequencing. It's like a carpet bombing with the four singles upfront, and then the group troups move in to shore everything up." -Dom Passantino

"Sound Of The Underground epitomised a certain type of small-town mindset: the teenage girl gang hanging around on street corners, bored out of their skulls with provincial life and provincial boys, longing to escape. And What Will The Neighbours Say? is the sound of those girls five years on, career girls in the big bad city and loving it, supremely confident and sassy but not yet world-weary." -The Lex

Fiery Furnaces on 2004 poll = Orbital on 1990's poll

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Cut Copy - Bright Like Neon Love

I heard a story about the making of this album; that Dan Whitford, the Cut Copy main-man, wasn't happy with the results of his recording efforts - the demos he'd recorded by himself with keyboards and drum machines didn't cut it, and the efforts at re-recording the same songs with a live band weren't right either. So he took the tapes to Paris, where Philippe Zdar from Cassius had "a bit of a fiddle" with them.

Some job he did. The songs are, for the most part, great hooky pop. But the production job is something else. The sound constantly shifts between the band tracks and the electronic stuff, often on the same track. They combine in unexpected ways, like when the bass drops out of the driving rock of "The Twilight" and reappears as a really acid-y synth line. And it's all coated in those sweeping Gallic filters, which lend a disco sheen but also just make a lot of the textures more interesting than they would otherwise be. It's as good on the headphones as it is on the dancefloor.

Will indie dudes with guitars who want to take a step towards the dancefloor find a bit of inspiration in this record? It doesn't sound very much like Gang Of Four, so probably not. Oh well. -Haitch

Other ILXors Say:

"Who knew the guy who made 'Hunder Twasser' would turn around and kick my ass so completely every time?" -R.I.M.A.

"My fave local album this year. "Going Nowhere" is the best New Order pastiche/parody ever!" -Hayden Nicholls

"This is just a damn magnificent album, like an extended meditation on the Aerodynamic/Digital Love segue in Discovery." -MC Transmaniacon

This is just wrong.

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Air - Talkie Walkie

Like Moon Safari, except with four or five real songs. -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"i love the record. really fantastic. "surfing on a rock" is my favorite" -Yanc3y

""Sexy Boy" = yer gliding along the autobahn
"Radio #1" = yer nodding your head as you do so
the new album = the car's broken down and while it's a pretty view and all there's nowhere to go!" -Ned Raggett

"I Think It's Their Best Album So Far.
......I Started This Thread By The Way.
Suprised to see it pop back" -Dude

This is just wrong.

What I meant was, with Orbital we had a few people praising them to the heavens, and when they finished lower those people expected, we were WTF'ing up and down the thread. That's the ILM equivalent of "Blueberry Boat" at #18. Some people on ILM adore them, but lots of others don't see what the fuss is about, so voila, "only" #18.

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Phoenix - Alphabetical

More French pop. This one’s got hooks, though. Like, major hooks. -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"i absolutely love the record. it wasn't what i'd call a grower. first listen i hated it, second listen, i loved it. not sure how that worked, there was nothing gradual about it." -pitwithspikes

"think it is a good record, almost too good - a lot of the songs seem like they were produced in some factory where pop melodies/arrangements are made to sound as if I've heard them a hundred times before." -dleone

"CLASSIC. I listen to it almost every day lately, and I never get sick of it." -Matthew Perpetua

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Madvillain - Madillainy

There's little left to say about the chemistry between producer Madlib's dense lo-fi collage of jazz club beats, forgotten movie dialogue, soul hooks, and comic book KA-POW when coupled with the hilarious, fantastic, vaguely psychedelic ramblings and raspy, cyclic delivery of chief rhymesayer MF Doom. It's all in a constant state of juxtaposition: Doom's knack for clever, comedic twists and his equal aptitude for flooring realism; Madlib's arrangements of jumpy horns and melting organs are combined with speaker panning detritus and daring mixing in a way that makes his tracks sound simultaneously familiar and alien. It's blunted hip hop that rewards the careful listener, cartoonish enough that we can keep our distance and human enough in its curiosity to pull us in and keep us there. -DOPESMOKER

Other ILXors Say:

"this is the weakest thing i have ever heard." -tOph

"I think it works in a totally different way than say Vik Vaughn or Doomsday. This is sort of like late night doom--it IS more mellow, less hyper, but the rhymes work surprising well in that conext, and some of the tracks are just brilliant, especially ALLCAPS and Raid." -Scott

"He is ridiculously clever, has a very unique personality, and sounds like no one else in hip-hop. Plus I just think he sounds good." -DJDee2005

Your flippant comment notwithstanding, I am surprised, considering how much love it's been getting on ILM threads.

I don't know if the people on those threads voted here, though. Perhaps not.

10. Dungen
9. Squarepusher
8. Mastodon
7. Tv on the Radio
6. Stina Nordenstam
5. Diplo
4. Beta Band
3. Isis
2. Annie
1. Junior Boys

1. Junior Boys, Last Exit
2. Kanye West, The College Dropout
3. Annie, Anniemal
4. The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free
5. M.I.A./Diplo, Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1
6. Dizzee Rascal, Showtime
7. Brian Wilson, Smile
8. Arcade Fire, Funeral
9. Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender
10. Ghostface, The Pretty Toney Album

For a multitude of reasons, that sentence is perhaps my favorite thing that I've ever read.

http://rateyourmusic.com/

I don't expect there to be the exact same references, however it is a useful comparative link for reference.

Will do, thanks.