ILM TOP ALBUMS OF 2004

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Brian Wilson - SMiLE

I don't know if it would take a better or a worse man than me to write about this album without reference to all that baggage. I just can't do it.

If there was ever any idea that completing this project would close the book on it, it actually happening has blown that idea apart. It raises many more questions than it answers. I mean, what is this thing? Brian's aged voice apart, it's as close as anyone could reasonably have demanded to sounding as it would have done had it come out in 1967, but it's not a 1967 record. It's not a 2004 record either. I mean, if it were then it would be the best record of 2004, wouldn't it? After all, this is musically as near as dammit to being a complete version of the album people have spent close to 40 years raving about, myself maybe 14. Will I spend the next 37 years raving any more wildly about any of the other albums released this year? I doubt it, yet somehow it doesn't feel right calling this my favourite album of the year, nor putting somewhere down the list either.

I don't know even how to listen to it. I can hear the whole thing refracted through the lens those 37 years have built up, as an elegy for Brian Wilson's life, or for the myth of Smile. As many have remarked, opening words rarely come as poignant as "I've been in this town so long" now do. I can get excited about beautiful sections that it together in ways previously released material never achieved (the transition from 'long, long ago' into the xylophone at 1:48 in 'On A Holiday', say). But it's no good – I can't hear it as the classic Beach Boys album Smile. It's a curio, something to puzzle the sometimes cruel contingencies of artistic achievement over. For now, anyway. In 2041, ask me again. -Alba

Other ILXors Say:

"I still don't get what the whole Beach Boys fuss is about." -Rasputin Kitten

"ITS VERY GREAT.

VERY VERY GREAT. " -ddb

"Honestly, I really don't think this is nostalgia or a little piece of "what might have been"....I think it's just a really amazing piece of music...." -M@tt He1geson

...has got nothing on the proper MIA album. I don't quite understand all the love.

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Junior Boys - Last Exit

The lullabies Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark sing to their kids at night. Assuming they have kids. -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"this album is GAY and WONDERFUL" -Cutty

"Listening to this and that Justus Koehncke covers thing actually made me want to go and buy some New Order." -@d@ml

"I don't think any other band has ever made me miss basslines less." -Jordan

"admittedly i'm really late on this Last Exit album, but fuck i'm diggin' it hard now" -ken taylrr

I think I got taken in by all the Junior Boys with my No.1 prediction.

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Annie - Anniemal

ILM’s first official cheereleader. Or is it the other way around? -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"there isn't a bad track on it (although the 7 minute-long 'come together' is like a generic early 90's rave pop anthem from the title down) i managed to actually *dance at a party* to chewing gum on sunday!

gonna be mega." -piecesboy

"I love it when ILM gets all excited and behind something." -Alba

"I am incredibly impressed by the album as a whole. I need to spend more time with it, but my gut feeling is that this will be one of my top favorite albums for the year." -Matthew Perpetua

"I can't quite shake the impression that this is sort of the best album ever made, it feels like it is totally completely Up There with all my very very very favouritest records of all time and I can find absolutely nothing about it that is less than superbly perfect really. I do hope I maintain this level of enthusiasm, it is a tremendously excellent thing to have happened." -Alex in Doncaster

Please.

#2.

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The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free

My teens happened in the '70s, so I developed a big resistance to concept albums - they were usually really horrible, back then. Maybe it's because hip hop (go with me, I know this doesn't really qualify) is a storytelling form so much of the time, it seems to make more sense here. And of course this isn't some fantasy tosh or Henry VIII's SixWives On Ice or some such drivel, this is a day in the ordinary life, full of beautifully captured detail that anyone can connect with. What makes it my favourite record of the year is that honesty, that accuracy and incision, but it's the way he tells 'em too. Obviously I'm not going to go claiming that he has great flow, but he does deliver the lines well in his own fresh way, with feeling and truth, all underplayed, which is necessary for the low-key small-time story. I've always felt that hip hop (yes, yes) was more interesting musically than vocally most of the time, and I think this is where his great talent lies, even if some of the music is merely a frame for what he is saying - it's a beautifully made frame, music that is affecting in its own right, and magnificently matched to the song. -Martin Skidmore

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Kanye West - College Dropout

I feel a little corny putting this at the top of my list, because it's kind of become this year's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, the "laudibly gangsta free" token hip hop album that people who aren't really up on it can rally around, while a lot of people whose opinions I respect have hated on it, or have chosen to damn it with faint praise, slipping it in the lower half of their lists or not at all. But you know what? Fuck it, I'll still rep for the dude. In 2003 Kanye went from being one of my favorite producers to becoming one of my favorite MCs too. I collected every single mixtape he dropped, every track that leaked, following every release date delay, knowing that with Roc-A-Fella's release schedule it would probably be in limbo alongside M.O.P. and Rell for years. I figured that if it ever did drop, it would get some nice reviews and sell modestly, like all super producer pet projects. As much faith as I had in Kanye, I didn't expect multi-platinum sales and hit after hit single and Grammy nods in the double digits. It's not a perfect album (I tend to find reasons to leave the room during the block of three (three!) skits surrounding "School Spirit"), but there's far more good than bad or played out. Maybe a few years down the road we'll look at Kanye the way we look at Wyclef now, but you can't say this wasn't his year. -HotelOpera

Rest of the votes to come in another hour and a half.

Great work Dr. Bill!! Thanks!

i don't mind Kanye winning really - it seems a good list and again better than any magazine list i've seen

Crack'ead.

Re: no.15. Phew.

Nice blurb Al.