ILM TOP ALBUMS OF 2004

Nice list making and the suspence is killing me.

-- Tuomas (tuomas.alh...), January 16th, 2005.

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What happened?
-- mohair (pdesign...), January 16th, 2005.

I think the plan is to finish on Monday

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Big and Rich - Horse of a Different Color

As Chuck Eddy points out, this has a bounce and a swagger and a brightness that is extremely rare these days - indeed, it's always been uncommon enough to be cherished when we do find it. It blends its multifarious styles beautifully, partly because it's so well produced, and partly because the voices, the lovely, tight and sophisticated harmonies, pull it together so well. I'm a big fan of Bubba Sparxxx's albums, but (and this may be because I have been so out of touch with country music over the last few years) I didn't see this blend of country and hip hop, plus disco and hard rock, coming at all. I love music that sounds wildly happy, ecstatic, exuberant, and to combine all that with a lot of the lyrical wit of country and rap AND include the glamour of disco and the punch of rock is a thrilling achievement. -Martin Skidmore

Other ILXors Say:

"their album could easily wind up being the first album by anybody that I give 30 points to on a Pazz and Jop ballot. Ever." -Chuck

"Nevertheless, I'm having trouble getting overly excited about this album as a whole. There are certainly some fine songs, and I understand the thought process behind it, but ... eh." -Mr. Deeds

"I am so scared to investigate this record." -Sick Mouthy

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Devin the Dude - To tha X-Treme

A record that makes you feel dumb just trying to pin it down. Devin's drawing from everywhere, but making a disc strongly held together by his overwhelming sense of self. Obviously he's high, but maybe he's just SO high, he's grounded. How else to explain a guy who has his shit so absurdly together. The humor is humane and humanity is
staggering. Musically solid but rooted in Devin's own absorbed style relying on elements of funk, reggae, rock, whatever... It doesn't matter. He incorporates contradictions like the everyday part of life they are: Invigorating bass lines on an otherwise laid back track,
crying/laughter to kick off a breakup song where he immediately cops to farting under the covers. It doesn't stop until Unity, where he spells it out for us clear as can be. The aural
equivalent of staring at the sun. -Dan H.

Other ILXors Say:

"I defy you to name a better hip hop album released this year." -Forksclovetofu

"Judging from most kid-targeted food packaging, I'd say that he should try selling his CD in a supermarket where children can guilt parents into impulse-buying it. mmm, X-Treme jello." -DJDee2005

"this
album
is
THE
SHIT" -JSK Baby

Can I say, it should be noted that's from 2002, and that I completely retract that and just saw Wolf Eyes on an EXTREMELY rare off night the first time I ever saw them, and subsequently want to cut myself open and have them spit in my wounds so they can be a part of me?

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Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

As this was voted album of the year in more or less every poll here in the Netherlands, I almost put Franz Ferdinand at 9 in my Top Ten just as a "token indie" album. "Yeah, it's good, but not as good as these EIGHT other albums!" Really, I put it in because hardly any other band was more likeable than the Franz. Also: it's hits galore. Just don't play them anywhere near me for at least the next few years, because nothing has been played to death in 2004 as much as this one. -JoB

Other ILXors Say:

"They're fun for long drives or late night drinking/posting sessions and a soulseek copy of the self-titled kept me warm through the winter." -Slim Pickens

"STILL SUCKING

FAVORITE TSHIRT OF BORING WHITE KIDS AT FRAT PARTIES:

http://www.banchoryshop.net/images/franztour.jpg " -sometimes i like to pretend i am very small and warm

"I'm diggin'em." -Alex in NYC

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Fennesz - Venice

Endless Summer did a great job of uniting a few disparate camps. It was snoisy enough to keep the noise fans happy, while it’s melodic, chin-stroking moments pleased the folktronica fans (and the Beach Boys references certainly didn't hurt in that regard). In addition, there was even enough mayhem to keep the Tigerbeat 6 fans smiling. But the release of the Field Recordings 1995-2002 stopgap compilation ended up foreshadowing the new one – which was largely a dismissal of the pop and folk elements of Endless Summer and a return to dense, drifting, hazy music. Nonetheless, the blasts of guitar raining down on “Circassian� and “The Stone of Impermanence" are every bit as beautiful as anything on Venice’s more pastoral predecessor. And like all of Fennesz’s work, its zoned-out, catatonic form of nostalgia works best at high volume. -MindInRewind

Other ILXors Say:

"sonically beautifull, not as fun or playfull as endless summer (minus the sylvian track). kinda sad." -twelve

"Having heard it tonight, I proclaim it glitch-Vangelis..." -Ned Raggett

"quite heavy and wafting like the fog on a lake in the alps in autumn. that is not per se bad but a little bit frightening, i find." -alex in manhattan

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Xiu Xiu - Fabulous Muscles

More like “I Luv This Album (OH!)� -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"I've never heard more pretentious music than Xiu Xiu. Just listen to that one track on Fabulous Muscles about a "jock" who is now a soldier or whatever. How could you not want to kick their ass after that?" -Mickey

"I must make a point of ending mixes with Xiu Xiu's "Fabulous Muscles" from now on." -Barry Bruner

""Fabulous Muscles" is definitely their best album yet and the most compelling pop album I've heard this year." -Simon H.

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Felix da Housecat - Devin Dazzle and the Neon Fever

"I used to sing along to lyrics as dumb and simple as the ones on Van Halen's "1984" and didn't think twice about it. I never stopped to analyze them, but as time passed on, I gained a greater appreciation of how hard it could be to write a (apparently) simple song about ogling girls. This brings us to the genius of "Short Skirts", a clever masterwork of fuck-you attitude which might as well be the ultra-sassy response-song to "Drop Dead Legs". Elsewhere, "Everyone Is Someone In LA" makes me long to spend the rest of my days as a stand-in driver for one of those helicopter panorama shots of LA that opened the first sixty seconds of seemingly every episode of Knight Rider. Apologies to Kittenz and the Glitz, because the best glitz was saved for the follow-up -- this album is all about black eyeliner, striking a pose at your leisure at any time day or night, and shirking the responsibility of real life for the more pressing responsibility of looking fabulous."

Other ILXors Say:

"I like it. sounds very much like a parade of '80s styles, smart sonics, haven't gotten too deep into it lyrically but somehow doubt I'm missing too much there." -Matos K.

"devin dazzle is really great, even if the hardcore felix fans i know hate it." -Yanc3y

"This album is pretty great - but it can also be a cold, hard display of craft. FdH is like the Squarepusher of electro-pop: he's got mega-talent, but not necessarily the "human" touch." -dleone

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Animal Collective - Sung Tongs

19. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs

Noise-folk band releases “pop� album. Pitchfork readers and guys wearing long, flowing robes rejoice. -The Good Dr. Bill

Other ILXors Say:

"I like them and everything, it's nice, but I'm also thinking that this is kinda Phish for people who hate Phish." -Spittle

"sung tongs has a kinda nu-goofball vibe to it." -Scott Seward

"I've finally heard Sung Tongs, and while I find it pretty enjoyable, anybody who argues these guys are up for "world's greatest pop band" gets a gold plated CAUCASIAN PLEASE medallion for christmas."

#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