2003 Pitchfork 'Best New Albums' - which of these is the best?

The only two of these I'd have any inclination to listen to these days are Ellen Allien and Dizzee Rascal, but I'd rather listen to New Pornographers Electric Version or Fiery Furnaces Gallowsbird's Bark.

The Wrens, one of the last great guitar band albums (sniff sniff)

― kornrulez6969, Thursday, July 26, 2012 8:07 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?!?!? i don't know where to start

you are free

kind of amazing, i think of this period as being a time when i was "following" indie rock, but i've heard very few of these indie rock records. here are the ones i've heard in full.
-Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It in People - don't like this band
Cat Power - You Are Free - i know people think this is her best, but i thought it was a major drop off from moon pix
decemberists - castaways - don't really like this band, but my wife does, so i've heard this a bunch. it's ok.
grandaddy - sumday - half of this record is great, the rest is meh
radiohead - hail to the thief - didn't like this one very much
sufjan - see the decemberists
shins - i like this one!
jay-z - good record!

How is the New Pornos record not here?!

Ted Leo (but I like his later stuff even more!)

don't know if i've ever heard anyone say this before

i was a little put off by hearts of oak at the time but it grew plenty on me.

i still fuck with vaudeville villain too.

and... nothing else that i've ever heard here, but maybe if i get sick of 'hypermagic mountain' someday i will listen to 'wonderful rainbow'.

Surprised there's not more excitement for the music here. I think 2003 marked the pinnacle of 2000s indie rock, though I might be biased, because that was around the time when indie-rock felt for me like a significant, definable movement, something that I could follow with the same passion of the alternative rock I listened to when I was a little kid.

A lot of artists on this list are represented by their best albums: The Shins, The Wrens, Menomena, The Unicorns, The Rapture, Dizzee, but I think Cat Power gets my vote. You Are Free is so lean and brutal. It's not an angry album, but there's something hostile about it, and the way those songs pass on these poisonous emotions without priming you for them or helping you reconcile them.

?!?!? i don't know where to start

Ugh. I know I should ignore this, but I'll bite.

I take it you strongly disagree with my assessment that The Wrens Meadowlands is one of the last great guitar records. Please, tell me. What am I overlooking?

don't know if i've ever heard anyone say this before

i'll probably be the lone vote for out hud.

bernard: i liked the one on 'living' about chillin out in europe or whatever but he's sounded pretty burnt out since then, i couldn't get into 'bricks' either. ah well.

tho 'shake the sheets' went from ah er ok what are we doing here to something i played to death, so that's good.

Can't wait to do this thread 10 more times

― camp lo magellan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, July 26, 2012 4:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man, just imagine how exciting it'll be the day you realize you don't have to open/participate in threads that are of no interest to you.

Somgs: Ohia

This is Vaudeville Villain vs Hail to the Thief for me, but that's like two out of the three albums I've heard in thus list. Although I scan as indie bcz I love a lot of Sonic Youth and Fall* albums but I really know fuck all about indie music or Pitchfork

Like Cat Power? Is she worth listening to? I have this vague notion in my head of her having 'intense vocals': is that right?

*The Real New Fall LP is easily my favorite album from this year.

exploding hearts, obviously

― J0rdan S., Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:55 PM (6 hours ago)

I gotta be real and admit that I'm waaaaaaaay overdue on checking out Lightning Bolt; I'll give WR a listen sometime this week.

Exploding Hearts are the band nabisco kept comparing to Material Issue, right? I am thinking about checking them out too.

like the soft pink truth, lightning bolt, deerhoof and jay-z albums, too.

xp take shrooms

deerhoof or manitoba

xp I usually have to buy them actually

The Real New Fall LP is so damn great. They haven't released anything nearly as good since, right? I think I missed the last few

That Out Hud album is super creative and really should be #1

cosign on the real new fall LP. still listen to it pretty regularly. surprised it didn't a pitchfork nod.

Well, 2012 will have lots to choose from. Seems like they've had a new BNM every day of the last few weeks.

angels of light

Surprised there's not more excitement for the music here. I think 2003 marked the pinnacle of 2000s indie rock, though I might be biased, because that was around the time when indie-rock felt for me like a significant, definable movement, something that I could follow with the same passion of the alternative rock I listened to when I was a little kid.

Used to be things ran in 20 year cycles, implying ten years after was the centre of the fallow period before reappraisal slowly started. I think this has sped up slightly, so 2003 is pretty much at the bottom of the cycle right now (not that 2001 did that much better in a poll a while ago). Mostly, people who are in a position to make their voices heard right now were gawky teenagers/college kids when this stuff came out, and are still in the backlash phase against their earlier comforts/selves. Many of them will pay healthy amounts to go to the 20th anniversary of That Band Play That Album The Whole Way Through in ten years' time.

I feel really really really stupid for getting Out Hud confused with Hed PE (sic) sometimes

(re: the Fall--Real New got a 7.6 rating, same as most of their albums in the 00s; the last album of theirs I loved was Imperial Wax Solvent, though Your Future Our Clutter has a lot of fans on ILX; but yeah Real New is better than both)

I've never even heard of Angels of Light :(

This is a pretty terrible list.

It's Radiohead or Ellen Allien for my but I think I'm going to vote w my vagina coz HTTT is my favourite RH album but Berlinette isn't my fave EA.

I guess I listened to Rounds and Up In Flames a lot back then, too but the idea of Up In Flames as forward-thinking rather than a Chapterhouse rip is mystifying to me.

Oh sod it. I have 2 heads, I can vote for the Ellen Allien record I really want without feeling disloyal.

this was the year i became the indiest indie kid in high school so this is all nostalgia, this list was my bible

her majesty the decemberists would've been my answer at 15 so i'll go with that

i was even more of a corny indie fuxx whatever whatever in 2003 than i am now, with that said my faves are The Shins, Exploding Hearts, Sufjan, Her Majesty The Decemberists and like Wrens/MMJ.

also, 2003 was a monster year, imo. Here are a handful of records that either should be on that list, or I'm surprised are not:

Kathleen Edwards, “Failer”
Jose Gonzalez, “Veneer”
The Long Winters, “When I Pretend To Fall”
The New Pornographers, “Electric Version”
The Notwist, “Neon Golden”
The Postal Service, “Give Up”
The Strokes, “Room On Fire”
Sun Kil Moon, “Ghosts of the Great Highway”

I have that Ellen Allien album but can't remember anything about it, not that I'm saying this is the album's fault

It's the the one with Unknown Trashscapes (?) and all the songs about trains on it. Actually it's pretty great but it's hardly Thrills.

2003/4 was p much the year, after 3 years of being in a touring indie band, when I realised I couldn't actually stomach indie anymore. It was the year of really accepting Poptimism and moving away from everything this list represented. Thanks, ILM, for that. It was really freeing.

The Notwist, “Neon Golden”

2002 iirc

berlinette is pretty awesome - it's prob only ellen's third best album behind thrills and orchestra of bubbles but in the context of ellen's discography this is hardly a diss, and also it's so stylistically different to those two that it feels less like an inferior version of ellen than just a different one, and also how fucking gorgeous "sehnsucht" is and what an amazing banger "push" is (PUSH PUSH PUSH KICK UR ASS KICK UR ASS).

i voted ellen - i don't necessarily love berlinette more than boy in da corner or kish kash but of those three it's certainly the most underrated. the fourth album in this dreadful list that's worth anything is you are free - "free" especially is an amazing song, i love how bold cat power sounds on it contra her early work. but while i broadly like and keep up with her, cat power has never had what it takes to make me a real head-over-heels fan, and in some ways i resent her for taking the 90s female singer-songwriter model and sucking all the grandiose ambition and formidable technical chops and lyrical aggression out of it, and replacing it with conventional 00s indie fragile femininity and a...basic approach to the concept of chops. um i do like her though!

overall if this list embodies an aesthetic that you prize or that you followed at any point, You Are The Problem.

Boy In Da Corner over Kish Kash

2003/4 was p much the year, after 3 years of being in a touring indie band, when I realised I couldn't actually stomach indie anymore. It was the year of really accepting Poptimism and moving away from everything this list represented. Thanks, ILM, for that. It was really freeing.

i really credit ILM with flicking this switch in my brain, which is exactly why this board retrospectively happily accepting this aesthetic is a bit weird to me

I don't really pick up an aesthetic from this list tbh? like as much as there's lots of Shins-y flotsam which is either 'not my thing' or actively pernicious depending on how I'm feeling today, there seems to be lots of things which come from somewhere totally different

Push is on Berlinette??!?! I thought it was on Stadtkind so that just pushed (heh) the album up in my estimation.

I don't think this list represents an aesthetic, but the albums I've heard (and many others I know only by reputation - the reputation giving me the distinct impression "this is not for me") does seem to be a jumbled mess of everything that I was just totally ready to leave behind at that point.

It's funny, I was reading a comic book recently that had a two-frame quip about leaving indie behind and adopting a stance of "radical poptimism" with a footnote and a link to Tom/FT and oh how I laughed and laughed and pointed and said "yes, this was a thing! that's me, that's me!" It was a definite tribal moment on ILM. But ILM has had many moments and supports many tribes.

I'm going to listen to Berlinette for the rest of the morning now, so this thread has had some use.

artists in this poll whose music i have heard that i like: Lightning Bolt, Out Hud, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Mt Eerie/Microphones, Soft Pink Truth

artists in this poll whose music i could not identify even if there was a gun pointed at my head: everything else, ok, i could probably identify Radiohead, not really into them after the 1st two albums

the unicorns album is the most fun

Supersilent, Lightning Bolt & Ellen Allien are the only survivors from this list that are still on my iPod.

The Books, The Shins, The Wrens... 2003 was a nadir for unimaginitive bands with even more unimaginitive names.

I still listen to the Four Tet and some of the Radiohead. Played the Manitoba the other day and I like it but it sounds really gauche and hyperactive compared to his subsequent stuff.

Think most of this list is definitely at the bottom of the decade-on trough of despair right now.

The Books might be an unimaginative name but they're defintely not an unimaginative band.

It may be that their name did them a massive disservuice then; I remember listening to a lot of these acts back then and pretty universally thinking 'wtf'; I could well just be confused.

You definitely are confused if you're putting The Books in the same category as the other two