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

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

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

― lex pretend, Friday, July 27, 2012 3:32 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

lol if lex 'flicked the switch' to pop music in 2003 after years of nothing but tori amos and tom waits or whatever that explains a lot

If anything that Books album is closer stylistically to Four Tet and Jóhann Jóhannsson, the whole thing's on spotify http://open.spotify.com/album/0mcPCd19lQ092tEuXp1eRD

I shall investigate.

lol if lex 'flicked the switch' to pop music in 2003 after years of nothing but tori amos and tom waits or whatever that explains a lot

haha no but ILM was more of a catalyst for the young me w/r/t "it's totally OK to like what you like and to hate what you hate"

weird to think of this list being as old today as a list including "crooked rain," "ready to die" and "Selected Ambient Works II" would have been in 2003

OK, The Books are well away from The Wrens and The Shins.

Still a shitty name though!

crooked rain, ready to die, SAW ii: try to think of a print or online venue where those three would all have been top ten in 2003

the idea that this is 'an aesthetic' which is now embodied by ilm is a very odd one to me

Looking at this list makes me realise I was not paying very much attention to new US alterna-trends in 2003.

tbh repping for "The Black Album" in 2003 is not as remarkable as repping for "Ready To Die" in 1994 would have been

for an indie-centric publication, i mean

was that the point? i didn't think that was the point.

-

weird year (for pitchfork?), lots of artists here performing not quite at the top of their game whilst still doing pretty well? tho i have never heard e.g. that specific sunburned record. exceptions - basement jaxx, dizzee, lightning bolt

i guess anyone who would want to rep for the blood brothers record is the kind of person who has taught themselves to not click on pitchfork threads. that was a good record.

two decemberists albums! oh god.

tbh not sure what your point was - did you mean "imagine a place where anyone would have cared about these albums if they were released in 2003?" or "imagine a place that would still revere these albums in 2003?" or was 2003 a typo, etc

i guess anyone who would want to rep for the blood brothers record is the kind of person who has taught themselves to not click on pitchfork threads. that was a good record.

lol that's what i voted for

A lot of the albums on this list are ones that, from my point of view, preceded better efforts from said acts.

although tbf the only other ones i've heard are the Cat Power from depressingly way way after i thought they were any good and the Ted Leo record where i think the production poorly served a bunch of songs that sound better live (xpost)

heh, all the albums here where I'm au fait w/ its followup, I like the 2003 album more

xp

(Out Hud, Ted Leo, Lightning Bolt, Blood Brothers, Dizzee, Ratpure, Jay-Z)

(and Basement Jaxx)

I dunno. For me, it was more like, that period just had all these pop juggernauts in the form of Sugababes' Third, Sound of the Underground, Britney Spears' Toxic (think that might be early 2004), all this mind-blowing production from Xenomania and Richard X...

...and ye olde indie bastions thought I should be listening to - Cat Power? The Postal Service? Get outta town!

Yeah, I think I was definitely much more into pop at that point than P4K approved indie.

tbf, that Cat Power album stands up.

i don't know, at this point i feel about the same way about going back and giving the sugababes album another listen as i do the microphones one: which is to say, i guess i could, but ...

i actually can't think of a worse cat power record - early, slightly improvised-feeling stuff, moon pix, covers record, muscle shoals band record, is there one i'm forgetting

lol i do not mean muscle shoals

Didn't mean to pick on Cat Power, but I was looking down that list trying to even find an artist I *should* have liked.

You Are Free is where I got off the Catbus

Oh I voted Xiu Xiu of course

where I got off the Catbus

slow_clap.gif

Always meant to give that Giddy Motors album a go, it's kind of new wave of burly pigfuck right?

tired zing, p4k thread, good morning everyone

I should listen to that M83 album sometime, considering how much I like the last two

also Ellen Allien

I like the Blood Brothers record a lot too, but I wore myself out on it when it came out so now when I see it I'm all kinda, "ehhh, not sure I need to hear that now".

Giddy Motors was more no wavey iirc, I think there was sax and little of the blokishness that I think of wrt 'pigfuck'

ailing memory-based disclaimers again apply

oh damn, why had I never heard Berlinette before now

voting for sufjan. don't judge me.

i think this was the year i started reading pfork so i pretty much listened to all of these. most of them are good! none are personal favorites though

voting for sufjan. don't judge me.

too late *judges hardcore*

lol @ p4k giving a "best new music" to a Polysics album that came out three years prior

I'm guessing it came out in the States in 2003.

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

Really loved this whole post/explanation, ecuador.

One thing I'm struck by is how small most of these records are. We've got pre-Illinois Sufjan; pre-prog Decemberists; a half hour Shins album; lots of tiny works by The Books, The Unicorns, Cyann & Ben, ect. This was the year before Arcade Fire hit and anthemized a lot of indie rock, and it really shows

This list is funny to me because it was around this time that I sort of started falling out of the habit of keeping close tabs on new music, so I look at this and go, "Oh yeah, I've been meaning to check that one out!" as in, I've been "meaning to" for a decade. Thanks to Spotify, I am now working through an age-old listening checklist and feeling really hip and current with...really old music. Oops. This Viktor Vaughn album is sounding pretty good I gotta say.

like/love all of these:

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It in People
Cat Power - You Are Free
The Blood Brothers - ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn
Four Tet - Rounds
Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
Singel Frame - Wetheads Come Running
WHY? - Oaklandazulasylum
Dizzee Rascal - Boy in Da Corner
Sufjan Stevens - Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State
Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash
Menomena - I Am the Fun Blame Monster
Jay-Z - The Black Album

voted Cat Power, because I'm still in love with her.

anyway. the Polysics album is clearly the best. but i would venture to say i'm the only one here who's heard it.