2004 Pitchfork 'Best New Albums' - which of these is the best?

Feel like this one is a lot tougher, leaning towards Inches of the second DFA comp right now. But damn, that Excepter record is great. So is the Mission of Burma.

Madvillain, Les Savy Fav, Junior Boys or Dungen.

at the time it would have been sung tongs, but these days

The Disintegration Loops I-IV

Yeah, Basinki and Madvillain are both great options too.

Voted Sung Tongs, so sue me.

Basinski's probably going to win this poll, yawn

Voted Junior Boys but once again I haven't heard half of these

xpost Because despite their later forays into impenetrable twee noise, I fucking love that album for its acoustic textures and drum rhythms.

Burma

surprising to me how the '03 list had so little I knew or cared about and this year has several I really like. That SY album was a good one and a great drive-down-the-highway record, love the Burma record a lot, I like that Interpol album a lot but I understand that is a lol at me but w/e it's good, the Jeck album's good, C'mon Miracle is cool and an all-time album title/cover shot combo, I think A Grand Don't Come For Free is good even come at me I don't give a shit that's a fun record. But Last Exit was huge for me that year, so emotional and rich -- one of those Important-Feeling records at the time, one I mark that era by. So, that.

Yeah 2004 seemed like the year I got interested in new music again after a couple of years in a wilderness where I only bought reissues and albums by reliable favourites. I think this ties in with the year I got a broadband connection and soulseek.

A Grand Don't Come For Free was a good album.

Franz Ferdinand

at the time i probably listened to erlend øye's dj kicks the most... not sure if i'd still go for that?

junior boys

Yeah, Junior Boys would win if not for FF for me, also like a bunch of stuff on the Streets, Sonic Youth, Les Savy Fav, Kanye West, Interpol, Futureheads and Arcade Fire albums

lol at You Are The Quarry

sonic youth over kanye over cee-lo over a bunch of shit i pointedly avoided

erase ilx if kanye loses this

hi kanye

problem is, i think i burned myself out on this kanye album. its pretty great though, i need to revisit it.

i warmed up to parts of the album later, but i still remember my bafflement at "Through The Wire" on the radio - dude making Vanilla Sky references over chipmunk samples WHY IS THIS INTERRUPTING MY CRUNK

"through the wire" is far from the best song on that album and far from the best single but that song is hilarious

I always liked "We Don't Care" and "New Workout Plan" a lot but that album kinda loses steam quick

Also the last 10 minutes are borderline unlistenable

here let me just be the annoying herb I am, the kanye album is too fuckin long

don't feel nearly as much attachment to this list as 03's overall. might vote for Comets On Fire tbh, that album is a blast

it's really not better than any random 70 minute plus R. Kelly album you could name

liked the Les Savy Fav and Loretta Lynn at the time, Annie and Kanye to a point also

oh Junior Boys still holds up too I think

the slow wonder

A much stronger list than the '03 one, love all of these:

Kanye West - The College Dropout
Madvillain - Madvillainy
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I-IV (Caveat: I've only heard vols. I & II)
Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Erlend Øye - DJ-Kicks: Erlend Øye
Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
Björk - Medúlla
The Foreign Exchange - Connected
Dungen - Ta det lugnt

Voting Erlend Øye - never heard a note of his own music but this is such a great mix.

Oh yeah, love the Junior Boys LP too.

madvillainy by a distance. shout out to mirah, such a great record.

this was a banner year for albums that were half good.

its between blueberry boat, a grand don't come for free and slow wonder for me. had lots of songs from slow wonder floating round my head recently.

l a s t e x i t

this was the year that i actually went out of my way to listen to all of the 8.0+-rated records on pitchfork and got really burned out, but last exit is unblighted

man, for me this list is way weaker and more dated than the '03 one.

the only ones i spent time with are kanye, cee-lo, junior boys, and bjork.

the only one i really feel like going back to now is medulla. that cee-lo record is underrated though, it has his best single and some crazy jams like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdTbfETd__w

Agree with others that this a much stronger year. Annie and Kanye are albums I still play a lot but Junior Boys is by far the best thing here, it's a perfect album.

I still rate the Bjork, Air, Go Team, Cee-Lo and Arcade Fire albums a lot too.

I'm tempted to vote for "Piracy Funds Terrorism", but I mostly play "Arular" instead these days. I probably still listen to "The Slow Wonder" the most.

Love or Loved:
Kanye West - The College Dropout
Cee-Lo Green - Cee-Lo Green... Is the Soul Machine
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Madvillain - Madvillainy
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I-IV
Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Dungen - Ta det lugnt
Brian Wilson - Smile
Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine
Various Artists - DFA Compilation #2

Like or Liked:
Xiu Xiu - Fabulous Muscles
Jason Forrest - The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash
Les Savy Fav - Inches
Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose
Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
Comets On Fire - Blue Cathedral
The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Diplo & M.I.A. - Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1

trying hard not to vote kanye...

madvillain

mad plays the bass like the race card

never knowingly heard the annie, bjork, erlend oye or jr boys albums

Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in the Hands
Madvillain - Madvillainy
Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
Comets On Fire - Blue Cathedral
Annie - Anniemal

Still like all of these. Voting for The Streets.

Can we have a disintegration loops vs madvillainy poll?

I think I bought that Plastic Constellations album because of their review. Oops.

DFA Comp vs Last Exit vs DJ-Kicks

DFA contains the all-time classic that is Casual Friday, so...

honorable mention: disintegration loops

Sooo...am I the only one voting for Funeral?

whoa i forgot that "fabulous muscles" came out that year, great album

i voted for 'a grand don't come for free' by the streets aka mike skinner

i def would have voted for streets of this lot in 04 but ironically i've grown to consider it a real singles album

i still think van lear rose is really great too

yeah I like Van Lear Rose a bunch

voted for Air though, love that album

In retrospective indie became really boring and safe since the mid 00s. Most experimental artist making the pitchfork rounds nowadays is Ariel Pink ffs.

yes and no. i just looked through the 2011 BNM list, and while it does make less room for explicitly experimental and avant-garde artists, it's otherwise pretty similar. tim hecker, nicholas jaar, oneohtrix point never and julianna barwick all got the nod. then again, there's no equivalent of the blue notebooks, viroulegu forsetaror KA or the disintegration loops.

there's a guy i know who won't accept that pitchfork can ever have been right about anything because they gave a dismissive review to a reissue of robert wyatt's rock bottom in 2001

looks like they scrubbed that one from their archives

This canon is balls.

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, November 10, 2004 3:28 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bjork

I know it's passe to mention Funeral but it is basically the reason Arcade Fire became infinitely popular on lesser records.
That said, I'm voting for Basinski.

the comets of fire and the dungen records seem pretty good, sort of 'i will maybe listen to those next time i'm in the mood for that kind of thing', alternatively i might just forget they exist for another eight years

the jason forrest seems very er busy. i might try and listen to it while engaged in some kind of high-intensity activity and see if that works for me.

do people really still like funeral all that much, i'm kind of amazed by that

this canon is balls

it's interesting ('interesting') to look at their best of from the same year, it has special gunpowder and the pretty toney album which apparently they ignored on release -- it seems like that degree of retroactive canon-making for pitchfork seems to jibe more with what i remember people getting enthused at that year. much-loved indie record that made top ten that year but not BNM: joanna newsom's first record.

The Arcade Fire album is actually good to very good, and I didn't like anything after.

2004 was to the 2000s what 1994 was to the nineties - kind of a definitive "kicking in" of the decade for me.

02: Animal Collective
Sung Tongs
[Fat Cat]
By mid-2004, most music fans had grown just as tired of smug old Brooklyn as they were of self-insulating "iron" {sic} {lol} -- global conflicts were escalating to disastrous levels, politics seemed hopelessly stunted, and warmth and compassion suddenly (and unexpectedly) seemed to become the most appealing aesthetic choices. Thankfully, Animal Collective's magnificent, soaring Sung Tongs successfully and wholeheartedly eschewed spent, Brooklyn-bound ideas about suave sonic detachment and trucker hat-indifference. Sung Tongs is an emotionally thrilling record, impossibly giddy and fully-charged with big, raucous enthusiasm: Acoustic strums and wild, flailing voices (including some mind-blowing harmonies by vocalists Avey Tare and Panda Bear) coalesce into something sublimely weird and undeniably beautiful. Consequently, Sung Tongs is the perfect soundtrack to a six-year old's birthday party, complete with easy singalongs, gleeful hollers of "meow!," and man-made bird twitters-- all cupcakes and costumes and unadulterated bliss. Chances are, 2004 will go down as the year Indiedom collectively flipped for freak folk, and Animal Collective's role in that is undeniable: Somehow, Sung Tongs managed to make us all feel a little bit happier, at a time when we most needed it. --Amanda Petrusich

other non-BNM BoY: modest mouse, tv on the radio, dizzee, fennesz (!), de la soul (!), espers, califone (?), concretes (blah), camera obscura (blah), scissor sisters (...)

xpost ^^^ bullshit like that review that completely fucks up the outlook for AC and fuels twee-haters' ire. Play Sung Tongs at a kids birthday party and I'm sure it would end in disaster. I fail to see the "kiddy/childlike/cupcake" aspect so lazily foist upon their music by so many reviewers. There are no "easy" singalongs on that album, for a start you can't make out any of the words and the twists and turns of cadence and phrasing on there don't really lend themselves to being easily followed. To me (at least on ST) AC's sound is about primordialism, primitivism, getting lost in an animalistic, ritualistic haze - a pure essence of sound that eschews or deconstructs typical rock structures.

i wasn't so much bemused by the conception of what the animal collective record was like as by that conception of what the rest of culture in 2004 was like, you know? you're right, tho

borderline impossible choice between 'Sung Tongs', 'The Disintegration Loops' and 'KA' - I'll probably go with latter, tho - vacation/forget me <3

annie, philip jeck, the streets, panda bear, comets on fire and brian wilson could all be serious contenders, if the 3 above weren't so life-changing...

surprised to not see:

Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album"
Arthur magazine's seminal freak-folk comp "The Golden Apples of the Sun"

and '04 albums i wish were on here:

Aveo, “Battery”
Eluvium, “An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death”
The Thermals, “Fuckin A”

i'm surprised that walkmen record isn't from earlier, feels like 'the rat' has been in my playlist since the dawn of time

The Dungen and Excepter albums are the only two that I would still listen to. At the time though, I would have gone with something else (Sung Tongs, Inches, Sonic Nurse, Blue Cathedral) entirely...I probably wouldn't find the need to listen to those albums again.

kanye then, kanye now

M.I.A./Diplo vs Air

I might overrate that Air album because it's the only one of theirs that I actually like but it's great regardless

i would have thought that people who repped for the kanye album would now be considering themselves whatever the exact opposite of vindicated by history is

huh? it's a great album.

I like that Interpol album a lot but I understand that is a lol at me but w/e it's good

^^^

don't be ashamed bro

agree this is also a much more interesting set of albums than the last one, on the whole. bunch of stuff here I think is really good - Comets, Interpol, Cee Lo, Fiery Furnaces, Dungen, Kanye, AnCo.

absolutely hate that Arcade Fire record tho

Grand Don't Come For Free v Anniemal

I kind of hoped that by now ppl would at least have the grace to pretend to be embarrassed about making The Streets into a brief Thing

(I mean, "Weak Become Heroes" and "Don't Mug Yourself" are okayish but the rest of that album is HORRIBLE)

i would have thought that people who repped for the kanye album would now be considering themselves whatever the exact opposite of vindicated by history is

― thomp, Friday, August 3, 2012 12:15 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

the qualities that make me hate most of what kanye does now were there in his earlier work but that hasn't really changed my view of those old records. i revisit them maybe a little less but still consider them generally very good. he's not the first person to go from great albums to repulsive self-parody.

yeah I've got no time for Kanye now but that first record is pretty fun

it's so weird how long he's stuck around as a commercial force

him and Jay-Z and Eminem

"All Falls Down" still holds up but I'm not really feeling anything else on here so far (and "Spaceship" is actively annoying the fuck out of me atm)

I kind of hoped that by now ppl would at least have the grace to pretend to be embarrassed about making Kanye into a neverending Thing

huh after years of hating it all of a sudden "Jesus Walks" sounds awesome again

I kind of hoped that by now ppl would at least have the grace to pretend to be embarrassed about making Kanye into a neverending Thing

― EZ Snappin, Friday, August 3, 2012 9:52 AM (19 minutes ago)

no, the first couple are still good

ha and I still hate "Slow Jamz"

btw did this song end up on all three of their albums or just Twista and Kanye

That Mirah record is great.

why the fuck am I still listening to "Last Call"

where's joanna?

the milk-eyed mender >>>>>> every record on this fucking list

it's pretty good, yeah. not always in the mood though.

Madvillain - Madvillainy
The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
Morrissey - You Are the Quarry
Junior Boys - Last Exit
Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks
Björk - Medúlla
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Virðulegu forsetar

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Blueberry Boat got robbed but i had to vote for Funeral. so in part it is my own damn fault.