A decade after alternative rock peaked culturally (if not yet commercially), indie rock arguably did the same, but it was a whole new world—for starters, you rarely heard this music on the radio. More often, you had to find it online, usually at Pitchfork, arguably never closer to the zeitgeist since then, especially when it placed Arcade Fire’s Funeral on top of its year-end best albums list. I don’t think I was even aware of the band until this happened, and I spent most of the year writing for a competing website (albeit a far less buzzy one.)
The playlist I’ve assembled for 2004 contains so much of this stuff: in addition to my favorite Funeral track (and perhaps one of the few AF songs I can still stomach following recent allegations about the band’s leader), there’s Sufjan Stevens, Franz Ferdinand, Neko Case, Ted Leo and Tegan & Sara. Plus, a handful of relatively obscure but likeminded artists I was assigned to review, including Tamas Wells, Marit Bergman, Tompaulin and Paul Brill, whose New Pagan Love Song (represented by its title track) remains in occasional rotation two decades on.
We also have a few ‘90s holdovers putting out some pretty excellent later-career work: a single from PJ Harvey’s unjustly forgotten Uh Huh Her; Morrissey’s second-last great song to date (which rhymes “bullet” with “gullet”); The Magnetic Fields, triumphant at the impossible task of a follow-up to 69 Love Songs; Jill Sobule interpolating Chicago’s “Saturday In The Park” (and totally getting away with it!) and Sam Phillips with one of her loveliest ever ballads which, along with her “ba, ba, ba” instrumentals found immortality in Gilmore Girls (both the OG series and its Netflix sequel.)
As always, it’s the oddities I adore the most: the Delays’ marvelously androgynous vocalist Greg Gilbert (RIP), Nellie McKay’s gently jaunty, gin-soaked reverie, Madeleine Peyroux’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work cocktail jazz Leonard Cohen cover, even Mark Mothersbaugh’s electro/orchestral score for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (one has to think he never worked with Wes Anderson again cause he knew he could never top this.) However, let me direct your attention to A Girl Called Eddy (aka Erin Moran (not the Happy Days star)). Her elegant, self-titled debut was a cross between Aimee Mann and Dionne Warwick (with a hint of Karen Carpenter) and like nothing else anyone put out in 2004 (not even Feist, I’d argue.) “The Long Goodbye” is such sparkling, heartbreaking pop I never skip it whenever it comes up on shuffle. She finally reemerged four years ago with a nearly-as-good second LP, Been Around, a relief as I feared she become the 00’s version of Jen Trynin.
2004: Take Your Records, Leave Me Mine
- Tompaulin, “Slender”
- Bebel Gilberto, “Simplesmente”
- Delays, “Nearer Than Heaven”
- Jens Lekman, “You Are The Light (by which I travel into this and that)”
- Jill Sobule, “Cinnamon Park”
- Sufjan Stevens, “To Be Alone With You”
- Tamas Wells, “Even In The Crowds”
- The Magnetic Fields, “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”
- Nellie McKay, “Ding Dong”
- Rufus Wainwright, “Gay Messiah”
- A.C. Newman, “On The Table”
- A Girl Called Eddy, “The Long Goodbye”
- Feist, “One Evening”
- Junior Boys, “Teach Me How To Fight”
- Mark Mothersbaugh, “Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op”
- Paul Brill, “New Pagan Love Song”
- Kings of Convenience, “I’d Rather Dance With You”
- Madeleine Peyroux, “Dance Me To The End of Love”
- Tegan and Sara, “Downtown”
- Stars, “Ageless Beauty”
- The Futureheads, “Meantime”
- Arcade Fire, “Neighborhood # 3 (Power Out)”
- Mr. Airplane Man, “How Long”
- Neko Case, “The Tigers Have Spoken”
- Air, “Venus”
- The Divine Comedy, “Our Mutual Friend”
- Sam Phillips, “Reflecting Light”
- Scissor Sisters, “Mary”
- Marit Bergman, “Tomorrow Is Today”
- Ron Sexsmith, “From Now On”
- Morrissey, “First Of The Gang To Die”
- PJ Harvey, “The Letter”
- Rilo Kiley, “It’s a Hit”
- Franz Ferdinand, “The Dark of a Matinee”
- Bjork, “Triumph of a Heart”
- Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Me and Mia”
Haunted Jukebox 