Music

2011: All Sounds Like A Dream

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Kaputt and in particular, its title track is one of those perfect pieces of music I didn’t know I wanted until I first heard it, Dan Bejar’s previously irritably mewling vocals zeroing in on an ideal setting via a gauzy but urgent wash of electronics, yacht rock guitars and horn flourishes. Released weeks after the death of Gerry “Baker Street” Rafferty, it sounded like a passed torch, instantly negating all that time in between when such sounds were deeply unfashionable.

Some years back, I crafted a playlist called “21st Century Eighties” due to the sudden proliferation of stuff like M83’s 2011-meets-1986 anthem, Junior Boys’ glass-eyed take on a slowed-down ABC or Spandau Ballet (in music if not vocals) and Kavinsky’s perfectly icy throwback synth-pop made indelible by its placement over the opening credits of my favorite 2011 film, Drive. I suppose Iron and Wine’s Christine McVie pastiche and Washed Out’s Limahl homage could slot in, too, although Ivy’s house-pop resurrection owes more to the subsequent decade. Transcending any decade: Wilco’s catchiest tune (without Billy Bragg), k.d. lang’s finest ballad, Lana Del Rey’s still-startling debut, Emm Gryner’s breathless, crystalline pop and R.E.M.’s sweet last gasp. As for The Rapture’s urgent, exuberant dance-rock opus (also a last gasp from them), it’s not a Bee Gees cover—it’s much better than that.

And that’s not all! Don’t forget Jens Lekman’s cautionary note to the lead actress of a Lars von Trier film, spirited one-shots from alt-country rocker Jessica Lea Mayfield, garage punks Those Darlins’ and Aussie duo An Horse (it was the golden age of discovering new music through iTunes’ free Song of the Week), a skeletal, haunted Feist cover from James Blake, Beth Ditto making a beeline for the diva house dancefloor, My Morning Jacket offering rare words of wisdom that resonated with my then-36-year-old self, the eerie, Norah Jones-led “Black” (made immortal by Breaking Bad late that year), and of course, Kate Bush delectably daft as ever (if a little more subdued than in her The Dreaming days.)

2011: All Sounds Like A Dream

  1. Wilco, “I Might”
  2. Those Darlins’, “Screws Get Loose”
  3. Atlas Sound, “Mona Lisa”
  4. Beth Ditto, “I Wrote The Book”
  5. Jens Lekman, “Waiting For Kirsten”
  6. Jessica Lea Mayfield, “Blue Skies Again”
  7. Destroyer, “Kaputt”
  8. Emm Gryner, “Heartsleeves”
  9. Bon Iver, “Calgary”
  10. Iron & Wine, “Tree By The River”
  11. PJ Harvey, “The Words That Maketh Murder”
  12. Kate Bush, “Wild Man”
  13. M83, “Midnight City”
  14. The Kills, “Future Starts Slow”
  15. Junior Boys, “Playtime”
  16. James Blake, “Limit to Your Love”
  17. Lykke Li, “Youth Knows No Pain”
  18. Kavinsky featuring Lovefoxxx, “Nightcall”
  19. Paul Simon, “So Beautiful or So What”
  20. Lana Del Rey, “Video Games”
  21. Ivy, “Distant Lights”
  22. Lady Gaga, “Marry the Night”
  23. Florence + The Machine, “What The Water Gave Me”
  24. My Morning Jacket, “Outta My System”
  25. Cut Copy, “Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat”
  26. Raphael Saadiq, “Movin’ Down The Line”
  27. Laura Marling, “The Beast”
  28. R.E.M., “Uberlin”
  29. kd lang & The Siss Boom Bang, “The Water’s Edge”
  30. Danger Mouse & Daniel Luippi feat. Norah Jones, “Black”
  31. Meshell Ndegeocello, “Chance”
  32. Lindsay Buckingham, “That’s The Way Love Goes”
  33. Washed Out, “Amor Fati”
  34. An Horse, “Dressed Sharply”
  35. The Rapture, “How Deep Is Your Love?”
  36. Beirut, “Santa Fe”

2010: Spinning Around In Circles

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My 2010 top ten albums list is a good example of how such things are forever in flux. Only Laura Marling (then #4) made my 100 Albums project. I still love the top three although there are other Tracey Thorn and Charlotte Gainsbourg albums I gravitate towards. A revised list would likely include Fitz and The Tantrum’s still-stellar-in-spite-of-their-post-2013-output debut and maybe The Radio Dept.’s Clinging To A Scheme, especially as they’ve only released one full-length since (in 2016!)

Most of the selected tracks below are predictable (Belle and Sebastian, The New Pornographers and Goldfrapp on one of my year-end mixes? Who saw that coming?) Still, a few curveballs remain: actual pop/EDM hit “Stereo Love”, which I might’ve heard on Boston’s Kiss 108 while getting a haircut; “Shark In The Water”, one of my favorite one-hit-wonders (and it wasn’t even a hit here!); “This Charming Life”, Joan Armatrading’s best song in well over twenty years (not that I’ve heard much in the interim); and “Melancholy Beach”, a Gorillaz song you’d easily mistake for Blur in a blind listening test (I know, like most Gorillaz tunes.)

The early Obama era truly looks splendid now, if a bit naïve—a space where retro-soul (Fitz, Sharon Jones), eccentric art-pop (Field Music, Janelle Monae) and new wave-flavored side projects (Broken Bells, the track from Here Lies Love (more a disco pastiche, actually)) intersected and nobody gave a hoot as to whether they fit together: streaming was around the corner and for the most part, we were more than ready for it.

“Dancing On My Own”, however, completely owns this year (and I didn’t even hear it until that November at the earliest.) As solid as Robyn’s most recent album (2018’s Honey) is, nothing on it compares to what will always be her signature crying-on-the-dancefloor anthem, about which I would change absolutely nothing.

2010: Spinning Around In Circles

  1. The Divine Comedy, “At The Indie Disco”
  2. The New Pornographers, “Crash Years”
  3. Hot Chip, “Hand Me Down Your Love”
  4. Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Dandelion”
  5. VV Brown, “Shark In The Water”
  6. Belle & Sebastian, “I Didn’t See It Coming”
  7. Laura Marling, “Hope In The Air”
  8. Tracey Thorn, “Hormones”
  9. Vampire Weekend, “Giving Up The Gun”
  10. Broken Bells, “The Ghost Inside”
  11. Best Coast, “Boyfriend”
  12. Fitz and The Tantrums, “Breakin’ The Chains of Love”
  13. Corinne Bailey Rae, “Paris Nights/New York Mornings”
  14. David Byrne/Fatboy Slim feat. Theresa Andersson, “Ladies In Blue”
  15. Goldfrapp, “Alive”
  16. Graffiti 6, “Annie You Save Me”
  17. Janelle Monae, “Wondaland”
  18. Laura Veirs, “July Flame”
  19. KT Tunstall, “(Still A) Weirdo”
  20. Morcheeba, “Even Though”
  21. Spoon, “The Mystery Zone”
  22. Field Music, “Let’s Write A Book”
  23. Sade, “Soldier of Love”
  24. Edward Maya feat. Vika Jigulina, “Stereo Love”
  25. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, “I Learned The Hard Way”
  26. Guster, “Architects & Engineers”
  27. The Gaslight Anthem, “American Slang”
  28. Gorillaz, “On Melancholy Hill”
  29. Robyn, “Dancing On My Own”
  30. The Radio Dept., “You Stopped Making Sense”
  31. Scissor Sisters, “Invisible Light”
  32. Joan Armatrading, “This Charming Life”
  33. Deerhunter, “Desire Lines”
  34. Arcade Fire, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
  35. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Bottled In Cork”

2009: Some Kind of Contact

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What was 2009 really like? Well, the oft-execrable Black-Eyed Peas spent 26 consecutive weeks leading the Billboard Hot 100 this year (with two songs); in happier news, Taylor Swift and the newly ascendant Lady Gaga also dominated radio, while Animal Collective topped the Village Voice Pazz and Jop album poll (no, really they did—never got their preciousness apart from a stray track here or there.) None of these appear on the below playlist, although it does feature artists who came in at #’s 2, 3 & 4 on Pazz and Jop (respectively, Phoenix, Neko Case & Yeah Yeah Yeahs.)

If any trend emerges from this mishmash of one-offs (who remembers “Sweet Disposition” and 500 Days of Summer?), indie singer/songwriter perennials (Metric, Jill Sobule, Andrew Bird) and still-hanging-on veterans (Pet Shop Boys, Chris Isaak, Super Furry Animals’ final album and what should have been Morrissey’s last hurrah), it’s an increasing propensity for lounge-pop, albeit in various guises: modern indie (The Bird and The Bee), jazzy easy listening (Pink Martini) and orchestral ’60s throwback (Camera Obscura), among others. Everything old’s also new (yet) again: Moroder-like synth-disco (Swedish duo Royksopp with Robyn’s crucial assistance), baroque retro-pop (Stuart Murdoch’s one-off imaginary-then-later-made-actual soundtrack via his God Help The Girl project) Kate Bush-influenced spooky splendor (Florence + The Machine, Bat For Lashes) and British new wave revivalism both snotty (Art Brut) and sublime (White Lies).

Throw in a handful of UK number ones (La Roux, Lily Allen, David Guetta with ex-Destiny’s Child-er Kelly Rowland) and you’ve got a shimmering time capsule of end-of-the-decade Anglophilia. Oddly enough, it took a few years for the one of the most Anglocentric, of-its-time tracks to fully register: Imogen Heap’s “First Train Home” is essentially Dido-influenced laptop music but those last, building fifteen seconds always get to me.

2009: Some Kind of Contact

  1. The Tender Trap, “Sweet Disposition”
  2. Florence + The Machine, “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”
  3. Camera Obscura, “French Navy”
  4. Super Furry Animals, “Helium Hearts”
  5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Hysteric”
  6. Morrissey, “I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris”
  7. Jill Sobule, “San Francisco”
  8. Chris Isaak, “We Let Her Down”
  9. Bat For Lashes, “Pearl’s Dream”
  10. Pet Shop Boys, “The Way It Used To Be”
  11. The Bird and The Bee, “Polite Dance Song”
  12. Lily Allen, “The Fear”
  13. Metric, “Gold Guns Girls”
  14. Emm Gryner, “Young As The Night”
  15. St. Vincent, “Actor Out of Work”
  16. Vienna Teng, “In Another Life”
  17. La Roux, “Bulletproof”
  18. Andrew Bird, “Fitz and the Dizzyspells”
  19. Pink Martini, “Splendor In The Grass”
  20. Neko Case, “I’m An Animal”
  21. Kings of Convenience, “My Ship Isn’t Pretty”
  22. Gossip, “Heavy Cross”
  23. Phoenix, “Fences”
  24. Royksopp with Robyn, “The Girl and The Robot”
  25. White Lies, “Death”
  26. David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland, “When Love Takes Over”
  27. God Help The Girl, “Come Monday Night”
  28. The xx, “Night Time”
  29. Junior Boys, “The Animator”
  30. Serena Ryder, “Little Bit of Red”
  31. Art Brut, “DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes”
  32. Tegan and Sara, “Hell”
  33. Bon Iver, “Blood Bank”
  34. Sondre Lerche, “Heartbeat Radio”
  35. Imogen Heap, “First Train Home”
  36. Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, “Goodnight Oslo”

2008: I’ve Been Calling Since 4:00 Last Night

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It’s only 15+ years ago as of this writing, but it feels even further away. Whatever happened to The Ting Tings, Alphabeat, Nikka Costa and Duffy, anyway? Does anyone in the UK remember top twenty hit “The Journey Continues”, known to me only because it has heavenly vocals from Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell? Brazilian Girls have since put out a single album (ten years later!), Marit Bergman has long since returned to singing in her native Swedish and Portishead remains MIA to this day, suggesting Third might’ve been a fluke (although Beth Gibbon’s first-ever solo album is a prime candidate for my top ten of 2024.)

Regardless, 2008 had room for so much: an ‘80s pop star reinventing herself as an EDM diva (Cyndi Lauper), a ‘90s alt-rock star (Juliana Hatfield) collaborating with one from the ‘80s (The Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler), a Tony Award-winning musical from one of the decade’s best (and more obscure) rock singer/songwriters (Stew’s Passing Strange), a ‘90s Swedish teen-pop fixture coming into adulthood (Robyn), new wave icons getting the band back together for one last hurrah (The B-52’s), Sam Phillips rediscovering her jaunty, droll strut, Sia before she went mega-pop, the back-to-basics lead single from REM’s penultimate album, the first collaboration between two post-punk giants in 27 years (Byrne/Eno), plus some significant debuts: Vampire Weekend (drawing a decisive line between Gen-X and Millennial pop), Hercules & Love Affair, Lykke Li and Fleet Foxes.

If making room for weirdos such as garage rock stalwarts The Dirtbombs and the venerable, inimitable Marianne Faithfull (covering Dolly Parton!) doesn’t fully get me off the hook for going out on Coldplay (their greatest hit, how could I not include it?), so be it. The Goldfrapp song remains one of my all-time favorites, and even that’s eclipsed by Martha Wainwright’s caustic, uber-catchy gem—brother Rufus arguably never bested it.

2008: I’ve Been Calling Since 4:00 Last Night

  1. Goldfrapp, “A&E”
  2. Alphabeat, “Fascination”
  3. Martha Wainwright, “You Cheated Me”
  4. Sam Phillips, “Don’t Do Anything”
  5. Mark Brown feat. Sarah Cracknell, “The Journey Continues”
  6. Calexico, “Man Made Lake”
  7. The Ting Tings, “Shut Up and Let Me Go”
  8. The B-52’s, “Juliet of the Spirits”
  9. Aimee Mann, “Thirty-One Today”
  10. Marit Bergman, “Out On The Piers”
  11. Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal”
  12. Brazilian Girls, “Losing Myself”
  13. Portishead, “The Rip”
  14. Hercules & Love Affair, “Blind”
  15. Robert Forster, “Don’t Touch Anything”
  16. Stew, “Work The Wound”
  17. She & Him, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”
  18. Vampire Weekend, “M79”
  19. David Byrne & Brian Eno, “Strange Overtones”
  20. Cut Copy, “Hearts On Fire”
  21. The Dirtbombs, “Wreck My Flow”
  22. Juliana Hatfield with Richard Butler, “This Lonely Love”
  23. Lykke Li, “Dance, Dance, Dance”
  24. Duffy, “Rockferry”
  25. Marianne Faithfull, “Down From Dover”
  26. Cyndi Lauper, “Into the Nightlife”
  27. Nikka Costa, “Can’t Please Everybody”
  28. The Radio Dept., “Freddie and The Trojan Horse”
  29. Stereolab, “Three Women”
  30. TV On The Radio, “Family Tree”
  31. Hot Chip, “Made In The Dark”
  32. Robyn with Kleerup, “With Every Heartbeat”
  33. REM, “Supernatural Superserious”
  34. Sheryl Crow, “Out Of Our Heads”
  35. Sia, “The Girl You Lost To Cocaine”
  36. Steve Wynn, “Manhattan Fault Line”
  37. Coldplay, “Viva La Vida”

2007: Give Me Your Hand and Let’s Jump Out The Window

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A weird year by any standard: of the handful of these I first heard on the radio at that time (Kate Nash, Iron & Wine, Plant/Krauss), the strangest (and most obscure) of them was Tunng, a British electro-folk collective: resembling laptop Peter Gabriel, “Bullets” somehow found regular rotation on WERS and stood out immediately. The National, Imperial Teen and Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings were more word-of-mouth discoveries (Pink Martini I became aware of via my parents.)

Otherwise, with each year, my mixes tend to feature more artists already familiar to me. In 2007, a few had put out their best work in some time (Tori Amos, They Might Be Giants, Suzanne Vega) while others made triumphant returns after extended absences (a remix of Tracey Thorn’s first single since Temperamental; Crowded House’s unexpectedly strong reunion album Time On Earth; Alison Moyet’s voice aging like a fine wine.) The Weakerthans were on their last, eloquent gasp (as were Rilo Kiley and the incomparable Ween), while St. Vincent, then a young upstart/Polyphonic Spree refugee was only hinting at a rich, varied catalog to come (as did The National to a lesser extent.)

Stars’ anthemic, 1980s-inspired pop arguably never peaked higher than with “Take Me To The Riot” (excepting “Elevator Love Letter”, of course) while The Shins, finally following up their great 2003 album Chutes Too Narrow evoked no one so much as… prime Crowded House (even if they didn’t call the song “New Zealand” after Neil Finn’s homeland.) Apart from that, nothing encapsulates the year better than a memory of taking the Amtrak into New York City that April, LCD Soundsystem’s epic Sound of Silver opener on my headphones providing a steady, hypnotic pulse across endless row houses and railyards of Queens—more apt for what I remember as an optimistic time than, say, Rufus Wainwright’s premonition of complications still way, way down the road.

2007: Give Me Your Hand and Let’s Jump Out the Window

  1. Stars, “Take Me To The Riot”
  2. Tracey Thorn, “It’s All True (Escort Extended Remix)”
  3. Bebel Gilberto, “Bring Back The Love”
  4. Fountains of Wayne, “Someone To Love”
  5. The Shins, “Australia”
  6. Kate Nash, “Foundations”
  7. Alison Moyet, “Can’t Say It Like I Mean It”
  8. The New Pornographers, “Myriad Harbour”
  9. Tori Amos, “Bouncing Off Clouds”
  10. Iron & Wine, “Boy With A Coin”
  11. LCD Soundsystem, “Get Innocuous!”
  12. Rilo Kiley, “Silver Lining”
  13. Crowded House, “She Called Up”
  14. Imperial Teen, “Room With A View”
  15. Andrew Bird, “Scythian Empires”
  16. KT Tunstall, “Saving My Face”
  17. Feist, “The Limit To Your Love”
  18. The National, “Fake Empire”
  19. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Rich Woman”
  20. The Bird and The Bee, “Fucking Boyfriend”
  21. Super Furry Animals, “Baby Ate My Eightball”
  22. Roisin Murphy, “Primitive”
  23. St. Vincent, “Paris Is Burning”
  24. Tunng, “Bullets”
  25. Rufus Wainwright, “Going To A Town”
  26. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, “Tell Me”
  27. Spoon, “Don’t You Evah”
  28. Tegan and Sara, “Back In Your Head”
  29. Pink Martini, “Hey Eugene”
  30. Richard Hawley, “Tonight The Streets Are Ours”
  31. They Might Be Giants, “The Mesopotamians”
  32. Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, “La Costa Brava”
  33. The Weakerthans, “Sun In An Empty Room”
  34. MGMT, “The Handshake”
  35. Ween, “Your Party”
  36. Suzanne Vega, “Anniversary”

2006: I’ve Got No Party To Go To

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In 2006, now fully into my thirties, my life gradually solidified—I had a steady job, a good living situation and I even met the person I’d eventually marry. Music too remained a constant, even if none of the albums on my original year-end top ten endured to point of warranting their own entries in my 100 Albums project (the one that did, I didn’t hear until its American edition came out the following year.)

Starting this year, I began making best-of mix CDs to send out to friends, a ritual I kept up through 2010 (and briefly revived in 2015.) Most of the first seventeen tracks here appeared on that mix CD, with Marit Bergman’s winsome yet exuberant “No Party” now finally on streaming services (it wasn’t when I put together an earlier version of this playlist in 2018.) The latter half below is full of songs that have endured, from massive hits (Gnarls Barkley, Scissor Sisters) to barking-mad obscurities (please listen to the Herbert song all the way to the end) and everything in between. I would apologize for that Rodrigo y Gabriela-Sparks-Sufjan Stevens-Charlotte Gainsbourg sequence for inducing whiplash if not, even by 2006, iPod shuffling hadn’t already conditioned us into listening to music that way.

Also, if someone were to locate a copy of this playlist decades from now without knowing the title indicating the year, I’d like to think due to the timeless nature of such tracks as “Be Here Now”, “Crowd Surf Off A Cliff” and “I Feel Like Going Home”, they might not immediately deduce what exact year all these tunes came from. On the other hand, The Decemberists, TV On The Radio and The Knife are all defiantly 2006, summarizing an era when Pitchfork and Myspace ruled and practically no one knew what smartphones would portend in the immediate years to come.

2006: I’ve Got No Party To Go To

  1. Marit Bergman, “No Party”
  2. Neko Case, “Hold On, Hold On”
  3. The BellRays, “Third Time’s The Charm”
  4. Regina Spektor, “Better”
  5. Hot Chip, “Boy From School”
  6. TV On The Radio, “A Method”
  7. Belle and Sebastian, “Dress Up In You”
  8. Nellie McKay, “Long and Lazy River”
  9. The Hidden Cameras, “Awoo”
  10. Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins, “Rise Up With Fists!”
  11. James Hunter, “People Gonna Talk”
  12. Paul Brill, “Don’t Tell Them”
  13. Camera Obscura, “If Looks Could Kill”
  14. Emm Gryner, “Almighty Love”
  15. Calexico, “Cruel”
  16. Junior Boys, “In The Morning”
  17. Pet Shop Boys, “Integral”
  18. The Knife, “One Hit”
  19. Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”
  20. Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
  21. Ben Kweller, “Sundress”
  22. The Decemberists, “O Valencia!”
  23. The Radio Dept., “The Worst Taste In Music”
  24. The Divine Comedy, “Diva Lady”
  25. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, “Crowd Surf Off A Cliff”
  26. Ray LaMontagne, “Be Here Now”
  27. Herbert, “The Movers and The Shakers”
  28. Pernice Brothers, “Automaton”
  29. Rodrigo y Gabriela, “Tamacun”
  30. Sparks, “Dick Around”
  31. Sufjan Stevens, “Star of Wonder”
  32. Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Everything I Cannot See”
  33. Scissor Sisters, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’”
  34. The Killers, “Read My Mind
  35. Chris Isaak, “King Without A Castle”
  36. Yo La Tengo, “I Feel Like Going Home”

2005: Nothing Can Touch Us

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Irresistible to begin one of these annual playlists with a song declaring, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” Those words surely resonated for me in 2005—I had just turned thirty, my love life was in perpetual flux and I yearned for something resembling actual adulthood (and not an apartment with five roommates. )

Just as I saw more movies in cinemas this year (including my first trip to the Toronto International Film Festival) than any previously, I likely listened to more new music as well. Among the three dozen favorites below, we have unusual cameos (Cindy and Kate from The B-52s on “Take My Time”! An opera singer on the Calexico/Iron and Wine collaboration!), triumphant returns-to-form (Depeche Mode, Erasure, Aimee Mann and New Order), and defining tracks such as Sufjan Stevens’ iconic ode to the Windy City, Fiona Apple’s Disney-meets-David Lynch title track from her troubled third album and The New Pornographers’ breathless, towering mini-epic—the centerpiece of an LP I nearly gave its own 100 Albums entry.

If you asked me what some of the big hits of 2005 were, I’d answer “Hollaback Girl”, “Gold Digger”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and… that’s all I can name. But this mix is packed with songs that received copious play at the time on my just-purchased first iPod: Andrew Bird’s catchy, soaring, indecipherable wordplay; Metric’s Blondie-worthy disco-rock; My Morning Jacket’s incredible fusion of Lynyrd Skynyrd and XTC; Pernice Brothers’ blissful instrumental; Amy Rigby’s disarming meet-the-new-wife fable; glorious, meticulous power-pop from The Magic Numbers and Oranger; Art Brut perilously walking a fine line between stoopid and clever; Doves’ alternately spiky and swaying Motown pastiche; and the now mostly-forgotten Shivaree’s dreamy, undulating ballad, its unresolved melancholy and regret just hanging there, affecting and unshakable.

As anticipated and thrilling as Kate Bush’s return from exile was, Saint Etienne’s latest was for me an event—the London trio’s worst selling album (not even released domestically until the following year with a stoopid rearranged track listing), it was an instant classic with the effortlessly joyous “Stars Above Us” a buoyant anthem (not even a single in the UK!) now awaiting rediscovery.

2005: Nothing Can Touch Us

  1. The Mountain Goats, “This Year”
  2. Art Brut, “Formed A Band”
  3. Calexico/Iron and Wine, “He Lays In The Reins”
  4. Junior Senior, “Take My Time”
  5. The Decemberists, “The Sporting Life”
  6. Depeche Mode, “Precious”
  7. The New Pornographers, “The Bleeding Heart Show”
  8. Amy Rigby, “The Trouble With Jeanie”
  9. Bettye LaVette, “Joy”
  10. Doves, “Almost Forgot Myself”
  11. Metric, “Poster Of A Girl”
  12. Sufjan Stevens, “Chicago”
  13. Keren Ann, “Greatest You Can Find”
  14. Aimee Mann, “Video”
  15. Kate Bush, “A Coral Room”
  16. Roisin Murphy, “Through Time”
  17. Fiona Apple, “Extraordinary Machine”
  18. Mike Doughty, “I Hear The Bells”
  19. Erasure, “Here I Go Impossible Again”
  20. Goldfrapp, “Ride A White Horse”
  21. My Morning Jacket, “Off The Record”
  22. Pernice Brothers, “Discover A Lovelier You”
  23. Marianne Faithfull, “Crazy Love”
  24. Shivaree, “Mexican Boyfriend”
  25. Antony and the Johnsons, “Fistful of Love”
  26. Martha Wainwright, “When The Day Is Short”
  27. The Magic Numbers, “Love Me Like You”
  28. Madonna, “Hung Up”
  29. Andrew Bird, “Fake Palindromes”
  30. New Order, “Waiting For The Siren’s Call”
  31. Super Furry Animals, “Zoom!”
  32. Spoon, “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”
  33. Oranger, “Sukiyaki”
  34. Ivy, “Ocean City Girl”
  35. Saint Etienne, “Stars Above Us”
  36. Ben Folds, “Landed”

2004: Take Your Records, Leave Me Mine

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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

  1. Tompaulin, “Slender”
  2. Bebel Gilberto, “Simplesmente”
  3. Delays, “Nearer Than Heaven”
  4. Jens Lekman, “You Are The Light (by which I travel into this and that)”
  5. Jill Sobule, “Cinnamon Park”
  6. Sufjan Stevens, “To Be Alone With You”
  7. Tamas Wells, “Even In The Crowds”
  8. The Magnetic Fields, “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”
  9. Nellie McKay, “Ding Dong”
  10. Rufus Wainwright, “Gay Messiah”
  11. A.C. Newman, “On The Table”
  12. A Girl Called Eddy, “The Long Goodbye”
  13. Feist, “One Evening”
  14. Junior Boys, “Teach Me How To Fight”
  15. Mark Mothersbaugh, “Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op”
  16. Paul Brill, “New Pagan Love Song”
  17. Kings of Convenience, “I’d Rather Dance With You”
  18. Madeleine Peyroux, “Dance Me To The End of Love”
  19. Tegan and Sara, “Downtown”
  20. Stars, “Ageless Beauty”
  21. The Futureheads, “Meantime”
  22. Arcade Fire, “Neighborhood # 3 (Power Out)”
  23. Mr. Airplane Man, “How Long”
  24. Neko Case, “The Tigers Have Spoken”
  25. Air, “Venus”
  26. The Divine Comedy, “Our Mutual Friend”
  27. Sam Phillips, “Reflecting Light”
  28. Scissor Sisters, “Mary”
  29. Marit Bergman, “Tomorrow Is Today”
  30. Ron Sexsmith, “From Now On”
  31. Morrissey, “First Of The Gang To Die”
  32. PJ Harvey, “The Letter”
  33. Rilo Kiley, “It’s a Hit”
  34. Franz Ferdinand, “The Dark of a Matinee”
  35. Bjork, “Triumph of a Heart”
  36. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Me and Mia”

2003: My Office Glows All Night Long

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I’ve already referenced (via my essay on Want One) just how much music I was listening to in 2003—truly the era of Peak CD for me. Between a major move across town and commencing a short-lived website reviewing gig, it was a busy, heady time, with music remaining one of my few constants (the other being movies.) On that note, some of the more obscure tracks here are from records I was assigned to review: A Northern Chorus’ Smiths-worthy jangle/pastoral instrumental, Troll’s demented, inexplicable noir rock en Espanol (I think), singer/songwriter Rosie Thomas (kind of an indie Shawn Colvin), Egyptian-Belgian diva Natasha Atlas, the inimitable Arab Strap (immortalized in a Belle and Sebastian album title five years before) and the generally forgotten Oranger, whom managed to pull off the neat trick of sounding like XTC, Jellyfish and The Banana Splits all at once.

The three dozen tracks below are but the cream of a bounty of songs that received many spins on my navy blue Sony Discman at the time; I could have easily included another dozen (yes, subsequent playlists will be at least this long.) Thumbing through the below tracks, there’s only a few I didn’t hear until more than a year later, most notably The Radio Dept. when “Pulling Our Weight” resurfaced on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack in 2006. The rest predominantly represent the very best of that era’s indie pop, from relative veterans like the Nick Rhodes-produced Dandy Warhols and the magnificently cursed Wrens (they would never complete a follow-up) to next-big-things TV On The Radio (their Young Liars EP also a discovery via assigned review-writing), Sufjan Stevens and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

In 2003, I was over the moon for both Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service, even if Ben Gibbard’s twee voice now feels a little too earnest for middle-aged me (although Death Cab has produced enough songs for a killer Greatest Hits album since then.) Fortunately, this year also happens to have two tunes I’d happily bring along to a desert island: The Shins’ Nilsson-esque chamber pop wonder “Saint Simon” and Canadian outfit Stars’ immortal, resplendent “Elevator Love Letter”, which saved my life more than The Shins or even The Smiths ever did.

2003: My Office Glows All Night Long

  1. The New Pornographers, “The Laws Have Changed”
  2. The Radio Dept., “Pulling Our Weight”
  3. Calexico, “Quattro (World Drifts In)”
  4. Rosie Thomas, “I Play Music”
  5. Basement Jaxx with Lisa Kekaula, “Good Luck”
  6. Arab Strap, “The Shy Retirer”
  7. Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, “The Ambassador of Soul”
  8. The Postal Service, “Such Great Heights”
  9. Nelly Furtado, “Explode”
  10. Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man, “Tom The Model”
  11. Natacha Atlas, “Eye of the Duck”
  12. Black Box Recorder, “The New Diana”
  13. The Hidden Cameras, “A Miracle”
  14. Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, “Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone”
  15. Thea Gilmore, “Mainstream”
  16. Fountains of Wayne, “Mexican Wine”
  17. A Northern Chorus, “Red Carpet Blues”
  18. Sufjan Stevens, “Romulus”
  19. Pernice Brothers, “The Weakest Shade Of Blue”
  20. Annie Lennox, “Pavement Cracks”
  21. The Shins, “Saint Simon”
  22. Stars, “Elevator Love Letter”
  23. The Dandy Warhols, “The Last High”
  24. The Wrens, “This Boy Is Exhausted”
  25. The Weakerthans, “One Great City!”
  26. Death Cab For Cutie, “Transatlanticism”
  27. Moloko, “Forever More”
  28. Oranger, “Bluest Glass Eye Sea”
  29. Stew, “LA Arteest Café”
  30. TV On The Radio, “Young Liars”
  31. Troll, “Western”
  32. Junior Senior, “Chicks and Dicks”
  33. Belle and Sebastian, “Stay Loose”
  34. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”
  35. Rufus Wainwright, “11:11”
  36. Super Furry Animals, “Slow Life”

2002: I Miss The Innocence I’ve Known

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The title comes from Wilco’s summery ode to (as another song on a Sparks album from that year puts it) Ugly Guys with Beautiful Girls; it’s a reaction to (and nearly an inverse of) last year’s title, and the turnaround speaks volumes of how much had changed for me in that relatively brief time span. I spent the first half of 2002 in a deteriorating relationship which finally, spectacularly collapsed at the end of June; I spent the year’s remainder shellshocked and distressed, but also defiantly impulsive (and, more often than not, carelessly stupid.) I can’t definitively say which half was better or worse but together they permanently color most of my 2002 memories, right down to the art I consumed.

Music was an escape and a healer. I found solace in Sleater-Kinney’s defiant call-to-arms, the Mekons’ razor-sharp reaction to post-9/11 religious fundamentalism (on both sides), Saint Etienne’s revivifying plea to “get the feeling again”, Alison Moyet’s elegant, impassioned inquiry in seeking impossible closure and PJ Harvey lending kickass verve to a great, lost Gordon Gano song that could’ve easily held its own on Violent Femmes. However, I also took comfort in the melancholier hues of Jon Brion’s should’ve-been-nominated-for-an-Oscar Punch Drunk Love theme, the near ethereal wash of Badly Drawn Boy’s About A Boy soundtrack (it should’ve been nominated too), Pet Shop Boys proving that yes, they too can turn out a convincing Dionne Warwick pastiche and the reassurance of tracks by Doves and Emm Gryner, pushing me forward, encouraging me that not all hope was lost.

I began blogging in late 2002, so it was the first instance where I made public my favorite albums of the year. Most of the titles I picked then are represented below (apart from a few: I haven’t listened to Norah Jones or that Ani DiFranco live LP in some time), along with the usual assortment of key tracks (Marianne Faithfull an ideal conduit for Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics; Tegan and Sara making a case for punchy folk rock that doesn’t entirely sound like anything else) and a handful of songs I wouldn’t hear until later (no one knows the late Luna song or Imperial Teen’s banger but everyone should.) Also, for possibly the first time, I do not see one single track here (apart from Kylie’s improbable American comeback) that I would’ve heard on commercial radio at the time—a harbinger of increasingly idiosyncratic, indie-centric listening habits to come.

2002: I Miss The Innocence I’ve Known

  1. Gordon Gano and PJ Harvey “Hitting the Ground”
  2. Frou Frou, “Breathe In”
  3. Kylie Minogue, “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”
  4. Badly Drawn Boy, “Silent Sigh”
  5. Spoon, “The Way We Get By”
  6. Stew, “Reeling”
  7. Carla Bruni, “Quelqu’un m’a dit”
  8. Tori Amos, “Crazy”
  9. DJ Shadow, “Six Days”
  10. Mekons, “Only You And Your Ghost Will Know”
  11. Marianne Faithfull, “Sliding Through Life On Charm”
  12. Jon Brion, “Here We Go”
  13. Wilco, “Heavy Metal Drummer”
  14. Luna, “Lovedust”
  15. Neko Case, “Deep Red Bells”
  16. Sparks, “Suburban Homeboy”
  17. Imperial Teen, “Ivanka”
  18. Tegan and Sara, “Living Room”
  19. Aimee Mann, “Lost In Space”
  20. Beck, “Paper Tiger”
  21. Alison Moyet, “Do You Ever Wonder”
  22. Emm Gryner, “Symphonic”
  23. Pet Shop Boys, “You Choose”
  24. Future Bible Heroes, “Losing Your Affection”
  25. Ivy, “Say Goodbye”
  26. Morcheeba and Kurt Wagner, “What New York Couples Fight About”
  27. Beth Orton, “Concrete Sky”
  28. Doves, “There Goes The Fear”
  29. Saint Etienne, “Action”
  30. Sleater-Kinney, “Step Aside”