2002. Was it a good year for new music? The answer you get depends on the answer you're looking for. More bands were taking cues from the past for inspiration rather than forging ahead in new directions. Pop singles were in such heavy rotation that even the most curmudgeonly rock purist couldn't help but develop an affection for one or two of them. The RIAA kept complaining that sales were down and online file sharing was the sole reason (slyly choosing to neglect the economic recession, the skyrocketing mint labels spent on promotion, and overall drop in quality of major labels' largest-scale releases). So again, was it a good year for new music? The answer is, bizarrely enough, a resounding YES!

     This list is my attempt at gathering and reviewing as many of my favorite albums as I can before completely losing interest in the idea altogether. There will be no ranking whatsoever (a small-minded and antiquated habit if ever there was one), but each write-up will include some sort of indicator as to the overall quality of its corresponding release. It is my intention to create a list as musically varied and wholly original as possible, but having looked at the year-end lists of many others may have subconsciously tainted my process of elimination. Check in periodically, because I will be adding to this list well into the year 2003.

Mull Historical Society - Loss (Beggars XL)
More often than not, a release from one man recording under the name of a group is bound to be full of indulgences. Colin MacIntyre must have known this, because Loss is a plump, hedonistic gourmet of a pop album. While the songs themselves retain a strong sense of traditional structure and melody, the flourishes placed upon them mount a tug-of-war with the listener's patience. Initially, the egotistical overkill of MacIntyre's ideas weigh too heavy on the fragile design of the songs, but with repeated listens it turns out those ideas actually support them.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros.)
I'm not sure if there's any new way to elaborate on how wonderous Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is, as it's made frequent appearances on year-end lists. Unlike most people, I was let down significantly upon hearing The Soft Bulletin, and was certain the Lips' most inventive years were behind them. Happy to eat crow, though, I found that this album continues a move toward the dense and elaborate songcraft Coyne has been perfecting over the past decade (evidenced by the best rock single of the year, "Do You Realize?").


Laub - Filesharing (Kitty-Yo)
Filesharing is accompanied by a gimmick. The gimmick revolves around the fact that the album was created via internet filesharing. Tracks were passed back and forth between Laub cohorts until complete. The disjointed feel one might expect when listening to the album is barely present, though. It's quite a cohesive piece of sputtering, clicking minimalist electronica, often resembling latter day Björk or less commercially palatable Massive Attack. And after hearing the duo create music this amazing being miles apart, hearing what they've made in the same studio is at the very top of my to-do list.


Out Hud - S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. (Kranky)
Making good on the promise of their early singles must have been a threatening endeavor for Out Hud. Such high expectations based upon such a shallow pool of material (less than 10 songs in 4 years) would be daunting for any band. Patience is a virtue, though. Even though this album adds only 6 more songs to their repertoire, the compositions are varied and stretch out in such different directions. In an age where 80-minute albums are more common than not, Out Hud proves less is indeed more.


Paul Westerberg - Stereo (Vagrant)
For over a decade, more emphasis has been placed on what Paul Westerberg's solo albums aren't instead of what they are. And they are, actually, intelligent and sparkling albums by an older, wiser songwriter. Face it, being in a band like the Replacements is a young man's game. So why is Stereo gaining this much acclaim? The songs don't differ much at all from those on his other albums. The recordings, however, aren't polished at all; most having been committed to tape in Paul's own basement. For some people, immediacy is everything.


Edan - Primitive Plus (Solid)
If there's one period in hip-hop's history to which I can relate, it's the early to mid 1980's. It was still relatively new at that point, and I was new to it. Primitive Plus is packed with tributes to hip-hop's "old school." Furious scratching, cheap sounding drum machines, logical use of samples, and amateurish rhyme cadence may sound like elements best left to a revival act, but in the capable hands of Edan, they sound as modern and forward-thinking as Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC did in 1983.


The Walkmen - Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone (Startime)
This group defies categorization. They come from New York City, sure, but they don't sound like The Strokes. Nor do they sound like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Interpol. In fact, they sound like no other band I've ever heard. Accented by distant, echoey piano, the drums and guitar sound clear and immediate, and the vocals...well, the vocals are dripping with heightened emotion and sometimes reach for notes they can't physically grasp. More satisfying each time, it's one of the few albums of late I can almost guarantee I'll be listening to fifteen years from now.


The Helio Sequence - Young Effectuals (Cavity Search)
In the years since My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything was released, countless numbers of bands have used it as the blueprint for their existence. The Helio Sequence updates those ideas somewhat, adding sunnier melodies and bubbling synth sounds to the walls of washed-out guitar and throbbing bass. Since there's no hope of ever seeing the release of another My Bloody Valentine album, investigating the would-be follow-ups is an often rewarding process. Especially when the would-be follow-up is Young Effectuals.


The Montgolfier Brothers - The World Is Flat (Poptones)
Buried beneath the industry's preoccupation with loud and/or fast music this year, you'll find The World Is Flat. Gloriously lush but simply understated, the Montgolfiers (Roger Quigley and Mark Tranmer) have invented a musical genre all by themselves that I'd never even pondered -- "ethereal lounge." Okay, that sounds ridiculous, and really, there's much more to the album than swirling guitars and martinis. It's relaxed, sad, beautiful, dreamy, and remorseful. No matter what I write in this small space, it's still not enough to praise this album as much as it deserves.


Andrew W.K. - I Get Wet (Universal)
"When it's time to party, we will party hard." In Andrew W.K.'s world, it's always time to party. Normally, an album with such a singular vision would grow weaker with repeated listens, but the effort he put into the actual sound of this album merits ongoing attention. No album in years has sounded this gigantic -- possibly since the release of Def Leppard's Hysteria in 1987. So, while Andrew W.K. may play the role of a carefree meathead in the public eye, I can't help but think of him as a relentless perfectionist in the studio; spending hours and hours planning the perfect party.


Ural 13 Diktators - Techno Is Dead (Ural 13)
The liner notes offer this eulogy: "This album is dedicated to Techno Music (R.I.P. 1982-2002)." Whether or not techno is actually dead remains a hot button issue (just ask Eminem), but the Diktators pay respects to many of the music's varied subgenres over the course of the album's 12 tracks. Since originality wasn't the goal, one can hardly fault the duo for sounding so derivative. It's refreshing how well they interpret each style they attempt, from the Nitzer Ebb-ish pummeling industrial disco on "Ready For This" to the Human League leanings of "Blind Love." A fine epitaph, if that's indeed the case.


Crooked Fingers - Reservoir Songs (Merge)
Former Archers of Loaf frontman, Eric Bachmann, decided this year to commit to tape versions of cover songs that frequently appear during his live engagements. None of the material Bachmann chose to tackle sounds out of place in this setting, with most songs lending themselves willingly to the new arrangements (with only Prince's "When U Were Mine" requiring a bit of coercion). In fact, if there's one drawback to this collection of songs, it's that no compositions more obscure than these were chosen to be covered.


Josephine - This Is Not an Advertisement (Lithium)
Slightly less self-aware than fellow Scots, Life Without Buildings, Josephine blaze a similar trail of Velvet Underground affection with a bent for CBGB's-era Talking Heads and Television. What sets them apart from other groups paying homage to those same heroes is that they focus more on inspiration than imitation. Parts of the album switch gear completely to incorporate acoustic guitar and flute, creating brief moments of levity to break up their otherwise powerful and peerless statment of purpose.


Joseph Arthur - Redemption's Son (Universal)
There's nothing too remarkable about Joseph Arthur or Redemption's Son on the surface, but under the layers of studio orchestration and slick production you'll find exemplary songwriting. Over the years, I've discovered I was born with a predisposition to liking music of this sort, and it's one of the best case studies I've had the pleasure of hearing in quite some time. Fans of everyone from Nick Drake to Joe Pernice should be more than pleased. The only flaw may be the wealth of material on this album, coming in at an overwhelming 16 cuts.


Themselves - The No Music (Anticon)
The level at which most hop-hop concerns me is little more than a blip on the radar. Perhaps I'm close-minded, but I don't feel like I am. I just derive very little joy from listening to it. That's why I was surprised this year to find at least 4 or 5 hip-hop albums that really intrigue me. The No Music is the most recent, and has more in common with Tricky or DJ Spooky than with the standard "bling-bling" variety of TRL heavyweights. Much of it sounds like Eno's ambient work, set to a beat, tweaked a bit, and rhymed over. More interesting, too, with each subsequent listen.


Gogogo Airheart - Exit the Uxa (Gold Standard Laboratories)
Regardless of how many years your post-punk band has been around, you got noticed by someone in 2002. San Diego's Gogogo Airheart forgoes the use of straightforward melodies in favor of loose rhythms and simple songcraft, cranking out one of the only revival records this year successfully managing to sound like it's from the time period it's most influenced by. Not as funky as The Rapture or as angular as Radio 4, Gogogo Airheart plays the music the way it originally arrived, choosing to leave revisionist glossiness at the doorstep.


Kylie Minogue - Fever (Capitol)
Since mainstream pop is such a singles driven format, many pop albums are little more than convenient catchalls for singles, padded with substandard filler. Fever is one of the few exceptions to that rule. Not that every track here could be a potential single, but they still offer enough inventive continuity between the hits to keep the listener from pressing the skip button very often. Already into her 30's, she keeps up well with those in their early 20's and, in some cases, surpasses them with wide-eyed youthful energy. Contains my pick for pop single of the year, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head."


Lemon Jelly - Lost Horizons (Beggars XL)
This proves once and for all that psychedelia and electronics aren't necessarily strange bedfellows. At times, the structure of the songs recalls 1970's Pink Floyd, but the foundation on which they're built owes more to contemporaries who work squelched beats and repetitive samples into a sizeable portion of their output. What really separates Lemon Jelly from their peers, though, is the huge scope of this album. Swelling strings, woodwinds, and brass layered over audio samples of everything from NASA transmissions to a would-be documentation of some questionable lab experiment.


Mount Sims - Ultra Sex (Emperor Norton/International Deejay Gigolo)
Playing the yang to Fischerspooner's yin, Mount Sims is also a neo-electro revisionist and performance troop. But there's something just underneath the surface of the music that assures the listener the band is in on the joke -- and the joke is raunchy sexuality. Here at home, the album has 13 tracks. Abroad, it has 15. Unfortunately, there are a total of 21 tracks between the two, making neither collection comprehensive. For rating purposes, I'll be using only the Emperor Norton release ("Hate Fuck" happens to be the best track of all, but only appears on the International Deejay Gigolo version).


Supergrass - Life On Other Planets (Parlophone EMI UK)
If this album weren't being imported from the UK at such a reasonable price, it would be a tragedy that no US label has bought the rights to release it here. Supergrass have always been almost capable of achieving their goals when recording an album; the chemistry in the studio must be white-hot, because the sound of each record is ready to leap off its disc and invade your personal space. But Life On Other Planets is the album they've always hinted at making -- a rollicking ballbuster of glam-rock and pop -- never having had all the right material at the right time before now.


David Bowie - Heathen (ISO/Columbia)
Pretend, if you will, that the thin white duke went into total seclusion for the past 22 years after recording his last great album, Scary Monsters. Now, pretend he only returned to the studio to carry on in the tradition of his best work, and you have Heathen. What the future holds for David Bowie and his fans is uncertain, but we should envelop ourselves in the amazing quality of Heathen while we can. Looking at his track record, Bowie's due for another musical misstep right...about...


Loren MazzaCane Connors - The Departing of a Dream (Family Vineyard)
I was first tipped off to the work of Loren MazzaCane Connors in 1999, when he and Jim O'Rourke released an album of live guitar improvisation entitled In Bern. With The Departing of a Dream, he mourns the loss of life on 9/11 more gracefully than any other tribute I've heard. Pieced together in ten tracks from reverent, yet joyless, solo guitar performances, the album documents the day's events better than words ever could.


Plus/Minus - Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut Album (Teenbeat)
When people who have spent years playing guitar in a rock band start fooling around with electronics and tape loops, it's hard not to be a little suspect when presented with the results. Ex-Versus guitarist, James Baluyut, was more than capable of making the crossover, though. The chopped-up acoustic guitar samples that begin "Crestfallen" provide a broad metaphor for the album as a whole -- traditional modern-rock songwriting stripped of its fluidity, rearranged, and put forth in a very linear and simple format. Somehow, sounding this simple was never so complex.


Danzig - 777: I Luciferi (Spitfire)
After the original line-up of Glenn Danzig's band walked away in 1994, he fumbled around with new ideas that were neither well conceived nor well executed. So, just as I was ready to write him off forever, he returns revitalized and more musically muscular than ever. Still present are the Morrison-esque vocals and the hellish themes that have always prevailed in his material, but where the early Rick Rubin-produced albums sounded unstudied and claustrophobic, I Luciferi is heavy and expansive.


Metro Area - self titled (Environ)
The circular motion that music trends follow is a funny thing. How could something that would have sounded so ridiculously out of step with the times five years ago sound so fresh and forward-thinking today? Metro Area's first full-length (mostly compiled of previous 12" sides) stays incredibly true to the late 1970's/early 1980's electro-disco genre to which they're paying homage. And when they hit the mark, they hit hard -- but when they miss (which they rarely do), it sounds like something you'd hear on The Weather Channel during your local forecast.


The Notwist - Neon Golden (City Slang)
Neon Golden is a bit of a change for the Notwist; having started out as a middling punk band in the late 1980's, and then stirring up a blend of traditional instruments with electronics in the 1990's. The ideas established on their two most recent albums are still in place throughout their newest effort, but the songs themselves are better constructed, allowing the dense arrangements to wrap around material worth remembering.


Caesars Palace - Love For the Streets (Dolores/Virgin Sweden)
Perhaps you've seen the Smirnoff Ice commercial with the hip kids dancing around in a laundromat up to their armpits in soap suds. The beachy garage tune playing in the background is "(I'm Gonna) Kick You Out" by Caesars Palace, taken from their 1998 album Youth Is Wasted On the Young. In the four years since that strong debut, very little has changed about the Caesars Palace formula. Love For the Streets is a pre-packaged party in a box looking for a host.


Luna - Romantica (Jetset)
It brings me great pleasure to announce that Dean Wareham has again tapped into whatever area of his brain that allowed him to record Bewitched and Penthouse close to a decade ago. The songs (and the band, for that matter) sound more vibrant and energized than they have since the release of those early albums. Perhaps the stress of label-hopping for the last few years was taking its toll, but all is now calm and Wareham can return to business as usual; creating wonderfully subtle and biographical pop songs.


Q And Not U - Different Damage (Dischord)
I blindly introduced myself to Different Damage a couple months ago when I picked up a promo of the album on the cheap. Since Dischord's quality track record is pretty hit and miss, I wasn't sure what to expect. Fortunately, I happened upon a hit. The songs are percussive and jerky, and the falsetto often employed by vocalist Chris Richards adds more to the material than it takes away.


Weird War - self titled (Drag City)
Only having been a casual fan of both the Make-Up and Nation of Ulysses, and never having given Royal Trux much (if any) attention, I was a little apprehensive about the pairing of Ian Svenonius and Neil Hagerty which makes up Weird War. Any uneasy feelings I may have had were ushered away quickly upon hearing the album, though. Kind of like the old gag "there's chocolate in my peanut butter/there's peanut butter in my chocolate," Weird War blends the hyper-soul of the Make-Up with the raunchy blues of Royal Trux. The end result? Hyper raunchy soul blues, of course.


The Warlocks - The Phoenix Album (Birdman)
More of an ensemble than a proper band (members come and go like days of the week), the Warlocks' "sound" is the most important element of their songs. In most cases, such severe tunnelvision would ultimately lead to apathy and boredom on the part of the listener. But in the case of the Warlocks, the sameness of the material only enhances the hypnotic power of the album. Earlier in the year, I said the Warlocks were probably saving rock n' roll, but they couldn't care less. I do hope they care enough to keep recording together for a few more years, though.


Sonic Youth - Murray Street (Geffen/Universal)
For the past few years, it has become increasingly easy to ignore each new Sonic Youth album. Of course there were good songs buried deep in the murky experimentalism, but seeking them out was barely worth the effort. That's why Murray Street came as such a surprise. The melodies had once again returned to the forefront, and even the sprawling feedback jams seemed less self-congratulatory and more tuned into the actual blueprint of the songs. Best of all, Kim Gordon rediscovered the low-end of her bass.


Oneida - Each One Teach One (Jagjaguwar)
Each One Teach One is split into two parts for good reason -- it offers two very different faces of a single band. The first disc contains two extraordinarily long songs, neither of which are substantial enough to hold the attention they crave. But the second disc condenses all the energy of those extended tracks into seven single servings, bubbling with colorful psychedelia and garage-inspired mayhem. Fun and eerie at the same time.


No Doctors - self titled (Freedom From)
An acidic marriage of sludge and Chicago blues only begins to describe the contents of No Doctors' self titled album. Possibly the lowest fi of all the lo-fi platters released this year, this album rumbles around at the bottom of your speakers daring you to let it out in the open. Fans of studio noodling will be delighted, while those who prefer crunchy, detuned psycho blues jams will also find plenty here to occupy their leisure time. Summarily, it's a dangerous and purposely confrontational album.


Numbers - Numbers Life (Tigerbeat 6)
Ten well-crafted bursts of furious post-punk in just hair shy of twenty minutes -- amazing. While these songs may be short (more than half of them are one minute and some change), it doesn't hinder their ability to sink in. On the contrary, actually. Were they any longer, they might not be as effective. Numbers tread the same musical water as early Wire or The Fall, adding some squishy analog synths to the mix and, for kicks, pushing the robotic vocals to the very front.


Buffalo Daughter - I (Emperor Norton)
Not being terribly familiar with Buffalo Daughter's previous releases, I don't feel comfortable comparing and contrasting this year's I with the rest of their catalog. The ambitious ideas showcased on this album, though, are trumped only by the execution of them. There are so many cases of guitars mixed with electronics that go dreadfully awry that it becomes even more refreshing when the combination actually clicks. Not unlike latter day Stereolab albums, I creates its own thick atmosphere and dares not let you step out until the last note has faded.


The Rogers Sisters - Purely Evil (Troubleman Unlimited)
There's no denying that New York City has been the place to look for trendy-retro and/or genuinely edgy art punk bands for the last couple of years. With Purely Evil, the Rogers Sisters make quite a statement in an already crowded community of like-minded groups. Screeching, scratching guitars on top of slinky basslines and choppy, yet melodic, vocals bring to mind the heyday of the B-52's. I'd really like to try putting this album on at a party just to see what happens. The songs are, of course, danceable, but the sharp edges could very well send friends running for the door.