40 Versions

Say hello to another year’s goodbye.

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THE YEAR’S BEST RELEASES

60. Tomato Can  Self-Titled Demo
Blues powerhouse. One of these kids is 23, the other is 16. Can you believe that? (They’ve added a bass player and a drummer since forming last year.)

59. The Black Angels  Passover
Cacophonous, Jefferson Airplane-splicing Vietnam rock.

58. Tha Dogg Pound  Cali Iz Active
As stated here, I’m old enough to recall 1995’s seminal Dogg Food, and Cali Iz Active, fortunately, updates and sharpens those formulas – rather than retreads them – while Kurupt, Daz, and Snoop keep their chemistry fun and loose.

57. Agallah  Propane Piff (Mixtape)
Agallah’s full-length, You Already Know, also is worth mentioning, but Propane Piff is mixtape eloquence.

56. Liars  Drum’s Not Dead
Hated this until a few months ago, actually. There was a light somewhere, and I found it.

55. Calexico  Garden Ruin
Not as multicultural as previous affairs, Garden Ruin is softer, quieter, relationship-between-leaves-and-trees music.

54. The Sleepy Jackson  Personality
Yes, yes, just as if The Beach Boys and Suede were the same band.

53. M. Ward  Post-War
More everywhere-at-once than last year’s Transistor Radio, and slower to reward, but more powerful, maybe?

52. Tortoise & Bonnie “Prince” Billy  The Brave & The Bold
Abstract, disjointed, and sometimes difficult reinventions of songs familiar and obscure.

51. Tom Waits  Orphans
Waits’ plentiful strengths – farmhouse jamming, tears-in-beers balladry, spooky flashlight-storytelling – boxed up and neatly divided.

50. Cam’ron  Killa Season
I had a minor panic attack after I realized I was the only music writer who actually liked this. But what Cam lacks in accessibility, he more than makes up for in focus and direction, and – why pull punches now? – guts.

49. Nocturnal Ron  Beat Lovers, Vol. 2
Lazy-day DJ, kaleidoscopic tastes.

48. Clipse  We Got the Remix (Mixtape)
Far-out beats that complement layered Clipse/Re-Up Gang bars, many of them borrowed from last year’s We Got It 4 Cheap series. The “Re-Up Anthem” over Clapton’s “Cocaine” is brilliant.

47. Peter Bjorn & John  Writer’s Block
Metro music; a million runway soundtracks waiting to happen; perfect Euro-pop.

46. Crystal Skulls  Outgoing Behavior
Squeaky-clean indie lo-fitronics.

45. Molemen  Killing Fields
Production trio from Chicago who proved several times this year that they could play well with others. Killing Fields has Saigon, Kool G Rap, and Rhymefest absolutely murdering stuff, plus Vakill’s “V,” the year’s best buried gem.

44. The Capitol Years  Dance Away the Terror
Philly’s Capitol Years love The Beatles, and I hate The Beatles, but that doesn’t mean I can’t love The Capitol Years.

43. Caural  Mirrors for Eyes
Dizzying dream-loop beats, hissy patchwork instrumentation, floating vocal bits, something for a colorful fall day.

42. William Fields  Timbre
A “Treefingers”-inspired electronic composer from Arden, Del. Truly.

41. Green Lantern  Alive on Arrival (Mixtape)
DJ Green Lantern broke away from/got kicked out of the Aftermath/Shady/G-Unit camp for siding with the much better Jadakiss during 50 Cent’s dis track rampage last year; he acknowledges it here on an interlude, and he shows why it’s integrity over feelings everywhere else.

40. k-the-i???  Broken Love Letter
Passionate, honest slam poetry forced over frustrated backdrops. Or, a new form of hip-hop.

39. Rhymefest  Blue Collar
A great illustration of the discrepancy between art and commerce. Blue Collar sold something like 15,000 copies the week it came out, back in July, and I’d be surprised if it’s cracked the 100,000-mark by now. Not that you should care. Just another reason why Chicago hip-hop is killing it right now without getting its full due.

38. Beck  The Information
The Information isn’t groundbreaking or artistry-shifting in a Sea Change or Odelay sense, but it’s something of an arrival: exciting, playfully comfortable, and wonderfully consistent. Done with pillaging his own influences, Beck’s finally borrowing from himself.

37. J.R. Writer  History in the Making
Dipset’s only other worthwhile rapper, who had no push, no convenient beefs, one minor hit of a single (“Grill ’Em”), and one massively overlooked debut album.

36. The Product  One Hunid
Scarface protégés who remind me of 2nd II None, without the no-freestyling bullshit. Dark, direct street-rap.

35. Spank Rock  YoYoYoYoYo
New age electro-rap or, what Beck might try next.

34. Justin Timberlake  FutureSex/LoveSounds
Barring unforgivable garbage like “Losing My Way” and, possibly, the Three 6 Mafia collabo, F.S.L.S. stole the year as far as interesting pop muzik was concerned.

33. The Rapture  Pieces of the People We Love
Not as varied as Echoes, which feels like eons ago, Pieces is a far more upbeat, rhythm-minded outing that’s weak on brute strength but heavy on clever spastics.

32. Man Man  Six Demon Bag
Man Man, another great band from Philly, totally ’fess up to their Trout Mask-thievery. There’s a pop song or two in here as well, something they’re less likely to admit.

31. Band of Horses  Everything All the Time
Band of Horses are My Morning Jacket for people who think My Morning Jacket are becoming the next Dave Matthews Band. Try “The Great Salt Lake” when (if?) “The Funeral” trails off.

30. The Knife  Silent Shout
Not that I know much about the geographic influence of a place like Stockholm, but it’s a bit hard to believe Peter Bjorn & John and The Knife both share in it, one being so light and comedic, the other being Donnie Darko-horror. Silent Shout sounds like Japanese death-disco, and, up until recently, I thought it was. Like Dabrye discovering European atmospherics.

29. The Gossip  Standing in the Way of Control
Punk & soul & dance collide, clash, go home together on this engine of a record, just 10 songs, a half-hour, countless repeats.

28. Belong  October Language
One time, it was oceanic waves of static and hiss, swelling into an unlistenable swirl that can only be likened to watching a nuclear detonation in slow motion. Another time, it was the long-lost follow-up to Loveless.

27. Grizzly Bear  Yellow House
Spooky warmth, like a crackling fire on a softly raining day. The gentler bits of Pink Floyd’s Meddle amplified, made personal.

26. Thom Yorke  The Eraser
Thom Yorke’s debut solo album is exactly what you’d expect from him given the pop-on-an-electronic-field approach his band has taken for the last six years. And you know what? There really isn’t anything wrong with that. If this is Radiohead’s new, final direction, it’s hardly anything to be disappointed with.

25. Cat Power  The Greatest
If you knew nothing of Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, before The Greatest, you knew everything about her after it. It wasn’t just her revealed history with stage fright and booze that made the album a glistening achievement; The Greatest is a powerfully naked record, each moment feeling tenderly placed, like flowers on a gravestone.

24. Dabrye  Two/Three
Ann Arbor, Mich., producer/DJ Tadd Mullinix (Dabrye) is big on drum-beast instrumental hip-hop with squirts of synthery and discordant melody structures; on Two/Three he fleshes things out with rappers like MF Doom and Kadence, and keeps the guest shots short and useful. It all comes off like The Knife discovering hip-hop.

23. Micah P. Hinson & The Opera Circuit
See Power, Cat. Micah Hinson made an album that starts and ends with every track, mini-symphonies of madness that crumble with pieces of his chipped heart.

22. The Twilight Sad  Self-Titled EP
Something so touching about a singer that doesn’t try to hide his pronounced accent, even as the killer-crazy guitars and drums brew up a storm and try to blow him out of the way, very Jesus & Mary Chain-style. A full-length waits.

21. The Roots  Game Theory
Not their best album (Things Fall Apart), or their most experimental (Phrenology), or their most stripped down (Do You Want More?!!!??!), or their most soulful (Illadelph Halflife), or their most accessible (The Tipping Point). But Game Theory is far and away the most cohesive and focused, and also the edgiest, record The Roots have made yet.

20. Girl Talk  Night Ripper
Funny how I hate about 75 percent of the songs used in this mash-up, and, of the ones I do like, I’ve heard too many times. Sometimes, two (or three or four or five) wrongs can make one untouchable right.

19. Lil Wayne  Tha Carter 2
I didn’t care for Dedication 2, and Weezy’s not breaking into my top five anytime soon, but this album never really left my sight this year. Especially “Mo Fire,” “Shooter,” and, ironically, “Best Rapper Alive.”

18. Trae  Restless
Much of the indifference, non-existent marketing, and horrible packaging Rap-A-Lot lazily brings to its releases washed away with Restless, rapper Trae’s incredibly solid art-rap breakthrough. This young guy is the next Scarface.

17. TV on the Radio  Return to Cookie Mountain
Album of the year, in some circles. In mine, Cookie Mountain was a spurting challenge: some parts brilliant immediately (“Province,” “A Method,” “Dirtywhirl”), other things that needed time to warm up (“I Was a Lover,” “Wolf Like Me”), still others that I’ll never like (“Blues from Down Here”). In the end, though, fewer records were worth the effort.

16. “Marie Antoinette”  Film Soundtrack
Is it right to so highly praise a soundtrack if you never saw the film? Probably not. In this case, the soundtrack was so vivid, so rich with aching imagery, so real, that I felt like watching the movie was merely a footnote.

15. Ghostface  Fishscale
True, Ghostface has never made a bad album, but, with the exception of Supreme Clientele, they’ve always been spotty, a bit suspect in terms of cameos and guest producers and single-pushes. Fishscale marked a return to unfiltered street rap; even “Back Like That” felt too raw for radio. I didn’t believe Def Jam would actually put the thing out until I had it in my hands.

14. Joe Budden  Mood Muzik 2 (Mixtape)
This year’s We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2 had New Jerz MC Joe Budden fighting for his rap life and modestly destroying tracks with nimble delivery and incredible stamina. A full-length waits.

13. The Coup  Pick a Bigger Weapon
Public enemy number one: The Coup made a superb return with arms full of funky, fearless, revolutionary rap, and even helped a pair of friends (Black Thought and Talib Kweli on the excellent “My Favorite Mutiny”) get there, too. The OutKast record that didn’t happen.

12. The Killers  Sam’s Town
Very easy to hate what Flowers & Co. do here, but also easy to champion, since The Killers were upfront from the get-go about their ambitious intentions (e.g. hijacking the bleak rock world and splashing it with Born to Run-color). With the exception of the big “When You Were Young” single, they didn’t succeed, really, but there’s not much about the rest of Sam’s Town to be ashamed of, either.

11. The Game  Doctor’s Advocate
So The Game got dropped by his label and lost pretty much all contact with his mentor in the months leading up to the release of the now-oddly-named Doctor’s Advocate. Then the album comes out and everyone realizes The Game didn’t need Aftermath or Dr. Dre to make a compelling West Coast street record, just fresh fire and revelations. Meanwhile, Aftermath CDs (especially when followed by the “G-Unit” stamp) end up with longer shelf-lives than Tabasco sauce.

10. Dilla  Donuts
Released on his birthday and three days before his death, Jay Dee’s Donuts is a tragically poetic eulogy: it’s all the sounds of one man loving music more than the life that birthed it.

9. The Sword  Age of Winters
What I had in mind when everyone started talking about the new Mastodon album. If all metal sounded like this, I’d stop listening to hip-hop.

8. 7L & Esoteric  A New Dope
I’m still bugged out over how they did this, using played-out samples and rhymespeak and buying into every indie-rap stereotype laid before them. Ridiculous robot-beats and self-deprecating swagger = the new soul-baring. To wit: “My Boston accent’s re-tah-ded” – the line gets me every time.

7. Clipse  Hell Hath No Fury
The album that almost became the coke-rap SMiLE proves every bit jaw-dropping as promised, rounded out with eerie Casio alleyscapes and even eerier verses, each one intricate and spit from the pits of fire-belly stomachs. Seriously, no one’s coming close to these guys.

6. Sunset Rubdown  Shut Up I Am Dreaming
I walked into this blindly and curiously, like a naive outcast looking for acceptance in the home of a crazy person. I found Spencer Krug. He let me in.

5. National Eye  Roomful of Lions
Lush, fragile guitars; warped fuzz-tones; crackling melodies – Philadelphia doesn’t feel or sound like this; I can’t think of a city that does.

4. T.I.  King
Measured, raw, gassed up and overconfident, and yet, entirely owed. An album begging for its green light, and T.I. was the only rapper this year whose kingdom actually came.

3. The Decemberists  The Crane Wife
I’m not an advocate of indie bands staying on indie labels, and The Crane Wife (and Return to Cookie Mountain) are reasons why – warm, polished end caps on the production; loose songwriting; same bloated ideas; integrity intact.

2. Beirut  Gulag Orkestar
Apparently, there was a lot of hype heaped onto this and the shoulders of its creator, Zach Condon, which quickly mutated into ugly scorn and jealousy – exactly why I couldn’t care less about things like blog hype and internet pundits. There’s a marching band and drunken sing-a-longs blasting out of Condon’s apartment – can you do that?

1. Vakill  Worst Fears Confirmed
“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy”: Vakill is from the South Side of Chicago, he works with Molemen, he raps with brimming swagger and soul-torn responsibility, and Worst Fears Confirmed is one of the best hip-hop albums ever made.

THE YEAR’S BEST SONGS, AS A 5-PART MIX CD SERIES

CD-1
T.I., “What You Know”
Christina Aguilera, “Ain’t No Other Man”
Lil Scrappy ft. Young Buck, “Money in the Bank”
Dabrye ft. Doom, “Air”
Spank Rock, “Bump”
Rhymefest, “Devil’s Pie”
Destroyer, “European Oils”
The Sky Drops, “Hang On”
Liars, “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack”
Daedelus, “Nouveau Nova”
Justin Timberlake, “What Goes Around Comes Around”
Dilla, “Stop!”
7L & Esoteric, “Perfect Person”
Cam’ron, “Wet Wipes”
DJ Drama & Lil Wayne, “Georgia Bush”
The Knife, “Forest Families”
The Roots ft. Malik B & Porn, “In the Music”
Clew Rock, “Hood Rich”

CD-2
Naledge & Lupe Fiasco, “Mean & Vicious”
Chamillionaire ft. Jae Millz & Papoose, “Riding Dirty” [RMX]
Rick Ross ft. Akon, “Cross That Line”
The Gossip, “Listen Up!”
Junior Boys, “In the Morning”
The Rapture, “Down for So Long”
Man Man, “Feathers”
The Sleepy Jackson, “You Needed More”
Camera Obscura, “Let’s Get Out of This Country”
Band of Horses, “The Great Salt Lake”
National Eye, “Silver Agers”
M. Ward, “Poison Cup”
Sunset Rubdown, “Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings”
The Capitol Years, “Oh, Lord”
The Situation, “Pine Street”
Ayatollah, “Highway to Heaven”
Belong, “All Equal Now”
TV on the Radio, “Dirtywhirl”
Gemini Wolf, “Sugar Low”

CD-3
Vakill, “When Was the Last Time?”
Trae, “Real Talk”
OutKast ft. Lil Wayne & Snoop Dogg, “Hollywood Divorce”
Madlib, “Electric Company”
Papoose ft. Busta Rhymes & Raekwon, “Address Me as Mister”
Joe Budden, “Outcast”
Z-Ro, “Man Cry”
Ghostface ft. Megan Rochell, “Momma”
The Product, “Read”
DJ Drama ft. Busta Rhymes, T.I., J-Hood, Gravy, Ludacris, Uncle Murder, Lil Wayne, Freeway, Willie The Kid, Detroit Red, Juice, “Cannon” [Megamix]
Styles P ft. Fat Joe, “Shotgun Season”
Currency, Lil Wayne & Remy Ma, “Where Da Cash At?”
J.R. Writer, “Grill ‘Em”
Talib Kweli, “Listen”
Clipse, “Hard or Soft” (Joey Fingaz Freestyle)
T.I. & DJ Drama, “Fresh”
Lil Wayne, “Shooter”
The Coup, “The Stand”

CD-4
Cat Power, “The Greatest”
William Fields, “Seaglass”
Caural, “Hallucination Broadcast”
The Scenic Route, “Nosferatu”
The Twilight Sad, “That Summer, at Home, I Had Become the Invisible Boy”
Calexico, “All Systems Red”
Micah P. Hinson, “It’s Been So Long”
Thom Yorke, “Cymbal Rush”
Owen, “Bad News”
Dosh, “mpls rock & roll”
The Blow, “True Affection”
Crystal Skulls, “Baby Boy”
The Decemberists, “The Crane Wife, 1 & 2″
The Black Angels, “The Prodigal Sun”
Spindrift, “Beauty” [RMX]
Vakill, “Under the Gun”

CD-5
The Fray, “How to Save a Life”
The Killers, “Bling (Confession of a King)”
Editors, “Munich”
Peter Bjorn & John, “Paris 2004″
Beirut, “Postcards from Italy”
k-the-i???, “You’re Not That Beautiful”
Vakill, “V”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Gold Lion”
The Sword, “Freya”
E-40 ft. Kanye West, Ice Cube & The Game, “Tell Me When to Go” [RMX]
Beck, “Cellphone’s Dead”
Clipse, “Hello New World”
Snoop Dogg ft. Dr. Dre & D’Angelo, “Imagine”
Tom Waits, “Lord, I’ve Been Changed”
Grizzly Bear, “Plans”
Sparklehorse, “Shade & Honey”
Johnny Cash, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”
The Game ft. Nas & Marsha, “Why You Hate the Game?”

Artist of the Year: T.I.
Band of the Year: TV on the Radio
Producer of the Year: Molemen
Mixtape DJ of the Year: Mick Boogie
Beat of the Year: “When You Were Young”
City of the Year: Philadelphia