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December 26, 2002

Best of 2002

My "Best Albums of 2002" list.

Albums that came out in 2002

  • Mull Historical Society – Loss. Hard to believe it’s mostly one guy (see Jason Falkner for more). Power-pop of the kitchen-sink variety, but with more amazing hooks than you can count, and no song is less than excellent. “Animal Cannabus” is basically three or four timeless choruses strung together and repeated. I just don’t get tired of this one.
  • Aimee Mann – Lost in Space. It’s not quite as good as “Batchelor No. 2” (why wouldn’t you want Jon Brion producing all your albums?), and it’s unrelentingly dark. In Aimee's world, people are glum fakes, news is always bad, and even the ink is invisible.
  • Sonic Youth – Murray Street. I haven’t bought a SY album since Dirty, ever since they basically dropped the good melodies from their songs. Murray St. is nothing if not their prettiest, most hummable album ever. Jim O’Rourke’s warm and friendly production really suits them.
  • DJ Shadow – The Private Press. I haven’t listened to it much, but I’m amazed every time.
  • ..and you Shall Know Them by the Trail of Dead – Source Tags and Codes. Austin band (the drummer used to pour at my local coffee shop) makes good by making the best Sonic Youth album of 1993, and then adding about fifty more guitar tracks to each song. Which is just about right.
  • Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Not a terribly original choice, I know, but I liked it.
  • Sleater-Kinney – One Beat. SK is one of those bands I’d really really well if I could buy a Best Of album, but One Beat is nearly as good. I wish they’d explore a slightly broader stylistic range, now that it’s obvious that they can really play together, but this thing’s excellent. I’m easily sucked in by good melodies played noisily, and they come thick and fast on One Beat.

    • Music from 2001 but that I got in 2002

    Some stuff that's really from 2001 didn't come out in Germany until 2002, so it still counts.

  • The Strokes – Is this It. I really didn’t buy this until 2002, so I’m allowed.
  • Orlando Cachaito Lopez. The bass player for the Buena Vista Social Club’s newest solo album, which mixes up a bunch of musical styles (even including a brief appearance by a DJ on one track).
  • Cotton Mather – The Big Picture. Cotton Mather’s another Austin band. This one isn’t as purely great as their last, Kon-Tiki, which is among the best guitar-pop records I’ve ever heard. There’s a bit too much self-indulgence here (the pointless epic “Raymond Finds Waterfalls” and the half-sung-in-Italian “Story of Anna”), but songs like “40 Watt Solution” are amazing.
  • Koop – Waltz For Koop. Lounge jazz beats is a genre I know nearly nothing about, but I sure like Koop.
  • Superchunk – Here’s to Shutting Up. If they put an album out, it goes on my list for that year, though Superchunk has put out at least three better records in the last fifteen years. “Shutting Up” isn’t quite as great tunewise as “Come Pick Me Up”, and I think their experiments with strings, brass, and synth worked way better in Jim O’Rourke’s capable hands on that album. The actual song parts of “Late Century Dream” are pretty much the least you’d need if you wanted to layer up pianos and keyboards and strings to make an indie-rock millennium epic.

    • Posted by Andrew at December 26, 2002 07:24 PM

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    I got a couple overlaps with NPR's Music of 2002: http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/index.html

    Posted by: Andrew at January 6, 2003 10:01 AM