Having sort of set myself up as an occasional critic, I kind of feel compelled to try to say something to sum up various pop-culture elements of 2003. This is something of a foolish task, given that my actual experience of these things is awfully idiosyncratic. I just don't listen to enough music, see enough movies, or read enough books to really be able to say anything about what the absolute best of 2003 in any category was.

I can, however, cherry-pick a few good albums off everybody else's lists and comment on them. This is a selection of records that turn up on "Best of 2003" lists that I've actually listened to enough to have an opinion about, in no particular order. All opinions are mine, but if you were smart, you'd share them.

• The Wind by Warren Zevon. Hands down, Best Album by a Dying Man. Of 2003, certainly, possibly ever. Spare, haunting, self-aware, funny-- everything you'd want from a Zevon record, let alone the last one ever.

• The Old Kit Bag, by Richard Thompson. We might as well get all the really cheery albums out of the way up front. This is about as upbeat as you'd expect from a record whose opening track it titled "Gethsemane". Still, this is an excellent album. "She Said It Was Destiny" is a really catchy song, and "Outside of the Inside" is one of the best "inside the mind of an extremist" songs ever.

• Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne. As I said back in June, this isn't quite as good as Utopia Parkway, but it's certainly good enough to be one of my favorite records of the year.

• Electric Version by New Pornogaphers. Like Welcome Interstate Managers, an album of slightly bent pop songs, though these guys have a bigger sound than Fountains of Wayne. I haven't listened to it quite enough to really resolve individual songs, but it's very good.

• Mary Star of the Sea by Zwan. Billy Corgan, never a man of small ego, got the idea that he was a musical genius, and people would be ecstatic to listen to any damn fool thing he felt like recording. The result was a couple of late Smashing Pumpkins albums that really sucked. With his new band, he seems to have realized that what people were really after was the soaring and crashing guitar sound of their earlier records, and he delivers that here. Time will tell if he's actually learned his lesson or not.
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