I write about music for Scene, the Plain Dealer, Metroland, Goldmine, blogcritics.org, featurewell.com, Billboard online. I review books for the Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Sun-Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, San Francisco Chronicle, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, and more.

Here are my Top 10 CDs of 2004:

Green Day, American Idiot, Warner Bros. The title track blasts like the Who's "I Can See for Miles" and Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and the album hangs together tough and tuneful. Who woulda thunk these SoCal surfer punks would craft a disk so polished and political? Green Day lent its talents to John Kerry. Too bad he didn't transmit similar energy.

Dittybops, Dittybops, Warner Bros. Angelenos Abby DeWald and Amanda Barrett on vocals and guitar and mandolin craft extraterrestrial flapper music. "Walk or Ride," "Pale Yellow" and "Ooh La La" bespeak a surreal, beguiling sensibility that gives a deliciously creepy feeling. A Mitchell Froom production.

Brian Wilson, Smile, Nonesuch. For the closure alone, the arrangements and Van Dyke Parks' inspired, weird lyrics. Decades after Wilson lost his mind, he's glued himself together enough to craft the best pop album of 1966. Never has time caught up with itself so rewardingly.

Eminem, Encore, Interscope. Marshall Mather is a man of many voices and strong focus here, and he's writing better than ever. "Yellow Brick Road" is the last word on high school, "Rain Man" is deliciously arch, "Mosh" is a fantastic anti-bush song (and video - too bad it was so late in the campaign) and Dr. Dre's beats are his best since "The Chronic."

Steve Bernstein, Diaspora Hollywood, Tzadik. Sex Mob leader/trumpeter Bernstein and X alumnus D.J. Bonebrake power an eccentric quintet melding Hebraic melodies and the sharkskin cool of '50s West Coast bebop. This is one of the best from John Zorn's Jewish mystical jazz label. Another dandy: Jenny Scheinman's Shalagaster.

Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand, Domino/Epic. These cheeky Scotsmen are everything Oasis ever wanted to be and more. They bang the tunes out one after another, the playing's tight, the energy never flags. "Jacqueline," "Take Me Out" and "Cheating on You" snap more than others, but professionalism and joy carry all the tunes.

George Michael, Patience, Aegean/Epic. "Patience" spans the great dance cut "Amazing" and the rueful, autobiographical "My Mother Had a Brother." His first album in eight years proves Michael is still a great singer.