Modest Mouse: Good News For People Who Love Bad News
This is one of the few instances where a song by a very odd band got huge, was virtually everywhere, and still I loved every second of it. "Float On" couldn't be ignored, and I don't know why you'd want to ignore it anyway. (And so what if it lifts the entire structure of the chorus from James' "She's A Star." That's also a great song.) And if you somehow didn't hear this, you surely saw/heard the Nissan Sienna commercial that used The Moon And Antarctica's "Gravity Rides Everything." It, too, was everywhere for several months. It'd be easy to write off Modest Mouse as hype, but this, again, is one of those rare instances where the album is so endearingly odd, so sweetly twisted, that it's impossible to hate, even if it does seem convoluted and confusing at first. With familiarity, the album's gruff exterior and singer Isaac Brock's drunken shout reveals a delicate, strange little heart.
Mike Keneally & Metropole Orkest: The Universe Will Provide
This hour-long instrumental suite is orchestral-rock like you've rarely heard it before: created by someone who really understands how to meld two very different types of musical units together, and the results aren't in the slightest bit cheesy prog-rock. What Mike Keneally has created here is, essentially, the ultimate tribute to his mentor Frank Zappa - for there's no one else in rock who could have pulled this off so successfully but Zappa. It's as beautiful as it is impossible to classify. Is it jazz? Is it rock? Is it avant garde? Is it "classical"? It's all of these things, and more.
Metal
Mastodon: Leviathon
After the blast of intensity and creativity of Remission, fans expected nothing less than more of the same. Oddly, Leviathon does not deliver and listeners are the better off for it. Instead of continuing where the last album left off, with an apocolyptic, dense roar, the band opted for variety and melody. Rather than build on sounds and structures pioneered by their peers, such as Meshuggah and Neurosis, the band looked backward by 30 years and developed a classic heavy metal album, which is evidenced by the many strains of late-70s Rush and early Black Sabbath that can be heard rumbling through out the album. It may immediately come off like a throwback, but the varied textures are a welcome change from the nonstop barrage of sound that heavy music has become recently.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
wildly interesting and informative list Tom, thanks! Ihad no idea the Trash Cans were still around and I had almost completely forgotten Grant Lee
2 - DJRadiohead
Tom,
Interesting list- particularly Helmet. I expected so much less and was pleasantly surprised. I can't say I like the album as a whole, but there are a couple of very good songs ("Throwing Punches" has been a favorite of mine since I heard it on the 'Underworld' soundtrack).
3 - Tom
Eric: do check out both the Sinatras as well as the Grant Lee Phillips album - if you liked what they did in the past, you'll like what they're doing now, and probably more, from my perspective. They're that good.
DJRadiohead: I went into the Helmet album with low expectations, too, and still found it to be a disappointment. I'd much rather listen to pretty much anything than this, sadly. I really thought I might like it, as I even like Aftertaste, which I think is unfairly slagged by fans who might have been expecting Betty II.
4 - Henry Porter
I must say you do check out the hard, cold, strange and unusual shit. No Dick Dale and the Deltones for your funky ass. I find your tastes peculiar but your means of expression are immaculate, and I don't think I've had as much fun with a single post since I went skinnydipping with the Bundchen sisters.
5 - Bill Lamb
Fascinating list...I didn't know Einsturzende Neubauten were still around either. I'll have to look that up.
Keep listening to Arcade Fire. It is a truly beautiful album and they are starting to build a buzz.
6 - Mark Saleski
as usual, tom provides a varied list, almost none of which is on mine.
...which is a good thing because now there's more stuff to check out.
particularly that intrumental Mike Keneally cd. yummy.
i do have the Wilco cd and it's pretty cool. is is alt.country? it is music concrete? uhm, yes.
7 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
tom, excellent stuff. i never thought i'd enjoy reading about Marillion, but there you go, suprised am i, as yoda would say, if he too were reading about marillion.
I somehow managed to miss the whole Modest Mouse thing, and it was only after my own list was up that someone reccomended it. It blew me away, is what. Fantastic.
I would add the libertines, of course, to any list of best records of 2004, but thats why we all got our own, i guess.
Brilliant stuff, and whilst i'm wary of instrumental rock opera shindigs, you write about it brilliantly.
8 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
and as a fairly long-time fan of nick cave, having enjoyed pretty much all of his back catalogue, i gotta say the new record (s) is the best thing i've ever heard from the dour sonabitch.
9 - Tom Johnson
Good sir Duke, never fear, the Libertines released a much-enjoyed album, but I had to make a cut-off point somewhere. As I mentioned, it was a really tough job just picking these, and the Libs weren't the only thing I had to sadly leave out of this meandering list.
I may have a "honorable mention" list for those things that just didn't quite make the cut. I realized in retrospect there were a number of things that I really enjoyed that, for whatever reason, the listening tapered off toward the end of the year and they plum got forgotten. ANd there are things like the new U2, which came out so late in the year that I have a hard time calling it a "2004 album," as the majority of it's first full year of life will be spent not in 2004 but in 2004. Anything released in the last couple months of the year is pretty hard to list as a best-of for the entire year, I think. I know my tastes change pretty quickly, and what I favor immediately after buying may well disappear from my listening queue by year's end.
10 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Anything released in the last couple months of the year is pretty hard to list as a best-of for the entire year
I totally agree. I left Eminem's Encore off my list, but i've been listening to it constantly for the last month. It's hard to get a handle on things overnight.