Top40: The Best of 2004

11. Embrace
Out of Nothing
(From UK)

Out of Nothing, the band's fourth album, is the best they have ever made. The McNamara brothers have buckled down to some serious songwriting (aided by Coldplay's Chris Martin on first single "Gravity") to produce a selection of songs that can all lay claim to the title "Classic".
The album ends as magnificently as it begins with a triplet of songs that takes the breath away. The gentle "A Glorious Day", atmospheric "Near Life" and magnificent title track prove just how far Embrace have come since the days of out-of-tune criticisms and gags about being Oasis' little brothers.
Out of Nothing is a truly exceptional album that suggests that, far from being over, the journey for Embrace has only just begun. Their fourth album is easily their best to date and one which comes highly recommended for anyone who is currently listening to the likes of Keane, Coldplay or Snow Patrol.

12. Razorlight
Up All Night
(From UK)

Dylan may not be the prophet of the 1960s, but maybe Razorlight is truly a shining light of 2004. Sort of a vague rehash of early 1960s pop music and early Punk, Razorlight doesn't really impress on the first listen and when first seeing them.
Some of their best stuff seems to take off where The Clash left off. "Don't Go Back To Dalston" and "Golden Touch are wonderful songs.
We caught this band when they played with Gratitude and Jimmy Eat World in Chicago in Nov, 2004 and they were amazing - full of punk attitude and rock swagger with abundant talent and energy to back 'em up. Whatever shortcomings they have in solidness of some of their composition are easily forgiven during their live performanaces.
The album, however, is a different story. For the most part, the vocal sounds somewhat muted and underpowered, with the instruments often overpowering the voice, and the band seemed to have chosen the safe path of polishing up and smoothing out the jagged edges on the recording - this strategy seems to undermine their style in a lot of songs.
Nonetheless, the band is exceptionally good and despite the shortcomings of a studio album, there are plenty of good songs to make this a solid purchase. We've been playing "Rip It Up" and "Golden Touch" over and over again for days.
Razorlight has a penchant from going to slow and quiet to a really big sound. There is intensity in right amounts on this record and their live show. Worth, checking out!

13. Patti Smith
Trampin'
(From UK)

Like BORN TO RUN, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON and BLONDE ON BLONDE, it's no stretch to call this an historic issue for many reasons. The songs are consistently well-crafted. The opener, JUBILEE, is especially lyrical and showcases a powerful, burnished voice that fits the music like a glove.
Unlike most albums, great thought was given to the sequence of songs - which range from pensive to explosive. By the time RADIO BAGHDAD bursts through your system, the voice, the music, the production itself, will take your breath away. GANDHI, in particular, will become an underground classic. Indeed, it's been going 'round and 'round in my head since we first heard it.
Technically, it's been years since I heard a band recorded with such nuance. All the pieces are well-defined. The dynamic range of the recording is awesome, and the voice is placed exactly where it should be. Audiophiles will put this CD in their demonstration rack, but so will those who believe rock is a life-force and a potent political art form, too.
Nothing I've heard in the past five years approaches the quality of this release. I'm now a Patti Smith fan at the grand age of... (???), and plan to buy a copy of HORSES this weekend. TRAMPIN' reminds us that in the cesspool of the American record industry - in which 50% of new rock releases are throwaway - some smart producers (in this case, Patti Smith and her band) may turn your head around.
We're living through a terribly dark time in 2004, and this beautifully crafted album is a burst of light.

14. Avril Lavigne
Under My Skin
(From Canada)

With her breakthrough 2002 debut, Let Go, Avril Lavigne tried to market herself as the bona fide alternative to tarty teen queens, Britney and Christina. Her guitar-pop hits were irresistibly bratty but the whole "Complicated" teen pose was a little hard to swallow, especially since two songwriters called the Matrix - who had at least twenty years on the Canadian singer - fed her most of the material. Having had the chance to live a little, Lavigne returns to make good on her angsty image with
Under My Skin, an album rippling with delightfully dour melodies and heartfelt lyrics about loneliness ("How Does It Feel") and fractured relationships ("Don't Tell Me"). Is it cliched? Sure. Will it scare off her necktie and t-shirt wearing fans? Possibly. But there's nothing quite as satisfying as watching a teen-pop icon actually reveal her soul.
It is obvious by the first hearing that Avril has grown so much since her 1st album. The songs on Under My Skin are so lyrically and musically awesome. Chantal Kreviazuk, Ben Moody, Evan Taubenfeld, and all the others Avril worked with made this album so great. They all have so much talent and if you read the lyrics it shows.
Many people described this album as "the best break-up cd" and I agree. All the anger and pain guys cause us girls comes across so well in Avril's songs.
Avril is out there battling with the artists who are stripping and singing about how sexual they are (Britney, Christina etc.)
Avril isn't doing it and as musiclovers, we appreciate that!

15. Modest Mouse
Good News for People Who Love Bad News
(From USA)

Modest Mouse is back after four years with a long awaited follow up. They came out with the EP "Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks" and the singles collection "Sad Sappy Sucker" in 2001, but neither of those discs lived up to albums like "The Moon and Antartica" and "The Lonesome Crowded West". So, in the first half of this decade, it was easy to forget about what a great band Modest Mouse really are. Now, they've finally released a new album, and it serves as a great reminder of how talented Issac Brock is.
"Good News for People Who Love Bad News" starts off in fine form. After a short 'Horn Intro', it moves on to the excellent 'The World at Large', with it's catch "Ba-ba-ba's, and a nice little guitar riff, the kind that Modest Mouse do best. Next is the obvious single, 'Float On'. It's far more poppy than anything they've done in the past, but in this case change is a good thing. It's one of our all time favorites. After that is the second single, 'Ocean Breathes Salty', this is currently our favorite song on the album, with it's blissful, organ driven chorus.
The first section of the album ends with the pointless, twelve second, 'Dig Your Grave'. But the next section starts out as strong as the first on, with a traditional, Modest Mouse rocker, 'Bury Me With It'. Then there's a Tom Waits inspired three song set. Starting out with the insane, freakout, 'Dance Hall', then the slow accoustic, accordian driven, 'Bukowski', which contains some of the best lyrics Brock has ever written, and lastly 'The Devil's Workday'. Despite the obvious Tom Waits influence, these songs still remain stricktly Modest Mouse, and don't rip him off in any way.
"Float On" was the first single and has seemingly become the anthem for my road trip in Spring Break and future ones too. The track is an unbelievably good song, showcasing Brock's frenetic vocalization and guitar playing as well as his keen but awkward sense of hooky melody. Reminiscent of Talking Heads, than there is "Ocean Breathes Salty", a nice compound of Pixies and Ugly Cassonova.
This great band is a nice change in a industry back to the rafters with too many me-toos. If you like Death Cab, The Shins, Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Rilo Kiley and Pixies you'll love this. Even if you are accustomed to only more 'popular' music, I still suggest it. "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" is simply another classic album from Modest Mouse - one of the best albums so far for 2004...

16. Dizzee Rascal
Showtime
(From UK)

The follow-up to last year's "Boy In Da Corner" is a bigger sounding album; a volcanic ride of crazy wordplay, ghetto techno, and bottom heavy bass. The first single, "Stand Up Tall", is a hyperactive, video game bounce with a hyper catchy chorus. The follow-up single, "Dream" is a re-make of Captain Sensible's (The Damned) 1982 chart hit, "Happy Talk". Includes bonus DVD with three videos and a short film.
Dizzee Rascal is only 19 years old. He used to be part of the Roll Deep Crew and he won the Mercury Prize for Boy In Da Corner. Some people call this music grime. It is hiphop sped up. Dizzee is lyrically pretty exciting. Hiphop has become sort of lame. Every gig has a bunch of dicks waving their right arms up in the air like they did in that Dr. Dre video over ten years ago. It's nothing new. His first album hit British culture hard.
But like drum and bass, sometimes this stuff goes out of style fast and it's picking up in the USA though.
Coming from the South side of London, Dizzee is street. "Dream" is one track that you can sit back and laugh to, because you'd never suspect an artist to put that type of music as the background and with his lyrics, he makes the track "hot". We've always been a fan of garage music and trip-hop but he is one that is making me love it much more.
Overall this CD will make him much more popular in the States within 2005.

17. Anita Baker
My Everything
(From USA)

First let me just say that some of my fondest childhood memories are chillin' at home with my family with the "Rapture" album on. And as a musicfan I fell in love with the passion of her lyrical delivery - completely original, full of strength and sensuality. That combined with live jazz rhythm section equalled skill and artistry you cannot deny. That said, the title song alone is worth getting this album.
Radio needs this music desperately!!!
Thank You Blue Note Records for bring back Ms Anita Baker to both the public and her many fans. Sure she has eight Grammys to her name but Anita left us way too early in her singing career. Anita shines on the title song and it is Baby Face who REALLY get Anita to open up fully both in voice and range, its a song that should be released as a single. Anita brings back the Perri Sisters, Gerald Albright and Mr. George Duke.
Nine of the ten tracks were produced live in the studio between herself and industry legend Barry Eastmond (which was wonderful to know), but like I said earlier Baker and Eastmond played it pretty safe musically and didn't experiment too much with various styles like she has done in the past. Don't get us wrong there are some great moments with My Everything but we were hoping Baker would have chosen more jazzier cuts which she brilliant at.

18. The Rasmus
Dead Letters
(From Finland)

'Dead Letters' is the debut album from Scando-rockers The Rasmus. Full of hard, melodic rock that recalls the heyday of Bon Jovi mixed with the power-pop of the Raspberries, 'Dead Letters' is guaranteed to have you rocking out and grabbing your air-guitar before you can say, "Gee-tar!!"
According to the singer, Lauri, of the Finnish quartet The Rasmus, the album Dead Letters consists of songs that are like a "letter to somebody. It could be an apology, confession or cry out for help." Remaining members Aki, Eero and Pauli all agree that their music experiments with "raw and naked sounds". Just hearing the way they describe themselves can make us assume that their music is of a dark, fiery and moody nature.
The band themselves have been together for 10 years and have caused a fuss in their homeland, winning several Finnish Grammy awards. However, they have only recently been discovered globally with the release of their bigeest-selling single, In the Shadows.
The Finnish band 2004 made the Rock again popular mixed with so many other genres. It seems that this album was being one of the biggest music expirements of 2004...

19. Maroon 5
Songs About Sarah
(from USA)

Hey, what could be stranger than a band mimicking the sound of Jamiroquai, with just a bit of dilution? After all, that band diluted the Stevie Wonder influence into their own one hit wonder moment and then went largely ignored when they struck a disco pose on their last album. Someone should tell Maroon 5 about this, because it's hard to imagine them getting too far with their current sound!
Front man Adam Levine sounds so much like Jason Kay on this album that one could be forgiven for thinking that Jamiroquai had slid down the pipes a little further. The guitar work is mainly boiled down to the funky kind of strut that groups like the Backstreet Boys are known for when they're "getting down". When the guitars aren't in full effect, it's Jesse Carmichael's keyboards that take center stage.
On tracks such as "This Love" and "Must Get Out", Carmichael manages to conjure up both the productions of Britney Spears and The New Radicals respectively. So what are these guys all about? Do they want a respective soul bid, or are they just reworking the pop candyfloss formula with a "real band"? It's hard to say.
'Songs About Jane' is one of he best CD purchases we've made in awhile. It seems quite rare today to find a CD in which the filler tracks are just as good as, or even better than, the singles.
Thankfully, we were not disappointed at all: in fact, it seems as though 'Songs About Jane' has found a permanent place in your CD changer.

20. Wilco
A Ghost Is Born
(From USA)

Wilco has always been a band who stands out above the rest, with one of the most original, if not best sounds of modern music. I think the most important aspect of the 'A Ghost Is Born' is that it's fundamentally a concept album. Not like the bombast of 70's art rock, but like a late night conversation that veers into the metaphysical while retaining its warmth and cameraderie. Tweedy talks to us of feelings of alienation, inefficacy, despair, as well as hope and a few other brighter things. And because the songwriting is so appealing, it never gets uncomfortable to sit and listen to him. YHF had great songwriting too, but to my ear, Ghost works much better as the product of a band that knew how to play the songs.
One of the great things about Wilco is their desire to create albumns designed to be listened to straight through. Each song fits and serves as a bridge to the next on each one of their albumns, and Ghost is no different. When I listen to Wilco, I have no desire to forward through a song. Its like listening to the Beatles' Abbey Road, you would never skip through that albumn, because to do so would ruin the whole experience!
'A Ghost Is Born' is an excellent album that just needs some time to warm up to. If you don't like it at first just give it a few listens and it will grow on you. Once you have, I have little doubt you'll agree - this is likely to be the best album of 2004. Whether or not it's Wilco's best album will largely be a matter of personal tastes: with such a vast array of sounds in their library, it's hard to call one 'better' than another when they are all distintly different.
In this day and age, it's unlikely you'll find a music review that focuses its judgment solely on the sound coming out of the stereo. I think that all one needs to do is throw away the baggage trailing this album, forget what band it is, forget about what other people think about it, and pretend it's a blank cd you found in the back of your closet.
Now put it in the cd player and listen to it all the way through; listen to the music, nothing but the music, and you might just find this is an amazing album.
We can write this on Top40 Charts review: 'A Ghost Is Born' cements Wilco's reputation as the best band in America, and one of Top-5 worldwide. The sheer songwriting craft and musical ability expressed on the record is leaps and bounds beyond what anyone else is doing right now, and is probably what every other band will be imitating two years from now.
Thank God for Wilco and Radiohead, two bands that are doing what they want and doing it well!!!

The best of the best for 2004 without music frontiers:

| 1-10 | | 11-20 | | 21-30 | | 31-40 |