In what could have been a calendar year bloated with shlock-rock and garbled idol-pop, we were lucky enough to receive albums that cemented indie-rock’s manifest destiny, underground rap classics that tunneled their way to daylight and, in a long-awaited treat, Brian Wilson’s SMiLE, an album unhinged in time, finally made it’s way to our stereos. People who adore “The O.C.” found challenging, off-center rock. Smiths loyalists saw the return of the king. Tightly wound college kids started dancing to some rakish Scotts. Two modern American icons, The Beastie Boys and Green Day, didn’t just age; they matured. Bjork and Kanye West became lightning rods for both love and hate; you heard them once and you were galvanized. God, death, madness, dancing and the human voice all made their presence known in every corner of 2004. Visit michigandaily.com for the rest of the music staff’s 2004 picks.

 

andrewgaerig

 

1 The Walkmen Bows and Arrows

A hugely reverberating album, Bows and Arrows bounces off subway windows and wheel wells with the force of U2’s spiraling guitar attack and the rhythmic drive of so many ’80s post-punk bands. Hamilton Leithauser scrapes his voice across and chalkboard and winds up angry/confused/hopeful, waiting for anything that’ll take him away from here.

 

2 Madvillain Madvillainy

Hip hop, too often recognized for its harsh and visceral nature, rarely feels as soft and transcendent as this album. Madlib clips frayed shards of your consciousness. MF Doom peeks through the cracks, discarding his many masks long enough to get goofy, sad and hilariously confused.

 

3 Brian Wilson SMiLE

Go west, old crackpot psycho. Brian Wilson takes a break from lounging scarily around swimming pools to fantasize, after a 30-year hiatus, about a mythic, candy-cane America. His blend of surreal and serene ignited such holy wanderlust that daddy didn’t just take the T-Bird away, he drove it straight into a midlife crisis.

 

4 The Black Keys Rubber Factory

“The Lengths,” the country-blues epic that splits this album like dried snakeskin, is the type of transcendent ash that their prior albums were missing. It should also put to rest any lingering doubts about the blues duo’s authenticity, as if there was something inauthentic about growing up in the permanent gray of Ohio and recording your album amidst the fumes of an old production plant.

 

5 The Streets A Grand Don’t Come for Free

No matter how badly Skinner wants us to believe he’s a stoned-batty slacker — “I should just sit on my couch like I know how” — the grand ambition of A Grand proves it’s bollocks time and again. His production, a synthesis of bratty guitars and RAM-powered soul, allows his stilted rhymes to hit with the force of a far less subtle MC. We’re all better off for his ambition, whether he admits it or not.

 

6 Bjork Medulla

Bjork’s arcane vocals-only concept gave this album a schtick, but it was Bjork’s total embrace of Rahzel’s gruff production that allowed her to weld the digital choir together with her snaking melodies. Medulla is another chapter in Bjork’s fantastic fiction.

7 Ghostface The Pretty Toney Album

Has anyone ever pined so hard for mainstream acceptance, failed so miserably and still come out with such irresistible art? Bathed in buckets of soul, stoned out of his mind and drunk on his own ridiculous flow, Ghostface eats your underground ethos for breakfast.

 

8 Califone Heron King Blues

A bunch of aging, skinny white boys from Chicago get nutty with Afro-funk freakouts, jamming on a bed of white noise and emptying ma’s pan cabinets for their deviant percussion. Like Brian Jones’s Rolling Stones on Sly Stone and a slow morphine drip.

 

9 Interpol Antics

Annoyingly enough, everything still sounds easy for Interpol. Their effortless second album, however, seeps a humility that their debut lacked, reducing their sound to rock‘n’roll’s charming holy trinity: guitar/bass/drums. Few bands can take such basic ingredients and sound so huge, so dark.

 

10 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus