Best of: 2004

Then: I was swayed by the goofy charms of Brian Wilson’s long-awaited Smile (Nonesuch). I still enjoy this album – down to every last slurred vocal and trombone slide – but I have to be in the mood.

Now: In what is something of a recurrent theme, I’ve moved by then-number-two, The Delgados’ Universal Audio (Chemikal Underground) to the top spot. In many ways, I consider this album of a piece with Summerteeth and The Execution of All Things in terms of sound and outlook; it’s another pop album of great drama and distress, with the arrangements to match. (And, like PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, I find this album a lot more compelling than anything else I’ve heard by The Delgados.)

And that pretty much brings us to the recent past. The next post in this series will be the final one; I’ll cover both 2005 and 2006. My favorite albums for both these years haven’t changed, but I’d like to talk about them all the same.