Opening Salvo
So Greg asked me why I didn’t do a top ten, why I might not get around to it this year. “Even I posted a top ten,” he cajoled. Well, yeah, Greg, but you didn’t put any damn comments on it! No reviews, no why’s or wherefores. How’s a cracker supposed to know? Y’suck, man! Y’suck!
But then I had to ask myself if I was entirely proud of all the purple prose I’d spilled in the “editorial sections” of top tens posted in years past. I had to admit it was not so. Ultimately, I had to admire letting a list speak for itself; who needs the jibba-jabba?
But I am a writer, and a nerdy nerd on the topic of pop music who likes the sound of his own printed voice. So I had to reach a compromise, and here ’tis: I’ve limited myself to 10 words about each of the 10 albums in this, my top 10 for 2002. Please notice that hyphenated expressions count as one word, and that I didn’t stick with sentence form, resulting in some of the entry-descriptions having a delightful haiku-like quality.
I’m also drunk.
(One caveat here: I’ve no right, really, to do this list because I fell in absolute love with Spoon’s “Girls Can Tell” album this year, but that was put out in 2001, and I’ve not heard their 2002 release, “Kill the Moonlight.” You go, Spoon!)
The Ten
1. Desparecidos, Learn Music / Speak Spanish
punkish half-hour concept album
passionately deriding urban sprawl
STORYTELLING!
INTEGRITY!
2. Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights
spiky new-age coating
with a fuzzy shoegazing center
GOD DAMN!
3. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
not-that-difficult
bloopy/bleepy folk
still breaking hearts
(like mine)
4. Oasis, Heathen Chemistry
tuneful rock stars
become tuneful again–
YOU KNOW YOU’RE RIGHT!
5. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
protest songs at zeppelin level–
aging gracefully
an institution now
6. Weezer, Maladroit
actually riding the guilty-or-not pleasure line
better than
number seven
7. Andrew W.K., I Get Wet
i’ll buy the walk
since he certainly
talks the talk
8. Beck, Sea Change
uneven, but
some songs actually
as good/sad
as hank, cash
9. The Hives, Veni Vici Vicious
what is garage?
i’ve no idea.
this kicks my ass!
10. Rhett Miller, The Instigator
Whiskeytown bang meets
Matthew Sweet buck–
pop songwriter’s songwriter!
