Traditionally, year-end lists of best albums consist of music readily available at record stores. But some of the best music made in 2001 was available only through Internet downloads, including Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.”
The disc was originally scheduled for release last September, then withdrawn by Reprise Records because it deemed the album uncommercial. While Wilco searched for a new distributor, it streamed “Foxtrot” on its Web site for a few weeks. Does that constitute an official release? Should it be considered for inclusion in year-end best-of lists?
“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” will begin showing up in record stores in April, when Nonesuch Records “officially” releases it. Some listeners are already familiar with the album, after downloading the music and sharing it with their fellow fans. Still, the number of people with access to “Foxtrot” is limited; I get e-mails daily from readers wondering when they can get their hands on it (Wilco has stopped streaming the album’s contents on its Web site).
The same is true of the Dave Matthews Band’s “The Lillywhite Sessions,” a superior album to the band’s official 2001 release, “Everyday,” yet available only as a bootleg through Internet channels.
One of the beauties of a year-end best-of list is that it can draw attention to music that listeners may have overlooked. But even though I consider “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” to be the finest music I heard in 2001, the fact that the album won’t be readily accessible to most music fans for another four months forces me to exclude it from my best-of list.
I can’t guarantee that will be the case if a similar scenario arises in the next few years. As more homes gain access to personal computers and high-speed modems, more music will be distributed directly from the artist or record label to the consumer’s hard drive, bypassing retail outlets and traditional means of distribution completely.
Until then, I stick with tradition and present a list of albums that can be readily found in most well-stocked record stores, whether on the street corner or online. And even without considering “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” there was no shortage of worthy albums, as once again the task of distilling the year’s finest releases to a mere 20 proved daunting. Here’s what I came up with.
1. Bob Dylan, “Love and Theft” (Columbia): Dylan pays tribute to his boyhood heroes, from Groucho Marx to Charley Patton, and provides a raucous tour of 20th Century musical America that sounds perfectly apt for this post-Sept. 11 world. Blood, desperation and wicked gallows humor are in the air as Dylan and his road band play jump blues, slow blues, rockabilly, Tin Pan Alley ballads and country swing with rollicking wit, agility and power.
2. Drive-By Truckers, “Southern Rock Opera” (Soul Dump Records, www.drivebytruckers.com): The best Southern-rock album since Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Street Survivors” is based loosely on Skynyrd’s rise and fall — a tale that mirrors the tragic arc of the Old South, George Wallace and arena rock, all of which figure in this epic. Part fable, part personal memoir, “Southern Rock Opera” is full of bleary, gin-soaked voices; triple-stacked guitars stomping, grinding and crying; and cerebral rednecks wrestling with what they call the “Duality of the Southern Thing.” Here’s a rock album like they don’t make anymore, but should.
3. Aterciopelados, “Gozo Poderoso” (BMG): Colombia’s Aterciopelados (The Velvety Ones) have attracted several high-powered patrons from the Anglo rock and pop world, including Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, Arto Lindsay and Marc Ribot, and the reasons are evident on the group’s fifth album, “Gozo Poderoso” (“Powerful Joy”). Singer Andrea Echeverri is Latin America’s answer to Patti Smith; she sings mesmerizing folkloric melodies over electronic trip-hop rhythms, Spanish acoustic guitars and rock power chords, and the sound is as uplifting as any you’ll hear this year.
4. Various artists, “O Brother Where Art Thou?” soundtrack (Mercury): What the Buena Vista Social Club album did for Cuban music, the “O Brother” soundtrack is doing for bluegrass. Though the Coen brothers movie treats Southern hill-country culture with a condescension bordering on contempt, the soundtrack is a loving evocation of what Ralph Stanley calls “mountain soul,” as interpreted by performers spanning the generations from the Fairfield Four to Gillian Welch. Among the many fine performances, an a cappella “O Death” by the 74-year-old Stanley is one for the ages.
5. Macy Gray, “The Id” (Epic): Something wicked this way comes, and it’s the freshest sound in R&B since the last D’Angelo album. Unlike Gray’s acclaimed 1998 debut album, which positioned her as something of a trippy singer-songwriter, “The Id” takes considerably more chances. It’s psychedelic soul in the tradition of Sly Stone and George Clinton, crossed with Prince’s funky libido.
6. Cannibal Ox, “The Cold Vein” (Def Jux): “The Cold Vein” suggests the soundtrack for one of Philip K. Dick’s futuristic sci-fi novels, even as it explores the harsh realities of ghetto life. Over a latticework of disorienting sound vistas and lopsided beats carved out by one of the masters of the hip-hop underground, former Company Flow mastermind El-P and rappers Vast and Vordul Megilah trade rhymes in which their childhoods in Harlem become fuel for stories full of bedlam, comedy, pathos and bravado.
7. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, “How I Long to Feel That Summer In My Heart” (Mantra): This Welsh outfit creates a glorious celebration of pop beauty that suggests a cross between Fairport Convention and Nick Drake in a lushly orchestrated cycle of songs, gently sung, sometimes barely above a whisper.
8. Monster Magnet, “God Says No” (A&M): Heavy yet melodic, “God Says No” bridges the chasm between the psychotic psychedelia of the ’60s “Nuggets” era and the densely textured alien atmospherics of Nine Inch Nails (NIN co-producer Colin Moulding does the mixing here). It’s the best of two worlds: a slamming highway soundtrack and the perfect album for late-night headphone excursions.
9. Gorillaz, “Gorillaz” (Virgin): The stars of this richly textured hip-hop project are Blur’s Damon Albarn and rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, with assists from Cibo Mato’s Miho Hatori and the Tom Tom Club’s Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz. But the cool grooves are orchestrated by Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, the most consistently inventive producer of the last five years.
10. North Mississippi Allstars, “51 Phantom” (Tone-Cool): At a time when the charts are stuffed with bands who could be from Anywhere, U.S.A., the Allstars celebrate their Mississippi heritage with a rockin’ vengeance. “51 Phantom” expands the hill-country blues drone of the trio’s impressive 2000 debut to include gospel call-and-response, dirty boogie, even folk harmonies.
11. Sam Phillips, “Fan Dance” (Nonesuch): Phillips negotiates the difficult terrain between tart observation and compassionate insight with the becalmed precision of a woman who knows exactly what to leave out. Sparser than her earlier pop confections, “Fan Dance” is exacting in its musical choices, from Van Dyke Parks’ string arrangements to Marc Ribot’s banjo plucking, and every one of them serves the jewel-like songs.
12. Buddy Guy, “Sweet Tea” (Silvertone): As with Dylan, it’s not a good idea to count out Buddy Guy, whose “Sweet Tea” is his strongest album since his ’60s Chess Records sessions. Guy attacks songs of lust and death with a vigor that’s terrifying; In a world full of temptation and cruelty, Guy again sounds like he can’t be satisfied.
13. Res, “How I Do” (MCA): Though Alicia Keys has been elevated to the forefront of the neo-soul movement overnight, don’t believe the hype. Her debut album isn’t nearly as strong as the extraordinary “How I Do,” by Philadelphia’s less heralded Shareese Renee Ballard, a.k.a. Res (pronounced “Reese”). “How I Do” simmers with trip-hop atmospherics, and it embraces rock guitars and reggae bass lines. Cautionary tales about fame, the media and unpaid debts give Res’ street-smart grooves a deep-soul resonance that eludes many of her contemporaries.
14. Slayer, “God Hates Us All” (American): Step into the inferno. On its eighth album, the strongest in a decade, the quintessential thrash-metal quartet doesn’t so much redefine the genre as prove an utter mastery of it. They bring the precision of classical musicians, the fury of street punks and even some deeply imbedded melodic hooks.
15. Mystic, “Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom” (GoodVibe): The easygoing flow and sing-along melodicism suggest a hip-hop take on Sade’s after-hours smoothness, but this West Coast rapper cuts deep, especially on the devastating “Fatherless Child,” which addresses the death of Mystic’s estranged father from a heroin overdose and ponders the turns her life might have taken if he had been a bigger presence in her childhood.
16. Mellow, “Another Mellow Spring” (CyberOctave): French head-trippers channel bits of Pink Floyd, German art-rockers Can and late-period Beatles into a hazy stroll through a Parisian playground.
17. Laurie Anderson, “Life on a String” (Nonesuch): Don’t let the avant-garde haircut fool you. Laurie Anderson is a singer-songwriter of crushing poignancy, and she’s at her best on her first album in seven years. Her poetry of loneliness towers majestically on the deathbed meditation “Slip Away.”
18. The Coup, “Party Music” (75 Ark): The Coup is hip-hop’s most righteously political duo since Chuck D and Flavor Flav were trading rhymes in Public Enemy’s late ’80s heyday. Like P.E., the Coup throws a party while lobbing verbal hand grenades at corrupt capitalists.
19. Guided By Voices, “Isolation Drills” (TVT): The prettiest, deepest, most melancholy power pop of the year, and the most personal.
20. The Holmes Brothers, “Speaking in Tongues” (Alligator): Three glorious voices grounded in the good earth of the blues and lifted by the grace of gospel interpret the songs of Ben Harper, Dylan and the O’Jays, with a gritty, modern production twist from Joan Osborne.
