NY Times Best Albums list

[Bags]

I think some screams of ecstasy will be heard once the absence of White Stripes is noted on Pareles' list....(Note, I will post the individual critics "best" lists seperately).
 
 The Albums and Songs of the Year
 By JON PARELES
 
 1. YEAH YEAH YEAHS: `FEVER TO TELL' (Interscope) New York rock finds its arty party spirit in the hard-headed, amorous, banshee voice of Karen O. Behind her, a drummer and guitarist chop and splice together everything from rockabilly to grunge, turning jagged shards of riffs into rock that swaggers and jumps.
 
 2. OUTKAST: `SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW' (Arista) Lust rules all for Andre 3000 and Big Boi, whose split double album wraps ambition in irrepressible music. Andre veers toward pop with songs that go bounding from style to style �?? fun even when they're half finished �?? while Big Boi's raps are fast, smart and newly far-reaching. These guys ought to work together sometime.
 
 3. RADIOHEAD: `HAIL TO THE THIEF' (Capitol) Raising the stakes again after two albums of introspection, Radiohead stirs its sonic experiments into new ravaged anthems, engaging the outside world again with perplexity and rage.
 
 4. ANNIE LENNOX: `BARE' (J) There hasn't been a plush, bitter and furious breakup album like this since Annie Lennox made "Diva," and this album could be its match, wrapping elegant arrangements around a wounded voice.
 
 5. WARREN ZEVON: `THE WIND' (Artemis) Made by a dying man, "The Wind" cracks jokes, rocks awhile, quietly stares down death and makes fond farewells, modestly asking, "Keep me in your heart for a while." Its sound is unadorned and twangy, but its effect is haunting.
 
 6. CABAS: `CONTACTO' (Virgin/EMI Music USA Latin) Salsa, brass bands, rock, funk, cumbia, Afro-Caribbean drums �?? Andres Cabas sets his love songs in music that criss-crosses his native Colombia and leaps beyond its borders with well-earned confidence.
 
 7. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE: `WELCOME INTERSTATE MANAGERS' (S-Curve/Virgin) Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood knock out catchy songs in styles from power pop to ballad to folk-rock, sketching a dead-end suburban life in a verse or two. For all their craftsmanship, there's sympathy just under the surface.
 
 8. ALICIA KEYS: `THE DIARY OF ALICIA KEYS' (J) Full-fledged soul songs that hark back to the 1970's, with verses, choruses and bridges rather than the singsong vamps of current rhythm-and-blues, give Alicia Keys something to dig into as she once again contemplates the tensions between love and independence.
 
 9. MARS VOLTA: `DE-LOUSED IN THE COMATORIUM' (GSL/Strummer/Universal) On a concept album about deathbed delirium, here comes progressive rock again, with songs full of whipsaw tempo changes, sudden interludes, untrammeled momentum and a passion that spills out of every structure.
 
 10. MISSY ELLIOTT: `THIS IS NOT A TEST!' (Elektra) The beats are minimal, as Timbaland makes bodies move with just blips, thuds and perfectly placed spaces. And the aspirations are maximal, as Ms. Elliott sets out to wake up hip-hop, show men their place and get her satisfaction, both sexual and analytical.
 
 SINGLES Black Dice: "Cone Toaster" (DFA); Lumidee: "Never Leave You" (Universal); Anthony Hamilton: "Comin' From Where I'm From" (Arista); Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z: "Crazy in Love" (Columbia); the Strokes: "Reptilia" (RCA)

[Bags]

The Albums and Songs of the Year
 By KELEFA SANNEH
 
 Published: December 28, 2003
 
 1. R. KELLY: `CHOCOLATE FACTORY' (Jive) An impossibly smooth meditation on romance and obsession, with enough grace and swagger to remind 15-year-old Jay-Z fans and 50-year-old Temptations fans how much they have in common.
 
 2. DIZZEE RASCAL: `BOY IN DA CORNER' (XL) Britain's greatest rapper twists East London slang around tense computer-generated beats, and every once in a while, the verbal calisthenics make way for bitter moments of clarity. The most optimistic song begins, "Sometimes I wake up, wishing I could sleep forever."
 
 3. YEAH YEAH YEAHS: `FEVER TO TELL' (Interscope) A squirmy, squawky post-punk classic. For a while, the hair-trigger guitarist Nick Zinner and the unpredictable singer Karen O never stop fidgeting. But then the giddiness dissipates, leaving bleary, uneasy love songs. It's as if someone has switched on the lights, and Karen O is trying to make sense of what she sees.
 
 4. 50 CENT: `GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope) This album seems to consist of nothing but hits �?? 50 Cent squeezes a sing-song hook into just about every line. But it's a grim party: the casual jokes about death are his way of reminding us of the price he might have to pay for his success �?? and for our entertainment.
 
 5. BRAND NEW: `DEJA ENTENDU' (Triple Crown/Razor and Tie) An extraordinary emo album, full of sweeping choruses and ambivalent conclusions. While his band turns out pop-punk riffs and stately ballads, Jesse Lacey sings of a boy who reluctantly loses his virginity and of a frontman who can't remember whether he's serenading his girlfriend or his fans.
 
 6. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE: `TRANSATLANTICISM' (Barsuk) Eleven impeccable songs about lovers just out of reach. The guitarist and producer Chris Walla strips things down so you can hear every hum and sigh, and Benjamin Gibbard peels back layers as he sings, often starting with a vivid metaphor and ending with a memorable plea.
 
 7. COHEED AND CAMBRIA: `IN KEEPING SECRETS OF THE SILENT EARTH: 3' (Equal Vision) The year's most fearless rock album: a fantastical emo epic full of wailing guitar riffs and tender entreaties. The sound is massive but never diffuse: instrumental lines snap tautly together, and Claudio Sanchez's voice is almost unbearably wild and sweet.
 
 8. BLUR: `THINK TANK' (Virgin) The sweet sound of a veteran band running low on energy and high on ideas. The singer (and lead schemer) Damon Albarn writes perhaps his best batch of songs so far, floating on top of lazy North African beats and meticulous Brit-rock grooves.
 
 9. HOLLERTRONIX: `NEVER SCARED' (Turntable Lab) A near-perfect party mix, bringing together all kinds of dance music �?? Southern hip-hop, dancehall reggae, old-fashioned new wave, new-fangled bhangra. Plus the year's best Joe Strummer tribute: the Clash's "Rock the Casbah," enhanced with rhymes from Missy Elliott.
 
 10. DAVID BANNER: `MTA2: BAPTIZED IN DIRTY WATER' (SRC/Universal) A wild-eyed bull session orchestrated by a great rapper-producer. On his third and most appealing album this year, Banner is at his omnivorous best, roaring through spaced-out club tracks, belligerent gospel laments, exuberant posse cuts and one blood-spattered Christmas carol.
 
 SINGLES OutKast: "Hey Ya!" (Arista); Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell and Uncle Charlie Wilson: "Beautiful" (Priority); Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz featuring Ying Yang Twins: "Get Low"; Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z: "Crazy in Love" (Columbia); Panjabi MC featuring Jay-Z: "Beware" (Sequence).

[Bags]

The Albums and Songs of the Year
 By NEIL STRAUSS
 
 Published: December 28, 2003
 
 1. OUTKAST: `SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW' (Arista) One CD is about women; the other CD is about ghetto life. And yet they manage to avoid nearly every cliché that these themes typically bring out in rappers. The two-disc set unfolds like a great independent movie: you never know what to expect next. By the end, you want to get down on your knees and say, "Thank you, OutKast, for saving mainstream rap this year."
 
 2. THE THRILLS: `SO MUCH FOR THE CITY' (EMI) It's not just the sunny, harmony-laden, sing-along pop on the debut CD from this Dublin band that evokes California; it's also the rotted dreams and shattered ideals that lurk beneath the surface. It's the happiest sad CD of the year.
 
 3. JOHNNY CASH: `UNEARTHED' (Lost Highway/American) This five-disc collection (four with previously unreleased music) documents Cash in his final, and unexpectedly formidable, decade. Here, wisdom and desolation walk hand-in-hand as he stands at death's door, emptying the contents of his life onto the welcome mat. Goosebumps are de rigueur for first-time listeners.
 
 4. R. KELLY: `CHOCOLATE FACTORY' (Jive) I want to deny this music's appeal, but can't. The production's breathtaking. The suggestive, sinuous remixes are the state of the art in rhythm-and-blues while the smooth love songs go so far out of their way to be empathetic that they verge on self-parody.
 
 5. THE POSTAL SERVICE: `GIVE UP' (Sub Pop) This gentle, swooning collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie and Dntel fused the nerdy alienation of indie-rock and the nerdy click-and-pop of electronica into the sleeper hit of the year.
 
 6. THE SLEEPY JACKSON: `LOVERS' (Astralwerks) In concert, Luke Steele seems like he stepped on stage at Monterey; on disc, he seems more fit for the Brill Building; and in person, he seems like he's spent time in Bellevue. Put all these personalities together and you have a beautifully off-kilter CD that is at once familiar and unusual. The song "Don't You Know" alone moved this disc two spots up in the ranking.
 
 7. OTIS TAYLOR: `TRUTH IS NOT FICTION' (Telarc) Mr. Taylor is one of the most impressive bluesmen working today. He tackles the darkest and most ambitious of themes and sets them to the most minimal and evocative music he can summon. Though he's received much acclaim for the intelligence of his lyrics, it's his masterful approach to arrangement, melody and rhythm that make this CD so distinct.
 
 8. BASEMENT JAXX: `KISH KASH' (Astralwerks) Though Prefuse 73 and Four Tet may have made more innovative dance albums this year, they just won't get the party started like "Kish Kash," a rare CD that holds up as well on headphones as it does on the dance floor.
 
 9. OI VA VOI: `LAUGHTER THROUGH TEARS' (Outcaste) If Massive Attack was a klezmer band, you'd have Oi Va Voi, a London sextet that pulls together Uzbek, Yiddish and English singers into a mesmerizing, innovative debut of chill-out music with substance.
 
 10. AFI: `SING THE SORROW' (DreamWorks) AFI broke through artistically with this ridiculously melodic and ambitious CD of goth-pop-punk that should have been received as the mainstream rock masterpiece it was.
 
 SINGLES: Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z: "Crazy in Love" (Columbia); White Stripes: "Seven Nation Army" (V2); Lil' Kim featuring 50 Cent: "Magic Stick" (Atlantic); Fannypack: "Things" (Tommy Boy); Junior Senior: "Move Your Feet." (Atlantic)

[Bags]

(I'm thinking this is their main jazz critic...who has the White Stripes on his list!)
 
 The Albums and Songs of the Year
 By BEN RATLIFF
 
 1. BEBO VALD�?S AND DIEGO EL CIGALA: `LAGRIMAS NEGRAS' (BMG Spain) Mr. Valdés, the pianist who has helped shape Cuban music for the last 60 years, meets El Cigala, the traditional blood-and-iron flamenco singer; using boleros as the medium, they merge languages and come up with a beautifully realized third path.
 
 2. WAYNE SHORTER: `ALEGRÍA' (Verve) The string arrangements aren't what sells the record �?? Mr. Shorter himself does, still playing better saxophone than just about anyone out there, and preserving his legacy better than anyone had expected.
 
 3. ANTHONY HAMILTON: `COMIN' FROM WHERE I'M FROM' (Arista) The neo-soul singer of the year sings about sexual hurt as if guided by the spirit world, over both opulent and workaday grooves; Hammond organs and common sense predominate.
 
 4. WHITE STRIPES: `ELEPHANT' (V2) Jack White, one of the greatest rock stars of our time, writes his own aesthetic rules and then breaks them, using guitar effects swiped from heavy metal for what's ostensibly purist garage rock. Grist for a sidebar: the asterisk Billboard uses to indicate a million units sold, affixed to an album recorded on less than what it costs to rent a studio apartment in Manhattan for a year.
 
 5. R. KELLY: `CHOCOLATE FACTORY' (Jive) One of America's most sure-handed record producers and most silken-voiced singers, with track after track that can make you either wince (the elegant vulgarity of "Ignition (Remix)") or dissolve in admiration (the sweetness of "Step in the Name of Love"). It's pop music �?? no more or less messy than that.
 
 6. MISSY ELLIOTT: `THIS IS NOT A TEST!' (Elektra) Not just the decisive emergence of Ms. Elliott as a producer in her own right, crafting music that's a lot more upbeat than the work of her partner Timbaland, but the unveiling of Timbaland's deepest, weirdest, most impressively minimal tracks. Plus, the development of Ms. Elliott as America's most self-possessed singer, making sex raps funny and convivial.
 
 7. CAF�? TACUBA: `CUATRO CAMINOS' (MCA) Take away the not-so-great tracks produced by Dave Fridmann, and you've got yet another great Café Tacuba record �?? pure pleasure by this Mexico City rock band (finally using a real drummer instead of a machine), mixing the perfect proportions of skepticism and happiness.
 
 8. THE BAD PLUS: `THESE ARE THE VISTAS' (Columbia) Really good jazz musicians, playing non-disco and non-rock with backbeats and interesting production: why didn't someone think of that years ago? Oh, but it's so much harder than it sounds.
 
 9. EL GRAN SILENCIO: `SUPERRIDDIM INTERNACIONAL VOL. 1' (MCA) The creolization of old and recent street musics �?? ska, norteño, punk and cumbia �?? by this Mexican band: think about it in your head, and you'll hear this record.
 
 10. MIROSLAV VITOUS: `UNIVERSAL SYNCOPATIONS' (ECM) A mysterious and beautiful album �?? slightly disembodied, and, strangely enough, stronger for being so �?? by one of the heroes of the jazz bass, with an international cast of great musicians including Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Jan Garbarek and Jack DeJohnette.

[Moon Mullen]

Originally posted by Bagster:
  The Albums and Songs of the Year
 By KELEFA SANNEH
 
 R. Kelly-"Chocolate Factory"
 50 Cent- "Get Rich Or Die Tryin"
 Brand New- "Deja Entendu"
 Coheed and Cambria- "In Keeping Secrets of the Silent Earth"
 David Banner- "MTA2: Baptized in Dirty Water"
 
 Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell and Uncle Charlie Wilson: "Beautiful"
 Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz featuring Ying Yang Twins- "Get Low"
 
 

That list was bananas!  :mad:   It should had been under the header of "Worst Pieces of Garbage and Bullshit for 2003"
 
 I never knew that the New York Times allowed their employees to drink on the job

[flawd101]

dave chapelle did a good r kelly song and remix.....but i hate coheed and cambria.

[markie]

Originally posted by flawd101:
  .....but i hate coheed and cambria.

I wonder what they think about you?

[flawd101]

Originally posted by mark e smith:
   

Originally posted by flawd101:
  .....but i hate coheed and cambria.

I wonder what they think about you? [/b]

i'm sure they dont know me, but if they did they would love me and beg me to be a fan.