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Derrick's Top 10 Albums of 2004
with artwork, explanations, and mp3 samples

#1 Mirah's C'mon Miracle
i honestly can't pick a favorite song off of this album. i've been trying for about six months now and i really can't. just as soon as i've decided on "we're both so sorry," i'll realize that i like "you've gone away enough" even more. i've been a fan of Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn for a couple years now, and this album totally surprised me just how much i find myself singing her dainty little melodies wherever i am. her songwriting is just so open, you feel like you're really getting a good peak at this cute girl's privatemost thoughts without even the slightest bit of resistance. and its catchy, too.
mp3 - Jerusalem


#2 Les Savy Fav's Inches
the long-awaited Les Savy Fav single collection. nine 7" singles with two non-album tracks each, released on nine different labels, finally collected on one cd in reverse chronological order so you can really hear how the band has changed over the years, from post-punk to aggressive tale spinning to guitar-driven synth rock. this is a completely brilliant collection of songs with some of the most inventive rock music i've heard...well, since i first became interested in rock music. plus, a bonus dvd with commentary on each of the songs and music videos.
mp3 - Yawn, Yawn, Yawn

#3 TV On The Radio's Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
the beautiful thing about listening to TV On The Radio's material thus far is that you can follow the progress as they're really figuring out just what the hell they're doing. true, a handful of the songs on this album drag due to repetative and uninteresting loops and no song buildup, but the absolutely brilliant song writing and layered production of songs like "The Wrong Way," "Staring at the Sun," "Ambulance," and "King Eternal" surely make up for that. before this album, TVOTR was just two guys with a minidisc recorder. after touring for this album they are a five-man tour de force with more passion than a bucket full of Jesuses (Jesi? Jesum?). plus, the harmonies of tunde adibempe and kyp malone are splendid.
mp3 - Staring at the Sun (Young Liars version)

#4 The Arcade Fire's Funeral
there's something very epic about this album. its also something very riotous, as in i can see a few hundred kids storming the street, marching in synch, flaming torches raised high, with this album as a soundtrack. there's also something heart-touching and saddening about this album. i'm not referring to individual songs here. all of the songs are like all of these things, and yet, all so different. this is what i imagine Talking Heads would sound like if they were younger and more passionate and wore school uniforms and traded instruments in the middle of songs.
mp3 - Wake Up

#5 Ratatat's Ratatat
its like playing Sonic The Hedgehog, only fourteen times as awesome. in fact, over the summer, whenever i played Sonic The Hedgehog roms, i would only listen to Ratatat (incidentally, when i played Mega Man i would only listen to Minus the Bear)
mp3 - Seventeen Years

#6 Of Montreal's Satanic Panic In The Attic
so i downloaded this album the same week my dad found his thirty year-old bicycle in the closet and asked me to bring it to a repair shop. after it was fixed, he told me i could ride it if i ever felt the urge. i soon discovered that the psychadelic pop of this album was absolutely the perfect music for a leisurely bike ride along the boardwalk on sunny summer days and even made it easier not to notice the stench of suntan lotion on the flocks of tourists scared of a kid on a bike. i found myself listening to it endlessly and riding the boardwalk at least once a day, sometimes up to four times in one afternoon. needless to say, my dad revoked my borrowing-his-bike privileges after about a month.
mp3 - Lysergic Bliss

#7 Ted Leo + Pharmacists's Shake the Sheets
no, its not as musically interesting as the previous album, Hearts of Oak, but the politically charged themes made me listen to this album pretty much nonstop after november 3rd, helping come to grips with the fact that the bleeding heart liberals do indeed have a whole lot of walking to do. the music is straightforward pop-rock, but the writing is superb.
mp3 -Me and Mia

#8 Asobi Seksu's Asobi Seksu
i actually got this album in december of 2002 when i saw the band open for They Might Be Giants at a local show and they self-produced the album. my friends and i were just there for TMBG and didn't care about whatever local bands were opening, especially ones with hard to pronounce names, but when asobi seksu began to play, i was genuinely swept up in their fun and likable new wave sound. before their last song, the cute singer yuki announced "hi, we're asobi seksu and we have cds for sale downstairs." my friend dan immediately screamed "I'M GONNA BUY ONE!!!" to which she looked down at us and said "uh...thank you." dan turned to me and said "no, not really." "well, i am," i replied. "dude, can i burn it?" i listened to it for most of the following spring semester. the album was repressed this year for global consumption by friendly fire, so technically its a 2004 album.
mp3 - Walk on the Moon

#9 Elliott Smith's From a Basement on a Hill
over a year ago, my girlfriend called me at school from philly, told me that she was jogging and listening to NPR and they announced that Elliott Smith was dead and that she was just distraught and couldn't talk. i was haunted for the next three days by the song "everything reminds me of her" and my life was filled with sadness. after a couple of weeks i was still pretty broken up about it but i was no longer haunted. then, towards the end of the summer i heard "a distorted reality is now a neccessity to be free" which was to be the final track on this, supposedly elliott's final album. the song instantly created the illusion that elliott was still alive after all and that maybe things weren't as bad as he'd once made them sound. maybe there was a bright side, we just had to fight for it. it was a good feeling.
mp3 - Twilight

#10 The Thermals Fuckin' A
there's no great reason behind this. its more or less meaningless pop-punk styled aggression with distortion filters applied to everything, but oh man is it fun. "a stare like yours" was my anthem for like two months appropriately bridging my elliott smith and ted leo phases.
mp3 - How We Know