Stocki's Top 40 Albums of 2003
1. OVER THE RHINE – Ohio
From the first moment I heard this album it was so far out in front in its number oneness that I didn’t have to ever consider it again. I first heard the songs in March at The Faith and Music Festival at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Just Karin’s voice and Linford on piano on Lost Brother and I was taken back to that first time I heard them at Greenbelt 92. I had been disappointed with Films For Radio especially after the acoustic nature of Good Dog, Bad Dog so to hear them stripped back to their core was a treat. For an encore Karin came out to the piano to debut a brand new song she had written about the war, Remind Us. Wow! Hearing this newly written song in America a week after the war began was a powerful memory of the year.
When Ohio dropped on the mat I picked it up in hope. From the moment I heard the first few bars I knew we were on to something special. I walked around for days raving and every song made me gulp in wonderment. The organic production made this definitive Over The Rhine and there are few sounds I love better than definitive Over The Rhine.
The First Time I Heard…
Well I had read an interview that Martin Wroe had done with them in the still much missed Strait magazine. I was looking forward to seeing them at Greenbelt ’92. So the first night I am sitting at the legendary Late Stinking Show and on they come to sing Paul and Virginia and a cover of a Charlie Peacock song. The next day I was simply lost in wonder at their full band gig. It was as beautiful as anything I had ever heard and Karin had won all our hearts! We left and someone said they wished they had had a camera. I said, “Don’t worry boys I got enough for all of us.” My then girlfriend, now wife, shouted back, “Aye, and on my camera.” Even she understood!
To think that this year I had a couple of meals with them in the home of Dave Perkins in Nashville and at the Festival Of Faith and Music at Calvin College.
2. THE FRAMES – Set List
Few live albums reach such heights in “best of the year” lists but The Frames are as good a live band as there is anywhere in the entire world and to capture the brilliance of the live thing so succinctly on a CD is achievement enough to merit its high placing. I got to hear Glen live on the week that this was number 1 in the Republic Of Ireland when he was way down the bill at a Van Morrison open air in Killyleagh Castle and having crossed the border into Northern Ireland nobody had any idea who he was. Two different countries on one tiny island. Still at least the north gave The Frames a packed Ulster Hall for their end of year gig!
The First Time I Heard…
I actually cannot remember when I heard their first single The Dancer but they were where I always thought The Waterboys should have went instead of losing the balance between Irish folk and rock out in County Galway. It took the Irish fiddle and gave it rock n roll kick! I saw them for the first time in London in 91 and bumped into Glen for the first time when he parked his moped beside my car at a Van Morrison gig at The Point Theatre where The Frames would see in the new year on the same bill as The Sawdoctors just a couple of week later! I remember saying to him that I thought “they” were the best band I had seen all year. He said “wha’? The Commitments?” I said “No. The Frames!” and he said, “Thank ****!” He was not too enamoured with his lingering connection with The Commitments after the movie’s release. He plays guitarist Outspan in said flick. By the way, I do not want to condone its use but nobody uses the **** word quite the way Glen Hansard does!
3. BELL X1 – Music In Mouth
In some ways this is more interesting than The Thrills. When it comes to the next album Bell X1 have about ten irons in the fire ready to shape where what The Thrills do is a difficult question. Here there were Radiohead like moods, wonderful poetry and lashings of humour seamlessly included!
The First Time I Heard…
They sang In Every Sunflower at The Hot Press Awards a year ago in memory of the late Mic Christopher. I thought it was amazing and searched and searched until the album came out this summer.
4. SWITCHFOOT – Beautiful Letdown
Probably the most played album on my radio show this year, Switchfoot came of age with an album that took them out of the CCM ghetto and into Rolling Stone. It rocked body, mind and soul.
The First Time I Heard…
The first time I booked the bands for Greenbelt in 1997 these fresh faced Californian surfers appeared and though their was something of potential in the sound what I remember most was their boy band appeal to the teenage girls and their little leaps on stage! Would they grow up? I have listened to each album with more and more admiration but this one blew me away altogether.
5. MAGNET – On Your Side
This one took me by surprise in the summer. A Norwegian residing in Lockerbie and recording in Cornwall. Bizarre! But not as quaintly strange at how beautiful sadness can sound. Indeed these songs are so gorgeous that it takes you a long time to realise how bleak and sad the songs are. His Lay Lady Lay with Gemma Hayes on duet has never sounded so lazy. The Days We Left Town is Waits’ Frankie’s Wild Years but where Tom sounded as demented as the storyline Johansen makes it sound like the glorious joy of resurrection. As comfortable an album as your ears will ever wear. The Last Days of Summer has been ricocheting around my brain since the sun went home for autumn, lingering much longer than the warmth of our hot (honest !) British summer. Lush!
The First Time I Heard…
Most new music comes to me through reviews as I don’t much listen to the radio apart from Bob Harris if I am in Ballycastle on a Saturday night! This one almost got past me but then I think it was Mojo raved about it. This summer I had just finished a book on artists like Dylan, Springsteen, Mitchell, Gray, Radiohead and Waits so I felt I needed a break from them and every Monday went into a nearby town’s HMV and bought the week’s new thing. After the Mojo review Magnet was one of those albums. Great choice!
6. ATHLETE – Vehicles & Animals
This one has grown and grown on me as the year has gone on. I almost missed this one but their Glastonbury performance as shown by the BBC made me seek it out and listen afresh and it became along with The Thrills my sunshine of the summer. Indeed I could argue with myself about its position as it is more authentic to their London roots than The Thrills were to Dublin. Deeper depth charges and more humour than The Thrills too!
The First Time I Heard…
I had my friend Jude Adams on my radio show. Jude works for Radio One and also succeeded me as booker of bands for Greenbelt. I told her to bring some good tunes and she played Aqualung, Polyphonic Spree and this. I had heard none of the artists before but went and bought them all soon after. Athlete now remain the only one of the three that Jude hasn’t had to Greenbelt! Friends with taste are a vital asset in life!
7. THE THRILLS – So Much For The City
Dublin again! The Thrills came up with an album so darn good that I named the July and August The Summer Of The Thrills. Even though they were from south Dublin’s Blackrock they came on all Parsons meets Brian Wilson. Just as radio friendly as anything this year.
The First Time I Heard…
It might have been the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury.
8. RICKIE LEE JONES _ The Evening Of My Best Day
A return to her acoustic jazz grooves of twenty years ago and a brand new political rage ignited by America’s war in Iraq blended to make this Jones best album in many a long year. Her web page with extensive ideas and pictures to go with the lyrics was a winner too. Still a chuckle rises in me as I press up the lyrics to Ugly Man and see George Dubya smiling out at me!
The First Time I Heard…
In my last days of school my good mate William Ireland was daring enough to take the train to Belfast to bring back all that was cool. He listened diligently to the American Top 100 even I remember with a tranny glued to his ear while watching Ballymena United at a wintry Showgrounds and certainly was the first to buy Rickie Lee’s debut made famous by the classic Chuck E’s In Love. I borrowed it from William and still have his vinyl copy! That was 1980! I bought the CD William so call round any time!
9. JOSH RITTER – Hello Starling
Another man who went world via Ireland, it seems that Glen Hansard freed him from more open mikes to open for The Frames in Ireland and the rest is history. A wee bit of Ryan Adams, a little Dylan and a pinch of Springsteen shapes songs of poetry and tune.
The First Time I Heard…
He was supporting The Frames in the Limelight in Belfast coming across like a new Steve Forbert and winning the audience over against the run of play. I had forgotten we were in Ireland where tunes beat fashion any day! I bought his two albums that night and waited patiently for this one!
10. GRANDADDY – Sumday
This was somehow the first Grandaddy album I bought. For some reason I had been reluctant to jump into Grandaddy and then fall immediately with this. Perfect for a lazy month in Bllaycastle. El Caminos is a prayer and indelibly embedded in my head and if every song had been as good as The Go In Go For It or El Caminos In The West it would have been further up the top ten.
The First I Heard…
My mate Gordon Ashbridge probably was the first to tip me off to Grandaddy but it took me time to take the plunge. Rare for me. No idea why.
11. DANIEL LANOIS – Shine
We waited ten years and with Lanois we were always sure he’d be worth the wait. Full of that dense Lanois lazy quality of sound and as always never too short of spirituality. His co write/co sing with Bono Falling At your Feet that originally appeared on the soundtrack of Million Dollar Hotel is one of my favourite songs and Shine is has that mystical ambiguous poetry of faith that hits the spot. His gig in Dublin’s Olympia in late October was a gem. Brilliant musicianship and the vocal harmonies were awesome.
The First Time I Heard…
No doubt through his production work with U2 and later on Dylan’s No Mercy. Saw him in The Royal Festival Hall when he toured Acadie and thought he was the coolest of them all. My then girlfriend, now wife, even hung around the right place for a quick hello and an autograph!
12. THE JAYHAWKS – Rainy Day Music
When I brainwashed my mate Paul Chambers to buy this one in Guernsey he suggested a similarity with Crowded House. Having known them as alternative country pioneers I had never seen it or heard it that way but now he says it…just add pedal steel! An album packed with great songs and if you got the extra CD six more treats too!
The First Time I Heard…
Hollywood Town Hall was my introduction but cannot remember why…
13. MARIA MCKEE – High Dive
A long time coming and when it did we were surprised once more with McKee’s muse. This one got past a lot of critics compliments but not their scathing criticisms but my wife’s heroine has lost nothing of that voice and the production’s similarity to Spector’s work on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass was ambitious and pleasing very pleasing to me!
The First Time I Heard…
The first Lone Justice single was a Tom Petty Song, Ways To Be Wicked. I loved Petty at the time. It was made even better by a photograph of McKee in Strait, The Greenbelt magazine of the day, and the fact that she shared my faith. When she lived in Dublin in the late eighties and was said to be looking for a husband I had dreams but then I met her at a signing in a Belfast record shop and thought she was a little firey! A loud mouth with an angelic voice! She once told a friend who asked her about the lack of God in her lyrics that her voice was her witness. I sneered and then I heard her sing live and the first thing I thought was…God exists!
14. ROSIE THOMAS – Only With Laughter Can You Win
Denison Witmer was with us in September and was saying how he’d worked on this album and how good it was and how much I would enjoy her spiritual content. It arrived on the mat as he was going out the door to the airport. He was right I love it. I guess that those without a rock n roll memory will think Norah Jones but those of us with a little more history will hear Joni Mitchell’s Blue which gives it the credit it deserves.
The First Time I Heard…
Paste magazine reviewed her album and then had her as 2002’s number 1 album. That sent me scurrying off to buy When We Were Small which I fell in love with one summer afternoon driving to Murlough Bay…
15. BRIAN HOUSTON – THE VALLEY
Now you see I think that Houston’s previous album Mea Culpa is his best when it comes to playing and production but the songs are not half as good as they are here on a stripped back supposedly throwaway album that was to clear out the songs he was not going to use to fill the gap until the next album would have budget and time. There is something wrong somewhere in the camp if songs like The Valley, I’ll Fly Away (no, not that famous one!) and Kisses At The Door are discarded. I want my coffin brought into the Church to The Valley and to leave it to I’ll Fly Away. Drive carefully kiddo!
The First Time I Heard…
Well there was Communique in the mid eighties when Houston came over all Bono poses and I thought that they were a band who should have been in the real world instead of telling a safe Christian audience that “Christians could have fun too.” I remember screaming at one gig that Jesus did not die that we might just have fun! Gladly, I loosened up and after a few years when God told his Church leaders to tell him to give it up and be miserable making bookshelves he realised God must have been wrong and formed Mighty Fall taking them into those very venues that a wee tight Stockman had suggested he should have been playing five years earlier. I found their single Kick It In the Head in a wee shop in Wimbledon and loved it. Brian heard that I had got it in London and when I preached in his Church and he was playing in the worship band we both eyeballed each other and said we needed each other. Had the privilege of working with him in Guernsey this year. What a rage!
16. DAMIEN JURADO – Where Shall You Take Me
Now I have been trying to enter the depression of Jurado for some years and failed miserably until this one arrived in on my desk and I am a believer. Linked with Pedro The Lion’s David Bazan and Rosie Thomas whom he sings a duet with on the Springsteen Nebraska Tribute and she sings with him here as she often does. For a man with a Christian hope the man can dig deep in the darkest corners of life but there is light if you excavate far enough. Leonard Cohen doing the aforementioned Nebraska is as good a way to describe it as any.
The First Time I Heard…
Always on the look out for new songwriters I came across Rehearsals For Departure but it was along time before I saw it cheap enough to buy! Rumours of his faith no doubt speeded the search but as I said it was this fourth attempt that nailed me.
17. THE BEATLES – Let it be...Naked
There have been the cynics and the believers when it comes to the remaking of The Beatles final release (not last recording - Abbey Road). I am one of those who fell for it hook, line and sinker. Listening to it gave me a consistent buzz that the Spectored aberration never did. Yet I loved the original too. I read once that it was The Beatles trying to kill off their legend, I guess in much the same way people greeted Dylan’s Self Portrait. I liked it. I never did like the overly produced Sgt. Pepper and the organic nature of Let It Be felt good to me.
And let us not forget that there are great songs here. Get Back and I’ve Got a Feeling are among their best rockers, The Long And Winding Road, Let It Be and Across The Universe are as beautifully structured as anything they had written before. The adding of Don’t Let Me Down which I never understood being relegated to merely a b-side gives it more beef and in the reordering of the tracks there is a generally more energetic feel to the entire thing. Too many reviews were looking at specific differences too close up instead of sitting back and getting a panoramic reinvention.
The First Time I Heard…
I cannot believe I lived through the sixties and never heard The Beatles. I think I must have but my first strong memory was at my first secondary school party when the prefects must have just bought The Beatles 1962-66 and played Paperback Writer and Ticket To Ride. I was well impressed but didn’t own my own Beatles records until 1975 when I swapped a bunch of singles for my mate Colin Miller’s uncle’s Please, Please Me, A Hard Days Night, Beatles For Sale and Help. Sorry Colin but you got the wrong end of the deal. I am sure you are not still listening to any of that stuff!
18. THE WATERBOYS – Universal Hall
Scott simply knows how to write a great song mostly simple but spiritual profound. Here he goes back to The Universal Hall at the Findhorn Spiritual community and with old Waterboy fiddling buddy back in harnass sends out a whole dose of spiritual musings. Every Breath Is Yours is hymn of the year! And I got to interview him too…
The First Time I Heard…
U2 were waxing lyrical about them in the mid eighties and I think I bought Pagan Place on the back of their raving. Ulster Hall in April ’86 is still the gig of all time!
19. DAVID WILCOX – Into The Mystery
Technically this is a 2002 release but I only found it in March so it is in. These are my charts so I write the rules – OK! The title sums up my spiritual journey of 2003. The title comes from the song Out Of The Question which says in a four minute song everything I would love to articulate in a sermon. It is a song about elusive search for truth, the truth in Wilcox case being God. God is indeed beyond the definitions of theologians or song writers – “I tried to trap you but I know I missed.” The elusiveness makes it no less real but redefines the rules of definition; “The truth is there for finding/But the logic that’s involved/A mystery unwinding/Not a problem to be solved.” By album’s end that God of mystery and elusiveness is bending from the galaxy of mystery to speak to us in our Native Tongues.
The First Time I Heard…
Very vivid story! It was May 1993 and was in Seattle about to start my drive across America. I was in Ellen Lopochinsky’s bed (she wasn’t!!!!) and I woke up to my first morning in the USA. There was sun beating in the window and a tree just outside. I reached out and pressed play on Ellen’s cassette player and Covert Wars came on. Such articulation.
20. KINGS OF LEON – Youth And Young Manhood
Of all that new punked up Strokes stoked rawk stuff this was the one that grabbed me most. I just heard Lynyrd Skynyrd meeting The Ramones and enjoyed it. Janice and I painted our front room in Ballycastle during the summer and I turned this up loud and it was great!
The First Time I Heard…
Read about these sons of preachers and gave it a try!
21. SUPER FURRY ANIMALS – Phantom Power
Yeh! Someone singing about the war.
22. RYAN ADAMS - Love Is Hell Part 2
Did Lost Highway really refuse this album? It is no Gold but these songs are great.
23. EMMYLOUS HARRIS – Stumble Into Grace
Not as great as Wrecking ball or Red Dirt Girl but has its moments. Strong Hand her beautiful tribute to June Carter Cash was made more poignant still by Johnny’s passing, her nod to the theology and politics of Bob Marley in Time In Babylon and her so write with Lanois Lost Unto This World.
24. RADIOHEAD – Hail To the Thief
Someone said it at the time and I agree I don’t love Radiohead but I am a huge admirer. I had to do a lot of work on this album this year and I am glad I had to.
25. FLEETWOOD MAC – Say You Will
Great comeback. Buckingham produces and guitar solos out while Stevie Nicks is has still that beautiful mystical sway of ribbons and lace. The extra CD version with Love Minus Zero even if I didn’t spend the extra!
26. THE STROKES – Room On Fire
They are state of New York’s art. Punk pop!
27. WARREN ZEVON – The Wind
A sad loss this year but he didn’t go before giving us one of his best albums. Sad, poignant, vulnerable and as zany and rocking as ever!
28. DAVID KITT – Square 1
Not as astounding as his debut or the EP before it but beautiful and mellow late night grooves with a little noise this time.
29. LUCINDA WILLIAMS – World Without Tears
She waited til her fifties to rock out but she rocks out here as well as those half her age and younger.
30. DENISON WITMER – Recovered
A tastefully chosen covers album from a great Philadelphia song writer in his own right! Any album with two Jackson Browne covers gets my vote.
31. PERNICE BROTHERS – Yours, Mine and Ours
Joe Pernice as sonically pleasing as ever.
32. RIC HORDINSKI – When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
This used to play guitar for the Number 1 act and produced number 19. Mystical art on guitar and in song.
33. ZWAN – Mary, Star Of the Sea
Former Smashing pumpkins Billy Corgan takes up his guitar and it would seem his cross and follows…
34. WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY – Regard The End
Robert Fisher with traditional songs or songs written in that vein and a lot of death and heaven.
35. MARTYN JOSEPH – Whoever It Was That Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home
More lyrical songs of deep spiritual ponderings without leaving the discomfort of the real world.
36. NEIL YOUNG – Greendale
Young writes a novel in song. Ambitious and intriguing.
37. YO LA TENGO – SUMMER SON
Grandaddy territory. Sounds like twilight in the desert. Easy on the ear and hard to not like.
38. CASSANDRA WILSON – Glamour
Smokey jazz voice wraps herself round some great songs!
39. RYAN ADAMS – Rock N Roll
Adams gets younger the older he gets. Giving The Strokes a run for their money but it is along way from Strangers Almanac.
40. BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB – Take Them On, On Your Own
Grunge up T. Rex riffs and add a rebellious rage against all things America in commerce and war (can they be separated!).
Back
