Best of 2001: Music

ArtForum, Dec, 2001

Bob Nickas

1. Rodney Graham, Getting It Together in the Country Is this the sound track to the new reality? Recorded two summers ago but lately on my turntable just about all the time, "Nature Has No Purpose," "Champagne for Everyone," "This Is the Only Living I've Got (Don't Take It Away from Me)," and a beautifully resigned cover of Dave Mason's "Feelin' Alright" got me through the dusty days.

2. LILiPUT A reissue of everything from '78-'83; an eccentric, electric rush. Never underestimate four bored Swiss girls.

3. The Fall, The Unutterable Mark E. Smith stuttering all over the k on "Ketamine Sun"--one of life's guiltier pleasures.

4. Shuggie Otis, Inspiration information The long-lost soul classic, ca. '74, as fresh as anything ca. now, with "Strawberry Letter 23," one of the stone-cold pop songs of all time.

5. Fantomas, The Director's Cut Henry Mancini and Bernard Herrmann never sounded as suave ... or as sinister.

6. Dead Meadow, Howls from the Hills Note to Kenneth Anger: more music for Lucifer Rising?

7. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells "The Union Forever" actually channels Citizen Kane: "Well, I'm sorry but I'm not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping, or real estate. What would I like to have been? Everything you hate."

8. Black Dice, Erase Errata The new No Wave.

9. Lord High Fixers In a dream, Curtis Mayfield and Phil Ochs turned the Art Ensemble of Chicago into protest punk, and the LHF were born.

10. Bob Dylan, "Things Have Changed" Performed during the Academy Awards, appropriately enough. Dylan is, after all, the new Brando.

Rachel Greene

1. Neu! The perfect sound track to Richter's "18. Oktober 1977" cycle. With its mesmerizing oppositional and aimless tracks, this rerelease, from the same fraught world ('70s West Germany) as Baader-Meinhof, encapsulates that culture's urge to self-define.

2. P.J. Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea No longer a singing interface to some archetype of a suffering, rejected woman, P.J.'s energy has become less labile, more Patti Smith.

3. The Strokes, Is This It Like Vanessa Beecroft's bored mannequins, the Strokes ooze ennui. I'd imagined them as normal kids who'd discovered the VU. Turns out they're cosmopolitan Manhattanites. Regardless, songwriter-vocalist Julian Casablancas is a real talent.

4. Nirvana, "10th Anniversary Box Set" Reportedly quashed by scary Cobain estate executrix Courtney Love. One of my generation's most fragile artists, screwed again.

5. Le Tigre, Feminist Sweepstakes A band using music as an entry into feminist consciousness, encouraging us along the way to wear name tags, have fun, and kick some shit.

6. Radiohead, Amnesiac Heart-tugging, vague, atmospheric: lullabies that defy analysis.

7. Missy Elliott, Miss ... So Addictive Unexpected flourishes around sexy lyrics and catchy beats suggest an agenda more cutting-edge and ambitious than meets the eye.

8. The Need (Bowery Ballroom, New York, Apr. 12) They're years ahead, scoring for hybrids of sci-fi and Grand Guignol I can't yet visualize.

9. Caetano Veloso, Omaggio a Federico e Giulietta An homage to the Fellinis and masterpieces like Nights of Cabiria. Nothing chaotic here, just affirmation.

10. Chuck D, Fight the Power: Race, Rap, and Reality From '97, but I just got the book. Today's hip-hop is conservative, and D's intelligent narrative of its finer moments inspires.

Dennis Cooper

1. Pin back, Blue Screen Life The year's most enigmatic, impeccable, swoonily beautiful songs.

2. Weezer, The America's most popular great band brings rock formalism to the masses. Thirty perfect minutes.

3. Bjork, Vespertine She escapes Lars von Trier and Matthew Barney unscathed.

4. Daft Punk, Discovery Intricate, vapid, irresistible, brainy French electro-pop piffle.

5. Mouse on Mars, Idiology Electronic music's creative recession continued this year with a few eccentric exceptions. This was the wackiest.

6. Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus Even wiser words and music from Pavement's brilliant crusader for and against irony.

7. Sigur Ros, Agaetis Byrjun Weirdly charismatic, progressive rock--inflected borderline sonic tedium.

8. DJ Screw & the Screwed-up Click Soldiers United for Cash Posthumous CD of erratic slo-mo hip-hop celebrating the effects of cough syrup by a Houston DJ who allegedly died from an overdose of same.

9. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells Suspiciously stylish but sincere brother-and-sister act (or divorced couple, depending on the interview) out of Detroit. Sparse, impassioned, quasi-gimmicky blues rock.

10. Autechre, Confield Music so cold and abstract it makes Carl Andre seem like Kiki Smith.

Ben Ratliff

1. John Lewis (Alice Tully Hall, New York, Jan. 18) How inept we seem to have been in not recognizing his swing and sensuality, and what a way to go out, with an almost perfect live retrospective only sixty days before this jazz master's death.

2. Carlinhos Brown and Timbalada (Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Feb. 25) When Brown let loose with the heavy, dense James Brown funk, the crowd froze. When he played this year's Carnaval hit, a cheery cha-cha-cha, the crowd exploded.