TOP 10 ROCK & POP CDS 2004

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 26, 2004 | by Leon McDermott

9WILCO A GHOST IS BORN (NONESUCH) ITS release was delayed when frontman Jeff Tweedy entered rehab to shed himself of an addiction to painkillers;

no surprise, then, that A Ghost Is Born is fuzzy, warm and enveloping, an expansion of the musical palette the band utilised on their previous Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Plaintive, experimental, and beautiful.

10TOM WAITS REAL GONE (ANTI) CLASSIC Tom Waits, even without his beloved piano. Clanking, skeletal rhythms, Waits sounding like a preacher with a mouth full of muddy grit, ghost tales and soused bar- room banter, sea shanties and Cuban rhythms; the best weird album you've ever heard.