Best of 2003
Marcus Berkmann
Has 2003 been a good year for pop music? Ask me in a few years, and even then I probably won't know. It has only recently dawned on me what a great year 2000 was, what with the 0 Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump, James Grant's best album My Thrawn Glory and high-quality comebacks from Mark Knopfler, Rickie Lee Jones and (of course) Steely Dan. Whereas 2001 seems to have been a wasteland, at least for someone with my particular tastes. Maybe I haven't bought the right records yet. They must be out there somewhere. So the following is by no means a definitive or exhaustive guide to this year's records: it's merely the product of a no more than averagely whimsical purchasing policy.
I bought Belle and Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress (Rough Trade) purely because I had gone into a Woolworth's for the first time in 20 years and happened to see it there for £9.99. And also because this previously shambolic Glaswegian indie outfit had been produced for the first time by Trevor Horn. There's nothing like a completely unexpected collaboration to get the earlobes twitching, and few could be less likely than this.
Belle and Sebastian, despite their twee name and often rather delicate music, are a seven-piece collective so ineluctably serious that they never do interviews or give themselves named credits on their (generally very sober) album sleeves. Horn made all Frankie Goes To Hollywood's records and (highlight of his career) produced ABC's The Lexicon of Love. He is Mr Pop Sheen, whose perfectionism has eaten up recording budgets many times larger than anything Belle and Sebastian would have to offer. Apparently he rang them up and said, 'I know what you are trying to do and I can help you do it.' And by golly he has. It's a marvellous album, full of deft pop touches and glorious tunes. Horn has brought focus to their feyness without overwhelming it.
A much slower burn is Annie Lennox's Bare (RCA). I never much cared for the Eurythmics in their 1980s heyday, but since Lennox went solo she has made some interesting albums: the classic Diva (1992), the covers collection Medusa (1996), a Eurythmics reunion album Peace in 1999, and now this one, the rawest and most uncompromising of them all.
Is there anyone in the world more articulately miserable than the multimillionaire pop star? Lennox is thoroughly brassed off, and this gloom slightly stifles the album on the first few hearings. The tunes aren't as immediate as before, arrangements are muddier, vocals more obviously tortured. Nonetheless, it's worth persevering with. As you grow used to the emotional intensity of the songs, so the tunes start to force their way through. It's actually a very powerful album, the type that will be yielding new pleasures for years to come.
Slightly disappointing was Grandaddy's Sumday (V2). David Bowie got it bang on when he talked of 'too many tracks with the same weight and drive'. Their basic template, a sort of slacker pop with low-fi grunge leanings, informs almost every track, and most of them melt into each other in your mind, even after as many listens as I have subjected myself to. By comparison The Sop/aware Slump had almost delirious variety. But Sumday is still in the top five (for now) because of songwriter Jason Lytle's melodic gift and funny, fatalistic lyrics.
Lemon Jelly's marvellous, playful Lost Horizons (Beggars XI Recording) would be in the top five, as it's the record I have played most this year. But it was released in 2002. Curses.
The last two are, for me, fairly predictable. Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time's Keep Going (Folk Modern) was discussed at length in this column last month, while Fleetwood Mac's wondrous comeback album Say You Will (Reprise Records) I seem to mention all the time. Warning: this latter is an 18-track album, with ten terrific songs on it. It's your job as punter to identify those ten songs and then programme the CD player to play them and not the other eight. Wasn't the compact disc supposed to make it easier to listen to music? Think again, pop pickers. And Happy Christmas.
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