The Automatik

Top Ten Albums of 2004 (Once again, this includes new releases, old favorites, and just-discovered gems)

1. Morrissey, You Are the Quarry: Please don’t call it a comeback, because he never left our hearts. With this album, Moz proves that not only does he still have something to say, but that he can say it with vitriol whilst wearing a natty pinstriped suit and holding a Tommy gun. You can all drop “cardigan-wearing whiny Brit” from your vocabulary now, thank you.
2. OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below: I’m no hip hop expert or even a die-hard aficionado, but I do believe OutKast is the cure for that dread disease known as I-like-all-kinds-of-music-except-rap-itis. Big Boi’s eclectic, addictive Speakerboxxx is clearly the superior disc, but The Love Below assures us there’s no threat of Benjamin Andre taking off his cool anytime soon.
3. Sam Roberts, We Were Born in a Flame: He looks like Jesus if Jesus was buff, blue-eyed, and rocked your ass off. He writes songs about Socialism, plays the violin, and sings in French. What’s not to love? And when he shouts, “I would die for rock and roll,” you do not doubt him.
4. Courtney Love, America’s Sweetheart: After ten years of having to defend myself when I’d say I didn’t hate her, I finally got fed up and started to. Then she releases this album. At times disturbing and unhinged and just plain messy, it’s real and affecting and wonderful. Damn you, woman.
5. Jason Falkner, Bliss Descending (EP): Leave it to Jason Falkner to make the Top Ten albums list with a five-song EP. He’s a pop singer, but don’t let that fool you into thinking his music is disposable fluff. I look forward to putting his next (full-length!) release on my Top Ten List for 2005.
6. P.J. Harvey, Uh Huh Her: At first I hated it to the point of discomfort and annoyance. But I think that’s sort of the idea. Uh Huh Her is an almost painfully arid collection of songs with shimmering mirages of gorgeousness strategically located to take the edge off. (And even though I don’t have every one of Polly Jean’s albums, I will stand proudly by that previous statement.)
7. Air, Talkie Walkie: It might not have achieved the prog rock glory of 10,000 Hz. Legend, but it’s still great. And you can make it out to it, which is always a bonus.
8. Adam and the Ants, Dirk Wears White Sox (CD reissue): Finally, the (arguably) greatest album by the seminal New Wave S&M pirate is released on CD, with all the songs that were cut from the 1982 re-release. And it’s worth the wait. With lyrics like this, there’s no question why Adam Ant is still, more than twenty years later, the king of the wild frontier: Day I met God I got so carried away…not with religion but the size of his knob.
9. Siouxsie and the Banshees, JuJu: Seeing Ms. Sioux and Co. perform in September rekindled my dormant love for her hypnotic voice and haunting music. I must have listened to this album fifty times in the past few months, obsessing about the songs to the point of dreaming about them. Often imitated, but never equaled, Siouxsie and the Banshees are one of the most unique bands of the 80s and are tragically underrated.
10. Gary Glitter, Rock and Roll-Gary Glitter’s Greatest Hits: I know I shouldn’t love songs by a confirmed pedophile, especially when he boasts about being “the man who put the bang in gang” and looks like Tony Curtis’s decrepit alter ego in diva drag, but I can’t help it. If all you know is “Rock and Roll, Part Two,” you are missing out.

Top Ten Best Things About 2004

1. Getting married to Shaun and the time spent with our families in Canada: It was the greatest and most deliriously fun time of my whole life.
2. Slooooooaaaaaaan! I finally got to see them play in my hometown, meet them, embarrass myself in front of them, and have Chris Murphy flirt with me. As my friend Melissa said, “It’s like the culmination of a dream, honey.”
3. The August 7 concert on Olympic Island, in Toronto, Ontario: Less than a month after seeing Sloan in New Orleans, I got to see them play at an all-day outdoor festival in Canada that they organized. With Shaun at my side. And there were no moshers! It wasn’t just Sloan, though; it was Sam Roberts and The Stills and several others who blew us away. Thank you, Jay Ferguson, for teaching us how to rock…and how to love.
4. Being thisclose to attaining Permanent Residency status in Canada.
5. Meeting internet friends in person: Melissa, Collin, and Zach-you are too cool for school. And the rest of you? I can’t wait!
6. Hanging out with Brennan: I’m really going to miss you when I move.
7. Not caring about new music: Sure, there are a few new bands that have piqued my interest, but on the whole I just don’t feel the need to listen to every release by every band that is proclaimed as the “saviors of rock and roll.” Not when there are Sparks albums I haven’t even heard yet.
8. James Spader winning an Emmy: I wanted this to happen last year and it did. Oh, Alan Shore. You’re ethically challenged and we love you.
9. Trying to change my “look”: Pointy toed shoes DO look flatter me, as do straight-legged pants. Who knew?
10. Goodbye, Number 20

Top Ten Worst Things about 2004

1. Being apart from Shaun
2. Car accidents and pet surgery (can this please be the last time I ever have to list these two items?)
3. Hurricane Ivan and all his friends
4. Tom Arbon’s murder
5. Self-righteous ignorance posing as religious conviction
6. Homophobia
7. The proess of applying for Canadian Permanent Residency
8. Friends moving away
9. No new Redd Kross album (I’m crossing my fingers for 2005)
10. Disappointing releases by The Vines and Hanson-and I was counting on you, too.

The Cool Shit (aka, “If I was a hipster writer for a trendy magazine, I’d put these things on my list” Items of 2004)

1. Sloan. So cool that they get mentioned in three separate Top Ten lists. (I was going to put the U.S. release of Action Pact with extra tracks in the Top Ten Albums, but I thought that was pushing it.) Sloan is the kind of band that makes you want to drive slow with the windows down and the stereo cranked so that people will stop and stare at you. Hot Canadian rock stars, Photoshop muses, sources of much adoration and causes of much giddy laughter…not only do I love Sloan, I love loving them. And so should you.
2. Jim Thirlwell. You may know him as one of a plethora of personalities under the Foetus umbrella, but to me he’s just a genius. Never has his near-impenetrable pastiche, masculine swagger, or operatic growl seemed more appealing. And with age has come the sort of self-exploration that adds a whole new layer of depth to his work. He’s such an original that he is his own genre. There is no mold to break. Don’t let this man’s brilliance slip away from your ears.
3. Lost. Not since Freaks and Geeks have I been this emotionally invested in a show. It’s like a combination of Land of the Lost, The X-Files, and Survivor. I know they’re stranded on an island, but I hope they never jump the shark.
4. Smallville. It’s been on for a while, but it just keeps getting better. The characters are becoming more complex and the mythology more fascinating. Sure, it can be hokey at times, but young Clark Kent’s unwavering faith in goodness and Lex Luthor’s eerie descent into evil make for damn good television.
5. Freaks and Geeks on DVD. The show may have ended a few years ago, but its amazing ability to astound has not. Although the torches of other cancelled shows have been kept burning by the efforts of dedicated fans, none has been more deserving of devotion than Freaks and Geeks. The DVD set features all the episodes with the (peerless) original music, commentary, outtakes, cast interviews; it almost makes up for the fact that the show only lasted one season.
6. Arrested Development. It took me a few viewings to grok the subversive and surprisingly absurdist humor of this anti-sitcom, but now I realize why the Emmys were well-deserved. Every character is flawed, even the sympathetic ones, and not in a whiny, heavy-handed way like the dysfunctional family of Everybody Loves Raymond. Arrested Development is like a surrealist comedy, and it’s hilarious.
7. Napoleon Dynamite. Less a fictional movie than a documentary of oddballs, I found myself laughing out of sheer confusion. Yet, the film doesn’t mock its subjects; there’s a reverence for these misfits. I would applaud the actors’ performances but they are so believable I am not sure if they were even acting at all.
8. Death From Above 1979. After their string of recent sold out shows across Canada, the U.K., and Japan, I can scarcely believe that I saw these guys with the Meligrove Band at a $5 show in the rec room of an old church this summer. We had to leave because they shattered our eardrums. The music is an unholy alliance of 80s speed metal, New Wave dance music, and funk. And it’s just two guys. You gotta give props to a band who has the balls to post the message, “If I had the resources I would fly a plane into [James Murphy's] skull” on their website after being approached by Death From Above Records to change their name.
9. The Automatik. The coolest cybernetic organism ever to write about pop culture.
10. Chuck Klosterman. He’s a senior writer for SPIN, but don’t hold it against him. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is everything a pop culture treatise should be: insular, clever, and hilarious. Deconstruction is like breathing to Mr. K. Although he doesn’t have the groundbreaking, anarchic prose style of Lester Bangs (which is actually my main critique of his writing), his essay on unironic love of Billy Joel comes from a similar place as Bangs’ piece on Bob Seger. At times the snark can be smothering, but he’s created some excellent essays. In fact, he’s so good that I sort of hate him out of a deep-seated envy.

Top Ten List of “Enough Already”

1. Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie: I’d call them Death’s Head and the Sickly Child, but I’m quite sure they’ve never read Brideshead Revisited and wouldn’t get the reference. Actually, I’m not even sure they can read.
2. Hollywood liberals: Their vast sums of money prevent them from actually living in the world I inhabit, so their opinions on it are meaningless to me.
3. Slutty tweens
4. 2004 Presidential Election Drama
5. Reality shows: Okay, really now. Fuck off.
6. Nipplegate/Wardrobe Malfunction references: It’s a boob, folks. Let’s move on.
7. Shitty new music hyped to the heavens by anyone and everyone.
8. Emo_____
9. Usher: If I see one more fashion spread of him humping some half-naked model, I’m going to hurl.
10. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy backlash: I know Carson Kressley’s wardrobe could make you question the good in the universe, but he never makes anyone else wear plaid golf pants with flip flops.