1994, New Albums, Other New Stuff

So, amongst my friends and myself, 1994 is widely regarded as the best year for music in our lifetimes. Some of the more notable albums from 1994 are as follows:

• Weezer - Weezer [Self-Titled]
• Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction
• The Offspring - Smash
• Green Day - Dookie
• They Might Be Giants - John Henry (my favorite TMBG album)
• NOFX - Punk in Drublic
• Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
• The Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
• Stone Temple Pilots - Purple

Now, that's 9 extremely solid albums. Weezer's self-titled is one of my favorites of all time, as is Smash, Stranger Than Fiction, and John Henry. So after perusing this list, it's hard to see another year that could possibly beat 1994. But strangely enough, the year 2003 is slowly gaining ground in my mind - and could very well be better than 1994. The biggest problem with trying to make a decision like this is simply longevity - I don't know how well the albums from 2003 will hold up a decade from now, as I've only been listening to them for a matter of months. The great albums of 1994 have passed the test of time, and 10 years later they still make me happy to hear [and geez, 10 years since Dookie? I feel old! I remember singing "Basketcase" on the back of the bus on the way to middle school!] So where am I coming from with this 2003 hypothesis? Here's my quick list of great albums from 2003:

• Cursive - The Ugly Organ [an album which I absolutely love, my favorite of all time perhaps...]
• A.F.I. - Sing The Sorrow
• The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
• The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
• Outkast - Speakerboxxx / The Love Below
• The Postal Service - Give Up
• Evanescence - Fallen (shut up. It's a good album.)
  
• The Decemberists - Her Majesty, The Decemberists
• Bubba Sparxxx - Deliverance
• Linkin Park - Meteora (again, shut up. I like it.)
• Dover - The Flame
• Beulah - Yoko
• The Coral - The Coral
• Ozma - Spending Time on the Borderline (phenomenal power-pop)

Now, I doubt that entire list will still be remotely near my playlist come 2013, but some of the CDs from 2003 really blow me away. The Shins put out an amazingly original disc that proves it's not what you do, but how you do it. The album by The Mars Volta is a sonic masterpiece, with so much going on that it's hard to keep track of it at first but once you do, you love it. Cursive's album is possibly one of my favorites of all time. A.F.I.'s new album shocked me as I had positively hated everything they'd done up to this point, but Sing The Sorrow is absolutely phenomenal. I guess I won't know the answer to this hypothesis for another few years [2008, at least] but I'd assume that a few of them will stay up near the top of my list.

Speaking of albums, I've recently gone on a flurry of listening to new stuff. Here are my thoughts on a few of them:

Cake's Pressure Chief
Cake hasn't completely returned to their days of glory - I liked their first few albums better. The first song on the disc, "Wheels" is one of the best Cake songs I've ever heard though. Now don't take this as a negative review, I liked the disc. I just happened to like Prolonging The Magic and Fashion Nugget better - but those two albums are classics.

Nelly's Suit and Sweat
Two new albums from the rap magnate of the STL. Now to put this review in perspective, please understand that I loved Country Grammar, and I liked Nellyville. So I went into listening to these two albums - Suit is Nelly trying his hand at R&B and being smooth, Sweat is more upbeat and club-friendly - and I expected to at least like something I heard. Not so. These two albums were pretty awful in my mind...I just couldn't even remotely get into either of them. Sweat was the better of the two, but some of the tracks just went beyond mindless and just ended up making my head hurt. Consider these two albums as $25 you're never getting from me, Nelly. Stop making crap music. I completely forgot to mention the album Da Derrty Versions: The Reinvention that came between these two and Nellyville but that's for good reason, the album was completely forgettable, just like these two. Move on, nothing to see here.

Flogging Molly's Within a Mile of Home
For some reason unknown to me, I'd never listened to Flogging Molly before listening to this album - and I hate myself for waiting so long. I'm quite a fan of Irish and Scottish musical styles and if you don't believe me, check my CD collection for all the Dropkick Murphys albums and a copy of The Chieftain's The Best of the Chieftains. I put this CD in my dash on a recent drive over to Jacksonville, not knowing what to expect and I have to say I was very pleasantly suprised. Now I knew what style of music these guys made, but I'd just never taken the time to get into them. I will now though - after a recent binge on Indie music, this album was a nice change from the downbeat emo-ness that I'd been stuck on for a while. This album is a great, happy album.

Sum 41's Chuck
When I heard Sum 41's first full-length album, All Killer No Filler, I wasn't all that impressed and [falsely] wrote Sum 41 off as another mediocre pop-punk band. I didn't get into the album, probably because of my prejudice - later listens proved that I liked the disc. Sum 41's second album Does This Look Infected? is probably the best pop-punk since Green Day's Dookie - a bold claim, but DTLI? was absolutely incredible. Following in the footsteps of 2002's album, Sum 41 gives us 2004's Chuck, which after a few days of listening, I've come to like. It's more musically diverse than their previous efforts, but that's both a good and a bad thing. The album has some amazing highs, but it hits some snags - slow songs kill the pace of the album and take away from its overall effectiveness to rock. Now I really do like the album, but the last one was better. The last one was a classic though - but I still look forward to new Sum 41 stuff when I can get it. They still know how to rock and they still know how to make music that kicks ass. Let's just hope that this flirting with a style change doesn't become permanent. I don't want to lose another good pop-punk band, since good pop-punk is pretty hard to come by [something I've lamented in great detail here].

I went out and bought the Aladdin 2-disc DVD set, and of course I'm thrilled with it. I don't care for the extra stuff, a new Clay Aiken song and Nick and Jessica singing "Whole New World" - but thankfully Disney didn't "add" this stuff to the playtime of the regular movie [like they did with that new song in The Lion King] so when I popped in the disc into my DVD player, it was just a great trip down memory lane from start to finish. I still knew the lyrics to all the songs, and I still loved the whole movie - Robin Williams as the Genie simply made the movie. Possibly the best single performance by a character in a Disney movie [though Patrick Warburton's role as Kronk in The Emperor's New Groove was just amazingly hilarious].

I saw that season one of Fox's award winning comedy Arrested Development is coming out on DVD this coming week. This show is freaking hilarious, and I for one can't wait to both pick up the DVD and to see season two this coming fall on Fox. The only other comedy shows that I like nearly as much as this one are Comedy Central's Chappelle's Show and HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which are both incredible in their own ways. I've been waiting for AD to come to DVD, if for nothing else than the fact that I can get friends into the show. AD is one of those shows that if you miss an episode, you lose the feel of things. I watched the first episode and loved it - it was like an arty-comedy movie brought to my little screen. Like somebody had watched Rushmore too many times and decided to make a TV show like it. If you haven't seen the show, go freaking get the DVD. You will love it.