Continuing my look at the albums of 2004…
I must have been highly anticipating Wilco’s A Ghost is Born, and yet I don’t know if I ever got around to hearing it.
This album, the band’s fifth, followed the widely acclaimed 2001 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It was that album, along with its predecessor Summerteeth, that got me into Wilco, and by the time 2004 rolled around, I was a big fan of all four of their releases.
Continuing my look at the albums of 2004…
The list of 2004 albums with which I’m unfamiliar (or only passingly familiar) isn’t very long. Actually, I should say the list of albums from that group I’m actually interested in hearing isn’t very long. This year saw a lot of albums released that don’t pique my interest at all.
But I did manage to pull together a batch of ten.
‘Kimberly’ is a song from Patti Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses. It is about a time Smith held her baby sister, Kimberly, in her arms during a lightning storm at her family’s New Jersey home.
The song has lots of great detail, unsurprising given Smith’s talents as both a poet and memoirist, and a melody that The Smiths later interpolated for their song ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.’
Here’s a track from Lily Allen’s sophomore album, 2009’s It’s Not Me, It’s You. ‘Him’ finds the Catholic-raised Allen wondering how much of an active role God plays in human life, if indeed a God exists.
In the late 00s, on this album and her debut, Alright, Still, Allen delivered cheeky modern pop with humor and style. She seemed to be kicking off a promising career.
OK, so I messed up.
I had an album slotted neatly into my #1 slot for 2004. In fact, it was a no-brainer. I was looking forward to writing about it.
Then I discovered that, contrary to the date stamp in my iTunes library, the album was actually released in February of 2005. So it will make a lovely entry after I’ve worked my way through the 5s, but it would be premature to include it now.
Meet Me In Montauk 