grapez top five albums of 2004

The streets of downtown Newburyport were clogged with snow banks and parked cars this morning resulting in my driving around in circles until finally finding an open space to land my Civic. Such is winter. It’s best not to rush in anxious cycles of cold desperation but rather go with the whirlpool flow until you finally come out the other end of the vortex and find yourself a spot of your very own. And such is music. There’s so much circling around us that it sounds like noise sometimes. And so I have a tendency to stick with what’s familiar. Like R.E.M. and U2. Their new albums of recognizable but refreshingly new-found tunes wore a channel in my very mind. Still, Brian Wilson’s Smile one-upped them and touched my soul with thirty-seven year old melodies that seem as timeless as a southwest breeze on an August seaside morning. Then rounding out these well-known runners-up in my top five was a wonderful collaboration of the old and the new: Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose produced by Jack White. I can remember an Indian Summer afternoon this autumn that caused an equal effect of insightful experience and innocent exuberance as these songs do. But an iPod will cause one to spin about the web until you’ve found something brand new. For me, this year, I discovered the Drive by Truckers. Their album The Dirty South mixes southern rock, Neil Young, and shades of Sun Records music with actually literate lyrics to tell their version of red-state down-home cooking. It rocks, it’s deep with its roots, and you can dance to its lyrics in your comprehension. Park yourself in its driving melodies, man, and chill out.