List No. 4: Beck to Liars

Ah, 2002: a year that will be remembered for supposedly reviving rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, loyal… Ah, 2002: a year that will be remembered for supposedly reviving rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, loyal radio listeners got tired of inane fabricated drivel permeating their existences and used their consumer power to demand more rock by snapping up the Strokes, White Stripes, Hives, Vines and even the Rolling Stones.

The best albums of 2002 didn’t rake in the most cash, nor did they bring rock back in its purest form. Rather, each of these artists seemed to be striving for something revolutionarily different. These records were made just for the sake of making music and haphazardly striking down complacency while they were at it. Enough preaching – here are my top five. Audiophiles, change is good.

5. Modey Lemon

Modey Lemon

AF Records

Though I just implied that the best albums of 2002 are those which were in sharp contrast to anything ever done before, and now I’m putting Modey Lemon, a band whose dark, junky rock is a reflection of times past, on the list. It would be a disservice not to mention this local band’s debut. Guitarist/vocalist/Moog player Phil Boyd and drummer Paul Quattrone have captured the ferocious energy of their live shows into an album that even sounds louder than your average CD.

4. Sea Change

Beck

Geffen Records

So Beck made this great Mutationsesque record, perhaps one of best albums ever about relationship troubles, then goes and tours with the Flaming Lips, who also just put out a superb album, creating an indie rock dream come true. The album itself is a perfect metaphor for Beck’s constant evolution, with its sweet folk melodies that clash sharply against Beck’s last release, the rowdy and full-figured Midnite Vultures.

3. Murray Street

Sonic Youth

Geffen Records

Sonic Youth, in their first album with Jim O’Rourke, luckily haven’t mellowed with age and again embrace change. This album is both concise, containing only seven tracks and the right amount of extended play to short punkish tracks, and ecstatic in only the way that Sonic Youth’s grinding guitars can be. O’Rouke’s melodic influence comes through on this album’s spacier tracks, “Karen Revisited” and “The Empty Page.”

2. They Threw us all in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top

Liars

Blast First/Mute

Liars have juxtaposed scary unconventionality with some intangible, familiar punk force on this album and at their electric live performances, much like it makes me both happy and sad that I was one of the fifty people who saw them at Club Laga a few months ago. The album, with its sentence-long song titles and jittery electronics, is more the framework that the experimental four-piece builds off during performance than a carbon-copy of performance.

1. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco

Nonesuch Records

What more can be said about this album? Not too many major label artists are dropped for being too experimental. Also, not too many rock albums inspire documentaries. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is dense, varied and emotional, and totally ended any blah categorization of Wilco as “alt-rock” with its brilliant use of static, syncopated beats, strings, various scratches and blips.