Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2002

Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2002

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50.

Comets On Fire - Field Recordings from the Sun
August 13, 2002
Critic Score
70
2 reviews

This follow-up is just as nasty but much more involved: where the debut was sharp, terse and loud as fuck, Field Recordings is sprawling, massive, and loud as fuck.

49.

dälek - From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots
August 6, 2002
Critic Score
74
2 reviews
As a poet, Dälek has a grasp on subtlety that most will never approach. And as a collective, Dälek have achieved the seemingly impossible: successfully bridging the conventional and the experimental in a way that respects both at once.

48.

Tom Waits - Alice
May 7, 2002
Critic Score
83
11 reviews
While the rest of pop culture infantilizes itself with cussing puppets and manufactured bands who willfully dangle like marionettes, Waits is serving up vintage brittle fusion and somehow breaking the law of diminishing returns.

48.

Tom Waits - Blood Money
May 7, 2002
Critic Score
81
11 reviews
The music is so expressive and confident in its spook-ass vibe that it's flat-out cinematic.

45.

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - In C
October 1, 2001
Critic Score
81
2 reviews

44.

Hrvatski - Swarm & Dither
October 14, 2002
Critic Score
68
2 reviews
You might assume most new electronic music is devoid of that old-fashioned human emotion, but Hrvatski's music offers evidence that it can be both intellectual and inviting.

42.

Beck - Sea Change
September 24, 2002
Critic Score
80
15 reviews

On Sea Change, Beck sounds intentionally world-weary, but it's the songs themselves that sound labored. Is it no longer enough for Beck to write profound, genre-bending tunes that stand on their own? Does he really need the crutch of suffocating overproduction and bold strokes of orchestration to shock us into caring again?

41.

Talib Kweli - Quality
November 19, 2002
Critic Score
82
7 reviews

40.

Derek Bailey - Ballads
April 0, 2002
Critic Score
84
3 reviews

Bailey's ability to let the song go where the improvisation takes it-- while resisting the temptation to veer completely off course-- is the mark of a true artist, and Ballads is a fine entryway to the appreciation of Bailey's art.

39.

Kevin Drumm - Sheer Hellish Miasma
August 19, 2002
Critic Score
83
2 reviews

38.

Eminem - The Eminem Show
May 26, 2002
Critic Score
72
9 reviews
He's playing the same old marshall vs shady real-or-fake game as usual and its as interesting and complex as it ever was.

37.

Secret Machines - September 000
March 25, 2002
Critic Score
82
2 reviews

36.

DJ /rupture - Minesweeper Suite
January 1, 2002
Critic Score
84
3 reviews

35.

Hot Snakes - Suicide Invoice
June 11, 2002
Critic Score
80
4 reviews

34.

Tim Hecker - Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again
November 20, 2001
Critic Score
88
4 reviews

Each listen is deeply satisfying. Haunt Me is not a shift in paradigm, but it does explore this particular sound with taste and invention, and I wouldn't hesitate to place it on the top tier of current abstract electronic music.

33.

RJD2 - Deadringer
July 23, 2002
Critic Score
84
9 reviews

32.

Philip Jeck - Stoke
January 1, 2002
Critic Score
84
1 review

31.

ISIS - Oceanic
September 16, 2002
Critic Score
97
3 reviews

30.

Mr. Lif - I Phantom
September 17, 2002
Critic Score
79
5 reviews

29.

Sigur Rós - ( )
October 28, 2002
Critic Score
82
14 reviews

But despite its standout moments, the repetition of the album's central lyric and the relative lack of innovation in contrast to Ágætis byrjun can't deliver on such claims, and ( ) simply winds up a decent follow-up from a band who has already proven themselves capable of much, much more.

28.

Missy Elliott - Under Construction
November 12, 2002
Critic Score
81
14 reviews

Once you push the politics of it aside, Under Construction's a good record with some incredibly sick production work.

25.

Neko Case - Blacklisted
August 20, 2002
Critic Score
79
9 reviews

Blacklisted's accompaniment is roundly excellent and evocative, but Case's voice is what really sells the record.

24.

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas
February 25, 2002
Critic Score
79
6 reviews

Most of Mclusky Do Dallas holds this pace, but infectiously poppy songwriting always girds the extreme elements. This works to keep the mood varied, as the band stretches out barbed-wire guitar lines like the one on "Collagen Rock", or follows the easy stride and sudden fits of a song like "Alan is a Cowboy Killer".

23.

Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays
October 17, 2002
Critic Score
89
2 reviews

22.

The Fire Show - Saint the Fire Show
July 16, 2002
Critic Score
89
2 reviews

21.

Wire - Read & Burn 01
June 25, 2002
Critic Score
74
7 reviews

21.

Wire - Read & Burn 02
October 1, 2002
Critic Score
83
3 reviews

20.

Hot Hot Heat - Make Up the Breakdown
October 8, 2002
Critic Score
77
14 reviews

There's no reason Breakdown couldn't put Hot Hot Heat on the national stage-- the band's accessible enough on top of their inventiveness to be a feminine facial structure or two away from superstardom.

19.

Deerhoof - Reveille
June 4, 2002
Critic Score
83
2 reviews

18.

The Streets - Original Pirate Material
October 22, 2002
Critic Score
86
14 reviews

Given the fact that it does, eventually, manage to overcome the horrific-sounding concept of British hip-hop, it seems pretty reasonable to give it a recommendation. Bloody good show, I say.

17.

Fenn O'Berg - The Return of Fenn O'Berg
July 1, 2002
Critic Score
87
3 reviews

16.

Black Dice - Beaches and Canyons
July 29, 2002
Critic Score
79
6 reviews

15.

Enon - High Society
June 4, 2002
Critic Score
83
3 reviews

14.

Sleater-Kinney - One Beat
August 20, 2002
Critic Score
80
13 reviews

With One Beat, Sleater-Kinney have turned in an album that absolutely, positively OBLITERATES the gender card, an album so colossal that all prefixes to the label 'rock band' must be immediately discarded.

13.

Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
October 21, 2002
Critic Score
94
2 reviews

12.

Max Tundra - Mastered by Guy at the Exchange
November 12, 2002
Critic Score
84
3 reviews
This record shows the breadth of his creativity, yet it's accessible, catchy and brilliantly simple. A massive achievement.

11.

El-P - Fantastic Damage
May 14, 2002
Critic Score
90
8 reviews
No doubt, El-P has delivered both what we'd hoped for and what we need right now. This is his statement for these times, and it's one of the finest hip-hop records I've heard all year.

9.

Sonic Youth - Murray Street
June 25, 2002
Critic Score
81
12 reviews

Journalistic integrity aside, it gives me great pleasure to be able to like a new Sonic Youth album without having to force it, and to finally give their back catalog a nice, long rest. You can bet your hat there's gonna be Jeremies who say Murray Street isn't far-out enough, and Ericas who would prefer the band kept things under four minutes, but a whole lot of in-between folk are going to be pleased as punch with the results.

8.

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
February 19, 2002
Critic Score
84
12 reviews
While the band continues to traffic in childhood and nostalgia, the atmosphere on this album is a shade darker than on previous releases, and comparatively tense with a noticeable thread of paranoia.

7.

The Notwist - Neon Golden
January 14, 2002
Critic Score
82
9 reviews

A decade into their career, the Notwist have created a masterpiece by pulling the same trick they pulled on Shrink: mixing things that might not seem to fit together into a beautiful, seamless whole.

6.

Spoon - Kill The Moonlight
August 20, 2002
Critic Score
78
8 reviews

This record is an adventure in starkness, beyond Girls Can Tell even while evoking some of that album's finest moments.

5.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
July 16, 2002
Critic Score
85
15 reviews
Despite this album's disappointing brevity (45 minutes, padded with two instrumentals), its dense production and well-crafted melodies offer long-term replayability.

4.

The Books - Thought For Food
June 3, 2002
Critic Score
79
5 reviews

The pleasure to be had from Thought for Food has nothing to do with musical referencing. This modest and unusual album stands on its own as a quiet triumph-- one unlike anything I've ever heard before.

3.

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Source Tags & Codes
February 26, 2002
Critic Score
80
15 reviews

Dense, beautiful, intricate, haunting, explosive, and dangerous, this is everything rock music aspires to be: intense, incredible songs arranged perfectly and performed with skill and passion. Source Tags and Codes will take you in, rip you to shreds, piece you together, lick your wounds clean, and send you back into the world with a concurrent sense of loss and hope. And you will never, ever be the same.

2.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
April 23, 2002
Critic Score
91
16 reviews

Beneath the great story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, there are all the tropes and symbols and coincidences of a little mythology; but under that is a fantastic rock record.

1.

Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
August 20, 2002
Critic Score
82
11 reviews

Turn On the Bright Lights has been one of the most strikingly passionate records I've heard this year. That other people I've spoken with have the opportunity to experience it, and that they feel similarly about it, can only be a good thing.

Original Source: http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/5888-top-50-albums-of-2002/
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