Best of Music 2001

10. The Chamber Strings
Month of Sundays (Bobsled)
This brightly hued gem leaps out of the speakers from the first song, an original that's part Burt Bacharach and part Carole King -- with a dash of the Mamas and the Papas. Yes, the lyrics are slight. Yes, the time-capsule arrangements sometimes border on silliness (yeah, baby!). But on only its second album, the group achieves such unabashedly warm prettiosity that such complaints are rendered irrelevant.

Top Five Songs

1. Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
"Where Does Yer Go Now?" from How I Long to Feel That Summer in My Heart
(Beggars Banquet)
No one in this pop-exotica outfit can sing well, but damned if this isn't the year's flat-out prettiest melody (boosted by a soaring, imaginative -- and surprisingly minimal -- arrangement), no matter how shaky the delivery.

2. Arab Strap
"Haunt Me," from The Red Thread
(Matador)
That this brooding Scottish group saved its best song for next to last on its smoothest album is just another sign of maturity outweighing the dyspepsia that was almost too much on its previous albums. The other songs on this list come first on the albums they represent -- arguably a must to gain the attention of fickle listeners. This number, all addictive orchestral loop and hemorrhaging heart, is a small miracle of barely controlled turbulence so transcendent that to have put it first might have caused brain damage in unprepared listeners.

3. Ivy
"Undertow," from Long Distance (Nettwerk)
Pop hooks are tricky; repeat them too often, and the song becomes obvious and boring. Ivy opens its third disc with a hook that won't quit, one so good that you don't mind hearing it as often as the group wants to restate it. Which is a lot.

4. Fonda
"The Sun Keeps Shining on Me," from The Strange and the Familiar (Hidden Agenda)
This could be the B-side to Ivy's "Undertow"; the tonal difference between the groups' coldly efficient chanteuses is minimal.

5. Rebecca Gates
"The Seldom Scene," from Ruby Series (Badman)
With just this much less quirk, Gates' Spinanes might have earned some deserved attention in the marketplace. This is what Gates sounds like with this much more quirk. The best song on an outstanding solo debut.

David Cantwell

Top Ten Albums 1. Rodney Crowell
The Houston Kid (Sugar Hill)
Nothing in 2001 could touch Rodney Crowell's The Houston Kid. His story songs about growing up poor and white are gripping and complex, his character sketches generous and insightful. Throughout, his twangy guitar-based arrangements rage and exult, empathize and forgive -- and rock out like lightning bolts [splitting] pine trees down to the roots. I know love is all I need, Crowell sings, rendering that cliché hard-won rather than romantic. Is this country-rock, roots-rock, alt-country? Label it how you please, but this might just be the genre's finest album in a quarter century.

2. The Coup
Party Music (75 Ark)
What happened to rap that gave a shit about something besides bitches and Benjamins? The Coup (MC Boots Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress) addresses that old fart's lament with an on-the-one antidote. Musically, its wicked samples and dance-floor-packing beats allude to old-school science-droppers, from Arrested Development to KRS-One to X-Clan, without ever feeling nostalgic. Indeed, this Party campaigns for the future, championing female equality and blue-collar dignity while dispensing advice both sanitary ("Wear Clean Draws") and revolutionary ("5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO"), the best being we could all at once retire.

3. (tie) Patty Loveless
Mountain Soul (Epic)
Rhonda Vincent
The Storm Still Rages (Rounder)
In a stellar year for bluegrass, Vincent's and Loveless' albums were the cream of the crop. But they're quite different recordings. Check out what each singer does with "Just Someone I Used to Know," a 1969 Porter-and-Dolly hit that somehow wound up on both discs. Loveless' version is stark and bluesy, emphasizing Patty's soulful mountain harmonies with duet partner Jon Randall. Vincent, on the other hand, spotlights her band, the Rage, via an arrangement steeped in sophisticated trio harmonies and timing that makes the rhythm hop and scoot. Mark both albums as for-the-ages classics.

5. Bruce Springsteen
Live in New York City (Columbia)
In less cautious moments, I'm calling this Springsteen's best album. The themes and narratives that have driven his career for a quarter century crystallize here as never before. He carries us, and his band and audience carry him, from the idealism of "Prove It All Night" to the harsh realities of "Atlantic City" -- and still he finds reason to believe in a "Land of Hope and Dreams." Neither The E-Street Band nor Bruce's strangled guitar solos has ever sounded better on record. No wonder. A few studio masterpieces notwithstanding, live performance has always been Springsteen's real medium.

6. Nick Lowe
The Convincer (Yep Roc)
Now this is pure pop for now people, and for future ones, too, if they're smart. Elegant and slyly soulful, delivered with uncommon craft, unexpected sincerity and, as always, an unrivaled sense of humor, The Convincer is the sort of heartbreakingly beautiful pop record fans figured Lowe had in him all along.

7. Bob Dylan
Love and Theft (Columbia)
You can't repeat the past, someone insists, to which Dylan replies, of course you can. He makes this point throughout, looting melodies and licks from minstrelsy, Tin Pan Alley, and the Chicago and country blues. Still, his repetitions never descend to mimicry, thanks (finally!) to a band he deserves. The sonics are a tad thin -- as a producer, Dylan makes a great singer-songwriter -- but that hardly matters because of his singular voice, by turns hilarious, sweet and horribly prescient. How did he know to write Judge says to the high-sheriff, 'I want him dead or alive/Either one, I don't care'?