The Best of Music 2001

Oh, to be a movie reviewer. Assuming that an average of five movies are commercially released each week, that makes about 250 films to consider when crafting top-ten lists. Sounds tough, but whole genres can be dismissed (goodbye, teen comedies!). Plus, there’s no need to sit through an entire stinker — laudatory performances almost never occur during otherwise execrable flicks.

On the other hand, irrepressible singles do show up on spotty CDs (see the latest from Pink, DMX and Stone Temple Pilots) and the best songs aren’t necessarily the radio singles (see almost any metal or hardcore rap act), necessitating that each track be given at least a cursory listen. Given that about thirty albums get released each week (and that’s a conservative estimate), that leaves more than 1,500 titles to sift through at year’s end. And it turns out that, at the very least, 10 percent of those rank between damn good and borderline excellent, with almost every genre producing a few gems.

Hip-hop rode a fourth-quarter rally to an impressive showing. Jazz offered lavish reissues and fresh approaches. Bluegrass lassoed a massive audience thanks to a dark-horse soundtrack. Hard-rock shrugged off its dunce cap on the way to producing the year’s three most intelligent releases. And regular rock, courtesy of the Strokes and the White Stripes, generated hype about albums that actually deserved it. Doubtless, all of the Pitch’s writers still harbor some frustration about the worthy discs they just didn’t have room to tout, but none has any regrets about selecting the standouts found on the lists that appear in the following pages.

Top 20 Albums

1. System of a Down
Toxicity (American)
Wake up, singer Serj Tankian shouts at the opening of System of a Down's alternately jagged and sadly poignant single "Chop Suey!" It's an appropriate rallying cry from a band that serves as an alarm clock for the heavy-music scene, alerting fans lulled into accepting mediocrity by waves of inessential rap-rockers and grunge revivalists that it's time to open their eyes and experience real innovation. A socially conscious band with a master satirist's feel for subtlety, System of a Down cloaks its commentary with metaphors and lightens the mood with absurdist humor. Other change-minded acts have turned their albums into straight-faced rallies; SOAD prefers to throw a political party.

2. Fantomas
Director's Cut (Ipecac)
When crafting a covers album, some artists pride themselves on being able to retrace the selected songs without ever straying outside the lines. But to hear Mike Patton update movie themes is to imagine Jackson Pollack recreating a staid still life. While maintaining the music's inherent spookiness, Patton and his cohorts (Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins, former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Mr. Bungle's Trevor Dunn) magnify its menace with thrash outbursts, plodding downtuned dirges and anxiety-inspiring keyboard accents, often within the same tune. But the group's most important weapon is Patton's malleable voice, which lends a creepy calm to Henry Mancini's "Experiment in Terror" and a demon-possessed mania to "The Omen."

3. Masta Ace
Disposable Arts (JCOR)
Write your rhymes in the shower/You're washed up, raps Masta Ace, sneering at himself during the scathingly self-critical "Dear Diary." He needn't have worried -- despite the seven-year hiatus since his last release, the Masta still ranks among hip-hop's top lyricists. He has abandoned his on-beat, off-beat flow, sporting an efficient, snippy delivery that makes him sound like Slim Shady's positive-minded twin. And he's ditched his bass-loaded attack, which made speakers shiver as his disc approached the player. Now he opts for smooth backdrops that massage his robust verses rather than smother them.

4. Ghostface Killah
Bulletproof Wallets (Epic)
The passionately dramatic, dizzyingly abstract lyricist behind last year's best album, Supreme Clientele, has fallen off ever so slightly, but Ghostface's latest joint still tops all but three contenders. Willfully mysterious (the track listing on the back of the disc doesn't correspond with the actual order in which the songs appear) as well as amazingly expressive and unmistakably real, Ghostface delivers his narratives with cinematic clarity. Wu-Tang producer RZA, who always does his best work when teamed with Ghostface, stacks classy samples onto formidable solid blocks of soul, then decorates these hard-driving beats with intriguing piano loops and horn bursts.

5. Radiohead
Amnesiac (Capitol)
6. Tool
Lateralus (Volcano)
Radiohead continues to confound listeners who want easy musical answers, but that doesn't mean Amnesiac is inaccessible -- its melodies float near the songs' surfaces in clear view. Still, focusing on the immediately evident features of Radiohead tunes is like watching Mulholland Drive with the sound muted: It's still a beautiful experience, but there's much more available for those willing to dig deeper. Tool's first album in four years offers a different sort of challenge. With its two-part compositions, recurring musical themes, startling mood swings and slow-developing ebbs and flows, it's a seventy-minute behemoth that's best consumed as a whole.

7. Rufus Wainwright
Poses (Dreamworks)
8. Loudon Wainwright III
Last Man on Earth (Red House)
Opening with a definitive examination of self-destructive behavior during which Rufus Wainwright admits he's a little bit Tower of Pisa, the album Poses brims with riveting first-person character studies. Using nuances and inflection, Rufus communicates countless moods using a voice that's amazingly effective given its narrow range. While Rufus' piano arrangements result in graceful, ornate compositions, his father, Loudon Wainwright III, uses his acoustic guitar to craft spare backdrops that place the emphasis where it should be -- on his insightful lyrics.