2002 My Top Albums By Clark Benson  [84 more lists]

NOTE: list is "as is" at the end of 2002; my opinions have definitely changed a bit since then and I will update a revised version of this at some point.

There were a TON of damn good records this year, but I didn’t find any that completely blew me away – no OK Computer or Is This It? or Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space or Mule Variations or Time Out Of Mind or If You’re Feeling Sinister or What’s the Story Morning Glory level releases. Maybe it’s just that a lot of good records came out late in the year and I need to give them more spins. It was the hardest year I could think of to come up with an order for this list, just about all of the Top 10 could be interchangeable, and so could 15-25 (and for that matter there were 10 other records that could almost as easily have made the Top 25.)

The overall theme might be consistency – a lot of bands I like put out records this year, and very few of them sucked (I would have to say the biggest disappointments were Badly Drawn Boy, especially the bloated record about the fish but also the soundtrack he did, and Peter Gabriel – maybe not total shite but surprisingly tuneless for a 10 year wait). It was great to see Sonic Youth put out a record as good as anything they’ve done, Pearl Jam’s record has a couple of truly classic songs and the rest is pretty solid, bands like Low really jacked their songwriting to another level, David Gray’s followup to his huge hit is an even better record, Foo Fighters stone cold rocked it, Sleater-Kinney’s best batch of songs yet, etc.

Spotty records from faves like Oasis (though “Stop Crying Your Heart Out” is definitely one of the best songs I heard all year), Chris Robinson, Phish, Bowie, Gov’t Mule, Chemical Bros, Guided By Voices – all with some total clunkers, but all also had at least one or two great songs on them. Oh and the Mars Volta put out a great EP and are odds-on favorites for my fave album of 2003 judging from what I’ve heard in advance.