Observations from the weekend:
– When you get on your bike for the first time in months and ride it 18 miles, your hindquarters grow numb quickly. Tomorrow, they will no longer be numb, but numbness will sound like a more pleasant alternative than soreness.
– Short story writing contests that (a) limit you to 1,000 words, (b) require your story to start with the phrase “These were perilous times,” and (c) require it to end with “So, you see it all worked out” are (a) dumb, (b) dumb, and (c) dumb.
– My favorite discs of 2001:
The Magnificent Seven: Spoon, Girls Can Tell and Clem Snide, The Ghost of Fashion (TIE for crabwalk.com Album of the Year); The Dismemberment Plan, Change; Death Cab for Cutie, The Photo Album; The Strokes, Is This It; The Flashing Lights, Sweet Release; Pernice Brothers, The World Won’t End.
Honorable Mention, in alphabetical order: Mark Eitzel, The Invisible Man; The Faint, Danse Macabre; Luna, Live; Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus; Owls, Owls; Radiohead, Amnesiac; Red House Painters, Old Ramon; Sloan, Pretty Together; White Stripes, White Blood Cells.
Disappointments (none of them bad albums, but less than they should have been; alternately, discs I liked at first that quickly grew stale): Travis, The Invisible Band; Weezer, Weezer; Tindersticks, Can Our Love; R.E.M., Reveal; Champale, Simple Days; Ryan Adams, Gold.
3 thoughts on “short story contest, top discs of 2001”
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i’d have to agree with your call concering The Dismemberment Plan, great album…but i’m gonna have to disagree with ya on the weezer. i had the opposite reaction to it. at first, it seemed a bit stupid…months later, things just wouldn’t be the same without it. (pinkerton still beats the hell out of it though. heh)
REM’s “reveal” a disappointment? What are you smoking?
When I first listened to Reveal, I thought: “Huh. Not bad. Actually, pretty good.” But REM’s a band I root for, so I think I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I threw it in the CD player last week and wasn’t bowled over. Not a bad album — I was just disappointed.
As for Weezer, it’s certainly no Pinkerton. I just expected more from the, what, 18 years they had to work on it. It seemed like their most boorish and least intelligent album. (To me, at least.)