The other four of the nine albums I'm calling 'the Best of 2003':

Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash

Okay, so the first half is better than the second half. But what an album this is, any way you slice it. So many layers of sound, so many invitations to move, so many little magic throwaway moments that anyone with fewer ideas would have to use as the basis of an entire song. What the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole was to mid-90s indie rock and old Schooly D, Kish Kash is to current r&b/pop/electro/bootleg-mash-ups... It's just so cool and exciting to listen to 'Plug It In' and realise the Jaxx are almost certainly trying to make music that sounds equal parts Justin Timberlake and Add N 2 (X). And I still reckon the best way to describe 'Lucky Star' is "like being beaten up by Horus".
Download: 'Lucky Star', 'Plug It In', 'If I Ever Recover'


The Rapture - Echoes

Of course, a lot of it is utterly fantastic to dance to: you can't *not* dance to 'House Of Jealous Lovers' or 'Olio' (well, maybe you can - each to his own, but I can't). But Echoes isn't just a dancefloor album. Thanks largely to Luke Jenner's big-hearted, idealistic sense of romance, it's also a love album. This year's best love album, in fact. Check out 'Open Up Your Heart' (nice steal from Bowie's 'Five Years' there boys - if you're going to steal, you better steal from the best) and 'Love Is All' for confirmation. When the romance and the dancefloor combine, as on 'I Need Your Love', The Rapture are just - yes, again - the best thing ever.
Download: 'I Need Your Love', 'Killing', 'Sister Saviour'


RZA - Birth Of A Prince

Halfway between the wickedness of bad boy Bobby Digital and the wisdom of Prince Rakeem, this is the best Wu-Tang album I've heard since Ghostface's Supreme Clientele. Somehow RZA has pulled off the neat trick of making an album that simultaneously sounds like classic Wu goodness ('Fast Cars' could easily have been produced in '95, but of course they were a decade ahead of their time back then), makes nods to what's going on in the rest of hip hop today ('We Pop' sounds like it ought to have set clubs alight as much as any Dre banger), and also heads off in strange new directions (that squelchy weirdness all over 'Cherry Range', or the head-mashing entirety of 'Bob N I'). Keep the faith, true believers.
Download: 'The Grunge', 'Chi Kung', 'You'll Never Know'


Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell

Two parts intoxicated trashy sleazy glam hedonism to one part lonely pleading wintry laments. It's the latter that surprises and has won over many of the skeptics, but I still think the Yeahs do the former as well as anybody else, possible incest references and all. It's been argued that guitarist Nick Zinner is the real star of the band, and I think there's a case for that, but you'll never find me joining in with the oddly vitriolic Karen O hate. So she's playing dress-up. Dress-up is fun! Don't need no hateration in this dancerie.
Download: 'Rich', 'Maps', 'Tick'

So Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club is like the coolest, sexiest person ever - Tryphena and I agreed on this during a midnight viewing last night - and manages not to look dated at all, unlike anyone/anything else in the movie... And then Molly Ringwald gives her a makeover, and she looks absurdly terrible, unbelievably Eighties, and everyone is like "gasp - you're... beautiful!" - and we're like "is this meant to be a joke?" - and it's just kind of disturbing.

Hey! It's end of year round-up time!

There are nine albums released this year which I can unequivocally recommend. Here are five of them.

Outkast - Speakerboxxx / The Love Below

I'm not sure what more there is to be said about Outkast’s (latest) magnum opus – actually, that’s completely wrong - I bet there’s a lot. I bet we haven’t even scratched the surface… If there was ever an argument for the road of excess, a manifesto for maximalism, then these two discs are it. Andre and Big Boi bestrode 2003 like a twin-headed colossus... Okay, that's enough hyperbole – although there can never be enough hyperbole for the likes of ‘Bowtie’. Speakerboxxx is the slightly better album – the instant classic, the “omifreakinGod!” jaw-dropper; The Love Below is the grower, full of hidden treasures. Between them, the two records are a primer for almost everything that’s ever been great about music.
Tracks you must download: 'Unhappy', 'Bowtie', 'Flip Flop Rock', 'Happy Valentine's Day', ‘Dracula’s Wedding’


Twilight Singers - Blackberry Belle

Greg Dulli is back and firing on all cylinders. If some of the ingredients (both musical and lyrical) are familiar, then by now the former Afghan Whigs frontman is a master when it comes to serving them up mixed together in fresh and exciting ways. Ugh, a cooking analogy – still, at least it makes a change from the usual imagery I end up using to describe Dulli’s music, which is either a) alcohol (probably Jack Daniels), b) cigarettes (Lucky Strike), c) a dimly-lit subterranean bar where you can drink Jack Daniels, smoke Lucky Strike, listen to some Isaac Hayes and leer at the bar staff.
Download: 'Esta Noche', 'Teenage Wristband', 'Feathers'


Jay-Z - The Black Album

It's funny, people started saying that Jay-Z was the best rapper in the game a few years ago, when I really don't think it was true... But he's been improving steadily ever since (with the odd occasional wobble - even he's admitted that the double album was a bad idea), and on the strength of this record, it's hard to think of an MC who is wittier, more charismatic, or more surprising. Of course it helps that the production is 100% watertight (when was the last time you could say that about a hip-hop album, even a really good one?). "Flyer than a piece of paper bearing my name" = line of the year.
Download: 'Encore', 'Dirt Off Your Shoulder', 'Public Service Announcement (Interlude)'


The New Pornographers - Electric Version

First time I wrote about this album on this blog, I said it was almost impossible not to fall into clichés when praising it - so imagine how much harder it is to write a brief summary like this… Hell, I’d just be calling it what it is if I said “it’s a delightful confection of melodic hooks and power-pop goodness!” I could also point out that it’s one of the few albums I’ve ever heard that sounds like it was influenced by Sgt Pepper (a frankly rubbish album itself) and yet somehow manages to make that into a good thing. All hail The New Pornographers. They are the praise and worship band at the Church of Joycore. You are not worthy. Form a line to the throne.
Download: 'The Laws Have Changed', 'It's Only Divine Right', 'Miss Teen Wordpower'


Cat Power - You Are Free

Almost forgot this one when I came to make this list. I think that's because the best songs here are not ones that I would necessarily choose to listen to in anything other than the bleakest possible circumstances, and my year has been a very happy one... I mean, seriously, 'Good Woman' has to be one of the most emotionally devastating pieces of music I've ever heard, and possibly the most traumatic evocation of a certain kind of break-up ever: Chan knows that ending things is the right thing to do, but she's going to miss him so. Fucking. Much.
Download: 'I Don't Blame You', 'Good Woman', 'Maybe Not'

More to follow.