Putting that aside, Logged Off continues its commitment to presenting independent music, and its commitment to highlighting the works of Australian artists, musicians we feel can proudly stand alongside the best of their first world compatriots. And so we give you the Top 10 Albums of 2003 (in descending order)
3) All I See Is Red - Self Titled: From the northern reaches the sound
of the post-rock soundtrack to operation Questionable Freedom shall
come.
4) Royal City - Alone at the Microphone: Been dozing in the gutter with corpses lately? Royal City know the sound - as significant in terms of scope as The Band's early 70s work. 5) Cat Power - You Are Free: The listener is anything but free as Chan Marshall carries us with her through her continuing Inferno.
7) Leonard Cohen - The Essential: The title says it all - from the early 60s to 2001, over 40 songs of love, loss and redemption. Includes the original "Hallelujah" which still king whips Buckley's version at 40 paces.
9) Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series 5 The Rolling Thunder Revue: Finally the release of the 1975 tour to end all tours. 2 CDs of Zimmerman on fire as the storm clouds gather round (Check out Hard Rain to see where it ended).
10) The Hidden Cameras - The Smell of Our Own: Best album of 2003 dedicated to the joys of golden showers, butt fingerings and splendid man-on-man choral/folk pop arrangements. Thanks for reading, and Logged Off looks forward to pulling the teeth out of 2004 with you and a pair of rusty pliars.
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We told you there'd be surprises. In a year where disappointment
reigned supreme, it was a glorious privilege to look elsewhere for
answers, for comfort and for solace, and to find those qualities in
works of the highest calibre. However it's no surprise these works
have been overlooked, whether it be by the illiterati of the online sites
or the puerile poseurism of the music mags; there is no great
democratisation of the critic led by the internet, just a continuing void
into which falls the worst of the populous and the splitter-splatter of
wanna-be replicants.
1) Cyndi Lauper - At Last: In which Cyndi steals "Walk on By" from
Dionne and wrenches it into her own song of misery and loneliness. As
she does on Brel's "If You Go Away" etc. Comeback and album of the
year.
2)Function - The Zillionaire Retarded
Speeds...: Magical work from Melbournites
obsessed with crafting the sounds of light and emptiness.
6) The Hired Guns - Between Here & The Night:
Another Melbourne band, this one creating the aural
ambience for a night full of jilted lovers begging for shotguns
and dismal diners serving shitty coffee on a rainy afternoon.
8) Rachel's - Systems/Layers:With Trinkets not
releasing their equivalent of Chinese Democracy until
New Years, Rachel's long-in-production opus takes the
prize for stringed instrument elocution and articulation as
the Louisville outfit include orchestra sessions and field
recordings in their dissolution of city life's disillusions.
