I've heard of these folks, but the only song of there's I know is "Wagon Wheel". That's a nice, gentle song and these two examples that you have posted here are similarly pleasent in their old-timey country stylings. I'd be perfectly happy to listen to this music, but it doesn't quite grab me enough to fork out my hard-earned cash to buy any of their stuff.

Blimey! I'm surprised he was even as old as that, but then again, thinking about it, that sounds about right. I principally know him from his production and engineering work with the Breeders, Nirvana, the Wedding Present, and Bush.

I absolutely love Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, but even I'll admit that the term "genius" is much too readily applied to Wilson and his music.

Another favourite album of 2004...



#2 - Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE by Brian Wilson




In 2004, the world's most famous unreleased album finally got released.

Back in 1967, the SMiLE album was to have been the Beach Boys and their musical mastermind Brian Wilson's magnum opus. Unfortunately, a combination of Wilson's deteriorating mental state, band in-fighting, and legal problems between the group and their record label all conspired to prevent the album from ever being finished. For decades most of the songs recorded for the album remained unheard, while the legend of SMiLE and what it might've been grew and grew. In late 2003, with little warning, Wilson announced a tour in which he would perform the finished album in its entirety. The following year, a newly recorded studio version of the album was released, with Wilson's on-tour backing band the Wondermints providing vocal and musical accompaniment.

Myself, I've long been a fully paid-up member of the "Church of SMiLE", ever since I first read about the "lost" album in 1990 and began collecting bootlegs of this unreleased material. So, the news that a newly recorded, modern version of the album was coming out in 2004 filled me with both excitement and trepidation. Would Wilson be up to the task of reconstructing his musical masterpiece?

I needn't have worried because Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE is amazing. This is simply some of the best music I have ever heard. I mean, OK, it's not quite up to the lofty standards of the '60s recordings in terms of musicianship or vocal performances, but it's much, much better than we probably had any right to expect it to be.

The album is divided into three movements: the first, "Americana", deals with the mythic history of America; the second, "Circle of Life", charts man's physical and spiritual journey from birth to death; and the third, "Spiritual Rebirth/The Elements" examines the wonder of the natural and supernatural world. Like the original late '60s sessions, this album is experimental, wildly eccentric, often humorous, and catchy as all hell. The spirit of '67 and the "Summer of Love" is in this music's DNA and thank God Wilson and his lyricist Van Dyke Parks didn't try to alter that.

It's pointless trying to pick out the best tracks because as far as I'm concerned, this entire album is faultless. In fact, the only reason that this isn't my number 1 album of 2004 is because, after all, the material on it was almost 40 years old at this point (even if these are new recordings). I wanted something that was more of the era...a bit more "2004" in my number 1 spot.

Anyway, have a listen to the gorgeous "In Blue Hawaii" and the delicately beautiful "Wonderful" and let them do their thing to you…

Carrying on with more favourite albums from 2004...



#3 - Scissor Sisters by Scissor Sisters




Subversive pop is the best pop! And the very best thing about the Scissor Sisters was that they made deliciously subversive pop. I don't believe the band had very much commercial success in their native America, but over here in the UK they were massive in the mid-to-late 2000s, scoring half a dozen hit singles (including a number 1) and two multiplatinum selling albums.

Named after a lesbian sex position, the band wrote songs concerned with the seedy, sexually decadent underbelly of New York City's after dark street life. Their self-titled debut album is full of songs about sex freaks, drag queens, transvestites, and ghetto prostitutes, while covering topics like the tale of a gay man coming out to his mother in a nightclub and a couple having sex on the back seat of a taxicab, while the driver watches and masturbates. Not your usual Top 40 pop fare, to be sure! But then again, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of record buyers had no idea what the songs were about.

Musically, these edgy and taboo subjects are all couched in songs that are infectiously catchy, brilliantly arranged, candy-coated slices of retro pop – any one of which could've been a single! Honestly, this whole album plays like it could've been a "greatest hits" record. Even the band's Bee Gees-style cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" is such a brilliantly irreverent cover of a song that is a staple of the chin-rubbing, "serious rock" crowd, that it's kinda subversive in itself.

Scissor Sisters is a really fun album; a kitschy mash-up of '70s pop songwriting, disco grooves, new romantic guitars, and glam rock decadence. Here's the single "Take Your Mama", but honestly, every track on this album is great…

This is way off-topic for the thread, so forgive me my rant...

I know there are serious medical and scientific applications for AI, but let's get real: here in the real everyday world, all AI is being used for is plagiarising copyrighted art from artists, stealing work from writers and journalists, helping turn women into porn without their consent, and undermining our democracies with political deepfakes and propaganda bots. That's without even considering the ethical and moral implications of the use of deadly autonomous AI in the military.

So yeah, f*ck AI.