The top tens
by Matt Worley

As an avid listener and reviewer of music, I am privileged to give people, organizations and magazines my top ten album picks for the year. There are no real requirements for this job (and not much pay), but because I run a strange magazine called Lies (and we run music reviews in the magazine) I get to shoot my mouth off about what I like and listen to. But when it comes down to making up a top ten, I always get weird about it. Politics begin to enter the picture, along with personal biases, label considerations and maturity. Add a dash of humor and secret code and there's the top ten for the year. For the newest Lies Magazine (#16, out in a few weeks), we ran a selection of our reviewers top tens. Because I was feeling quite poppy and possibly unenlightened by the time the end of the year came around in 1997, I named my list: The Pop Monster Top Ten. Sort of a warning. Here is official unveiling:

1. Faith No More -- Album Of The Year (Slash/Reprise)
2. Size 14 -- Size 14 (Volcano)
3. Deus -- In A Bar, Under The Sea (Island)
4. Pigeonhed -- The Full Sentence (SubPop)
5. The Pietasters -- Willis (Hellcat/Epitaph)
6. Coldcut -- Let Us Play (NinjaTune)
7. Tindersticks -- curtains (London)
8. Spiritualized -- Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (Arista/Dedicated)
9. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones -- Let's Face It (Mercury)
10. Radiohead -- O.K. Computer (Capitol)

And now to deconstruct. On my regular top ten lists (which I've been doing since 1993 or so), I've always had a code. The #1 and #10 are always not in the correct places. #1 is usually a joke or a bit of politics or just something that would make most people go "hmmm..." Usually the #10 would be the #1, but it is by a band I've been a fan of for a while and so the fact that their new release is good is not as much a surprise. So the boys in Radiohead, who have been putting out good albums since 1993, get the #10 spot. I couldn't resist putting Faith No More's "Album Of The Year" atop my list. It's not the best FNM CD, but it ain't bad.

Size 14 is a nasty little release from a label that might not even be around anymore. The singer sounds a bit like Weird Al, sings about pretending Claire Danes is his hand and robbing banks to pay off credit cards. It sounds like the power pop of the late 80s without pretension or hair spray. Very amusing, and amusing always beats out seriousness when I'm feeling snarky.

Coldcut is a DJ on the Canadian label, Ninja Tune. For those of you who like DJ mixes, anything on Ninja Tune is good. Other notables on NT are Up, Bustle & Out, the Herbalizer and DJ Vadim. This selection is more to give note to the entire label than to Coldcut, although the 2CD set "Let Us Play" is quite nice.

I figured I should have a poppy ska band on the list and I chose Mighty Mighty over Buck-O-Nine for one reason only: the Bosstones CD was better, but Buck-O-Nine's "28 Teeth" is a much more enjoyable CD. Bouncing, relentlessly poppy and danceable, Buck-O-Nine almost made it onto the list.

Because NOFX's "So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes" came out in late 1997 and because they don't like a lot of publicity, I left it off the list. NOFX is the greatest punk band ever. Was that 16 enough? Everything else on the top ten was unaffected by politics and/or strange mental twists of my brain.

And then I got a gift certificate from my office Christmas pool, which meant I could pick one of the 1997 releases I hadn't gotten for free (and hadn't already picked up). I bought Björk's "Homogenic" and fell in love. So my list for another publication will probably look like this:

1. NOFX -- So Long And Thanks For All The Shoes (Epitaph)
2. Radiohead -- O.K. Computer (Capitol)
3. Björk -- Homogenic (Elektra)
4. Deus -- In A Bar, Under The Sea (Island)
5. Pigeonhed -- The Full Sentence (SubPop)
6. The Pietasters -- Willis (Epitaph)
7. Tindersticks -- curtains (London)
8. Spiritualized -- Ladies and gentlemen we are floating through space (Arista/Dedicated)
9. Buck-O-Nine -- Twenty-Eight Teeth (TVT)
10. Ben Folds Five -- Whatever And Ever Amen (550 Music)

And just to mix things up a bit, the best single songs (not necessarily singles) of 1997 according to me:

1. "Hope You Don't Mind" by Lauren Hoffman
2. "Albequerque" (sic) by Buck-O-Nine
3. "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba
4. "Where Do I Begin" by the Chemical Brothers
5. "Walking On The Sun" by Smashmouth

So there.

Matt Worley's real favorite album of the year came out in late 1996: Tricky's Pre-Millennium Tension. Duh.

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