Outside Pissing In: Charles A. Hohman’s Deranged Ravings, Cravings and Gravings

Spectrum Culture has crowned the best albums of 2003! That’s right: 2003. How does a year-end critical consensus look with five years of context? Well, you can view the list here. (Full disclosure: note the byline on the no. 3 album). And compare with that year’s Pazz and Jop results. As if the man currently engaged to Zooey Deschanel needed another reason to celebrate, he apparently recorded two of 2003’s musical touchstones. And while I cannot deny Give Up’s brilliance (as much Tamborello as Gibbard, mind you), I’d swap Transatlanticism in favor of some choices from my ballot that didn’t make the final list: the Libertines’ Up the Bracket, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ Hearts of Oak, and the forever underrated Go-Betweens forever underrated penultimate album, Bright Yellow Bright Orange. Quibbles aside, this feature drives home that 2003 was a banner year for pop culture, especially music, one that may eventually rank alongside 1977, 1984 and 1994 for its fertile plethora of cultural breakthroughs. Should the albums list not sell you, just take a look at Pazz and Jop’s Singles list. Plus, 2003 was an amazingly busy death year, with Katharine Hepburn, Strom Thurmond, Bob Hope, Barry White and Gregory Peck all dropping within two very charmed months.