Underrated/Overrated
For the last 25 years, I’ve been creating ranked lists of my favorite albums of the year, including a paragraph or two about each, as many a shameless music obsessive is wont to do.
So I decided to look back at what albums I underrated or overrated most egregiously or worse yet, missed entirely at the time in the 2000s and 2010s.
Here are my ten most shameful bad calls or oversights in no chronological order:
My #1 album of 2002 was Bright Eyes, Lifted… And while I was right that their singer/songwriter, Conor Oberst, was an exciting new talent, that album wouldn’t even make my top 10 from that year today. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot should have been my #1 (I ranked it third at the time). I have also played the Spoon, J Mascis, Elvis Costello, and Neil Finn albums from 2002 a lot more in the intervening years.
Somehow, Lucinda Williams’ World Without Tears didn’t make my top ten in 2003. This is a travesty. It might even be my favorite album of hers. What’s funny is, at the time I wrote, “I might be underrating this one.” Uh, yeah.
In 2005, I rated the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah debut album #3, and Sufjan Steven’s Illinois ended up near the bottom of my list. I said at the time, “I admire this, more than I like it.” That has changed dramatically over time. In hindsight, the former was just Talking Heads pastiche, and Illinois should have been first, second, or third along with LCD Soundsystem’s eponymous debut and the Spoon album from that year, Gimme Fiction. Illinois is a towering achievement. It’s a lot to digest, but well worth the effort. And after you put in the effort, you can’t understand how you ever could have mistaken songs like “Concerning the UFO Sighting…,” “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” or “Casimir Pulaski Day” (up there with Isbell’s “Elephant” as the cancer tearjerker of all time) as anything less than masterpieces. I love Sufjan’s Carrie & Lowell album even more, but he became one of the greats on this one.
I had 22 albums on my main list in 2006, including Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black at #1 before almost anyone in the U.S. had heard of her (I bought it on import). And yet what ended up becoming my favorite album of 2006 was not among them: Robert Pollard’s double album, From a Compound Eye. I went through a very brief and unfortunate one year phase where I didn’t buy Pollard solo albums, because I wanted Guided by Voices to get back together (which they did in 2011). 2006 was the wrong year to skip. F.A.C.E., as fans call it, is 26 songs in 71 minutes, Pollard’s longest album by far at the time. Could I live without “Kensington Cradle” and maybe “Denied” (for production reasons)? Yes. Do I prefer the live version of “The Right Thing” to the album version? Again, yes. And his other solo album from that year, Normal Happiness, is also essential in my book. But let’s be honest: Robert Pollard is a whole chapter in my book. Literally.
In 2008, I wildly underrated Vampire Weekend’s eponymous debut album as some kind of fluke: “a solid debut; but I’ll only really be impressed if they can top it,” (which they did on their next album Contra.) But Ezra Koenig and Co’s debut is one of the 3-4 best debut albums of the 2000s. Not sure how I could have mistaken it as anything less. I think I may have been put off by their Columbia University East Coast preppy smarty-pants pedigree. Or maybe it was the Paul Simon “Graceland” homage, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” Which I now love unreservedly. But talent is talent. Whatever “it” is, these guys had it. I love the whole thing. It’s basically a perfect record. Not to mention a generational one. Second only to Drive-by Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark that year.
I had 16 albums on my main list in 2010 and 9 more in my “honorable mention” annex. Boston Spaceships, Our Cubehouse Still Rocks was nowhere to be found, because I didn’t hear it until almost a decade later. Boston Spaceships was a power trio starring Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices. They released five albums from 2008-2011. And while I like or love them all, this one’s my favorite. And it’s one of a handful of Pollard’s 120 albums (or so) with no bad songs on it. If you’ve never heard it, you’ll thank me.
I was late to the party on Kendrick Lamar. To Pimp a Butterfly was my point of entry in 2015. But his second album in 2012, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was 25 year old Kendrick’s first HR and would have been high on my list that year if I had heard it at the time. The original album is damn near perfect, and the deluxe reissue contains two additional gems, “The Recipe (feat. Dr. Dre)” and especially “Swimming Pools (Drank).” Classic album.
In 2013, I underrated the last truly great Lloyd Cole album, which in typically immodest fashion he titled Standards. Not sure why, because I’ve been a huge fan of his since his debut album as Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, Rattlesnakes, in 1984. What’s even weirder is that this album has dropped off the face of the earth. It’s not available for streaming as far as I can tell. A glitch in the Matrix?
Although 2015 was a pretty great year in music, with albums like Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell and Titus Andronicus’ gargantuan punk rock double album The Most Lamentable Tragedy dropping like sound bombs into my consciousness, how on earth did I only rank Jason Isbell’s Something More Than Free at #11? It would be in my top 3-4 from that year now.
I’ll wrap up right back where I started, with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes: I wildly overrated the first album on this list in 2002 and wildly underrated his solo album in 2016, Ruminations. While it contains two songs I don’t care about, the other eight are truly excellent. It should have made my top ten instead of the solid Hiss Golden Messenger album, Heart Like a Levee, which I ranked #4 in a very competitive year.