MISSED GEMS EIGHT ALBUMS FROM 2004 THAT SLIPPED THROUGH THE CRACKS
By Sean Palmerston
No doubt about it, 2004 has been a great year for music.
There have been a number of breakthrough groups—
including Scotland’s Franz Ferdinand and Montreal’s
The Arcade Fire—that have received an obscene
amount of attention in the past 12 months. So instead of
preaching the gospel once again, let’s look back at
some of the past year’s overlooked albums that deserve
mention. Some of these are way off the mainstream map,
others just fell through the cracks, but all of them are
definitely worth tracking down.
Baltimore’s The Anomoanon released two albums this
year, both of which highlighted a mature, classic rock
sensibility that reminds us of the first two albums by The
Band as well as the early ’70s output by the Grateful
Dead. The sextet, led by Ned Oldham (older brother of
Will ‘Bonnie Prince Billy’ Oldham), may be one of the
best kept secrets out there currently, and their first 2004
album The Derby Ram (Box Tree Records) is just as
good as any of the Palace Brothers albums.
Magnus Lindberg is much better known as a producer
than a musician—something that can happen when you
engineer quite possibly the most influential hardcore
album of the past decade (The Shape of Punk To Come
by Swedish band Refused). But Lindberg has also been
an integral member of the Swedish post–hardcore
collective Cult of Luna for the past five years,
contributing to their past three albums on Earache
Records. Salvation, their most recent 2004 release, is
the album that ISIS fans wish that band would have
made after their landmark 2002 album Oceanic, and will
appeal immensely to fans of ISIS, Neurosis and those
with an open ear to shifting dynamics who like
intelligent, orchestrated metal.
Operating out of Waco, Texas, songwriter Sean Padilla
records under the moniker The Cocker Spaniels. Over
the past half–dozen years he has recorded and released
