About this time every year, the Nashville Scene’s music critics weigh in with lists of their favorite records from the past 12 months. This year we decided to do something different: We invited all our writers to weigh in on the cultural highlights (and lowlights) of 2002, from music to books to DVDs to politics. The 21 lists below represent a cross-section of Scene contributors, each offering his or her own take on how to sum up the year past. Some lists are ranked, some aren’t; some are topical, some are wide-ranging. Many subtly or directly address the fears and anxieties of living in a post-9/11 world on the brink of global conflict. But from Andrew WK to Ann Patchett, from Springsteen to Sunshine State, they all represent an attempt to find some joy or meaning in the year we’ve just lived through, and maybe even some hope for the year to come.

Literary, local and other highlights

——Bruce Dobie

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett My wife left this book sitting on her nightstand, and without anything to read one night, I picked it up, figuring I ought to give Patchett, a Nashville author, her due. Only a few days later, I staggered out of her gorgeous tale of love, art and human tenderness and maliciousness, and wished it had never gone away. This is a story of beauty, against a backdrop of conflict, in a world that never really existed. Or did it?

The Lion King On a family vacation to New York City this summer, the trip to see The Lion King on Broadway loomed as just another obligatory gesture to the kids. Little did I know that I would be swept up in one of the most richly choreographed and finely scored tales I’d ever seen.

Ground Zero While in New York City, I wanted to see the spot where the planes came crashing into the World Trade Center. What I really wanted was to go there before the politicians erected a monument in place of the hole. Sure enough, the hole said it all. Just vast emptiness and lots of people from all over the world coming to pay homage.

Battle of Nashville Civil War Tour Local investment banker Nathan Bedford Forrest Shoaf conducts a periodic tour of the Battle of Nashville battleground on the anniversary of the battle, Dec. 15-16, 1864. His tour, coursing from the edges of downtown through Green Hills, is fabulous. I haven’t really looked at the city the same since. Any Shoaf-tour graduate will begin viewing Nashville topographically—suddenly, you’re focusing on our city’s numerous hills, from which the Union and Confederate troops tried to claim advantage. It was a helluva battle and spelled the official end of any Southern comeback.

Vanderbilt, 76; UT, 59; Feb. 2 at Memorial Gym This women’s hoops match-up was a thing of beauty. UT came swaggering into the city as a top-five nationally ranked team. But Memorial magic once again took hold, Chantelle Anderson got control down low, and the gym absolutely came unglued. Women’s roundball is the sport now at Vandy. Plus, I hate the Vols.

Bredesen, 51 percent; Van Hilleary, 48 percent The better guy won. Bredesen stuck with a relatively boring campaign plan that called for stressing his management experience and fiscal acumen. In the end, it worked, despite doubters such as yours truly. When his opponent began making lots of ground based on resentment to a state income tax, the Bredesen team never flinched. They just kept on keeping on—and signing lots of checks to carpet-bomb the opposition.

CMA Awards, Nov. 6, Grand Ole Opry House From time to time, all you can say about the CMA Awards show is that it doesn’t have a clue what kind of music it’s showcasing. This year the producers obviously decided, “We still don’t have a clue about what country music is, but we’re gonna play a lot of it anyway.” The results showed the fabulous reach of the genre and the solid musicianship involved, at a time when everyone’s been arguing that we need more banjos to make it authentic. Faith Hill did her diva thing, Dolly rang the rafters with an African American choir, and newcomers Rascal Flatts and Rebecca Lynn Howard showed there’s hope. Indeed, there is.

Mark Schimmenti and his merry band of architects at the Nashville Civic Design Center In downtown Nashville, at this very moment, in a cool-as-hell space, a subversive group of very intelligent architects are plotting out Nashville’s built environment. Their undertaking of the Plan of Nashville promises to bring some sense to this city, which was bombed to hell and back by urban renewal in the 1960s and horrible development decisions ever since. Sometime, if you’ve had enough of the Frist Center and still want some visual stimulation, just walk into the Civic Design Center, located at the corner of Church Street and Seventh Avenue.

Music, movie and other highlights

—Jim Ridley

10. Samuel Fuller, A Third Face: My Life in Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking Like his films, Fuller’s posthumously assembled autobiography is a damburst of action, bluster and audacity, recounted in a raspy, uproarious narrative voice as pungent as cigar smoke. Every ounce of living went into his films, and what a life: His wartime exploits with the First Infantry Division, from Omaha Beach to the liberation of the death camps, are what the author would call “a helluva yarn.”

9. James Luther Dickinson, “If I Could Only Fly,” from Free Beer Tomorrow Merle Haggard cut this Blaze Foley jewel not long ago, beautifully. But on his first solo record in three decades, legendary Memphis producer/soul guardian Dickinson imbues his own Latin-tinged version with a weary, faltering nobility that’s even more haggard. It plays on the jukebox in purgatory’s cantina, as the sun goes down for the last time.

8. Marianne Faithfull, Dec. 9 at the Belcourt Just the idea of the ’60s’ most glamorously ravaged (surviving) chanteuse performing live in Hillsboro Village was exciting enough—until she duetted lustily with surprise guest Will Oldham and concluded a spectacularly venomous “Why’d Ya Do It?” by pogoing like a blissed-out schoolgirl. Did anyone even care that she didn’t do “As Tears Go By?”

7. Jackass: The Movie, opening night at the Hollywood 27 Like riding a roller coaster with 300 people rising, falling and shrieking as one.

6. Werckmeister Harmonies, Nashville Independent Film Festival The movie itself was amazing: a three-hour black-and-white behemoth of a fascist allegory, filmed in mesmerizing long takes that escalate in scale and complexity. More amazing still was the response. The audience for the NIFF’s Thursday-night screening stood dazed and bewildered afterward in the Green Hills lobby, but all weekend you could hear people puzzling out the movie’s themes and intent with mounting excitement. It was one more reason this year’s NIFF was the best I’ve seen in 20 years. My thanks also to the film’s sponsor, the indefatigable Nashville Premieres group, which again risked its money and the crushing disappointment that results when you offer the things you love and no one accepts.

5. The Blind Boys of Alabama, Feb. 13 at the Belcourt They rocked the house so hard, the roof’s still shaking. The climax found the entire audience on its feet, stomping and clapping, as indefatigable 72-year-old Clarence Fountain testified up one aisle and down the other, pausing only for a modified James Brown spin as the spirit moved him. Proof that Nashvillians do, on occasion, dance.

4. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, The Rising On first listen, the arena-rock arrangements of this much-vaunted post-9/11 reverie seemed grandiose and slightly generic—a throwback to the synth-heavy stadium-filling sound that spoils Born in the U.S.A. for me. A week later, I wondered why a song about a hole in the sky had me pounding on my steering wheel and brushing away tears. This is popular music in its truest sense, intended to reach and touch the highest common denominator. After a month of listening to nothing else, it had the force of something I didn’t know I needed—an exorcism.

3. Femme Fatale A movie that rekindled my love for all the wonderful, sinful, garish, elegant, prurient, improbable, magical things movies can do.

2. The night of Oct. 30 I round the corner of the Ryman Auditorium’s back alley, blood still roaring in my ears from the Elvis Costello/Laura Cantrell concert. There stands the main Attraction, his arm around Nashvillian Dana Delworth as flashbulbs pop. He wears a hat cocked at a rakish Frank Sinatra tilt; she wears a mile-wide grin of goofy abandon. Then we all go into Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, where the room is a fog of smoke, longneck beers and sawdust hillbilly music. I love this city.

1. Katharine Dillon Ridley What moment to choose as the best of all? The first tiny spark of personality on my baby daughter’s face? The last of her sweet toothless smiles? Her first little tottering step before collapsing in a heap of toys and stuffed animals? How short this year seems, and how infinitely precious. I’ll settle for a cold rainy night, in all its beautiful shades of gray, lit by the glow of an undecorated Christmas tree and the warmth of a sleepy little girl.

Honorable Mentions DJ Shadow, The Private Press; the chocolate-hot pepper popsicles at Las Paletas; the WFSK Freestyle discussion of Biggie & Tupac; the Frist Center’s tribute to the Actors Studio with Celeste Holm and Patricia Neal; Beck, Sea Change; the grilled alambres at La Terraza; Denice Hicks’ exhausting tour de force in the People’s Branch production of The Fever; the Nashville Premieres screening of Godard’s Band of Outsiders; the title track of Solomon Burke’s Don’t Give Up on Me; the moment when the cursive, pale-blue letters of the title Far From Heaven fill the screen to Elmer Bernstein’s score.

Memorable moments and heartening developments (as they somewhat relate to food)

—Kay West

The continued growth of Nashville’s immigrant population On a recent Sunday, I was checking out ethnic restaurants in those areas of town where immigrants new to our city settle. In one afternoon, I visited Ethiopia, Somalia, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, India, Iran, Mexico, Central America and Italy. In every eatery, families were gathered at tables to eat, drink and talk. They were also engaged in that very American pastime—watching football. No matter where I stopped, groups of men had their eyes glued to the television, watching Tennessee play Indianapolis. I had no idea what they were saying, but whenever Steve McNair completed a pass, these Vietnamese, Ethiopians and Hondurans rose to their feet and exchanged high fives. I watched the entire game restaurant by restaurant. The growth of our immigrant population, most visibly noted in the presence of their small restaurants, is heartening and exhilarating. Those who complain that they’re taking something away from us are simply wrong. They are building our roads, constructing our homes, landscaping our yards, cleaning our houses, taking care of our children, tending to our elderly and sick, feeding us dinner and enriching our community in countless ways. We share more than we realize, from love for our families to love for our football team.

Nashville comes out This city has always had bars and restaurants that catered to a gay and lesbian clientele, but most did so fairly discreetly. This year Tribe on Church Street and Lipstick Lounge on Woodland Street opened wide the doors of their brand-new upscale digs with extravagant, come-one, come-all grand-opening parties, and all of Nashville was invited. Whatever your persuasion, these establishments are welcome and proud new additions to the city’s increasingly diverse entertainment scene.

Neighborhood revitalization It is widely acknowledged among urban planners and developers that restaurants often lead the way in reclaiming and reenergizing neighborhoods. Exhibit A: Hillsboro Village, which began its gentrification in 1981 with the opening of Faison’s. Not so densely populated but following the lead have been Sylvan Park and Belmont Boulevard. More recent upstarts have been 12 South, with Mirror, Las Paletas and Portland Brew, and East Nashville, with Margot Cafe and Bar, BJRC, Red Wagon, Lipstick Lounge, Rosepepper Cantina and Family Wash. On the horizon are new independently owned restaurants in Germantown and The Gulch. The suburbs can have their Olive Gardens and Starbucks, give me Caffe Nonna and Fido.

Mostly Martha/Monsoon Wedding Two movies made me believe anew in the healing, redemptive and transformational power of love. Both also whetted my appetite for things edible and edifying. Mostly Martha is a German film about a controlling, repressed female chef, her withdrawn, tragedy-stricken niece and the passionate, compassionate Italian male chef who pulls them out of their crippling grief and helps them build a family. Monsoon Wedding is pure Bollywood—a vibrant, exuberant story of an extended Indian family gathered for the arranged marriage of two attractive young professionals who aren’t so sure if they want to submit to this long-standing tradition. Men who are seriously seeking the answer to what women want would do well to refrain from dismissing this film as a chick flick, and pay attention to the devoted overtures made by the male leads—who had every woman in the audience audibly sighing and positively swooning.

Bruce Springsteen, The Rising A 25-year Springsteen fan and a former New Yorker, I continue to be blown away by The Rising, his heartfelt and heartbroken reaction to the tragedy of Sept. 11. This August, I spent a long weekend on Fire Island, the summer retreat of thousands of New Yorkers. Accessible only by ferry, the half-mile-wide island is a series of small villages connected by boardwalks, sidewalks and sandy paths. One afternoon, a friend and I biked to The Out, a casual beachside joint famous for its fried fish sandwiches and frequented by New York and Long Island firemen who have decades-old cottages in this blue-collar area of the island. As we were sitting on the deck under a cloudy sky, drinking ice-cold beer, surrounded by good-looking men in dark-navy FDNY T-shirts, music came wafting out of a nearby open window. It was Springsteen, third cut from the album, “Waiting on a Sunny Day.” As it played, the sun came out for the first time in two days. I asked my friend the name of the village we were in. “Kismet,” she replied with a smile. It certainly felt that way to me.

Ten’ll Getcha 20 (or 21): The year in records

—Bill Friskics-Warren

1. Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections Goodie Mob’s Green is a helium-voiced trickster-cum-philosopher king, rhyming and crooning about getting grown, getting boned and getting high on good vibes—and about what Jesus would really do. “My heart beats with unconditional love / But you don’t know the blackness I’m capable of,” he warns, like a modern-day John the Conqueroo, on “Medieval Times (Great Pretender).” Gets as chilled out, down-home and funkadelic as he wants to, too. Easily the most satisfying and salutary record I’ve heard since AOI: Bionix, De La Soul’s funky miracle from the fall of 2001.

2. Various Artists, Red Hot + Riot/Sleater-Kinney, One Beat Globalization on the one—and of one heart. The prophylactic party music of Red Hot + Riot pays tribute to the damn near universal applicability of Fela Kuti’s visionary, horn-rich synthesis of Yoruban and Brownian polyrhythms—as well as to the global reach of the damnable AIDS epidemic, which claimed the father of Afrobeat’s life in 1997. One Beat finds the identity politics of the most righteous and riot-ous punks of the past decade opening outward to embrace another matter of global health—planetary security.

3. Field Mob, From tha Roota to tha Toota/Nappy Roots, Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz There’s the Dirty South of Juvenile and The Cash Money Millionaires, with their thug poses and bling-bling playaisms, and then there’s the dirty South, a grimy, far from glamorous province blighted by poverty, racism and a withering anti-rural bias. Field Mob and Nappy Roots inhabit the latter. Yet both crews reclaim and celebrate the roots of their raising, self-described “kuntry-ass niggahs” Field Mob going whole hog with barbwired high jinks, neo-soul lyricism and a necessarily redactional take on history, Nappy Roots with defiant beats, stripped-down grooves and a barnyard sense of justice.

4. Joan Osborne, How Sweet It Is/The Bonner Brothers, Delayed but Not Denied Osborne reimagines a cross-section of the rock and soul canon, courtesy of the civil rights era, as a drum ’n’ bass-steeped balm for a post-9/11 world; the Bonners take us higher with the saltiest fatback between here and eternity. Both stand as examples of soul-searching at its prophetic best.

5. Dolly Parton, “Hello God”/Chuck D & the Fine Arts Militia, “Twisted Sense of God” Pop’s two most passionate, incisive theological meditations on 9/11. Parton’s is the more searching, enlisting an Appalachian chamber quartet and gospel choir to call on heaven with her, while D decries idolatry, both Christian and Muslim, over apocalyptic beats and death-metal guitar. Neither lets anyone off the hook, citing not just humanity’s pervasive bad faith, but also the need for heaven and earth to forge peace and justice together here and now. Just as crucial is PE’s “Son of a Bush” (from Revolverlution), which, as its title suggests, gets down to the nitty gritty of naming names.

6. The Hives, Veni Vidi Vicious/Yeah Yeah Yeahs Garage punk in excelsis, The Hives making like a Swedish Stooges at 45 rpm, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs updating the transgressive squall of Bikini Kill, especially when lead bawler Karen O makes like the Kathleen Hannah of “Suck My Left One.”

7. Dixie Chicks, Home/Shania Twain, Up!/Elizabeth Cook, Hey Y’all Defining the two ends of the commercial country continuum, the latest from Twain and the Chicks prove just how durable and elastic the idiom can be, the Chicks finishing what O Brother started by crashing through Hot New Country’s bluegrass glass ceiling, Shania by engaging the whole damn universe. Will the circle be unbroken? Hell, no, especially not when smart, soulful singers like Cook make records that prove just how irrelevant categories can be.

8. Marianne Faithfull, Kissin Time/Linda Thompson, Fashionably Late Two wizened, battle-scarred dames (in the sense of royalty, not “broads”) who sound tougher and more tender than ever, Faithfull with an expansive neo-cabaret revue, Thompson with a deceptively cozy family affair. Send in the crones.

9. DJ Shadow, The Private Press/Amon Tobin, Out From Out Where Shadow’s transcendental meditations are breathtakingly Apollonian, while Tobin’s visceral soundings make for the bowels like Dionysus throwing down on the River Styx. Together these DJ-producer opuses constitute a marriage between heaven and hell, or vice versa.

10. LL Cool J, “Big Mama (Unconditional Love)”/Alan Jackson, “Drive” Two tenured franchise acts reach out for the ties that bind via something as putatively unhip as sentimentality, LL with a Philly Soul-cured shout-out to his grandmama, Jackson with an in-the-pocket paean to his late father and daughters. Both are a hell of a lot harder than you’d think.

The year in rock music

—Noel Murray

1. Spoon, Kill the Moonlight In a year with too many great records and no standout masterpiece, the follow-up to last year’s best rock album (Spoon’s Girls Can Tell) best represents the state of the rock in its tuneful, abstract and ambitiously jagged sketches of restless nightlife.

2. Josh Rouse, Under Cold Blue Stars This ornate folk-pop concept album about the struggles of a Midwestern married couple from the ’50s to now matters less in the particulars than in the impressions of yearning and compromise conveyed through hummable choruses and the slippery cadences of Rouse’s voice.

3. Life Without Buildings, Any Other City Pretty much the perfect U.K. art-punk record, coming on strong with dramatically askew guitar and percussion and sputtering femme-centric poetry, and wrapping up just when it starts to wear thin; to complete the trick, the band broke up a few months after their record’s stateside release.

4. The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots A refinement of the Lips’ 1999 breakthrough The Soft Bulletin, this broad, fantastical inquiry into values lacks the novelty of its predecessor’s spacey prog-rock swoop, but as a catchy, imaginative allegory about the interconnectedness of good and evil, it’s vital stuff.

5. The Reigning Sound, Time Bomb High School Neo-garage bands have been rushing out of the shadows en masse in the past year or two, but few have put together a record as top-to-bottom solid as this set of instant-classic punk love songs, steeped in the tradition of the neo-garage scene that the band members helped pioneer, as well as the gnarled R&B roots of their Memphis hometown.

6. Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head Resisting the urge to art it up after a warm, accessible debut, Coldplay instead deliver the mainstream rock album of the year, all atmospheric and haunting, and refreshingly earnest in its connection to and engagement with the outside world.

7. Rhett Miller, The Instigator Just as the Old 97’s hit a creative dead end, their resident up-tempo tunesmith recharged by recording a set of simple, hooky songs packed with wild-abandon sing-alongs and subtle undertones of spiritual insight.

8. Lambchop, Is a Woman Stubbornly slow and vague on first listen, the songs on Lambchop’s sixth full-length album gradually penetrate, fogging the mind like a late-afternoon nap, and delighting with the surprising shifts in country-soul orchestration and the keen imagery of singer-lyricist Kurt Wagner.

9. Hot Hot Heat, Make Up the Breakdown While Spoon have already begun abstracting the snappy, danceable neo-new wave of 2001’s Girls Can Tell, Vancouver’s Hot Hot Heat are quick to jump into their empty chair, effortlessly delivering the kind of groove-happy off-pop that the new New York underground scene has been indulging with generally dourer or more slavish results.

10. Cornelius, Point The eclectic Japanese instrumentalist narrows his focus, running through a sequence of textures and rhythms that open up from simple, minimalist ideas into expansive sonic environments and then close back down again.

Runners-Up Should any of the records above fail to meet their obligations (or be loaned out to a pal at the moment), they can be replaced nicely by the 2002 offerings of any of these acts: ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Beck, Blackalicious, Bright Eyes, Neko Case, Common, DJ Shadow, Interpol, Iron & Wine, Jurassic 5, Marah, The Mooney Suzuki, +/-, The Promise Ring, The Roots, The Shazam, Stew, The Streets, The Walkmen or Wilco.

Trend of the Year: The hip-hop promise fulfilled Reaching beyond its origins in stripped-down beats and melody-free rhyming, and even beyond its recent preoccupation with thug life, hip-hop bloomed in 2002 in countless mind-expanding new varieties, including Blackalicious’ eclectic soul poetry, Jurassic 5’s revivified old-school methodology, The Roots’ live and lively free-associations, Common’s expansive psychedelia (allowing room for guest visits by Mary J. Blige and Stereolab), Cee-Lo’s gospel stomp, The Streets’ cockney lad tales, and not to mention the hip-hop-informed soundscapes of DJ Shadow, RJD2 and Citizen Cope, among others.

Music, movie, TV and book highlights

—Matt Pulle

Bruce Springsteen, The Rising On the anniversary of 9/11, I turned off my television set, put away my newspapers and let this CD play for hours. It’s evocative and profound, yet accessible enough to listen to again and again. And it doesn’t matter who you have over at your place—your cousin who opposes any kind of armed response, or your best friend who thinks we should bomb the hell out of every Middle Eastern country and commandeer their oil fields. Everyone can dig this album, which simply collects a bunch of great stories about the everyday heroes of 9/11, the grieving family members they left behind and the struggle to figure out what happens now.

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen Any couple in a loveless marriage who think starting a family is a good idea should read this book (which came out late last year, but continued to make its impact in 2002). The Corrections is about a seemingly normal St. Louis family plagued by jealousy, opposing values, sibling rivalries, unfulfilled expectations, sexual promiscuity, financial backbreakers—really, everything short of murder, rape and incest. Franzen has uncanny insight into how husbands, wives, parents, children and siblings can love each other and still be each other’s worst enemy. Long stretches may be mind-numbingly boring, but then there are passages that will force you to put the book down and walk around to absorb what you just read.

The Ring There was no logic to this movie, and it really had nothing to say. But I haven’t seen a more attention-grabbing film all year. You could have told me that I’d won a million dollars right as the opening credits were rolling, and within five minutes I would have forgotten my sudden turn of good fortune. This incredible tale, flaws and all, about a creepy videotape and the awful things that happen to the people who view it, had me under its sway immediately and kept me up for two nights. And I can’t remember the last time a woman looked better on the big screen than actress Naomi Watts.

Girls Club I never actually saw an entire episode of David Kelley’s Girls Club, which the FOX Network maliciously canceled after only two episodes, but I saw enough to realize that this had the potential to be the greatest television show ever produced. A trio of scorching-hot women wearing low-cut blouses pouting about how nobody respects them and sharing in the inevitable girl-bonding moments—preferably while working out at the gym—what’s not to like about that? The soul of the show was going to be the staple scene in which a potential male client thinks one of these three scantily clad lawyers was actually a secretary. The offended lawyer in turn would pout with righteous indignation and say something like, “Not only am I a lawyer, but I’m the best lawyer you’ll ever have.” That had good times written all over it. Yeah, it’s troubling that David Kelley has suddenly become incapable of writing decent dialogue, and his idea of female empowerment is less enlightened than Hootie Johnson’s, but comedy is comedy, whether it’s intentional or not.

Fred Thompson on Law and Order Not because he’s good, but because he’s so bad. Law and Order is the best television drama in the past 10 years, because unlike The West Wing, it’s populated with characters that you can somehow imagine existing in real life. But Thompson’s portrayal of a conservative district attorney is stiff and contrived, turning his every scene into a “how to be a contemplative lawyer” instructional video. Part of this isn’t Thompson’s fault; for whatever reason, the writers apparently want to make him a mouthpiece for a strict constructionism rather than a living, breathing attorney. But even still, our outgoing U.S. senator, one of the best guys up there, can’t cut it on television—not yet, at least. And until Thompson can, he should never share a scene with the great Sam Waterston.

Top 10 signs that 2003 can’t be any worse

—Bruce Barry

I might have had more time to check out new music, fiction and film if the country hadn’t spent so much of 2002 going to hell in a hand basket. For your holiday pleasure, I’ve winnowed the year’s countless examples of America in decline down to my top 10 events of 2002 that clearly point to 2003 as an inevitable improvement (in chronological order):

Jan. 28 Former Enron CEO Ken Lay’s wife Linda, interviewed on NBC’s Today Show, says her Kenny was hoodwinked by underlings and fears for her family’s financial future: “There’s nothing left. We’re fighting for liquidity. We don’t want to go bankrupt.” As she speaks, the Lays own property worth at least $27 million; soon after comes news that Ken Lay cashed out of more than $100 million in company stock during 2001.

Jan. 29 George W. Bush’s State of the Union address (interrupted 77 times by applause) pledges war against terrorism and recession, and dubs Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil.” Six days later, W. unveils a budget increasing defense spending by 14 percent to a whopping $379 billion—the largest rise since escalation in Vietnam in 1966—while slowing growth on education and the environment.

May 6 In a diplomatic maneuver without precedent, the Bush administration “unsigns” the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty that Bill Clinton signed in 2000. The ICC, with 60-plus ratifications and strong support from U.S. allies, is to try people accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The U.S. and Libya are active opponents.

July 21 WorldCom seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following disclosures that it improperly booked almost $4 billion in expenses—a number that rises to $9 billion with subsequent filings in later months. It’s the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. corporate history. Starting with Enron in December 2001 and ending with United Airlines in December 2002, five of the largest seven bankruptcies in U.S. history occurred in the last 13 months.

Aug. 9 A new report from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard shows U.S. public schools increasingly segregated by race—this news coming almost half a century after state-sponsored school segregation was outlawed. Among the country’s largest school districts, integration in recent years has decreased or held steady at all but a handful.

Aug. 26 South African President Thabo Mbeki tells the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development that “a global human society based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few, characterized by islands of wealth surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations resist pleas for more foreign aid. As the world’s biggest polluter, the U.S. also rejects time frames for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or converting to renewable energy sources. Three months later, while President Bush is traveling, the EPA quietly softens the rules governing industrial air pollution in the U.S.

Sept. 24 New Census Bureau figures show that the proportion of Americans living in poverty rose for the first time in eight years, and that middle-class household income fell for the first time in 10 years.

Oct. 10 Both houses of the Congress vote overwhelmingly to give President Bush unprecedented and virtually unchecked authority to wage war in Iraq, despite a lack of convincing evidence that Iraq poses an imminent or direct threat to U.S. interests that would allow for lethal force under U.S. and international law.

Oct. 25 Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota is killed in an early-morning plane crash. The Senate loses one of its precious few voices of reason on issues of social justice. Less than two weeks later, Democrats lose control of the Senate.

Nov. 18 Siding with the Bush administration, a federal court expands the government’s ability to wiretap and search its citizens, blurring the distinction between criminal and counterintelligence investigations. The Washington Post says the decision “lets Americans be investigated and locked up without any of the normal protections of the justice system.” Nine days later, President Bush elevates indiscretion to high political art when he names the nefarious Henry Kissinger to head a commission investigating intelligence lapses preceding 9/11. Bush praises Kissinger’s “clear thinking and careful judgment.” Critics call Kissinger a putative war criminal for his malefaction in Cambodia, Timor and Chile. Kissinger subsequently bags it when he discovers that the ethics rules that apply to everyone else apply to him too. Things are looking up for 2003.

Visual arts highlights

—Angela Wibking

Public art Like Chicago’s Cows on Parade and New Orleans’ Festival of Fins, Nashville’s Catfish Out of Water public art project, announced in August, will enhance the urban landscape with artist-designed images of an animal icon. Cumberland River Compact, a local nonprofit environmental group, is spearheading the project, which calls for 100 fiberglass catfish sculptures to be created by local artists and displayed around the city May through November 2003.

Neuhoff Center Located on the 14-acre site of a former meat packing plant in Germantown, the Neuhoff Center is a work in progress with several buildings in various states of renovation. The public got a taste of its potential this year when the Nashville Cultural Arts Project debuted its “Outta Site” lecture series on art, architecture and urban development at the center. The complex is also home to the Nashville Jazz Workshop, which offers classes and concerts throughout the year.

12 South revival Arts-related businesses contributed to the revitalization of the 12 South neighborhood this year. Rumours Gallery (works by local and regional artists), Art & Soul (art, movement and voice classes) and 12th South Mercantile (hand-painted furniture and collectibles) are the latest additions to the street’s artistic lineup.

Cheekwood diversifies Cheekwood offered more inclusive art exhibits and programming in 2002. Shows included edgy video and installation art, family-friendly tree houses, art by Iraqi refugees and Andrew Wyeth’s “Helga” paintings. Cheekwood’s third annual observance of the Latin American holiday El Dia de Los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) was bigger than ever, and its Trees of Christmas extravaganza morphed into “Seasons of Celebration” with Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa components.

Frist Center offers a mix In its second year of operation, Frist’s main gallery exhibitions brought in big-name art from major museums, while the shows in its CAP Gallery offered a small but significant dose of works by emerging 21st century artists, ranging from paintings by Seattle artist Gloria DeArcangelis to installation art by Japanese artist Rie Oishi. Artist and curator lectures, film screenings, special museum café menus and hands-on art workshops added to a solid programming mix that many an older arts facility would envy.

Gilding Athena The Parthenon’s 42-foot-tall statue of Athena was coated this year in gold and paint, from the top of her helmet to the tips of her toenails—as was the case with the original sculpture in the fifth century B.C. temple in Athens. Some folks thought it might be gilding the lily, so to speak, but this goddess actually looks better with a little glitter and eye shadow.

Art co-ops Despite the sputtering economy, artist-run galleries continued to open this year—though well outside Nashville’s comfort zone, geographically and artistically. The newest, Rule of Thirds, opened this summer in the living room of an old house off Belmont Boulevard. Other artist co-ops still going strong around town include Plowhaus (in a storefront in East Nashville), Fugitive Arts Center (in a warehouse near Greer Stadium) and ruby green contemporary art center (in a nondescript brick building on Fifth Avenue South).

Frida Salma Hayek’s pet project about the life of the talented and tormented Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was the best film about a female artist this year. It was also the only film about a female artist this year or, for that matter, any year. Not only that, it was one of the most visually arresting and entertaining films of 2002. Frida is also doing well at the box office and generating Oscar buzz for its stars, which means the timing may be right for more films about art and artists.

Music, TV, movie and other highlights

—Ron Wynn

1. Jane Bunnett, Spirituals and Dedications This Canadian soprano saxophonist and bandleader is best known for her fiery solos and frenetic Afro-Latin jazz sets. So it was a surprise to get a poignant disc that mixed wonderful renditions of traditional gospel pieces with a couple of originals paying homage to jazz’s foremost composers and performers. But Bunnett keeps her focus in the present here, making this session much more than another tribute.

2. 24, FOX Network Last year, FOX debuted the freshest, brashest TV series since The Simpsons. Kiefer Sutherland, long an inconsistent actor, became a provocative and convincing figure in this exceptional spy program, in which each show represented one hour in a day of counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer’s life. The second season has kept up the momentum, as Bauer tries to find nuclear devices hidden by “terrorists” while wrestling with family woes and bureaucratic machinations.

3. The Blind Boys of Alabama, Feb. 13 at the Belcourt Their album Higher Ground was wonderful, but the group’s appearance at the Belcourt was transcendent. Clarence Fountain can’t mash the high notes or hold lines like he did in the ’40s and ’50s, but he’s still capable of making the walls resound with searing shouts and cries. The Blind Boys held church in front of a packed house, and when they marched arm-in-arm down the aisles, they took the audience back to the gospel train concerts and tent revivals of the ’50s.

4. Colson Whitehead wins MacArthur grant It’s been dubbed the “genius grant,” and past winners have ranged from musicians to poets to social workers. Novelist Whitehead was a deserving recipient: His John Henry Days, published this year in paperback, is a masterful combination of pungent satire, cultural commentary and protest.

5. Walter Moseley, Bad Boy Brawly Brown Author Moseley stubbornly refused for many years to resurrect his popular detective Eazy Rawlins, instead penning everything from science fiction to political essays. But he finally brought Rawlins back in 2002, putting him in another classic mystery setting, this time in 1960s Los Angeles.

6. Jason Moran, Modernistic Pianist Moran is arguably the most intriguing among a corps of twentysomething jazz types grappling with thorny questions of tradition and direction. While Brad Mehldau’s equally exciting and unpredictable Largo has gotten more attention, Moran repeatedly demonstrates on Modernistic, via sometimes delicate, sometimes flamboyant playing and writing, that he has few contemporary peers on the improvisational circuit.

7. Bobby “Blue” Bland, Aug. 2 at Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar As long as he remains active, Bland will always pack them in at blues clubs. But given his recent health problems and advancing age, no one expects him to do much beyond zipping through his hits. Thus when Bland came onstage at Bourbon Street and began belting out crackling choruses, complete with his trademark grunts, casual talk ceased and folks leaned forward in anticipation. A standing-room-only crowd got a set filled with flair, humor, urgency and conviction. Bland’s band might lack the great soloists who backed him during the Duke years, but he invoked plenty of the passion that made those tunes unforgettable.

8. Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day Before Brosnan took over the role of James Bond in 1995, most cinema observers pronounced the series dead. Brosnan reconfigured the Bond equation, returning the elegant and charming character attributes lost during the Timothy Dalton era, while also restoring the cunning and menacing qualities lost when Roger Moore replaced Sean Connery. Still, Brosnan hadn’t gotten the film to fully exploit his talents or completely update the portrayal until this year’s Die Another Day.

9. The ongoing Biggie/Tupac controversy Who really killed Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur? The unsolved double murders enjoy the same status among hip-hop conspiracy theorists that the grassy knoll controversy does with the JFK generation, and things got even more heated this year with the dueling theories presented by reporter Chuck Phillips’ L.A. Times series and English filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s Biggie & Tupac documentary.

10. Rev. Solomon Burke This vintage soul musician didn’t top any Soundscan charts, but he certainly enjoyed a high-profile year. His smashing Fat Possum release Don’t Give Up on Me featured him on compositions by rock luminaries ranging from Elvis Costello to Tom Waits. Rounder reissued his triumphant 1983 comeback disc Soul Alive, and his work was also featured on the stunning anthology The Heart and Soul of Bert Berns, who penned “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” and “Cry to Me.” Then, to top it all off, he opened some West Coast shows for The Rolling Stones in late October and early November.

Classical music, local culture and other highlights

—Marcel Smith

Lynne Rothrock Recalling both Diana Krall and a prettier Bette Midler with sassy red hair, this singer lately did a gig at 12th & Porter announcing her first CD, This Is Me. She opened the show as a lighthearted tramp doing “He Ain’t Mr. Right, but He’s Mr. Right Now” by Jeff Frankel and Amy Powers, and she finished with the hauntingly tender “When You Are Old” by Gretchen Peters. She can sing anything, and she can grab and shake a house.

People en Español It looks just like People magazine, full of slick ads and color photos of gorgeous males and females, and it’s just as conscientiously superficial. But given the content, a reader doesn’t need much Spanish to make out what’s on the page—and pick up some Latino slang besides. The pictured guys might pass for Anglo hunks, but the women do not resemble Lara Flynn Boyle: They have curvas above and below their unmasked ombligos. There are other arresting differences too. Dr. Pedro Garcia should require this magazine in high school Spanish classes—it might actually get kids to learn the language.

Stephanie Hamilton For years, this local dance teacher has been mounting concerts each spring and fall at Harpeth Hall. The most recent program cut a rug with Elvis Presley and Richard Rodgers. Most of her dancers have never danced before, but she still puts them onstage a dozen or so at a time to do intricate, upbeat, precise ensemble routines. All signs are that the kids are having a ball. The routines are delightfully witty stuff—and the kind of thing any public school might emulate. Given only a gym floor and a CD player and Hamilton’s imagination, any school might rescue “physical education” from dreary futility.

Samuel P. Huntington In his 70s now, Harvard government professor Huntington may be authentically unique on our planet: He is incandescently erudite and writes in plain, everyday American. His national best seller The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order may have come out in 1996, but it couldn’t be more relevant than it is right now. It remains maybe the most realistic, lucid and cogent model of international relations that nonspecialists may use to envision the U.S. in relation to Islam, to China, to Latin America, to Africa and to Europe. This is a sobering book; it does not promote naive optimism. But neither is it a doomsday prophecy. Its image of Islam is an especially prickly cud to chew on since 9/11.

Osvaldo Golijov A composer of bewitching genius, Golijov was born in 1960 into a Jewish community in La Plata, Argentina, and grew up steeped in klezmer music and Astor Piazzola’s new tango while studying piano at the classical conservatory. In 1983 he moved to Israel before coming to the U.S. in 1986. After garnering a truckload of prizes, he now teaches at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. His splendidly imaginative “Pasión según San Marco,” based on St. Mark’s crucifixion story, was commissioned to commemorate this year’s 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death. Blending dramatic power and substance and musical inventiveness worthy of Bach himself in the same crucible with traditional Jewish herbs and native Argentine spices, Golijov has brought thrillingly vital music into a world stumbling toward catastrophe.

Music, movie, book and other highlights

—Wayne Wood

Warren Zevon on The Late Show With David Letterman, Oct. 30 Zevon, who had the height of his popularity in 1978 with “Werewolves of London,” has spent the past 25 years releasing interesting and literate music for a small group of devoted fans. His collaborators in that enterprise have included Hunter S. Thompson, Carl Hiaasen, Mitch Albom and Irish poet Paul Muldoon. In September he announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had a short time to live. With little advance notice, Letterman devoted his entire Oct. 30 show to Zevon, who gave a touching, yet not maudlin, interview and sang three songs. The tone for the evening was set when he was introduced and the band struck up one of his songs from the late ’70s, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” When Letterman asked what having a short time to live had taught him, Zevon thought about the question for a minute and said, “Enjoy every sandwich.” One shudders to think what Barbara Walters would have done with this; Letterman did it right.

Bruce Springsteen, “Mary’s Place,” from The Rising This song from the Sept. 11-themed collection The Rising occurs about two-thirds of the way through, but with its story of a spouse left behind trying to find joy in the present while keeping the good memories of the past, it contains the line that best sums up the whole album: “How do you live brokenhearted?” The Rising is so tied to a specific historic event that all of it may not age well; “Mary’s Place” will sound perfect 50 years from now, because it’s not about terrorists or airplanes hitting buildings; it’s about the human heart struggling to go on.

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot The album that Reprise Records hated, was picked up by Reprise corporate sibling Nonesuch, and went on to be the biggest seller of this wonderfully creative band’s career. The opening lines of the first track, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”—“I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue”—are more than a new way to talk about driving drunk. They’re the voice of man who knows he has lost control, driven away a person he loves and hates himself for it. I played this CD loud all summer long.

Zimbabwe Daily News online High-wire, life-risking journalism, delivered daily to the desktop. Some background: Robert Mugabe, the de facto dictator of this once prosperous African nation, stole reelection this year through fraud and rammed through his parliament a tough set of laws designed to muzzle the press and the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. The Daily News is the one free newspaper left in the country. Its editors and reporters have been jailed, its press and offices have been firebombed, and every morning a new edition appears with news of what the government is up to. A daily shot of what the freedom of the press means by a courageous group of African journalists putting out a free newspaper with no constitutional protection. (www.dailynews.co.zw)

Sunshine State An absorbing, multilevel movie that shows the Florida of today being built on the ghosts of the past. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” Faulkner wrote in Intruder in the Dust, and John Sayles’ movie shows the intersecting lives of people of all races as a developer works behind the scenes to build a development amid the complex lives of a small beach community. The only movie I saw this year that I was still thinking about and sorting through a week later.

Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark An account of how amateur and backyard astronomers continue to contribute to our knowledge of the cosmos, and help look out for potential killer asteroids and comets that could impact Earth. A combination astronomy book and paean to the human spirit of discovery.

Reasons why I didn’t lose my mind this year

—Jonathan Marx

Donnie Darko Set in Reagan-era suburbia, this dark-humored and unusually moving film follows a disenfranchised high-school kid, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, as he grapples with apocalyptic hallucinations and bumps up against various authority figures. It should speak to anyone who’s totally spooked by the current Bush era: It raises some pretty basic but profound philosophical questions, positing a vastly more empathetic—and genuine—morality than the one our own president and attorney general would seem to embrace. More than that, it’s full of sharp, hilarious dialogue, and it’s got a brilliant soundtrack that’ll resonate surprisingly deeply for anyone who came of age in the ’80s.

Deerhoof, Reveille All hype about The Strokes and their neo-garage/punk brethren cast aside (as it should be), this is possibly the most exciting rock ’n’ roll record of the last five or so years, in part because it is so utterly unique. This isn’t Deerhoof’s first album, but it’s here that their blazing guitars, visceral drumming, sing-song melodies, elliptical lyrics and simple keyboard embellishments coalesce into something electrifying and unpredictable.

Thuja This instrumental quartet released four different CDs of their improvised soundscapes this year, two them (Museum #1 and #2) in lovely hand-packaged editions with block prints, shells, dried plants and other pieces of natural detritus. These small tactile materials incarnate the group’s musical aesthetic, which includes recording outdoors, where the sounds of air, water, earth and living things work their way into the songs, literally and metaphorically. The music can take a while to absorb, but when it does, it’s a wholly singular experience, soothing and subtly disquieting—a sensation that makes Thuja’s explorations feel both outside of time and of the moment.

Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize At a time when there are too many reasons to feel ambivalent about being American, here’s one reason to be proud—an affirmation that our society has fostered at least a few values and public figures worth upholding. Case in point: Carter is so classy, he’s used this opportunity to ever-so-diplomatically urge Bush to pursue peace, while the esteemed Nobel Organization has used this opportunity to pretty much trash the current prez.

Gilmore Girls On the surface, this series on the WB Network looks like it’s targeted at teenage girls and their moms. But for every moment when the plot or the dialogue veers perilously close to saccharine sweetness or just plain goofiness, the show’s writers throw in a moment that rings painfully honest (and it often involves a parent or a kid fucking up in a big way). Now in its third season, the show keeps getting better, and it boasts some of the quickest, funniest banter on television. Also, the producers/writers get major points for including just the right amount of hip musical references—enough to make it clear they’re serious music fans, but not so much that talk of The Clash or Belle & Sebastian ever gets cloying.

Tweet, “Oops (Oh My)” One small consolation of corporate FM’s ever-shrinking playlists: For a while, this song was on the radio about every 20 minutes. Timbaland’s backing track is as freakily inventive as anything else that came out this year, and good gawd, the lyrics are sexy (well, minus that guest rap from Fabolous, which might’ve gone just a bit too far).

David Cross, Shut Up You Fucking Baby! Wow, a comedian who’s actually funny. One reason is because his spontaneous monologues are so topical. On this two-disc set, he lays into the Catholic Church, Promise Keepers, Bushcroft and plenty other things with a fury so righteous that his bits don’t just induce laughs, they make the listener feel downright uncomfortable. Which is the way humor should be, right?

Music and movie highlights

—Chris Davis

The Trials of Henry Kissinger If you’re outraged by the cast of crooks in and around the current Bush White House—and amazed at the “liberal” media’s outright failure to remind the public that a good many of the president’s appointees committed felonies under previous Republican regimes—this movie will unsettle you and confirm your worst fears: that the government is not stupid and does not mean well.

Nagisa Nite, On the Love Beach reissue Props to Jagjaguwar Records for reissuing this masterful Japanese folk-psych homage to Neil Young’s On the Beach. Rather than sounding like a Young acolyte, songwriter Shinji Shibayama (who sings and plays most of the instruments) sounds like Crazy Horse recording inspired piss takes on the Roxy Music songbook.

Jackson C. Frank, untitled reissue This budget-priced reissue of Frank’s sole LP, with detailed liner notes recounting his fascinating and tragic life, is indispensable to anyone wanting to hear different voices from the ’60s folk revival.

Devendra Banhart, Oh Me, Oh My... Banhart’s incredible debut has been in constant rotation in my CD player ever since it arrived in the mail about a month ago. He’s assimilated the best of the rare folk records—from Karen Dalton to Vashti Bunyan—and condensed them into accessible psychedelic mock-epics with titles that would’ve made Marc Bolan blush. Best part for last: Banhart is playing Slow Bar on Jan. 9.

Dio/Scorpions, June 18 at AmSouth Amphitheatre Hipsters poisoned my brain for years and encouraged me to think that liking metal was at best a camp pursuit. At AmSouth Amphitheatre, the elfin one stood tall and The Scorps rocked hard to an enthusiastic, fucked-up crowd of people who, it turns out, were right all along. My neck was sore for days.

Wolf Eyes, April 27 at Springwater This Michigan group’s unique industrial trance music transformed Springwater’s tinsel-and-cinderblock interior into a swirling, echoic mass of electronic arcade sleaze. The confused crowd didn’t know whether to flee or to close their open jaws and pump their fists maniacally to the cyclic pulse of Wolf Eyes’ dub- and hardcore-influenced noise.

Nova w/Scout Niblett, Sept. 21 at Springwater One of the best shows I saw last year was a chance collaboration between local guitarist Cortney Tidwell of Nova and Nottingham, England, musician Emma “Scout” Niblett. In town for a gig of her own the following night, Niblett was at Springwater and obliged Tidwell’s request for a fill-in drummer. The spontaneous interchange that followed was fated by geography to be a onetime event. I’m just glad I got to see it.

Oneida, Each One Teach One Record dealers are bigger liars than used car salesmen. If I had a nickel for every “essential” psych record I’ve purchased based on the salesmanship of a future Lord of the Rings extra, I’d be both unemployable and extremely wealthy. Oneida’s double LP/CD, no fooling, is the real deal—the “if you buy only one essential heavy psych record” record. The first cut, “Sheets of Easter,” hammers a repetitive chant/riff for 13 minutes without variation until the sound starts to shimmer and wave the same way that Rothko monochromes start to vibrate after you stare at them an appropriate length of time. By the end of the second disc, you’ll understand why Oneida were voted New York’s best live band by Time Out New York.

Sonny and Linda Sharrock, Paradise reissue Sonny and Linda Sharrock’s 1969 album Black Woman is an unbridled celebration of great black music featuring Linda’s soulful caterwaul and Sonny’s smooth guitar strummed so as to suggest a marimba or steel drum. Despite the title of that album, it’s their 1975 LP Paradise that’s generally regarded as Linda’s record. While Sonny evinces his distinctive ability to sound as if he’s dismantling the guitar while simultaneously maintaining the melody, Linda’s contribution is more confident and melodic than on Black Woman, careening from pointillistic, Ono-esque hiccups to beautiful soul singing. “End of the Rainbow” begins with a melody later popularized in the song “Kung Fu Fighting.”

Dogtown and Z-Boys Stacy Peralta’s documentary examines the irreverent and innovative Z-Boys surf team that gave birth to modern skateboarding, in the process creating a countercultural watershed that extended the ’60s antiestablishmentarian sentiment while the hippies moved on to cocaine and James Taylor. After that, skate culture incubated everything from design to fine art to music until it was ready for mass consumption.

DVD, movie and other highlights

—Doug Brumley

1. My So-Called Life DVD box set Despite an amazing groundswell aimed squarely at ABC execs, fans of this 1994-95 TV series starring Claire Danes couldn’t bring about a second season. Fortunately, those same fans finally coerced BMG into producing a five-disc DVD set containing all 19 episodes of the drama, which earned critical raves for its realistic, empathic depiction of a teen’s life. The production quality of the discs could have—and should have—been better, and there are no extras beyond the episodes themselves. But the rich characters and lifelike dialogue quickly obscure any audio-visual glitches or lack of new content, and die-hard fans are simply thrilled to replace their fatigued, home-recorded VHS tapes with a more permanent record of the show. The box set, released in November, is already the best-selling DVD item ever produced by BMG’s Special Products division—a development that may have some long-term impact on the way companies evaluate prospective DVD projects.

2. www.KEXP.org In a year when copyright rulings have compelled most terrestrial stations to cease broadcasting their signal over the Internet, Seattle’s superb KEXP-90.3 FM has actually expanded its simulcasted webstreams to share its quality radio programming with listeners throughout the world. The publicly supported station (read: no commercials) broadcasts 24 hours a day and plays everything from Steve Earle to Sigur Rós, from Jurassic 5 to John Coltrane—quite possibly all in the same hour. A real-time playlist on the Web site conveniently identifies each song, while a streaming audio archive offers quick access to any track, in-studio performance or program from the past two weeks. To top it off, the difference in time zones means that the wonderful The Morning Show With John show comes on at a palatable 8 a.m. Nashville time—not a painful 6 a.m.

3. The Royal Tenenbaums Director Wes Anderson moved squarely into the mainstream with this star-studded film about the eccentric, baggage-toting members of the erudite Tenenbaum family. Deeper and darker than Anderson’s previous works, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, the movie hit Nashville big screens in January, followed by a fittingly wonderful Criterion-edition DVD this summer. Classified as a comedy, it becomes less humorous and more poignant with each subsequent viewing.

4. A Skin Too Few—The Days of Nick Drake Jeroen Berkvens’ 48-minute documentary about the life and environs of the late singer-songwriter played to a packed theater at the Nashville Independent Film Festival, and rightly so. Through interviews with Nick’s sister Gabrielle, record producer Joe Boyd and others closest to the withdrawn performer, the film sketches a quick history of his brief 26 years, while childhood images and publicity photos are interspersed with new, reverential footage of Drake’s empty bedroom and beautiful, sweeping shots of germane British landscapes. Together, it all brings new perspective to the celebrated artist’s hushed folk songs, which serve as the film’s soundtrack.

Music, movie,TV and book highlights

—Jonathan Flax

U2, 2002 Super Bowl Halftime Show, Feb. 3 Segueing from the mid-’80s lullaby “MLK” into a blistering “Where the Streets Have No Name” as the names of 9/11 victims scrolled behind them on giant screens, U2 synthesized a lot of emotions in 15 minutes while playing the hell out of their songs. As Bono signed off, coolly displaying his stars-and-stripes jacket lining in a last small gesture, it was easy to respond cynically, but far easier to be moved.

Richard Thompson, “Oops!...I Did it Again,” June 17 at 12th & Porter Smack in the middle of his set, as the old man in the snappy black beret held court over a rapt and close-quartered crowd, Thompson threw one of his many curveballs that night. Not the obscure gems from his early catalogue, not the traditional numbers from the unofficial Irish Drinking Song canon, not the dexterous guitar workouts that left several notable Nashville gunslingers craning their necks to see his hands. No, this time Thompson began a spot-on cover of Britney’s “Oops!...I Did It Again.” Spot-on, that is, but for a deep brogue twist in the chorus, which turned the word “oops!” into the somehow more menacing “ups!” A testament to the mojo of that evening and to the artist himself, the tune was played poker-face straight. It sounded all too convincing, almost dire; it sounded like a Richard Thompson song.

Bowling for Columbine Michael Moore’s most cogently realized work to date, this documentary maintains a pitch-perfect ratio of humor, hard facts, harrowing stock footage and Moore’s own textbook showiness. In particular, his revelatory conversation with a thoughtful and articulate Marilyn Manson and his climactic give-and-take with NRA president Charlton Heston are two of the most riveting scenes in any movie this year.

The Daily Show When did Comedy Central’s The Daily Show become one of the most incisive news programs on cable? Seriously. Not only do Jon Stewart and company’s irreverent, whip-smart headlines and commentaries provoke nervous laughter, they often illuminate sensitive events of the day with an enlightening lack of CNN, MSNBC or FoxNews pretense. As for Stewart’s guests, the pundits, scholars, journalists and politicians who filled the interview couch during the show’s remarkable post-9/11 redirection have returned for 2002. It’s a striking, admirable evolution for TV’s most fearless and biting half-hour.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot, by Sarah Vowell Smart, observant essays from the frequent This American Life contributor. Best piece: Bush vs. Gore 2000 as a high school jock-vs.-nerd contest writ large.

Tribute, Nashville Independent Film Festival As poignant and deeply human as it was outrageous, this exploration of tribute bands and their tribute fans showed that cover groups suffer the same backbiting, infighting and dues-paying as their real live counterparts. As the film played to a sell-out crowd at the NIFF, with a heavy quotient of musicians, the knowing roars in the audience were like some kind of communal release. The most fun I’ve had in a movie theater—ever.

Beck, Sea Change A strong year for albums, but this is what I’ll take to the proverbial desert island if forced to choose. Beck downshifts here from the glitz of Midnite Vultures and makes something still very lush, but a restrained lush. It’s also a sterling elegy to loss and growth and no hard feelings, all of which hit comfortably close to home. Runner-up: The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, for the exact same reason.

Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill DVD Izzard’s one-man show is a world history lesson, a linguistics lecture, an essay on straight transvestitism and an exercise in erratic tangents, such as the possible origins of Engelbert Humperdinck’s nom de plume. It’s also the wittiest, most entertaining release of the year.

Dirt Bike Annie, The Prom and M. Ward, various dates at The End Three stellar live shows that stick with me still, each of them attended on a whim, with only modest crowds. Yet these three visiting acts, who quietly toured their way in and out of the same Nashville venue this year, made for the most vital small-club gigs I saw in 2002.

MTV Video Music Awards, Aug. 29 A case study of surreal television and a warning bell for the apocalypse, this year’s VMAs were like some oppressive fever dream that you couldn’t awake from. But yes, that really was Eminem threatening violence to both Moby and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; a seemingly plastic surgery-enhanced Axl Rose failing to belt out the opening yelp to “Welcome to the Jungle” before running out of breath; and Michael Jackson creating an award for himself (“Artist of the Millennium”) on the spot, then thanking, who else, David Blaine, during his “acceptance” speech. He was just supposed to blow out the candles on his birthday cake.

Notable closings and grand reopenings

—Paul Griffith

Norma’s Dusty Road It was Nashville’s oldest licensed beer bar and one of the city’s last authentic honky-tonks. David Allen Coe used to sleep in a car behind the Dusty Road’s original Woodland Street location, and during the mid-’70s the club was home to Nashville’s then insurgent bluegrass community. Its worse-for-wear ambience made it an ideal location for country music videos and the perfect hiding place for visiting celebs: Both Alan Jackson and Ray Charles shot footage there, and U2 once jammed on its rickety stage. In the midst of higher-profile Lower Broad closings, the boarding-up of the Dusty Road’s “new” First Avenue location this fall went virtually unnoticed—except, one would assume, by its now largely transient, voiceless group of regulars. Longtime owner Norma Bogle always treated her rough-hewn clientele with a loving yet firm hand, but recently she had been in poor health. A frenzy of phone calls to local authorities from the Metro zoning office to the Budweiser distributor turned up no explanation for the bar’s closing.

Mars Music After its aggressive pricing contributed to the demise of several local mom-and-pop music stores, monolithic Mars Music closed its own doors this November, its bankruptcy due to “underperformance” and nonpayment of monumental debt. (The chain is about $2 million into the Roland corporation alone.) Though Nashville’s music community complained about surly employees, poor service and overall sterility, many a sheepish glance was exchanged at the store’s 100 Oaks location between pros who nonetheless knew that Mars would offer them the best deal.

Belmont Boulevard Technically, it was never closed, but locals who cared about their car’s suspension often wished that it had been. Though it seemed like forever, Belmont Boulevard was reopened after 10 months of what often appeared to be redundant work on the area’s water lines—gaping ditches would magically be filled in overnight, only to be dug up again the following day. Still, all the detoured trips down 12th Avenue—never the already congested 21st—now seem worth it if for no other reason than this: bike lanes! Sure, they’ll only take you from Bongo Java to Wild Oats, but as part of our traditionally bike-unfriendly town’s Pilot Bikeway Project, there’s something about the bold, freshly painted channels that makes us seem, well, civilized.

Compendia and Universal South record labels Despite a chilly fiscal climate and an abundance of available office space on Music Row, two audacious Nashville-based record labels opened their doors in 2002. Significantly, both Universal South and independent Compendia Music Group got lucky early by fishing in deeper waters than some of their struggling neighbors—the former with releases by Joe Nichols, Allison Moorer and Cross Canadian Ragweed, the latter with Dead Reckoners Kevin Welch and Kieran Kane, Joan Osborne and New Age chart-toppers Taliesin Orchestra.

Exit/In Plenty has already been written about this legendary club’s 2002 padlocking and eventual reopening. Most important in these discussions is speculation about what this venerable institution’s history of instability says about Music City’s live music scene. Inexperienced managers, apathetic college students, jaded music business veterans, greedy bands, meddling record labels, managers, booking agents, etc. all got the blame, but the bottom line was this: Since its first renovation, despite many a soundman’s best efforts, the Exit/In has been a terrible-sounding, cold-as-ice room, inhospitable to bands and audience alike. Here’s hoping that new owner Rick Whetsel makes rectifying this situation a priority.

Top DVDs of the year/toys for 1-year-olds

—Donna Bowman

10. Schoolhouse Rock There are the ones we all remember (“I’m Just a Bill”), but there are also the ones that hover in dusty corners of our recollection, only in fragments (“Interjections”). Good educational songwriting lasts a lifetime.

9. Beauty and the Beast If you didn’t think it deserved a nomination for Best Picture in 1991, take another look at perhaps the greatest Disney animated picture of all time.

8. Plastic toddler cups A couple of bucks for a set of five. They nest and roll in circles. Especially the yellow one.

7. Saturday Night Fever Two great movies of the ’70s—this and Rocky—unfairly became punch lines. One look at this brilliant, desperate update of Rebel Without a Cause, and all the parodies will be wiped away.

6. Fisher-Price Baby Playzone Crawl-Along Drum Roll Not just for crawling—also for carrying and throwing and making sure one of the three colored balls ends up in every room of the house.

5. Fisher-Price Little People Family Van No more the wooden, armless Little People of my childhood (immortalized in Evan Dorkin’s comics). Now: families without daddies!

4. The Tarantino Collection Only a decade after QT changed the face of independent filmmaking, young people are coming of age with no memory of Pulp Fiction. Finally, we can do something about that.

3. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India You still have a few months to get in on the ground floor of the Bollywood boom. This old-fashioned crowd-pleaser is the right place to start.

2. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Roger Livesay’s performance as the Young Turk who becomes an old fogey is one of the subtlest and most touching in film history. Bonus points for director Michael Powell’s pair of cocker spaniels “spending a penny” during their big scene.

1. Empty Diaper Genie refills They stack, they roll, they stack upside down, they have a hole in the middle to hide a block or ball. Where were they when we were kids?

An automotive top 10

—Marc Stengel

High and Mighty: SUVs—The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way, by Keith Bradsher Word has it that after this scathing SUV exposé appeared on bookshelves in September, author Keith Bradsher was summarily uninvited from any future auto junkets. So what? He’s off to Hong Kong anyway, leaving behind a mean-spirited, controversial, occasionally wrong but often thought-provoking look at our latest vehicular excesses.

Ford GT A lot of baby boomers fell in love with sports cars while daydreaming about the Ford GT40, which climaxed an impressive career with its 1-2-3 finish at Le Mans in 1966. This year Ford determined to resurrect history with a new Ford GT that will hit the streets in 2003 in limited production runs of only 1,000 cars per year. Power will be 500-plus horsepower from a supercharged V8, at a price well over $100,000.

Demise of Saturn EV1 In November, General Motors pulled the plug on its once ballyhooed Saturn EV1 all-electric vehicle. The company announced that it will not renew all 600—that’s right 600—leases for EV1s prowling the streets since 1996. Devotees are heartbroken, but GM refuses to let any of these machines escape the crusher, even after a reported $1 billion investment in its plug-and-play car of the future.

Rebirth of MINI After a complicated gestation involving past and present automakers British Leyland, Rover, Austin, Morris and BMW, the cute little MINI micro-commuter returned to the roadways this year. It’s a city-slicker’s delight, buzzing in and out of tight spaces and turning heads on every sidewalk. Folks worried about safety can take some reassurance from front, side and head-curtain airbags; everybody else can revel in its high spirits and low fuel consumption.

Return of the Z Datsun (now Nissan) essentially invented the concept of affordable performance with the 1970 240Z, but by the mid-’90s, the Z-Car had priced itself out of its market. This year a reinvigorated Nissan Corporation debuted the 350Z as a 2003 model and put performance back in the hands of the masses—or at least of the upwardly mobile. The all-new “Z” boasts 287 horses and a six-speed manual (or a five-speed auto), and prices range from the high $20,000s to mid-$30,000s.

Satellite Radio All audio all the time—and for the most part commercial-free. That’s both the promise and the reality of satellite radio on the road, thanks to the twin debuts of XM Radio and Sirius Radio in 2002. So far, XM has the lead in listenership, owing to a hefty GM investment and thousands of satellite-capable GM vehicles already on the road. Rates are about $10 a month in either case; and until powers-that-be muck it up with commercialism, satellite tunes and talk shows represent an unprecedented nirvana for auto-audiophiles.

Cadillac Escalade EXT Mark your calendars: 2002 will go down in history as the beginning of the end of that irrational exuberance otherwise known as the sport/utility vehicle. How so? Just look at Cadillac’s high-cost, big-horsepower, ultra-deluxe and entirely useless 2002 Escalade EXT “hybrid” SUV. The only way to go from here is down. Watch your step.

Mercedes Maybach In May, in the midst of global recession, in a climate of impending war, Mercedes-Benz saw fit to revive its Maybach division of ne plus ultra luxury “saloons.” The stunningly huge and sybaritic Maybach 57 and Maybach 62 cost about $315,000 and $365,000, respectively. Reclining rear seats—with retracting leg rests—come standard in the latter. Imagine that!

Hummer H2 It’s the ultimate plaything: GM boasts that its all-new-for-2002 Hummer H2 will go anywhere, anytime. For 55-grand, it oughta. This “play Army” urban assault vehicle costs one-half of its namesake—the H1 version of the “for-real Army” HumVee. But the best trick is the one GM plays on its customers: Not a single part on the H2 comes from an actual Hummer parts bin, except for the pair of tow hooks bolted to the rear bumper. Everything else is a direct borrow from Chevy and GMC trucks.

R.I.P. Oldsmobile, 1897-2002 If you live to 105, you can be excused for dying, I suppose. And GM can probably be forgiven for taking its ailing Oldsmobile division off of life support (so long as no one calls too much attention to the history of missteps that precipitated Olds’ demise). The irony is, of course, that certain models like the Aurora sedan and Bravada SUV are the best Oldsmobiles available in years. All the better for becoming collectors’ items then, perhaps.

Music and movie highlights

—Scott Manzler

1. De La Soul: AOI: Bionix Conceived and (I assume) recorded before our world changed irrevocably, De La’s second installment in a proposed trilogy is nonetheless my post-9/11 music of choice. The once and future daisy-agers profess and, more importantly, practice a species of humanism—good-natured, non-strident, pro community, pro sex—that I hoped would predominate after our bloodthirst subsided. Instead, their live-and-let-live ethos, couched in a seductive ’70s soul lining, endures (and sustains) as an idyllic alternate reality.

2. Far From Heaven/Springtime in a Small Town/Talk to Her Melodrama, dismissively lumped under the dubious catch-all “chick flick,” is as enduring and important a cinematic category as the Western, film noir or romantic comedy. And based on its most recent A-list entries, the genre may be the most vital and relevant as well. The first two titles are breathtaking reworkings of earlier masterpieces; the latter, the surprisingly affecting culmination of Pedro Almodóvar’s sometimes brilliant career. Together they suggest that our turbulent inner lives are fraught with more adventure and peril than any of the CGI-abetted dick flicks Hollywood belched out over the past year.

3. Elvis Costello, Oct. 30 at the Ryman Auditorium Like Dylan and the Band in ’74, Costello and his Imposters tore through the McManus songbook with a joy and abandon that redefined as it ravaged. A sweaty night among reinvigorated old friends, all topped by a willfully perverse “I Want You” set piece and its soulful “Almost Blue” benediction.

4. Rolling Stones Remastered Series Judging by the largely indifferent response to ABKCO’s massive Stones reissue project, three decades of Mick and Keef’s excellent adventures may have finally done irreparable harm to the band’s rep—which is too bad, because their ’64-’72 run stands as one of the rock era’s singular achievements. All but a handful of the period’s regular releases are knockouts, and they’ve never sounded better. Anyone who plunked down $150 to $300 to see the “The Greatest Rolling Stones Cover Band in the World” owes him/herself at least a sampling of the real thing.

5. Time Out After mechanically repeating the routines of a former job, after fabricating the specifics of a new career, after betraying friends and family, Vincent, the protagonist of Laurent Cantet’s chilling suspensier, wanders into the cinematic void, his wife’s voice imploring from an abandoned cell phone. In the following scene, he sits penitently, adopting yet another role, the cautiously expectant job interviewee. Gifted French director Cantet reimagines the modern workspace as an inescapable arena of self-deception and abnegation.

6. Northern State, Hip Hop You Haven’t Heard Young, white and female, Long Island MCs Hesta Pryn, DJ Sprout and Guinea Love earn their title boast by simply being themselves. Their raps are immersed in the day-to-day specifics of lived young adult lives: working the hot corner on your softball squad, learning old-country culinary skills at your mother’s side, slicing and dicing pop cult materials like ace early-Buffy. I never hoped for or even imagined a hip-hop Sleater-Kinney; now I’ve got my fingers crossed.

7. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat Despite the album’s self-conscious post-9/11 vantage, my favorite touch remains the girlish “Oh-oh-oh/Oh-oh-oh” that tags each line of the aptly titled “Oh!” Which implies that our heroes, after a year-and-a-half sabbatical, are back on their A-game, channeling catharsis through sonic release. The resultant “combat rock” achieves the near-unthinkable, an expansive marriage of Dig Me Out’s white-knuckle intensity with the musical and political outreach of its underrated follow-ups.

8. The Son At some base level, the Dardennes brothers’ latest film, surveying the traumatic aftermath of a son’s murder, is as contrived and implausible as In the Bedroom’s third act. Yet their tale of an emotionally damaged carpenter’s bid for redemption and closure ultimately succeeds, and spectacularly so, in its unwavering conviction and unerring command of the basics—an understated script, fearless performances and spot-on direction. The final message is as simple and honest as it is painful and unfair: Sometimes there just isn’t any reason.

9. McCoy Tyner, March 20 at Iridium, New York, N.Y. I caught several first-rate jazz acts during my ’02 travels—Arthur Blythe, Ron Carter, Cachao—but Tyner gets the nod because of a rumored upcoming Nashveg date. The pianist’s live set honored the epic explorations of former leader John Coltrane while working an infectious post-bop groove worthy of Sonny Rollins. Joined by forever young vibist Bobby Hutcherson, the sexagenarian made hash of our culture’s contemptuous old-age myths.

10. Donnie Darko Jake Gyllenhaal died for our sins. Richard Kelly’s brilliant, sui generis debut feature isn’t the only Christ parable listed (cf. The Son), but it is the only entry to feature time travel, Tears for Fears, “Sparkle Motion,” a giant rabbit, Patrick Swayze and, of course, Jake’s somnambulant baby blues. Equal parts surreal, pained and transcendent, this cult fave completely baffled its distributor, but with half a decade’s perspective, it may very well stand alongside Rushmore as a twinned peak of the recent teen art-flick boomlet.

Music, movie, art and other highlights

—Jason Shawhan

Together, “So Much Love to Give” 12-inch single A collaboration between French house music titans Thomas Bangalter and DJ Falcon, this epic is one vocal snippet and the warmest of analog synthesizers pounding away for almost 11 minutes, and it is glorious.

Marianne Faithfull I started the year out in January seeing Faithfull at the Belcourt in Patrice Chereau’s Intimacy. I finished out the year in December seeing her at the Belcourt live.

Movies The highest of praise is due Nashville Premieres for its spiritual/ cineaste one-two punch of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker at Sarratt and Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies at this year’s NIFF. The latter was the most exciting film experience in the city all year. Roger Avary’s tragically underrated The Rules of Attraction was the high point of mainstream Hollywood offerings this year, but the biggest mind-melter experience was a film that won’t come to Nashville until 2003 (if at all): Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible.

The Osbournes It isn’t just that Sharon Osbourne is the coolest and most pragmatic person on the planet. It isn’t even that Sharon, Ozzy, Jack and Kelly are going to take the nation through the process of cancer awareness and treatment. It’s the fact that here is a reality program about people who are working together and are really likable and entertaining. Important issues, rock ’n’ roll and deadpan British senses of humor make this a deserved phenomenon.

Rule of Thirds gallery This new art space just off Belmont Boulevard is friendly, freaky, run by passionate and intelligent people, and has done consistently interesting exhibitions.

DVDs The commentaries on the discs for Paul Verhoeven’s Spetters and Asia Argento’s Scarlet Diva simply can’t be beat—technically aware, mordantly funny, sexually frank, unafraid to name names, philosophically insightful and easily revisitable, plus you can find them each for less than $20. The fact that Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill has finally surfaced in the U.S., uncut, is also worthy of praise.

David Cross at Exit/In, May 18 Starting with a harangue on the venue management’s sandwich policies (soon to be immortalized on DVD), Mr. Show alumnus Cross gave two and a half hours of merciless and hysterically funny stuff. If nothing else, it was worthwhile for explaining just exactly why Jim Belushi is evil.

The superfluous ’R’ in pop songs Nelly started the whole thing with “Hot in Herre.” Then Christina Aguilera felt the need to get “Dirrty.” When will it end? I don’t know, but there’s something to be said for making spelling more expressive. There is a definable difference between “here” and “herre,” just as there is between “dirty” and “dirrty.” Lewis Grizzard said pretty much the same thing, and while that doesn’t exactly confer linguistic legitimacy, it’s more entertaining than the s/z switcheroo that’s been going on for several years.

Varnaline, “Sweet Life,” Feb. 12 at Slow Bar There’s something magical that happens when the band you’re seeing in concert plays the song you want to hear the most desperately. Majesty and transcendence were in abundance at Slow Bar on this particular night, and deep inside his L.A. bunker, Phil Spector must have felt it too.

Adult Swim on Cartoon Network Finally, the post-Simpsons void is filled by something special. Home Movies is one of the best shows about childhood I’ve ever seen, and the dadaist trifecta of Sealab, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and The Brak Show is unmatched for sheer comic innovation. As if this weren’t enough, in January, Adult Swim is picking up Matt Groening’s Futurama—which is good, since Fox has been trying to kill the show since it premiered.

The year’s best records...in party sequence

—Todd Anderson

I detest ranking music. Therefore I have imagined a party with some of my favorite records of the year listed not in order of importance or “goodness,” but simply in party sequence.

Andrew WK, I Get Wet Play at 7 o’clock before the guests show up. Appropriate complement is a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Crush empty can against skull. Goes down well with Ping-Pong. Will improve smack-talking. Can be followed or preceded by entire Master of Puppets album.

Feable Weiner, Dear Hot Chick 8 p.m. Play it when the girls show up. They’ll jump up and down—always a good thing.

The Donnas, Spend the Night 8:30 p.m. An all-around solid album, built to be partied to. Big rock without stupid testosterone. If no girls show up to your party (like all mine), imagine The Donnas jumping up and down.

Ozma, The Doubble Donkey Disc 9:15 p.m. This perfectly constructed record is sweet like a shooter and pop like a nerdy Weezer (if that were possible). Grab something fizzy or fruity, possibly with vodka.

Hot Hot Heat, Make Up the Breakdown 10 p.m. Jittery, anxious pop songs that have been pulled right from your central nervous system. “Get In or Get Out” should be turned up as loud as possible and sung along to. Drink/spill an imported beer.

Spoon, Kill the Moonlight 10:35 p.m. A solidly cool record from a band who sound unaware that MTV exists. Appropriate complement is probably herbal, but whiskey and Coke will go down nicely as well.

N.E.R.D., In Search Of... 11:10 p.m. The import version of this disc is a bit thinner but gives their new wave of hip-hop/funk/soul a spookier edge. “Provider” and “Bobby James” are downers, but red-blooded ones. If you have the domestic release, the live instruments will kick a little harder and a little louder; you’ll need to move the record up in the playlist to accommodate. If you have a forty to spare, pour it out for your homies Jam Master Jay, Dee Dee Ramone and Waylon Jennings.

The Obscure, Laugh Like a Whip, Look Like a Dagger LP/Short Songs for Modern Living EP Midnight. Play when you’re good and lit. Will cause the jumping girls to go home or at least go into another room. Sit outside on the porch while listening and smoke a cigarette. Chat reverentially about this now defunct Nashville band’s sloppy live performances and remember that you don’t have The Obscure to kick around anymore. You probably won’t make it through the whole album in polite company. When it wears on, replace with the Short Songs EP, and repeat “Modern Living” for good measure.

Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights 1 a.m. End of the party. People will be passed out, making out or mumbling quietly. The best record to be playing when the cops show up to tell you to quiet down, even though you already have, since they’re just now responding to a complaint called in two hours earlier. As new and old as a skinny necktie. Smooth like cream liqueur and crazy like pills.

French Kicks, One Time Bells Play when it’s just you and your pals, drunk and tired, in the dark. Music built from the pieces that other bands threw away, alternately frightening and enchanting. Sometimes it sounds exactly like you’re feeling, but only in the middle of the night.

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Source Tags and Codes Absolutely not party music. Play it the next afternoon, when you’re still dazed but your friends show up to play NHL or GTA3 on Playstation.