Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Ballots cast for year’s best albums

Friday, Dec. 1, 2000 | 11:30 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays in the Sun. Reach him at geoff.carter@vegas.com.

Go figure. America can't pick one president from a field of two, yet every year America's music critics pick the 10 best albums from a field of thousands. Here's my contribution to democracy:

10. David Holmes, "Bow Down to the Exit Sign." If the terrific score to Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight" made David Holmes bankable, "Bow Down to the Exit Sign" busts the bank. Holmes' "invisible soundtracks" are almost indescribable in musical terms, so I'll just say that "Bow Down" is the best film you didn't see this year.

9. BT, "Movement in Still Life." Mistah BT, he lives. "Movement in Still Life" is so packed with goodies that it plays like a greatest hits collection. Best of the batch: the adrenaline-charged "Never Gonna Come Back Down," a wicked breakbeat jam that proves BT's mettle as a hitmaker and transforms former Soul Coughing vocalist M. Doughty into a fully digital, giant-sized beatnik. As BT cranks out some of the tightest beats this side of Fatboy Slim (whose latest release could have used some of this gas), Doughty lets fly a colorful fusillade of words and phrases and clauses. "It was in my belly bitter," he howls, "but in my mouth, it was sweeeeeet." Heard that.

8. Thievery Corporation, "The Mirror Conspiracy." See Laurent Garnier's "Unreasonable Behaviour."

7. Laurent Garnier, "Unreasonable Behaviour." Dark, sexy, beat-smart and utterly hypnotic. Not for kids, or even for mixed company (wink, wink).

6. Primal Scream, "XTRMNTR." You want a declaration of intent? Within the first 30 seconds of "XTRMNTR," Primal Scream invokes the Sex Pistols and invites the listener to "kill all hippies." Without further ado, you're looking down the barrel of the angriest techno-industrial record to poke out of the trenches since Ministry nailed "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste" to young America's tattooed forehead. It doesn't matter who or what you are -- "Accelerator" and "Pills" will make you feel like a 15-year-old flipping the bird at the business end of an approaching tank.

5. Radiohead, "Kid A." Yes, it's brilliant. Yes, they're geniuses. No, you probably won't like it. "Kid A" is a record for audiophiles, meta-hippies and rock critics; the whole thing probably syncs neatly with "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." It's good listening -- "How to Disappear Completely," "The National Anthem" and "Everything in Its Right Place" stand out -- but don't ask me if you'll like it, because odds are you won't. It's a headphones thing.

4. Chicane, "Behind the Sun." Producer/composer Chicane (nee Nick Bracegirdle) must be a gambler: You don't see the trump cards of "Behind the Sun" until he's won you over with them. You could listen to the epic trance of "Don't Give Up" a hundred times before you'd even suspect that the sleek, alluring Eurovoice driving it belongs to Canadian meat-and-potatoes rocker Bryan Adams. "Saltwater" puts a dreamlike trance beat under Clannad vocalist Maire Brennan, with predictably luminous result. And in "Autumn Tactics," Chicane may have perfected pop trance. Even if he didn't, it's the loveliest single of the year.

3. Ryan Adams, "Heartbreaker." Adams is America's most promising young songwriter. That's all. "Heartbreaker's" classic folk-country elements -- the live, twangy guitars, world-weary homilies ("I ain't never been to Vegas/ but I've gambled all my life"), solid-gone hillbilly swing and delicate Hammond organ washes -- recall the benchmark 1970s work of Willie Nelson, Joe Ely and Gram Parsons, three giants whose influence would be spread thick over Nashville in a perfect world. The former Whiskeytown frontman has done no less than create a modern folk-country classic in "Heartbreaker," and the only thing keeping it from going nova is America's depressing notion of what country music should be.

2. U2, "All That You Can't Leave Behind." U2's best record in almost a decade opens with "Beautiful Day," a picturesque, effervescent and wholly giddy anthem that the band practically trips over itself in its eagerness to deliver. It's that hard reset that allows "All That You Can't Leave Behind" to be an easygoing, hassle-free and tuneful experience for band and listener alike. The album gets into your head at first listen and only becomes more familiar, more amicable with each successive listen, like a budding romance.

1. Napster. Every song in the world just a click away -- say hello to the future or recorded music, ladies and gentlemen. Services like Napster are going to make columns like this obsolete, and not a minute too soon.