Picking the best records of this or any other year is a precarious, subjective art, made even more maddening by the fact that it is humanly impossible to listen thoroughly to each of the more than 30,000 new albums issued in this country every year, then to find all of the secret jewels buried in that mudslide. What follows is not my ranked list of greatness or obscurist cool for 2002: just ten great pleasures that didn't get away.

Low Trust (Kranky)

This trio from Duluth, Minnesota build a big magic from so little. The simple instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums) and soft vocal harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker ring long, slow and low in watery echo; the stunning opener "(That's How You Sing) Amazing Grace" moves like diamond-studded molasses. But there is rock here -- like "Canada," driven by harsh widescreen bass -- and you have to love a band that can title a song in tribute to one of our best folk-country songwriters ("John Prine"), then play it like a Gregorian death-metal chant.
chairkickers.com

Under Byen Det er Mig der Holder Traeerne Sammen (Plade Selskabet/EMI)

Their name is Danish for "Under the City." And here's the English translation of the album's title: It's Me Who Keeps the Trees Together. Thanks to the language barrier, that's nearly all I can tell you about my favorite new band and record of this year -- except that when I saw this remarkable eight-piece group from Arhus, Denmark at a music festival there in May, I was left speaking in tongues. With an eccentric armory of strings and keys (violin, cello, Wurlitzer organ, melodica), fronted by the haunted whoops and whispers of vocalist Henriette Sennenveldt, Under Byen make a beguiling dance music of pillowy beats and voluptuous shadows, with finely blurred echoes of British trip-hop, Björk's elfin romanticism and the ice-floe rock of Sigúr Ros. This will be a hard record to find: The group's Web site (underbyen.dk) is under reconstruction, and the Internet retail site below is mostly in Danish, with prices in Euros. But real treasure never comes easy.
rillen.dk
Label email: pladeselskabet@pladeselskabet.com

Leaves Breathe (B Unique)

Leaves are this year's real Coldplay: a young quartet from Iceland whose twilight guitars, soaring melancholy and sweet rivers of reverb are an enchanting twist on the angst-stabbed balladry of Radiohead and the gothic 1980's psychedelia of Echo and the Bunnymen. In fact, Leaves may be the most radical new band in Iceland -- utterly devoted to the rich conventions of a big chorus and clean twang in a scene where enigma is prized above all else. At this point, Breathe is available only as a pricey European import. That won't last long.
leaves.tv

yaya3 yaya3 (Loma)

The same trio -- saxophonist Joshua Redman, drummer Brian Blade and organist Sam Yahel -- cut Redman's recent fusion dare, Elastic. But this is the funkier record, spacey swing in the combined spirit of John Coltrane's Atlantic recordings and the 1960s free bop of the late Hammond B-3 legend Larry Young. Redman devotes a lot of oxygen to the suspense of sustain, while Yahel's riffs and melodies bloom with church and the Afro-galactic surge of forgotten Santana albums like Caravanserai and Welcome. And Blade continues to distinguish himself as an articulate and explosive new force in drumming, jazz or otherwise. The three make a cookin' music on Elastic, but here they really stretch out.

yaya3.com

Robert Plant Dreamland (Universal)

The brassy love in this enterprise -- the ex-Led Zeppelin throat's salute to his favorite psalms and souls of the 1960s folk and acid-rock awakenings -- was lost on both old Zeppelin fans and young garage revivalists, few of whom remembered that Zeppelin set lists in 1969 and '70 were packed with Buffalo Springfield and Spirit covers, rewired for arena-metal detonation. Here, Plant drapes the blues and psychedelic prayers of Bukka White, Tim Buckley, the Youngbloods and Moby Grape's Skip Spence in North African atmosphere and double-guitar heroics, vocally opening the melodies and choruses to expose the meditative tensions below. And in "Morning Dew," Plant pays sly thanks to the 1968-69 Jeff Beck Group, an unacknowledged model for Zeppelin's power-blues sound, by quoting Beck's guitar lick on his cover of the song on the 1968 album, Truth.
robertplant.com

Willie Tee Teasin' You (Night Train International/Tuff City)

A newly recovered chapter in the secret history of New Orleans R&B, these 45 RPM sides cut in the 1960s and early 1970s by singer-pianist-arranger Willie Tee are a gas as an education: a machine-gun spray of regional dance-party gems ("Teasin' You") and big hurt ("You're Gonna Pay Some Dues") that affirm Tee's place in the royal house of Crescent City soul, a peer in chops, if not sales, to Allen Toussaint. Surface-noise advisory: Many of these tracks appear to be dubbed from well-worn discs. But that may be all that's left of these mostly-local rarities. Besides, this is probably how they sounded on barroom jukeboxes after a dozen plays a day.
tuffcity.com

Manu Chao Radio Bemba Sound System (Virgin)

Here it is, live and frantic: Manu Chao's mash-up of Spanish, French and Caribbean energies, punk, hyper-ska and electro-cantina pop, fired at you in a whirlwind twenty-nine tracks recorded in concert. To appreciate Chao's catholic notion of roots and branches, listen carefully for the quick hard tear through "The Monkey" by New Orleans R&B god Dave Bartholomew, revved up into a Mexican-Beastie Boys bash. The manic velocity of Radio Bemba Sound System sounds like a studio trick, a miracle of editing. But Chao's shows are really this tight and wild. Now you can take one home.
manuchao.net

The Steve Miller Band King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents the Steve Miller Band (King Biscuit/Razor and Tie)

Between his initial flush of Fillmore-ballroom fame in the late 1960s and his leap to baseball stadiums a decade later with Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, Steve Miller was one of rock's hardest working road dogs, touring coast to coast with a golden rollcall of FM-radio hits and a hearty stew of blues licks, funk grind and improvising spirit. The 1973 and '76 shows on this two-CD set -- recorded in Washington, D.C. and New York respectively for the King Biscuit radio show -- shine a light on Miller's live prime. The '73 date is notable for the dirty version of Miller's early killer, "My Dark Hour," and a test run of the then-unrecorded "Fly Like an Eagle." In '76, on the verge of superstardom, he goes way back to 1968 for the tiptoe soul of "Baby's Callin' Me Home" (written by former bandmate Boz Scaggs) and the Sailor space hymn, "Song for Our Ancestors." I saw both of these tours. Finally, I got a souvenir.
kingbiscuit.com

Burnt Sugar That Depends on What You Know (Trugroid)

A multi-ethnic troop of New York birth but no fixed genre, Burnt Sugar expand, contract and groove like liquid mercury across this three-CD suite of jams and dreams, the followup to the band's 2001 debut, Blood on the Leaf. The Jimi Hendrix, Curtis Mayfield and Thelonious Monk covers dotting each volume (subtitles: The Sirens Return: Keep It Real 'Til It Flatlines; The Crepescularium; Fubractive Since Antiquity Suite) mark the high roads Burnt Sugar take through modern black music. But under the baton of producer/guitarist Greg Tate, the voices, guitars, strings, keys, horns and percussion also summon overlapping echoes of George Clinton, the electric Miles Davis of Get Up With It, Lee Perry's dark magic at Black Ark Studios, plantation blues and gangsta hip hop (minus the gats and 'hos): Ellington to the future via the Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun. You can buy the discs separately, one trip at a time. Or you can get all three and ride 'em to infinity.
trugroid.com

Blue Mountain Tonight It's Now or Never (DCN)

Now it's never: A true alternative in alt-country rock, Blue Mountain -- founded by the singing-writing duo of Cary Hudson and Laurie Stirratt in Oxford, Mississippi, in the early 1990s -- broke up in 2001 after recording four albums of electric Delta fury and cottonfield romance and making fewer fans than they deserved. But the Chicago chapter of Blue Mountain's cult following turned out in ecstasy for the March, 2001 show documented on this farewell release, a two-CD blaze of traditional biscuits ("Banks of the Pontchartrain," "Rain and Snow") and original grit ("Black Dog," "Generic America"). Those of us who weren't there: This is what we missed. Those of you who were: This is what you're missing.
bluemountainmusic.com
dcn.com

DAVID FRICKE
(December 9, 2002)