Not an especially strong year - going by what I listen to the most, I’m going to pick The Coup, with The Avalanches a close second.
Yes, kind of a bland year. I went with Radiohead.
The Strokes here. That album was a joyous mix of pop and post-punk guitar music that just rocked. It felt refreshing at the time, bringing the fun and stomp back to indie rock. Was it treading new ground? Not really. But at the time, I was happy to hear that sound again.
White Stripes. I like most of their albums really and this one is solid enough in an otherwise unexceptional year.
I love Gillian Welch’s sad, lovely pseudo-Appalachian tunes, so voted for her. The Radiohead album’s good, too. I liked Manu Chao when I first heard him (he was popular among some of the kids in the Mexican village where I was living), but soon realized he was singing nonsense in ten different languages.
Voted for White Stripes.
Bjork for me.
I liked the White Stripes’ and Strokes’ records from that year a lot, but Time (The Revelator) is one of my favorite records, ever. Probably the first acoustic, quiet record I’d liked start to finish in a decade or more, and the songs themselves helped me get through the intervening years.
I still listen to Ryan Adams Gold on a weekly basis, so it gets my vote.