I've been off-line for nearly a week, but I read that list in the WSJ on Friday too Jeff. Here's his full online list, which is actually 4 times longer. He has his desert islands discs and desert island singles there too, which give you an idea of his personal tastes... something that's of prime importance to judge where a reviewer's coming from. Unfortunately, only the WSJ article has the full in-depth comments for each of those top-10 discs he lists.

His list is targeted at older rockers, so it's more intriguing to me. Too many no-talent re-hashers in too many of the '03 lists I've seen. He has some nice jazz discs listed on his full listing that sound worth investigating.The only thing on there I've even heard is Ether Song by Turin Brakes.

As for my own "2003 best of list"... I just don't understand how some people get the time to listen to that much new music. I'm just getting my '99 list pretty well squared away... It'll be another 4-5 years before I've heard enough '03 discs to venture an opinion. I feel uncomfortable making such lists without listening to at least 100, and generally 150-300 releases... and that's not easy to do in a single year. There's probably that many discs reviewed every month in The Big Takeover alone!

At least Jim's list has a bit more mainstream (classic rock sounding) discs than the ones I've seen in the more poppy publications. Too many jazz, prog, and quieter classic rock songwriters just get ignored by the music publications. There's usually one "new" artist that makes such a big splash they get included (Norah Jones), but 99% of the interesting new talents are overlooked.

The only disc I've heard myself from 2003 that might make my own '03 list is Tiny Volcano's self-titled album. Very soft sounding pop that's a lot like Wondermints. It has slight echoes of Beach Boys, Badfinger, Beatles, XTC, Neil Finn, and Jellyfish in it. I'll have to listen to a whole lot of CDs to move this down past my eventual top-10. Not groundbreaking or anything, but very nicely done if you like this style of pop-rock. (you listening Rick?)