2004 is winding up to be a pretty lame year for new music. this years best of lists are shaping up to be a bunch of default picks like the roots and brian wilson. nothing's wrong with that except that the roots album is surely below par by even the band's standards and the brian wilson album, is really just a souped up reissue.

so the press has to really go to the edges to fill out top 40 lists. thank god they did. on almost every list is the arcade fire's "funeral". i had never heard of them. apparently there's a lot of indie hype surrounding the band. so i searched out the torrent, gave it a listen, and, lo-and-behold, it's pretty damn good rock music.

and (gasp!) it's probably one of the single best records i've heard this year.

so as our year crunks to an end, we would like to start trunkyard's 'best of 2004' list with this album offered up to the citizens of trunkonia for your downloading pleasure.