This might be the first year that I had no trouble coming up with twenty albums that I absolutely adored. In past years, I’ve come up with five or six, and then I had to pad this list by going on Amazon to see what other albums I’ve heard that were actually released this year. This year, either because of downloading (legal and otherwise) and what I perceive as a geniune surfeit in good music, I had no trouble coming up with about thirty off the top of my head (which I then pared down, for everyone’s sake). This overabundance of good music is one excellent reason to be positive, when so much else in our world should cause us deep concern. Which brings me to my next point.

Our country is in a shitbiscuit of a fuckstorm of a mess of a pickle right now, and the whole world hates us. With the re-election of The One Whose Name Will Go Unmentioned, I experienced a serious crisis of faith to which I think most of you can relate. I do believe that the next four years will be a dark time that will see strife to rival that of the previous four years, and things are going to get worse before they get better.

So, if anything’s going to give us a glimmer of hope during the next four years, it’s going to be art, especially popular music. That’s why, when it comes to music criticism, and criticism in general, I think it’s time to stop the hating, once and for all. What better moment to start celebrating the good art out there and stop tearing down the bad? Why waste your time telling me that an album sucks? What service could you possibly be providing? If I like something, and you don’t, why is it necessary for you to go out of your way to inform me of it, and then belabor the point?

I am utterly perplexed by people who proclaim themselves music fans and then go on long tirades about how much some band sucks. These people expend more breath bitching about how much something sucks when they could be using that breath to rave about how much something else rocks. Do you hate our government? Our healthcare system? The plumbing in your shitty apartment? Fine, bitch about that. But why waste another second bitching about music, when it has done so much to save us?

I’m just trying to stay positive, and that’s a full-time job. I hope you’ll understand.

Air: Talkie Walkie It’s not Moon Safari II—it’s even better. A tidy little package of ten beautiful songs that offer romance without the treacle, the sort of stuff hipsters play for each other on Valentine’s Day. Also perfect for driving along Lakeshore Drive on a bright late-winter afternoon.

Ambulance LTD: Ambulance LTD Emerging quietly from the New York Pretty Boy Rock Onslaught of 2003-4, it took a while for this band to get my attention. But when they finally did, oh man. The sexy swagger of “Primitive” and “Sugar Pill” is tempered by the poignant resignation of “Michigan” and “Swim”; the walls of sound created by “Stay Where You Are” and “Yoga Means Union” are dissolved by the bouyancy of “Ophelia” and “Anecdote”. I regret not catching these guys during one of their seventeen shows in Chicago this year.

Annie: Anniemal This album generates equal parts joy and curiosity: Are all Norwegians that beautiful, or just the ones who make pop music? How is it that Scandanavians speak better English than I do? What’s so brilliant about beginning an album by cooing “Let’s start the record”? Just what is the extended metaphor at work in “Chewing Gum”? Has there ever been a catchier elegy for a dead lover? Are all songs called “Heartbeat” going to be excellent?

Bark Psychosis: ///Codename:Dustsucker My favorite band no one has heard of. Ten years since their only previous full-length, the beautiful Hex, Graham Sutton returns with another dark fortress of solitude. Comparisons to Talk Talk are inevitable and mostly accurate, but this is less pretty, more urban, grimier—and updated to accomodate the horrors of the new millenium.

Channels: Open EP Technically not an album, but it packs more punch with six songs than a lot of full-lengths do. There’s a lot to recommend this band, but one of the things I love most—and what sets Channels apart from J. Robbins’ previous projects—is the politically-charged nature of most of the songs, unequivocal but never blatant. Released in September, this EP was the perfect pre-election salvo and a potent post-election salve. Since things in this country are going to get worse before they get better, music will likely be our only saving grace in the coming era.

cLOUDDEAD: Ten Until I heard this album’s self-titled predecessor, I would have scoffed at the idea of ‘ambient hip-hop’. I suppose I still should, since the wily members of cLOUDDEAD, despite their tenures in the Bay Area’s Anticon collective, refuse to call cLOUDDEAD hip-hop. They also proclaimed this the group’s last album, offer very little information about their constituency or recording process, and pack these songs more densely with lyrical non-sequiturs than any other artist, hip-hop or otherwise. Still, their eclecticism and persistent oddities never seem cheap or forced; they are elegant components of an overarching aesthetic of seductively alien poetry and provocative sound collages.

Elbow: Cast Of Thousands This year might be the first time I looked back fondly on the month of January. I spent most of it working in a strange little commercial signage shop on the city’s northwest side, and every morning I’d wake up happy just to be gainfully employed in my new home of Chicago. I’d throw open the blinds and snowy winter light would come streaming into the room, and that’s what this album, especially the opener “Ribcage”, sounds like. Melancholy without being moribund, cheeky without being coy, this is a welcome addition to British pop lineage, the logical heir to the thrones of the Smiths, the Stone Roses, even Radiohead. I’d pilot my car up 94, buoyed by hardscrabble hymns like “Buttons & Zips” and “Not A Job”. Neither pretentious or ponderous, Elbow is the soft-spoken, disheveled guy in the corner of the pub, charistmatic and reassuring.

Fennesz: Venice My GarageBand ouvre provides ample evidence that good laptop music is invariably more difficult than it sounds. So the praise Christian Fennesz has garnered for his deceptively simple-sounding ambient project Venice is not undeserved. Even more improbably, the one track with vocals (“Transit”, which finds David Sylvian lamenting the demise of Old Europe) doesn’t seem the slightest bit out of place.

Foreign Exchange: Connected What is it about hip-hop that allows it to abandon metaphor and lyrical obscurity and be so straightforwardly positive without sounding vapid or clichéd the way other genres would? A chorus like “Good people, good loving / good music in my life / it makes me happy” is transcendent in this context, where in a country or pop song it would be intolerable. “Be Alright” is almost enough to make me a morning person, and then “Sincere” shows up to complete the process. All this, and a Postal Service-style production schema that delivers some gorgeous backing tracks.

Junior Boys: Last Exit 2004 was a good year for brooding electro-boys. Between Junior Boys, Superpitcher, Erlend Øye, Justus Köhncke, Jurgen Paape, and a host of others, melancholitronica has never sounded better.

Mouse On Mars: Radical Connector Two German dudes celebrate their tenth year as Mouse On Mars by hiring a drummer/singer who isn’t Phil Collins, and embracing pop accessibility without sacrificing any of their weirdness. Add generous helpings of sublime hooks, manipulated vocals, pristine drum sounds, and warm organ flourishes. Stir well and deliver to me at the Hideout Block Party last September.

Rainstick Orchestra: The Floating Glass Key In The Sky I just recently got this, and haven’t listened to it more than a couple of times, but it’s so discreetly beautiful I know it will end up being a favorite. Structurally and sonically similar to Jan Jelinek’s Loop-Finding Jazz Records, this album is too rhythmic to be ambient, too subtle to be full-on electronica. It blends the best aspects of both phyla and moves a little closer to the front of the stage than your typical background music.

RJD2:Since We Last Spoke He’s like a white, American version of DJ Shadow. The DJ jams on this album are as tight as ever, but what really sells me are the songs where RJ Krohn gives his turntables a rest long enough to construct the infectious Cars clone “Through The Walls” (which he then, in fact, remade with Ric Ocasek on vocals) or the endearingly sincere ballad “Making Days Longer”, on which he accompanied himself with guitar when I saw him live earlier this year. It’s hip-hop with a heart.

The Scissor Sisters: The Scissor Sisters Plot a point at the “Comfortably Numb” cover, and you can chart an infinite number of disasterous vectors radiating outward, and only one triumphant trajectory, which the Scissor Sisters somehow discovered. I don’t know if they realized what a dangerous game they were playing when they embraced their inner Elton and unleashed enough androgynous vocal workouts and feather boas to make Hedwig blush. Or maybe they didn’t give a fuck and just wanted to party, and that’s why this works so well. It may be the celebratory vibe and the Will & Graceing of America that has broken the Scissor Sisters into the mainstream, but it’s the glistening pop hooks of “Better Luck Next Time”, the urban melancholia of “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough”, and the unabashed sincerity of “Mary” that put this album on my list and is sure to complete the Sisters’ world domination sometime in early 2005.

Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans Greetings From Michigan blew me away this year, and its follow-up was quieter, less sprawling, but amazing nonethteless. If only the Christian faith was always this honest, this austere, this elegant.

Tears For Fears: Everybody Loves A Happy Ending Diverse and relevant enough not to be dismissed as “just another comeback,” this album closes the acrimonious rift that supposedly opened between Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith after 1989’s The Seeds Of Love. Most critics ignore the fact that Roland Orzabal released two perfectly serviceable—and at times inspired—albums under the Tears For Fears moniker in the 1990s, but whatever. The important thing is that the Beatlephilia is there, the majestic singalong choruses are there, the sublime pop hooks are there and there is none of the staid predictability that mires some elder statesmen of pop music when they re-enter our lives.

TV On The Radio: Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes The descriptor “Like nothing I’ve ever heard” is rarely useful, but I think it suits TV On The Radio and the way they deconstruct music and marry sinister, dirty bass grooves to eerily sterile drum loops, then pile on ethereal non-instruments and fragmented, foreboding lyrics. Where they go from here is anyone’s guess, but this was the debut album no one could avoid in 2004.

Tortoise: It’s All Around You TNT gave us soundtracks to imaginary, poetic movies, and Standards gave us gritty core-shaking workouts, but this album attains a level of majesty not previously heard from Tortoise. The quintet is painting with bigger brushes than ever before, creating an epic sweep of powerful themes, from the carnivalesque opening track, to the cinematic grandeur of “Crest”, to the bracing gallop of “Dot/Eyes”. Always at least ten years ahead of the game, this album provides a good glimpse of what Chicago will look and sound like in 2015.

John Vanderslice: Cellar Door Like I’ve said before, John Vanderslice creates the catchiest depressing music ever. On the first pass, you’re too enamored with the hooks, the sterling sound, the sonic trickery to realize that these gorgeous songs are about guerilla warfare (“Pale Horse”), wedlock (“They Won’t Let Me Run”), drugs (“When It Hits My Blood”), delusional paranoia (“Up Above The Sea”), mercenary military men “Heated Pool And Bar”), and death (“Coming And Going On Easy Terms” and, well, all the other songs). Perhaps that�s what makes Vanderslice’s themes so much more poignant.

Rufus Wainwright: Want Two Criticized for being flawed and ponderous, that somehow just makes this album more alluring for me. I like an album that makes me work a little, and the idea of a “difficult” album has become more intriguing to me lately, as Medulla and A Ghost Is Born and several others keep me coming back despite an initial lack of accessibility. That’s not to say everything here is as obtuse as “Agnus Dei” or “Old Whore’s Diet” (both seriously fucked-up masterpieces): “The One You Love Is” is jaunty and cavalier, “The Art Teacher” is a lovely narrative spun over oscillating piano, “Crumb By Crumb” is a quaint shuffling fable, “Gay Messiah” is pretty and playful, and “Waiting For A Dream” is all trippy surrender. Wainwright is in the rare and coveted position of being a successful, respected artist who can pretty much do absolutely anything he wants, and all on Dreamworks’ dime. I can’t wait to hear what he comes up with next.