Favorite Albums: 2000-200413. Nellie McKay, Get Away From MeOriginal position on my Stylus ballot: #6 I can still remember the first time I heard this album, intrigued by the brimming hype, cute cover star and Norah Jones tweak of a title. It was a rainy weekend afternoon in 2004, and, as I said in a year-end wrap-up for Stylus months later, “there’s nothing I’d rather do than listen to a smart, funny woman talk for two hours.” You can guess how my social life was going if I had to hit up a double-disc of silly supper club music for the privilege. When she sang “Miccio, you give meaning to every day” (or something rather similar) on “It’s A Pose,” I wondered if she was name-checking my music blog. Funnily enough, my future musical-theater-loving, comedian wife did happen to come across my web presence around that time. So har de har! Patheticness redeemed. Anyhow, the merits of Nellie McKay’s debut album. I earnestly compared this to Dirty Mind in another year-end deal, which was appropriate in that both feature a young singer-songwriter gleefully genre-fucking to best unveil their own brazen, uncompromising identity. But I was overly optimistic as to how much she cared about crossing over. Not that I’m in any place to throw stones, and not that her album of Doris Day covers wasn’t terrific, but any hope that she’d shoulder her way into the limelight has passed as she slipped from Columbia to SpinART to Verve and a residency at Feinstein’s. Still, no one else has made me think about visiting Feinstein’s, and the way the album careens from spazzes like “Sari” to the classic drollery of “I Want To Get Married” is made more impressive by Geoff Emerick’s sterile production. We’re lucky she tried to grab the mainstream even once, really.

Favorite Albums: 2000-2004
13. Nellie McKay, Get Away From Me
Original position on my Stylus ballot: #6

I can still remember the first time I heard this album, intrigued by the brimming hype, cute cover star and Norah Jones tweak of a title. It was a rainy weekend afternoon in 2004, and, as I said in a year-end wrap-up for Stylus months later, “there’s nothing I’d rather do than listen to a smart, funny woman talk for two hours.” You can guess how my social life was going if I had to hit up a double-disc of silly supper club music for the privilege. When she sang “Miccio, you give meaning to every day” (or something rather similar) on “It’s A Pose,” I wondered if she was name-checking my music blog. Funnily enough, my future musical-theater-loving, comedian wife did happen to come across my web presence around that time. So har de har! Patheticness redeemed.

Anyhow, the merits of Nellie McKay’s debut album. I earnestly compared this to Dirty Mind in another year-end deal, which was appropriate in that both feature a young singer-songwriter gleefully genre-fucking to best unveil their own brazen, uncompromising identity. But I was overly optimistic as to how much she cared about crossing over. Not that I’m in any place to throw stones, and not that her album of Doris Day covers wasn’t terrific, but any hope that she’d shoulder her way into the limelight has passed as she slipped from Columbia to SpinART to Verve and a residency at Feinstein’s. Still, no one else has made me think about visiting Feinstein’s, and the way the album careens from spazzes like “Sari” to the classic drollery of “I Want To Get Married” is made more impressive by Geoff Emerick’s sterile production. We’re lucky she tried to grab the mainstream even once, really.