Annal:2002 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Grammy Award in the year 2002. For a ranked list of albums, try the honor roll.
- 2002 Grammy-Alternative winner
- Score: 10.52
Coldplay required a lifetime to make their wonderfully assured debut, Parachutes. But it took less than two years for the moody British quartet to deliver a masterful follow-up. As a band, Coldplay have advanced to a stage where they outshine nearly every one of their rivals in terms of imagination and emotional pull. A Rush of Blood to the Head is a soulful, exhilarating journey, moving from the cathartic rock of “Politik” to the hushed tones of “Green Eyes” without once breaking its mesmerizing spell. Singer Chris Martin takes his voice on soaring…
- 2002 Grammy-Alternative nominee
- Score: 6.52
Beck is bummed. Really bummed. And if song titles such as “Lost Cause,” “Lonesome Tears,” “Already Dead,” and “Nothing I Haven’t Seen” don’t make the point, his achingly sad lyrics and Sea Change’s unerringly downcast sound do. While 1998’s Mutations—arguably the singer-songwriter’s masterwork and Sea Change’s spiritual cousin—was filled with unflinching self-examination, moments of levity were found in songs like “Tropicalia.” Not so on Sea Change. Beck’s woozy, almost narcoleptic delivery seems to amplify the set’s sense of…
- 2002 Grammy-Alternative nominee
- Score: 6.52
Fans of the Clinic’s uniquely eerie take on ‘60s and ‘70s U.S. garage rock will be pleased by their second long player, Walking with Thee, which contains the same amount of malevolence lurking within. It also sounds quite marvelous. On their debut album, Internal Wrangler, this British four-piece displayed a ferocious, focused melding of garage, art rock, Krautrock, surf, and any other left-field genre you’d care to mention. Clinic will no doubt tire of the continual Velvet Underground comparisons, but while they have mined rock’s cooler record…
- 2002 Grammy-Alternative nominee
- Score: 6.52
Cruel Smile is a stop-gap compilation of peripheral recordings dating from the When I Was Cruel sessions (including sundry remixes of tracks from that album), radio slots, and performance tracks, many of which were originally released as B-sides and bonus cuts on singles from the far flung corners of the globe. Costello aficionados may already own the likes of the blood-and-guts live rendition of “Uncomplicated” and the two admirable recordings of the Charlie Chaplin-penned/Nat “King” Cole-covered “Smile”—one dripping with strings, sax, and…
- 2002 Grammy-Alternative nominee
- Score: 6.52
Behind the Music is the third album from Gothenburg’s Soundtrack of Our Lives who first caused a stir with their 1996 debut Welcome to the Infant Freebase. A screaming homage to rock ‘n’ roll, Welcome bowed deep and low before the Rolling Stones, particularly the classic 1968-74 period. Yet Soundtrack were always more than a tribute outfit. Live, they eschewed the Stones’ showbiz flamboyance in favour of a hypnotic, strobe-lit intensity while singer Ebbot Lundberg—big, bearded and clad in a white robe—came on like a genuine manic street…
