100 Best Albums of the Decade

100. M.I.A. - Arular

Why here? No clue except for the inevitable chant of "ya ya heyyy" that comes when "Galang" busts through the speakers.

99. Blur - Think Tank

Hated this album when it first came out, but came around to the odd charms that lurked underneath. It's all about the melody hidden beneath "Out of Time" and its stunning chorus, which forgives such rave-ups as "Crazy Beat". But how can I explain the allure of something raft and vicious like "We've Got a File On You"? Gorillaz may have made better singles this decade, but as far as Damon is concerned, Blur will always make better albums.

98. Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights I like my Adams with a shot a whiskey, just like the first track.

97. Lucinda Williams - World Without Tears

She's made better albums (her debut and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road), but this is the sucker that originally pulled me in. The way those drums swing in on "Fruits of My Labor" is some kind of minor miracle. She's a tough gal to be around, but she carries a good tune.

96. Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers

Comfort is right. She made some glitzy techno-folk albums in the 90s, but I like it when you can barely hear her voice above the strummed acoustic guitar. What may seem like pleasantries, is actually a remarkable achievement of mood and music. It ignites day dreams in this restless soul.

95. Joanna Newsom - Milk-Eyed Mender I still hate Ys, because it sounds like her attempt to take us to some strange other land. But she's strange enough as it is, as this glorious album proves. Those harps tickle my brain in delightful ways.

94. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights

This album snuck in with the rock revival, but I can't figure out way. Listening to it today, the album seems timeless, a moody, atmospheric album that's a remarkable trip on headphones.

93. Girl Talk - Night Ripper

Talk about the ethics of sampling all you want, this is one monster of a dance album that stacks hit upon unlikely hit. The final hurtle of any rock sensibility I had was crushed under the flow of Biggie and Elton John

92. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Call it Indie rock if you'd like, but "Stillness is the Move"'s gnarly riff is there not to bludgeon you to death, but to make you move. They'd rather be leading the party then flipping through their iPods.

91. Sonic Youth - Murray Street

Yeah, there's still distortion and chaos, but all I remember from this album is the warm fuzz of three guitars wrapping themselves around my head. This albums comforts my weary soul. One of the last great documents to what a guitar turned up all the way can do.

90. Outkast - Speakerboxx/The Love Below

It's a mess, but there are charms to be had by all. It's also probably the only listenable double rap LP. (sorry Hova, you'll get your due later)

89. Annie - Anniemal The exact moment when I realized that pop could transcend all else."Heartbeat" was the hit, but the rest of the album is stocked with nice second helpings. Feeling down and out never sounded so good.

88. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

I get all the connections to African pop, but I just like the little orchestra interludes they seamlessly stick into each song.

87. Tilly and the Wall - Wild Like Children

There has to be at least one tender indie rock album in the mix, one that exudes "ahs" and "shucks" and makes you want to wear hoodies and smoke lots of cigarettes. I don't miss college that often, but when I do I want to listen to this and forget about everything.

86. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Not too much to say.

85. Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans

When you're worried about Sufjan swooping down and taking the soul of rock n roll away with his banjo, remember he's just a Christian folk singer at heart. And this meditation on the power of the unseen is powerful no matter what you believe.

84. Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

You know you've hit on some kind of genius when the space between the chords is more important than the chorus. The perfect antidote to the great rap-rock orgy of the late 90s, it proved that a lack of style could be its own glorious thing.

83. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

They'd been trying for years, but the this is the first time their dance pop meets the Strokes actually started to make sense to me. Or at least this is the moment when I started dancing. Either way.

82. No Age - Nouns

I'm over lo-fi, scream-fi, noise rock, or whatever the Vivian Girls and Wavves are. I'll take No Age and be on my way, thank you.

81. M Ward - Post War

In any other decade, he'd be grouped up with Dave Matthews band or some stupid jam band, but luckily what he really wanted to do was write pop songs. He only gets there occasionally with a song like "Magic Trick", but I'll take the noble failures over another guitar solo.

80. Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSounds

In the hysterics that followed MJ's death, one point that got skipped over was that his music was fucking bananas. None of best songs were sane. It was that moment that I realized how bonkers JT was and why I admire the guy. This is a freewheeling dance album, and it's too odd to ignore.

79. Feist - The Reminder She had the whole folk thing down before she even began this album, but it's her stabs into the mainstream that really are worth a listen. Nothing like an indie princess making the jump to the top of the charts.

78. Handsome Furs - Face Control

One man. One woman. One drum machine. You try to make such great songs out of it. I dare you.

77. The Go Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike

The crowning achievement of the Go Team is how they manage to confuse you into believing the samples are live and the live instruments are samples. By the time "The Power is On"rolls around you start wondering whether you've heard this song a hundred times before or for the very first time.

76. Tom Waits - Blood Money

This is a mean, depressing album filled with murders, money, and regret. Sort of like every other Tom Waits album except that it also has "All the World is Green", which is probably my favorite song he's ever written

75. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Rather like Springsteen, Arcade Fire tailored the follow up to an instant classic (him Born to Run, them Funeral) by taking a step back, cutting back on the complex arrangements and focusing on the story telling. The result has more fire, and less grace. And sometimes that's the mood I'm in.

74. TV on the Radio - Dear Science,

It's a tender dance album, with wildly inventive dynamics and structure. I can't deny that. But I probably just included this album because I love the way the hand-claps sound like snare drums.

73. Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars

This is the Rufus I hope sticks around. He has no need to make a grand statement or score some unlikely pop hit. He'll never be truly famous. But he can crank out gloriously over-the-top baroque pop until the day he loses that amazing voice.

72. Danger Mouse - The Grey Album

I think it's really clever. While I really like the Mouse and the Mask, this album is probably better.

71. Daft Punk - Discovery

There is no denying that this album contains probably three or four of the best singles of the decade. For that reason alone it's on the list. But those are really all I listen to, so the album sits here.

70. Broadcast - Tender Buttons

Once this album starts making sense, you know you've gone too far. All you'll hear is delightful little pop songs while everyone else is clutching their ears in pain. What...there is distortion in this album?

69. Lily Allen - Alright, Still

Feel good album of the decade, complete with muggings, narcisstic heroines, and great soul samples. The true sound of walking through any large metropolis.

68. The Walkmen - You & Me

Content to never write another "The Rat", the Walkmen spend their time her conjuring up New York on a gray snow laden evening. Sometimes it's fun when you're crazy, drunk friends play it cool for a night and drink hot cocoa by the small electric heater.

67. Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

Feels like they took the best parts of every rock album they had on their shelves, mixed them up, and stuck them back together. I may not understand Okkervil River completely, but I do understand this.

66. Stephen Malkmus - Pig Lib
I had some kind of epiphany with this album while driving around the country roads of Columbus, IN. Out of nowhere I imagined lanky indie-rock kid Malkmus as clichéd rock guitar god. He may try to disguise this superpower with oblique lyrics and odd time structures, but I can see through it.

65. St. Vincent - Actor

I love when she slices through her guitar, all angles and aggression, and then whispers sweet nothings in my ear. How someone so calm and peaceful can dream up such disjointed musical landscapes is beyond me, but I'll keep digging in trying to figure it out.

64. Mylo - Destroy Rock n Roll
There is a point in my life when I really needed this album. When things weren't going that well and I just needed an album made by a recluse just like me. It's at once horribly corny and just about the coolest thing in the world.

63. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Another deceptive 80s dance group dressed in rock outfits, they tossed in riffs to hang with the guys and then hit the groove to attract the women. They realized their zone about 55 seconds into "Take Me Out", and never really let it go from there.

62. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell
Of the bands from the rock revival, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were at least geniune in their goal. The fury unleashed on this album is unmatched. I'll take "Date with the Night" over "Maps" any day.

61. Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
I have Michael Roberts to thank for this one. It's stupid album filled with unbearably cheesy songs. But I've listened and listened beyond reason. Mostly it just makes me laugh.

60. Hot Chip - The Warning

The dance group with a heart of gold. After I heard this album I figured this group would get copied beyond all belief. But then I realized what I delicate balance they struck with hazy nostalgia tempered by clanging beats. It's a remarkable achievement and hasn't been equaled since.

59. Coldplay - Viva La Vida
I already admitted my sin last year, so might as well just be honest. While every Coldplay album makes me feel guilty when I go back and listen to it, this one actually sounds better.

58. Wolfparade - Apologies to Queen Mary
Even rock in the double 0's had to be oblique. There's hardly any satisfaction to be had here. Just weird parables and odd bursts of feedback. That they made it all sound so triumphant by the end is why they continuously confuse and amaze me.

57. Bjork - Medulla
We all new Bjork could sing, but to have an album dedicated to nothing but to voices is startling. That she uses the experiment to make a bunch of staggering anthems is the real triumph. "Oceania" rings with unbelievable majesty.

56. Bob Dylan - Tell Tale SignsIf you ever have doubts about Bob just play this album, and you'll see that his outtakes are quietly more powerful than anything you could ever put together. Especially make sure to check his revival version of "Ring Them Bells".

55. Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Me, I'm a Paul guy. Have been for years now. So when I see him crank out four good albums this century I root for him. But I don't have to fake any enthusiasm when he churns out something as mysterious and beautiful as thing. This one stands up there with Ram in my book.

54. The White Stripes - Elephant
It may be cool to dismiss their mainstream breakthrough, but I remember what it sounded like the first time it pummeled through my speakers. It's a band unleashed and wild, ready to take their stab at success head on.

53. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love Their second album is sleeker and sexier than their first, and it's also the one that they feel most comfortable with.

52. Beck - Sea Change It's the last time Beck seemed truly to follow his muse, content to let it lead him wherever it wanted. That it let him down this beautiful is why I'll always have a soft spot for him.

51. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome
The best Springsteen album (by far) released since Born in the USA is a collection of rambling songs he recorded in his house. It's messy and hilarious, but always strangely reverent to the material. Sometimes you wish rock stars would lose the polish and record scruffy material (hello R.E.M.). And this is just another example of how it should work.

50. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale I am not a Wu-Tang kind of guy. That's just not my style. But this album, with Ghostface acting like he only has so much time to tell you the whole story or shit is going to go down...well, this I can get. It only sounds more urgent and relentless years later.

49. Deerhoof - The Runners Four
It helps when your silly indie rock band, with its precious female vocals, can also rock with such abandon that No Age can sometimes sound tame.

48. Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
So, you've made some of the best albums of the 90s by playing the tortured art rock student for all its worth. What's the way to success? How about unabashed pop with lots of bass guitar?

47. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
Let's push forward, indeed. I had never heard anything like this when it first came over the speakers. Can this even be classified as rap? Is this even a song? Why am I such addicted to it? The simple fact of this album is that each song is a potential single, distinct, and isolated. "Weak Becomes Heroes" may be the critical hit, but I was always more attracted to the vulgarity of "Don't Mug Yourself". Though he might have upstaged that with another album that will probably pop up on the list later on.

46. The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows
It's all here. The sad bastard Walkmen that's as lonely as going to bar by yourself and the agitated Walkmen that still had something to fight about. They were capable of some magical moments, but all the good times seem tainted by the blood of bad mistakes. Though they'd like to change, they can never completely get back on their feet. It's a really sad album, and one that only gets more so as the years go on.

45. The Books - The Lemon of Pink
A breath of fresh air. Nico Muhly tried like hell to make something like this, and yet his attempts came out a little too eager, and little too cacophonous. The Books are in it for the long haul, there to talk you down and soothe out your soul. It's an album that always has something to say, even if there aren't that many lyrics to lead you along.

44. The Microphones - "The Glow", Pt. 2
I've been trying for years to write songs that would fit on this album. The nearly perfect opening tracking sounds so haphazard that it feels like it as the first take of something that just came to his head. But it takes talent to write a song so seemingly tossed off, as I learned the hard way

43. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
This is the moment when Spoon went from a great idea to a great band. These songs aren't spectacular for a band that doesn't like regular structure (choruses and bridges), they are astonishing for any band. Phil Spector would have killed (he might have tried) for "Cherry Bomb". Even their rock theories like "My Japanese Cigarette Case" are tighter and more meaningful. A lot of people were in to Spoon before this, but I never completely joined in until this album.

42. Sigur Ros - ( ) The first time I heard this album a friend prefaced the push of play by saying he thought this was the greatest album of all time. How do you respond to something like that? Well, first off, you listen to it repeatedly for years to try and figure out for yourself. If Ágætis Byrjun sounded otherworldly and mysterious, this one sounds fragile and heartbroken, the human side to the affair. I've fought for years now whether I think this or their second album is better. Unfortunately, I get a little lost in the second half of this album. But during the first half I got wrapped up every time. During these bright moments of clarity, I can see what my friend was talking about.

41. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America It's the perfect example of the right band tackling the right topic. The Hold Steady had always been singing songs about tramps, but they'd never really made it sound like this before. I mean, just check out their album covers. Everyone except this one is monochromatic and drab. This one is over the top and garish. It's their one indulgence, and it's the party I'd like to remember. Give me a "Massive Night" anytime.

40. The Pipettes - We are the Pipettes Man, I completely drank the kool-aid with the Pipettes. I didn't care if they were a prefabricated girl group with stupid clothes and cheesy songs. I sang along to every song. I do have a weak spot for early 60s pop hits, but that surely doesn't explain why I knew all their names. I still think "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" is one of the best songs of decade.

39.Radiohead - AmnesiacI was initially disappointed with Amnesiac because I didn't think it matched the perfection of Kid A. I soon realized that was kind of the point. I actually prefer the odder moments of Amnesiac, the ones where they drift off into "Pulk/Pull Revoling Doors" and "Hunting Bears", to their more polished songs like "Dollars & Cents". It's like finding a treasure trove of b-sides from your favorite band. You'd never trade the originals, but it's fun to dip in occasionally.

38. Animal Collective - Strawberry JamFeels was a good album, but I was growing tired of the excessive yelling and needlessly obscure songs. But something happens around the 5th time you listen to this. Everything starts to make perfect sense. The distorted reverberations of "For Reverend Green" speak louder than any bland rock riff. "Fireworks" starts sounding like, well, exactly what its about. It's an album that gets better with every listen, and is the first moment that I realized there was more to Animal Collective than the concentrated focus of Sung Tongs.

37. Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose

How'd Jack White get this? It's a nearly perfect country album made by a woman who hadn't made a good album in thirty years. And yet it never feels like a regurgitation of old favorites. It's a new classic, one that is as heartfelt and beautiful as anything she ever created.

36. Bob Dylan - Love and Theft Same thing as above. I guess there is life in anybody. Time Out of Mind was considered a comeback, but no one said that about Love and Theft. This is a just another one of his classics, a riveting romp through the fake Southern Childhood Mr. Dylan never actually had. It's a distinct turn in his catalog, and one I was there to behold.

35. The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love

There is no reason for this. I know they don't write the most original songs, and that the distortion does most of the work, but I am the biggest sucker for this sound you can imagine. I love late 50s, early 60s rock. I adore distortion. But the biggest thing for me is how this never sounds like a Jesus and Mary Chain riff. It's too heartfelt for that. They take their mission too seriously. "Remember" and "That Great Love Song" got most of the attention, but I love the deep cuts like "Love Can Destroy Everything" where they just sound so unabashedly in love with music they'd do anything for it.

34. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll I've waited for years for the novelty to set in. You know, the inevitable "Tenacious D" let down of a funny record that has told its joke one too many times. But it never comes. Like the best art, their jokes only miraculously get better after each spin. And believe me, I've attempted to overplay "We've Formed a Band" and "Emily Kane" to no avail.

33. Sufjan Stevens - Come on Feel the Illinoise

Sufjan's shining moment, not counting the brief glimpses of oddity that creep into "You are the Blood". While Michigan attempted to humanize the stories, Illinois is all about Sufjan taking all the liberties he wants. Instrumental interludes, songs based solely on woodwinds, homicidal clowns, there is nothing he can't achieve as long as you don't count the crap unleashed in the b-side album, The Avalanche. A perfect example of young talent having the freedom to do what he wants and taking full advantage of it.

32. Outkast - Stankonia So this band, or duo, is awesome. Have you heard BOB? It's so fresh and so clean.

31. Deerhunter - Microcastle

I've been trying to untangle the mystery to this album for a year now, and I'm not sure I ever will. It's truly haunting, an album that can give something like "Nothing Ever Happend" yet also fill about a quarter of the album with near silence. But like the best board games, it only feels complete when you finish the thing.

30. Madvillain - Madvillainy His name's Doom. He weaves unlikely tales over some of the most schizo-phrenic beats someone could throw at him. His train of thought is Joyce-like, yet he's always in control of his flow.

29. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Korteleda Ah Jens...whatever could I say?

28. Sigur Ros - Ágætis Byrjun

Where to begin. I grew up in the smallest of towns where this did not exist. You know, falsetto strutting lead singers, string sections, keyboards that sound like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This is truly strange and would have been dismissed as crazy by all my friends. And yet to my ears, it felt like the most inevitable thing in the world.

27. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Lie Down in the LightThat small town I was talking about above? Well it's awfully close to where Bonnie "Prince" Billy lives, and this is the sound of everything of my childhood racing back at me. It's the perfect encapsulation of the slow flow of the Ohio River and campfires along its bank. I fell hard for this album last year, and I plan to stay with it for as long as I can.

26. Kanye West - Graduation
When Graduation dropped it seemed like an overblown misstep, the inevitable letdown after Late Registration. But it's only gotten better since I first heard it. It's so stuffed for hits songs it now sounds kind of embarrassing. How could it be so easy for him? This album is strange and wild, a magical combination of perfection execution that still manages to feel spontaneous and random.

25. Jay-Z - The Black Album

Now tuned into the motherfucking greatest. Believe me, Big Brother still has the upper hand. Ponder why I love Jay so much, and I'll just rap the entirety of "99 Problems" to you. It doesn't need to be so complicated. His unstoppable flow needs no answers.

24. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

Rock singers have been pissed for ages, but while most might rail against the man or something lame, Jack White is just really mad at you. You're lazy. You aren't a gentleman. You should be a better person. That he makes it rock so hard is a singular achievement.

23. The Strokes - Room on Fire There were the rumored Nigel Godrich productions, the overblown NME future of rock predictions, but really Room on Fire is just a more diverse take on the original. Tiny bits of reggae and synth pop creep into the mix. It's, gasp, a little more colorful and fun. This was the album that made me believer, and it took a stinker of third album to turn me off. Perhaps I put to much hope in the Strokes, but hey, I've got this guy as a consolation.

22. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning

This guy came out of nowhere. Believe me, I've gone back and listened to Bright Eyes's un-listenable albums. Horrible shit. Honestly, I don't know how anyone deals with it. But this...it seemed to suddenly tap into a mindset that made a lot of sense to me at a time when I was in New York. And though Conor has never equaled it, I'll always appreciate how it calmed me during the run up to war and the runaway from my hometown.

21. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
Oh Ryan Adams. At some point I owned everyone of your albums, including all the Whiskeytown stuff. I wanted something that meant as much as this one, because there is something in this album that reaches unforgivably deep. Or at least I thought so. Like someone who doesn't know their powers, you could never quite get back there. Along the way I found Gram Parsons, and realized he did a lot of things better than you. I didn't need the Adams to try some many different styles. I just needed this one. So I'll take this album and be done with it.

20. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
It could be a lot of things. Driving around Kentucky blasting "Dirty Money". Singing "Keys open Doors" to myself every time I open any door. It could be their unmatched vocal boasting and the Neptunes focused beats. It's one of the last rap albums I thought I'd need around, but one that has become an indispensable addition to my catalog. Bitch I'm so trill? I can't explain it!

19. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
This album is so good it's almost boring to talk about. How did they get here? When did the weird cadences became hooks, and when did frat kids start dancing to "My Girls"? As I've figured out, it's best not to ask questions with Animal Collective. As long as they still move and still make sense, hold them tight. We'll figure out the specifics later.

18. Rufus Wainwright - Poses

Where Rufus's debut album was baroque and obtuse, Poses is clean and approachable, the sound of one man settling in to a new stage of his life, and not quite sure which direction he'd like to go. So he tries them all. There are folk songs, slight stabs at the contemporary, goth dirges, and cover songs that he father wrote. They help add to the ramshackle feel to this album, and there is something really thrilling about listening to an overwhelming talent stretch his legs. But it's the piano ballads that get more beautiful and heartbroken as the years go on. He'd realize this on his next album, and indulge in them to (some might say) an overwhelming degree. So its nice to come back here where he's a touch more modest, willing to share the spotlight with his sister, and just enjoy the times.

17. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Forget everything I said about Animal Collective above. Sure their new album is amazing, but nothing will ever approach the love I have for this intoxicating album. Stuffed full of acoustic guitars and Beach Boy harmonies, it's album that never grounds itself, always undercutting any understanding you may be gaining. So each listen feels like the first strange experience with the unknown.

16. Kanye West - Late RegistrationWhatever happened to gangsta rap? You know that kind that riled up church groups and wanted to kill cops? Did Kanye kill it, and just expose it for the hollow posturing it was? Instead of wasting time acting hard, how about crafting a perfect rap album that sounds really massive on headphones. Not as easy as you thought, huh? I'd have been into rap when I was 13 if albums like this were made then. I mean, I know you may all think this album is overrated, but please listen again.

15. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free A suite of songs that perfectly ties together the tale of a loser who lost a minimal amount of cash that means everything to him. The only (original) concept album of the decade, it ends with post-modern twist, two endings, and you can believe whichever one you'd like. The first round is all anger and frustration. He's drinking so much he can decorate his apartment with the waste, "It's not my fault it's wall to wall empty cans". But his frustration isn't heroic. He's a sad sack wasting his life. The second ending implausibly finds the missing money in the back of his TV. I don't buy it. It's a cute trick, it helps you leave the album on good note. But I know these guys. They never find the cash.

14. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
What can I say, other than that I was wrong? I ranked this guy as the number four album of 2008 last year, but it should have easily been number one. But how do you think it makes me feel dropping a true disco album up there? It's a little embarrassing if the album weren't so unbelievably tight. It's trance only gets more addicting as I listen to it.

13. Brian Wilson - SMiLE
I mean, do you want me to describe the moment when I first heard this thing? I was laying on the carpet (which was probably dirty) of my senior year apartment with Austin, Blake, and Kyle with volume turned up nearly all the way. We gasped as the preludes to Good Vibrations popped up in the middle, and marveled at the unending stream of ideas. But mostly we were just aghast that this thing was coming out of the speakers, an album that we'd all heard had never been finished. And not only had it been completed, but in a glorious way, with respect to the original idea, but not pulling any punches.

The best Beach Boy songs are always tinged with sadness, and that's missing here. It's undoubtedly a happier, more joyous album than the original lineup could have managed, and sometimes I need that.

12. Radiohead - In Rainbows

Sometimes talent seems like an accident the individual doesn't know how to handle. But you never wonder that with Radiohead. It's scary, because they know how to wield power for their own purposes. When they want to wallow in the pain and muck of every day existence, they can. And when they want to make a warm subdued album that rips away most of the beats of their previous albums, they know exactly how to get it done.

11. Arcade Fire - FuneralWhere did this come from? They may play to the large theaters now, walking into crowds with megaphones to simulate an intimate experieince. It may seem like rock posturing, but I remember seeing them in a cramped venue at U of I with about a hundred people when it felt real. People were crying and holding each other. They tapped into some kind of mysterious understanding with this album, and approached a topic that had never been properly dealt with on record. It seems like they may never get back to that feeling, and that's probably okay. We still have this document to hold onto.

10. Rufus Wainwright - Want One
The sound of a hundred wine soaked nights. A garish celebration to nothing. A monumental temple to excess, debauchery, massive string sections, and heartbreaking songs about heartbreak. Want One is a lot of things, a lot of voices singing, instruments wailing, and it always teeters on the edge of collapse. The next song is the one that gets too loud and will break through your speakers. To most people it must sound like train wreck waiting to happen. There are songs about leaving your phone on vibrate and dreams about reading happy headlines on the New York Times. It's takes a lot to blow such minuscule events into what amounts to a pop opera, but it's what keeps me entangled. It's odd to pick an album so full of flaws, especially when Poses is more polished, mannered choice. But to me, Want One sounds exactly what it must be like in Rufus's brain. And I like hanging around there.

9. Tom Waits - Alice
I made a joke about Tom Waits early on about all his albums sounding the same (number 76 to be exact), but that's simply not true. They certainly all carry the same atmosphere. But Alice is singular in the Wait's catalog because of it's complete focus on lust for love. It's a heartbreaking ride through the demented characters of Wait's dreams, figures that never get what they want, never get release. It's all unrequited love, and it seems to drive him mad. He could laugh away the scoundrels of Blood Money. But this seems to really have stopped him in his tracks. Why this tale meant so much to me is hard describe. It's unspeakably beautiful. But mostly it just makes me jealous that he could conjure up such real passion.

8. M.I.A. - Kala
BANG BANG BANG...And I take your Money! How was it so easy for her? How'd she go from Arular (a forceful first album) to something as perfect as Kala? She just swooped in there and took it...

7. The Avalanches - Since I Left You

A mix tape is really hard thing to pull off, no matter what High Fidelity tells you. What starts with a white hot single, usually disentigrates into whatever you happen to be listening to at the moment. The mood has to break at some point, and along the way you get tired and slack off. But not the Avalanches. I've listened to this album hundreds of times, and each time I try to find the seams, but I never can.

While its technically impressive, what really draws me each time is the meloncholy atmosphere, the wash of regret that they manage to exude from a bunch of random samples. It's honestly a perfect mix-tape, one that improves its source material.

6. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

At first I just loved the ridiculous songs, the ones that closesly mimicked the irreveant nature of "Losing My Edge", but in the middle of this album something changes. Instead of describing what the perfect situation might be, the songs start becoming them. It's liked he realized the prophetic nature "Yeah" and started geting it done himself. It's easy to be the critic, to yell out against the tide. It's another thing to actually do the work. It's a miraculous transformation.

5. The Strokes - Is This It?

I was one of those kids that was convinced that the Strokes were here save rock. It's hard to grow up with a style of music and watch it devolve into the idicocy of Limp Bizkit and whateverthefuck Nickleback is. I used to have nightmares about the latter sucking all the life out of my skull. Serious! So I hung all my hopes on this New York quintet to bring back to the basics. And I realize now, the Strokes had something far different in mind. It's all about the beat here. Every song is anchored with drum machine precision. There's hardly an unscrubbed moment to be found. So what does the whole thing come off like the wildest night you can barely remember? I think that's why I became so taken up with them, why I drove all over the country to see them play, and snatched up every single I can find. And when they stopped having a good time, around album three, I started to wonder why I cared at all in the first place.

Luckily whenever I question that I just need to listen to the first ten seconds of "Someday" and the world is right again. Nothing here means anything beyond whatever it takes to have a good time. And that was sort of revolutionary at the moment.

4. Wilco - Yankee Hotel FoxtrotThis album is the sound of absolutely everything falling apart. Melodies crumble into the abyss, rhythms stumble around aimlessly. Relationships are discarded, people forgotten. It's a messy album, and one that I initially couldn't stand. But it's been unraveling its mysteries to me for years now.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in my personal opinion, is the product of three people meeting up in very different points in their career. Jeff Tweedy had the songs, Jay Bennet built them up, and Jim O'Rourke tore them down. Take away any peg and you're left with a different album. When Tweedy and O'Rourke tried to replicate this mood without Bennet, the result was too manered and stale. Bennett tried to replicate the chaos, but he never had the voice to anchor his songs like Tweedy could. The trio was never meant to last, and, sadly, will never get to after Bennett's death. But they produced one masterpiece, and one that only gets better as the years go on.

It can feel like a horribly depressing album in places, but against all the odds I always manage to find some undercurrent of hope. Maybe its just the love of simple songs that manages to hold this whole thing together. An unbridled passion for music that they tried to reconcile with the trying times.

3. Jay-Z - The Blueprint
If modern day me had the chance to go back in time and visit pre-millennium me to tell him just one thing, I'd probably just use it for a laugh and whisper into his ear that he'll grow up, against his will, to be a huge Jay-Z fan. It's not a casual appreciation, "I don't really like rap, but this Jay-Z song is okay", but a full blown, know-every-lyric kind of obsession. One that would lead to a search for any other album that could match its perfection.

But it's hard. It's so much better than everything else. Even Jay-Z couldn't equal it. As unbelievable a talent as he is, he isn't actually all that great at making albums. Though everyone of them has hit number 1, I don't think that many people are lining up to defend Kingdom Come or the Blueprint 2. What's so astonishing about the Blueprint, and why I've listened to it repeatedly over the decade, is that appears to have been some kind of perfect confluence talent. He found the best producers, who laid down their best beats, and he walked tall over it all without fear. Nearly every song here could have been released as a single. I know this is the default Jay-Z album for people to like, but that's just because its that good. I mean, I kind of this it's underrated. Why doesn't everyone love this thing?

2. Panda Bear - Person PitchIt's as mysterious today as the moment I first pressed play. A progression of sound that always seems out of reach, and beyond understanding. It feels startlingly human, and yet never manages to touch the ground. It's the sound of old movies, sepia toned family photographs, and forgotten cartoons from childhood. It seemingly exists and yet could disappear back to where it came from without a moments notice. You'll always remember the experience, but never the specifics. But that doesn't really explain why I listen to this album so much, and how it always seems to be on in my apartment. And I really have no answer.

1. Radiohead - Kid A
Yeah, it's the most important album of the decade, and terribly influential to me personally as a music fantatic and human being, but what is it, exactly that makes Kid A so good? It's the easily the best album of the decade, as I've found out, but why?

I struggled for weeks trying to place another album at number one. Because, while I realize the importance of this album, I wanted to get past it. Panda Bear's Person Pitch is much closer to my mood, than the horror hallways of Kid A. But all arguments ended the moment the first few seconds of "Everything in its Right Place" entered into my brain. Kid A is so emphatically better than any album released this century that it is hard to talk about.

I realize without it I'd be nowhere. The shift in direction coincided with the jump off the deep end into a world of the unexplained. I feel like this list should be dedicated to Kid A, because it directly influenced every other pick. I'd probably still hate techno, all electronic music, rap, ambient, jazz...It made Jay-Z and Wilco sound perfectly normal. There is nothing this album can't do.

Most of this decade was fought trying to make sense of chaos, moral posturing, and endless wars. Instead of celebrating, the best albums found beauty amongst the chaos, digging deep within to try and reconcile the problems. And no one really did it better than Radiohead.

Best Albums of 2008: 1-5

5. TV on the Radio – Dear Science,I was not a believer of Return to Cookie Mountain, which had lots of effects and ZERO tunes. Was there a melody on that whole album? But make an album of carefully crafted pop so adventurous as to transcend classification and then I’ll fall over and praise you. First track "Halfway Home" starts like sixties garage before mixing soul vocals, off kilter drums, and keyboard atmospherics. It’s not until the last 30 seconds lays on the regular rocking. It’s worth the wait.

"Crying" sounds like the offspring of LCD Soundsystem and U2’s Achtung Baby. Hand claps sound like snare drums. I have a hard time figuring out whether a guitar is being played or a keyboard blare. "Golden Age" is all bass at first until they throw it atop some massive keyboards, a catchy chorus, and what sounds like an orchestra.

But no matter how weird things get, how many effects or intruments they pile on, everything is built upon the solid frame of a killer song. Surely not as difficult as thier last album, but when it is so easy to sing along why fight the urge?

4. Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love AffairPitchfork gave the The Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack an 8.7 but had this disclaimer:

It did so by diluting disco's more extreme elements to create a safer, more marketable package. Even then, conservative audiences saw disco culture as a Sodom and Gomorrah rather than an alternative Eden.

I was skeptical that there was some deep, dark disco universe I didn't know about. Sure, I knew about the drugs and the sex that happened at the club, but the music?? Though I've enjoyed some of the disco elements that modern indie bands have incorporated into their music, I've never actually, consciously, listened to what can be called "disco" without sort of enjoyment. I can't ironically dance to old disco hits. I can laugh along with LCD Soundsystem, but that's about it.

But here is a living breathing Disco album and the most striking thing about the whole experience is how dark and menacing the experience is. Though the music definitely makes you dance, this is dancing for some kind of understanding or, at the very least, some sort of release from the regular world. It's no joke that they brought in Antony to sing on so many of the tracks. His weary voice gives meaning to these songs, and an importance that can't be diminished.

Rather like Austin, I was tempted for a few weeks this summer to throw this album up top and be done with it. A nearly perfect dance album featuring insane single after insane single, this album was one that sounded equally good on the dance floor as it did on headphones. Hell, I even played the title track during my wedding reception and people danced.

But unlike Austin, I never let go. "Blind" sounded as good to me in the summer sun as it did while I was ducking into buildings during cold Chicago winters.

3. Okkervil River – The Stand InsAustin, I hope you're happy. I've been trying for the past four years to dismiss Okkervil River as an average guitar band. I had vindication with Black Sheep Boy, an album I still don't care for. But last years The Stage Names slowly wore me down. And now with The Stand Ins standing as one of my most played albums of the year, I have nothing left to fight against. I've given in. Okkervil River are an astonishing band.

This has been called a brother to The Stage Acts, but it’s easily the superior album. Every song on this collection is solid and distinctive. Little bits of classic songs have been tossed in for effect, but it never feels like stealing. It just sounds like a band on stage playing to the crowd to see if they are cool enough to get the jokes. It’s for the faithful, the ones that stuck around through the encore to see what else the band could do. I’ve played it a dozens of times, and each time I find a new sound, a new instrument, a new melody buried deep within.

2. Bonnie "Prince" Billy – Lie Down in the LightI often have River Cottage induced dreams of retiring to the country to raise pigs and tend to gardens, and now have the singer I’d like to have on my imaginary front porch. Bonnie "Prince" Billy didn't mean much to me before this but I've been completely taken aback by this album. I still can’t listen to I See a Darkness. I know it’s the supposedly his best album and I’ve tried to go back to it, but nothing sounds as comfortable as this album.

This is an album of infinite pleasures, starting with "Easy Does It" a simple song that's quietly my favorite song of the year. There's something so refreshing about the complete lack of irony when he sings, "There's my brothers and my girlfriend, my mom, and my dad, and meeee....and that's all there needs to be." It's all backed by instrumentation that's the furthest thing from flashy, but is also perfectly suited and steady as can be.

But that's only the start. "For Every Field There is a Mole", with its biblical refrain gets me teary eyed and by the time we've hit "What's Missing Is" I'm home. I feel the weight of the Ohio River flowing by the hills of my small hometown in Southern Indiana. I can hear the heaviness of the air. It's all there in this album, and that's way I returned to it so often this year.

1. Deerhunter – Microcastle

Like all of my favorite music, the idea that this has a beginning or an end is unimportant. This could play in loops - it often has - and I'd never tire of it, never fail to hear something new.

I certainly got in with "Agoraphobia", with the dream-like lyrics floating over my head. But that's really just the beginning. "Never Stops" continues that incessant beat, and features the beginning of that gorgeous wave of distortion that seems to pop around this album. And then the rest of it is a blur. One incredible blur of an album I've been trying to digest again and again to see if I can figure out what is going on. Yet, it always remains out of reach. So I try again. I think I'm going to be doing this for a long, long time. This album and me are far from over.

This album works wonders. Though Deerhunter don't sound much like Radiohead, this album feels like a distant cousin of OK Computer. It's really that astonishing. It creeps under your skin in odd and disturbing ways, yet it glides along like the best pop music.

Best Albums of 2008: 6-10

10. Vampire Weekend – Vampire WeekendI'm afriad had I actually been in college this album would have meant far more to me. But as it stands it always felt like I was going back to visit my younger friends in dorm rooms, drinking cheap liquor out of plastic cups, and trying to act like an undergrad again. Essentially, a lot of fun to act all irresponsible, but it was always best in small doses.

This is basically our Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! album of the year. An album so sweet and catchy as to be completely irresistable, yet so absolutely close to the annoying line as to make you always question your allegiance. I teetered back and forth for months, wondering whether this album would appear in my top 10 or not on my list at all. But how could I possible have so much venom for an album I've been listening to regularly since January?

Though praised for their use of African music, this band owes far more to the Strokes than most people would like to admit. Listen to "Someday" by the Strokes than "A-Punk" off this one and get back to me. About all they are using from Africa is the sunny disposition of the pop songs, and the fact that none of these songs even remotely rock.

Though I like songs like "Oxford Comma" and "A-Punk", what I really love are the ones where the string section is just as prominent, like "M79", where the violins take residence where guitar solos would usually reside. It's these moments that give me hope the band moves beyond the adolescence of eternal college and goes into something a little more dangerous.

9. No Age - NounsBlake couldn't believe I didn't have this album. "It's really a no-brainer." He's right. My love of distortion is very real and this is basically an album were distorted guitars rule the world. Every song, whether it differs in tempo or tone, features some kind of pulled metal strings, and it's an addicting sound that I've been indulging in for months.

But No Age are for more than just a loud band. While I love distorted guitars, I'm not that into the whole "noise genre" that's been raging in the past years. I could never really figure out why. Wasn't this what I wanted? But the compete lack of tunes, and the fact that every other instrument in the band was usually going apeshit too was probably the real reason. Though shoegaze had insane guitars, the beat was always level headed and the singing more sweet than strained.

Most of the songs here could have very easily been strummed on acoustic guitars, and the singing never gets above a snarl. It shows that volume isn't so much a trick as much as a texture, and these two L.A. rockers are impeccable craftsmen.

That said, my favorite song has to be "Sleeper Hold" where they throw out all the rules and rock with absolute abandon.

8. The Walkmen – You and MeThe Walkmen only sound good when it’s cold, dark, or very late at night. Fortunately, when it’s any of the above it's hard to imagine anything sounding much better.

Like nearly every else, I first got into the Walkmen through "The Rat", a vitriolic screed that was at once deeply depressing and manically addicting. But I stayed with the Walkmen for their hazy laments which provided most of the bulk to Bows + Arrows, and what was almost completely absent from A Hundred Miles Off.

They kind of lost their way on that last album, but here they return to the snow drifts that so enveloped Bows + Arrows. Songs like "Canadian Girl" and "Long Time Ahead of Us" take that droopy metallic fog of 2004's "Hang on Siohan" to new weepy heights. And when the weather's right (or, I guess bad) I can't get enough. I wish I could take these guys out in the sunshine and show them around, but perhaps that would ruin all of their powers.

7. Coldplay – Viva La VidaI jumped off the Coldplay wagon right around the time “Clocks” became the biggest hit of their career. It didn’t sound like they wanted to be the biggest band in the world, just the least offensive. Though they had never been my favorite band, I flocked to what can only be described as their struggle to be something more. It didn't always produce the best music, but hearing them struggling through their influences made for some engaging listens. Of course, they followed the uneven A Rush of Blood to the Head with the completely tailored X&Y, which took insubstantiality to whole new realms of blandness. I went from a timid fan who liked "In My Place" to becoming completely repulsed.

Which is what makes this album so frightening. Viva La Vida is scatter shot, poorly sequenced, and maddening, but it’s also an album worth picking over, finding the right bits, and returning to over and over again. Which I did. Look at my iTunes play count and it's absolutely riddled with Coldplay. So much so, that I felt horribly guitly and intentionally stopped listen even though I wanted more.

But how can you deny the military march of "Violet Hill", the sweet summer serande of "Strawberry Swing", or "Chinese Sleep Chant" which finds coldplay doing My Bloody Valentine, albeit in a good natured way? Hell, I even like "Lost".

This feels awful to say, but this is a Coldplay album that's actually really good. Easily their best album, and one of the best sounding albums of the year. Brian Eno surely gets some credit from broadening the palate of these wispy British lads. I'm not sure if it was his choice or theirs to chop up songs, tack them onto other songs, or get rid of choruses in most songs, but the sense of adventurousness is addicting. Though it doesn't always work - why do two tracks in a row feature two seperate songs stuck together? -the fact that Coldplay are challening their listeners is a huge step forward.

To my ears, it just sounds like they are trying again. Parachutes had lots of problems, but it sounded like a few guys trying to make something grand out of nothing. Viva sounds like a few guys trying for something mythic. It doesn’t quite reach those heights, but if the most popular area rock band of our age is taking these kind of risks, isn't that a good thing?

6. Bob Dylan – Tell Tale SignsEvery June for the past five years I pack my things into cardboard boxes, tape them up, and load them up into a moving truck. I unload them, unpack, and stack them around a new apartment. I wait 11 months and 29 days and then I repeat the same process over again. Indianapolis, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Columbus, and now Chicago. Every single year I listen to Bob Dylan a little bit more.

Perhaps I’m maturing. I've progressed from a Bob Dylan appreciator to something we might call a Bob Dylan Fan (fanatic is still too far out). But I've never had that flash of recognition when I realized the gloriousness of Dylan. It just keeps building.

Leave it to Dylan to release and odds and sods collection that sounds fresh enough to be a brand new album. This is especially impressive considering most of this material comes from the highly stylized Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind which both featured hazy, reverb laden production jobs. Nearly all of the production has been stripped away, leaving songs like "Series of Dreams", a leftover from Oh Mercy that appeared on his first Bootleg Album, feeling nearly naked. It used to swirl around your head like a Joshua Tree leftover, but now it feels more like a rush of ideas than a rush of production effects.

“Most of the Time” on Oh Mercy was all fog and that incessant beat, which made it great for movie soundtracks, but tended to mar the actual words. Left naked and bare its as sweet and deprecating as anything on Blood on the Tracks.

I’ve spent hours trying to decode “Mississippi”, a seemingly flighty little number tossed off on Love and Theft. But from the sessions of Time Out of Mind, it sounds muddy and inspired, like the river it flows down.

Perhaps most startling is “Ring them Bells” which appeared in a fine version on Oh Mercy as a spiritual lament, all cool and calm. This live version from 1993 couldn’t be more different. It's joyous and heartfelt. Throughout the song a group of men can be heard screaming “yeah!” “all right!”, like a hallelujah from a spiritual. And Dylan takes all those screams and ratchets up his intensity until he's nearly screaming.

It reminded me of this interview he gave in 1997:

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light"—that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

That’s the kind of shit the Dylan stirs up on a daily basis in my life. It’s the kind of sentiments that never get old and never stop improving no matter where I'm living at the moment.

Best Albums of 2008: 11-15

15. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular

Sure, “Electric Feel” was the song of my bachelor party, a raucous and very late night that ended in slapping fights and a very bad hangover. But I never assumed that song or its album would have any other part in my life. How could it? I only knew that one song, and didn’t expect it to work out of the context of being personally chauffeured around to bars around Louisville, getting belligerent, and listening to "Electric Feel" the whole time.

But something changed at about the 10 second mark during the first track, "Time To Pretend" when those keyboards come in. I realized this was an album I was going to adore. And by the time I got to "Kids" I was in, and haven't really let this album go since the mid summer.

Unlike Cut Copy, an album I kind of liked but could never commit to, MGMT sound as good banging from shitting headphones as they do on a loud stereo system. And they've kept their 80's influences in check - aping the synths, but keeping the dream pop and beats pointing towards the modern millenia.

It may be nothing more than a soundtrack to an awesome night, but what's the harm in that?

14. Sigur Ros –Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

I was sure Sigur Ros had magical powers after listening to Ágætis byrjun. How could you not believe? I used to listen to this album before bed during my freshman year in college, and it coaxed things out of my dreams that I never thought possible. I’d never heard anything like it, and the music reorganized my brain to believe in sounds that it would never have tolerated before.

I actually loved their next album ( ) even more, overdosing in the deepness of it all. It sounded like an important band taking a head first dive into the unknown, and I was there to swim along. It also, honestly, sounded really good when drunk. I still don't understand this phenomenon, but believe me, it's scary.

Perhaps I was destined to think of Takk... as something like a retreat even though it had actual melodies and short songs. By that time I had Animal Collective to stretch my imagination, and I was growing tired of the languid rhythms, and how it always felt like I was listening to them at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Enter Sigur Ros Vol. 2, and hey! They make a mighty freak folk band. Who knew they had it in them? Not as defining as the original, but special in its own magical way.

I really thought this was going to be a top ten album, but I never quite delved in far enough. Perhaps I never let them sink in subconsciously, listened to them at night, or while drunk. They can be an isolating band, and with a wife and a dog, there aren't many times when I'm just hanging out with my headphones. But I'm still keeping them around, to see what kind of majesty they can lead me to.

13. Conor Oberst – Conor Oberst

I actually enjoyed the pop inflected tracks that Oberst inserted into last years Cassadega, even if the album as a whole felt a little cold and calculated. Well, the blood, and the acoustic guitars, are back in this one, but not the aggression. Instead of the righteous yelling of I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, we get some cool cruising music with Oberst talking about how easy the living would be on a house boat. That line from "Sausalito" had me wanting to take a long trip down the center of this country until I ended up in the Gulf of Mexico. Hell, during this Chicago winter that still sounds good to me.

Taking a nice year long vacation dipping ones toes into the ocean and not worrying about much else would be a great trip. But that's all this album really meant to me. It just sounds wonderful when it's on, and so I listened to it a lot. Far more than Cassadega, and well enough to appear far up in the top 10. I'm just not sure how much longer I'll want to take a joy ride with this guy, or whether we'll get tired of each other once the problems appear.

12. Little Joy – Little Joy
Jesus, like I needed another reminder of how bad the Strokes have become. This is what they should sound like right now. It could be that the singer sounds like Julian Casablancas, or the simple mono guitar parts that ring throughout, but it’s probably because of Fab lent his immaculate drumming to the recordings. I’m not sure why his simplistic beat is so easy to spot, but this couldn’t be anyone else.

Every single whack of his sticks just digs the knife in further and makes me hate the new turbo-charged Strokes that much more. That’s quite odd coming from an album so sweet and good natured as this one. The cooing of the female vocalist is enough to make you long for sunny Sunday afternoons, and the male vocalist comes on like Julian without as many cigarettes. Toss in a few Bassa Nova chords, a couple Strokes-lite numbers, and you’ve got Little Joy. Like the perfect hug, it's not the most meaningful action, but it can occasionally just feel perfect all over.

11. The Fireman - Electric Arguments

Sometimes you'd like explicitly to tell an artists what they shouldn't do, whether you have any right to do so (probably not). But nothing is worse than watching a loved artists goof around and loose their way, yet there isn't much one can do about it. One can only hope that he/she gets to their senses, or at least puts out an album like this. The project between Paul McCartney and the producer Youth is the strangest of his albums: a complete experiment that takes loads of risks and yet still sounds like the most immediate and impressive work he's done in years.

My affection towards McCartney is well known, and I actually have been impressed by his previous two studio albums. But nothing really prepared me for this. It's huge, immaculately produced, and nearly absent of the pop pandering that McCartney has a hard time leaving behind.

Instead of hoping for a good chorus, these songs build off of little changes, continually adding ideas until the music simple soars off the speakers. "Sing the Changes" starts off in the clouds before ending up in the stratosphere. "Two Magpies", on the other hand, might as well have been a leftover from his very earliest solo recordings. It's also may favorite.

It's wrong to call this a McCartney solo album, because the presence of Youth has made it not sound like one. It stretches and groans in unexpected ways, and yet is also his most coherent work since something like 1982's Tug of War.

Mac loses his way towards the end, somewhat derailing an otherwise brilliant new album. But with him you take what you can get, hopefully he continues this collaboration and turns it into his new full-time band. As it stands, it's the second best band he's been apart of.

Best Albums of 2008: 16-20

20. Lucinda Williams – Little Honey

Though she's often thought of as tough and difficult, part of Lucinda's appeal has been her giddy pop songs. Don't believe me? She actually wrote "Passionate Kisses", which Mary Chapin Carpenter took and made into a pop country hit (it also won a Grammy!). But it was no fluke single. Between 1988 and 1998 Lucinda made three albums loaded with these strange, immediate pop singles that should have been mega hits had anyone somewhat normal sung them. Perhaps it was the songs in between, full of anger and spit that turned people off, or it could have been her voice. I don't know.

There is hardly a week that goes by when Abby and I don’t listen to her unfuckingbelievable 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road or her equally awesome self titled album from 1988. Unfortunately, her most recent album, West, which wallowed in sub-Time Out of Mind ramblings and weightlessness, was an enormous step in the wrong direction, so unworthy of its predecessors that I couldn’t even believe it was her. It shattered me. Lucinda always tried to get at something profound, but at least I could sing along to her pain.

That's what made me so depressed about West: it was no fun.

Apparently she’s tired of wallowing in her pain, too. Little Honey is about as happy as anyone can rightly expect Lucinda Williams to be, and nearly half of the songs sound like were back in the the middle of her very good 1992 album Sweet Old World. Not exactly top of her game, but still a joy to listen to.

I'm particularly fond of "Tears of Joy", "Little Rock Star" and "Real Love". It derails sometime around "Honey Bee", which is kind of filthy and obnoxious. But after West I didn't expect to Lucinda to get back to here. I'll take what I can get.

19. R.E.M. – Accelerate
Though championed as R.E.M.'s comeback album, Accelerate doesn’t even approach the top half of their best albums. Hell, it isn’t their best post-Berry album (that title goes to very underrated Up). It just happens to be much, much better than Around the Sun, the worst album (by an incredibly wide canyon) of their career. Though a huge mess, and horribly produced, it does have a strain of something we might actually describe as "passion", something R.E.M. haven't shown since...well...when?

Everything good and bad about this album is located in the first single “Supernatural Superserious”. It starts off with a riff (a dumb one, by the way), showcases a verse we know we’ve all heard before, then kicks in with some killer harmonizing by Mills (welcome back to the mix!), and finally and surprisingly, ends with with a kick of the kind of prolonged jangle pop that would make "Pretty Persuasion" proud.

That's basically how the album goes. I’d probably give up the first half of this album for Reveal’s "Imitation of Life", but not the last half. "Mr. Richards" starts off a four song suite that reminds me of the glory days of Lifes Rich Pageant. Perhaps it's the new producer, but it actually feels like they were playing together in the same room.

Hell, I even like "I’m Gonna Dj", which is a stupid song that doesn't mean anything. But why deny Stipe in such a frenzied mood? He's a singer that used to change lyrics around at will and sing about chairs and nonsense. I wish he would do that more often. The winner is definitely “Horse to Water” which sounds like nothing much in the catalog. No one has been clamoring from the to make a revved up punk number with great drumming, but thanks anyway.

If they'd have asked my opinion, I'd have stripped all the distorted guitars from this album and not produced with such a dumb fucking thumb. Why does it need to be so loud? This habit of mastering albums within an inch of the red line has got to stop! I care hear little sweet arpeggios ringing on the sides of the speakers until the mammoth guitars come in.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. R.E.M. is one of my very favorite bands, and though it doesn't come close to their cannon, it's a strong album with some wonderful songs to pick off. And average R.E.M. is still worth an awful lot to me.

18. Brian Eno and David Bryne- Everything that Happens Will Happen Today

This album sounds really good on headphones. Really good. I know with Eno involved that was bound to happen, but it's such a thrill to put on this album and have the music swirl around your head with such abandon. He is, gasp, a phenomenal producer.

But this album could have been recorded with on Garage Band and these David Bryne songs would still be good. That's really the backbone to this album. Though it's a little scatter shot, with some really weak electronica-flecked tracks mucking up the second half, when Bryne strums simple chords and Eno has the background pulsing something magical happens.

It's essentially a simple album elevated to the heights of technicolor drama, which is basically the opposite of what Coldplay did with Eno this year. Sometimes it's great to be humble when you have so much power, and that's what I feel every time I kneel down before these gods of modern music.

17. Tilly and the Wall - O

I had what can only be described as a crush on their first album, the absolutely adorable Wild Like Children. We're talking a Junior High crush, so innocent and pure, yet so important as to feel like the weight of the whole world hung upon every interaction. Though the tap dancing is cute, what I loved was the sweet acoustic pleas. I wrapped meanings into things that I'm sure weren't there, and longed to actually meet these people so I could fawn over them.

So it’s kind of surprising that I’m loving the new raucous Tilly, that specializes in guitar riffs and minor key chants. Honestly, there are parts of the album that sound like the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. "Pot Kettle Black" is an obvious choice, but so is "Chandelier Lake" and "Too Excited".

To their credit it still sounds like them, and though they've pushed that tap dancer a little further back in the mix, she's still there.

Perhaps it's a more profound enjoyment. I no longer want to hold their hand, but I probably listened to this album more, but that doesn't always mean everything. I'll always return to their first album for the pinch of first love, but this one will do for the morning after.

16. Hold Steady - Stay Positive

For the past three years I've felt like the lone champion of the Hold Steady. Though I threw the delightful Pipettes atop my best of 2006 list, I continue to listen my number 2 album, the Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America, far more. Though I don't exactly feel guilty about it, they should have been number 1.

When this album came out I thought I could rectify that small mistake. Not only is it another strong album, it comes with zero filler, something their previous album couldn't even say. The only complaint, and it's a big one, is that they are musically identical albums. The surprise is lost.

I stopped listening a few months ago, and never felt like I was missing too much. Though they are often touted as our generation's Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Boss never felt like he was standing still. He followed the exuberant and overblown Born to Run with the somber Darkness on the Edge of Town. The downright depressing Nebraska was followed by Born in the U.S.A. And even that album, which is criminalized for its pop songs and reliance on bad synths, is stuffed with somber gems like the sex starved "I'm On Fire" -- still one of his very best songs.

The Hold Steady aren't there, but maybe that's asking for too much. I'll trade all of my old Pearl Jam albums, and every other grunge band for that matter, for "Lord I'm Discouraged" a song that should rightly end around the four minute mark, but instead drifts off into a completely unexpected coda so affecting and genuine as to make you want to listen to it again and again.

They will always sound great cranked late at night. This album is another fine example. Here's hoping their next album goes even further.

p.s. who designs their covers? For crying out loud...

Best Albums of 2008: 21-25

25. Nico Muhly - Mothertongue

My experience with Nico Muhly is as strange as it unlikely. I found the album through Kyle who had proclaimed it the best album of the year sometime in early July. I hated it. There were no songs per se, just what felt like aimless drifting punctuated by a nervous sense of distress. It is essentially an instrumental album, but he uses tapes of vocals whispering nonsense over and over until you feel like you're in a hushed elevator and you can't get off. I thought my time with Nico was done.

Unbeknownst to me, Nico was touring with Doveman, who had just made cover album of the Original Footloose soundtrack (!!). My friend Hal created the website for the album, which ended up being a minor Internet sensation. Hal also got free tickets, so I got to see Nico and Doveman, and Sam Amidon. And it was there, when I could see the mad frenzy take place on stage, that the music sunk in. What sounded like scattered ideas on record were beautifully orchestrated movements. Where once there was discord, now a melody appeared.

In particular I've became infatuated with The Only Tune Pt 1, 2 and 3, a suite based on a creepy old folk song that Nico's parents used to sing to him. Something about two sisters walking down by a pond. One pushes the other in. The dead sister is fished out of a pond by an old man who makes a fiddle out of her remains. Only problem is the fiddle can only play one song, Oh the Dreadful Wind and Rain.

Creepy. Right. So he takes that song and makes it into major blood soaked tragedy, something cinematic and real and I can't get it out of my head. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the album, which is why it's hanging out down here at number 25. But the visions of that song stay with me, and it's why it made the list.

24. Beck – Modern Guilt
Joey Waronker has blood on his hands. The famous session drummer and insanely talented man, is also the Grim Reaper of established bands. Everything he touched in the late nineties went to shit. Think about it. Smashing Pumpkins flopped with Adore. R.E.M. with UP. And with Beck, Joey has been there throughout it all, mucking up every album since Odelay. I know the moment a band dumps their drummer and picks him up things are about to go to shit.

Dude is talented to all hell, but something gets lost when he is there. Beck made the beat for "Loser" on a cheap drum machine in a living room, and it destroys anything Joey has done. Which is why I've been into Modern Guilt from the start. With Danger Mouse providing the beats, and Joey left to just one track, Beck's songs sound like the have some purpose.

It certainly isn't a fun album, but it's his most cohesive in years and songs like "Walls", "Profanity Prayers", and the title track are the best since his heyday. Plus, it has the best album cover of the year, and that has to count for something.

23. Oasis – Dig Out Your Soul

I’m the biggest closet Oasis fan I know. While I’ll wax poetic about the genius of their first two albums and a smattering of singles released between 94 and 96, I’ve also been known to listen to latter day Oasis albums more than once. Each time I’m convinced they’ve made their best album since Definitely Maybe, only to find that I’ve just wasted perfectly good hours of my life that I will never get back.

Though they will never make an album as good as their first again, I think any Oasis fan would have gladly accepted another bloated Be Here Now. At least that album had a few good songs. And you know what? That’s basically what they've done here. This sucker is a mess. It's poorly produced, loud as all hell, and yet still I come back to it.

I'm not going to try and dissect songs like Bag it Up, The Turning, Waiting for the Rapture, and The Shock of the Lightning, but they do reconnect with their much more interesting first album. They ditched their second drummer Alan White an album ago, and it was much needed. The flashy White indulged their overblown "Hey Jude" sensibilities a little too much. Their first drummer had no talent, but his blundering style provided Oasis with (perhaps unintentional) hints of shoegaze's numbing beat. This album occasionally gets back there, and it's enough to make this album not just okay, but actually their best since Be Here Now. You can take that as a compliment or a curse.

22. The Raveonettes – Lust, Lust, Lust

I adore their second album, which wraps sweet bubble gum pop in piercing, abrasive distortion, but figured it was kind of a one-off affair. Their third album kept the songs but ditched the noise, and once I could peak in and take a look at the songs I realized there wasn't much going on.

Well, the noise is certainly back, and so is the purpose. This sucker is huge and I'm hearing all kind of things I'm sure aren't actually there. I'm such a sucker for this sound.

About half of these songs try to act menacing, and I’m having none of it. Give me the songs that sound so sweet you want to gush and the distortion so overwhelming as to magically turn into a Phil Spector sized orchestra.

First single “You Want the Candy” is good, but even better is “Sad Transmission” which swipes the baseline from "Duke of Earl" (Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl) and beat straight from Motown. The guitars are obviously Jesus and Mary Chain loud, but there is also some killer Buddy Holly happening, too.

21. Dodo’s - Visiter

I don't have anything to say about this album. I've tried to write things but none of it matters. I like the drums and the acoustic guitars, but not much beyond that. I originally took that as indication that I didn't really care about the album and that I should leave it off the list, but the sucker has three songs in my iTunes top 25 most played songs. That should count for something, right? Perhaps it was just my consolation Animal Collective album this year. Whatever it is, I listened to it a lot and I think other people should, too.

Radiohead: Nick's Greatest Hits

This post was created in reaction to the recent Radiohead Greatest Hits. I don't know why it angered me so much, but it was probably because I so loved the band and the whole realease had no class. These songs were created for individual albums, and to slop them all on one release felt wrong. So Austin and I decided to make a better one. We'd pick at least one song from every album and reconstruct this failed collection.

A week later both of us failed. No matter how you try to arrange things, a song from Pablo Honey will always butt heads with an Amnesiac number. So we scrapped those plans, and just decided to compile a 10 song Radiohead album that would best showcase our favorite album. It would not only include a bunch of their best songs, but would flow like their albums always do.

I had two competing criteria. One is that these were my top 10 favorite Radiohead songs. And two, that the 10 songs had to fit well together. There is a noticeable lack of songs from Kid A on this list, which happens to be my favorite of their albums. But those songs don't like to break away from each other, and tossed in amongst the rest of their cannon, things didn't feel right. The same could also be said about the Bends. It's an album I do like, but none of it's big powered riffs felt right cutting their way through these ones.

What I finally decided upon, was that if someone were to ask why I love Radiohead, this is what I would hand them. A retrospective of (most) of their career, it nonetheless is highly subjective, and long on the gorgeous Radiohead I love so dearly.

1. Airbag - OK Computer I tried all kinds of different songs, b-sides, live songs, and all of them failed. As introductions to albums go, Airbag is unparalleled and I just couldn't tear it away from that spot. I'm not completely sure why. Perhaps it's that after 10 years the song still sounds off kilter and confused though impossibly perfect. Radiohead never made a song like this before Ok Computer, and they never really returned here. It's the right introduction to collection of songs that constantly surprise and never do as they are told.

2. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - In Rainbows

After Hail to the Thief I kind of jumped ship. I figured that Radiohead's best years were behind them and that I should move on. Then I heard a live version of this song and quickly realized I was wrong. The album version manages to be even better than those early raw tries, replacing the repetitive ending with a skate around a gloomy ice rink. Like the Weird Fishes of the title, the song just keeps diving further through the strange world below.

3. Let Down - Ok Computer

By now, I hope, my intentions are clear. My Radiohead is a complex subdued one. There is nary a distorted guitar on these 10 songs. No, my Radiohead is bewildering and mysterious. And no song sums up my love of Radiohead more than this song. 10 Years on, I still can't figure out how they created a song like this one. It's a relatively plodding tempo, there aren't many crazy chords, and while there are a few dozen guitars or so, what is surprising is how they make all the normal instruments sound so completely alien. What always get me is how triumphant it sounds, how oddly empowering the music is compared to the small insignificant lyrics about being crushed like a bug.

4. Worry Wort - Amnesiac B-Side

To end the trilogy of the gorgeous, I picked this Amnesic b-side. It's one that I somehow missed when it came out, and discovered it a few years later along with Cuttooth (another b-side that almost made the cut). It shares many of the same characteristics as the previous two tracks, but this world is completely insular. It isn't of this earth. I suppose it wouldn't have fit on either Kid A or Amnesiac, but it remains one of my most listened to tracks. This little trilogy showcases what I hold most dear about Radiohead. The odd dynamics, the use of shading and the slow build. There isn't any release to these songs, just a long burn that's beautiful to watch.

5. Kid A - Kid A

My love of this song borders on the bizarre. I still don't really have any idea what they are doing, or whether there is a melody, chorus, or a structure at all. My favorite album by Radiohead is Kid A, and the title track sums up everything I love. I remember listening to this song for the first time on tinny computer speakers a few days before the album was released. It was the most anticipated record of the day, and no one had any idea what it would sound like. They had released some blips to advertise, but nothing like a whole song. We knew it would experimental and that it wouldn't have guitars. But how can you ever expect anything like this? Instead of being scared of this new strange world, I just dove right in. It's the centerpiece of an album I still can't get over. And on any album claiming to have the best of Radiohead, I can't imagine this song not being present.

By now, I hope you can tell I love the downbeat, experimental Radiohead.

6. Gagging Order - Com Lag

But wait! Com Lag is the worst thing Radiohead ever put there name on, and that includes Pablo Honey and all their early singles. It's heavy on some of the worst electronic impulses they ever had. There is hardly a melody to find. Except this song, which dates from Ok Computer and sounds as simple as Thom Yorke could possibly be. It just has an acoustic guitar and voice. If this were stuck on some album I'd probably have grown tired of it years ago. But since I had to find this one stuck amongst their worst songs, I feel oddly attached to it. I'm not one of those guys that wish Radiohead would stop playing with computers, but it's just impossible to deny this guy's power. It doesn't sound like any bit is missing, or that the drums would really make this move. It took Radiohead so long to realize they didn't need distortion to move people, and this acoustic piece showcases that better than any song.

7. Karma Police - OK Computer

Of course it's on here. As I get older and start to really admire the more electronic side of Radiohead, I move further and further away from the Bends and from half of Ok Computer that has a regular structure. But I'll never get over this song. It's the one that got me into Radiohead for the first time, and it's the one I sang when drunk in college. It's a first love and one that won't die.

8. Knives Out - Amnesiac

My love of Kid a is only tempered by a strange infatuation with this song. I know Austin doesn't understand it, sometimes I can't even figure it out for myself. It's distinctive guitar part is lifted almost note for note from Paranoid Android, and unlike that epic it has no shift in tone, no bridge, and no guitar solo. But for some reason I adore those muffled guitar strums before every verse, and the way the third guitar enters the during the instrumental break so quietly that you'd be hard pressed to realize it was even there. The song seems so effortless. It's like Thom was born to be able to crank out these minor key songs without really thinking about them. This is him at his most unguarded.

9. Street Spirit - The Bends

The only song more depressing than a song about cannibalism, it remains the black hole of Radiohead despair. That it's also oddly beautiful and hypnotic is beyond question, but why would ever want to subject himself to this pain? The Bends is usually the fan favorite Radiohead album, but it's not mine. I have no animosity to it like I do for Hail to the Thief. It just doesn't even seem to be the same band. Dynamic is built on distortion and screaming, where they would later learn restraint. This is the one exception. It could have easily fit on Ok Computer, and even, oddly, on In Rainbows. The use of background vocals to ratchet up the tension is brilliant, and that repetitive guitar line can float in your head for days on end without getting boring.

10. Nude

But Radiohead for me is not about depression. I don't identify with that. What I love is sweet release, and no song has anything quite like the ending to Nude. But lets back up for a moment to Meeting People Is Easy, the VHS (!!) release that chronicles Radiohead's Ok Computer tour and showed them completely losing their minds. After an hour and half of them trying to answer stupid questions from journalists and doing sound checks on songs they couldn't get right, we hear them end with a song called Big Ideas (Don't Get Any), which has a xylophone, some beautiful vocals, and a smashingly loud guitar at the end. It sounded like the best song they had ever done. I was sure it had to be on Kid A or at least Amnesiac. But nothing. They played it live a few times, but it didn't appear on Hail to the Thief. It wasn't until In Rainbows, where it showed up with a dub influenced beat, a choir of back ground vocals, and that glorious high falsetto. It's odd that anything so perfect in my head would turn out so different and yet better, but Radiohead seems to have done it.