Bourbon Milk Punch

Best Albums of 2011

2011-12-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

25. The Antlers - Burst Apart
24. Panda Bear - Tomboy
23. R.E.M. - Collapse into Now
22. Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
21. Cut Copy - Zonoscope
20. Atlas Sound - Parallax
19. Cults - Cults
18. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
17. tUnE-yArDs - W H O K I L L
16. Washed Out - Within and Without
15. Real Estate - Days
14. Yuck - Yuck
13. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
12. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost
11. Wilco - The Whole Love

10. M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
9. Smith Westerns - Dye It Blonde
8. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
7. Pains of Being Pure of Heart - Belong
6. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

5. Cass McCombs - Wit's End

This was my little secret of the year, an album that I played repeatedly but told no one about. I'm afraid it wouldn't translate well, and that the same things I love—the mesmerizing tranquility of it all—would bore people to tears. I do know this: It's one of a handful of albums like Tom Wait's Alice and Lucinda Williams's World Without Tears that begins with a haunting, downbeat number which is somehow as invigorating as a two minute punk rant. This feels like the introduction to his world, and it's a sad one. In fact, things only get more terrifying from here on out.

4. Bon Iver - Bon Iver

There are no great singles here. When I'm done listening to the album, I often wonder what exactly happened. Did I really finish this again, or did it skip a bunch of tracks? I'd be angry if I didn't always have a reason to dive back in, to try and figure out what I've been listening to on repeat. It is not commercial, and I'm not quite sure how it will stand up. But it is a piece of work that deserves the time sunk into it.

3. Destroyer - Kaputt

Combine two of my least favorite things—Destoyer and 80's soul pop—and what do you get? How about one of the most confusingly awesome spectacles of the year. Filled with reverbed sax and awkward dance tunes, this should have been one of my least favorite albums of all time. I never understood the appeal of Destroyer until last year's Bay of Pigs EP, which is luckily repeated here. Normally he seems purposefully eccentric, but this genre exercise gave him some much needed constraints.

2. Kanye West and Jay-Z - Watch the Throne

I'm pretty adamant that we shouldn't judge art on moral grounds and that lyrics are just one aspect of what goes into a song. So the arguments about this being just an obscene product to pitch during the Great Recession really bored me. Plus it's borderline insane. For every line about excessive luxury, there is another that celebrates black icons. For every reference to Margelia jackets, there is another about the murder rate in Chicago.

Rolling Stone deserves special condemnation. After giving the album a paltry 3 ½ stars, noting the same tired "luxury rap" criticism, they then decided to anoint the album as the second best of year. This act allowed them to basically have their cake and eat it too; they could express their condemnation, while also showing that they were hip enough to understand what the rest of us already knew.

Never in my whole life have I heard an album bumped from as many cars as Watch the Throne. It didn't matter if you were black, latino, or white, this album was everywhere during the Chicago summer. While MBDTF seemed purposefully uncommercial, basically every track here was calibrated for radio airplay. Even the second half, which grows increasingly dark and introspective (why is that the critics never talked about this?), is filled with concise songs.

But I have to admit that the first half, the one filled with all the songs about greedy consumerism, is my favorite. Why? Because Jay-Z and Kanye are fucking hilarious, and listening to them trip over themselves trying to top each other with ridiculous lines was one of the great joys of 2011. "Otis", in particular, sounds like they were duking it out over every single line. Sure, it has no great meaning, and you can't call it poetry, but when was that ever the fucking point? Since when do great pop songs have a moral compass? Don't we want our crazed stars to try so hard to make us happy that they'll start acting truly bizarre?

1. The Field - Looping State Of Mind

Like Panda Bear's Person Pitch, The Field's Looping State of Mind is an experience that doesn't make a whole lot of sense initially, and yet is completely mesmerizing if you let go and submit to it. Besides the title track, I couldn't tell you the name of any of these songs, and yet each has more plays on iTunes this year than any other album. It wasn't even close. That should count for something, right?

Unfortunately, I worried that part of that reason was that I can work to it. Is there anything more lame than that? Though I once loved music that would control me, now I'm searching for albums that I can completely ignore. Of course, it is one of those albums that is great to write with playing in the background. But part of its power is that it makes me write BETTER and FASTER. It sharpens air, condenses time. Put it on, pick an assignment, and it's done. It is better than most drugs.

And yet, it also works when the keyboard is pushed back and the wine comes out. I have this album at my disposal everywhere I go. On my computer (MP3), turntable (vinyl), car (CD), and iPod (MP3, again). There aren't many moments that wouldn't benefit form this album (working out, walking the dog, walking down the street). I know this sounds strange, but that's because this album makes no sense and yet is impossible to stop listening to.

Best Albums of 2010

2010-12-19T12:43:00.000-08:00

20. No Age - Everything in Between
19. Wavves - King of the Beach
18. She & Him - Volume 2
17. The Walkmen - Lisbon
16. Spoon - Transference
15. The National - High Violet
14. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot the Son of Chico Dusty
13. Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love
12. Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz
11. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today

10. Vampire Weekend - Contra

At first this album seemed like the very definition of a sophomore slump. Like kids with new toys (and budgets), the production was busier and glossier, and all the songs felt needlessly aggressive and flashy. I missed the simple pop pleasures of the first album, and I immediately discarded this album for about ten months. It was my mistake, because there are real songs buried in here, and ones that benefit from the new approach.

9. Beach House - Teen Dream

I nearly fell asleep standing up when I saw Beach House open for Grizzly Bear a few years ago. The mix of maudlin melodies and languid tempos didn't exactly win me over. But something has changed here, and I can’t quite figure it out. The tempos are still slow, but there is a sweeter and more delicate touch here. It makes the music feel less like some desperate drug fueled haze, and more like the best drunken summer afternoon of the year.

8. Best Coast - Crazy for You

When I argue with people about lyrics of pop music, this is the kind of album that seems tailor made for my argument. It's a sad and sunny beach album about heartbreak and longing. The lyrics are trite and simple, but when paired with the sorrow of those guitars, and the echoing harmonies of some lost Beach Boys summer, everything makes perfect sense. It the dramatic equivalent of adding heartbreaking strings to a cheesy teen film. You know you’re being manipulated, but everything sounds sweeter when you can sing along.

7. Girls - Broken Dream Club

I fell hard for Girls last year, admiring the quick blast of the debut album that felt haphazard, and about as complex as the Ramone’s oeuvre. It was awesome, but hard to understand how they could improve on that simple formula. So it is utterly astonishing to listen to this EP and hear the band blowing up the constraints and sounding better than before. We’ll have to wait until the next full length to see if they could match the songs, but this teaser is all I need to tide me over.

6. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

My favorite parts of Deerhunter’s last album, the mesmerizing Microcastle, were the quiet, slightly poppy ones. They felt like whispers between the extreme noise. So it is really no surprise that I’d fall for this album, which is made up almost exclusively of the kind of demented bedroom pop that only Bradford Cox could create.

5. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

Man how I hated Ys. But I immediately understood Have One On Me, a breathtaking album which cuts deep and pulls no punches. Her voice is richer, and the arrangements are more fluid. While the songs on Ys seemed to go on forever, the cyclical songs here feel necessary to contain her changing mood. Each verse feels warranted not for some kind of story book meaning, but for the emotional connection. For me, the music needs to drive the meaning of lyrics, and Newsom finally corrected the balance, delivering her most beautiful and stunning album yet.

4. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

I have always given Gorillaz the benefit of the doubt. While all of their albums has been uneven and too long, the singles have always made the trip worth it. But Plastic Beach is an album, albeit one that most reminds me of the glory days of mid-nineties CDs. Honestly. It is stuffed solid with strange detours and memorable pop songs. It's a world that you can completely engage with and learn something new each time.

3. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

“Aren't all of the songs too long?” That essentially was my first thought about LCD Soundsystem’s third album, and first since the nearly perfect Sound of Silver. As an album I just don't think it stays together as well, I’d have lopped off three minutes from the opening track, and tried to fit everything on one disc. But who cares what I think? The real treasure in this disc is exploring each track as an individual, cracking it opening, and trying to make sense of it. After a while the aggressive guitar tangle of All I Want starts to hit the right notes, and the spiraling and frenetic Pow Pow starts to make sense. Plus this fucker sounds epic on vinyl.

2. Arcade Fire - Suburbs

Last time we left Arcade Fire, they were railing against god and hypocrisy with torches and megaphones. The fire in Neon Bible felt real and vital, but it pushed them closer to the preachers they were trying to skewer. So when I heard that they would next be taking on the suburbs on their next opus, I worried that the songs would suffer from the cynical view. But as they announced in the press statement, it’s not “a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs – it’s a letter from the suburbs.” The innocence and sincerity of Funeral has returned, as the album feels like a teenager simply discovering music for the first time. The hint is in the album cover. Each songs seems designed to play in the car while cruising endlessly around roundabouts and subdivisions in your beat up car.

1. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

What more, really, could we ask for from a pop star? Had Kanye West done absolutely nothing he'd still be worth paying attention to, because he is so unfiltered and honest. With a business stuffed full of bullshit, he felt like the one person that saw its faults but still wanted to engage with it on his terms. Of course, he did put out music this year, including a barrage of utterly stunning free mp3s, which documented an artist on a peak and ready to conquer. To say I was ready for this album was an understatement. I'm not one of those people that jumped after Late Registration. I sometimes think Graduation is better. Still, I wasn't prepared for how shockingly huge My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy would be, and how it’d obsess over it for two months straight.

Can we talk for a minute about how great this album is, because we are dealing with Kid A levels of genius here...

I am hearing all kinds of shit here. It’s an artist on the edge of inspiration and insanity, with an album so absolutely overloaded that it could have ended up like the worst kind of progressive rock — or worse — the rap generation’s first Oasis-level Be Here Now flame out. No one would have put it past him. But the one thing that has always remained with Kanye, during the all the twitter chaos and other PR nightmares, was his undying love of music.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sounds at once perfectly polished and yet wild and diverse. Each song seems like it could come from a different album. Compare the perfect soul soundtrack of Devil in a New Dress to the minimalist pulse of Runaway. Who would have guessed that Monster would sound so right after the jungle club mix of All of the Lights? Throughout it all guests weave seamlessly in and out, like jazz musicians taking their turn at a solo. So how can Kanye really be an oppressive egotist if he so often lends the spotlight to stars like Nicki Minaj, who walks all over both him and Jay-Z in her verse? Each guest seems picked out specifically for some sound he had in his head, but was unable to translate by himself.

I could go on. For such a massive, experimental album as this is, it's actually built on the frame of four massive singles (Power, All of the Lights, Monster, and Runaway). All could have carried a whole album, and yet they are warped here by the albums strange world view, coming out less commercial, and much more demented.

Which brings us to the biggest irony about this startling album. It’ll probably sell less than all this rapturous praise seems to indicate. Surely less than Graduation, and probably 808s and Heartbreak. That's okay. He took the hard route here, and I feeling we are going to be talking about this album for years to come.

Best Albums of 2009

2009-12-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

25. Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs
24. Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
23. The Antlers - Hospice
22. Real Estate - Real Estate
21. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
20. Julian Casablancas - Phrazes for the Young
19. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
18. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
17. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
16. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul.
15. Destroyer - Bay of Pigs E.P.
14. Volcano Choir - Unmap
13. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
12. Bonnie "Prince Billy" - Beware
11. Dark Was the Night

10. The xx - The xx I feel horrible about this band. I'm enraptured with this album, but I just haven't given it enough time to really know whether I love it for the right reasons. It's minimalist and sweet that rare combination that might explain why I always want the album on. It's been a busy couple weeks with this album, here's hoping that I'm able to give it more.

9. Atlas Sound - Logos Where Deerhunter alternated between blissed out ambient passages and quick-focused guitar assault, Atlas Sound alternates between blissed out ambient passages and multi-layered pop. Hell, there is even a totally appropriate Panda Bear cameo. It's not quite as mysterious and engaging as Deerhunter, but it's often more immediate and satisfying. The perfect mid-day, sunshine record.

8. Dirty Projectors - Bitte OrcaHere's another band I never listened to before this year, and I'm wondering what was my problem. Bitte Orca is so crammed full of ideas, it's hard to figure out exactly where you stand. One minute they are all calm and beautiful, and then Stillness is the Move comes on and I might as well be listening to the best R n B song of the year.

7. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus PhoenixI've known about Phoenix for a while now, but I always thought of them as some watered-down version of the Strokes. All plastic and polished instead grit and unwahsed hair. But I suppose that's kind of the point. While the Strokes have spent the past five years trying to do anything but play together, Phoenix have been refining their craft. It's a surprisingly varied album, one that feels just as comfortable with pop-rock as they do with ambient passages.

6. Bibio - Ambivalence AvenueThis is one of those albums that I had on constantly this year, and though I know none of the track names, I can safely say I've listened to it more than any of the albums on the list.

5. Handsome Furs - Face Control Forget the Wolf Parade reunion. Spencer Krug may get all the love, but my favorite songs on Wolf Parade's debut album were almost all sung by Dan Boeckner. While Krug trips up his tongue with David Bowie-like inflections, Boeckner is all fury. That fury turns to lust here, as Face Control's 12 tracks showcase his unrelenting snarl, the kind of rock voice everyone secretly wishes they could conjure up when singing in the shower.

It's almost embarrassing how good he is. He sings behind a drum machine and blaring synths, and yet comes out looking cool. It helps that he is such a thoughtful writer of melodies, giving his voice the change to raise and fall with dramatic tension. Usually its just falling, but he'll occasionally pick himself off the ground and toss off some beautiful passage. Just when you think the nights gone wrong, something rescues it all.

4. St. Vincent - ActorOh the way her voice seems to tickle my spine! How does she do it? Actor plays out like one of those beautiful glass ornaments, all shimmering and spotless, with jagged edges that cut your finger just when you aren't paying attention. It's dramatic and dangerous, the kind of album that too many indie-albums don't have the nerve to do.

Greg Kot from the Chicago Tribune described it best when he called these songs mini movie soundtracks, filled with sweeping orchestration, and yet never content to stay in one place for too long. Songs take unexpected detours, starting off innocent and then veering into some unplanned tunnel. Each listen brings up some emotion that I had planned on. And, completely off the train of the thought, I love how she seems to be playing her guitar with a pair of scissors.

3. Girls - Album I detested this album after a few listens. The nasal voice, the lo-fi production, all rang as false to me as Wavves haircut. But once I was able to visually place Elvis Costello's head on top of Christopher Owens, it all made sense. I'm not much interested in his background in cults and as runaway, but I am enthralled with the emotions he is able to focus in these bursts of melody. The songs all start off as sad sack tales of kids without a place to turn. Dude can't even afford a pizza and a bottle of wine in Lust for Life, and yet they dress it up with doo wop cooing, and surf guitar. Rock n Roll is the product of the young, and it seems as if he just couldn't figure out any other way of getting this off his chest. It's accidental and mythical, the kind of album that makes you so insanely jealous because he did it so easily.

2. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart / Higher than the Stars E.P.It took me a while to figure out whether I really liked TPoBPaH or just the nostalgia that they flashed in front of my eyes. Their style reads off like a direct riff off my Facebook wall. I mean, come on. It was like shoegaze filtered through "This Charming Man" with Belle and Sebastian vocals and nary a slow song in the bunch. It's all one big giddy sugar rush. For the first half of the year they were my guilty pleasure. I knew their best parts were ripped from better bands, but why argue with something is so much fun?

The real turning point for me was the Higher than the Stars E.P. The title song rides the wave of synths, while the drums seem never to hit the ground, tickling your inner ear lobe like a sped up drum machine. It's all glittering lights and the feeling of watching Manhattan unfold in front of you while you sit in a happy drunken stupor in the back of a cab. This one, nearly perfect song made me question every song on their debut. I picked it apart and began to notice their unique take on the past, and their strides to release their influences and create something new. Shockingly, this album that I had tossed off as innocent and naive, started sounding like one of those debuts from a band about ready to really shake things up. I have high hopes.

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion / Be Fall Kind It's not quite fair. Within the first week of 2009 I knew what would be the best album of the year. How could you not be sure about this album? It's accessible and yet still wild, a perfect distillation of Panda Bears Beach Boys-like drone and Avey Tare's impeccable knack for erratic and original melodies. It's spontaneous and focused, the kind of album you were never quite sure they'd be able to make.

I suppose I should be astonished that so many other albums made a play for the top. But none of them quite had the timeless quality that Merriweather exhibits. Like LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver, it seems to have always been hanging out on the record shelf. And just to add insult to injury they tossed off Be Fall Kind, which is the darkness to Merriweather's summer day. It's as bewildering as the best parts of Merriweather, and shows that Animal Collective aren't quite done with the surprises.

100 Best Albums of the Decade

2009-09-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

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. 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 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 songs 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 his 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

The 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 the lanky, indie-rock kid Malkmus as some 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 a 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 a 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 I 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 knew 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.). 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 things 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 may have upstaged this 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 has something to fight about. They are still 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 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 is the first take of something that just came to his head. 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 just like regular structure, 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 get 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 Pipettes kool-aid. 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 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 fifth 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 it's 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 of 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 fills 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 is Doom. He weaves unlikely tales over some of the most schizo-phrenic beats anyone 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 a 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 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 into 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 contemporary, goth dirges, and cover songs that hhis 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 it's 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 an 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, and by 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 will get 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 a 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 it's 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 rock back to the basics. I realize now that 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 it's 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 it's that good. I mean, I kind of think 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

2008-12-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-11T08:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

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

2008-06-19T08:26:00.001-07:00

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.

Best Albums of 2007: 5-1

2007-12-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

5. M.I.A. - Kala
I didn’t expect this. Arular was fantastic and all, but every single freaking song on this album is a gangbuster ready to make the dance floor move. Where did those beats come from? Before, the caged beats sounded futuristic and threatening, and now they sound downright earth shattering. And instead of some chanting she’s crafted some perfect songs.

I still, honestly, can’t pin down exactly what moves me about her. Her tone-deaf delivery isn’t exactly revelatory, and while her lyrics are interesting, they aren’t poetry. And her politics, like nearly everyone has mentioned, are rather disturbing. This isn’t the power-of-the-people vibe, this is radical and dangerous. I wouldn’t mess with her. Sure, it could be a huge facade that she’s put on to sound more dangerous. But I don’t buy it. I’m scared of her. Honestly, if I saw her on the street I’d walk the other way. God knows what she’d do to me. Ask for an autograph? Forget about it.

Perhaps that’s the attraction...that and the 12 or so unbelievable singles piled up here.

4. Rufus Wainwright - Release the Stars
I think I’m the only person in the world that loved this album. I know for a fact I’m the only person in Columbus, Ohio who knew the words to all the new songs. When I saw him this fall I belted every song, and everyone looked around like they had no idea what was going on. I remember seeing Rufus in New York during his Want II and just feeling completely surrounded by love. And there I sat in the midwest with a bunch of people that didn’t care.

Why did I care? Because he delivered an album of romantic gems set to completely over the top productions that swept me up in a fever of bittersweet nostalgia (the best possible kind). Why doesn’t any one else care?

I know that answer, too. The album is a little campy, bloated, and not nearly as strong as his first two albums. Sure, I’m forgiving. I gave the Smashing Pumpkins nearly four albums before I jumped ship. But I have jumped ship, and am now privy to anything Rufus wants to do. Luckily he’s not bitter or jaded, and is making romantic albums full of tortured lovers, forbidden loves, and that voice to carry it all.

3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
This is a special album, and I think we all know that. There was no where to go after Hail to the Thief, an album that saw Radiohead reaching further and further into the depths of digital hell---perhaps I’m not the right person to talk about this. I was never a fan of that album, which I saw as stripping Radiohead of all their power.

There were hints that things might change, specifically the wondrous live version of “Arpeggi”. But I could never have anticipated an album of such warmth. In fact, I was expecting more drum machines, especially after a typically glum Thom Yorke solo album. It’s certainly not a happy album, but it feels full-bodied and real, something that you can’t really say about a Radiohead album since the Bends.

But this is no retread and never have they taken their minimalist tendencies so far. If Kyle is right and this is their last album, I can’t imagine a more fitting way to go.

2. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Last New Years I spent with Austin getting mad drunk and hanging out with people I had no right to be around. It was some kind of Ivy League party and I had just drunk a bottle or two of champagne and was acting obnoxious. I spilt hot wax all over my one leg, spent 30 minutes in the bathroom trying to clean it off, and then I found the iPod. They had this meticulously sequenced playlist which I decided had to go. In a room of about 50 people I’d never met before, i started picking every song. I think i was doing well until I decided to play Spoon “I Turn My Camera On”. Everyone froze and looked at me. I got bitched out by some girl (who Abby threatened to fight), and left in a semi-disgrace. Spoon were ruined for me. I was a little embarrassed, but just mostly ashamed. I had a great time that night, but Spoon were always going to be the band that tainted the evening.

I had no interest in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga when it came out. When I finally did get around to listening to it, I wasn’t much impressed outside of “Cherrybomb”, thinking it stale and too simplistic. I just didn’t want to be reminded every day of my idiocy. And then slowly but surely I got in. First it was “Underdog”, then “Finer Feeling”, and then “Don’t You Evah”, and before I knew it the album was on repeat for the whole summer.

But it wasn’t until I got madly obsesed with “Japanese Cigarette Case” that I realized I was on to something truly unique. Here was a song with one verse repeated occasionally, with a spanish guitar solo, and then a riff. And yet it was one of the most engaging songs I’d heard in ages. How did they do this, how can you make such simple things say so much?

So, it’s been my year of Spoon. From disgraced figures into heroes . Who knew?

1. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
One of the stranger experiences in life is when I happen to fall asleep watching a movie I’ve seen many times before. I know the plot, know the characters, but in the haze of sleep these events line up to create a completely new experience. Strange scenes that never existed before appear, and characters start breaking from the script. None of it ever makes sense, but this new world is beautiful and strange. I’m always curious to see where it goes, before I drift off again.

I’ve never heard an album as completely bewitching and dreamlike as this one, and never one that reminded me of this phenomenon. Each time I sneak in it feels like a completely new experience, one that can never be replicated. Because there are no verses, no choruses, just waves of samples looping around itself, there is no entry point except the beginning. If you drop in the middle it’s disorienting and alarming, but always beautiful and often sublime.

The album will always be about the random, the unexpected, the new turns I didn’t know existed. It will be me rambling around Brooklyn half awake with headphones through the trees back to my old apartment at a late hour. It will always be the unknown, and that’s why I can’t stop listening to it on repeat waiting for unexpected to happen.

Best Albums of 2007: 10-6

2007-12-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

10. Kanye West - Graduation
I understand it. I was ready to ditch the Kanye bus, too, until he dropped a party animal with exactly one bad track (Drunk and Hot Girls). No skits, no sappy ballads with Brandy, and at least three phenomenal end of the year chart toppers (Stronger, Good Life, Flashing Lights) that equal anything he’s put out before. I was ready to hate. I am still not impressed with his flow. But I am impressed with an album loaded hits that makes the stunning Late Registration look slightly stale.

It all has to do with Kanye the producer, who took back control and played it exactly the way he wanted to. Late Registration felt like the edges were smoothed over, but Graduation hits hard and often with miraculous sounds that are innovative and quirky.

I’ll never trade his rhymes for Hova’s, but in a year that saw American Gangster look back to past strengths, Kanye looked straight ahead and put together a staggering modern American hip hop record.
9. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
This is it. I remembering anticipating his first album with bated breath, hoping that I’d have some spark of light to equal his insanely great singles (Beat Connection, Yeah (Crass), Losing My Edge). It was a fine, fine record, but nothing even came close. What I was really waiting for was this stunning record, where every single song could be the best song he’s ever written.

That’s no joke. There’s not even one remotely weak track here. There are the crass, slightly goofy tracks (North America Scum, Us V Them) that equal the good times of his initial success, and then there is impeccable dance rock (All My Friends, Someone Great). As inspiring as those songs are, I prefer the jackass “Losing My Edge” LCD Soundsystem, and in that respect, didn’t listen to this album as much as I should have.

But I recognize its genius, and wish the album meant more to me. Perhaps, it feels too much like 2005. Did he miss his big chance? According to most music blogs, he didn’t. And I still have years to fully dissect what's going on here, which I'm more than happy to do.

8. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
E-Mail from Austin Diaz, December 8th 2005: “All of you need to get in touch with me as soon as you can over IM...I’ve been listening to the Jens Lekman album...and I’m really trying to not just buy into Pitchfork hype but this album is amazing. As Duncan commented, it sounds “Christmas-y” which it does and like Morrisey had a torrent love affair with Sea-Change-era Beck.”

This was right before our big year end list two years ago, and I had absolutely no time. I was juggling 10 new albums, trying to figure out what exactly I had missed and what was worth skipping. So I didn’t even give it a try.

E-Mail from Blake Royer, December 9th 2005: “I think of the affair as less torrential and more of a gentle rainstorm, with tender fucking, melodramatic role-playing, kinky balloons and other twee props.”

And I STILL didn’t download it. What was I waiting for? Musical recommendations don’t come much better than that.

It wasn’t until this wonderful and charming record that I finally got around to what I as supposed to already know. Jens Lekman is a man of many talents, including some impressive sampling skills, but it’s his warm story telling that keeps me around. Like just about everyone else in humanity, it was “Nina” that sold me. Was I the only one that wished I were in that situation, pretending to be the fiance to a lesbian? How precious is that?

7. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Blake said to keep trying, but it was taking a long time. I really loved Sung Tongs, and had liked Feels at first, even if I never listened to it after the 2006 list where I threw it in the top 10. I missed the more subdued feel of Sung Tongs, and was growing very weary of the bursts of screaming. I was tired of having to try so hard to like an album. Was I getting too old for this? Of course I wasn’t, I told myself, so I listened to it again and again and again...

Then one day I turned on “For Reverend Green” and realized it was the greatest fucking song I’d heard all year. I don’t mean this lightly. Animal Collective were always a band I wanted to like more than I did. Perhaps it’s the cool factor, the want to be more obscure, but I don’t have to pretend any more. All of sudden the heavens opened up and this absolutely perfect song appeared to me. And I didn’t have to do anything except adore it. That was easy.

And quickly the rest of the album fell in the line. “Peacebone” and “Fireworks” were next, and then I was humming “#1” like it was a pop hit. Albums do take time, but they need to inhabit your day and not sit on the shelf looking pretty. This is the first time Animal Collective jumped in the game and played.
6. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Indie rock kids have been trying for years to sound like Bruce Springsteen. It’s cute. But no one ever figured out that there has to be something to fight for, some strife to get over. It’s not about rocking with abandon, it’s about breaking away, cutting your loses, and starting over, even if that’s an impossibility. Arcade Fire are the first band to actually come close. It’s no accident that he invited them on stage to sing “Keep the Cars Running”, this is mimicry on the highest level.

But it’s still mimicry, and that’s the only reason this album doesn’t have the dark intricacies and rambling confusion of their fantastic debut. This album is streamlined, obvious, and, at times, rather clumsy. The lyrics are weighty and overbearing. But their heart is there, and the rage they conjure up is real.

Ironically, my favorite songs are the ones that stray furthest from the Funeral multi-suite template. (Antichrist Television Blues) is straight verse chorus the whole way through, yet they manage to weave a twisted tale of money, god, and power into one of the catchiest 5 minutes in 2007. The title track is a simple 2 minute lullaby played as quietly as 7 talented musicians possibly can. It's theses new fantastic directions that get me the most excited, and what kept these songs close to the top-played list all year long.

Best Albums of 2007: 15-11

2007-12-17T18:36:00.000-08:00

15. The National - Boxer
“Apartment Story” got me into the dark forbidding place, and “Fake Empire” kept me there. All the rest is about atmosphere and how much low singing you can stand. I apparently have a very high threshold.

14. Okkervil River - The Stage Names
When people bashed Bright Eyes “I’m Wide Awake...” a couple years ago, they usually used Okkervil’s “Black Sheep Boy” as what real modern folk music should sound like. I wasn’t having any of it. Austin kept playing it for me, and I just couldn’t ever manage to sneak in. The latter album felt slick and detailed, while Mr. Conner’s effort felt freewheeling and spontaneous. Of course, Bright Eyes followed that album with the mannered Cassadega, and Okkervil make a rocking Americana record full of strange characters and lots of guitars. It’s the clear winner this year, and one of the last albums I thought I’d get into. I had kind of convinced myself I didn’t like them. And then “John Allyn Smith Sails” came on.

I never, ever, in a million, billion years would have predicted that they would just break into the Beach Boys. It’s one of the most rousing endings to any album I’ve heard since, probably, “I’m Wide Awake”. I know I keep comparing them to Bright Eyes, and they really don’t sound much alike at all, but I guess that means I (finally) like them. It’s a good thing.

13. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
Its no longer accurate to say Paul makes bad solo albums. He’ll probably never make anything as convincing as his Beatle compositions, or even the fantastic Ram, but he’s made five solid solo albums in a row. That’s impressive. They haven’t been classics, but for someone (rightly) demonized for thirty odd years for making mediocre shlock it is a feat.

I don’t really feel right ranking these new achievements, but if I had to pick I’d probably settle on this one. It shows a rejuvenated Paul taking his best shot at pop music since his early 70’s pinnacle, and mostly succeeding.

I’ll always be that guy fighting for Paul. He’s my favorite Beatle, and I cringe when people continue to belittle his contributions to modern music. It’s just nice to have something to show for my side. This helps.

12. Feist - The Reminder
It’s no great secret that Let It Die’s best moments were those actually written by the lady singing it. The second half of covers felt overbearing and fussy compared to the stripped down simplicity of the wondrous first half. It would seem smart of her to have learned her lesson and made a beautiful, stripped down album with nothing but originals. So it comes as a rather shocking surprise that the least interesting moments on The Reminder are those that most recall her first.

There is nothing wrong with these songs (So Sorry, The Park, Intuition), but the best moments of this CD are when she subverts these and either ratchets up the sex (My Moon My Man) or turns into a big goofball with her ear set on a sing-along. (One Two Three Four). Honestly, she could sing about just about anything and I’d listen, but the more insincere and mysterious she becomes the more I pay attention.

11. Jay-Z - American Gangster
I got watches I ain’t seen in months!
Oh, really? I haven’t worn a watch in years! When I still lived in New York, clocks smacked my face on a regular fifteen second interval on the subway. When not in the subway, I was usually staring at a computer screen with little numbers constantly glowing in the top right. What about on the street? I either had my nose buried in an ipod (top right), or had my handy cellphone at arms length. Who needs a watch?

Jay-Z’s separation from the streets he’s trying to rap about here is miles thick. I’m not convinced for a moment that he’s more Frank Lucus than Ludicrus. You can’t have it both ways. It’s the thinnest of concept albums, and one that features some of his absolute weakest production jobs.

This could have been just as big a disaster as Kingdom Come, but somehow, it manages to rank among his very best. I do love “Roc Boys” and “No Hook”, but it’s over that furious organ, spitting rhymes with Nas, that Jay really gets his point across. Jay didn’t become famous because he was a drug dealer. He got it because he can ride the wave of some organ crash, saying something ridiculous about eating too much at Mr. Chows, and still come out sounding downright triumphant.

Best Albums of 2007 - 20-16

2007-12-16T19:16:00.000-08:00

20. Yeah Yeah Yeah - Is Is EP
Yeah, Show Your Bones had it’s moments, but hearing Karen O rip out in “Rockers to Swallow” is like hearing a dear old friend say hello for the first time in years. It’s the scream, that full bodied tear breaking over a wave of distorted guitars and drums that first attracted me in the first place. And for the most part, that’s what this album delivers. It’s not quite the cold classic of their self-titled e.p., or even their roaring first album, but it shows what we missed when they decided to be just a tad quieter. Sounds sad, but sometimes youthful bashing of instruments really does mean more.

19. White Stripes - Icky Thump
There seems to be two camps with this album. One believes this to be the Stripes fall from grace after two hit albums. The other that this is their best album since White Blood Cells. But I guess that depends on whether you like your favorite brother and sister combo rocking seriously or just cracking cruel jokes with guitars blazing and nothing but pure spite to fuel the fire.

Count me in the later. Nothing is better then when White gets all preachy about the lost morals of today's youth, while he layers on distortion three miles thick. Ah! How I missed being yelled at. And I especially missed the creepy sibling tales. Sure, the album is not near as solid as their breakthrough, and they did miss out on their folksy, acoustic side. But I'll always take the smart ass White to the one that gets his videos played on VH1. I know, it's snobbish. But there was a time when the weirdness of the Stripes seemed like commercial suicide. I remember it so well.
18. I’m Not There - Various Artists
Like I needed another reason to get heavily into Bob. It’s becoming a yearly occupation and each time I get a little further in. Last year it was No Direction Home, and now I have this: a covers album of mostly obscure Dylan songs that is consistently, and mind-bogglingly solid. This is strange. These random artists are taking lesser Dylan songs, covering them (mostly) faithfully and ending up with an album that pays homage to the classics but still sounds modern. Honestly, it could have been so bad.

It's still to big of a beast to fully plow through. I have my favorite (everything by Yo La Tengo, Maulkmus, and "Just Like A Woman" sung by Charlotte Gainsbourg). But I need more time. It's an album of as much pleasure as you have time to give, which you can definitely say about the man behind the whole project.

17. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
Though awfully funny, I now look back on 2005 as my favorite time for Mr. Adams. He was swigging whiskey, making a fool of himself, and releasing album after album of swaggering country anthems. But it couldn't continue without something going horribly wrong. This album is about as fine a product as could have emerged from a full-on rehab and a new girl that doesn't want to break his heart.

I agree with the suggestion that it's a mini greatest hits album, complete with some fantastic acoustic laments, breezy soft rock, rocking Replacement carbon-copies, and some genuine country ones. I prefer the first and the last, so about half of this album sends me into a dizzy. I always skip the more serious compositions for the moments when the melody gets so ingrained with his body that it feels like he could just exude sadness. What a beautiful image...even if it only occasionally pans out.

16. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
This album breaks my heart. I've been a huge Boss fan for years now, and I'm no longer scared to admit it. I used to listen to "Born to Run" with the bedroom door locked, quietly pumping my first in the air with all the teenage rage of his greatest characters. And here is an album with Springsteen completely unhinged, gunning for his former glory. The songs are drenched with some of his saddest images --I think of the flag flying over the courthouse and the clouds of grey on election day--and some rocking tunes to back them up.

But the production sucks. Every electric guitar is reverbed, all the acoustic guitars chime, and echo coats all his vocals in syrup. Instead of the wall-of-sound of Born to Run, he's made a polyphonic spree. Instead of poignant, the songs feel sappy. It's a sad fact that masks one of his best efforts with a sheen of irrelevance.

Fortunately, half the songs get to shine through the Disney strings, and make a difficult album perfectly bearable instead of a slog.

Best Albums of 2007: 25-21

2007-12-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

25. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
This is when I knew it'd be a good year. Blake had loved Bird's previous album (Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs) and played it often when we were still in college (ages and ages ago!). But I had always resisted, always found a reason not to dive in. Not this album. It was the first album of the year that I played repeatedly, and still do. I think it was "Heretics" that drug me in. It feels wonderful to be proved wrong. So this seems like the perfect place to start this list, with a fantastic album in a year completely stocked full of them.

24. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
It could have been a contender. With Niles Cline pulling the strings, and a live album showcasing some serious rocking, this one seemed destined to be a hell of good time. But all was apparently not well. Instead of bringing the barn down, they decided to retire to it. And they made an easy-going mid-70s soft rock album. Or at least they attempted to. Which is just as well, for when this album works, like the first half, I think they succeed brilliantly. It’s not until the later half that the lazy songs become boring, and some rather awkward rocking goes by without much moving in their wake. I'll still take the easy spirit of the first half, and especially the title song, to settle down to any day.

23. Grizzly Bear - Friend E.P.
Yellow House was a beautiful record, but for some reason I didn’t realize how complex the arrangements were until I saw them go apeshit live. The mutli-instrumentalist would be on both knees screaming into different microphones, punching different pedals, while the guitarists would be playing insanely intricate picking patterns, and someone would be screaming...and still, the melody would be maudlin and lazy. I couldn't figure it out. But some of the new song they played were moving a little faster, and those all ended up on the E.P. That includes a particularly creepy version of "He Hit Me", which changes the romantic relationship and increases the doom. The E.P. is still insanely beautiful, but this time with a little more below the hips.

22. Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
I wanted to adore this album like I had with “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning”, but it’s shiny veneer is hard to get through. Where that previous release felt warm and inviting, this one is glossy and slick. It makes some of his acoustic songs feel insincere.

Fortunately, he didn’t write an album of acoustic pleas, and when he strays from that formula some beautiful things start to happen. Who knew Connor could pull off a mid-tempo sixties pop gem like “Make a Plan to Love Me”? Or that he could finally get the jagged electronic beats to do something for him with “Coat Check Dream Song”?

Sure, I still like “Four Winds” and "If the Brakeman Turns My Way", but this album shows his restlessness is what makes him interesting, and why he still sounds like he has so much more to find.

21. Battles - Mirrored
What the...? I still have no idea what is going on in this album and I suppose I never will. The rhythms are too tight, the vocals too scattered, and the guitars...where to begin. As out of control and chaos-tinged, it's still maddeningly methodical and never overbearing. Much has been made about how this is indie-rock's stab at prog, but no song stretches past the 10 minute marks and (I don't believe) anyone breaks out in three part harmony. Just some insane rock made by people too talented to do anything else. I think it has much more in common with freak folk than Yes, but I suppose that's because I actually enjoy this stuff.

The Best Albums of the 90s: 5-1

2007-05-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

5. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Both Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine like to hug the top of most 90's lists and here they do with mine. I came to My Bloody Valentine much later, so in that way it still sounds fresh in a way OK Computer just doesn't. I could go on and on about this album, but I've delayed finishing this list for so long, I really shouldn't waste any more time. This album is essentially perfect and in that way it's hard to define. I love distortion. I love pop songs. Enter Loveless.
4. Lucinda Williams - Car wheels on a Gravel Road
In 1998 I found Lucinda with album World Without Tears, which is terribly behind schedule. It's also a bitter, emotional slog. It's kind of funny that I fell for it so hard. Especially considering how spirited and exciting Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is. As far as albums filled with great singles from beginning to end , this one is stocked tight. How country and blues can sound so engaging is hard to understand. Mostly it's her voice that still kills me.
This also represents the exact opposite kind of music I thought I'd be listening to later in my life.
3. Radiohead - OK Computer
What hasn't been said about this album? It exists outside of criticism at this point. But it's not topping this list because I don't really listen to it much anymore. Maybe Hail to the Chief burned me out, Radiohead exist in the past for me now. I'm far from embarrassed of my infatuation with the band, and who knows, I could go into a huge kick next week. But I don't play Radiohead like I play everything else in the top 5. Why it belongs here is because of how it once controlled my life. I know every crevice of this intricate, delicate album. It probably plays through my head subconsciously at least once a day.
I'm just going to say it again. I think Hail to Thief was a mistake. It was the kind of album that made me question the supremacy of Radiohead. If I could just go back to a simpler time when this album and Kid A were all that mattered. Then, just maybe, it'd be topping this list and not just appearing. It's hard to talk bad about this album, especially any piece of plastic with a magnificent song like "Let Down" on it. But this list is all about what I listen to now, and while I can recommend this album completely and openly, you may notice how my itunes hits are low.
2. Rufus Wainwright - Rufus Wainwright
I adore Rufus. This is a complete guess, but I'd be willing to beat my heterosexuality on the fact that I was the only kid in my school that listened to him in 1999. It's just a fact. He didn't play to Indiana sensibilities, nor to anything that I had previously known about myself. Much like there used to be lots of grunge bands on my list and now there are none, Rufus came at a time when I didn't think I needed him. I had no precedent for him. I didn't grow up on Broadway musicals, I don't really like singer-songwriters, and here was a gay Canadian singing some of the most beautiful music I'd ever heard. And for reasons I can't quite explain, I've been listening to him ever since. I never fell out of favor with him, never had to rediscover his back catalog. Maybe it is because I like each one of his subsequent albums (including Release the Stars!), so I've never had a reason for Rufus to be out of my life. Many of the rest of these bands had their peak in the nineties and moved downward from there (Hello Oasis!). But Rufus was just getting started, on this, his debut album.
He has never sounded like this again. It's a sprawling, ambitious album to be sure, but it's nothing compared to the bombast of the Want albums. It almost feels like Rufus unadorned, unworried about contemporary flourishes like he was on Poses, and still not ready to bring down this house on every single freaking song on an album like every other album. It's started by what happens to be my favorite love song, "Foolish Love", and ends with another stunning plea in "Imaginary Love". It careens through cabaret, waltz, and careful ballad after ballad in between.
Though I think Want I is Rufus at his most quintessential, and Poses features his best collection of songs, this is his best pure album.

The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
I own essentially everything the Smashing Pumpkins have ever put their name on. Main albums not withstanding, I have most of their singles, DVDs and video cassettes. On my computer I have roughly 150 demo versions of songs. I've bought Siamese Dream three times. I have a collection of some 120 tracks of nothing but live banter. And that's on top of the numerous concerts I have in full. It's sad. But when you have a favorite band, you treat them as such and you get your hands on anything you can. And the Smashing Pumpkins are my favorite band because of this album.

In fact, though I have hours upon hours of songs, if it weren't for this little collection (if that's what you can call a 28 song collection), I probably wouldn't care. Why such love? Maybe it was the time in my life (13 years old) when I needed an album like this to get lost in, quite like The Wall that Billy had said he wanted to emulate. But that overlooks the songs on this epic, monstrous album. I can understand how some might not like this album, but it's also one the most impeccably produced album of all time. It's loud, raucous, dangerous and ethereal. Unlike Siamese Dream it sounds like they played all these songs live. And they were able to add some electronic flourishes just underneath to give texture (something they'd lose sight of around Adore). I don't feel like defending it anymore. It's great.

I'll admit I had a devious reason for this list. The Pumpkins are getting ready to release a new album and I'm worried, so so worried, that it's going to the worst album ever made. I have reason. Look at the shitty, depressing titles. Look at the cover. It doesn't have James, probably doesn't have Darcy, and will probably rock really, really hard. But I don't want heavy metal Billy, I want dream pop Billy, the one who screamed over blankets of warm, fuzzy distortion. I, basically, want an album like this one again. But is that right? Should we place such restraints on artists. I was fairly excited when I heard that the pumpkins were reforming. Why shouldn't they? If the album sucks, then I just don't have to listen to it. Lots of great artists have made really bad albums. Most of the bad albums occurred later in their career. This is my way of dealing with something I have no control over. It has sort of worked.

PS - I've heard their first single Tarantula. It rawks like old school Pumpkins. I have hope!

The Best Albums of the 90s: 10-6

2007-05-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

10. Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beat as One
If you were to sit down and construct my perfect album, a good place to start would be this one. Pop songs flushed out with mind numbing distortion. That I came to this album some 9 years late only makes me feel sorry that I didn't have it earlier. It's hard to pick my favorite moment, but their cover of the Beach Boys ranks up there. Mostly I just think of that distortion.

9. Oasis - What's the Story Morning Glory
It's passe, not cool, maybe not even correct. Sure Oasis, but this one?

My girlfriend loves this album. My friends do to. Play it at a bar and everyone fucking loves it. I'm not sure how long we have to go on pretending this isn't a great album. Maybe because it's stacked with sappy ballads, Oasis aren't even remotely cool, or the lyrics are shite.

For years I have intensely defended Definitely Maybe as the superior album, considering it both cooler and a more solid collection of songs, and it probably is. But in a straight up times listened to challenge there isn't even a contest. I'm not talking about when I was junior high, but last year. Have you listened to "She's Electric" recently?

8. Primal Scream - Screamadelica
I don't know why I listen to this album. I started listening when I lived in London for a while and every fucking copy of Mojo claimed this album as the greatest ever. I don't go to raves, I've never even heard this played at a bar. Maybe I just love the cover (Isn't it great?!).

7. Wilco - Sumerteeth
The power of Summerteeth, and why I listen to it constantly no matter what mood, is the way it wraps heartbreaking lyrics with some of most driven, gitty music imaginable. I'd like to congratulate Jay Bennet. Synth here. Hand claps there. The deeper it burrows into the pain of Twitty the more Bennet lays on the schmaltz. It's a dangerous record, one that can make a shot in the arm seem joyous. But in terms of sheer listenability, it's a stunning achievement.

6. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
Having your mind completely fucked everyone once in a while is important, and for me it all began with Sigur Ros, a band completely different than anything I had everything I had witnessed before. Sure there was Radiohead. Sure I've listened to more difficult music. But Sigur Ros, especially on this album, produces sounds I'd never known before, and ones that I never thought I'd love so much. This album has powers.

Freshman year, Austin and I would fall asleep to this almost every night. I probably have listened to it more in my dreams than on my computer.

The Best Albums of the 90s: 15-11

2007-04-29T11:29:00.001-07:00

15. Beck - Odelay
Beck is strangely unlistenable now. I once considered him a genius. In the summer of 1999, my number 1 album of the year was Midnite Vultures, an album I thought was revolutionary and complex and now consider incredibly tame. Same thing with Mutations. I used to listen to it . Mellow Gold has a ramshackle feel to it, that is easy to love and equally annoying. And poor Odelay. Once destined for pantheon status as on of the landmark albums of the 90s and of all time, is now slowly fading. But it's also the only great Beck album (though I'll still stand by most of Sea Change) and deserves to be looked at again.

14. Nirvana - In Utero
I don't get Nevermind. As the one album from the nineties that ever touches lists of great albums, it remains a complete mystery to me why it does so constantly, all the time, and without irony. Nevermind bugs the hell out of me, not because I hate the songs, but just the production. It's glossy and well manicured. Maybe blame Butch Vig, but it sounds dated. In Utero? It's still hits really, really hard. Maybe it was Girl Talk that reintroduced me to those drums in Scentless Apprentice, but they are massive. But this has always been my favorite Nirvana album, maybe I liked the darker shades of Kurt, and especially All Apologies. But when I think of Nirvana this is always the first album that comes to mind.

13. The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
This was another album that I came to after the fact. I was even late to the game on Yoshimi, an album that I immediately fell for. But the Soft Bulletin is something different, and I wasn't quite ready for it when I found it. It's dark, warped, and not nearly as playful as Yoshimi. It took time, but while Yoshimi sounds tied to its time, the Soft Bulletin sounds better every time I return to it. The power of the Soft Bulletin is how it wraps it's songs in some of the most impressive production techniques, and yet each one of these strange tunes could stand neatly on its own if played on an acoustic guitar. There aren't many Flaming Lips songs you can say that about.

12. Belle and Sebastian - If Your Feeling Sinister
One of my favorite things to witness in New York is when someone puts Belle and Sebastian on the jukebox at some indie dive. It's so quiet compared to whatever came on before that everyone sits around wondering if anything is playing. A shock runs through the room. They get real quiet. Is it broken? But slowly a little acoustic guitar strum appears, and that little croon pops up. By the second verse, it becomes more evident, and when everyone finally notices that it's the Belle, they usually smile and comment that, isn't that nice, Belle and Sebastian is playing. As quiet and peculiar as this album is, for some reason it sounds best with a lot of people listening to it. That Blake is usually responsible for the play is another matter.

11. The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream / Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Out on tour with The Smashing Pumpkins Nature kids, i/they dont have no function I dont understand what they mean And I could really give a fuck.

It's come to my attention over the past years that these albums are essentially one and the same. These artists have much more in common than anyone would like to believe. Both are highly adventurous albums, which signaled both groups most commercial work. That the Pumpkins sold millions upon millions more than Pavement is beyond question. Why they both remind me of each other, even if though it's obvious that they didn't like it each other, is the subtle ways each one tries to act like the other. The similarities even go down to their album titles.

I believe it deep down, a fact that I think was backed up with Pig Lib, that Stephen Maulkmus wishes he had a muscular rock band behind him. Sure the charm would be gone, but he'd be able to indulge his prog rock instincts. What is "Stop Breathing", other than an excuse to, however awkwardly, solo? And because Maulkmus is a much better guitarist than he has any right to be, he wants to break away at every moment, but stumbles when he sees the rest of the band not catching up.

And in that same way, Billy wishes he could be as cool as Malkmus. It's really obvious. Billy wants so often to be cool, but he couldn't be further away. So he hides his lyrics in vague meanings and tries to sound smarter than he is to counter the affect. But maybe I'm stretching things. The best part about each one of these albums, is how they try for each others glory and end up stumbling over their own unique vision. Crooked Rain's awkward walk is half of it's charm, and Siamese Dream would stumble over itself if it were even sort of cool.

Even if you discount the duality in both of their album titles, the similarities run deep. They should really end their feud and create a supergroup. Now that would be an album.

The Best Albums of the 90s: 20-16

2007-04-26T19:46:00.001-07:00

20. The Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

Man, I listened to a whole bunch of Beastie Boys in high school. It reached full fruition after Hello Nasty. And then began the steady decline. First dropped off their annoying debut, and then Ill Communication (has anyone ever listened to the last 10 songs of that album?). And as much as I loved Paul's Boutique, it seems juvenile at this point. I'd probably need to give it another listen. But this album. It seems as wildly experiemiental as the first head scratching time I listened to it.

19. Bjork - Homogenic
Good god that bass. The first time I heard the Hunter, I didn't really know how to react. What was that? There had been nothing in my Midwest upbringing that could have prepared me for that assault. Something so unique, mysterious, and deliberately weird was the exact opposite of what I was listening to at the time. And it still, more or less, feels the same way. I don't know where Bjork came from or what she hopes to accomplish, but I still have dreams about the collapsing set in the "Bachelorette" video. Maybe that's because they played it on MTV. Really. I guess that's what youtube is for no adays.

18. Blur - 13
I was once attacked by an angry Irish waitress when I admitted I liked Blur's albums. Great singles, maybe, she said, but all their albums are crap. I then countered that my favorite album was 13, and she said "oh that's different." Yes, it is different. Nothing by them really sounds like this album, one that can happily be described as an absolute mess. While all the rock bands in the late nineties were making electronic albums, trying to shift up their beats, Blur used tape hiss and amplication to dramatically change the clean tones of their previous albums. It's an atricious mess, with not a few unlistenable moments. But it's always exciting, always ready to shift under your feat.
17. Radiohead - The Bends
After OK Computer imprinted itself in my head, it was only a matter of time before I moved back to The Bends. And much to my surprise, it's as much of a statement as its big brother. Sure the songs are great-it probably has better singles than OK Computer-but the reason I return to this album is because of those guitars. They are everywhere. I doubt there is a powerchord on this whole album, but each distorted burst seems to land with as much force as a Pete Townsend whirl wind. I konw it doesn't sound intellectual to pass off a moody, somewhat depressing album as having great guitars, but whatever.

16. R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
My favorite 80s R.E.M. album is probably Reckoning, a rambling, loose collection of songs that they had largely written during the tour for their debut album Murmur. It's quick, passionate, and largely devoid of studio trickery that had peppered Murmur. My favorite 90s album by R.E.M. is probably New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a long, rambling collection of largely rock songs written and recorded during the Monster tour. It almost entirely devoid of the warped wall of guitars of its predecessor, and somehow rocks even harder. While it's fun hearing R.E.M. record what is essentially a live album, there are moments of great fidelity that help break the album up. The best is "E-Bow", with it's refrain about "aluminum tastes like fear", that sounds menancing and beautiful at the same time. I like all of R.E.M.'s 90s albums, it wasn't until Around the Sun that they blew it. And I probably should have more on here. From here it probably would go Out of Time, Monster (grossly underrated), Automatic for the People, and finally Up--a cheerful little record that is just a tad too long. But it's New Adventures that I play the most.

The Best Albums of the 90s: 25-21

2007-04-26T13:47:00.001-07:00

This isn't a guilty pleasure list. We've done that before. And now is not the time. I can't put on albums I'd like to say I hate but secretly listen to occasionally (STP's Tiny Music...Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, Green Day's Dookie). This is about what I consider the best of the 90s. This list has been much harder than I thought it would be.

It's funny how much things have changed, how many things I declared as permanent have changed. I listened to a lot of grunge rock as a kid, and not much is left. Same thing with rap. I listened to a lot of gangsta rap in middle school, and while it's a good nostalgia trip, it's not great.

Some things didn't surprise me. By my senior year of high school, I had kind of figured out that no one really liked the Stone Temple Pilots, and for good reason. But some things have surprised me. By 2002 I had fallen in love with Weezer's Pinkerton, and my love was only confirmed by the vast majority of students at college. But after two brutally bad albums, I can't with any feeling listen to them.

About half of these albums I found after the 90s had died. I thought this would be such an interesting exercise, to look back at what I remembered, and what I listen to now. We're constantly reevaluating the past, but until now the 90s always felt so close. But they are so, so far away.

I also wanted to see what other people thought. What have a forgotten about, never explored, or need vindication about. It begins now.

25. Cornershop - When I was Born for the 7th Time
Cornershop were my little secret in high school. It was hard to admit to people that "Brimful of Asha" is your favorite song of the summer, especially when it's not the Fat Boy Slim remix. It's just not many times you can become infatuated with a Indian/British hodge podge of hip hop, country, Ginsberg instrumentals, and a completely serious version of Norwegian Wood sung in Indian. And unlike a lot of my weirder loves during the time, this one still sounds just as fresh as when it first come out. I especially love "Good Shit", where he repeats the title over and over and makes it sound so darling.

24. Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Time hasn't been that kind to Pearl Jam. I have every single one of their albums and starting at about my Junior Year in college I haven't listened to them. Except, that is, for this one. Their dour mood seems forced now. Glum might be the better word. But if someone asked me what grunge was and why it was so popular, this is what I'd hand them. Weird, dark, heavy, melodic, and just arty enough to have edge. Vs still rocks like a monster, but after 10 years, this one still sounds the best. Why? Maybe it's the deliberately stripped down production, but I think the main reason is that's its the first time they didn't take themselves so seriously. Song about bugs? Check. Jazz freak folk outs? Check. Self-loathing grunge? You betcha...

23. Wilco - Being There
I never got Wilco until Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, so imagine my surprise when I went back two albums and found out that they were a happy-go-lucky rock band. Big huge riffs? Catchy choruses? How about really great classic rock solos? In "Heavy Metal Drummer" they may have talked about watching those "heavy metal bands, I used to go see on the landing in the summer", but this album beckons for such an event. It sounds kind of silly, but the 90s had a lot of dull rockers, and this one showed me that rocking seriously didn't have to be so studied and mechanical. Playing really loud guitars could actually be a whole lot of fun.

22. Oasis - Definitely Maybe
One of my favorite past-times is defending Oasis. Especially to the people who believe Oasis only wrote weepy acoustic ballads. The first place I start is with "Supersonic", and then move to "Columbia", and end with "Cigarettes and Alcohol". Usually people either cup their ears in defense of the abrasive distortion, or admit what I always knew, that Oasis, in their infancy, were a seriously great rock band. While they'd become a boring stadium touring dinosaur so very quickly, none of these songs is plagued with the boring rock conformity that strangled Oasis later in their life. Whether they incorporated shoegaze, disco, or blues riffs, it's a marvelous debut and one that most people are surprised to hear.

21. U2 - Achtung Baby
My favorite U2 album, Achtung Baby is the only one that doesn't seem indebted to its time. As great as Joshua Tree is, the moment those reverbed guitars hit the speakers the only thing I can think is: "it's the 80s." And as much as I like Zooropa, it's buzzing dance oriented songs sound very much of the 90s. But Achtung Baby, for some crazy reason, still feels modern to me. The songs don't stray much from normal rock construction, there are still lots of verses and choruses, but the execution is detailed and infinitely pleasurable. "One" will probably never get old, but I always loved "Even Better than the Real Thing". I like the sex god Bono. But that's just me.

Best Albums of 2006: 5-1

2006-12-15T05:49:00.000-08:00

5. Hot Chip - The Warning
One constant theme through this list seems to be the lack of time I had to digest an album, because the binge I went on for the past month, where I probably went through 30 albums, if not more. Somewhere along the line I just didn't find enough time for Herbert, Califone, Love is All, or Beirut, though I have them all and can't wait to give them more than one spin. But I don't need any more time with Hot Chip. I already know it's stacked with single, after single, of infectious dance pop. But what always grabs me, and why I can't seem to stop listening to this album, is the dark undertone that keeps cutting at all these songs, even as the keyboards glare and the melodies remain peppy. "We tried, but we don't belong" reads like it should be over syrupy strings. But it's not. How they made one of the most impersonal genres into something so genuine is hard to grasp, but it hasn't stopped me from trying to figure it out.

4. Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Me and the Belle had a little romp this year that lasted roughly 4 months, where I didn't let anything else get between me. I'm not sure why Stuart Murdoch's voice can appease my head, but I was wrapped up in it for the longest time. And it's all because of this album. Sure I'd heard their earlier albums, I had even liked Dear Catastrophe Waitress and loved "Your Covers Blown", but here was an album where they their pop fantasies sat firmly on top of their newly found hips, which they swung with big bassy grooves for the entire disc. It doesn't have the same kind of importance as If You're Feeling Sinister, but Belle and Sebastian have never really ever been this much fun before.
Much has been said about indie rock's recent love affair with 70's AM rock, a genre that seems far removed from the raw pop of most indie. And to be sure, the Decemberists came nowhere near this list because of their recent foray, which keeps getting worse every time I listen to it. But instead of highlighting the bombast of some of the worst music ever made, they've taken the glam sheen and adapted it to their personal tales.

When I downloaded this album, I for some reason I stopped at "The Price for a Cup of Tea", meaning that sweet melancholy joyride song always ended this gleeful piece. So when I finally realized it wasn't the last track, I got rather offended and went ahead a deleted the weepy ballad that took it's place. This is a giddy free-fall of a record, and it should stay that way.
3. Mylo - Destroy Rock n Roll
So I took off on my bicycle. I don't go to many shows anymore. Sometimes I kind of wish I'd spend more time doing that, but I really don't feel that guilty. The bands I do see are ones that I dearly love, because I want to get drunk and sing every word. It could be my upbringing. Back in rural Indiana, going to a show meant organizing a huge expedition, and I still haven't gotten used to walking down the street and seeing someone perform. My excuse is old and tired, but I always grew up listening to music on headphones, and that's what I love the most. I think that's an artist at his most pure. Everything else heightens the experience, but it can never replace it. I love examining every crevice of my favorite music, and that can only be done with repeated close listening, and I can't think of anything more intimate then music being pumped straight into your ears at a outrageously loud volume. I think Mylo gets that, too. This dance music at it's most geeky and edited. Playing this at a club would probably stop the action in it's tracks, but on headphones it's sounds quite nearly perfect.
For headphone albums there is always an ideal situation, or at least one that pushes understanding beyond anything you could imagine, like listening to "Let Down" during rush hour in Times Square. And I can't imagine a better scenario than illegally listening to "Muscle Car" fully buckled in during a hairy take off from Laguardia in a very small plane that gets bumped around a lot. Actually, I can't think of too many bad times to play this album.
2. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
"Gonna walk around and drink some more."
Rock lyrics are often criticized about only talking about girls, sex and having a good time. The thinking is that the human condition is much more complex, and that this narrow focus doesn't quite capture the many other shades of life. But the only time you're ever going to listen to the Hold Steady is when you want to go out, meet girls, and have a good time. Not that the characters ever get what they want. "Boys and girls in America, have such a sad time together." And they do. None of the hookups work out, none of the drugs arrive on time, and there's this lonely girl walking around trying to find some more beer. What are all these boys and girls looking for? Sure they're looking for each other, but I think they're just looking for a better soundtrack. "We had some massive nights/ every song was right." There is one dud on this whole disc, but it's a short punky, raveup that you can't dance to. Every other song is either a rock anthem with a catchy chorus, or a weepy ballad about sad girls and boys where you'd have to get close with someone. And that's the way it should be. Rock needs to bring these sad groups together, even if it's just for one night where everything won't go to plan. But that won't stop them from wandering around trying to find the next person, that next experience, or even that last glass of beer. I liked Seperation Sunday, but nothing prepared me for this sad and joyous record, where failing sounds like the best soundtrack to wasted nights you could ever imagine.
1. The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
I feel like I should be deeply ashamed about this, and I’m sort of cowering now as I think of placing this at number 1. But please let me explain.
Austin's right. I do know all the names to the Pipettes (Becki, Rose, and Gwenno-they kicked Julia out about a year ago). I know the name of their backup band (the Cassettes), and where they are from (Brighton). There is, actually, not much I don't know about the Pipettes compared to most heterosexuals. I can't really explain why I've placed a pastiche girl band from England on the top of the list except that they make me really, unbelievably, uncontrollably happy every single day. There is not a single album that came remotely close to the giddy rush that this album gave me this year. I love the way they dress, the way they dance, and how bratty they are on television interviews, but mostly I'm just in love with the songs.
"Your Kisses are Wasted on Me" and "Pull Shapes" are the two most infectious singles released this year, and they are both on the same disc. "Your Kisses" mixes bratty Got Team energy with some heavenly chorus snatched out of some Diana Ross song. "Pull Shapes" was ripped straight from ABBA by way of "Hey Ya" except they break it down three times. And while the intoxicating heights of those two singles are never really topped, it's ridiculous to hide what would otherwise be a outrageous collection of perfect nostalgia, whether that's the cool sexiness of "Judy", "Dirty Mind", or "Tell Me What You Want."
There were better crafted albums this year, ones with deeper themes, and better production and you'll never excuse any of these singers for Beyonce. With a clear head, I'd probably pick the Hold Steady or even Mylo, and who knows, when I post this and realize what I've done, I might knock it down. But when I think of the album that I cared about the most, listened to the most, and wanted to tell the most people about, there really was no contest.

Best Albums of 2006: 10-6

2006-12-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

10. Asobi Seksu - Citrus
Some things I don't understand. Like why I have a job that I hate so much, why they won't pave the road outside my apartment, or why I like this one particular kind of cart food on 28th and Madison with greasy chicken and fried eggplant. But absurdly loud guitars over atmospheric white noise with a breathless cooing in the background, that I get. I adore shoegaze or dream pop, or whatever this is, because it hits that part of my brain that other people reserve for angelic choirs and church organs. And that's what the entirity of this record does for me.

9. The Rapture - Pieces of the People we Love
People don't dance no more? Last time out they were banging their gear as loud as they could to create the furious sound of a sweaty club. They've cleaned up their act somewhat, but instead of ditching their dancing shoes and loosing that akward falsetto, they've decided to push the beats further. Tics and blips come from every angle of the speaker, pushing each song in unexpected ways. The guitars don't pierce in the same way, instead adding a new counterpoint, which the bass finally falls behind. They may never surpass the manic energy of their debut, but they have just made one that I feel is better in almost every way.
8. M Ward - Post-War
This list should be dedicated to Mr. Ward, for without this little gem, there probably would be no list. I get approximately 10 channels, and four of them are Brooklyn Free Speech. When they are not showing secrets of the Subway they are showing junior high basketball games shot on a handheld camera by screaming dad in the third row. Except once real late for some odd reason they were showing music videos and the first one I saw was M. Ward's cartoon parable "Chinese Translation". I'm not sure what hit me, why the chorus "What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?" gets me every time. Maybe it's the sweeping guitar strings or the dream like atmosphere, but the next day I downloaded it, and really haven't stopped listening to it. I was never a big fan of M. Ward before this album, but I didn't realize how varied it would be. From the sad strumming of "Poison Cup" to the sing-a-long happiness of "Magic Trick". It's a record I had no intention of finding, and for some reason that makes it that much sweeter.

7. Beth Orton - Comfort of Stranger
I don't have any use for Beth Orton the techno singer songwriter, who apparently blazed the trails with Will Oldham and created such interesting records in the 90's. She was not part of my life, and when I returned to her past record after becoming infatuated with this one, I realized how hard she was trying. I'm sure they have their place, and some people love them, but it's hard to go back when your point of reference is this gorgeous, warm record that feels like old love letters. Those don't sound like powerful adjectives, but they have their place, and for some reason this year I needed this record a lot. Whether it was the sunshine of "Conceived" or the easy breeze of "Countenance". It's made all the more divine thanks to Jim O'Rourke homey production and understated playing. The pleasures are infinite, even if they never reach too deep. Quite like that rainbow on the front cover.
6. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
There are essentially two kinds of Springsteen. There's the rock n' roller, whose explosive albums Born to Run, Born in the U.S.A., and half of the River, search for meaning in relationships through the music of his youth. And there is the troubadour of folk, whistfully putting out quiet albums about quiet people in a rural towns like Nebraska, Ghost of Tom Joad, and the other half of the River. They butted heads in playslists, followed each other in concerts, but rarely have they ever appeared in the same song. This could have been a pleasant record, one with lots of earnestly sung protest songs. But apparently the other Bruce showed up for recording, and took those damaged protest songs sung by Seeger and turned them into one of the most triumphant recordings of his career. Make no mistake, this is no folk album. He weaves New Orleans jazz, dixieland, bluegrass, and other desperate sources in the same song, creating a rich celebratory band that sounds great really loud. It's his best album since Born in U.S.A., but more importantly, it's Bruce at his most fun.

Best Albums of 2006: 15-11

2006-12-13T06:21:00.000-08:00

I'm posting a little early today for I have a date with Rufus at Carnegie Hall tonight. I've always been a sucker for sentimentality, and Christmas songs and Rufus Wainwright plan to bring that to a whole new extreme. So here's an early present for you guys to look at before the real deadline comes.

15. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
It was a fine summer day in Brooklyn just like any other. All of us laid under a tree sipping wine and eating fine cheese, watching an old nature film by a dead Frenchman on sea creatures with newly improvised background music by Yo La Tengo. They stood behind a screen, and for all we know, it could have been any band on the planet. But we all knew it was them, because while they were playing instrumental passages to coincide with the mating of jellyfish, they sounded EXACTLY like you'd think Yo La Tengo would sound. So even on this album, when they hammer on the distortion in one song, then cool back and sing little pop ditties, it's all recognizably our favorite band from Hoboken. Less exploratory than their past classics, this one is the reassured hug of a band that knows it's powers and is not afraid of what noise they create.

14. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
For some reason, I think this is the last album good album Dylan can make. As his voice keeps disappearing into the hole where it was born, all instruments seem to bully for prominence in the song. On Love and Theft he was content to let the band really swing, but he's not as cocksure as he once was. The songs, long winded Americana standards, are still here and they are still mesmerizing. But his band has backed off considerably, letting brushes substitute for drumsticks, and letting guitar solos merely fill the time instead of ripping it apart. And in that way, it's a sad album, even if Dylan is still lively and cracking jokes. But as his voice leaves, so does the essence that makes Dylan Dylan, and it's impossible to say where he can go from here. So this will remain the last time a Dylan album can truly be compared to his brilliant and manic output from the 60's.

13. Girl Talk - Night Ripper
I'll try not to debate the merit of the art too much, for Michael's excellent post yesterday stands on about as solid ground as there is. Enjoyment for its own sake shouldn't be discounted as a means of understanding pop music, and in the case of Girl Talk the essential question comes down to whether you'd derive any pleasure out of this album if you didn't recognize the samples. It's an interesting question, because the lasting nature of the disc depends upon people discovering it and relating back to the music that it cuts up and rearranges.
But I do know the samples. I know when "Scentless Apprentice" looped under "Tiny Dancer" and "Juicy". For most of my life I assumed that rap acts had the beat and rock acts had the melody. Think about how hard rock acts tried to incorporate beats into their sound so they could be hip. But here alternative bands lay down the beat, while rappers lay claim to anything that is put before them. It's fascinating that it works at all, let alone consistently over this disc. There is nothing particularly shocking about this collection. In fact, the best complement that be paid to this album is how fluid and listenable it is. Sure the styles are twisted, the beats run over, but the stitching is impeccable (Listen to how "Galang" ties together two tracks). Anything that brings this much enjoyment needs to be praised, because collections this engaging don't just happen all the time.

12. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
Oh Mike's going to have to pay for this one. I was perfectly content to not have this record in my life. Things would definitely have been more pleasant. This thing is cold and unrelenting. It's also perfectly edited, exceptionally produced, and flawlessly performed. Another case of running out of time, this would probably have scored much higher had I actually had more than a couple weeks to listen and break down all the songs. But while it is quite dark, I somehow found the little things to love about this album. Whether it's the wicked humor, "By no means am I in love with a stripper/You understand that then you fittin the glass slipper," the clinging metal in "Keys Open Doors", or other witticisms that they seem to spit out every other line: "While i'm shovelin this snow, man, call me frosty!" This is lean focused album which other rap albums can only dream of.

11. Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards
I didn't need any convincing about Tom Waits, so he didn't need to drop a minefield of odds and sods so bewitching it ranks among his best work. I'd been happy with another Alice, Bone Machine, Swordfishtrombones, or hell even Real Gone. But instead of picking and choosing his form of attack, he decided to drop them all. It's an enormous embarrassment of riches that I still can't plunge deep enough into. Once I think I've gotten far into Brawlers, I jump to the middle of Bawlers where I lose myself on some weepy tune before I skip to the spoken word exchanges of Bastards.
Deciding which album works best is a taxing job, and one that I just can't decide at this moment. The Brawlers are the ones that are the most immediately engaging, but really it's whatever Waits that you identify with the most. As for me, I'm an Alice fan, and the Bawlers disc is stuffed full of torch songs to bring a tear to any old sap.

Best Albums of 2006: 20-16

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20. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
Of the bands left from the Return to Rock! hype machine of 2002, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are the only ones to change their style with any sort of success. The Strokes tried to go commercial, the White Stripes tried to get weird(er), and Interpol tried not be the most depressing band of all time. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs just cooled things down a notch and focused on the songs. What were manic raveups two years ago, or sturdy mid-tempo rockers. And where Karen O used to yell brazenly, is another guitar to pick up the load. Because it's not as confrontational, it's easy to quietly dismiss this album. But the best songs here are the ones that come from odd angles, and attack in ways you weren't prepared for.

19. Peter Bjorn and John - Writers Block
I wish I could whistle. In the past three months I've been trying hard to master this form of music with fairly limited success and to the confusion of much of the subway traffic I pass. But it does make me feel generally good about the world, which is much the same feeling I have listening to Peter Bjorn and John. They can whistle, or at least one of them can. And they can lay down a groove and then completely forget about it, because they are that cool. I've never heard so many beats take the background to a cute little melody. And it is a little record, one that needs to be examined closely. Unfortunately, it's one that I probably haven't given enough time.

18. Cat Power - The Greatest
This year, I think you were either a Neko Case acolyte or a follower of Cat Power's pain, and count me in the later. Neko has a set of pipes, but it sounds like a gift from god that she wants to flaunt. Cat Power's voice was shaped hardened experience, and I'll wallow in her misery anytime. Abby describes it as "that voice", and I know exactly what she means. Nearly all the female artists I listen to have it. It's a rusty, world-weary drawl best be exemplified by Lucinda Williams. When they sing the weight of the world comes crushing down. I don't get giddy listening to this stuff, it's not some fantasy of being with such tortured women. I usually just want to lay out on my couch and weep. I love that feeling. I know there are some upbeat numbers here, but I don't much care for them. I like the ballads where the band seems to ache every note out, nimbly stepping around broken hearts. But it would be nothing without Cat Power and "that" voice.

17. Neil Young - Living With War
How different things used to be. When this record was released, America was smack dead in a war that we were losing but refused to admit. There was no "Lauer-Certified Civil War", as the Daily show recently Christianed it. Just some Republican antics that in their 6th year were growing increasingly desperate and futile. It was easy to play ignorant to all this in the streets of New York, but all that changed when I entered the airport to head home. The faces changed, the television channels changed. I remember walking around the terminal with this album pipping in my ears and feeling completely futile. It's a topical record and it's violent and blunt. And there hasn't been an album this year that has touched me in the singular way this one has when I was walking through the airport worrying about the worlds sins and I'm not sure why. This is undoubtedly one of the worst produced albums I've ever heard. Sure it was produced quickly, but why make the drums sound like they were recorded in a concrete bunker? Whole bars of music are left blank where is sounds like Neil should be soloing but he forgot. But it's hard to imagine an angier record, or one that is as powerful as this, no matter how glaring its faults are. What started as an angry kick turned, thanks to the recent elections, into a record of righteous vindication.

16. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
"You keep me coming home again." No, it's not a recent foray into country for our favorite New York lads, but drastic refocus of basic rock essentials. After Sonic Nurse landed a little flat with me, I realized that Murray Street was probably some kind of minor miracle, and that I should be happy plunging into their back catalog instead of waiting on a new classic to be handed to me every other year. Then comes a stripped down, distortion free cruise through the most catchy album of their career. With zero fat, no extended jams, and enough tight solos to keep things interesting before they return to the groove. Their drummer was always a cut above rest, but it's wonderful to hear him so confident here.

Best Albums of 2006: 25-21

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25. Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
It can be a long slog to get through this record sometimes, what with the self-serious air and grey rain that seems to be always falling. And that can be okay for some moods, but I'll be honest and say I'd never return if it weren't for those guitars. Ah that reverb. I'll always swear my undying love for a wave of distortion flickering around my brain, but a close second comes the ringing chimes of shimmering reverb sparkling out from the speakers. It can make one of the most depressing albums of the year seem almost joyous.
24. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Their shtick can be maddening in execution and I often want to smack their lead guitar player a few times to teach him to really let go and play a real goddamn solo with more than 5 notes. But though the music is technically simple, their tales of adolescent life are shocking and refreshing. Although they're as brash and ignorant as Oasis, they aren't afraid to let a song go past without an anthemic chorus or slow fade out. That kind of gall needs to be rewarded, especially when they can really lay it on when it counts.

23. The Beatles - Love
They have greatest hits collections but this one puts that on acid, which is all quite convenient because my favorite period of the Beatles is the 1966-1968 period they highlight here when they were nose deep in lots of drugs trying to write pop symphonies. Though it will never replace one of their albums, as it stands, this encapsulates what I love about the Beatles better than the Red Album, Blue Album, or that awful Beatle's 1 did. Sure, we do miss those 4 minutes that were chopped off "Hey Jude", and no one needs "Yesterday" with "Blackbird" tacked on the beginning. What we needed were more mashups like the "Drive My Car" medley. But I'll settle for a project that was far more interesting than it had any right to be even if most of the joy came from hearing the fab four in newly remastered glory.

22. I'm From Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends
I was sure I was going to hate this band. I don't have much patience for twee that teeters too close to children's cartoon shows and here was one man not from Barcelona singing infectious sing-a-longs with some 15 of his closest friends with nary a bad vibe throughout. And they come so close so often to that horrible edge that I had to turn on some guitar fueled rock to clear my system every once in awhile. But the melodies are contagious and bottomless. That choir changes this from an album of precious melodies to an album full of indie anthems that will stick themselves to your skull.

21. Ghostface Killah - Fischscale
I don't think if I've ever come even close to finishing this monster and I don't mind. I'm not here for the message, I don't need to know a kilo is a thousand grams, because that's easy to remember. I've got the first half stacked with singles 8 long to try and plow through where he never throws a bad rhyme. Unstoppable even at his most deplorable, it's hellishly long and all the skits are awful. Paired down to 10 and this would have plowed to my top 10. But rap albums aren't for music geeks worrying about the posterity of individual albums, and that's how it should be. Rap like this is an esacape from the maundane, and at 37, I think Ghostface even feels that way.