Kick a Pigeon

Best Albums of the Decade

2009-09-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

50. M83 - Before Dawn Heal Us
Total Points: 145
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #16 by Dan

49. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

Total Points: 148
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #16 by Blake

48. Spoon - Gimmie Fiction

Total Points: 151
On List: 2
Highest Placement #25 by Blake

47. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

Total Points: 151
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #36 by Blake

46. Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins

Total Points: 152
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #38 by Blake

45. Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Total Points: 153
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #15 by Michael

44. The Walkmen - You & Me

Total Points: 156
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #11 by Blake

43. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Total Points: 159
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #19 by Austin

42. Elliot Smith - Figure 8

Total Points: 161
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #20 by Michael

41. Jay-Z - The Black Album
Total Points: 163
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #14 by Austin

40. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People

Total Points: 164
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #8 by Michael

39. Beck - Sea Change

Total Points: 165
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #4 by Michael

38. Jens Lekman - Oh You're so Silent Jens

Total Points: 168
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #28 by Blake

37. Rufus Wainwright - Poses
Total Points: 169
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #15 by Blake

36. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury

Total Points: 171
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #11 by Michael

35. M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts

Total Points: 181
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #3 by Dan

34. Burial - Untrue

Total Points: 183
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #6 by Dan

33. Sigur Ros - Ágætis Byrjun

Total Points: 186
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #28 by Austin and Nick

32. Tom Waits - Alice

Total Points: 190
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #3 by Austin

31.The Knife - Silent Shout

Total Points: 191
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #19 by Dan

30. Jay-Z - The Blueprint

Total Points: 191
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #3 by Nick

If modern day me had the chance to go back in time and visit pre-millennium me to tell him just one thing, I'd probably just use it for a laugh and whisper into his ear that he'll grow up, against his will, to be a huge Jay-Z fan. It's not a casual appreciation, "I don't really like rap, but this Jay-Z song is okay", but a full blown, know-every-lyric kind of obsession. One that would lead to a search for any other album that could match its perfection.But it's hard. It's so much better than everything else. Even Jay-Z couldn't equal it. As unbelievable a talent as he is, he isn't actually all that great at making albums. Though everyone of them has hit number 1, I don't think that many people are lining up to defend Kingdom Come or the Blueprint 2. What's so astonishing about the Blueprint, and why I've listened to it repeatedly over the decade, is that appears to have been some kind of perfect confluence talent. He found the best producers, who laid down their best beats, and he walked tall over it all without fear. Nearly every song here could have been released as a single. I know this is the default Jay-Z album for people to like, but that's just because its that good. I mean, I kind of this it's underrated. Why doesn't everyone love this thing?

29. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
Total Points: 191
On List: 2
Highest Placement: #1 by Austin

This album makes we weep over things I haven’t—and probably won’t—experience. I understand that perhaps they became a tighter and perhaps “better” band on subsequent albums but I can’t get over the raw intensity and lonely desperation of this album. It almost makes me want to have more pain in my life because it sounds so beautiful here. I still can’t listen to “A Stone” without completely stopping anything that I am doing. That includes driving…I don’t’ listen to this album much in the car.

28. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Total Points: 192
On List: 3
Highest Placment: #33 by Austin

Spoon finally clicked with me on this album. I understood the aesthetic and I really caught on to the songs. I don’t know how many times I’ve played this in my car.

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

Total Points: 194
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #13 by Austin

Sir Oberst is on my list too much I know. This album I feel is timeless and I recognize that it’s better than the album of his that I’ve placed higher but it’s too emotional at this point.

26. The Rapture - Echoes
Total Points: 202
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #8 by Dan

25. Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

Total Points: 210
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #10 by Blake

24. Madvillain - Madvillainy

Total Points: 211
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #22 by Blake

23. Brian Wilson - Smile

Total Points: 214
On List 3
Highest Placement: #1 by Michael

22. The Books - The Lemon of Pink

Total Points: 225
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #9 by Blake

21. Radiohead - Amnesiac

Total Points: 229
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #4 by Austin

Yes, I have it higher than Kid A. I make no apologies. Amnesiac is not an album that I came to eventually. It was, for some odd reason, immediate for me. I’ve been a staunch defender of every single one of these songs since the beginning. I even love “Hunting Bears” and Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors.” And in my opinion “Life In a Glass House” is the best album ender ever.

20. White Stripes - White Blood Cells

Total Points: 243
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #24 by Nick

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.

19. Hot Chip - The Warning
Total Points: 251
On List 4
Highest Placement: #16 by Michael

18. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
Total Points: 253
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #2 by Blake

17. Jens Lekman - Night Falls over Kortedala
Total Points: 254
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #6 by Blake

16. The Strokes - Is This It?

Total Points: 268
On List: 3
Highest Placement: #5 by Nick

I was one of those kids that was convinced that the Strokes were here save rock. It's hard to grow up with a style of music and watch it devolve into the idicocy of Limp Bizkit and whateverthefuck Nickleback is. I used to have nightmares about the latter sucking all the life out of my skull. Serious! So I hung all my hopes on this New York quintet to bring back to the basics. And I realize now, the Strokes had something far different in mind. It's all about the beat here. Every song is anchored with drum machine precision. There's hardly an unscrubbed moment to be found. So what does the whole thing come off like the wildest night you can barely remember? I think that's why I became so taken up with them, why I drove all over the country to see them play, and snatched up every single I can find. And when they stopped having a good time, around album three, I started to wonder why I cared at all in the first place.Luckily whenever I question that I just need to listen to the first ten seconds of "Someday" and the world is right again. Nothing here means anything beyond whatever it takes to have a good time. And that was sort of revolutionary at the moment.

15. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion

Total Points: 272
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #4 by Blake

14. Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair

Total Points: 289
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #14 by Nick

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. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
Total Points: 291
On List: 5
Highest Placement: #9 by Austin

Just an unreal album that sounds like it was recorded somewhere else. These guys must experience a reality different than the rest of us, the receptors on their eyes must pick up different wave lengths.

12. Junior Senior - Hey Hey My MY Yo Yo

Total Points: 311
On List: 5
Highest Placement: #3 by Michael

Yes, it has staying power. Every song on this album (besides the into, but I like that too) has been my favorite song. I have choreographed dances to these songs in my bedroom. One of my favorite capital-P Pop albums ever.

11. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Total Points: 312
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #6 by Nick

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.

10. Daft Punk - Discovery

Total Points: 313
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #1 by Dan

9. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Total Points: 321
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #5 by Austin

The only appearance they’ll be making so I figured I’d make it a good one. To be honest I can’t get into anything they’ve released since the album. I know they are saviors or something but I just want everything to sound like album. In fact, if all music could sound like “Winter Love” I would be content.

8. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Total Points: 333
On List: 4
Highest Placement: #2 by Nick

It'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.

7. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

Total Points: 346
On list: 4
Highest Placement: #7 by Austin and Michael

The only album I’m including from this prolific artist. He has several terrific and worthy songs not on this album, but this is the only really solid effort I feel he has produced. Reinforced by recent rides through the recession-ridden Midwest and south.

6. Radiohead - In Rainbows
Total Points: 354
On List: 5
Highest Placement: #12 by Nick

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.

5. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Total Points: 356
On list: 4
Highest Placement: #1 by Blake

4. The Avalanches - Since I left You

Total Points: 374
On list: 4
Highest Placement: #2 by Dan

3. Wolf Parade - Apologies to Queen Mary

Total Points: 379
On list: 5
Highest Placement: #11 by Austin

Before I fell completely in love with everything Spencer Krug shitted on tape there was this album that introduced me to him. The simmering, yet often falsetto-ed aggression never ceases to appeal to me. For some reason I connect with so many lyrics without having any idea what they mean.

2. Arcade Fire - Funeral

Total Points: 397
On List: 5
Highest Placement: #5 by Blake

1. Radiohead - Kid A

Total Points: 473
On list: 5
Highest Placement: #1 by Nick

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

2008-12-13T13:37:00.001-08:00

50. Max Richter – 24 Postcards in Full Color
The idea of making an entire album compromised of neo-classical “vignettes” all hovering around the minute mark so they could be used as ringtones sounded ludicrous to me. What I like about classical music is the movements, the crescendos, the prolonged emotions: one can’t do this in a minute.

And this is not what Richter tries to do. Instead he does just as the title promises. He somehow creates musical snapshots where the atmosphere is immediate, the scene set within a matter of seconds. I'll admit I've not used any for my ringtone but there's always time.

There’s not much else I can say about this album other than I love listening to it.

- Austin

49. Nico Muhly - Mothertongue
I really love this album, but I'm not sure I understand it. Who are the multiple voices supposed to be? What is the relationship to folk music? Is there a connection between the first and second halves of the album? I fell asleep once to this album; my dreams are terrifying. Yet I find myself returning to Muhly again and again, for a kind of music I've never experienced before. That kind of album doesn't come around very often.

- Michael

48. 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.

- Nick

47. 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.

- Nick

46. Earth – The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull

See: Bohren and Der Club of Gore, but I listened to this album this spring. I can't believe the Earth concert was sold out when I tried to buy tickets in Berlin; I had to go to a disappointing Yeasayer concert instead. When I first heard “The Driver,” the guitar struck a chord in me that is still ringing, I think: it sounds like a darker, not-dated-sounding soundtrack to Twin Peaks. I will see them live, one of the days.

- Michael

45. Clinic – Do It!

Back in high school I LOVED Internal Wrangler and Walking With Thee; then I got to college and was disappointed by their subsequent albums, which sounded like a rehashing of those, but less interesting. This album, though, has all the bite of the former and all the mood of the latter; I rank it right up there.

- Michael

44. 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.

- Nick

43. The Cure – 413 Dream

The Cure are in my favorite 3 bands ever. This is my favorite Cure album since Bloodflowers at least.

- Michael

42. Alphabeat - AlphabeatThis album is embarrassingly high on the list for me. But I should refuse to feel bad. With gems of pure sugary pop as satisfying from the first listen to the 40th, even an album as uneven and over-pleasing as this gets credit in my book. iTunes play counts don't lie, and 10,000 Nights of Fire, Fascination and In the Jungle are all in my top ten for the year. The first three songs are almost enough to make the rest of the album work, but it all does begin to wear.

But there were innumberable times when I put on the beginning of this album after a bad day, and it made me indescribably happy, dancing around like a white man never should. And if music that does this isn't good, I don't know what is.

Technically this was released last year, but they came out with a 2008 version that's not as good. So get the original.

- Blake

41. Tilly and the Wall - OI 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.

- Nick

40. Mogwai – The Hawk is HowlingOK, so this is no Mr. Beast, but the new Mogwai sound is growing on me. “The Sun Smells Too Loud” is fun in a way that old Mogwai isn't, and “Batcat” rocks hard, even if I miss the long buildups. Have you seen the video for that, by the way? OMG. I fully acknowledge that I have this WAY too high on my list, and I'm not even going to try to prove its worth. At least there's no Ryan Adams on this list, though!

- Michael

39. Hold Steady - Stay PositiveFor 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...

- Nick

38. Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Fight
Their name is horrible and their music completely predictable. Their singer has one of those thick Scottish accents that usually wears on one after awhile, and he uses it to sing faux-poetic lines like “it takes more than fucking someone you don’t know just to keep yourself warm.” Everything just seems to have this veneer of cliché and the whole song persists in a self-adorned naïveté.

I love it.

Frightened Rabbit has no need to invent a new genre or add some DJ or a second drummer to make them original—they’ve no need for original. They play the music they like and they play it perfectly.

- Austin

37. Yo Majesty – Kryptonite Pussy EP
I doubt anyone else has this or liked it much, but I LOVE this EP. Back since 2006, when the “Club Action” remixes started to appear, I have secretly enjoyed the dirrrty lesbian club anthems of this Tampa Bay duo. But the Kryptonite Pussy EP takes it to another level of dirrtyness, of flow, of booty-shaking beats. It's a shame that the girls' debut album, also released this year, didn't stick to the club atmosphere of this EP and the early singles. I didn't listen to much new hip-hop this year; this is the only appearance on my year-end list. But damn, I know I will be listening to “Hey There Girl” and “Monkey” for years in the future.

- Michael

36. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
I have this album much higher than I had its predecessor though I admit that Night Ripper is the superior album. Everything about Night Ripper was a revelation: the way it mixed genres and paired absolutely crap songs (My Humps) with fantastic ones (Heartbeat). It was a more significant statement than this album. I don’t feel like articulating what exactly that statement was, but suffice it to say I came to this conclusion after I posted my entire list.

Anyways, I will still probably listen to Feed the Animals more because it’s simply more fun. Whereas Night Ripper is somewhat weighed down by its uniqueness and its statement (admittedly I feel like such seriousness is foisted on it by listeners, it’s not fault of Girl Talk himself), Feed the Animals is just downright fun. I still laugh when I listen to some of these pairings, especially the one with Jesse’s Girl.

And it’s a great party album.

- Austin

35. Shearwater - Rook
During my torrential love affair with Okkervil River this year, building on my love for last year's The Stage Names, I read a lot about them. That's when I found out about Shearwater, a side-project for Will Sheff with Jonathan Meiburg that has since grown, while Sheff has lessened his role to work with Okkervil River (Meiburg also plays in Okkervil River)

The influence of one band on the other is clear, but Shearwater is a lot calmer, darker, and introspective. Like the National, the band pulls off a kind of wearied sophistication that's massively appealing. There is a melancholy to everything, but none of that mood weighs down the record; instead it give it permanence. The songs ebb and flow with the high falsetto and richly expressive qualities of Meiburg's voice, which has this amazing combination of strength and fragility (think Jeff Buckley). The record is entirely human, and the songs express that. It's not a record of pop melodies or experimentation. Just an extremely high quality collection of incredibly well-written songs.

- Blake

34. Lykke Li - Youth Novels
What the hell is it with Sweden? It's like a conveyer belt of really good bands. One after the other, year after year, somebody new comes around and blows me away. My biggest Sweden crush this year was Lykke Li, who is young (22), smart, not afraid to be goofy, and a fantastic writer of pop songs.

- Blake

33. 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.

It's easy to listen to this album once or twice and walk away saying "meh." The production is very minimilist and uncrowded, which can be a little underwhelming, especially because the songs are well-written enough to really soar, and at times I really wished they would. But I stuck with it, and found myself increasingly charmed. It's a very, very restrained album, and mature because of it--every little beat and backup vocal is carefully placed. Lykke's voice is pretty airy and gentle, so the simplicity suits her -- but it takes time to love. She's a coy artist, which is the best kind to have a crush on.

- Nick

32. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
Since I missed Tanglewood Numbers back in 2005 I've been absorbing a lot of Silver Jews. I've since gone back to their earlier albums (especially American Water), and I recently realized that they're closely related to Pavement, and Stephen Malkmus played with lead singer David Berman in college and was an early member of the Silver Jews until Pavement took off. This is, I think, their best album since American Water.

Why do I love the Silver Jews? Berman is a gifted songwriter, a published poet who writes like it, and pens incredibly odd music. He's probably a heavy whiskey drinker, and just an all-around weirdo. The songs are unfailingly smart, hilarious, and never takes themselves seriously (see Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed from Tanglewood Numbers, or the epic San Francisco B.C. from Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea). It's just enough country for me, feeding a casual southern/southern-gothic fascination, and he knows how to tell a great story. He sings in a casual, deep voice that kinda reminds me of Johnny Cash in its deadpan delivery. But in the end, I'm most entranced by the strange beauty that emerges when I listen to the Silver Jews. I don't know why, but I can't deny it.

- Blake

31. Brian Eno and David Bryne - Everything that Happens Will Happen TodayThis 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.

- Nick

30. Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer
It has been an on again, off again type of year between Wolf Parade and I. I was initially disappointed with this album; it didn’t have the fire, the intensity of Apologies to Queen Mary. But then I friend of mine saw them in concert and told me I had to give it another listen and a loud listen at that. I fooled around with the levels a bit and she was right—the production on this album sucks, but the energy of the songs is definitely there.

Then I saw Sunset Rubdown in concert and my complete adoration for them was cemented, which instead of augmenting my love of Wolf Parade served to diminish it. Instead of listening to this album I put on old Sunset Rubdown albums. And if this album popped up at random I would just switch to Sunset. It was a sad situation.

And then, inexplicably, this album became something, that for a couple weeks, was the only thing I could listen to. Perhaps it was the piano hook on “Call It a Ritual.” And as long as I was listening to that song I might as well continue with “Language City” and there were the catchy drum highlights on “Bang Your Drum” and before I knew it was listening to all ten minutes of “Kissing the Beehive” with rapt attention.

- Austin

29. Bloc Party – Intimacy
There is this great section in 2666 by Roberto Bolano, where Amalfitano asks a young pharmacists what his favorite books are:

Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphoses, Bartleby, A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something relevatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist...and who clearly preferred minor works to major ones. What a sad paradox, though Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacistsare afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works.

This album has been roundly criticized for being overambitious, for throwing too much stuff into one album (luckily much of what they thrown in is drums), and for the failure to achieve what they set out to accomplish. But, to me, it’s a beautiful failure.

- Austin

28. 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.

- Nick

27. Antony & the Johnsons – Another World EP
I didn't listen to much sad music this year; overall 2008 has been one of the happiest years in recent memory. But this album still moved me to tears on occasion, even with no negative emotions to dwell on. Lord knows what this would have meant to me some other more angst-ridden year. Antony is becoming one of the more important songwriters of the decade, I feel.

- Michael

26. DJ /Rupture – Uproot
I really liked /Rupture's last album, Special Gunpowder, but this one takes him to the status of auteur.

- Michael

25. Lil Wayne - The Carter III
Jennifer Olmsted, reacting to a “This American Life” piece that asserted Americans as a whole are getting smarter and more intellectual, wrote the following:

“Intelligence is the new chic. Chic, and easy to attain. Learn to pronounce Foucault, drop a well-placed Freaks and Geeks reference, read a few Great Books, subscribe to HBO and the Economist, mix in a little ironic Lil Wayne appreciation, and suddenly, you've got class, intelligence, and culture. And everyone perusing your Facebook knows it. Appearance, not reality.

Ironic Lil’ Wayne appreciation? This quote, though I didn’t much creedance to the post as a whole, caused a minor crisis. Was my appreciation of Lil’ Wayne only ironic? A Latin teacher in the suburbs of Boston listening all the time to Weezy rap about hustling rock, ironic? Who really knows what this word means?

Following Michael’s recommendation last year I got the mixtape version of this album and I haven’t looked back since. I would like to write a paper on the lyrics of Lil’s Wayne, but a study of the lyrics alone would only address half of the genius of this artist: the impact comes in the delivery, the evident pain in boastful raps, the slight chuckle after a line about death, the humor that is both sincere and (gasp) ironic.

I could go on gushing about this album and about Wayne’s body of work in general, but I’ll stop because I don’t have much time.

- Austin

24. .Brian Wilson – Lucky Old Sun
I don't expect to win everyone over to this album. I will just say that in the context of SMiLE, this is one of the most happy/sad albums of the year, as only Brian Wilson can be. How can you not be creeped out when Wilson sings about watching a girl when she's sleeping? And how can you be singularly happy when he sings about “that good kind of love”? Once again, I take a pseudo-mystical approach to Brian Wilson's music, and once again, I am rewarded for it.

- Michael

23. Bob Dylan – Tell Tale Signs
Every 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.

- Nick

22. Air France (EP)Air + Avalanches? I must admit, when I first started listening to Air France on the blogs, very early thanks to my friend Dan, I wasn't overwhelmed. As I listened more and more, though, it became a soundtrack to my life, coming into my head as I walked to school, or took the Ubahn, whatever. No, it's no Studio, but this EP keeps me wanting as much Balearic music as I can handle.

- Michael

21. 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.

- Nick

20. Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line
I kept my appreciation for this band under wraps this year. The album hasn’t been around for long, but the second I listened to it I just felt a weird sort of affection. This is a band that I root for, I want them to be popular, I want them to make it. And in certain circles, I guess they already have.

They were garnering a lot of buzz last year around the same time as Vampire Weekend, but their drummer died and delayed the release. And while I feel sorry for their loss I must say the experience has benefited their music. No group’s debut album should sound this mature. This album has the intensity that most debut albums of good groups have, but it’s welded with a musical, and dare I say, lyrical sophistication that groups don’t find until several albums later (some, sadly, never do).

Plus I’m a complete sucker for the inclusion of a string section with garage band type music. Maybe this means I’m secretly fifteen years old, but I don’t care. Also I like that they have two female and these vixens blend their voices perfectly with the lead singer.

In short, I’m a big, big fan.

- Austin

19. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
In years past I’ve maybe placed albums that I, in fact, listened to on a more regular basis, behind albums that I thought were musically better—at least musically better from an objective stand point (the arrangements more refined, the musically, overall, more inventive, and, yes, better critically accepted). But with this album it’s unavoidable. There is not a single album that even comes close to how many times I’ve listened to this album, we’re talking all day writing binges soundtrack-ed only by Iver’s haunting voice.

My friend Tom, when I sent him this album, said, “If I could make music I would make this.” I don’t feel that way. I would more make music like Apes and Andriods, if I could be any music I would be this music. I want to sing like Shef, but if I could some how exist as a voice I would be Iver’s voice.

I know this sounds dramatic, but I am unable to be objective about this album, I’m unable to list and quantify its musical attributes, to discern what works and what doesn’t because I just connect to it on a personal level. Maybe it’s just been my particular, overall mood this year and perhaps in a year I won’t feel the same way. But I’m not writing this list next year, I’m writing it now. And right now, though I tried to avoid it, there is no other album that should be at the top.

- Austin

18. 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.

- Nick

17. Jamie Lidell – Jim
I often get weird looks when people ask me what type of music I like. I don’t like to define a type, because I’m that cool, rather I list artists. When I say Sunset Rubdown, or Okkervil River or Hercules and Love Affair, people, not acquainted with any of this type of music, generally assume they won’t like the same type of music as me.

Then I put on Jamie.

How can you not like this music? It’s throwback, for sure, but its updated throwback. It simply makes you want to move. And, especially on Jim, the production is impeccable. Listen to “Green Light” on a good pair of headphones and I challenge you not to be intrigued. Also, you can’t listen to the coda of “Hurricane” and not think of some funkified verision of the Beatles.

Ultimately I just appreciate the Lidell does exactly what he wants. I saw him in concert and he went on a ten minute electronic freestyle trip. The people I had convinced to go with me with the likes of “Another Day” and “All I Wanna Do” didn’t like it, but I thought it was fantastic.

I guess perhaps, for me, he can do no wrong.

- Austin

16. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colors
I love this album. I don't have anything to say about it.

- Michael

15. Lindstrom – Where You Go I Go Too
This is the best workout album ever. The perfect beat, something long enough to get a rhythm going, with just enough movements to keep me interested. And my god, those 80s synths. I love them. And I did work out to this album, until grad school got the better of me, and it never got old. I also listened to it at home, walking to school, while writing papers, everything. I just wish that I drove more so I could listen to it there. I was worked up about this album quite a while before it came out, and lo and behold it's right up there with all my favorite Lindstrom stuff, INCLUDING stuff with Prins Thomas. That's saying something.

- Michael

14. The Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Graves
I'll never forget a conversation I had with Nick back in college over a $1.99 Amber Bock at the Duck. We were discussing music, possibly because Pitchfork had put out their best of 2000-2005 list and I hadn't heard of more than half of the bands. At one point, Nick said something casually derisive about the entire singer-songwriter genre as a whole. Namely, that he hated them. That singer-songwriters were the height of mediocrity in music, clogging up all the space with their hackneyed Bob-Dylan-aping schtick, lacking a shred of originality.

Having grown up around church youth groups where the earnest-man-with-a-guitar is respected and adored, I remember being incredibly surprised, and I feebly defended the genre. But a short while later, I realized Nick was absolutely right. 99% of singer-songwriters are crap, emotionally adolescent, and uninventive musicians. It was a sad but true realization.

So my sincere love for The Tallest Man on Earth could be dismissed as nostalgia. Perhaps it's for early Bob Dylan, with whom the similarity is uncanny--not just the way the music sounds but his vocal style, aptitude for poetic lyrics, and overall energy. Or maybe it's because he's Swedish and I'm just a sucker for that country, as this list seems to attest. But I have not stopped listening to this album since I got my hands on it in May. The songs are rich, vivid, sad and deeply beautiful.

How can someone sound like early Dylan in 2008 and not be a derivative hack? I don't know. But the only answer I can offer is that maybe there's something transcendent possible when a man sings and plays a guitar.

- Blake

13. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
I’m not sure I’m allowed to put this album on my list. I’ve been listening to it since at least October 2007 when one of my ex-girlfriend’s friends lent me an advanced copy. He went to college with the duo and after he found out I was a big fan of The Knife he handed me MGMT. I listened to it and definitely liked it, but I guess I didn’t really take it seriously. I had a lot of “real” albums in rotation at this point and MGMT fell by the wayside. I didn’t think anyone besides me and Teddy (the friend) actually even knew this band existed.

But then strange things started happening. MGMT popped up on Rollings Stones’ “Hot List.” Not one but two students made me mix CD’s that included “Kids.” I told Teddy, via the ex-girlfriend, about the “Hot List” thing and apparently he was even surprised.

So I started listening more intently. Originally I’d never gotten beyond “Time to Pretend”—which I loved but viewed as the only really good song on the list. But I found that I loved every single song. “Electric Feel” is absolutely addictive and I even like “Pieces of What.”

The moral of the story is, the next time someone hands you an advanced copy listen to it.

- Austin

12. Bonnie "Prince" Billy – Lie Down in the Light
I 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.

- Nick

11. Apes & Androids – Blood Moon
So Michael was embarrassed to have this album in his top ten, and as I push it into my top five I attempt a sense of embarrassment, perhaps just a small blush of shame, but it’s not there.

I unabashedly love every track on this album.

They combine every dirty pleasure, musical and otherwise, I have and make it sound great. I’m a sucker for those guitar solos from eighties movies. I’m a sucker for dreamy synthesizer combined with over-processed drums. I love reverb, eighties-The Cure-to-the-max guitars. Basically they take every musical element that I wish I didn’t like and make it okay. Perhaps this is dangerous.

I know this album is not for everyone, but I don’t care. I love how this album just never lets up. It reminds of those more innocent, caffeine riddled nights, when my friend Trevor (he, like me, was also a “rock musician” imprisoned in the countryside of Kentucky) and I would spend the entire night messing around with the eight-track recorder his parents bought him for Christmas. We made music like this but it sounded like shit.

Perhaps I like this album because it feels, somehow, like vindication.

- Austin

10. No Age - Nouns
I came and left this album through a period of many months this year, obsessing then putting it away. I couldn't help but compare it to last year's Weirdo Rippers. I love Weirdo Rippers with a fierceness I can't explain. I may have listened to it more than any other 2007 album during 2008. Its power over me continues to grow. The songs, anchored in punk, stretch out into these giant, moody guitarscapes that evoke plane hangars and the warm, woozy desolation of Los Angeles. But at the same time I was trying to absorb Nouns, their proper full-album (Weirdo Rippers was a collection of EPs and other material). But Weirdo Rippers wasn't done with me; I hadn't escaped its thicket of messy sound.

Nouns isn't more cohesive--it's barely held together by an overhanging fuzz. But there are little moments of melodious brilliance (Things I Did When I was Dead) that I keep returning to. The power of melody is never more important than in noise rock--it's the beauty among obliteration that makes it all worth listening to.

It may be that I'm way in over my head with Nouns at the moment, and making irrational decisions about its placement on this list. But more than any other album it has captured my time, intellect, and imagination. The music is inventive and brilliant for a drummer and a guitarist -- bands twice their size are routinely less impressive, with a fraction of the ideas. Their mastery of noise is unmitigated.

It's been said that the sign of a good writer is when a whole book is thrown away on every page. The same applied to Nouns. The sheer number and quality of ideas in this album is staggering.

- Blake

9. Coldplay – Viva La Vida
I 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?

- Nick

8. M83 - Saturdays=Youth
It's not really fair that this album is higher on my list than the previous M83 albums, which I like more. It's probably that I enjoy M83 more now than I even did when those albums came out, and this album gets the benefit. There was a time this spring that Saturdays=Youth was my favorite album of the year, but I haven't listened to it enough this fall to make a call on it, so I'll leave it here (it could be anywhere in the top 6-8). Anyway, yes it's more of a pop album than previous stuff, yes it's cinematic/nostalgic but in a good way, yes it is wonderful on headphones. I will return to this one for years to come.

- Michael

7. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
I'm starting to feel like I'm spending too much of my time defending my choices rather than exclaiming why I actually love the albums on this list. But, it's going to be hard to not to that again here. This is the kind of album that's so easy and catchy that it's hard to listen to anything else in the first week of exposure. In fact, this was the first album I heard in 2008 that I really loved. As time went on, this love became guiltier and guiltier as the sheen wore off and I realized that I felt like an alumni frat brother during Monon Bell weekend, and I put them away for awhile. But the songs stood the test of many listens, and every time a song would pop up on random, I'd drop turn off shuffle and listen through the whole album. I've always admired bands that are able to appeal quickly while maintaining staying power.

It's also an album about New York, and I'm a sucker for those. The whole Columbia Ivy-Leage preppy schtick, while undeniable, is handled with appropriate measures of sincerity and irony. My biggest complaint is that the song about Blake's new face is the weakest on the album.

- Blake

6. 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.

- Nick

5. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
I was lucky (?) to see Fleet Foxes pretty early, after the blogosphere started to buzz with them, but before the album came out and they started taking over the indie-rock world. I saw them play in Berlin, in the same club I had seen an awesome Handsome Fures show with, like, 20 other people. Unfortunately (?) there were lots more people, but the after a disappointing Beach House show, something happened: the crowd became reeaaally quiet, and took on an atmosphere of friendliness I haven't ever experienced (except maybe with devendra banhart). I was in the front row, like maybe 4 feet from the band, and they handed out water bottles and interacted with the crowd on more than a banter level. Afterward I had a beer with a couple of the guys, and they were really nice, asking me to look them up when they came to Austin. I saw the show right at a point when I was getting sick of rock shows in general, and it reminded me that there is stuff in indie rock to get excited about. I know this was a hot band to like, but that just makes me happy for both Fleet Foxes and their fans.

- Michael

4. 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?

- Nick

3. The Walkmen - You & Me
Maybe more than any other album this year, I loved giving in to The Walkmen. It is a perfectly paced album, unfolding carefully and slowly. It helps, of course, that their music is moody and atmospheric, that they evoke the kind of beleagured middle-of-winter mood that's strangely comforting and easy to slip into. But from the moment I heard the first gentle cymbal crash of Donde Esta la Playa and the rumbling, muddled bass, I had little choice but to submit.

What's most surprising to me is that I never emerge from The Walkmen feeling depressed, even though I should. There's something about Hamilton Leithauser vocals that's human and courageous. To write this I'm going back over the tracks individually and what strikes me is how quiet they are, which I hadn't really realized before. There's nothing like the ferocity of The Rat. But the music lacks none of its intensity, commanding my attention just as pointedly as that song but with more careful instrumentation. With every listen the contours of this album shape and become clearer, new moments emerge, most unexpectedly uplifting. How The Walkmen bury this kind of beauty is lost on me. But this is a remarkable album.

- Blake

2. Hercules & Love Affair – Hercules & Love Affair
Everyone knows that I love pop and I love dance: the most obvious intersection of these two is disco. Was there any question that this would be in my top 5? Not at all. I thought this would be my #1 since a couple weeks after it came back. And yes I heard this in lots of Berlin clubs, and yes it was amazing. I've heard lots of good remixes of songs from this album, but none touch the originals. “Blind” will probably be in my top songs of the decade.

- Michael

1. Okkervil River – The Stand Ins
Austin, 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.

- Nick

Like Michael, I was initially unimpressed (more or less disappointed) with the Stage Names. And also like him I gained a better appreciation of it this year, but this appreciation stems from how enthralled I am with this album. The band is just so tight. The bass line never simply follows the guitar, nor do the keyboards merely echo and reinforce the overall chord progression. It all goes together so well.

I will say that, lyrically, nothing will top Black Sheep Boy, some of those songs still make me want to cry, but this album has some tough moments too. Due to certain experiences this year, I loved “Calling and Not Calling My Ex” as well as well as “Pop Lie.” I’ve already said this, but if I could sing like anyone I would sing like Will Shef, and I think, sometimes in my head I do sound like him. But this is just adoration.

Okkervil River is, and if they’re recent output is any indication will remain, one of my favorite bands. There is not an album that I can’t simply listen to, and this one is no exception.

- Austin

Best Albums of 2007

2007-12-22T21:05:00.000-08:00

50. Apparat - Walls

My favorite music background music this year: subtle enough not to distract often but with hopeful moments that make me simply sit back, listen and slip into stream of consciousness:

The organic weeping of string instruments layered over soft and quick electronics. The unintelligible and sparsely used vocals bridge different movements that fade as differing shades of light on the black backs of my eyelids.
- Austin

49. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Is Is E.P.
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.
- Nick
48. Ratatat - Remixes Vol. 2
Back in 2004, the first Ratatat mixtape was one of my most listened-to albums of the year, but I didn't include it on my year-end list because I didn't think of it as a legitimate release, a simple album of remixes. In this year of mixes, mixtapes, and compilations, I no longer believe that a mixtape is excluded from “real” releases. In my eyes Ratatat's remixes far outweigh their original tracks; they have a way of restructuring the rhythms of mainstream rap songs to make them sound new if they're old, fresh if they're dull. And if the song in question is Biggie, well, anything can happen. As I see it, the boys in Ratatat can give Siegel, Bun B, etc the guitar-powered fuel they need, and, perhaps more importantly, rap gives Ratatat the edge they need to keep from sounding like video game music.
- Michael
47. !!! - Myth Takes
What I love about Myth Takes is its kind of amateurish vibe. He can't really sing very well, for one. And the band doesn't seem all that good about realizing when they've got a good hook on their hands--they often throw one away when they should be basing a whole song around it. Instead, the tracks are crowded with too many ideas, too many new beats and directions, not enough focus. But that's also the reason I like it--all this adds up to exuberance, and if not exuberance, an infectious ADD. Horns duetting with retro-sounding synths over a disco beat? The album pulses with life. But then they do stupid things like spend 8 minutes on "Bend over Beethoven," a relatively uninteresting bit of music, and chop off the next track, "Break in Case of Anything," at 4 minutes, when it should have been built into an epic event. Ah well.
- Blake
46. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
Something made little Patrick happy. My guess is he got laid. What’s hilarious, methinks, is that while the title track and the following one, ‘Accident and Emergency,’ are decidedly upbeat a shadow gradually is cast over the rest of the album. You can almost hear the internal demons creep back into his voice.

The way he battles against them makes this album intriguing.

Favorite Track: Overture
- Austin
45. The 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.
- Nick

44. Black Kids - Wizard of Ahhs EP
Create a flawless four-song EP with ridiculous potential, and make it exceedingly fun--that’s an immediate place on my list. These guys are apparently blogworld darlings, going from nothing to hype in no time flat, but I don’t read that many music blogs. I don’t remember how I ended up with it, but I’ve listened to all four songs too many times and can’t wait for their album. I’ll admit that they’re a half-formed thing at best, but there’s something in the freewheeling spirit that is really exciting. Kind of like a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah that you can understand. Maybe they’ll put out a good album and then utterly fail like that other conspicuously hyped band. But for now, take really great pop songs, make things a bit fuzzy with echo, add caffeine, and throw in 80s synths. Imagine a yelp like the Cure's Robert Smith, without the whine. That’s this EP.
- Blake
43. 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.
- Nick
42. Various Artists - I'm Not There
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.
- Nick

41. Fall Out Boy - Infinity on High
A conversation with myself:

This may negate my entire list and I definitely feel guilty about it but…don’t pretend to feel bad about this…what…you unabashedly like this band and their borrowed, factory-made music…well you have to admit it takes a certain craft to patch together such pitch perfect pop with a splash of soulful vocals…it just takes good producers, a million vocal takes, and healthy dose of low musical morals…okay, look you don’t have to like it…who said I didn’t like it?

Favorite Track: I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears and None On My Fingers
- Austin
40. Handsome Furs - Plague Park
I thought it would be cute to put these albums together, but I actually do think that the two Wolf Parade solo records complement each other well. On the one hand, Spencer Krug's album (that's Sunset Rubdown) is so willfully obscure and full of bizarre imagery, but still manages to sound totally tragic (probably because of Krug's voice). On the other hand, Dan Boeckner's album is straightforward, nostalgic, and absolutely heartbreaking. Boeckner's lyrics verge on melodrama, Krug's on willfull obscurity. But they are both hugely affecting for me, and they go well together, kind of like this band I used to listen to... Musically, I find the simple synth/drums of Handsome Furs more easily digestible if less ambitious than the clanging symphonies of Random Spirit Lover. If I had to pick a favorite of the two, I might just pick Handsome Furs, maybe to be ornery, maybe because I saw a fantastic show by Boeckner et al here in Berlin, with all of maybe 20 people in attendance. But nevertheless both albums stand well on their own and together, and make me drool at the thought of a new Wolf Parade album (next year!).
- Michael
39. 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.
- Nick

38. Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass
In a year where I found myself listening to old favorites with new releases I purposely avoided this album. Aesop and I had had a long relationship and I really wanted to get into Dalek—I thought I needed another semi-underground hip-hop act to follow.

But, falling prey to a lazy afternoon, I obtained this album and almost immediately fell in love. Maybe I’m just a sucker for his flow and slick turns of verse. Nothing on this album, of course, reaches the heights of ‘Daylight’ but he comes awfully close with more than a few tracks.

Sorry Dalek.
Favorite Track: Keep Off the Lawn
- Austin

37. Justice - Cross
OK, there was no way that Justice were going to live up to the hype they had built up for themselves. And yes, the group is totally influenced by/successful because of image and hype. But I love it, and, unlike their hype equals the Klaxons, they made a really impressive try at delivering that mind-boggling album this summer. They could have just shit out some more brutally loud sunth-based bangers and placed them around “Waters of Nazereth,” and I would have listened to the album, enjoyed it, and set it aside for the next SCHOLARTRON. But instead they made a real album, with rises, falls, and (maybe) depth. It's not just bangers. And I know that Justice knew that EVERYONE wanted just bangers, so big ups to them for that self control. And like Dan, I think that this album is comparable to my boi Boys Noize. I actually think that Cross works better as an album, though, while Boys Noize delivers the single jams. So, if you're keeping track, that's Remixes: Justice (close); Singles: Boys Noize; Album: Justice.
- Michael
36. 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.
- Nick
35. Various Artists - After Dark
Including this album is totally cheating, since it's a way of praising so many of the singles that I already had gotten from “the blogs” (discobelle, risky bizness, fluokids, palmsout, etc) in the months before this compilation. But you have to admit that Italians Do It Better do a really good job of using their artists to create a really singular sound that really helps define the year's fads in dance music: 80's sounding fake-disco-soul. I made such a mix for Chuck for Mixster (Easter Mix Exchange), consisting only of 2007 songs that could be used in a re-filming of Miami Vice, washed out early-80s kitsch. In April there were already too many such songs to make the mix; I know that at least 2 songs from After Dark were in the running (“Running Down the Hill” and “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”). I love this shit, and this album is like the readymade disco-complement to Miami Vice: Charleston. Only possible improvement: Kavinsky on the list.
- Michael
34. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
As you all know, Andrew Bird's last album floored me completely and was second only to Sufjan in 2005's list. His highly intelligent writing style, personal aesthetic, and overall ear for melody and harmony has always impressed me. This time around all these gifts are present, and he seems also to be aiming persistently for accessibility. You get a sense that these songs are more radio-friendly, a little more traditional in structure, and, for that reason, only just slightly less personally authentic. I listened to this album over and over, waiting for the spell that overcame me listening to Mysterious Production of Eggs; it never came. This record has some unbelievable highlights. Scythian Empires is a gorgeous, quietly political song with a repeating one-handed piano piece and plucking violins; his gentle philosophizing lyrics in Dark Matter are still here ("Do you wonder where the self resides / Is it in the head or between your sides / And who would be the one who will decide / Its true location?"). So liked this album very, very much, but never passed over to love. There's still no one doing anything like Andrew Bird.
- Blake
33. No Age - Weirdo Rippers
It takes about almost two and a half minutes into the first song for this L.A. punk band to do much of anything but create fuzz. There are two sheets of guitar sound swaying back and forth, one calming and watery, the other persistent and melodic. A symbol gets agitated here and there, and the stray drumbeat enters (the band has no bass player). It sounds shoegaze, but there's a potent jaggedness to things. Then out of the blue they rip into this guitar-and-drum thing and yell some stuff using processed vocals, and quit a minute later.

It sounds like an indulgent, stupid project, but instead it's really good. Throughout the rest of their 32 minute album, the tidal guitars of shoegaze are crunched up and juxtaposed with punk drumming, and the results are strangely brilliant. Their big sprawling epic, Dead Planes, clocks in at a long-winded 4:12, and the first 2/3 of the song is spent creating a formless mess of guitars and disconnected drums. But it's the perfect example of their long-drone-short-burst aesthetic that works so well, and when the song comes together, it all seems inevitable.
- Blake

32. Battles - Mirrors
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.
- Nick

31. Caribou - Andorra
Caribou/Manitoba's weirdest album yet? You bet; no longer spectacular electronic pop experiments, this album goes all out at trying to find that lost 60's sound by combining electronic music with psych electric guitars. Snaith's best record? I think so. Andorra shows a real sense of nostalgia and historicity, shows a feeling of longing for something that none of us really know except in old movies and Nuggets: 1960s garage psychedelia. In their live show this month, the group projected fluorescent images of flowers blooming, etc, onto the stage while everyone went apeshit on the drums. This is Andorra in a nutshell to me: 60s kitsch projected onto proggy electronic music. The emotions that I feel about the album, I think, stem from the contrast of the two. The album at once sounds so powerful and so delicate.
- Michael
30. Grinderman - Grinderman
As aging hero of independent music, I think that Nick Cave is totally underrated. While other old rock badasses Tom Waits and Thurston Moore get superstar treatment with us rock kids (they should), Nick Cave often goes relatively overlooked. Why is that? I have no theories. What I do know, though, is that the Birthday boy himself is at least as reliable as those other two to turn out albums that show up on my year-end list. Abbatoir Blues from a couple years ago was fantastic, taking Mr. Cave down paths he had never been down before, namely nice-sounding music. With Grinderman, he's back to mean Mr. Devil, and I love him all the more for it. And the restraint on this album helps Nick to sound as nasty and powerful as he has since Let Love In. That's saying something.
- Michael
29. Various Artists - Kompakt Total 8
I'm not sure why this album from the always-reliable Kompakt label flew under the radar in a year that saw techno's coming-out party for the indie rock crowd. Maybe because the mix isn't as “pure” techno as the previous Totals? Certainly, Kompakt did branch out more into pop and house this year, for better (“Beautiful Life”) or worse (the Supermayer album). This album covers that gamut too, ranging from standards Superpitcher and Jorg Burger to Berlin hometown heavy-house fave Rex the Dog. The genius of this album, though, is that Kompakt makes all of these elements work together, making a mix that is both cool and fun, embodying the best of the Berlin party scene that is so omnipresent in my life right now. In 20 years, when I want to look back and remember what my time in Berlin was like, I will probably put this mix on, and be transported to so many parties.
- Michael
28. Liars - Liars
The Liars convinced me of their greatness with their last album, Drum's Not Dead, an experience of sheer power. It still gives me chills. Shapeless and unformed, it was nonetheless acutely emotional and wrenching. I loved it for its abstract qualities, its hugeness and its violence. If a band can go from sprawling abstractness to straightforward rock song structures, as they do with this year's release, Liars, without losing any of their power, it's a serious achievement. The probably dared each other to write regular songs and see what happened. This happened. The first track is loud and angry, incredibly good, but a fairly normal song, though made to sound powerful and desolate by the nature of the band playing it. But then "Houseclouds," the second track? It's a pop song. Who is this, Beck? Nevetheless, this two-punch is among the best moments on an album in 2007. Throughout, the songs are pretty paced, and they don't indulge in long instrumental sections, staying true to some variation of punk, garage, or pop rock form. But the fact that it's the Liars performing them makes all the difference. They can't help but do it better than anyone else.
- Blake
27. The Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
I didn’t know what to make of this album at first. After a couple listens I decided it wasn’t a grower, either you liked it or you didn’t and I was definitely in the latter group—I couldn’t get past his voice.

And then, and don’t ask what possessed me to listen to it again, it was beautiful. It’s something, maybe the mixed vocals, the instrumental moments of chaos, something about the album’s ode to Black Flag, something…who knows?

Please just listen to it several times.

Favorite Track: Rise Above
- Austin
26. Lil Wayne - Carter 3
One of the perks of the slow demise of the album as a concept is the rise of the mixtape. Who cares where music first appears anymore? No more primacy placed on the “original,” as if that every existed in the first place (the original song, not the primacy). So here we have Weezy, releasing a (good) studio album (Da Drought 3) consisting of mostly covers and remixes, and a fantastic mixtape sampling everything in sight. And man this mix is joyous! Wayne spits rhyme after rhyme at me so fast, he sounds out of breath, and soon so do I too. Weezy is the coyote of the rap world right now; he can sound as angry, sad, dangerous, or sexual as anyone out there, sometimes on the same album. Of course, he also has the maturity and patience of a child, which explains the stupid jokes, as well as his inability to finish one song before starting the next one. Of course, these “flaws” just add to Weezy's charm, and also help me feel childlike and giddy while listening to this mix.
- Michael
25. Daft Punk - Alive 2007
The most important music group of our generation (I said it) further secures its legacy by combining the best aspects of rock and roll (the live show) and electronic music (the remix). They deftly address both their own music and their live environment and audience in groundbreaking ways. They totally redeem the disappointing Human After All. They rock out to “Music Sounds Better With You.” What more could you ask from everyone's favorite sexy-robot music duo? Answer: another album, another tour.
- Michael

24. Iron and Wine - The Shephard's Dog
Around this time two years ago I wrote that Iron & Wine should only release EPs, because his sound and unaffecting voice can’t support the weight of a full-length LP. Thankfully, Sam Beam has proved me wrong. He finally harnessed the energy and immediacy of his Woman King EP and his work with Calexico and, with some training, gave it endurance.

I kept waiting for this album to get old and it never did. It definitely has staying power.

Favorite Track: Boy with a Coin
- Austin

23. Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbal
I swear the first time I heard this, I thought it was a lost Talk Talk album. That blend of high-pitched vocals, frail and yet full of lung power, the spaciousness, the indescribable communal feeling that you also get when listening to Animal Collective, especially Sung Tongs. Then "2080" came on, the third track, and my mouth dropped. The verse carried on by a persistent bass drum and tinny guitar, and then all of a sudden the chorus, "Its a new year I'm glad to be here," and the song has become achingly beautiful. THEN, at 2:50, everything gets even bigger, and they band starts to sound like they're singing around a campfire, and other people are hearing the music and joining the anthem. There's this whole gospel element to it. And just when you think it can't get any larger and more joyous, a group of children start singing, and the song ends in this quiet denouement.

I know this is more a review of that song that anything else, and it's certainly the highlight of the album, but if you're a fan at all of Talk Talk, Peter Gabriel, and like songs that possess a stunning melodicism with some tribal sounds and overall utter originality, please listen to this.
- Blake

22. Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch

Sondre Lerche’s testicles finally dropped. Don’t worry he still has that beautiful, seducing tenor, but he finally dropped his old, too-sweet-sounding-for-more-than-a-song-at-a-time music in favor of scissor-kicking-maybe-I-could-kick-you-ass-if-really-really-really-angry music—the results are astounding.

I’ve not found this album on any of the top album lists I’ve read but I don’t care. Throughout the turmoil that has been my top ten this album has been the one constant. I just keep listening to it.

Favorite Track: The Tape

- Austin
21. Studio - Yearbook 1
It's hard for me to explain just why I like this album as much as I do. I mean, it's Swedish, and beautifully produced, and a mix between electronic music and pop, and has subtly funky beats. And it varies between the tiny pop of “No Comply” to the grandiose dub of “Out There.” And I can listen to it on repeat for hours on end without getting bored or sick of it. Yeah, that's why I love this album.

- Michael

20. Beirut - The Flying Club Cup
Sorry I’m just a sucker for this type of music, I admit it. I don’t think about any of the gimmicky pitfalls of music like this, and I don’t care that Zach Condon is only twenty-one—this album is brilliant, especially when you take it together with the Lon Gisland EP released earlier this year.

This album reminds me that blank spaces used to exist on the map. It reminds me of a time when the unknown actually existed.
Illogical, rambling emotional impacts aside, this album marks an incredible progression for this band. Musically the song are much more distinguishable, and to emphasize this fact Condon seems to have intentionally utilized a single lyrical theme.

It’s the most listened to album on my ipod.
- Austin

19. 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.
- Nick

18. The Tough Alliance - A New Chance
A mix of unpredictable beatscapes and youthful vocals made this album irresistible the first time I heard it; its appeal has only increased. The unusual vocal sampling and instrumentation have yielded more unexpected surprises with every listen. There's something about dancepop that's impossible for me to dislike. This is a Swedish duo of childhood friends, who are Jens Lekman's favorite band, which is good enough for me. They're also famous for their somewhat confrontational personalities and aggressive, supposedly Situationist politics. That all seems to be lost on me, and perhaps lost in the carefree music--Situationist ideas were always a pose anyway. They've also been accused of promoting anarchy and violence, which just seems absurd. Perhaps this line from "Neo Violence" is apt: "Truly sorry thought you'd get the wink, it's in our nature to be out of sync."
- Blake

17. 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.
- Nick

16. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
My list this year seems to be littered (delicately sprinkled?) with largely wordless, instrumental music. Perhaps it’s a sign that I will soon start listening to instrumental smooth jazz covers of 1990s top 40s? I just threw up in my mouth.

I listened to this album on the 5 a.m. train from Providence to Boston with my head pressed sleepily against the windowpane watching the snow spit in the blue winter dawn. The album’s title seemed possible.

Favorite Track: The Silent
- Austin

15. Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover
This isn’t so much an album as an opera. These aren’t songs but movements weaving a modern mythology of characters epically struggling against tenuous everyday existence and the underage temptations of vodka.

Spencer Krug’s arrangements, like Mozart (there I said it), are frustratingly complex yet simple. Krug’s frail voice makes everything sound dramatic, his guitar lines blend together like a string section.

I hope he continues to be as prolific as he has been past couple years. He’s the best composer working these days. There I said that too.

Favorite Track: The Courtesan Has Sung
- Austin

14. 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.
- Nick

13. Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger
Delicately understated and sincere. Gone is the self-indulgent Adams who thought everything he quickly shitted belonged on tape.

I can’t put a finger on the prevailing “theme” of this album—it’s not like “Heartbreaker” where everything’s about loss, or “Love is Hell” which deals with angst—but I think that adds to the attraction. The emotions range over top a landscape of just good, good music

It does almost act like a greatest hits album.

Favorite Track: Two
- Austin

12. 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.
- Nick

11. Feist - The Reminder
It’s always hard figuring out where to put your long-haul favorites from the year, those albums that you got into early on and which, though they might lack the shiny appeal of bands you’ve discovered in the last month in the all-out listening-sprint that is required for writing a top 25 list, are nonetheless great. I’ve loved Feist since Let It Die showed up at WGRE in 2004, to when I saw her with like 50 people in 2005, to when I saw her with 5000 people in Williamsburg this year. She makes totally delightful yet lasting music that goes down easy but has enough charm to stick around. And that voice. Airy, heady, weathered and surprisingly expressive, especially on cuts like Intuition and So Sorry, the more low-key minimal-production tracks. But who could deny that 1,2,3,4 isn’t one of the most fun songs of 2007? Clean fun! She’s all over my top 25 most played of 2007, and for good reason.
- Blake

10. Okkervil River - The Stage Names
Unlike Mike and Austin, I didn't love Black Sheep Boy, despite its supposed positive qualities like wrenching heartbreak and authentic depression. Both Nick and I tried to get into it, but the only song we seemed to like was the opening track, a quiet little ditty that the band didn't even write. Maybe it was the exuberance of living in New York, where depression doesn't manifest itself quietly, but in loud, self-destructive behavior, Walkmen's "The Rat" style. The album just seemed dusty and distant. So it was a relief when the opening cut on The Stage Names began with the sound of palm-muted guitar strings keeping a quick beat, which gives way to loud, raucous singing and the occasional "woo hoo!" The second song doesn't slow down either, and suddenly Okkervil River is a confident band with gusto, without losing any of the literary qualities--there are characters and personas all over the album. Generally the idea of a literary songwriter bugs me--it comes off pretentious and fake and just hackneyed, but I really don't feel that way about Okkervil River. It's honest rather than pretentious, while maintaining the mystery of storytelling which is the reason we're drawn to it in the first place.
- Blake

9. Burial - Untrue
I recently read Derrida's Spectres of Marx, and I'm not sure how much “sonic hauntology” actually applies to this album. I understand that Untrue shows lots of “traces;” I'm just not sure how much different it is from, say, a Lil Wayne album with billions of samples, or the Go! Team. I fear that people just get excited because no one knows who Burial is and the album sounds spooky. Still, though, this is an album worthy of serious attempts at interpretation; it achieves feelings of loneliness and creepiness that I want to think more about, and the mood is one that makes me think of important questions of identity. I never could get into Burial's first album very much, but Untrue has blown me away; I've listened to this album more than any other in the past two months.
- Michael

8. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Was Animal Collective seriously on Conan O'Brien? National television?

As much of a mystery as Animal Collective is, this year provided some glimpse into their music-making process with the solo releases of Avey Tare and Panda Bear, their two lead singers. After Person Pitch came out, we were all astounded, and thought that maybe Panda Bear really was the genius in AC. Avey Tare's solo album with wife was fine, but nowhere near as astounding as Panda Bear's. But then out came Strawberry Jam, and Avery Tare is all over it. His vocals are the most compelling part and carry the album, not to mention anchor "For Reverend Green," the albums centerpiece.

"For Reverend Green. " Enough said. Just keep listening to that song over and over, until it becomes a spiritual experience. When I saw them play it live at South St. Seaport with the sun setting and the Brooklyn Bridge behind them, it did for me. But seriously, that song is ridiculous. It established why Avey Tare is such a talented vocalist, for one, (or at the very least totally original) because he makes that song work and no one else could ever sing it. Panda Bear somehow comes through with more astonishing tracks: I love "Derek," the lost Person Pitch song, a song which codified the feelings I had toward my childhood golden retriever, and her death two years ago. #1, the song they played on Conan, demonstrates well why AC needs both singers: the airy Panda Bear background as a setting for the rough-edged snap of Avey Tare. I think this is their best behind Sung Tongs, which will always astound and inspire me because it was the first thing I heard and when I realized music could do things I'd never realized.
- Blake

7. Jay-Z - American Gangster

I always wondered how long it would be before some ambitious rapper would take the 1970s brassy soul that has littered some of the most critically successful rap songs of the past few years and decide to use it as an entire sonic palette. Never in my wildest dreams did I hope that the one and only Hova would be the one to step up to the plate. In my mind it is this big-band/soul sound itself that is the “concept” in this pseudo-autobigraphical concept album.
- Michael

6. The National - Boxer
Climbed higher on my list with each listen. Their sound must originate from some smoky, basement bar in the middle of country where smoking inside is still legal. Matt Beringer’s voice is unshakable, the apocalypse could be raining down around him and I don’t his cadence would change.

Also since Sufjan didn’t release an album this year this is the closest I could get—he plays piano on the outstanding ‘Ada.’

Favorite Track: Slow, Slow
- Austin

5. Radiohead - In Rainbows
Dear Radiohead,

I’m sure you thought you would be first, and by all rights you should be. Without you this list wouldn’t exist. You’re the reason I love music.

You’ve definitely tested my faith over the years. Yes, eventually, all the albums were enjoyable but nothing approached the complete immersion, the complete escape I achieved with The Bends or OK Computer.

I kept waiting for an album I didn’t have to wrap my mind around, an album I liked immediately and could play for others and they would like it immediately instead of just asking me to play ‘Creep.’

As I waited, my music tastes matured and expanded thanks to the training you had given me. I had patience for music, I let it grow and build and glow in my ears. Months passed when I didn’t listen to a single one of your songs.

Then, when I wasn’t even paying attention, when I wasn’t obsessively guessing what new songs would make the album cut, you released this. After the misleading intro of ’15 Steps’ you launch into a simply blissful album. One after another the wonderful, accessible but complex, rolled across my ears—it was the album I had been waiting for, everything I had wanted.

So why aren’t you number one? I’m not sure, there are all these conflicting feelings, I’m so confused. After finally getting all that I wanted I’m not experiencing the complete endorphin rush of fulfillment I had expected.

I’ve decided we need to see other people, so I’ve put you at two. I hope we can we still be friends.

Best,

- Austin

4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
As much as I loves James Murphy's early singles, I wasn't blown away by the first LCD album; it seemed too thrown together, lacking cohesion or other album-qualities. Boy, he fixed that problem for his sophomore release. Sound of Silver flows from beginning to end, maintaining a consistent sound that never gets old. Of course this album also contains some of the most socially relevant songs for our zeitgeist, from everyone's favorite “All My Friends” (mine too) to the subtle “Get Innocuous.” And “North American Scum” can lead me to do embarrassing things on a European dancefloor.
- Michael

2. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala and 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.
- Nick

I heard "Bros" last year and forced Nick and Austin to listen to it when we played our top five songs of 2006 for each other. I think it came after Austin played some fast, beat-heavy song that he used to work out to. Then I put on "Bros," that starts with an owl hoot and needless to say, we didn't make it through all 12 minutes of it.

I think I know what the problem was--you're supposed to listen to Panda Bear alone. Yes, it's a headphones album, so that contributes. But all my feelings about this album are tied to very private experiences. "Bros" reminds me of snow falling, which is probably because the first time I heard it, I was walking around some Brooklyn brownstones at night and snow was falling softly all over the city, Joyce-style. It was one of the most beautiful and profound moments I've ever had in New York City. I felt utterly alone and utterly connected to the universe, etc., etc.. Another time I was alone one night and put "Ponytail" on repeat and fell asleep to it, and had dreams that were dreams I needed to have, and I woke up with a better understanding of myself. Last month, I woke up in the middle of the night having a bizarre panic attack while traveling, and feeling very, very confusedly unsettled. Nothing would put my mind to rest but "Search for Delicious."

I don't know why this is, why Panda Bear and Animal Collective in general are able to create these musical moments. Perhaps they just give us an abstract musical space to project our own fears, thoughts, dreams. But they really are artists, and this is really meaningful music.
- Blake

Do you remember when it took a few listens to warm up to Jens Lekman albums? I would tell a friend about I Want to Be Your Dog: “It sounds like boring mopey lo-fi music, but he actually writes profoundly affecting songs; just give it a try.” With Night Falls Over Kortedala, all you need is one listen and you're hooked. The arrangements are grandiose, the samples are over-the-top fun, and it has killer beats—seriously. And yeah, the lyrics are really simple and straightforward, but that Lekman's schtick; he has an album persona straight from a Capra film, one which is to me the most moving of modern rock persona's, only matched by the overwhelming personalities of Weezy or Ghost. And even though he's being really genuine and all that, Lekman tells great stories, and can make me as emotionally involved in his dilemmas as he apparently is. I think that Lekman's development as a producer and arranger (he could always write songs) has been one of the best pop/rock stories of the past few years, and Lekman has become quite possibly my favorite singer/songwriter of this generation.
- Michael

1. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Truthfully I’ve always listened to Spoon out of a sense of obligation. The same sense that makes you buy the Economist when you really want the Maxim with Buffy on the cover. I’ve always appreciated Daniel’s perfection of song craft, and the band’s virtuous use of negative, silent space within their songs, but the seemed songs too obviously crafted, too deliberate.

But then came this album.

It’s hard to write about. It’s flashes of independent brilliance delicately strung together. It is perfectly etched but strikes imperfect emotional chords. I don’t know how they wrote ‘Finer Feelings’ or where the bass line in ‘Don’t you Evah’ comes from or how they devised the handclaps on ‘Underdog.’ I’ve listened to it repeatedly.

It never gets old. Never ceases to amaze.

Favorite Track: Finer Feelings
- Austin

Best Albums of 2006

2007-01-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

25. Margot and the Nuclear So and So's
I owe my discovery of this local Indianapolis band completely to RJ. As far as band names go, let’s be honest, their’s sucks—it’s trying to be too indie. For that reason alone I didn’t want to give them a chance, despite the desperate urging of RJ. It wasn’t until he visited and forced me to listen that I realized RJ’s enthusiasm was completely founded. Every track on this album sounds vaguely familiar, I know I’ve heard a particular melody or arrangement before, but I don’t mind. They seem to take the familiar and make it their own, pairing well constructed songs with thoughtful lyrics about life in the Midwest. Maybe I like them because they are from the middle of the country and I get homesick every once in awhile, but this is truly a great album and I would recommend it to anyone.
- Austin

24. Morrissey - Ringleader of the Tormentors
I’m probably going to be dismissed for putting this album so high, but isn’t everyone allowed an indulgence on their favorite album lists? One which they’ve enjoyed immensely despite the usual built-in suspicion that ought to be present towards albums put out by 50 year old, gray-haired men, who take themselves very seriously? Albums which, as Smiths devotees might complain, are so well-produced and lacking in Johnny Marr’s interesting guitar work as to sound scrubbed clean, corporate-sounding, and, in the end totally irrelevant? Okay, okay. All interesting points. But the fact is I listened to this album almost more than any other, found it interesting and emotionally complex, and, most importantly, it was my entry point into the fascinating cult personality of Steven Patrick Morrissey. His irony, artifice, his witticisms, leading me to reread Oscar Wilde and start listening to Elvis and read about James Dean. Could it be that my unhealthy love of all things Smiths/Morrissey this year (Thanks, Paul) is clouding my opinion of this album? I couldn’t say, really. But I do know I loved it--the self-satisfied, even smug, critiques of politics and religion, the admittedly maudlin songs about abusive stepfathers, the sentimental-leaning attempts at exploring love and sex and the divine. My english degree scolds me for liking this stuff, but I can’t help being affected emotionally, something I can’t dismiss easily. His more acclaimed and similar album, You Are the Quarry, doesn’t interest me that much, which probably means that my love of this album is incidental to its release date and what it led me to read and think about otherwise. But the fact that it consumed me so gave it a prominent place on this list.
- Blake

23. Thursday - A City by the Light Divided
Confession #2: I’ve always liked Thursday, since their first album. Their music is mostly indefinable, not exactly emo, not straight up rock, not new age. I think the reviewer for Pitchfork put it aptly when he described their music as shit. Call me scatological. However, as much as one may enjoy the smell of his own shit he still lights a match to clear out the room—I haven’t shared my adoration of Thursday with most people. But I never thought they could release album like this one. They haven’t changed their sound, they’ve simply perfected it. Relentless drums, flawless guitar blending, pulsing bass and copious amounts of screaming. Their tale-tell melodic singing to bloodcurdling screaming dynamic is taken to new levels on this album as they sing about religion, car crashes and the death of family members. I can’t help myself, I know they’re over dramatic; I shouldn’t like lines like This is all we’ve ever known of God/Fine with me let me touch you now—but I do. If you’ve never listened to them I wouldn’t recommend this album. You wont’ like it and then you will hate me.
- Austin

22. Herbert - Scales
As Jordan mentioned, Herbert has been around for so long and put out so much, but it took last year’s Roisin Murphy album for me to even learn about him. That’s a shame; I like the old albums of his I have listened to since then. I discovered him just in time, though; I don’t know what I would have done without Scales this year. Last year, I thought that Jamie Lidell had perfected the subtle art of white-boy soul meets glitchy electronica; I had no idea. The songs on Scale are perfect soulful dance gems; the melodies are catchy, the lyrics are interesting, the production is perfect. There have been several analyses of the political implications of Herbert’s songs on Scale; what I love most about this is how much work and thought a political interpretation requires, how subtle it is. I don’t want to go into that now, but look it up if you’re interested; here’s a starting point. What really keeps me coming back, though, is how catchy this album is without being overbearing. I have a feeling I will be grooving to this album for years to come.
- Michael

21. Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye
I never listened to Junior Boys' first album, so I came to this thing with fresh ears after reading a 9.0 Pitchfork review (which I think was a bit unwarranted, and the reviewer seemed to be rating it on very personal reactions to the album and not very objectively). That said, this album is so well crafted and compelling, and lives up to so many repetivive, abusive listening sessions, that I'm ecstatic over it. From the playful poetry of the lyrics ("you're high-staked /you're right-faked / floor creeps / and deep sleeps / you catch up / you young pup / you old dog / you bullfrog") to melodies and harmonies that clearly fell out of heaven (the chorus bit in "In the Morning" where they switch and go up on "too young") to the spick-and-span sound of the production, not a note out of place--it all adds up to smart, danceable album, which is a rare combination I'd say.
- Blake

20. 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.
- Nick

19. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I am Dreaming
I’ve been thinking for a solid two weeks how to explain why this album is at the top. It always was, from the moment Nick sent out the email ordering us to compose top 25 lists. Number one: Sunset Rubdown, everything else involved much more debate. I don’t think I can adequately explain why, but I’ll try anyways.This album is a novel. I don’t know what famous author would write a companion novel to this music; perhaps Borges (though he never wrote a novel) or Angela Carter. The novel would take place in a windowless, basement bar in some lost coastal town. In this sepia-toned setting various carnival-esque figures would gather every night to drink themselves closer to Hell. Each page would draw the reader deeper and deeper into this mystical setting of desperation where the small whore of the bar would proclaim If I ever hurt you it will be in self-defense. The climax would come at the most desperate point in the album when some character, his life falling down around him, would shout out amidst the low whisperings of the bar Fuck me and someone else would say okay. But then something glorious would happen, hinted at by the song “Q-chord.” That brief glimpse of hope would disappear with the line oceans never listen to us anyway until the 5:11 mark of the last song. Then, in an instant, the reader, the listener and every other character would be in a place where lovers have wings and men have faithful hands and would make good boyfriends.
- Austin

18. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
I don’t know how well you, the reader, know me, but I am a pretty rabid Yoof fan. This might seem contrary to my heavy emphasis on pop melodies and production, and I think it is; I’m not sure what made me start to love the masters of distortion, but I do, and they are a definite contender for the coveted all-time top 5 list. Anyway, on some level, I think that everything avant-garde and noise-y that I like stems from its similarities to Sonic Youth. Which is why this album, the band’s best work in years (like since 1000 leaves at least, maybe even [gasp] Washing Machine), is so ironic; this song is not avant-garde or distorted at all. It is a great rock record, full of melodies, singing, normal guitar solos—rock stuff. Not to say that there is no distortion on this record, but it is used as an addition to the song structure, as opposed to vice versa. Like Jordan (or someone) said, the guitars are really restrained. And Christ, songs like “Jams Run Free” and “Incinerate” are so catchy, anthemic, and beautiful. I’m pretty sure that the last two Youth releases have also made my Top 10 lists, and, as said before, this one outshines them; let’s just hope everyone’s favorite aging hipsters can keep this streak going.
- Michael

17. 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.
- Nick

16. The Liars - Drum's Not Dead
This is the kind of album--mysterious, awe-inspiring, emotionally draining, ambitious, elastic, tangled, beautiful--that makes me wish language was as abstract and flexible, as possible to reach for the infinite, as music. The kind of album that reminds me, forcefully, that music is perhaps the greatest, most universal, most capable of art forms. Which makes writing something like this futile, doomed to sound overexcited and overwrought. Description of the music, I think, would highlight only those qualities in this album which are conscious (as opposed to subconscious), like the conceptual backbone of the whole thing, a dialogue (or battle) between creativity and doubt, confidence and second-guessing. That’s all interesting, but it’s the subconscious effects of the music that has made me listen to it so obsessively since the first afternoon I put it on, at which point I had to stop all I was doing and listen to every epiphany-filled turn (the incredible falsetto at the start of “A Visit From Drum”), every texture and the shape of the music (The incredible buzzing, robotic, angry sound at the start of “It’s All Blooming Now Mt. Heart Attack”), every emotion, until, assaulted and exhausted and drained, yet strangely content, the final track took all that abrasiveness and exhaustion and noise and chaos and let it unfold into the most beautiful denouement I think I’ve ever heard. In it’s context especially, but even without, it’s the most affecting, emotional song I’ve heard all year. The Liars live, back to Brooklyn from Berlin, was the best show I saw in 2006, full of the most unrelenting energy and ambition. How is it that amidst all the mayhem there is a powerful emotional core? I couldn’t say, and I don’t want to, because these kinds of paradoxes are the territory of music.
- Blake

15. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
When I picked up this album I didn’t really know anything about it. I’d just skimmed through the “recommended” section of a couple of sites when I was desperate for new music. I didn’t know he was a 19-year-old American when I started listening I just knew the music was fantastic. I’ve always been intrigued by near- and middle-eastern music (can you call this music that?) and this fit my tastes perfectly. I love the horns, the accordion and I love, love his voice. Over the summer I went to a free concert in a dried out pool in Brooklyn to watch these guys play. That was the first time I realized I’d just been listening to a kid. But his voice was impeccable, as were the arrangements. I watched his tiny frame belt out that all-too-mature voice and reveled in it.
- Austin

14. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
After watching the Scorcese documentary, like many people, I began the long path of making my way back through Dylan's albums. It just happens that way, and you have no choice but listen to him an no one else. In the midst of that, this strange sort of shock hit me: Dylan's alive. He's somewhere standing around, possible spouting off Dadaist poetry about commissioning his clips and getting his bird bathed and burned. I started listening to his Theme Time Radio show and reveling in the weirdness of the way he talks and just becoming a intrigued by his personality. Then this album came out and, after loving it from the first listen, I've come to think that it potentially ranks up there with what he was putting out in the 60s. I think the songs are working on a number of levels, and I think it's very complex and quietly a masterpiece. And perhaps I'm saying this because I'm trying to convince myself just as much that this album is that good, to shed the nostalgia and forgive Dylan for his possible tendency to be derivative and to realize that he's got every right to be predictable, because he invented the things people are blaming him for sounding like. People like Pitchfork are suspicious that an aging world of music critics heapspraise on Dylan because he's Dylan, but I really think this is one of the best releases this year, by far. He's doing whatever he wants to do, and for as long as he'll do it, people who are objective or gushing fans forsaking their critical impluse, will listen. I'll be joining them.
- Blake

13. Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers
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.
-Nick

12. Asobi Seksu - Citrus
I think there are a few of us who have this album hiding, ready to emerge in our top ten lists, and we all think it's kind of our secret. I, for one, find it difficult to resist any kind of shoegazing tendencies. And when it's fronted by a female vocalist, it's doubly hard. Then when she sings "put your tongue up to my battery," I give in. To this gorgeous, well-crafted, highly-original, sweeping-yet-intricate album. It makes me so happy to listen to it. I love the way lush, distorting guitars absorb me. I love that she sings in Japanese, it's so charming. Sometimes listening to this entire album is like slipping into this foreign dream, where I've been shrunk and I'm being led by the hand through a forest of bonsai trees, with a big paper bag over my head. Other times, I'm in Brooklyn (where the band is from) at a house party in the summer, and everyone is smiling, and there are these big, swirling guitars like funnels of colorful light all over the place, and I'm hanging upside down by my knees from a rafter in the ceiling. Oh man is it beautiful.
-Blake

11. Tapes n' Tapes - The Loon
I’d admit, if pressed, that this is a flawed album. Maybe it’s because it came at a time in the year when, aglow with all the great releases of 2005, I was beginning to be sorely disappointed that something hadn’t come out which I was genuinely obsessed with, that hit more than one spot in my proverbial musical appetite. I’d kinda liked the Mylo album, The Knife was leaving me interested but confused, The Strokes album was depressing, and I was briefly enamored with Man Man until they started they began to annoy me. Where to turn? How about an album that collected a bunch of influences--Pavement, Pixies, Talking Heads--and wrapped them up in one amazing release of quick songs, interesting guitar playing, a dynamic vocalist, and raw energy? Weirdo lyrics that make sense to me--I always fall for that. Depressing content and with sprawling, possibly incoherent musicianship to counterweight: an effective combination. I knew I liked this album from the start, but it was also an album that grew on me more than any other--the incoherency began to gel into an emotionally complex picture, the loose-cannon musicianship became purposeful and controlled, the humor suddenly less ironic and more genuinely laughable.
- Blake

10. 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.
- Nick

9. Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block
So I had the luck of hearing the new Peter, Bjorn and John album early. And I mean early; my friend brought back a ’45 from the record label he worked at back before the album was released in Europe, which was way before it was released in the US. It was “Young Folks,” and we had just seen the Concretes that week; we ate the single up. Pitchfork didn’t like it so much, though, giving it a 3 or something on their singles review. I got to see the group in Berlin a few weeks later, on a mis-scheduled tour; they didn’t have any releases in Germany at the time, and had to play to a crowd of almost no one in a restaurant that charged 1 euro cover. It was great for me, who got to see an engaging if short live performance sitting right in front of what most probably thought was a local band; the show was really enjoyable. The album was also stellar, and quickly became my late spring sound of choice; I loved the catchy pop melodies and elegant production; songs like “Paris 2004” and “Amsterdam” haunted me for days on end. Pitchfork did not like the album very much, though, giving it a 6.something, I think (this is going somewhere, I promise). Ok, flash forward to this fall, with the trio taking the blagosphere by storm; everyone loved “Young Folks,” everyone loved “Amsterdam,” etc. Which they should. How does pitchfork respond? They add “Young Folks” to their infinite mixtape, and re-review Writer’s Block, this time giving it recommended or best new music or something. Those fucking two-faced revisionists! I was outraged, I am outraged, and no one knows/cares. Of course, I shouldn’t care about that website any more, but they didn’t do justice to one of the best albums of the year, and then they try to act like they did once it becomes popular.
- Michael

8. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
This is the third album in my top 10 with an audacious first track close to 10 minutes long, which suggests a combination of arrogance and theatricality, and, when appropriate, genius. Austin and I had a couple email exchanges in which we discussed, with some degree of dismay and frustration, that the Destroyer album was once again coming ‘round the bend to completely ruin us and any chance for listening to anything else. All that had to happen was that first track, a little seduction which happened to stretch for enough time to leave you unable to do much but fold and submit to the textured, abrasive, idiosyncratic, familiar, distorted, weird literary world of Dan Bejar. The music is so strange and willfully queer that it’s remarkably interesting to more than a few people, both immediate and purposefully wearing its strangeness as a kind of distance from the listener. But it’s such a devoted, complete vision, a kind of shrine to one man’s outlandish bizarreness, that it’s endlessly engaging and satisfied repeated excavations into its interior. His voice is the perfect metaphor for this: nontraditional and making no effort to sound normal, but once you hear it enough times, as expressive as anything you’ve heard, malleable and creative and doing things many other voices wouldn’t dream of doing. Getting somewhere artistically means, at least at first, the method will seem too out-there, but this is merely the time where we’re readjusting to another way of seeing the world and we’ll be rewarded once we get there. At least in this case, we get nine minutes thirty-two seconds to come around.
- Blake

7. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
For me this is a cop-out position for the new Clipse album; 3 months from now, this album will either have risen to my top 5 or dropped out of my top 10, I’m sure. It’s just too unrelenting not too; the verses are demanding, the beats are violent, the production is in-your-face. Pusha T and Malice are much less lovable than they were on the first Clipse album. And this is why I love Hell Hath No Fury; it is unforgiving and dark while progressive and forward-thinking. Back in the day, I used to be all about “intelligent” rap music, you know the kind, Roots/Tribe/Talib, rapping about more abstract (no pun intended) subjects like politics and philosophy, groups that didn’t promote violence or drugs, instead opting for more “positive” lyrics. These days I think: fuck that. Intelligent rap music, intentionally or not, is the cultural appropriation of hip-hop culture by white people, who don’t want to deal with the unseemly aspects of the class struggle that permeate hip-hop culture. Well, as far as I can tell, it’s there, and it seems much more real to spit verses about slinging crack than to observing the problems from the outside like tamer hip-hop acts do. It’s the difference between talking about the culture and showing the culture by being a part of it. And of course I hate the term “intelligent rap;” it’s not only culturally classist, but also just wrong; Pusha T and Malice make some of the most clever and fresh wordplay that I have heard in rap music since, well, maybe forever.
- Michael

6. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love
I like Pieces of the People We Love more than Echoes.
- Michael
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.
- Nick

5. Yo La Tengo - I'm Not Afriad of You and Will Beat Your Ass
OK, so at this point just about everyone has had something to say about this album, and everyone has said something different. In fact, everything on this top 5 is somewhere else on someone’s list, but that’s beside the point. My experience with Yo La Tengo, at least is long but intermittent, following my entire experience with indie rock music in general. Back when I first got into bands like Pavement and early REM, during freshman year of high school, I totally got into Yo La’s I can hear the heart beating as one; a few months later, typical for high-school me, I pretty much started ignoring the album as well as the band and the genre of college rock in general, moving on to third-wave emo or something. A year and a half later, while I was digging Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, I absolutely adored And then nothing turned itself inside out, only to discard it in favor of neo-psych like the flaming lips and sparklehorse. When I go back through the band’s catalogue, then, I feel really nostalgic and sentimental; the sound reminds me, at the same time, of multiple and influential parts of my life that the band led me through. The new album, I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass, is the perfect album for this different-at-once sound, sampling all the best moments of the band’s career, including the old albums that I haven’t yet fully appreciated. It has long distortion-y epics like “Pass me the Hatchet” and “The Story of Yo La Tengo,” it has rocky pop gems like “Beanbag Chair,” it has lilting pop gems like “I Feel Like Going Home” and “Black Flowers.” Everything I want, and still unified-sounding, a complete album and vision (I disagree with you here, Austin). I wrote a review for The Depauw that said that this was one of the best albums Yo La Tengo has released; I stand by that. In a year that left me feeling absolutely disenfranchised with contemporary rock, a few veteran groups (Sonic Youth, Sparklehorse, Jarvis Cocker) reminded me that indie rock can still speak to me and be relevant, if not in its most current form (fuck you Decemberists!). Yo La Tengo did the best job of that for me.
- Michael

4. Hot Chip - The Warning
I think this is the only album on everyone’s list; am I right? I win, though, since I have it highest. Actually, from what I have read, I get the feeling that if all of you had had more time with this (and if Jordan would stop liking his brooding shit), it might be in everyone’s top 5 for the year. I have had the luck of getting this album right when it came out, back in Berlin; as you know from last year’s list, I was already in love with the group. I didn’t really take them seriously, though; it was hard to with all of the white-boy goofiness of Coming on Strong. I had no idea, therefore, of just how mature The Warning was going to be. Not that it isn’t goofy and fun; it certainly is that. As opposed to the last album, though, the new one has all kinds of songs, slow ones with sad ones, serious ones with goofy ones sometimes with elements of both in the same song (see the title track). Like the old effort, though, the band’s lyrics are clever and poignant. I never thought that an album could be at once dancey and profound; this album certainly does that.
-Michael

3. Mylo - Destroy Rock n Roll
Listen. Repeat. Listen. Repeat. That’s what this album was like when I first picked it up. I can seriously say I was addicted, in a bad/good/glorious way. If I went a couple days without listening to it my ears started to itch, I started sweating and an overall sense of depression swept over me. Eventually I weened myself off, but I still go back constantly like the smoker who’s convinced himself he’s quit and so allows himself the occasional cigarette. Slowly pulling the smoke into his lungs and exhaling it through his nose, watching tender curls play in the light, he decides it would be okay if he has one more. Listen. Repeat.
- Austin

1. tie Belle and Sebastian and Cat Power

Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
“Hey, is that the new Belle & Sebastian?” Yes, we used this joke a couple of times the moment Nick or I downloaded this album, and our third roommate Max, was home (not all that common). We all three listened to it together in our tiny Manhattan apartment and couldn’t help cracking a smile during almost every song--this was not at all the “sad bastard music” of High Fidelity fame. This was ebullient, happy, complex, catchy, literary, clever, emotional, imaginative collection of near-perfect pop songs. Why am I a sucker for this combination? For pop songs that tightrope-walk the wire-thin line between utter happiness and complete despair? That something so strange and personal, an emotional life so depressing in a literal sense, can be transformed into universal pop-inflected pleasure? Because I think it’s a matter of genius. Sometimes this attempt is cloying, sometimes depressing, sometimes fake-sounding and simplistic. Rarely can an album balance heavy lyric content without being weighed down, crafting pop lifeboats around it and improving the quality of life for people who listen everywhere. Twin Cinema, an album I began loving intensely shortly after we had all published our 2005 lists, did it last year. Murdoch and co. did it this year. I don’t have a good response to Austin’s complaints, but all I know is I think this album is totally wonderful and, save for a few songs from their very early career (check out “The State I Am In” and the rest of Push Barman to Open Old Wounds), is full of their best moments yet. -
Blake

Cat Power - The Greatest
How could I resist this album’s title? Seriously, though, I have considered this album my favorite of the year since April or so, and nothing has been able to topple it since then. For a couple weeks I though the Rapture might, but it didn’t have the lasting power that this album does. I don’t really have that much to say about it; everyone already knows it, everyone already likes it. Maybe I should start with why I love it, then. As you can see if you look through the archives, back in January or whenever, I reviewed this and gave it a measly 8.1. The haunting melodies, though, don’t just give up after a few weeks of listens; they bring you back, make you think about the songs in different ways. The best part of the album, though, is how Chan Marshall ends all the songs. Why does “Living proof” end there, couldn’t it keep going? I want to hear more of “Could We”! This album is a clinic in how to keep your melodies but cutting them off; too many indie artists like to play song structures out until they die. Of course, the fact that I’m talking about catchy melodies and not introspective lyrics is certainly offensive to lots of Cat Power fans; that’s why they love Moon Pix while I love this album. Not that The Greatest is shallow or empty; on the contrary, I think the lyrics are just as poignant as any other Cat Power album, which is saying a lot. The moods of the songs are more varied than those in other Cat Power albums, though, which is another reason I love this album. It takes you through highs and lows; this is probably what Jordan meant when he talked about the lack of sad songs on The Greatest. For me, though, The Greatest can be the saddest of all her whole catalogue, because of this very diversity; the highs of “Could We” and “Islands” make the drops of “Hate” and “Empty Shell” all the more dramatic. Anyway, I haven’t said anything about the warm Memphis sound, but you know all about that already. It’s my favorite album; there, I said it.
- Michael

Cat Power-The Greatest

2006-01-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

8.1 out of 10

Okay, this is already on my blog, but I thought I would post it here too, since it is a straight album review.
-Michael

There are some bands that have such an emotional effect on many of their fans that it becomes a disadvantage for a reviewer to be a fan of the group. The rabid reviewer not only cannot describe why he/she likes the new album, but can also even be at a lack of words as to what the new album sounds like. Cat Power is one of these dangerously powerful artists. Björk is another. So are the Fiery Furnaces, if you’re Rob Mitchum.

To my advantage or disadvantage, I am not one of those madly in love with Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power. I have grown up around friends who adore her, but her songs always seemed too slow and lacking melody, marking the music for me what Barry from High Fidelity would call “sad bastard music.” I did like, though not love, Moon Pix, What Would the Community Think was pretty good, and I really like her cover of “I’ve found a Reason” on The Covers Record. After familiarity with 4 or 5 records over several years, though, as of a month ago I still had Chan on my “I like them but I still think they’re overrated” list.

Cat Power, overrated no more. Her new album, The Greatest (no, not a hits collection), grounds whatever aloofness may have been present in earlier releases, gives weight to the airiness of previous records. Beginning with the first single and opening track “The Greatest,” you can tell that something is different. The lyrics are still great and bittersweet, but the instrumentation is all different, taking on the Memphis sound that sounds more like a 60s Dusty Springfield or 90s Bob Dylan backing band. Chan’s vocals are still dark and sweet, but on “The Greatest,” they take on a more rugged, almost husky quality (is husky the right word for a singer so delicate?).

As the album keeps going, though, the songs get even deeper, more melodic, and generally more appealing. “Living Proof” would make a great follow-up single to “The Greatest,” and the love ballad “Could We” is marvelous in its delicacy. Amy Phillips from pitchfork was just wrong about “Where is My Love,” which sounds more like a beautiful modern standard than the bore she made it out to be. That song is followed by what may be the best song on the album, the lilting “The Moon,” which wafts lyrically through love and heartbreak in such subtle, uncommon ways.

This album of pop gems isn’t completely removed from earlier suicide-whisperings though; songs like “After it All” and “Hate” sound like earlier Cat Power songs with different instrumentation. Taken on this album of southern country-pop (not pop-country), though, the songs seem to fit more rather than sound more out of place. If anything, The Greatest has shown me the value of earlier Cat Power through the contrast of this new, Michael-friendly stuff.

Overall, maybe Heather Phares from allmusic is right; this is a Cat Power album for music fans who aren’t particularly Cat Power fans. I love it, and I’m not one. I think, though, that after repeat listens the fan club can learn to appreciate this album for its new take on Chan’s already established singer-songwriter sound. Meanwhile, The Greatest can serve as an excellent introduction to Cat Power’s catalogue, and can also stand as a welcome respite for those of us depressed by the fizzling of alt-country, those who want a little more classicism in the indie-rock scene.

Mixtape Wars: Mellon Collie

2006-01-08T06:47:00.000-08:00

MIXTAPE WARS:
Mellon Collie
Austin vs. Nick

The challenge was simple. The much maligned Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness has fallen in stature over the years to its bright and shiny precursor Siamese Dream, and we intend to return the luster to the righteous behemoth by making condensing the work to a managable hour to appeal to those without the time to plunge through this two hour-plus epic. Whether we’ve been blinded by nostalgia is not worth getting into. But the task was hard.

Austin’s Mellon Collie:

1. Jelly Belly – This album is no longer an opus, it’s a kick-you-in-the-teeth rock album meant to surpass Siamese Dream so no starting out with that wimpy instrumental shit. We must start out with a bang.

2. Bullet With Butterfly Wings – In my opinion “Zero” is the perfect follower to "Jelly Belly", but in trying to change the feel of this album, to make it an album that somewhat matches up with it’s predecessor “Bullet” seemed the more logical choice.

3. Here Is No Why – On Siamese Dream “Today” cools things down but keeps the crunching guitars, which “Here is No Why” does as well as filling the coveted three spot with a one of the best tracks on the original album.

4. Love – This song is pushed further back on Dawn to Dusk but matches up with “Hummer” off Siamese Dream better than other tracks and it effectively keeps the crunch guitar effect going.

5. Zero – Best opening riff they have. With the previous four songs the listener should not get bored (a complaint most people have with the first two tracks of the original) and this song should kick the listener on his ass within five seconds.

6. Bodies – On Siamese Dream the Pumpkins really slow things down with “Disarm” in the six spot but for some reason I couldn’t give up the momentum the album’s been building to this point so I reached back to Twilight to Starlight and pulled this song way up.

7. 1979 – This is the best track on Mellon Collie and maybe in the Pumpkins entire catalogue, but by God they make you work for it on the original. They pushed it to the fifth track on the second disc, which added to the songs allure, as a listener you felt like you’d discovered it. I almost pushed it even farther back than seven, but I got anxious and while listening I found myself anticipating it far too much to wait longer than seven spots.

8. Muzzle – You need an uplifting song following “1979” not that it’s a depressing song but it sort of forces you inward and you need to be brought back out and this is probably one of the most uplifting songs the Pumpkins have recorded.

9. In The Arms of Sleep – For some reason I just couldn’t pick up the momentum after “Muzzle” my ears were tired and needed a break, this song was perfect.

10. Where Boys Fear To Tread – To be honest this song does sound a bit out of place, but I like it too much not to have it on the album. It works better when you know you still have a whole disc to follow it but serves to bring the slowness of “In The Arms of Sleep.”

11. Stumbeline – Both of these songs address the issues of loneliness and fear, just in completely different ways. So while they sounds completely different sonically I think the themes allow them to be side by side.

12. X.Y.U. – Siamese Dream had the eight minute “Silverfuck” so the new Mellon Collie needed a long rock song that was overindulgent. It came down to this one and “Thru the Eyes of a Ruby” and I’ve just always liked this one better.

13. To Forgive – The album’s run out of steam after “X.Y.U.” and all it can offer up is this tender song as a closer…

14. Tonight, Tonight – But wait! What’s this? Strings? What is this new sound emanating from the Pumpkins? It’s the sound that did open the original album and should have opened this one had I not been trying to create Siamese Dream II.

Total running time: 57:30

Nick’s Mellon Collie:

1. Tonight, Tonight
Well how else could it have started? The instrumental that starts the real album is really just an intro to the swelling strings that soar from this song. The song needs no explanation, it’s greatness, I don’t believe, is in any question. I thought briefly about stealing the b-side “Tonite Reprise” as sort of an intro to the real song, but half its charm is the hidden quality of discovering it for yourself. It should stay only with the devoted.

2. Muzzle
Deleting portions of the album was hard enough, but chopping it up felt like destroying steal. This song is number 12 on Dawn to Dusk. What I decided to do was place like minded material together, hoping to stretch a certain mood long enough, until it would eventually get destroyed by other styles. So the follow up to “Tonight, Tonight”’s soaring romance fell natural to the warm-hearted “Muzzle”. Probably a ballad in it’s inception, and played like one on their remarkable pre-farewell concert at Chicago’s United Center.

3. 1979
Continuing with the nostalgia trip comes a song that has only grown more remarkable each year. Putting it so close to the beginning feels little greedy, but I guess this is the point of the whole exercise.

4. Thirty-Three
Not necessarily the best song on the album, this one still probably comes closest to encapsulating the message of this album the best. It’s gorgeous melody and reaffirming chorus of “Love can last forever” hide some pretty troubled doubts that tinge the beautiful veneer. Most people will forever swear there love for Siamese Dream, but that one had always felt too cold. And this song is one of the prime examples of what was missing from the polished surface of its more reputable predecessor.

5. Jellybelly
Sometimes I get these sounds in my head that race back and forth like an electric wash where the noise just boils over. I have to hold my head because these loud noises start piercing the sides of my skull and I can’t stop shaking. It’s usually the opening to this song that I hear. I’m not sure if I wish I was in a band that could play this song, or that I’m going insane, but I do enjoy it for some reason.

6. Bullet With Butterfly Wings
By now, the dream-laden rush of the beginning of the disc is gone, and we are in the middle of rocking seriously. The great wonder of hearing all these songs together brings out the junior high student in me, when I first realized that all rock was not created equal, and that the bridge freak-out contained here is close to godliness.

7. Zero
As we peer further into the dark eyes of the beast, one thing becomes clear. Billy’s long phrased poetry that appears at the start of the disc has slowly disappeared to simple declarative ranting. Much has been written about the clumsy writing contained in this song, but that is only when the lyrics are removed from the cyber-punk background. Not everything is wonderfully explained in life, and dangerous thoughts are not always eloquent. That doesn’t make them any less powerful.

8. X.Y.U.
In High School, Eric and I would ride around at night listening to music in my car, and at least once a week we’d crank this song to the highest setting and yell as loudly as we could into the night air. The complete desolation you hear is no mask. This is the angriest song they’ve ever made. The power of this song might come from all guitars set at destroy and the drums mercilessness pounding, but the strength actually lies in the catchy melody of “And I said, I want to give you up”. One of the few take-no-prisoners rockers that could have been easily turned into a pop song. Though, thankfully, it was not.

9. Cupid De Locke
With no where to go but the fiery pits of hell, I decided to look up to the most heavenly song in the whole album. Not that it has much to do with god, but the lovely plucked strings and the sentimental romance give heart back to an album that had just looked like it wanted to kill your babies and eat them.

10. Galapagos
Really two in the same, number 9 and 10 belong together as they first appeared on the original for no other reason than they like two of the same. “Cupid’s” dream like narrative is fulfilled by “Galapagos’s” more human approach to love.

11. Stumbleine
If “Cupid” felt like the rush of young love, and “Galapagos” felt like the fight for innocence, then this one feels like acceptance of the dirty truth. That it remains so hopeful gives hope to the maturing attitude towards love that we all no is approaching but don’t really want to look for quite yet.

12. Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans
The most romantic of the epics is also the most mysterious. It doesn’t become audible till nearly 30 seconds in. I’ve always been drawn to its lovely stature, and it feels most at home with the rest of these odes. This combines the other three songs meditations on love, lust, and growing old, but throws in monster guitars, solos and whispering background noises.

13. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Surprised? It’s a lovely intro, but played at the end the sadness of the whole experience comes back to you. The roller-coaster ride through this album is nothing but an emotional trip through nostalgia, heartbreak, and ultimately love. Because this album is really just a concept album to trying to sort through your own emotions. That’s why I love this album so much. And for some reason ending with this song is like the rolling of the credits. Seemingly unnecessary but moving at the same time.

Total running time: 56:30

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth

2006-01-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

review by nick
5.2 out of 10

It’s impossible, you know. Cognitively, babies aren’t able to discern their first moments on the planet to tell us what it must be like to first glimpse the new. Thank god for that, too. Blood and monster thighs aren’t exactly the pleasurable greeting in which good times are made. So, judging from this, the new title could either mean a visit from extraterrestrials or a metaphor for reevaluating the already witnessed world. I’ll place money on the latter.

Yes, things have changed. Fortunately, the Strokes have not discovered god - though he apparently wants to talk to you on “Ask Me Anything” -, hired an orchestra, or let the drummer, Fab, sing. What they have done is expand their initial self-imposed restrictions in favor of exploring new avenues of their sound. Namely there are drum fills now, guitar solos that last long than four bars, and free forming song structures that don’t feel like they were constructed by your high school algebra teacher. The sound, which is both more polished thanks to the production and more free because of the loss of structure, makes First Impressions of Earth strangely distinctive record stuffed full of ideas that are almost always interesting.

So why is it so unsatisfying?

Certainly the atrocious production helps nothing, which strips any of the warmth of the guitars and removes the distortion from Julian’s voice. But the flaw runs deeper down to the basic principles that made the band so exciting in the first place.

It’s just hard to express why the pause in “Hard to Explain” means more than than the entirety of First Impressions. It had seemed so simple before. Right after the bridge in “12:51”, exactly 1:56 into the song, Fab switches from high hat to the cymbal, and the song, which had seemed calculated and methodical, picks up a swagger that greedier bands would have thrown away at the beginning. In “Someday” right after Julian lets out “I’m not wasting no more time”, the band breaks down to a simple drum pattern - 1:41 into the song - with the bass simply playing the basic notes with Julian’s suddenly high whispers in the background. I won’t even get into the one note opening to “Last Night”.

The album does start promisingly with “You Only Live Once”, because it has an interesting melody and knows exactly when to end. From then on begins the game of isolating the good moments out of the rest of the mess. The ending to the much maligned “Juicebox”, races forwards and backwards with the kind of urgency that they first explored with the excellent “Reptilia”. The left-field contribution, “Ask Me Anything”, which removes all the guitars and drums, replacing them with a melatron, is much better than it has any right to be.

But that’s really where the significant departures end. The most significant change, has less to do with new styles of music, than with the loss of restraint. In previous rockers like Room on Fire’s “The End Has No End”, the full throttle assault seemed to be reigned in right before the maximum impact could be reaped. “Fear of Sleep” not only goes from broke, but goes for seconds, unleashing a torrent of guitars and wall to wall screams. This is not a compliment.

The cool-tag first ascribed to the Strokes during the release of their debut Is This It, might seem to be a curse, but it really was what made them interesting in the first place. And I don’t mean that I only liked them because they looked, sounded, and acted cool. What the cool actually represented, and where Is This It’s and Room on Fire’s much touted power came from was the complete insular focus. No guitar line was played without incessant grooming. No snare hit without approval. It pressed no sonic boundaries, because it was too busy worrying how it looked in the mirror.

That half of the album is catchy, enthralling, and inspired means that it is worth the plunge. But great ideas don’t exactly mean great songs, and First Impressions seriously lacks anything in the league of the singles that were littered through Is This It and Room on Fire. That ultimately means First Impressions fails not in spite of its imagination but because of it.

Best Albums of 2005

2006-01-02T15:59:00.000-08:00

50. The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
I usually don’t have that much patience for the unapologetic cuteness of some indie rock outfits, and The Boy Least Likely To is exactly that--the album starts with the tinkering high notes of a xylophone, and the then a twee banjo comes in and leads the song to the end. But it’s one of my favorite songs of the year, bar-none. The lyric goes “Just be gentle with me, and I’ll be gentle with you,” a plea of self-deprecation whose bravery really stands in relief to a lot of ironic standoffishness that one normally finds in songs these days. The album’s cuteness is balanced by a lot of vulnerability and honesty, and for that reason it’s meant a lot to me. And the songwriting is masterful.
- Blake

49. Fiery Furnaces - EP
Maybe this isn’t a real album (it’s a collection of b-sides and re-recorded tracks and things, I think), but anyway, it’s ridiculously good. This was my first introduction to the Furnaces (I managed to miss Blueberry Boat, but I’ve since gone back and scraped my jaw off of the floor), and it took some time to digest. My friend Nick hates them because they’re deliberately difficult, and he’s right, but he’s also wrong. They’re a frenetic, confusing, cacaphonic band, but that’s what makes them so refreshing, since underneath all of it there’s a complete pop genius. Their work doesn’t offer up its secrets easily. They make demands. And the fact that they can do that to me without the benefit of an album’s cohesive setting makes it that much better.
- Blake

48. Wilco - Kicking Television
I dearly missed poor Jay Bennett, the frazzled, balding tower-of-a-man that lead them through the wilderness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and never found an inopportune moment to place a synthesizer. His presence was sorely missed on A Ghost is Born. Instead of hiding the huge gaping hole in their sound, they accentuated it like a bad sore. That certainly gave a different character to the record, one that they hadn’t explored before. But live they just sounded like they were missing something.
Well, the hole is gone. New guitarist, Nels Cline, who was apparently raised on a steady diet of Jazz scales, rips through every memorable guitar line and adds new heft. It’s thrilling hearing the band have so much fun with Summerteeth standout “A Shot in the Arm” as well as the ending to “Ashes of American Flags” where Cline goes berserk. But the real reason this live CD is so important is the way it sheds new light on A Ghost is Born. Even "Handshake Drugs" which has appeared on two previous Wilco recordings (More like the Moon, A Ghost is Born) sounds alive and brilliant. Simply, the ghosts are gone, and these songs have never sounded better.
- Nick

47. Ryan Adams – Cold Roses
Ryan Adams came out with THREE albums this year, which at first pissed me off because I thought it would be impossible for Adams to release three even semi-quality albums. But he did. And I both hate and love him for it. The first two are good albums and what I’ve heard of the third one, it’s much better than it should be. Alas, I decided I could pick only one Ryan Adams for my list.
Ryan Adams writes lyrics about drinking, heartache, the occasional bar fight and not much else. I know I’ve heard those chord changes in a song before (possibly another Ryan Adams song) so I can’t quite give him points for originality. But for some reason that doesn’t bother me. Adams has tapped into something: a vein of lyricism or a wellspring of honky-tonk arrangement that most people do not even believe exists. The fact that he knows this is both frustrating and endearing.
- Austin

46. Hot Chip-Coming on Strong
At first I didn't like this album much at all outside its AMAZING single "Playboy." I thought Hot Chip was a group who was great at remixing and had a fluke song, but was too jokesy to take seriously. Wrong. After manu, many listens, I think that Hot Chip is a serious group; their lyrics aren't serious, but their music is very mature and fun dance music that I can listen to in summer and winter. If you haven't heard it, it finally just came out in the US: "Throw off your towel and let's get wet wet wet"
- Mike

45. Broadcast - Tender Buttons
This is a really weird album, and it’s only beginning to make sense. I’m still on what may be a lifetime search for something that’s as subconsciously interesting as The Books’ first two albums, especially The Lemon of Pink. This comes close, and I think that I haven’t gotten there because it’s so unmelodious. The lead singer’s icy voice hovers over choppy, lo-fi sampled electronica, but it also feels organic. Every time I listen to this album I understand one small part of it. It’s on my list because it took one listen to know that it would continue to come back until I understand.
- Blake

44. Sigur Ros - Takk
I was never a huge fan of Sigur Ros. I liked them all right, but () I could never get into, and I tend to stray from deliberately spacey music that isn't shoegazey or at least poppy. But guess what? Much to my heart's delight, Sigur Ros did BOTH on their new album, including both pop gems and shoegaze-wonderful tracks. This is exactly what I wished () would have sounded like. Where should Sigur Ros go from here? MORE SHOEGAZE. Seriously, this album sounds, wonderful, though; even if you didn't like Sigur Ros before, give this a shot. ALso: it has great packaging.
- Mike

43. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
This was my cruising album last summer. Let me rephrase. This was my bike riding around Indianapolis cruising album. On a girls bike. That was too small. I'd like to say that this concept album of lost souls in a dead end town had something to do with my bike riding adventures when I really didn't have a job beyond grading ISTEP tests for junior high kids in Kentucky and my only worries were what Abby and I were having for dinner and whether or not I was going to go to Austin's to have some whisky and listen to Tom Waits. But my memories are probably just mere nostalgia for warm weather. The ride to his house took about 15 minutes and took me from the tree lined canal, around an obscene number of war memorials, and then up multilaned Delaware, to the semi-shady/cool-new-part-of-town where Austin lived. And for some reason the classic rock underpinning these tales and the husky crooner sounded great to the pumping of my overly-long legs. While the characters in the mini-rock soap opera worrying about overdoses and salvation, I just worried about large cars and flat tires.
- Nick

42. Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering
Bunyan’s music makes a perpetual hum, a hum that captures the essence of silence on a winter’s evening in a diner in North Dakota. The comforting presence of a cup of black coffee in an off-white mug under phosphorescent lights in the middle of a stark white and darkened landscape, the old counter lady leans over and asks silently with her old eyes whether you would like something more and you say no. You are completely content. Bunyan’s music paints this scene.
- Austin

41. The Chemical Brothers - Push the Button
In late middle school/early high school, I was a HUGE Chemical Brothers fan. Dig Your Own Hole is one of my favorite albums of all time to this day. I have a Surrender-era poster in my room. However, as I started moving out of breakbeat (and all electronic music) and into more indie-rock stuff, I stopped listening to anything new that the Bros. made. I never got into Come with Us. However, at the beginning of this year, I heard "Galvanize" featuring none other than my favorite MC Q-Tip, and I was blown away. Ditto to hearing the rest of the album; "Believe" is a wonderful track too, I like it more than anything on Silent Alarm. Actually, I like the Magic Numbers Track more than anything on their album. Also, the last track sounds eerily like the music from the water levels on Donkey Kong Country. I mean this as a compliment.
- Mike

40. Prefuse 73 – Prefuse Reads the Books
What Prefuse does to the Books is destroy them, sow them together and further disrupt your perception of reality—and almighty Jove gives his blessing.
- Austin

39. Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Background
Cute Paul is the most embarrassing Beatle to claim as your favorite. While this is might be due to his being a "smug, charmless fuck” as pitchfork so eloquently said, it’s mostly because he’s made 20 or so bad albums that I’ve never wanted to listen to. Each passing year I’ve had to feel even more ashamed of liking the guy that wrote “Hey Jude” and “Penny Lane”. I have to endure the millions who claim that George Harrison was the integral part to the Beatles’ destiny because, you know, he was cool.
Chaos and Creation in the Background isn’t the long lost classic that I want Paul to write, there are no hits here, nor anything that will replace his Beatles contributions. Instead it’s weather-worn collection that feels like a lost treasure trove of b-sides lovingly stashed in a dresser drawer, taken out and shown to those he really cares about. “Jenny Wren” and and “How Kind of You”, like his excellent “Vanilla Sky” released two years ago, appear so accidental, that it shows how natural McCartney’s genius really is when he decides to use it.
- Nick

38. The Apes-Baba's Mountain
One of the most confusing and frustrating phenomena in my recent rock-listening career has been the obscurity of the Apes. Why will no one listen to them? Why will no one listen to me when I say to listen to them? Is it because reviewers drop prog-rock when describing them? They are no Alan Parsons; The Apes sound like what the manic mob of killer children in Lord of the Flies would sound like if they were in an indie rock band. Every time I hear this album I want to paint my face and dance around a campfire. Pitchfork reviewed this album obscenely late, something like 4 months after it was released. I wrote them an angry email. It just so happens that last year's Tapestry Mastery EP has my favorite song of the year on it (the title track), and this album sounds like a continuation of that EP. "Imp Ahh" is one of my favorite tracks of the year, and who can resist a track called "Organ Syrup"? Trust me, please; if you haven't heard the Apes before, give this album a listen. It's worth it.
- Mike

37. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
I was really excited for this album to come out after Carl Newman’s solo effort as “A.C. Newman” and realizing his trenchant gift for pulling perfect pop songs out of the sky. I loved Mass Romantic, New Pornographers earlier album, and this one I liked better. The support of Neko Case’s airy-while-earthy voice and the other members from various bands have always garnered labels like “super group” for the New Pornographers; in that sense they risk sounding contrived. This is not the case. There’s a darker edge to this album, something slightly less cheeky, but in the end Carl Newman and co. simply write impeccable, tight, compulsively singable songs. That it doesn’t sound like the Gin Blossoms is the magic trick.
- Blake

36. M. Ward – Transistor Radio
This pick is for mi abuelita—which makes it hard to write about. She recently decided she was tired of being old, sick and tired so she basically starved herself to death. I was listening to this album when my dad called and told me. The crackle and old time feel of this album immediately created an indelible image in my mind.
My grandmother and I are sitting together in her din that always had a sort of sepia tone glow to it—we are sitting silently of course because I do not speak the language of the dead. But even though no words pass between us I know she’s rejoicing in not being alive, and with this album about death and poverty and love playing in the background I’m happy for her.
- Austin

35. Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
I know how cool it is to be a freak-folk nerd, but I can't dive headfirst into the genre. Try as I might, I can't fall in love with Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective sounds too typically avant-garde to count as a seperate genre to me, and Iron & Wine and M. Ward just sound like regular folk to me. (I do really like Islaja, though, if they count). Anyway, Devendra Banhart has been the exception for me, the figurehead of the freak-folkers that I admire and enjoy. Boy, this year he didn't disappoint, delivering an epic, exhausting album that is as confusing as it is fun. Sure he wrote the best anti-war song since Vietnam, but what the hell does "Little Boys" mean? Yes, his album is more produced than his last few, but the production only enhances his range of emotion, making a whirlwind of a trip that I'm not always up for riding. Oh, and Devendra Banhart also shared another special place in my heart; he is an artist that both my mother and I can really get into; I can't wait to buy her this album for Christmas.
- Mike

34. Nickel Creek – Why Should the Fire Die?
I should start this entry out with how I’m ashamed and I hate myself, but I’m not ashamed and I don’t hate myself. But Austin, they play these guys on CMT. Yeah I know, kiss my ass.
Allmusic’s James Monger put it best when he wrote this album is “the progressive bluegrass/folk-pop genre’s response to Radiohead’s Kid A.” It’s not but that’s not my point. Most who watch CMT aren’t going to understand what an attempt at “a response to Kid A” means, and most that would understand aren’t going to listen to Nickel Creek because well it’s Nickel Creek. They’ve cast themselves into the netherhell of the indefinable and since their major label prodigies they can’t cop out and call themselves “indie”—which makes this one of the more courageous albums of 2005.
All the members can flat play and seemed to have simultaneously lost their significant other and/or their faith. They funnel all this angst and doubt and talent into this album that has everything from orgasmic harmonies to references to James Joyce’s Eveline to lyrics like “let’s find a god we can pray to/ that will take you back” that will upset their evangelical Christian base. It’s not a response to Kid A, but it’s as close as bluegrass will get but since they had the marbles to release such an attempt I’ll pay homage by having the stones to put them in my top ten.
- Austin

33. Jason Forrest-Shamelessly Exciting
Every rare once in a while in one's listening career, one comes upon an album that is not only great, but is also so distant from anything else one has heard before that it is not merely finding a new album or band; it is finding a new sound. This has happened to me with, but not limited to, The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and, most recently, Jason Forrest's The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post-Disco Crash. Last year's album blew my mind; this year's album is an adequate follow-up to its gargantuan predecessor. The sound that Forrest has--I think it's called Break! or Break!core--sounds like an equal combination of 70s rock, hard-core glitch, and cheerleading anthems. It's beautiful; I can't wait for summer again so I can listen to Shamelessly Exciting! when it's sunny out. "War Photographer" is one of my favorite singles of the year, at least as good as the best of last year's album. If any contemporary artist will ever make me have seizures, it will be Jason Forrest--but the other people will only think I am smiling and dancing.
- Mike

32. The Books – Lost and Safe
The Books makes music that I want to break down, analyze and somehow reach some summit of understanding. More than once I’ve been tempted to produce some sort of scholarly work on the audio clips with the painter on “Lost and Safe” –paying close attention to the noises and samples between the clips.
- Austin

31. Beck - Guero
I know that putting the new Beck "disappointment" of an album kills any indie cred. that the Lightning Bolt/Animal Collective albums might have given me, and that almost makes me happy. Beck, I think, is the perfect artist to expose what shits hipsters can be; they can't handle him changing his sound all the time (read some reviews of Midnight Vultures, an album years ahead of its time), but when he releases an album that is arguably like something he's released before, they lose it. Guero is a very good to great album; I am unapologetic about that. Yes, "E-Pro" was a bit of a failure as a single. That I will allow. There are some similarities between this album and odelay. But just listen to the second half of the album; Beck takes some sonic ideas from Odelay and makes them more mature, more subtle--changes that make them altogether different and nuanced. That, I think, is also a great accomplishment, the talent that Beck has always had--taking something older and making it new again. Of course this isn't Sea Change, what I consider to be the best album since 2000 (gasp!), but I don't expect anything to be for a few more years.
- Mike

30. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have it so Much Better
Basically just a concept album about not fucking up your sophomore album, I'm not sure if any band worked as hard as the Franz did on this album. Remarkably complex, the intros give way to completely different songs before popping back up as the bridge. Furious high-hat drumming patterns rampage before slowing to Led Zepplin stomps. "The Fallen" alone morphs three or four times before lead singer Alex Kapranos tries to spit out every line he can possibly think of. There are even three good acoustic songs. Still it's the manic energy of "Do You Want To" and all that riled up sexual energy that shows the Franz Ferdinand will always occupy the sex-starved-lust-obsessed place in most of our hearts.
- Nick

29. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
To most outside the innner indie-rock crtique circle, which oddly includes me though I've been reviewing albums for over 5 years, our first introduction to LCD Soundsystem was through Pitchfork's remarkable Best Singles of 2000-2004. Judged against those three singles ("Beat Connection", "Losing My Edge", and "Yeah") this album can seem almost quaint. Most of the epic dance freakouts are gone, replaced by small fragments with an almost insular focus. "Too Much Love" continues the basic beat principles of their best songs, but "Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up" slows things down to a Pink Floyd stroll. "Movement" furious three minutes rush by like punk. The songs don't flow well into each other, but taken individually, as the album most be heard, they become something of small wonders of musical knowledge. And it doesn't hurt that those three singles are included in the bonus disc.
- Nick

28. Ryan Adams - 29
This album ruined my list. I was going to cop out and have a Ryan Adams slot where I threw all of his albums in one spot and just said good job on not fucking up this year. But they were so different that even when I attempted to chop them up into "my greatest hits of ryan adams 2005" (because the man needs an editor) it didn't make sense. And then I listened to 29 on repeat for about four days. I don't know if this album is going to age well. His albums are notoriously hard to gauge. Love is Hell kind of did if you chopped off 6 of the tracks; Rock n' Roll definitely did not. But I had the most genuine musical moment with this record in the cold winds of 72nd Street where I broke into tears in the middle of a crosswalk because of his voice. I haven't experienced such emotion from any of my top 25 albums, nor with any album in many years. It was something in his voice, the well written lyrics, the way the piano comes in perfectly in "Strawberry Wine". Cold Roses was pleasant and Jacksonville City Nights was great fun, but this exists as something else entirely.
It's at 7 because like everything he's ever done it's padded with at least four average songs. And when there are only 9 songs that is kind of a problem. And I'm scared that my enthusiasm is going to wane because I just got this album a week ago. Hell, it isn't even officially released. But the first four songs achieve a greatness that he hasn't achieved since Heartbreaker.
- Nick

27. Black Mountain-Black Mountain
I was first excited about this band (like oh so many others) because I heard that they sound like the Velvet Underground. They do NOT; what people should tell people who haven't heard them (and E-Harv did): they sound kindof like Broken Social Scene. Their songs are all huge, messy, expansive, and wonderful. "No Satisfation" is one of my favorite songs of the year; "Faulty Times" became something of an anthem to last semester. The band can chill out and make great psychedelic distortion jams like only SOnic Youth could, or they can fucking rock, making you turn up your car stereo until you almost blow the speakers. This album is wonderful as a whole, with each track going to the next in ways I never would have guessed would be so fluid. Pink Mountaintops, the side project, also has a pretty good album, but this album is epic. I hope the band can do this well on its next outing, but I fear they can't.
- Mike

26. Caribou - The Milk of Human Kindness
This album exists, start to finish, without a reference point. It is a world unto itself, untethered and also unconcerned with what is expected of a normal album. A good balance between electronic and organic, it balances samples with the occasional vocal piece by the man behind the curtain. To put it simply, this is the album I often put on when I needed to think and was tired of listening to The Books. When Brian Eno first began to make “ambient” music, his goal was to create a space in which to think, or something along those lines. This isn’t an ambient album, but it manages to introduce somewhat more traditional song structures and pop elements without them infringing on the holy emptiness of your usual ambient stuff. That’s the best way I can explain it. It’s immensely creative.
- Blake

25. Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights
If Adams is a pastiche artist then this is by far his most convincing facade. Liberated by the need to actually worry about crafting a hit single, this album just rumbles through the cliched country characters Ryan secretly wants to be if he'd ever move out of the East Village. And where Cold Roses could bore you to death if actually tried to listen to the whole thing, this one keeps it to a manageable one album with more than half of the songs worth an extra spin. "The End" is the most moving song he's made since the Suicide Handbook. "Hard Way to Fall" sees him starry-eyed for the first time since, well...Gold. But it's the completely over the top "My Heart is Broken" with its Nashville Strings and completely ridiculous lyrics that set my southern Indiana heart aglow and reminded me why I ever gave a fuck about Adams in the first place. And why I still look for some sort of salvation to my confused rural upbringing.
- Nick

24. M83-Before the Dawn Heals Us
Along with the rest of the indie crown, I adored Dead Cities... However, unlike the rest of the indie crowd, I love this album even more. Everyone should know by now my shoegaze-leanings. However, whereas the new Sigur Ros album pays homage to the subgenre of the early nineties, this M83 album suggests that there are new ways for the genre to evolve and remain contemporary. Kyle and I have discussed how this could be considered a concept album about "the cinematic;" this is what the pitchfork people who thought "Car Chase Terror" was awful don't understand. I've gone through many favorite songs on the album throughout this year; I'm beginning to suspect my likings have something to do with the seasons. Actually it's amazing that this album goes with every kind of weather; it isn't stuck to any season, and fits perfectly in a car whenever. Driving around Bloomington this summer with Geoff, I was convinced that this should be a summer album; on the way back from a Roots concert in February, I thought that winter was the way to go. I also had one of the more surreal experiences of my life going to see M83 in April; he was playing at what amounted to be the after-showing of some movie on electronic music at OSU, and Dan, Kyle, Geoff and I drove the 4 hours to see him in a room BEHIND a theater stage full of awkward CS majors who had never been to a rock show. After the show, we went up and talked to him, and he awkwardly but genuinely thanked us for coming to see him; then we drove back in the dreary almost-storm weather. I think that drive may have unlocked a portal to some weird post-modern universe that I live in now. On the way back home from Depauw tomorrow, I plan to rock out to "Don't Save Us From the flames" and hum along to "Teen Angst." This was the first great release of the year, which is often a killer come list-making time; the fact that I love it even more is very telling of the staying power of this album in my heart.
- Mike

23. Vitalic-OK Cowboy
Daft Punk's Human After All was one of the three biggest album disappointments of the year for me, along with the White Stripes and Death Cab for Cutie. I was expecting, or at least hoping for, greatness with each of those releases, and each time I got mediocrity (Daft Punk, Whit Stripes) or shit (DCFC). Thankfully Vitalic was there to catch my Daft Punk fall. OK Cowboy is a great album, one that I have appreciated more as the year goes on, one that, along with new Alan Braxe, makes me still believe in the power of French House music. Maybe next semester will convert me to the German Kompakt school of techno, but the french beat-masters will always have a special place in my heart, even if they are Human After All.
- Mike

22. Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
For some reason this was the hardest album to write about. Do you talk about the great production? MF Doom's flow? Do you apologize for admitting that you actually just really like the skits? How do you say that after 8 hours at work this album always makes the ride home funny? I mean, nothing here approaches to oddball genius of Madvillany, but that's not really the point. It's just the way all three elements (production, rapping, skits) are seamlessly sewn together to create the tightest rap album of the year. Not the best, but there isn't a seam showing in this project.
P.S. I'm waiting for the Meatwad side project.
- Nick

21. Junior Senior-Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
Holy shit. I had to debate whether this should count as this year, since it only has a Denmark release or something, but then again, I've been listenign to it for months. A week or so before Kyle downloaded this album (thank god he got it then; it's still kind of hard to find), I wondered aloud in the duplex: "I wonder what Junior Senior will do next. I liked the debut, but I wonder if they're a one-album band?" I had no idea. This album is beyond description, but I'll try; each track is equal parts Beach Boys, Jackson 5, and gay disco music. I can't get over it. It's maybe the happiest album I can remember. Every track is a potential favorite track; even the intro makes me smile. It's also one of the danciest albums I've heard in a long, long time; at our dance part SCHOLARTRON, "can i get get get" drove everyone nuts. I listened to this album twice a day for at least a month, and that's just me; throughout the duplex at any given moment you could hear the sounds of Junior Senior in 2-3 people's rooms. I'll stop gushing about it; if you haven't heard it, GET IT; it will change your mood for the coming weeks. Whenever I'm feeling down (maybe after listening to Okkervil River) i know that Junior Senior can make me smile. I haven't heard such pure pop bliss in my generation. I mean that.
- Mike

20. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
Oh don’t worry, I’ve only just begin to destroy my snobby “indie cred.”
These guys have gone many places with me this whole year. I listen to it while running, while studying and while driving to Chicago with Ty. Not many records are so versatile. I can sit and thoroughly enjoy Andrew Bird in a dim room but I’m not going to take him on my Rocky run up the Philadelphia Art Museum.
People accuse these guys of trying to hard, being too earnest. And maybe they do try to hard but I’ll take that over aloofness, over “we’re to talented to try hard,” over “the GRE is beneath me why should I pay attention to it, or finals for that matter? They cannot gage my intelligence!” Wait we’re talking about Bloc Party (cough) yeah they rock.
- Austin

19. Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
This album made sense when I saw Antony live at Carnegie Hall, and he made a comment during the show about his intention in making his music: to nurture a sense of joy. As I began listening to this album at first, I remember the siren quality of his voice, the melancholy notes, the rending sadness of his lyrics. It was an utterly beautiful album to play over and over again and become enveloped in, especially “Hope There’s Someone,” the opening track. That alone made this album important to me. But seeing an artist live will always add another layer to their artistry, however unfair that may be to use as in influence in making this list. But I was amazed how lighthearted and funny Antony was, how much he joked around and the general happiness of his persona when he wasn’t singing. It provided the contrast, of course, to the songs themselves, and that’s why his comment about joy makes sense: joy exists as something apart from, and even opposite of, happiness. Not to get all philosophical, but this balance of elements is the kind of revelation that I’m amazed a piece of music can provide. When it comes to the album itself, I can only say that it’s achingly, achingly beautiful.
- Blake

18. Iron and Wine – Woman King
This album reminds me of those lazy, hot summer afternoons I always hated because I was sweaty and bored and pining for the interesting leaves of fall and the creative chill of winter. But when I heard this album I new immediately I was missing something, some fountain of inspiration and beauty that I’d never tapped and most likely never will tapped. Iron & Wine exists in a realm of creation that I think for me is unattainable and I both fear and respect that.
- Austin

17. M.I.A. - Arular
Once again, seeing M.I.A. live made a difference, though I loved this album before I saw her at Summer Stage in 90 degree heat in Central Park with Salman Rushdie. Nevertheless, the anthemic power of the songs came alive when i saw her perform them. But playing it in the car while driving around in the summer is something close: blending elements of hip-hop and world music and dance and electronic into a contradictory, politically-charged, really fun dance party. To be honest, I’m mostly ignorant to her politics beyond a general desire for pulling up the poor and embracing some sort of anti-capitalist globalism sing-along--and I’m sure if I sat down and thought it through, I wouldn’t agree with her on more than one point--but I think that’s somewhat alright. The essence of her message is infused into the music, which is a feat that doesn’t happen easily. Pop music that is infused with politics is usually bad, just as is pop music that is infused with religion and any other system of thought--in most cases, it detracts from the artistry. But she pulls it off impeccably, intrinsically, naturally. For that reason, this album is, in my opinion, an immense success.
- Blake

16. Kanye West - Late Registration
People used to make albums like this all the time. They'd make a bunch of really great songs, make videos for some, attend MTV award shows, win awards, and laugh their way to the bank. Great bands used to do this. So in a year when the music sites I looked at were concerned that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were totally overhyped because people were talking about them so much their album had sold 20,000 copies, when I couldn't even tell you what the Billboard top ten looked like let alone say if I've ever heard of any of the people, it was great to understand at least one mainstream act. Sure it suffers playing it front to back, but that's missing the point. This is a singles album if there ever was one. And taken one at a time it's stunning feat. "Heart em Say", "Touch the Sky", "Gold Digger", "Drive Slow", "Diamonds From Sierra Leone", "Addiction", "We Major", and "Gone". Yes, the skits suck, the song with Brandy is crap, but has any album tried for so much and been so consistanly good this year? And he even says literate things once in a while.
- Nick

15. The Gorillaz – Demon Days
An amazing single can be a blessing and a curse. In most cases it serves to attract the masses to an album and if the album holds up it become acclaimed and a best seller and the next thing you know the band’s living it up at the playboy mansion.
But with a white hot single like “Feel Good Inc.” an album can be eclipsed, especially in the Internet age where people can download just one song. Nothing on the Demon Days measures up to “Feel Good Inc.” but it’s still a freaking amazing album. I know there’s some rule against ranking a side project this high, especially a cartoon one, but I think there’s also some rule against a side project being this good. This album is proof that overindulgence and sci-fi obsession can produce good and quality music.
- Austin

14. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
This is an album that, for some reason, made a whole hell of a lot of sense to me. It must be one of those cases when idiosyncrasies align, or something like that. Most people like it and obviously it’s a masterful album, but I literally could not stop listening to the songs on this album since I first listened to it in February, and I don’t understand why nobody else has the same problem. Every season of the year, this album has made immense sense. The whole thing pulses with this magnetic precision, these masterful arrangements, impeccable songwriting, and abstruse lyrics that make sense on a subconscious level. I have tried to dismantle all of these songs and I can’t “figure them out”, which is when, I think, a song can begin to lose its appeal. Every time I try I get turned around and sent in a different direction. The album has a whimsy, a humor, a wisdom, a poetic genius. I love the mathematical aspects of this album, both in the scientific way the music sounds to the lyrics taking about ones and zeros and GPS. At the same time, the entire project seems effortless, like it’s just the result of a set of formulas that Andrew Bird dreamed up. In fact, that’s the sense his live show gave: all the songs sounded different, way different, so they were sometimes only recognizable by the actual words of the lyrics. All the arrangements were changed and they kept changing, the melodies interacting and harmonizing on the fly. It was absolutely amazing, and I think that these songs are really just complicated formulas that are worked out, and so he just plugs in some different ideas and the thing comes out differently every time. Andrew Bird operates in a mathematical world of music, on a different plane. I am completely convinced that he is a genius.
- Blake

13. My Morning Jacket – Z
Nick and Mike have both given this album well crafted praise and I won’t try to rival or imitate them, because I couldn’t measure up, so I’m left with my mere emotional reasons for placing this album in the top ten.
For the past ten years, and even at times today, If people ask me where from, and I take this question to mean where am I really from, I answer Texas: once a Texan always a Texan even with the Idiot in office. I’m forever homesick Texas, but I’ve never really missed Kentucky though I’ve had to list as my permanent residence for ten years. But this album makes me homesick for Kentucky because it sounds like Kentucky. “Wordless Chorus” – the drive through the cattle and cornfields I made every morning on the drive to school. “Gideon” – the cabins surrounding Green River. “Off The Record” – the mysterious, purgatorial glow of Bardstown Road.
I could go on. This album forced itself into my history, insinuating itself into short film reels of my past in Kentucky—giving my life an appropriate soundtrack, albeit rather late.
- Austin

12. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
For me, Broken Social Scene is exactly where I want contemporary rock to be. They are beyond ambitious, they are political in all the right, subtle ways, they are collaborative (who is in the band? it depends on the album), they sound GREAT. You Forgot it in People has been a landmark album of the past few years, taking me to places I had never been before. This self-titled abum is at least as ambitious as that, but the aesthetic goals have changed; instead of making a beautiful mess within each wonderfully-crafted song, BSS expand their scope to the entire album. All of the songs play off each other beautifully, making a full, wonderful sound that takes an hour or so of intense listening to fully appreciate. Actually, multiple repeat listens, best taken consecutively. Not that I want to characterize this album as intentionally difficult and not-fun (ahem, Black Dice); so many singles work amazingly on their own as well. The first time I heard the leaked 7/4 I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. I went to Intonation Festival to see these guys (well, and DFA79), and I wasn't disappointed; their songs affected me the way that I would imagine a Cream show would in 1970. This album, along with my next two picks, has surpassed the rest of these albums in number of listens, which is amazing since it was released in October, and I got it in late Spetember. It was that good, and remains one of the most important albums to me of the year, mentally, emotionally, and musically.
- Mike

11. Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
This may be the surprising album on my top ten; it surprises me. I heard this album once or twice and it didn’t affect me very much--it didn’t have enough hooks to make a huge impression, and the songs were just strange enough to be a bit offsetting. The first song was such an odd combination of weirdo guitar work and falsetto repetitions that I kept skipping it. I put it away for awhile and started playing the album in the background when I was reading or cleaning my room. It wasn’t compelling enough for sitting down and concentrating on intensely, but it wasn’t easily swallowed as a categorizable, middle-of-the-road sort of pop record. But it was in this liminal space that the album began working on my psyche. Lyrics I couldn’t consciously remember hearing would end up in my thinking; parts of the album that frustrated me would end up as melodies I would strain to remember and be unable to place. Then, all at once, the whole thing made sense. The tiny guitar riff at the end of “I’ve Hardly Been” was suddenly immensely interesting; “Freeze the Saints” was suddenly a comforting song about feeling feeble towards a desire to love; all the electronic experimentation became a wonderful respite from the thickness of the melodies; the lyric “You’re a maker of minor modern masterpieces for the untrained eye” made sense. I will concede that Malkmus gives in to his indulgences more than once: the waa-waa guitar stuff at the beginning of “Kindling for the Master” can get annoying--but it turns into such a great song. And the 8-minute long guitar jammy thing in the middle is probably a bit much. But I am one who really hates jam-band luxuriating, and I am willing to give it to him. It could be that I have only a cursory interaction with Pavement and so this style was all new to me, but this album went from vaguely interesting to something which I intensely loved and understood overnight.
- Blake

10. Animal Collective - Feels
What, seriously, makes a good Animal Collective song? Is it the part where they chant in unison or when they play songs without choruses? Sung Tongs was played so much last year in our apartment that it was almost impossible to know really where that album began and ended because I think some song from that album was always in the airwaves. And it was great. Why? No idea. So I worried that this wasn't going to be as cherished as that one, because, well, I still couldn't figure out why I liked the last one and given this monster, it sure wasn't going to be easy to know. Luckily the moment I knew that this album was going to be great was after about three plays Blake and I subconsciously added our sound effects, little "ohhss" and "ekkks". It happened unintentionally and we both looked at each other afterwards, and knew. That's it.
- Nick

9. The Decemberists – Picaresque
I read and write and listen to music to escape, I always have. I was the nerdy kid with the horn-rimmed glasses spending most of recess reading sci-fi novels. Which means at an early age I became quite bored with regular, mundane life. I still constantly imagine my daily activities infused with angelic entities and sword-wielding pirates that would suddenly pull out laser guns.
And then the Decemberists dropped Picaresque and I slightly changed my perspective. In the past Colin Meloy has confined himself to paying homage to pirates and eulogizing Spaniards, but on this album the most moving moments are when he concentrates on modern day occupations. There are certain lines that constantly echo in the back of my head: “There are power lines in our blood lines,” “We’re kings among runaways on the bus mall,” and “There’s a tough word on your crossword.”
These are lines about real life, but it’s real life through the lens of the Decemberists and it seems so interesting. This album made me realize that the day to day can become a mythology, can hold some secret untold story, something other than my digital clock slowing eating away on it’s appetite of numbers.
- Austin

8. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
"No more songs about sex and drugs and rock & roll it’s boring"
With the White Stripes making mediocre albums, the Strokes making bad ones, and my old favorite Billy Corgan making some truly horrible shit, my favorite music is made by Mid-west expats who play modern folk music. I live in New York.
"I’m considering a move to LA (he’s considering a move to LA)"
And so after years of playing electric guitar and swearing my undying love for ear-splitting distortion, I've started spouting out comments about songs in the vain of "this contains the essence of American music" and "what this song really needs is more banjo".
"He no longer listens to A-sides/He made me a tape of bootlegs and B-sides"
And here Art Brut come playing very basic rock n roll with sarcastic lyrics that makes me laugh continuously, all the time, without fail.
"I’ve seen her naked twice, I’ve seen her naked twice!"
And I want to say that this is just hipster shit and that their rock skills are nothing compared to what I usually listen to. It's just pub rock with a guy sounding really English over it all talking about things he hates. But...
"Sweet Jesus, my heart/Is beating faster and faster"
...everytime I laugh. Sure the critiques on Modern Art and bands that sound like the Velvet Underground are clever, but really I just stick around to hear him say witty things at the ends of the songs. And I think Art Brut really say a lot about where I am right now in my life. I'm okay with my life as a sham, with having no discernible future career path, with eating grand meals with wine every night, and am enjoying it way too much. But it's just so hard to accurately say why...wait...oh yeah...I don't care.
"Stay off the crack"
- Nick

7. Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
I got into AiH a little late; I didn't hear Fingers Crossed until December of 2004 (it came out in June, I think). Anyway, from then until I first heard In Case We Die in March or April, well, it was the perfect amount of time to get excited about a new release. The debut had quickly become one of my favorite albums of 2004, and I couldn't wait to see what they would do next. Not knowing when they would release another album, and looking for tour dates, I went to the band website in February, and heard the song "Do the Whirlwind." I lost it. It remains tied for my favorite single of the year (I'll do a list next week of those). That song kept me satisfied until I got the album; once I did, I listened to it nonstop for a number of weeks. This is the reason I didn't immediately get into the Spoon album. It took a Beck release to wake me from the trance of this album. Or maybe I never did wake up. Someone (pitchfork?) compared this album to Blueberry Boat. The comparison can be helpful, but it needs the qualifier: whereas the Furnaces make epic, 10 minute songs with multiple parts, AiH condense that type of complexity into 3-4 minute pop gems that Paul McCartney would love. I'm not going to get into the specific beneficial qualities of all the tracks; you've all heard it. I saw AiH in Cinnci this summer in a little bar; the band was amazing, changing instruments after every song, sometimes in the middle. They had a heap of little toys and things to make all of the crazy sounds on the album. After the show, I went up to the band in the already-empty bar to thank them, and they were some of the nicest people I've met. They offered to get my friends and myself drinks, and we sat around for maybe half an hour, talking about the history of the band, they members' parents, which members were dating each other, and what I was up to. They offered to meet us in Cleveland the next day; they were going to a Malkmus show. I wish I would have gone; what better experience than seeing one of the most important musicians of the last decade with who may be some of those from this one?
- Mike

6. Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
I’m championing the cause that is Okkervil River. I could write a whole entry addressing the lyrics how they are the musical rendering of Gallow Kinnel's "The Book of Nightmares." How they tie together in come overarching theme concept and that once you understand the lines “If I could tear his throat/ spill his blood between my jaws” are a profound expression of true love.
Or I could write pages about how Will Sheff makes Conor sound like a whiny little bitch. How, like Ayn Rand’s “John Galt machine,” he absorbs all the sadness and heartache and insanity around him and sings as if his body is completely overwhelmed. Or how Sheff is not afraid to let his voice drop to a mere whisper as he tells the most heartbreaking story committed to tape this year.
I could go on and on about how the music sounds as if the band is playing behind chicken wire in a honky tonk bar in East Texas, trying not to get killed by proffering pounding basslines, but appeasing the gods of music by adding trumpets and accordions and falsetto. How they perfectly use dynamics, loud and soft, harsh and mild.
But really I just want to say that this album gets under my skin, invades my veins and ruins my heart.
- Austin

5. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
At first, this album came across as really silly and a lot of fun (see the first song, which sounds nothing like the rest of the album, though I don’t think it’s as bad as Pitchfork implied). I started playing the album every time I felt like being in an indie-pop sort of good mood, which was often since it was my first month in New York and I had no responsible plans for my life. Obviously, nobody has any idea what the lead singer is saying in any remote way, and that was perfect. So I started playing it in my empty apartment (no time and/or money for furniture) every morning and singing along in non-descript strings of vaguely english-sounding words. I picked out a few things “You look a bit like coffee, and you taste a bit like me” or “You look like David Bowie, have you nothing new to show me?”, which was basically fun nonsense. Oh, and “Who--Will get me to party? Who--do I have yet to meet?”--that, for me, was the essence of summer in New York: ending up at parties full of Spanish people and finding that I speak it fluently, wandering into apartments in Brooklyn which were hollowed-out storefronts and seeing a gentlemen in a bee costume sing pop melodies over homemade electronic beats..and finding out that there was a free Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show on a pier with $3 beer and $1 hot dogs with the sunset and the Brooklyn bridge in the background. I still don’t know what he sings about, but I really don’t want to know, and of what I’ve read it’s all pretty strange and oblique--it’s not the point. All of the songs on this album are so carefully put together, so subtly designed to grow with age, not immensely astounding at any particular point, but on the whole way above the fray, and so irresistibly sing-alongable despite the impossibility of discerning the lyrics. For me, it was all about the mood they set, and the importance of it being a nonsense-lyrics soundtrack to my life.
- Blake

4. Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
It's not something I'm bragging about, but most of my friends are fairly liberal. I'm not sure if something predisposed to people who like great music, who are generally nice, or those that are just poor, but most of my friends share my beliefs. The war was wrong. Bush is incompetent. I only know three people in the armed services, all of them did not have any experience in Iraq. Two of them I went to high school with, and the other is a friend of my girlfriend's. I haven't talked to any of them in a year. The only person I know to have died in Iraq was a guy that I played football with in elementary school before he moved away. His name was Eric Hillenburg and we were friends. Here is what the paper said:
Lance Corporal Eric Hillenburg, 21, Indianapolis. Shot to death two days before Christmas during the Fallujah campaign. Two other members of his unit were also killed. His father is pastor of Hope Baptist Church just north of Ben Davis High School.

This war does not affect me in the slightest bit outside the deep political debates I have with other like minded people over pints of beer. The thought that we are at war is almost absurd for me to comprehend as I walk to work in Manhattan where the largest terrorist attack in North America occurred just four years ago and where they expect horribly bad things to happen at any second.

Here is my rationale while in the subway: White people are not going to blow me up. Black people aren't going to blow me up. All people who speak Spanish are cool. If there is a baby in the carriage I am good. Large boxes are fine if a sweaty man who doesn't speak english is carrying it. All women are fine. Rants about Jesus are fine. All Jewish people are fine. People with backpacks and cameras are just tourists as long as they look lost. People with ipods obviously love life. That includes all game modules. That leaves about one person every couple of days that I see, which really isn't that bad. I'm usually too tired to care. Really, I am unaffected.

I never really listened to Bright Eyes until this album came out. It wasn't that I didn't like what they did, I just hadn't listened. So when Austin continued to play them over and over in his room and on his guitar, I decided to give it a shot. And I liked it. He sort of had that Ryan-Adams thing going on. Hell, he even had Emmylou Harris. But everything changed when I moved to New York. Suddenly all of the lyrics started to make sense. In "Train Under Water" I could visualize the L Train that goes from the village in Manhattan, under the East River, to Brooklyn. I've taken that train, it is a whole foot wider in the middle than the 6, which is what I'm stuck on most of the time.

Something makes sense in the village. It really does. I want to live there so badly because nothing matters in the outside world. You can survive there, read news about there, and live in a world outside the public conciousness. There are no wars in the village. Republicans sure as hell don't go there unless they are on tour buses. And that's what I want. I want to forget the war. I want to forget the economy. I want to forget about the Mid-west hicks of my youth, the obsession with money, the 2.5 kids in surburbia going to soccer games, and eating macdonalds. But I don't live there. While I share the same island, I am far away. But I can listen to this album and feel it.

The most profound line I've heard this year occurs 3:31 into "Landlocked Blues". "We made love on the living room floor/with noise in the background from a televised war." Nothing has so accurately described the repulsion to violence, the complete disconnection from reality, and the only way we have of coping. If there was an album that best described this year, it would have to be this one.
- Nick

3. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
Over Thanksgiving my brother and I were driving up to Louisville and he asked, “Hey can we listen to Spoon?”
“Of course,” I said. Now there’s something you must know about my brother, he likes good music like Spoon and Animal Collective and Bloc Party because I tell him to. I tell him “David this is really good you need to listen to this and like it” and he does—but I’ve never been able to figure out if he really likes the music or if it’s a younger brother trying to please the older brother type of deal.
Last semester Kyle would expound upon how Gimme Fiction was some sort of requiem to rock and roll and how the lyrics of every song all tied to one major theme. It sounded good but I never really understood and so often phased out what he was saying—sorry Kyle.
“I like how all these songs talk about Rock and Roll and how most people don’t really play it anymore,” my brother said gazing straight ahead unaware of the atomic phrase-bomb he had just uttered.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I think you really have to know my brother to really understand my awe but that fact that my brother got it, that he understood something about this album that I never paid attention to pushed this album into the top 5—along with the other reasons everyone else has mentioned.
- Austin

2. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
This appeared atop Austin's, Blake's, and Nick's list, but was nowhere in site in Mike's. Thanks to cruel basic math, that skewed the end results, leaving this much loved album at number 2. So the only reasonable thing to do is recap why it meant so much to the three that loved it so much.

I want to weep every time I listen to “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” I seize up when he hits the falsetto at the tail end of “They Are Night Zombies.” I simply stop everything and listen to “The Predatory Wasps of the Pallisades Are Out to Get Us!”
This album is a novel, the kind of novel that you read slowly because it’s a good friend that’s always waiting with a smile and a kind word every time you get home.
- Austin

This album’s gift is the way it builds and builds into a collective experience, as each member of the cast joins in, infusing stories and myths, spirituality and religion, death and celebration. Listening to this album, for once I feel some pride in that abstract idea of Americana...An album like this causes America to make sense. I think that’s what he’s trying to do. That’s meant a lot to me.
- Blake

This is such an understated triumph, such an easy album to completely forget about, that sometimes I just had to listen to it and remember why. Beacuse there is nothing quite like this album. Through the highways constructed by Stevens, I identified a part of myself I didn't fully understand and was searching for. Never has an album sounded so Mid-West, so humble yet expansive, so grounded and exultant at the same time.
- Nick

1. Wolf Parade
As the only high ranking album on all of our lists, it was only natural that this album would top the list. Contained below are all of the complete reviews.

When I first heard the name Wolf Parade I quietly thought to myself, “That’s maybe the worst band name I’ve heard, save for the one about clapping.” I kept thinking about this kid in middle school that always wore this black shirt with a wolf howling on it—he also wore tight levi’s, cowboy boots and would maliciously refer to me as “mexi,” the association was not a good one.
I downloaded the EPs over the summer just because I didn’t have a job and was bored, but I think I had them on my ipod for about two weeks before I listened to them. Now lately I’ve been kicked on my ass many times, by Latin, by Greek, by that fact that I have bills—I’ve grown accustomed to it and I’ve actually begun to enjoy it because I often get locked into my own set of individual opinions of the way things are and that’s no way to live life.
Well the EPs and the following album thoroughly kicked me on my ass. A band with the name Wolf Parade and a horrible association in my mind kicks ass! I get so fired up when I listen to this album that I want to find the guy that wore the wolf shirt, tell him that he doesn’t deserve to have ever worn that shirt and then kick him on his ass.
Okay so I didn’t talk about music much in this, suffice it to say that if the music was not loud, intelligent, and entirely too much fun I would not have it at number four.
- Austin

It didn’t take long for this album to floor me--actually, it was the first measure, when the drummer lays down a beat which claims for itself an expansive landscape the size of Montana, and never concedes an inch back. Instantly I was in a frozen tundra of ghosts and howling wolfs and open spaces, a place away from civilization, where I had to reach the end of myself by running, away, “farther than guns will go.” Away from the modern world and all of its complexities, where I am a hero in the daylight and a villain at night. What I’m trying to say is that this is an album of metaphors, harsh and potent ones, and it works marvelously, it transcends the world of metaphors, it feels intensely real. This album reminds me that society and the individual is not completely reconcilable, that in the end, it’s impossible to avoid rejecting it. It reminds me that God is distant. At the same time, the album forced me to examine what it is to love someone, to know that loving them means a desire to escape away into a lonely place, and that loving them means colliding with them in ways that seem strange and awful, going into ones darkest places and believing that there is a light to be found in the center of it, a light which comes from putting oneself aside long enough to care deeply for another person, as Tennessee Williams said it. And beyond all of it, my God, the music is incredible and anthemic and emotional. There’s nothing more to say.
- Blake

I didn't understand Wolf Parade until I saw them in concert. Blake and I had convinced ourselves that we had to see this band, because we liked the album and they were getting a lot of press and we hadn't really seen many bands this year. I was expecting a beer in hand, hanging out in the middle watching the kids have their fun. Then we walk in, see no one there, and walk straight to the front, realize we are very early, and stake out the best spot in the house. I had convinced myself that I was over rock n roll, being really for the young, and something to look back on fondly when I was still in college. After moshing to my third Strokes concert in as many years, meeting them backstage, shaking Julian's hand, and generally hanging out with them, I figured nothing was ever going to be the same. I had reached the pinnacle. But then I realized that Wolf Parade had two lead singers, that they were both good, and that they competed on stage, trying to out-do the other one. And it was stunning. Afterwards, I was able to hear that battle on and I fell in love with how on edge the entire album felt, how every moment was ready to spill over unto another song. Like CYHSY, this album is empty of filler, but unlike those smiling folks of Brooklyn, this beast has a dangerous edge. I am not dead to rock n roll any longer.
- Nick

Well no one else (Austin, Nick, Blake) has mentioned this album yet, so I assume it's in everyone's top 5. I would even go so far as to guess that it is someone's favorite album of the year. My prediction/hope is that this also wins Pitchfork album of the year, although they'll probably pick something a bite more under the radar (bitterness intended). Obviously, I love it too, which is a minor miracle; Wolf Parade had two strikes against this album, considering sooooo many people (myself included) had heard almost every song on the album on some EP or BBC session or something, and almost everyone prefers at least some EP track to the album track. Not to say that Brock's production isn't great; I got new things on a bunch of tracks that I hadn't pictured on the EPs. The favorite-track question of the year, I think, is not favorite Sifjan track or favorite Franz track, but favorite Wolf Parade track; THAT can say something about your personality (mine is "Hungry Ghosts," by the way). The hype-monster almost killed Wolf Parade before they could get going (think Yeah Yeah Yeahs); thankfully this miracle of an album fixed all that. Hands down the debut of the year, Wolf Parade is now the indie darling that everyone hopes can conquer the world. The Strokes came close, but, sigh, didn't quite make it; I'm doubtful about Arcade Fire. Wolf Parade, you're on deck.
- Mike