There’s always the fear with these lists that the brain-spatula will miss something important from the crevices of your musical memories of the decade. We can, and do, hope that someone else will remember the bits that we forget. We also remember the word floccinaucinihilipilificate, which means “to consider [something] worthless”, and remember that many people hold this position regarding lists like these. The noughties, or naughties, might be the last decade in which it is appropriate to laud “albums”.

If that proves to be the case, then these are the ones we want to laud last.

< 100-81 | 60-41 >

80.

The Streets
A Grand Don't Come for Free

679, 2004

It's likely that some of Mike Skinner's success as The Streets is owed to his peculiar Britishness, especially effective as grime and related sounds were gaining some prominence in the US. We're all very proud for knowing the difference between a geezer and a chav, but A Grand Don't Come for Free, a concept album about a regular guy's stumblings, succeeds well beyond the reach of its cultural and artistic oddity.

Skinner uses awkward, uncomfortable beats and a flow that changes from kinda rapping to talking to off-key singing. I wouldn't try to use the format as a model. Still, it works perfectly in creating the world of his protagonist, where unlikely insights come from mundane (or "quotidian", as everyone was so fond of saying in 2004) activities.

The plot develops reasonably coherently as far as pop operas go, but the album works not only because of the grand concept, but because of the quality of the individual songs. "Fit But You Know It" and "Dry Your Eyes" found UK chart success, but single "Could Well Be In" shows Skinner's strength in capturing those small moments in meaningful ways, here in a self-aware manner of thinking about thinking about something like hair-touching (similarly, "Fit" provides an examination of its own punning on "rude"). The song works better a second time and in context, with different meanings now revealed. After revealing both the futility of consolation and the value of cliché, the album moves to an ending that's as formally apt as it is viscerally unnerving.

– Justin Cober-Lake

79.

The Hold Steady
Boys and Girls in America

Vagrant, 2006

To be honest, the kind of guys that hold fort at most of the bars I tend to drink at don't really come up with A+ zingers like "Big heads and soft bodies make for lousy lovers" or "you can wear his old sweatshirt, you can cover yourself like a bruise". They tend to just moan about Kosovans taking their jobs or Lucas Leiva's positonal sense instead. Regardless of this, the main appeal of The Hold Steady, and in particular on Boys and Girls In America, was that they were able to redefine "bar band" to mean something new, to signify a group that accurately transformed the act of getting slowly fucked up and going "oh shit, bruv, lemme tell you about this one broad I used to fuck with" into a genre. It's not really about boys and girls in America anyway, it's about boys' reactions to girls in America: girls that combine depression with a near-Newsboy-in-2003 level of gambling prediction accuracy ("Chips Ahoy"), girls clawing at each others' eyes at the prom ("Massive Nights"), girls homely enough you don't have worry about taking good care of them ("Southtown Girls"). In this most emasculated of decades, at least one band was prepared to go "Hey, I hate you too bitch... no, no, I'm just kidding, could you imagine?" Pro-tip: if they'd have included bonus track "Girls Like Status" on the original release, it'd be about ten places higher in this chart.

– Dom Passantino

78.

Hercules & Love Affair
Hercules & Love Affair

DFA, 2008

Grounded in disco, routing forwards via UK synth-pop and Chicago house, and reaching back through brassy Seventies funk, Andrew Butler’s project seems conscious of its place within the lineage of New York dance – and yet the music easily and confidently transcends its influences. For other members of his collective, Butler’s awareness of historical context barely registers. As vocalist Nomi explained to me last year, “I never listened to disco, really. It’s strange, but when I listen to the record, it relates to me just as a modern, futuristic, mainstream electronic pop record. I don’t have those references in my head, so I can’t really refer to it as disco. The way it registers in my ears is just as some new kind of pop.”

Nomi is one of four voices on the album – two male, one female, one trans – although given Antony Hegarty’s contributions, which thread through five of the ten tracks, perhaps we have reached a land that lies beyond the boundaries of mere gender. Although Antony’s vocals sit well above the funky horns and disco bass, he doesn’t so much play the disco diva as adopt the persona of a lamenting deity, gazing down upon the mortal world with ineffable sorrow and yearning. His defining moment comes with “Blind”: the album’s centerpiece and emotional high water mark, casting a shadow from which its second half never fully emerges.

For having spent the first half ascending towards “Blind”, we now find ourselves inexorably ebbing away from it, despite some belated attempts to nudge us back into the party. Following the contemplative “Iris”, the crepuscular “Raise Me Up” and the frail idealism of “This Is My Love”, a returning honda-honda bassline suggests a girding of the loins – but the lovelorn Hegarty is having none of it. (“Life danced right out of me";"I will never dance again”) The chirpy camp of “Hercules Theme” already feels like a distant memory, and not even the breezy swoop and bounce of “True/False, Fake/Real” can take us back to where we once were.

– Mike Atkinson

77.

Sigur Ros
Agaetis Byrjun

FatCat, 2000

Some albums deserve acclaim for innovation; others for virtuosity. Some we praise for their challenge, and others for their catchiness. Others we reward simply for gorgeousness. Agaetis Byrjun includes a made-up language and alien angel babies among its gorgeousness, so bonus points for that. But if this record was just about providing closing-credit chills and "Ooh, Iceland," it could have been left behind long ago. The band displays remarkable musicality, forsaking technical display for captivating orchestration and intelligent formal structure both within and across individual pieces. And, yeah, there's that cello bow on the guitar thing, and that's rad, too.

While some of the album's most memorable passages are the falsetto-driven airs or the almost ambient moments, the disc has harder side. It is, after all, a cold record, not a chilly one, and it can cut even as it lulls. In the long march toward vernal dawn, there's even need for a moderately gritty prog stretch; Deep Purple would not be displeased with the sounds of "Hjartað hamast (bamm bamm bamm)," and I mean that in the good way. It's a beautiful change of pace from the dreamy sleepwalk of "Svefn-g-englar," and the growth from beatific awakening to loving assault helps shape the album wonderfully. The album's arch is more complex and more carefully structured than quick descriptions of it usually imply. The anthemic force of "Olsen Olsen" is offset by the masses-be-gone caress of "Agaetis Byrjun". It all releases into the foreign-future of "Avalon", which is less its own piece than away to come down out of what preceded it.

– Justin Cober-Lake

76.

The Wrens
Meadowlands

Absolutely Kosher, 2003

With its graceful key shifts, startling vocal reaches, pretty details and sinister atmospheric effects, The Meadowlands sounds like it took several years to make. After nearly a decade shopping for a label that wasn’t a hit factory or otherwise a mismatch, turning down wads of cash in the process, The Wrens landed on Absolutely Kosher, a beautifully aged relic of an utterly ’90s band. Tinged by disillusionment and letdowns directed at the music industry and broken love affairs, the songs, sonically varied and infused with momentum, include “The Seventh Stranger,” where lead singer and guitarist Charles Bissell asks wearily, “Is this real at all?,” subsuming, with a lulling, airy voice, the optimism inherent in the melody; to “Happy,” a grungy, sexy, epic piece about, not the emotion flirted with in the title and first verse, but the pushing, pulling, and demise of a tumultuous relationship (“Are you happy now?”), with closure lying—just maybe—in the surprising jam-out of the song’s final minute.

Yet The Meadowlands’s painful, ferocious music leaves ample room—in verses, bridges —for some of the prettiest rock of the decade. "She Sends Kisses," which vies with "Happy" for album standout, is a slow-churning song, but from the opening measures the band patiently piles on layers, tension, and urgency. For the most part, emotions run the show. But on "Per Second Second," a fast, jerky, melody shifts ever-so-slightly from verse to chorus to bridge, almost like a sped-up sketch of another Wrens song. The lyrics are barely audible. This is a chance for the band to have fun, yet even here is a song as nuanced, as melodically fluid, and as rhythmically playful as the others. Released nine years after the band’s debut Silver, The Meadowlands spared listeners from the drama the band suffered. It felt perfectly ripe, and so momentous that timing was no object.

– Liz Colville

75.

Isolee
We Are Monster

Playhouse, 2005

It’s no surprise that it took Isolee five years to follow up his debut, Rest and the album’s quietly breathtaking single “Beau Mot Plage” - an ever-morphing, sumptuous track built around a flick of a guitar riff and snuggling bass-line that received head-bobs as standing ovations. What’s surprising is how well We Are Monster ups the ante. From the wide-eyed synth swaths on “Pictureloved,” to the moped-up vocals of “Today,” Isolee crafted an album as impressive as it is engaging. Stuffed with ideas and dreaming of tangents, We Are Monster never feels too dense – taking all the best parts of ADD culture, discarding the afflictions. And, god, how these songs blossom because of it. Just follow the mellow fuzz guitar of “Schrapnell,” as it weaves through a series of mini-melodies, which compete and combine into new shapes every eight bars. It’s practically a re-make of Svankmajer’s “Dimensions of Dialogue”, with each section digested into confounding directions. But Isolee never sacrifices pacing for surprise. “My Hi-Matic” unfurls for minutes, slowly tugged along by it’s throbbing heart before remaking it anew at the half-mark, re-focused on the track’s wistful analog synths. Always opulent, We Are Monster is full of unexpected details - the wobble of “Face B”’s atmospheric swirls, the metronomic guitar plucks of “Madchen mit Hase.” Too perfect to be effortless, it is no surprise that there’s not a follow up to We Are Monster in sight.

– Nate DeYoung

74.

Fennesz
Endless Summer

Mego, 2001

A set of pleasantly anodyne melodies submerged in static and repetitive clicking, Christian Fennesz's Endless Summer isn't so much the Beach Boys rip promised or threatened by the title as the first (and so far, still the most striking) attempt by the Austrian wunderkind to really bring his particular brand of acoustic/electronic manipulation to the wider world. His subsequent work has never been quite as open as this, if you can call tracks like the organ-drone-vinyl-skipping exercise "Before I Leave" or the vibraphone and squelching textures of "Caecilia" open. And weirdly, you can – this is the Fennesz record I could play for my mom and, assuming she didn't think her stereo was malfunctioning (the opening "Made in Hong Kong" is the most off-putting track for the novice) she'd probably find it perfectly agreeable background listening. There's enough textural and compositional complexity to keep the most avid clicks-and-cuts fan listening closely, but a song like the fuzzy, far-off "A Year in a Minute" is immediately ingratiating whether you're already a Mego fan or not. Fennesz has said that at the time he composed Endless Summer being melodic "seemed to be the bigger challenge," but for a guy equally influenced by "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)" and the heavy winds of his childhood village, he's done an amazing job at walking the very narrow tightrope between melody and noise, between abrasion and coddling, between songs and sound.

– Ian Mathers

73.

Ricardo Villalobos
Alcachofa

Playhouse, 2003

Like the artichoke with which it shares a name, Ricardo Villalobos’ debut full-length is all about layers; as in, the more you peel away, the more you find. Minimal techno had its champions and designated heroes already by 2003, but nobody had heard anything like this—minimal with beats so interwoven, complicated, and precise, it was nearly an oxymoron, spiked with the flair of Villalobos’ Latin heritage, and blessed with some truly unholy earworms.

The real key to Alcachofa, far beyond it’s dancefloor possibilities or rhythmic invention, is Villalobos’ musicality, fusing his multicultural background (Germany by way of Chile) with minimal’s beat-heavy methods to come up with a whole new beast; the genre’s first full-length truly at home in the living room, as well as the club. “Easy Lee” hits you first, a dizzying vocal loop creating a never-ending wave of momentum to build the stomping bass figure and clattering percussion around; later, on “Waiworinao” a slapped bass and a couple of slashing, darting guitars, with just the faintest ghost of a beat, thrust and parry to build up to a climax that explodes with all the force of an expertly deployed feather pillow. From the seemingly simple parts, he continually built the most wonderful, most complex creations –seven minutes later, you hardly felt the boat rock, but you sure didn’t know how you wound up where you did either.

Not content with just thinking outside of the box, Villalobos was thinking outside of the whole goddamn building. His tracks would get longer, more organic, more expansive from here; it’s arguable as to whether he’s achieved a more complete and satisfying statement than Alcachofa.

– Todd Hutlock

72.

Sufjan Stevens
Illinois

Asthmatic Kitty, 2005

At the decade’s mid-point, Sufjan Stevens seemed happy to play the part of the whimsical scarf-rock auteur, popping out one (concept!) album after another, costuming his touring band as a cheerleading squad, and following Illinois, his 74-minute breakthrough, with a 75-minute (!) collection of its outtakes. In interviews he spoke of a set of 50 such records, one for each state, as ambitious an undertaking as it was artistically dubious: shouldn’t Sufjan write about what he knows?

With the judicious ear of time to sweeten its impact, it couldn’t be clearer that Sufjan did just that with Illinois. His extensive research into the Prairie State is not an end unto itself, but rather a gateway to the doubt, faith, and uncertainty that obsess him. He’s not a dilettante, he’s a dramatist, using situations and characters – in this case, historical figures – to explore his own concerns. That is why, at the close of the title cut, a choir intones “Are you writing from the heart?” over and over, until it becomes a mantra. All those woodwinds hide dissonance, abstraction, and darkness. “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” finds the narrator admitting his identification with a serial killer, while several cuts contain squalls of Sonic Youth-esque guitar, and the aforementioned title song offers the bald acknowledgement, “I cried myself to sleep last night.” That all the above are tucked into a work of such enthusiasm is not a criticism, but a compliment. It’s our loss that Sufjan seems to have abandoned his 50-state plan.

– Patrick McKay

71.

DJ Sprinkles
Midtown 120 Blues

Mule Musiq, 2009

DJ Sprinkles and Midtown 120 Blues are the decade’s best exercises in duality.

DJ Sprinkles is actually Terre Thaemlitz, a 40-year-old transgender living in Japan--a theorist and ambient composer who used to spin house records at transsexual nightclubs in Midtown Manhattan.

Midtown 120 Blues is a house album, but that’s like saying a paella is a bowl of shellfish and rice; it’s more than the surface description. House is the painting, deep house to be specific, but most crucial are the brush strokes. Belabored percussion; spatially vast keyboard tones; filigrees of distant joyful shouts, harp plucks, reverbed strings. Enormous sighs. Each element as small and telling as a teardrop.

While deep house is often pigeonholed as the sort of music that’s carted to the background of hotel lounges and bourgie bars, Thaemlitz demands the music be resurrected as the deeply political and confrontational music it once was. He doesn’t just do this in titles such as “Ball’r (Madonna-Free Zone)” and “House Music Is Controllable Desire You Can Own,” but also in the various hushed spoken-word bits whereby he recites diatribes against the ignominious trajectory of deep house (“greeting card bullshit”).

What one receives from Midtown 120 Blues is all of Thaemlitz: the theorist and the activist and the artist and the diva and the man and the woman. And so often, great art is the actualization of the all of the artist. Nothing is what it seems. Bring your presumptions with you, just don’t expect to still have them when you leave.

– Tal Rosenberg

70.

2 Many DJs
As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2

PIAS, 2002

Pity poor Girls On Top and Freelance Hellraiser: as far as everybody else was concerned, it was the Dewaele brothers' cut-'n'-paste compilation that birthed the bootleg. Well, if they didn't invent it (and they didn't), they certainly rode the crest of the bootleg/mash-up wave into the public consciousness, and we have this disc to thank (perhaps) for late-decade party jackdaws like Girl Talk. But now that hip/hipster DJs drop Yacht Rock alongside deep house and old skool like it ain't no thang, it's easy to forget how fresh - and audacious - As Heard On Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 was. It hits the ground running, Emerson Lake & Palmer's bloated, progtastic “Peter Gunn” assaulting Basement Jaxx's “Where's Your Head At?”; the latter track's faux-aggressive refrain suddenly turning into a belligerent sports rock anthem when removed from its pulsing electronica and inserted into ELP's gross synth squelches. From there, it was a hop and a skip past Peaches and The Velvet Underground to The Residents, Felix Da Housecat and Garbage. Amidst the eclectic racket of As Heard On Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 (those wacky dudes, there was no Pt. 1!), the shining diamond that left the rest of the record in its dust is track 8, a canny shoehorning of Salt 'N' Pepa's “Push It” into The Stooges' “No Fun.” It remains as thrilling as it was back then; that precipice drop as it all - momentarily - falls apart around the 1:30-minute mark swirls the butterflies in your stomach like riding a glorious pop culture rollercoaster - and the Dewaeles rode it, all the way to the bank.

– Clem Bastow

69.

Outkast
Speakerboxxx / The Love Below

Arista, 2003

Following up two of the most inventive and idiosyncratic records of the turn of the century is in itself a difficult proposition. The fact that Big Boi and André 3000 are very distinct and individualistic personalities themselves only complicated things. So when OutKast’s double-solo album combo dropped in stores, listeners instantly jumped to their own conclusions regarding the group’s explicit “divide” in both sound and marquee. What got lost in the shuffle, though, was just how complimentary each record was with the other. Yes, Big Boi was able to prove how false the impression that he was the rap-formalist really was, and André 3000 showed how well-versed he was in the pop catalogue, but the complete product still signified OutKast. From the deliciously schizo tour through thirty years of black music that is “GhettoMusick” to the sweat soaked crunk of “Last Call,” Speakerboxxx was a celebration of rap music’s spirit as party music, catalyst of cultural change, and progressive art form. By contrast, the Love Below was an unabashedly eclectic trip through the psychosis of an eccentric artiste, veering through rock, pop, soul, indie, jazz, and even a bit of hip-hop—and that’s not even mentioning the unclassifiable genius of “Hey Ya!” While the initial concept behind Speakerboxxx/The Love Below may have been designed to showcase the uniqueness of its creators, each final product revels in freewheeling pleasure buoyed by the undeniable enthusiasm that drives both Big Boi and André 3000, and ultimately leaves the listener understanding what makes them such a compelling duo. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is not the greatest rap album of all-time. Hell, it's not even the best OutKast album. But it's easily one of the most essential.

– Andrew Casillas

68.

Okkervil River
Black Sheep Boy

Jagjaguwar, 2005

I didn't actually hear Black Sheep Boy until about four years after its release. "For Real" served as the soundtrack for some YouTube video (not one about the romantic entanglements of Final Fantasy characters, hopefully) and urged me to find out more. Shortly afterwards, driven by "For Real's" creepy, unhinged violence and its stylistic ruminations on 'realness' in all its guises, the album was whirling into my list of favourites.

Grim reality is something of a thematic hook, fuelling the anger that charges much of the record. "Black" howls impotently at terrible past events, over which the teller has no control. Darkness assails from all sides. The weight of abuse hangs heavy, too heavy to lift, and far too heavy for the victim to shrug off. Terrible revenge fantasies threaten to overwhelm and consume. There's the midnight-black humour in writing what amounts to a power ballad about the subject of molestation. When Will Sheff is left able to do nothing more than yell "let me through that door," his voice cracking with hurt, it doesn't sound like an affectation. It sounds like genuine distress.

And while 'realness' isn't enough to elevate a record on its own, it plays a major role in Black Sheep Boy's greatness. I care about these tales. About this suffering. That's something I've found pretty rare since the days when my teenaged self would hang on Robert Smith's every word. Even when Sheff dabbles in the slightly ridiculous, as on "A Stone," he pulls it off. By embracing the ludicrous and flipping the song's focus on its head, he takes us on a bittersweet Pixar adventure about the daydreaming fancies of stones. As the mournful trumpet solo plays out, it's quite possible to start feeling sorry for inanimate chunks of geology.

For all its dark reality, anger and sadness, that's the moment when Black Sheep Boy really won my heart. It made me care about a goddamn make-believe rock.

– Peter Parrish

67.

Life Without Buildings
Any Other City

Tugboat, 2000

Is there anyone in the history of rock music who sounds quite like Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings? Over the 11 tracks that make up what is unfortunately the band's only studio album, and in a voice at once adorable and no-nonsense tough, she sputters, she shouts, she laments, she cajoles. And she repeats herself. A lot. Her conspicuous habit of fastening onto a particular phrase and not letting go (things like "my lips are sealed" or "he's the shaker, baby" or "eyes like lotus leaves") seems like it should come off as an unbearably quirky tic, but it's done with such hard-nosed enthusiasm that the overall effect is more like an incantation, as if only by saying the words out loud enough times can she give them force, make them true. Or sometimes, when she playfully switches up the inflection as she goes, she simply conveys the sheer pleasure of vocalizing. Either way, her voice is an elastic wonder, and you get the sense that she just wants to wring as much out of it as she can.

At the same time, none of this stuff would work half as well without her cracker-jack band; engaging enough to succeed as pure instrumental music in a post-rock vein, their tight, jazzy guitar riffs provide rhythmic grounding and bright melodicism to Tompkins's hyperactive, only-half-sung patter. In the album's best moments (“The Leanover," for instance), there's a feeling, between her quick, eager breaths and the bittersweet, endlessly ringing chords, that the world is wide open and almost anything is possible. Just not a second album, apparently.

– John M. Cunningham

66.

My Morning Jacket
Z

RCA, 2005

The cinematic vastness of Z was new for My Morning Jacket. It came from the production, or more specifically, from reverb, which touches everything from the bass at the start of “Wordless Chorus” to the saxophone that closes out “Dodante.” And yet Z sounds real, of this world, losing some of the fuzz and jamminess of earlier My Morning Jacket but none the poorer for it. Somehow, despite the unprecedented look-at-what-I’m-doing-here showmanship of Jim James’ every syllable, Z may be the most intimate and inviting collection the band has made. John Leckie, whose clean, close-shaven sound has stamped Radiohead, the Verve, XTC, Doves and countless others, produced the album with James, and the results is bold and indulgent. James’ voice, to which reverb is just an elegant casing, can do whatever it damn pleases, and here, it cries, as on the highest soars of “Gideon,” “Listen!”

The songs on Z, as Ian Mathers wrote three years ago, “let you use the descriptor ‘rocks’ without fear or shame.” Despite new members, the performers are tight and confident. At the end of “Gideon,” they play as if they’re at the end of an encore at a giant concert hall, at home in the gaping mouth of Radio City, playing with a joy and enthusiasm that oozes out of even the most sultry and dark moments.

It’s all over in 40 minutes, with the track average around four minutes. But then, Z often feels like a pop album: the forceful, happy hook at the beginning of “Lay Low,” the insistent refrain of “Off The Record,” the heady guitar arpeggio running quietly through “Gideon.” But in between these hooks are moments like the latter half of “Into the Woods”—stretches of confident solos, imaginative effects (that sometimes feel more Leckie than James), and dizzying introspection. Were these moments to take over Z, it might have taken a big idea too far. As it is, Z is a breathtaking drive-by that saves some indulgences—and the element of surprise—for the stage.

– Liz Colville

65.

Elbow
Cast of Thousands

V2, 2003

I'm willing to bet that Elbow's stellar track record is partly down to the fact that they'd been together for over a decade by the time their debut was released. Not fun years for Bury's finest, I'm sure, but the results have been so much more assured and enjoyable than the bands that were initially presumed to be Elbow's counterparts (coughColdplaycough) that it's tempting to assign all promising bands significant time in the wilderness. Cast of Thousands might be their finest, although I have a nasty habit of saying that about whichever Elbow album I've listened to last; it definitely boasts their finest opening salvo in the warm spiritualized glow of "Ribcage" and the punchy, soaring compassion of "Fallen Angel." It might also be their most varied effort – it's hard to think of another Elbow song as expansive as the crowd-sung "Grace Under Pressure," as abrasive and sinister as "I've Got Your Number" with its late period Talk Talk noise ruptures, as humid and haunted as "Crawling With Idiot," as wryly sexy as "Buttons and Zips" or as tenderly idyllic as "Not a Job." And that's not even mentioning the ballads, long one of their strengths; "Switching Off" is the middle chapter and peak of their trilogy of sweeping, non-mawkish love songs about growing old and "Fugitive Motel" manages to bring something universally touching and even a bit noir to traveling without the one you love. As always, there's nothing terribly revolutionary about what Elbow do, but from the detailed but not frivolous production flourishes to the askew, genially wise, and unashamedly grown-up lyrics to the superb sequencing to Guy Garvey's bearhug of a voice, Elbow show themselves to be sharper, steadier, and more affable than just about any other Britrock band of the 00s.

– Ian Mathers

64.

Battles
Mirrored

Warp, 2007

Even if it were notable only as the home for “Atlas”, one of the decade’s most brazenly bizarre singles, Mirrored would still be an awesome record. “Atlas” isn’t the only outstanding moment on this post/math/jazz/rock/delete-as-appropriate supergroup’s debut album, though; from the moment that frenetic rimshots open “Race: In”, it’s pretty evident that Battles mean a strange, fast, alien kind of business. If you’ve seen them live you’ll know that on several occasions more than one member of the band will play a guitar with one hand and a keyboard with another, and that the drummer keeps a cymbal so high he literally has to leap off his stool to hit it. The record isn’t much different.

At first John Stanier’s monumental drumming seems an odd bedfellow with Tyondai Braxton’s amphet-soaked pixie vocals, the product of some late-night hallucination that lasted through to daylight when it suddenly made sense, but through sheer, bludgeoning virtuosity, they come together. Perhaps at times Mirrored veers too far into “look at me, ma!” displays of technical proficiency, but there’s always something a little dangerous, a little unhinged, about the playing that makes this a very different beast to Steely Dan.

So some moments sound like a hardcore band playing inside a washing machine, and other moments sound like the theme tune to kids TV programs produced by sadists. “Tonto” is a never-ending riff-fest that takes so many detours you end up with no recollection of how it began; “Ddiamondd” is 2:34 of schizophrenic prog/jazz/punk momentum. “Atlas” itself, even two years on, pretty much defies description; it opens with a glam stomp and then morphs and morphs and morphs again, one moment a piece of slamming techno, the next a moment of proggy postrock. Mirrored is so fascinatingly deranged that it must be the product of very sane men.

– Nick Southall

63.

Kelley Polar
Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens

Environ, 2005

One of the most intriguing things about Kelley Polar's first full-length record is that it mixes signifiers both classical and futuristic. On one hand, there's a song title ("Tyurangalila") swiped from Olivier Messiaen, occasional madrigal-like harmonies (notably the intro of "My Beauty in the Moon"), and Mike Kelley's viola swooping and gliding with conservatory mastery. On the other, there are synths gleaming like moon-lit glass skyscrapers, precisely programmed pulsating dance beats, and Kelley's own effete vocals, which often resemble nothing more than a soothing alien transmission. Yet at no point does this ever feel gimmicky: by some strange alchemy, Kelley creates a seamless landscape out of these parts, a sophisticated space-age disco album that's darkly enchanting and also more than a little unsettling.

– John M. Cunningham

62.

Caribou
The Milk of Human Kindness

Domino, 2005

OK, so maybe Up In Flames caused more instances of spontaneous emotional combustion on first listen, and perhaps Andorra has better tunes and a more instantly identifiable aesthetic, but you know what? The Milk of Human Kindness is the Dan Snaith record that I, and several other Stylusers judging by the fact that it’s here and its brethren aren’t, keep coming back to. Again and again and again.

It’s Caribou, so we know it contains songs like “Yeti”, laden with tumbling drums, irresistibly shimmering organs, and breathy vocals less about lyrics, or even singing, than just adding even more momentum. It also contains elongated, neo-Krautrock grooves like “ A Final Warning”, composed of long passages where little but luxurious percussion occurs, interspersed with moments when the sound swells hugely and becomes truly psychedelic. We also know that absolutely everything will sound absolutely delicious; the subtle, succulent acoustic guitar riffs that permeate “Bees” and “Hello Hammerheads”, and whirling, insatiable cymbal swirls of “Brahminy Kite” just begging to be listened to over and over.

The thing is that The Milk of Human Kindness doesn’t define or embody anything; it signals no pedagogical revolution and captures no thrilling new ideology. It just sounds fantastic and makes you happy when you listen to it. We listened to it on Sunday afternoons while we sat and read in the sun; we listened to it when we cooked and then again when we washed up; we bobbed our heads to it as we drove quickly through wide, winding country roads; we loved every moment. That’s what it comes down to in the end, really; The Milk of Human Kindness is insanely, beatifically, unrepentantly loveable.

– Nick Southall

61.

Ryan Adams
Heartbreaker

Bloodshot, 2000

I went to a small dive bar in west Austin early one night. There was nothing particularly special about this bar; there were some stools, a pool table, an old big screen TV, $11 pitchers of Miller Lite, etc. However, I noticed that this bar had Heartbreaker on its jukebox, which I quickly realized that I had never seen on a jukebox before. Since the place was quiet, and the rest of my party had yet to arrive, I put a dollar into the machine to play a few tracks off the record. Pulling a stool up to the bar, I asked the bartender if this were a pretty popular album of choice for his patrons. He told me that customers rarely played any of the songs, and that he was the person who put the album on the jukebox on the first place. “So then you must play this record for yourself pretty often?” I asked. “Actually,” he replied, “I play it whenever people here need a bit of cheering up.” Cheering up? From Heartbreaker?? “It’s a break-up album!” I barked. The bartender then responded, coolly, “It’s a break-up album about the worst part of a break-up. After hearing this, you ain’t got nowhere to go but up.” Indeed, it’s this particular aspect of the album that makes it so resonant and beautiful: That something focusing on one of the most devastating feelings in the human experience can be liberating because it’s about someone else’s perspective of it all. It wasn’t sanitized, or optimistic, or forced to tack on a somewhat happy ending. It was brutal, and honest, and self-aware; the kind of attitude that lets you know how much shit sucks, but that this’ll all pass, and you’ll survive into tomorrow. After all, it’s just heartbreak.

– Andrew Casillas

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