The year 1980 marked the waning of the malaise era in America and the second year of Thatcher in the UK.  The anything goes 70s was being supplanted by the glossy, go-go 80s where the shiny surface masked such travails as AIDS and a resurgent Cold War.

The first year of the decade catches music frozen in midstream – hip-hop is beginning to surface across singles and a few albums such as Kurtis Blow’s debut, disco still lived, post-punk was giving way to new wave, and classic rock wasn’t yet classic. Here then are the 40 best albums of 1980:

40. The Sound – Jeopardy
Mostly overlooked in the UK during their career and wholly overlooked in the US where their albums weren’t even released, The Sound seems an unlikely candidate for a best of the year list. They now have a small but deserved cult following who quite rightly slot them in alongside contemporaries like XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen and Psychedelic Furs with leading a tough tuneful postpunk sound that still impacts bands like The Strokes and Spoon today.

39. Robert Palmer – Clues
On his way to louche Power Station lead singer and solo artist backed by manikin models, Robert Palmer was actually interesting. His 70s albums usually had fine songs and a crack band putting the man through some hot R & B paces (Sneaking Sally Through the Alley is the best of these). Clues was a left-turn towards new wave and rock signaled by the Gary Numan cover but achieved more ably on songs like “Johnny and Mary” and the delightful title track. Palmer’s previous rhythm excursions serve to underpin everything here with a strong groove, grounding the record and connecting it to his past work just as the harder edge looked forward to the ersatz rock of his future commercial breakthrough.

38. The Fall - Grotesque (After the Gramme)
The Fall’s first essential album, this chugs along consistently with some of Mark E. Smith’s best songs and freshest rants. The hooks are there and the playing stays on the right side of tight. It’s not hard to imagine “New Face in Hell” lodging in young Stephen Morrissey’s brain as a touchpoint just as “How I Wrote Plastic Man” would be later transmuted by Elastica.

37. Pylon – Gyrate
Pylon came out of the same fertile Athens, Ga. Scene as The B-52s and R.E.M. but never had a scintilla of the commercial success that those other two bands did. What they did have was a spring wound sound that owed more than a little to the Gang of Four. In this they actually were similar to R.E.M. at this point in their careers. Singer Vanessa Briscoe helps to distinguish the band from their British forebears and their co-scenesters as does the cooly detached guitar playing of Randy Bewley which recalls Tom Verlaine. Gyrate is terrific album which marries the herky jerky rhythms to the atmospheric and even majestic arrangements.

36. Alex Chilton – Like Flies on Sherbert
Released in many forms and different times across different labels and countries, this captures Chilton at his career bottoming out on the cusp of re-discovery and a major shift in focus away from rock to gutbucket R & B and standards. Though it’s been described as a sorry mess, the high art sloppiness of artists like Spoon and lo-fi fetishism of Bob Pollard give this  record a kinder frame of reference. Covers like “Boogie Shoes” are stripped to deranged minimums while the prickly guitar squalling of “My Rival” neatly prefigures Sonic Youth and Pixies. For those who were interested in seeing how far Chilton could go after Big Star’s Sister Lovers it’s a bracing trip.

35. The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
The knock on The Police is that they were a bunch of cynical journeyman who lucked into punk and new wave and rode it to success. While that’s true to a point, it misses the song skills of one Gordon Sumner, along with the elegant instrumental chops of all three members, without which they would have been little more than three bottles of blond hair-dye. On this, album number three, the band began to tap into their ambition with bigger, more anthemic songs and an eye for world events. While Sting’s pomposity is always lurking the sheer joy evident in the grooves is enough to keep it at bay, delivering what might be the band’s most consistent record.

34. The Suburbs - In Combo
For a brief moment in 1980 the Minneapolis rock scene was dominated by this band, whose guitars and synths sound would be soon eclipsed in local adulation by the harder edged punk of Husker Du, The Replacements and Soul Asylum even as they persevered. The songs here borrow from British punk, American punk, funk, and post-punk and it works, prefiguring bands like Interpol and the Killers while still hewing to their own distinct sound.

33. Prince – Dirty Mind
Like the Suburbs, Prince was sent forth from Minneapolis to commingle elements of several different genres in new and better ways. While his 1978 debut suggested a Funkadelic follower this third album added to the palette with pop and rock arrangements and some stunning songs like “When You Were Mine” and the salacious “Head.”  Aptly titled, this signaled the start of his hot and heavy phase which also coincided with his songwriting and commercial peak over the next decade.

32. The Cars - Panorama
The Cars were looking to vary things a bit on their third outing. Already one of the most successful new wave bands (the new wave moniker was ironic since they were Bostonians), Ocasek, Ben Orr and company wanted to get cred as artists as well. Ocasek even produced pioneering synth duo Suicide’s second album, surely a sign of where his head was at. Indeed Panorama is darker and less immediate than the hook extravaganzas that were the Cars’ first two albums. The single, “Touch and Go”, is one of the band’s best and most challenging songs combining icy Tangerine Dream-ish verses with bouncy country and western derived choruses. Not surprisingly the single and album stiffed.

31. The Brains- The Brains
The Brains blew some minds in 1980 with their off-kilter new wave, yet never achieved the success they deserved (like so many of these albums). Their debut included their best known song, “Money Changes Everything”, made famous three years later by Cyndi Lauper’s hit cover. There is more here than just that song though – The Brains suggested an alternate take on classic rock sensibilities fused with post-punk approaches to songwriting and instrumentation that sets them apart from bands with similar components like The Cars. The Brain’s touchstones were as likely to be Mott The Hoople as opposed to Roxy Music. A terrific lost classic.

30. Iggy Pop - Soldier
By 1980 Iggy’s career had been well and truly revived in the wake of punk and three excellent solo albums. So it’s understandable that Soldier isn’t quite on par with his best – it’s still pretty damn good. This is despite a tortured creation process that according to rumor included fights with Bowie, James Williamson, and the session band. Said band includes ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock who by then was in The Rich Kids. Still you can’t beat down and dirty Iggy like “Dog Food” or the sublime “Low Life.”

29. Suicide – The Second Album
This Ric Ocasek-produced gem was originally and oddly credited to Suicide’s two members, Martin Rev and Alan Vega, but subsequent re-issues have rectified this and returned it to the seminal band’s catalog. Suicide’s first album was ahead-of-its-time ghostly synthpop in 1977 and so it is with this follow-up. However the palette has broadened considerably from their groundbreaking debut. The music is still electronic but the sound is bigger, the songs more epic. Within a few short years bands like Depeche Mode and New Order would be running with the sound that Suicide helped create.

28. The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight
Before Robyn Hitchcock made a name for himself as a solo purveyor of macabre quirkery he led The Soft Boys alongside guitarist Kimberley Rew whose heavy melodic guitar style is an often unacknowledged influence on the likes of Johnny Marr and Peter Buck amongst others.  The lyrics equate falling in love to insects laying eggs under your skin and at their rousing peak The Soft Boys declare “I Wanna Destroy You.” And they do.

27. The Jim Carroll Band – Catholic Boy
Poet and Basketball Diaries memoirist Jim Carroll took a cue from his fellow downtown NY scenester Patti Smith and started a band to explore his musical musings. Luckily, like Smith, Carroll proved to be a natural gracing us with this last blast of classic CBGB’s style New York punk. Though “People Who Died”, a litany of friends who met untimely ends, is the best known track there is plenty here to delight aficionados.

26. Grace Jones - Warm Leatherette
Like Jim Carroll, Grace Jones was a New York fixture but in the disco party scene. While she had transitioned from modeling to performing in clubs in the late 70s it took the reggae production team of Sly and Robbie to push her (and them) into a new musical dimension. Whether covering Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug” or Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” Jones and team make these songs their own with slinky grooves and her trademark hard-edged voice. This is more than just disco, it’s domme disco.

25. Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth
This album is one of those unique records that could have been released yesterday, a week from now, or indeed 1980. It simply sounds like nothing else.  Alison Statton’s detached vocals glide above the terse guitar and pulse like keyboards as songs like “Credit in The Straight World” build and circle around their themes and motifs.

24. John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy
It was bands like Young Marble Giants and The B-52s that caused John Lennon to declare to Yoko that the music scene had finally caught up to her musical experiments. He was about ten years too early but to help the pill go down he returned to recording as well after his self-imposed five year exile and traded off songs with her on a concept album meant to evoke their marriage. In a sense this is really two EPs that don’t fully assimilate with each other – Yoko’s avant-pop and Lennon’s slick songcraft celebrating the joys of house-husbandry. Nevertheless it’s some of the best work from each of them and ultimately a sad epitaph to Lennon who would be assassinated shortly after the album’s release.

23. The Psychedelic Furs - The Psychedelic Furs
The Psychedelic Furs emerged from London with this debut album and one of the most interesting takes on post-punk, aided by Richard Butler’s rasping croon which can snarl like Johnny Rotten or insinuate like David Bowie. The band locks into a tight groove on tracks like the dubby “Wedding Song” and the slow burner “Imitation of Christ” churning it’s way through rich chord changes.

22. XTC – Black Sea
XTC pulled back from their earlier arch art moves on their previous LP Drums and Wires but they embraced pop hooks fully on this, their third (and best) album. Partridge and Moulding still write songs about architecture, history, and other such things but here they come across all punchy and direct on tunes like the magnificent “Towers of London” and the transcendent “Generals and Majors.”

21. Bruce Springsteen - The River
Brooooce splits the difference between Born to Run’s anthems and Darkness on the Edge of Town’s noir menace with this generous double that can feel overstuffed but rewards with a clutch of great songs. “Out in The Street” is still a live staple, as it should be given the effortless updating of classic early 60s swagger that recalls the Shangri-La’s and Dion but then there’s the balance of a pensive song like “Stolen Car.” This is the Boss arguably at the height of his powers.

20.  Swell Maps - Jane From Occupied Europe
It would be hard to imagine a whole swath of indie rock, from Pavement to No Age to dozens of groups in between without the experimental songcraft of Swell Maps. From the Cold War-baiting album title to the even more breathtaking tunes their second album is a lofty triumph of soundscapes and sideways hooks that unexpectedly sink in.

19. The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
Hoboken’s Feelies flew the nerd rock flag high at a time when few bands dared to be uncool. Now though you just check the way the cover of Weezer’s debut album references the blue background portrait of this, The Feelies first. The title is apt as they sound ready to leap off of their feet with their Velvets meets the Beatles jangle pop. Later incarnations of the band would sound more conventional but here they serve up a fairly original take on some venerable forebears.

18. Squeeze – Argybargy
Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook, the two main songwriters in Squeeze, helped keep Britpop alive through the new wave era, serving as the link between bands like The Kinks and future bands like Blur. Argybargy is chock full of sharp-edged tunefulness and armed with an armada of great singles from “Pulling Mussels (From a Shell)” to “If I Didn’t Love You”, not to mention should-have-been singles like “Separate Beds.”

17. X - Los Angeles
John Doe and Exene Cervenka took on a distinctly Los Angeles approach to punk with an assist from Doors keyboard man Ray Manzarek in the production chair and their ace in the hole – guitarist Billy Zoom. Though Exene’s sometimes off-key harmonizing can grate on some ears the boy/girl vocal arrangements were highly influential on bands like Pixies and the seamy downtown lifestyle songwriting is full of gems on this, their debut.

16. The Specials - More Specials
The Specials first album flew in the face of Britain’s rising racial tensions with an interracial band and music that fused the balls-out attack of punk with the skipping beat (and many of the songs) of 60s Jamaican ska. The Specials were nothing if not ambitious though and this followup  sees them broadening an deepening in every way. If not as immediate as its predecessor, More Specials also jettisons the casual misogyny of songs like “Little Bitch” for the satire of “International Jet Set” and the timeless melody of “Do Nothing.” The epic “Stereotypes” introduces Ennio Morricone as an influence stretching the original shorter single past the seven-minute mark. Sadly tensions would split the band apart into Fun Boy Three and Special AKA after their best single, 1981’s “Ghost Town” though they recently reunited for a short tour.

15. Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
While American’s knowledge of this band begins and ends with the 1982 song “Come On, Eileen”, a massive one-hit-wonder, this debut was celebrated in the UK as a groundbreaking fusion of punk spirit and soul songwriting chops. Singer Kevin Rowland is no Al Green, his slightly strangulated vocals recalling the yelping of folks like Tom Verlaine, but against the R & B chops of the band it makes for a bracing combo – and they know it.

14. The Jam - Sound Affects
Paul Weller and company just kept getting better and better after their debut. This, their fifth album, is also arguably their peak with a terrific batch of songs the grabs you right from the start with “Pretty Green.” Speaking of start, “Start!” is one of their best songs, extracting a bassline derived from the Beatles “Taxman” and constructing a sturdy groove around it that hints at the soul stylings to come on future Weller and Jam albums.

13. Devo – Freedom of Choice
Devo posited their theory of de-evolution on their early art-damaged albums, that the human race was essentially devolving into a stupid drooling mass of automatons. This is of course satire and what better way to slide into it than to be it so the band “dumbed” their sound down, losing the most dissonant elements, and gaining big shiny synth driven hooks. The result is their most enjoyable album, beyond even their signature song “Whip It.” “Gates of Steel” grabs you by the throat, “Girl U Want” is a classic and the title track was an apt send-up of the American electoral process.

12. Elvis Costello and the Attractions – Get Happy!!
Like Dexy’s, Elvis the C here takes classic soul moves and roughs them up with punk attitude though he is both less and more faithful to the source. Less in that he can’t help but write his own  wonderfully convoluted wordplay and punnery as well as slipping in left fielders like the stately “Riot Act.” More in that he lifts elements faithfully from Stax and Motown and even covers Sam & Dave.

11. The Rolling Stones - Emotional Rescue
Partisans argue over which Stones albums are the most underrated and Emotional Rescue can stake a claim to the number one slot on the list, overlooked as it usually is in favor of it’s predecessor Some Girls and follow-up Tattoo You. It’s a gritty grimy affair that effortlessly swims in the sleaze that the band strained to evoke on later albums like Undercover. The title track is the best known song here, a delightful slice of falsetto disco cheese with an insinuating melody and Jagger’s hilarious spoken come-ons: “Yes, you will be mine…” he intones. But “She’s So Cold” is a nervy jittery marvel in their rockabilly vein, “Down in The Hole” a slice of molten blues decadence, “Send it To Me” a clipped cod reggae attempt. The fact that most of this is less played out makes it a great secret treasure in the Stones’ twilight period of relevance.

10. Joy Division – Closer
The death of Ian Curtis by suicide after the release of this, the band’s last album before regrouping as New Order, can’t help but cast a pall over a record that should have signaled a bright future. The band was playing with song structure, rhythm, melody, all in an attempt to stretch past the focused terseness of their groundbreaking debut. For the most part it works, and there are intriguing signs of the electronic and dance flourishes that New Order would pioneer.

9. Roxy Music – Flesh + Blood
Flesh + Blood has a bit of a mixed reputation in Roxy Music land but its outlandish covers of “Eight Miles High” and “In the Midnight Hour” are endearing in their slick disco pop-ishness. More important is the fact that the sound they perfect here is what fuelled dozens of bands in next 2-3 years from Duran Duran to ABC to Haircut 100. While that’s not inherently a good thing, Roxy Music (and increasingly singer and leader Bryan Ferry) own the sound and deploy it better than any of their followers on songs like “Over You.”

8. The Clash - Sandinista!
Oh, what a glorious mess. London Calling, their 1979 double album, was simply too tight and consistent to rank as the band’s equivalent to The Beatles White Album. This triple (!) record threat (on vinyl) however, fits the bill – dividing fans and acolytes with a huge smorgasbord of songs that ru the gamut from punkified Reggae covers (“Police on My Back”) to hip-hop (“Magnificent 7”) to out and out dub, art-rock surf, Motown, and kids covering Clash classics. No weed-fuelled idea was too puerile to commit to tape and surprising amounts are worthwhile. More importantly, no two people make the same mix tape of favorites out of this.

7. AC/DC - Back in Black
Like Joy Division, Australia’s hard rock heroes AC/DC ought to have been laid waste by the loss of an iconic lead singer. Yet after the death of Bon Scott (from general carousing), new singer Brian Johnson and company took up right where the band had left off, creating their masterpiece and one of the finest rock albums ever. Their hard-partying, tune-loaded approach also paved the way for the rise of 80s hair bands (along with Def Leppard), essentially acting as a bridge between the blues riffing of Led Zeppelin and the leaner, less prog-rock sounds to come.

6. Pretenders – Pretenders
The first Pretenders album was a showcase for one of the most unheralded rock lineups, one that would be sadly devastated over the next four years by drug abuse. From brilliant guitarist James Honeyman-Scott to propulsive drummer Martin Chambers to bassist Pete Farndon the band rocked out on both blazing rave-ups and moody ballads. Chrissie Hynde’s expressive vocals and crackerjack songwriting provided the canvas for what would be one of the most acclaimed debuts of the 80s. Sadly Honeyman-Scott and later Farndon would both die of overdoses after the release of the band’s second album, and Hynde would later rely on a succession of sidemen under the Pretenders name to flesh out her still considerable songwriting and fronting skills.

5. Killing Joke - Killing Joke
Killing Joke were amazingly visionary as well as difficult to pigeonhole. Described variously as post-punk, goth, metal, industrial, and electronic, they fittingly landed this debut on EG, the same label as Brian Eno. Why not for a band whose influence ranges from Nirvana (who famously nicked the riff for “Come as You Are” from them) to Metallica to Pigface and even an early version of The Sugarcubes. The music is martial, chugging, spacious, often cinematic and apocalyptic in the way that only early 80s Cold War influenced bands can be.

4. Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel (“Melt”)
Did someone mention Cold War angst? Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers” is loaded with it, as well as an irresistible melody that tricked American’s into thinking this was some new wave debut rather than the third solo record by a former prog-rock frontman. And why not, since this very well might be the best record of his career. The surfaces Producer Steve Lillywhite conjures are immersive and widescreen, the dread suffusive, and yet the album isn’t a downer – particularly on the incredibly moving finale of “Biko.” In its sound and subject matter the record prefigures so much of what would be done in the rest of the decade, usually with far less finesse.

3. The Wipers – Is This Real?
Portland’s Greg Sage led The Wipers, one of the most criminally underappreciated bands to emerge from the American punk scene. From Sage’s blazing guitar chops to his yearning, questioningly tuneful songs like “D-7” and “Don’t Know What I Am” this record is the equal of anything The Replacements, Husker Du, or anyone else would bring out over the next few years.

2. Talking Heads – Remain in Light
Talking Heads released a remarkably consistent yet adventurous string of albums beginning with their 1977 debut and extended their streak with this remarkable melding of African rhythms and arrangements alongside David Byrne’s jittery vocals and the band’s skewed hooks. Producer Brian Eno plays a larger role, essentially as a de facto band member. The tension this created may have led to the band’s long three-year layoff in the studio after this was released but the record it created is a landmark.

1. David Bowie - Scary Monsters
It can be said now that this is the last of a string of classic Bowie records that began with Hunky Dory in 1971. What a way to go out – “Ashes to Ashes” extends his Berlin sound to revisit Major Tom from “Space Oddity”, another Tom (Verlaine) gets a stellar cover treatment with “Kingdom Come” and overall the record shows man at his peak. The 80s would be indelibly influenced by his example musically and professionally (think Madonna’s many ch-ch-ch Changes) but sadly Bowie himself would lose the plot after the of-the-moment Let’s Dance in 1983.

It’s fair to say that although he enjoyed a number 1 single at the height of the 1960s Alex Chilton’s influence has far, far exceeded his record sales. While he may not be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame his genius, his songs, and his career have inspired multiple generations of bands and several important genres ranging from the blue-eyed soul of Hall & Oates, the power pop of Cheap Trick, 80s alternative and indie rock like The Replacements and R.E.M., and lo-fi experimentalists like Pavement, Guided by Voices, and No Age.

I remember listening to a cassette of his band Big Star’s second album, Radio City in high school and wondering what kind of world could let music so perfect go undiscovered by so many. But I’m skipping ahead.

Like some alternate universe Bowie, Alex Chilton had distinctly different phases of music. Unlike Bowie there was never any hint of premeditation – Chilton seemingly couldn’t help himself and would go so far as to renounce his previous work. It started in Memphis with the Brill Building blue-eyed soul of the Box Tops. Chilton was just 16 when “The Letter” ascended the charts but his voice was at it’s huskiest. He chafed at the restriction of having songs written by others for the band to play and he to sing but he stuck with them through lesser hits like the wonderful “Cry Like a Baby” and some better than average singles and albums.

By 1970 the band had broken up and Chilton bummed around the Memphis scene before hooking up with fellow songwriter Chris Bell, drummer Jody Stephens and bassist Andy Hummel who were all members of a band called Icewater. They called the new band Big Star, in homage to a chain of southern supermarkets. Big Star’s first record, #1 Record was released on soul label Stax’s Ardent imprint and was a sales disaster. Yet the glorious songs inside were anything but. Inspired now by the shimmering songcraft of mid 60s Beatles and Kinks but with an undertow of wonder, nostalgia and heartbreak that was all their own, like all Bog Star albums it’s an essential for any serious rock fan. It was also completely out of touch with where the music world was in 1972.

Bell split from Big Star and would die in a car crash in 1978 (the posthumously released I Am The Kosmos Cosmos (thanks for catching the title mis-spelling Aaron) includes his only released solo single alongside never before released tracks.) Big Star went their separate ways initially but regrouped for 1974’s Radio City which found the band with a lean, tough sound and tighter more dynamic playing and Chilton’s best set of songs yet – some consider this his masterpiece. It’s a mind blowingly good record. Like it’s predecessor it was a complete flop commercially, in part due to Stax’s money woes.

Chilton was becoming increasingly frustrated – if his brilliantly arranged and executed songs couldn’t find an audience, why bother with the niceties at all? Recording for a third album commenced in 1975 but the sessions were chaotic to say the least. Where Radio City found tension in pushing and pulling the songs and adding different coloration here and there these new sessions featured songs that seemed scotch-taped together, on the brink of despair or even madness. Weary, resigned, resentful, defiant and yet with an undeniable tunefulness at it’s core – the sessions sat unreleased for years. In 1978 they appeared in Europe under the title Third and also Sister Lovers with slightly different track listings. Once heard (they’ve since been issued in their entirety) they are unforgettable and every bit as satisfying as the first two records if not more so. A whole chunk of indie rock starts right here.

In the meantime Chilton had hit the bottle hard and finally began to launch a solo career that was even more shambolic than Sister Lovers had been with surly, sometimes atonally barbed guitar playing and casually tossed off production and arrangements. While this could be hit or miss at times it also resulted in the amazing “Bangkok”, some great covers, and the fantastic 1980 album Like Flies on Sherbert.

He also began producing for groups like The Cramps and The Replacements (their new major label rejected the results) who returned the favor with their tribute song “Alex Chilton” in 1987, one of their most beloved tunes. In a nice twist it was produced by Memphis legend Jim Dickinson (who also recently died) – the producer of Big Star’s Sister Lovers sessions.

By the 80s Chilton was playing blistering guitar in Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, a Memphis band that added punk grit to rockabilly and blues and had also returned to making solo records. Now however he was reincarnated as a gritty soul man, pumping out greasy R & B with sweaty abandon. While the covers-heavy content may have disappointed some fans, albums like High Priest were extremely enjoyable.

The 90s brought long overdue accolades and elder statesman status along with a series of Big Star reunions that seemed a bit grudging on Chilton’s part, as he was clearly lukewarm on the idea of living in his own past. Yet his heart attack came on the eve of a Big Star performance scheduled this weekend at SXSW. Viewers likely didn’t know it but the theme song to That 70’s Show was a rerecorded version of Big Star’s “Out in The Street” by Cheap Trick – making it a bigger hit in the 90s than it had ever been initially.

Alex Chilton was a true American great. There was a time when meeting a fellow Big Star or Alex Chilton fan was to meet a kindred spirit. R.I.P.

Here are just a few of his career’s many high points:

The Box Tops – “The Letter”

The Box Tops – “Cry Like a Baby”

The Box Tops on Mike Douglas do “Turn on a Dream” and “Soul Deep”

Big Star – “Thirteen”

Big Star – “Ballad of El Goodo”

Big Star – “September Gurls”

Big Star – “O My Soul”

Big Star – “Kanga Roo”

Big Star – “Kizza Me”

Alex Chilton covering the Seeds on “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”

Alex Chilton – “Bangkok”

Chilton on 120 Minutes circa 1985

Alex Chilton – “No Sex”

The Replacements – “Alex Chilton”

If the 80s and 90s saw music fragmenting into hundreds of tiny subcultures the 00s offered a way out – in part by destroying the very music industry machinery that encouraged such fragmentation. File sharing may have killed music but it also saved it by letting people hear thousands of songs they never would have been exposed to.It also freed musicians like M.I.A., Radiohead, and Girl Talk to make music that was as boundary-less as their audience.

Here they are, my pick for the 100 best albums of the last decade:

Best of the 00s 100-76

Best of the 00s 75-51

Best of the 00s 50-26

Best of the 00s 25-1

Sky Saxon of the Seeds, who died in 2009

So the 00’s come to an end with a whimper, not a bang. These 25 albums were all great but I’d be lying if I told you that there was another 25 I was anguished about leaving off the list. Even so Dylan, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Raekwon, Monsters of Folk, Talbot Tagora and M. Ward all just missed the cut – to name a few. It was a dismal year for hip-hop but the likes of Wale and Kid Cudi give hope to the future. Merge records celebrated their twentieth anniversary while venerable Touch and Go announced their imminent closing.

Here without further ado, were my favorite 25 albums of the year:

1. Girls – Album
Get over the disappointment that Girls doesn’t even have any girls in the band and you’ll find that the duo of JR White and Christopher Owens have crafted an exquisitely detailed album that slides comfortably into the slot marked “Indie Rock” without becoming a slave to the genre’s tropes. It’s like Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted run through a gloriously filter of Smiths sensibility.

2. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
It may seem like Neko Case has been wrapping her considerable lungpower around the same seam of country tinged alt-Americana for several albums now. She’s so consistent and subtle in the ways she moves her craft forward from record-to-record that it can be heard to realize how much she’s progressed until you compare this to her earliest works. Her country twang has been leavened into a sweeping epic atmospheric sensibility underpinned by a sly sense of humor. Little flourishes color each song and her cover of Spark’s “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth” shows how unique her sound has become.

3. Thermals - Now We Can See
A concept album about death? Major bummer dude, and pretentious as hell. Yet The Thermals pull it off with the best album of their career, a considerable feat considering the breakthrough that was 2006’s The Body, The Blood, The Machine. This is the kind of melodic, intelligent, heartfelt punk that Green Day wishes they could write.

4. Future of The Left – Travels With Myself and Another
When the perpetually cross Welshmen in McLusky decided to call it a day, few thought that they would return in all but name and bassist but plus two members from the equally defunct Jarcrew. Yet return they have, with a brace of abrasively melodic post punk on this, their second album. All the snarkiness remains, abetted by pogo-worthy choruses and clever wordplay.

5. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
After spending most of the decade perfecting their neo-psych chops and expanding their audience Flaming Lips take a hard left into Krautrock territory with Can in particular serving as a touchstone for a sprawling bass heavy album. There are moments that recall PiL’s classic Metal Box/Second Edition as well, minus Johnny Rotten.

6. Japandroids – Post-Nothing

Japandroids are the best kind of bubblegum lo-fi – chiming squalling guitars plus killer songs recorded with punch and definition enough to not obscure the fun. Anthems abound from “Wet Hair” to the magnificent “The Boys are Leaving Town.”

7. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear’s debut was praised (perhaps overly) for it’s Brooklynite take on the pastoral sound sweeping indie circles so it’s a treat to find the follow-up bettering it’s predecessor in every way. The influences du jour are still there – as with Animal Collective a Beach Boys streak tempered by a touch of freak folk and out-and-out experimentation. The arrangements are less dry than before, with a marvelous command of build and release all of which sets off a remarkable set of songs. A triumph.

8. Surf City – Surf City (EP)
As their name implies Surf City has a touch of classic surf rock to them, but it’s by way of The Pixies, spiked with the Cure’s romantic melodicism and a dash of good old fashioned fuzz. The sheer enthusiasm of the songs and the performances is infectious – just try not to bop along.

9. Abe Vigoda – Reviver
Not the aged actor from Barney Miller, these art punks have flown under the radar successfully enough to avoid a lawsuit – so far. That may not last because as cool as last year’s Skeleton full-length was, this EP is better – song after great song. Like No Age this isn’t quite lo-fi enough to count as the mannered sludge passed off by Times New Viking but it has a raw immediate quality with songs that can come off like Grizzly Bear’s hard-rocking little brothers.

10. Sonic Youth – The Eternal
Sonic Youth’s return to indiedom may be a tad less satisfying than their last Geffen album, Rather Ripped, but it’s their rockingest album since 1992’s Dirty. It’s chock full of Johnny Thunders asides and nods to The Stooges as well as the bands trademarked sideways riffs and alternate tunings. Of course it’s the tight, focused songs that elevate this to the top tier of their ever-growing canon, plus the novelty of hearing them attempt something like vocal harmony and interplay on many songs, another new wrinkle for these vets.

11. Dan Deacon – Bromst
As interesting as Dan Deacon has been in the past, he’s always undercut his songs with skronky dissonance and over-syncopation that make listening a challenge for many (me included). On Bromst he lightens the stew just enough to still be distinctive but also highlight his rhythmic inventiveness and control of texture and pacing resulting in his best record yet.

12. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
Animal Collective keeps edging closer and closer to melody while always underpinning what they do with a sense of playfulness and anything-goes studio arrangements. Their off-kilter sensibility gets it’s fullest expression to date here on a record that finds room for paeans to fatherhood and family life amongst the close-knit harmonies, circular rhythmic pulsing, and unexpected side turns. The Beach Boys are a touchstone but only if Brain Wilson had been able to channel his madness completely and musically, had embraced the chaos equally with the melody. A true stunner.

13. AC Newman - Get Guilty
While New Porngraphers have begun to sound a bit overstuffed on recent releases bandleader Carl Newman brings things back down to the basics on Get Guilty, his best work since the Porno’s Twin Cinema. It’s not that he does anything new here, it’s that he does his schtick with expertise. If powerpop full of big meaty choruses and thundering drums is your deal then sign right up.

14. Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications
The louche former Pulp frontman gets in touch with his guitar-heavy side and brings noisemeister Steve Albini to man the control board. The result is lean and mean and full of horny tongue-in-cheek single-entendres like “Caucasian Blues” (in which he laments being hung like a white man) and the utterly brilliant “I Never said I Was Deep.”

15. Atlas Sound - Logos

Nealy shelved after an early version leaked last year, the latest album from Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox has thankfully seen the light of day and it’s as good as anything by his increasingly notable day band. Noah Lennox from Animal Collective guests on the awesome “Walkabout” and there is a certain shared sensibility but Atlas Sound is skewed less towards rhythm circularity and more towards chewy hooks and strumming guitars.

16. St. Vincent – Actor
Like Neko Case and Spoon’s Britt Daniel, Annie Clark (who is St. Vincent for all intents and purposes) is a thinking person’s pin-up, as glorious for their art as for their looks. Her background in Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestra, The Polyphonic Spree, and Sufjan Steven’s band give a pretty good idea of her take on music – a sort of Kate Bush as guitar slinger. On Actor she has the songs to pull it off, sounding like early solo Peter Gabriel if he had roped Thurston Moore into playing guitar for him.

17. Mos Def – The Ecstatic
In a lousy year for hip-hop it was good to welcome Mos Def back with a first-rate album after years of tossed off efforts. Sounding more vital than he has in years over a set of clever engrossing beats and soundscapes it’s a reminder of how great rap can be when it’s not subject to rote rhyming and mega-sales expectations. The cherry on top is a great guest verse by Slick Rick.

18. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
The Jesus and Mary Chain have much to answer for in the last few years but inspiring a band as fun and freewheeling as this one is nothing to feel bad about. To be fair The Smiths and a fair sampling of other late 80s British indie rock can also be detected here but the attack is as fresh as a naughty schoolkid. It all sounds new to them and they write and play their damn bleeding hearts out, which almost is enough to forgive their unfortunate band moniker.

19. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Callahan may no longer operate under the name Smog but he still has the same laconic delivery, insinuatingly dry songwriting, and command of melody. This time he’s backed with the richest instrumentation of his career with pianos and french horns and the likes standing ready to aid and abet but never overwhelm. In fact his use of space is more strategic than ever letting every violin or bell register like a thunderclap.

20. Polvo - In Prism
An unexpected comeback, Polvo was saddled during their early 90s heyday with the mathrock label and while their riffing is angular and their song structures can be architectural they have always had a warmth and humor that transcended the genre. They’ve also had Ash Bowie (who went on to play guitar in Helium) as a secret weapon, a guitarist with a knack for wringing melody out of sometimes dissonant patterns. Welcome back.

21. Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
For all the initial talk about this being a departure for the band it came as a bit of a letdown to hear that they actually sounded like… Franz Ferdinand. Repeated listens proved that the band had moved the game forward subtly, primarily by centering every song around the rhythm section. This is no bad thing as Franz bassist Bob Hardy and drummer Paul Thomson are one of the best in rock. On “Lucid Dreams” they do extend past the 8-minute mark (though the earlier, tighter version may be superior) and hints of T. Rex and Bowie still surface through the dancefloor. Undeniably catchy ass-shaking.

22. Kurt Vile – Childish Prodigy
The name is a tip-off that that Vile is a throwback to the theatrical self-mythologizing of 70s punk as it edged into glam. Ballads jostle with fuzzed out Iggy-esque rockers but there is always a twist instrumentally or lyrically to make it sound fresh rather than a guy living in the sounds of the past. Each successive song cements that Vile is a talent to watch.

23. Mika Miko – We Be Xuxa
The world surely needs more femme punk and Mika Miko are as good as it gets. Synthesizing sources as varied as The Raincoats, The Descendents, and Agent Orange makes for an album that pogos as much as it thrashes and that’s a damn good thing. It’s a short sharp shock of an album with room for detours like the mid-period Replacements-like jape “Turkey Sandwich.”

24. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
While the band name The Very Best makes this sound like a compilation of some sort, what’s being sampled here by the production team Radioclit and singer Esau Mwamwaya is the very essence of music from around the world. Appropriately they are joined by a member of Vampire Weekend and M.I.A., a handy guide to the globe spanning beats and melodies found within. An audacious follow-up to last year’s jawdropping mixtape.

25. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Wilco studiously avoid making the same album twice, so it’s not surprising that the new one was met with a mixed reception. They also vary their approach from song to song to the extent that “Bull Black Nova”, a droning drama that I love, has been denounced by several friends as the worst track on the album. Whereas the last record served up gloriously tangled guitar lines in the guise of classic LA rock, this one puts the screws to triple AAA radio but still finds time for a straight ahead ballad like “You and I”.

A proper video game for real Beatles nerds might go something like this:

Level One:

You have to successfully play for 8 hours straight for bored German lechers who just want to see the naked girls at the Reeperbahn in Berlin’s red light district circa 1961.

Level Two:

Successfully dress in outfits that most give off a “rough trade” vibe while simultaneously thrilling crowds at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in order to attract the attention of closeted record shop impresario Brain Epstein. Remember he has to be besotted enough to neglect his family business and manage you full time!

Level Three:

Paradoxically one of the hardest levels – keep from getting sacked as The Beatles drummer a la Pete Best on the eve of their first recording session.

…and so on. Of course the new Beatles edition of the popular game Rock Band has a sanitized fantasy version of the Beatles ascent free of band acrimony, romance managerial or otherwise, and a chronology that makes the aforementioned Beatles nerds wince as the final level is a version of the concert on the roof of Abbey Road studios during the Let It Be sessions (which everybody knows happened before they even recorded their last album, Abbey Road).

Of course how marketable or fun would a game be if the last level was pitting your lawyers against the other players to decide what terms the band’s partnership would be dissolved on?

More to the point, the game is a hoot for fans and newbies alike. It’s easy to play but hard enough if you set the levels properly, and it does give a renewed wonder and awe for the intricacies of their arrangements and the awesomeness of their talents.

For those preferring a more old fashioned evaluation of the Fab Four there are also the remastered albums available separately or in recession busting stereo and mono box sets. The sound is revelatory – the rhythm section re-emerges as an underrated marvel first, then the gorgeous inventiveness of George’s guitar playing and finally the singular nature of John’s voice and Paul’s amazing vocal range and the harmonies they all made together.

A friend of mine wrote me via Facebook in response to a message I’d posted there about the power of hearing George’s perfect guitar solo on “Nowhere Man” revealed in all it’s glory, the final note shimmering and clear. He wondered if it was wrong that he’d never paid attention to the Beatles and owned none of their albums despite being a music fan.

It reminded me of a girl I once dated who was also very passionate about music but had more than a blind spot for the Beatles – she disliked them. I was fairly outraged by this – disliking the Beatles is like saying you’d prefer no oxygen please, or that chocolate tasted like dog crap.

I think what happens with the Beatles is a resistance based on the fact that you are supposed to like them. When you are told that they are the greatest band in the world I think it’s easy to get the sense that there is nothing to hear in them that already hasn’t been heard and if so many people like them, how can they possibly be that good?

The answer is that there is no one Beatles but many – many styles, songs, and four distinct personalities that allow very different sensibilities to connect to them. I watched a snippet of a documentary the other night on Cirque Du Soleil’s Vegas Beatles extravaganza Love in which Yoko took the troupe to task for their staging of “Come Together.” Her insistence was that they had missed the message of it being a political song.

Watching it I thought “Shit Yoko, you missed the message, it’s not political at all!” In fact, Lennon has said that the song is actually based on a dream he had about his own funeral and everyone “coming together” to view the body – “over me” as it were. This is especially chilling when you know that the weird echoey plosive whisper that sounds like “shooptuh”  throughout the song is actually Lennon murmuring “shoot me.”

Really though neither of us is wrong in our wildly divergent experience of the song, nor was the Cirque Du Soleil in viewing it in an orgiastic manner (come together indeed.) The songs are elastic enough to contain many layers of meaning from “Please Please Me” which is seen in some circles as a  coded ode to mutual oral sex to “Back in The U.S.S.R.” which some Nixonites took as a bald-faced declaration of  support for the Soviets (“I’m backing the U.S.S.R.” to their paranoid eardrums)  rather than a tongue in cheek goof on The Beach Boys clean cut celebrations of Americana.

Perhaps the most poignant part of the renewed focus on the Beatles this year is that the album, the format they raised to the level of ultimate artistic musical expression, has been diminished in relevance to pre-Sgt. Pepper‘s levels. I pass no judgment on this – their singles were as magnificent as anything they did and the rise of MP3’s and downloading has given me more access to new music than ever before – perhaps too much more.

It’s fitting then that they also stand at the cusp of a new era – with a game. They may not be the first to have done so but simply in taking the plunge the boys from Liverpool once again prove their power to legitimize and popularize a format. I expect a Rock Band:  Rolling Stones in..oh…6 months?

1979 was one of those amazing years in music that just makes the jaw hit the floor. When it comes to albums the year was chock full of stone cold classics. At the end of the seventies music was perched on the edge of the great fragmentation that would take hold in the eighties and especially the nineties – punk, funk, disco, pop all rubbed shoulders along with the first stirrings of hip-hop (see my 1979 songs playlist for the full melange).

This is not to mention the themes that cut across the songs in a year that saw the a rising conservative movement regain power in Britain and begin to assert itself against the doomed Carter administration in the United States. Underneath was the roiling racism and anti-immigration of a resurgent fascist National Front in the UK and an America that wanted to put Watergate and all of the conflicts of the 60s behind them, as they would in 1980 by electing Ronald Reagan president.

Musically punk was becoming post-punk, reggae, dub, krautrock and even disco were becoming influences across the spectrum and even if rap was yet to make itself known on the album charts – it was out there being formed. These are my favorites – what are yours?

1. Talking Heads – Fear of Music

Talking Heads were in the midst of an amazingly fertile creative period which Fear of Music sits smack in the middle of. This was their third LP and their second with Brian Eno as co-Producer. Opener “I Zimbra” is a glorious red herring, a slice of afro-funk that marches on in like a refugee from the next album they’d do, Remain in Light, which was suffused with African rhythms from stem to stern. Fear of Music was a whole other bag – like a lot of 1979s best, the re-heating of the cold war brings a dread and an exploration of themes of totalitarianism on tracks like “Life During Wartime” and “Electric Guitar”. As usual though David Byrne’s lyrics bring a distinct New York art fried sensibility whether trying to decide what city to live in: “…how about Memphis, home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks?” or railing against the smugness of animals: “..they don’t even know what a joke is!” All of this is brought to jumping, nervy life by one of the all-time great rhythm sections, Tina Weymouth on bass and Chris Frantz on the drum kit and some of Eno’s most spectacular soundscapes. One of the best albums from one of America’s best ever bands.

2. The Clash – London Calling

I mean, duh. I did my college history thesis on this album’s distinct confluence of musical influences that include (as Robert Christgau and others have pointed out) various permutations of the 100-year old myth of Staggerlee, a black man who shot a white man just because he could. The Clash find the resonance of this in Jamaican rude boys, Rastafarians, working class Brits and losers of all stripes who try to break their losing streaks – all to often with violence. Punk wasn’t supposed to last past album one and the Sex Pistols had the good grace to implode in a blaze of bad karma. The Clash followed up their classic debut with a solid but unsurprising second record and by all rights should have been looking for a way out. They found one by expanding their musical palette and worldview, creating a rare double-album where every single song is spectacular including the unlisted bonus “Train in Vain”, which yielded their first US hit. The dumb asses at Sony music think that exposing people to great music for free is bad for sales so I have no official video to embed. Thus, Sony continues to demonstrate the marketing acumen that has led their entire industry into the crapper.

2.Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division was a band that marked the place where punk became post-punk – aggression curdled into depression and introspection and rhythm sections began to incorporate the mechanisms of krautrock and even the elongated bounce of Jamaican dub. You can still hear echoes of The Stooges and New York band Suicide in there too – like Suicide the synthesizer tones give the barest hint of new wave and alternative music to come – much of which would be pioneered by Ian Curtis band mates after he killed himself and they formed New Order.  In the Nazi sourced band name there is also the fascination with totalitarianism that was rampant at the time and found it’s counterpart in the revival of the National Front in Britain.

3.Neil Young and Crazy Horse -  Rust Never Sleeps

Rust Never Sleeps is the blueprint for a classic album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, one half acoustic laments and the other half blazing rock anthems, with much of the record recorded live and sounding it. It helps that this might be his strongest set of songs on any single album, from the acoustic and electric “Hey, Hey, My, My” and “My, My, Hey, Hey” later infamously quoted in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note to the fantasia of “Pocahontas” where Neil imagines hanging out with the titular native American princess and Marlon Brando, the heartbreaking “Powderfinger” which feels like a scene out of a Herzog film, the outrageous randy boast of “Welfare Mothers” and on.  “The king is dead but he’s not forgotten, is this the story of Johnny Rotten?” Young wonders, neatly conflating the 1977 death of Elvis and rise of the Sex Pistols in one verse. Utter genius.

5. Gang of Four – Entertainment!

Gang of Four’s debut LP took the politics and punk snarl of The Clash and married them to scouring brush guitars that were close cousins the scratchy style found on old 60s soul records, plus a pinch of reggae styled deep bass. Among the many highlights is “I Found That Essence Rare” a slice of deconstructionist Marxism that you can shake your ass to:

“Aim for the body rare, you’ll see it on TV
The worst thing in 1954 was the Bikini
See the girl on the TV dressed in a Bikini
She doesn’t think so but she’s dressed for the H-Bomb”

6.Wire - 154

Wire’s third album in under two years put a definite exclamation mark on their first incarnation, giving the impression that the band was striving for this mixture of electronics and melody even from the short sharp guitar based songs they had started with. 154 can be uneven but it contains thrilling melodies and surprising soundscapes, plus the band’s typical disdain for ceremony typified by singing the word “Chorus” with an audible smirk just before the, you guessed it, chorus of the indelible “Map. Ref. 41 N. 93 W.”

7.Elvis Costello and the Attractions – Armed Forces

Armed Forces sometimes gets short shrift but to me it’s the Costello record par excellance – his best set of songs and lyrics and some of the Attractions most inventive arrangements. Costello wittily and perhaps too-blithely sends up the resurgence of National Front activity in Britain by making a theme record about “emotional fascism” where lovers are really “Two Little Hitlers.” Nick Lowe lends a dynamic production palette and the gem “What’s so Funny About Peace Love and Understanding” which would forever be associated with Costello afterward. Lyrical gems like “I’m in a chemistry class/I want a piece of your mind/You don’t know what you started/When you mixed it up with mine/Are you ready for the final solution?” are backed up by muscular playing and witty touches like the faux-fouled up vocal dub in “Accidents Will Happen”.

8.Public Image Ltd. – Metal Box/ Second Edition

Neil Young may have sang “The king is gone but he’s not forgotten/Is this the story of Johnny Rotten?” on Rust Never Sleeps but for some observers Rotten’s new band PIL was exceeding the promise of The Sex Pistols with their new music. After all the Pistols were merely supercharging the template set by The Stooges, New York Dolls and Ramones. PIL were doing something else entirely, with Jah Wobble’s gonad shaking basslines lifted from stoned-out underwater Jamaican dub records and Keith Levene’s guitars similarly tuned in by way of surf rock and Richard Dudansky’s drumming like a disco record sped up. On top of it all was Rotten’s chanting, moaning, cajoling. It’s an extraordinary record that sounds both timeless and unrepeatable and it proved to be both – PIL would never reach these heights again nor ever revisit the sound as the core group imploded. Originally the record was issued, appropriately enough given the cinematic sweep of the sound, in a metal film canister filled with three discs – hence the title. Second Edition was the conventionally-sleeved re-issue.

9. The Jam – Setting Sons

The Jam was too retro to be punk but too edgy to be hard rock. Instead they got tagged as Mod revivalists, a scene which they would remain the only relevant members of despite spawning several other Who-inspired bands. In hindsight they were a crucial link between the Britpop of the 60s and the resurgence of the same in the 90s – showing that the elements that made The Kinks and The Who local treasures could still be tapped in the midst of punk and new wave. Setting Sons was a concept album of sorts about war, set both in an apocalyptic future foretold by The Clash in “London Calling” and the near past of British colonial warfare that sent local boys home in boxes. Yet the record is anything but somber with crackling arrangements and killer songs like “Wasteland” and “Smithers-Jones” and detours like the marvelous “Girl on The Phone” with only a misplaced cover of “Heat Wave” to spoil things.

10. Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material

The last gasp of British punk’s first wave came by way of Belfast, Ireland with a band that was uncompromisingly critical of the warring factions that continued to tear their country apart, calling them to task with brutally hard anthems that shone with a rare combination of hope and anger on tracks like the classic “Alternative Ulster” where they exhort listeners to “Alter your native land…”

11. The B-52’s – The B-52’s

Like Stiff Little Fingers, this was a gem I first discovered in my older brother’s record collection but there’s where the kinship ends. The B-52’s resembled a John Water’s film more than anything else happening musically at the time, mining garage sale kitsch and pop-culture avant-garde to come up with a debut that was stunningly original. Even better, you could dance to it. Named as much for the giant beehive hairdos of singers Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson as for the warplanes, their 50s and 60s in a blender ethos was trotted out at a time when this stuff was not seen as being cool at all. Of course, they didn’t give a shit and their highly original songs, killer guitar playing by the late Ricky Wilson and blend of vocals both electrifying and campy have made this a classic. Bonus points go to the indelible “Rock Lobster” which John Lennon heard on vacation deep in the middle of his house-husband phase. Zeroing in on the band’s reclamation of Yoko Ono’s most outre vocalisms Lennon declared the world ready to hear new music by both he and she, and the comeback Double Fantasy was born.

12. Swell Maps – A Trip to Marineville

The world is awash in lo-fi indie experimenters, from No Age to Deerhunter to the late great Guided By Voices, but Swell Maps set the template for sprawling, fascinating messes. To hear them tell it a total lack of musical training led them to put art over chops and belch out this remarkably tuneful, shambling, and noisy debut. “Do you believe in art?” they ask and it’s hard not to grin back and say “fuck, yeah!”

13. Linton Kwesi Johnson – Forces of Victory

Just as reggae, dub and ska were becoming a major influence on musicians across the color and sound spectrum, the golden age of Jamaican music was on the wane. Linton Kwesi Johnson’s life mirrored the migration of the music he would leave a lasting mark on, born in Kingston Jamaica he was raised in London’s Brixton district. Johnson considered himself a “dub poet”, concentrating on delivering socially conscious lyrics that cut to the heart of the black British experience. Luckily he fell in with Dennis Bovell and his band who provided a taut and hooky musical bed o all of Johnson’s classic albums. Forces of Victory is album number 2 for Johnson and quite possibly his best with track after track of great songs like “Want Fi Go Rave” and “It Noh Funny.”

14. Supertramp – Breakfast in America

Supertramp are about as uncool as a band can be but Breakfast in America is a soft rock classic as well as their commercial and artistic peak. Though the band started out as British prog rockers backed by a mysterious Goldmember-like Dutch millionaire, they developed a taste for pop success with hits like “Give a Little Bit” and “Bloody Well Right.” Much of the record is devoted to the lament of rock stars who have reached a certain station – the touring, the whoring, broken marriages, breadheads who don’t get them, and of course the joy of discovering America. The songs are leavened by a British tongue and cheek sensibility, particularly the title track. Guilty pleasure or not, Pink Floyd took all these themes and inflated them over two discs, a lot more misogyny and a lot less humor for The Wall this same year. I find this much more listenable.

15. Cheap Trick – At Budokan

After three brilliant but underachieving albums it was hard to see Cheap Trick as anything other than a cult band. Their particular melange of influences, The Move, The Who, The Beatles (especially but not limited to the hard rocking stuff) made them come off almost as punks when they debuted in 1977, compounded by their subject matter which took in suicide, murder, and lust in every permutation. In Japan however they were treated like gods, leading to this live album which unexpectedly made them stars in the US as well. Oddly enough, stripping off the production gloss that had accumulated on albums two and three allowed the killer hooks and raw riffs of songs like “I Want You to Want Me” and “Auf Wiedersehen” to breathe and emphasized the punkier hard rocking aspect of the band to positive effect. Though today we would call what they do power pop, they would have an influence on both the hair metal that would follow them through the 80s and bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins who supplanted them in the 90s.

16. Fleetwood Mac - Tusk

Tusk had the unenviable task of following up Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 juggernaut Rumours which at the time was the best-selling album – ever. Lindsey Buckingham’s brilliant songs and arrangements sprawl all over what was a double-album – one that flopped in comparison to its predecessor and the amount of label money spent on it. Nevertheless it is chock full of jaw dropping songs and performances as well as weird detours, making it the apex of the 1970s California sound embodied by the Mac, The Eagles, James Taylor and others.

17. The Slits – Cut

This record is about a million miles removed from Tusk, The Slits were three British women who were among the last in the punk scene to put a record out. This gave them time to pick up a lot of the Reggae and dub cues that were permeating the best records of the time, putting their own distinctly female point of view on great songs like “Typical Girls” and “Love Und Romance.” The amateurish singing and playing at times adds to the charm and the songs are sturdy enough to shine through the occasional bum note. A catchy treasure.

18. Tom Verlaine – Tom Verlaine

After a disappointing second album Verlaine’s band Television, one of the pioneers of New York’s legendary CBGBs scene, were no more, and he duly set off on a solo career. Though his profile would never be particularly high the quality of his work was often the equal of his original band, certainly on this debut which featured a number of songs originally meant for Television. His vaunted guitar playing blisters as always and his vocals, while characteristic in their warbly-ness, are also distinctive. It’s a great set of songs – good enough for Bowie to crib “Kingdom Come” the following year.

19. The Cars – Candy-O

Like Fleetwood Mac, The Cars had the task of following up a widely admired hit record, in this case their debut. Though Candy-O wasn’t as big a hit, it showed that The Cars stardom was no fluke and cemented their status as leaders of the burgeoning new wave sound (despite being from Boston and not England.) “Let Go” supplied the brilliant hit single quota but the insistent Bowie-esque groove of the title track, “Dangerous Type”, “Double Life” and “It’s All I Can Do” would become radio staples. An under-appreciated grower.

20. Iggy Pop – New Values

Iggy roared back to life after the Stooges implosion in the early 70s just in time to be hailed as a punk godfather, with a little help from his old buddy David Bowie. New Values was already three records deep into his comeback and if the energy was beginning to flag just a tad Iggy showed he still had something to say. The title track and “Five Foot One” are tough, vintage fare but tracks like “Endless Sea” added a surprising and not unwelcome touch of synthesizer.

At the end of the seventies music was perched on the edge of the great fragmentation that would take hold in the eighties and especially the nineties – punk, funk, disco, pop all rubbed shoulders along with the first stirrings of hip-hop. It’s also the year Sony’s Walkman would hit the market, revolutionizing the way people would enjoy and consume music with it’s portability and the rise of mixtape culture. This playlist of some of my favorite songs from 1979 captures a little bit of the essence of a great year for music. So hit play, kick back by the pool, at work with your headphones on, or even while operating heavy machinery, and enjoy!

The Stooges - one of 1969's best

For our latest flashback we take you on a trip back to 1969 – the year of Woodstock and Altamont when peace and love co-existed with the fallout of the turbulence of the previous year’s wave of assassinations, the election of Richard Nixon, and the continuing trauma of the Vietnam War.

It was a rich year for music with a number of major acts at their peak, a few hidden gems, and the roots of a few genres like funk, punk, and alternative beginning to emerge. So what albums make my favorites list? Here they are in no discernible order at all – my top 25 of 1969:

1. The Beatles – Abbey Road

Though 1970’s Let it Be would be the last album the Beatles would release, Abbey Road is the last one they recorded and it functions as their true swansong, closing the book on what could be the greatest career in rock. Their most lush album also features the best ever harmonies from all four Beatles – ironically their voices had never blended so sweetly across so many tracks. Paul McCartney’s bass playing is at a peak, nearly a lead instrument in its expressiveness and tonality.

In fact this is often described as McCartney’s album which is a bit unfair. Side 2’s extended suites are indeed the work of McCartney and George Martin in terms of sequencing though the encompass Lennon and George Harrison songs but Side 1 belongs to Lennon’s sequencing. More importantly Harrison’s songs are his two best to date (“Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”) and Lennon is no slouch with tracks like “Come Together” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. That second side? Pure bliss and a knowing, fitting coda for 8 years of innovation and musical accomplishment that eclipsed all others.

2. The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed

Let it Bleed is the second of a set of classic albums that define the Stones at the peak of their powers (the others being Beggar’s Banquet (1968), Sticky Fingers (1971), and Exile on Main Street (1972)) . It’s similar in sequencing and feel to the previous record but builds on many of its strengths with a darker more chaotic vibe. “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler” take the voodoo groove of “Sympathy For The Devil” and run with it. “Let it Bleed” is a country blues epic and the magnificent “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” with it’s angelic boy’s choir and killer buildup served as the basis for entire albums of material by the likes of Primal Scream and every inferior overblown Guns N Roses ballad.

3. The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

After the lacerating feedback and experiments in sound that marked their previous record White Light/White Heat VU explored a quieter and just as compelling side, with some of Lou Reed’s strongest songs. Absent was John Cale, who had acted as a provocateur to Reed in much the same way as Brian Eno would for Bryan Ferry a few years later in early Roxy Music. As in Roxy though,  the Reed’s pop sensibility would win out though “The Murder Mystery” is as ear challenging as anything in their catalog. Despite such standout tunes as “Candy Says”, “Pale Blue Eyes” and “What Goes On” not to mention drummer Mo Tucker’s charming lead on “After Hours” the record was a flop – just like the first two Velvet’s albums.

4. Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield Neil Young lit out for a solo career and promptly released two records in 1969. The first was a fine and eclectic effort aided by Jack Nitsche with grand orchestrations and overdubs throughout. The second Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, which came out a scant four moths later, was with a bar band called Crazy Horse and featured blazing guitar epics offset with yearning country rock. For the rest of his career he would use the sound of this album as a touchstone – from the intensity of “Cinnamon Girl” to the twang of the title track to the long workouts of “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Down by the River”.

5. The Band – The Band

The first Band album Music From Big Pink signaled a shift away from the expansiveness of psychedelia into a more earnest and rich exploration of roots music, what today would be called Americana. As praised as that record is (and justly) the self-titled follow-up is even better, with seemingly timeless songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Rag Mama Rag” exploring a mythic America that Bob Dylan would similarly limb on his most recent records like Time Out of Mind.

6. Led Zeppelin -  Led Zeppelin II

Jimmy Page was a legendary guitar-slinger for hire throughout much of the 60s, rumored to have played on tracks like “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks amongst many others. His last big gig was in the Yarbirds, filling a guitar chair previously occupied by Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Zepplelin was his own creation though as he proved by ditching the original moniker of The New Yardbirds and spewing out two great albums in their inaugural year. As great as the first record was though, as with the Band and Neil Young it’s LP number 2 that cemented the legend – “Whole Lotta Love”, “Heartbreaker”, “The Lemon Song”, all charge ahead with brutal efficiency while “Thank You” nods at the broader palette that would open up subsequently.

7. The Kinks -  Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire

A spat with the musicians union had all but killed The Kinks career stateside, which may or may not have spurred Ray Davies into his explorations of Britishness that would lay the groundwork for the Britpop bands of the 90s like Blur, Pulp and to a lesser extent Oasis. Arthur is named for Davies brother-in-law and taken in part from the story of his sister’s family and their emigration to Australia. It’s a tougher-edged record than Village Green Preservation Society with uptempo tunes like “Victoria”, “Driving” and “Arthur” setting the pace. The extended “Shangri-La” is one of the Kinks best and most ambitious songs, a multi-part extravaganza that would make the Decemberists green with envy.

8. Sly and the Family Stone -  Stand!

Sly Stone was a DJ and producer in San Francisco and was well-aware of the move away from singles to well-sequenced albums, yet the first few albums by his band were patchy affairs. With Stand! Stone would find his groove, with track after track of impeccably arranged ass-moving songs that spoke to the political and social changes that were happening. Where his earlier songs held out hope for reconciliation, on this record for every “Everyday People” there’s a “Somebody’s Watching You”, prefiguring the stoned-out dread of 1971’s There’s a Riot Going On .

9. The Flying Burrito Bros- The Gilded Palace of Sin

Gram Parson’s would prove to be a controversial figure in rock, a trust fund kid who would bring country grit to rock and lead The Byrd’s to singing about stuff like life in prison and deep religious belief which were far removed from his own experience. Still, whether covering others or writing his own stuff as on most of this record, Parson’s always felt 100% authentic – something that would entrance fellow hard-liver Keith Richards who would soon fall under his spell.

10 Fairport Convention – Liege & Lief

Just as Neil Young and Gram Parsons were bringing folk and country sounds to a rock audience in the States, Fairport Convention were doing much the same with traditional folk tropes in Blighty. They released a whopping three records of great material in 1969, but it’s here that vocalist Sandy Denny fully melds with their classic line-up which feature Richard Thompson on guitar.

11 Isaac Hayes -  Hot Buttered Soul

In its own way as psychedelic as anything to come out of San Francisco, Hayes like Sly Stone was pioneering album based soul – what would come to be known as funk. Hayes rich orchestrations and lengthy songs also prefigured disco only with a deeper, slower groove. The standouts are “Walk On By”, a remarkable reconfigurement of Burt Bacharach’s classic stretched like taffy past the 12 minute mark. Then there’s “By The Time I get to Pheonix”, a song that it’s hard to imagine original writer Jimmy Webb seeing as clocking in at nearly 20 minutes – including monologue.

12 Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy and the Poor Boys

Creedence has a remarkably short peak – pretty much all of 1969 with some greatness at the tail end of 68 and the beginning of 1970. As their albums went, this was the peak of the peak- showing off some of John Fogerty’s best songs with very little filler. Creedence was knocked at the time as not being an important ambitious band but the songs come from the gut – short and aharp like the populist “Fortunate Son” or the cowbell nirvana that is “Down on the Corner”. It may be that their continued embrace of the individual song over the album and their love of straight-ahead rock forms (not unlike The Band) led long-haired rock critics to view them as the musical equivalent of the reactionaries who voted for Nixon in ‘68.

13 Caetano Veloso – Caetano Veloso

While American bands like the MC5 and Jefferson Airplane played at political subversion in Brazil artists like Veloso were living it – imprisoned by the military dictatorship for their songs. Veloso recorded his vocals from his prison cell which is a lot cooler as an act of defiance than a badge of street cred as it often is for modern rappers. It’s a sad, engrossing record that reflects a dark period that is not so far removed than the reality that artists face in many countries today.

14 The Stooges - The Stooges

Iggy Pop’s introduction to the world was at the hands of one of his heroes – ex Velvet Underground guy John Cale who produced this remarkable debut album. The Stooges were a much more aggressive and assualtive band than the Velvets, essentially birthing punk with their raw sound, stripped of most of the overt blues signifyers that had underpinned most rock. The most Velvet’s like track is the 10 munte “We Will Fall” which has Cale’s experimental fingerprints all over it, but it’s anthems like “I Wanna Be Your Dog” with it’s nagging keyboard riff, “No Fun”, and “1969″ which all declaimed Iggy Pop’s war against the hippy culture that defined music at the time.

15 The Who -  Tommy

Tommy may not be The Who’s best album, but it is their signature record – the work that brought them stardom and put them on nearly equal fotting with the best of rock royalty. As the first concept album recognized as such (if not in actuality), it bears all the fdrawbacks of the form – song fragments that exist only to adavance a barely coherent plot, bombast, overlength. Yet it mostly succeeds on the strength of the band’s talents and the core of great songs by Pete Townshend like “Pinball Wizard” and “I’m Free”.

16 Captain Beefheart  - Trout Mask Replica

Zappa compatriot Captain Beefheart had a similar taste for the avant-garde but where Zappa deigned to employ forms like doo-wop and garage rock, often with a wink or sneer, Beefheart simply put everything into a blender – free-jazz, improv, rock – and came out with something unique. Trout Mask Replica sounds like absolutely nothing else – even followers like no wave skronksters John Zorn or James Chance have to approach from another angle. Not often something I play, it’s still one I’m glad to have heard and own.

17 Gilberto Gil – Gilberto Gil

Like Caetano Veloso, Brazil’s military dictatorship would imprison Gilberto Gil, leading to the pair’s flight to safety in England. Before being locked away though he recorded this album which is another classic in the tropicalia genre, melding elements of traditional Brazilian pop, psychedlica and straight ahead rock into an appealing stew that would heavily influence later artists like Talking Heads and Beck.

18 Gal Costa - Cinema Olympia

Another entry in Brazil’s thriving music scene, Costa managed to avoid prison, perhaps because her musical groundbreaking managed to distract the authorities from her lyrical content. Throbbing bass and rhythm, noisy guitars and out-there vocal paroxysms all meld into a unique musical experience and one of the best albums of a fertile scene.

19 Bob Dylan Nashville Skyline

For the tea-leaf readers looking for political insight and guidance from Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline was nothing short of dismaying. While John Wesley Harding’s biblical and outlaw imagery suggested a return to the land in order to foment revolution a la the Weather Underground, this album’s wholehearted embrace of country, the most conservative of musical forms, seemed like a capitulation. Dylan doesn’t even sing like himself , gently balladeering on “Lay Lady Lay” in a completely new tone. Yet it’s a remarkable and listenable album, from his duet with Johnny Cash on “Girl From the North Country” to “I Threw it All Away”.

20 Procol Harum – A Salty Dog

For most folks the Procol Harum story begins and ends with their 1967 smash “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, but they made several varied and excellent records into the early 1970s. A Salty Dog is one of their best, showing off the range of Brooker and Reid’s songwriting and the flashy guitar of then-member Robin Trower on songs like “The Devil Came From Kansas”, the title track, and “Wreck of the Hesperus”.

21 Love – Four Sail

Arthur Lee, Love’s main man, had pretty much replaced every original member by the time this one came out, perhaps in response to “Alone Again Or” becoming the band’s biggest hit to date without him singing or writing it. Four Sail is a more insular album than their previous work but Lee is an amazing songwriter serving up gems like the multi-hued “August” and the pensively gorgeous “Always See Your Face” with it’s breathtaking horn arrangement.

22 Shocking Blue – At Home

Shocking Blue is sometimes considered a bit of a joke, mostly known for their hit “Venus”, but no less than Kurt Cobain thought enough of the band to cover the fantastic “Love Buzz”. This album is full of similar crunchy, brightly arranged tunes set slightly askew by somewhat tortured English-as-a-second-language lyrics (they were Dutch after all) – which only make it more fascinating.

23 The Beach Boys 20/20

At this point one of the only folks to find the Beach Boys cool was Charles Manson, who hung around the group and even wrote the b-side “Look at Your Game Girl”. Everyone else had moved on to heavier things leaving the band to struggle along with material that was often as interesting as it was frustrating to record companies. 20/20 was a hodgepodge that showed that Capital records would prefer to put albums together the bad old way, singles surrounded by a grab bag of tracks from anywhere and time – in this case some Smile leftovers like “Cabinessence”. This still made for a highly listenable stew.

24 The Shaggs -  Philosophy of the World

Much has been written, by many better writers than I, about the three Wiggens  sisters and the album that was recorded for them at the behest of their biggest fan, their father. As primitivist as Captain Beefheart but coming from a genuinely naive, untrained place, it’s a record that surfaces all kinds of questions about teh nature of art, creativity, even melody and song form. “Who Are Parents” and “My Pal Foot-Foot” are the kind of things hipsters strain to emulate without the guilessness and geniune discovery of The Shaggs.

25  Nick Drake -  Five Leaves Left

Lush and inviting, Nick Drake’s debut took folk into some of the daring orchestrations Neil Young attempted on his debut but with more subtlety and success with songs like “Cello Song” and the gorgeous “River Man” leaving a haunting indelible impression.

Franz Ferdinand grab a bite

My initial response to Franz Ferdinand’s third album, titled perversely (for a non-live album) Tonight: Franz Ferdinand was tempered by the pre-release press and band statements that suggested a major sea-change for the band.

Lo and behold, on first listen there are some departures but this is very recognizably the work of the Scotsmen who gave us “Take Me Out.” That is, Danceable rock that’s more sprung than the Strokes but less overtly discofied than The Rapture.

There’s also Alex Kapranos louche lyrics and the bands tightly packed hooks and changes  – all in place as per usual. You could even sing “Take Me Out” over first single “Ulysses” and hardly notice the difference.

Except that damn single stayed in my head – Bob Hardy’s nagging bassline and the subltle skittering of Paul Thompson’s drums reminding me that Franz have one of the bets rhythm sections in rock. Unlike their last album You Could Have it So Much Better, the two have a lot of breathing space with guitars and more keyboards than usual providing wider swaths of coloration.

Maybe there’s more than met the ear here.

You still have to paw through a few songs on the first half like “Turn it On” that are quite fine but don’t really sound like much of a change before you get to the interesting stuff like the ode to non-marriage “Live Alone” which is like the bastard child of Blondie and Iggy Pop in his Lust For Life phase. “Can’t Stop Feeling” whomps in on syths and rhythms that an 80’s new romantic band would stab themselves for and “Lucid Dreams” throbs into a song-length outro worthy of The Chemical Brothers.

After all the heavy breathing Franz end things with one of their best ever ballads, the lightly skipping “Katherine Kiss Me”, which recalls their charming “L. Wells” single from a few years ago. It’s of a piece with “Eleanor Put Your Boots On”, one of the highlights from the last record.

So while it may not be the beginning to end masterpiece of their debut, Tonight has the feel of a transitional album into what will really be Franz Ferdinand’s next phase. And oh, what a rhythm section!

Reviving the Pixies seemed to re-spark a hunger for Black Francis (aka Frank Black) so much so that he reverted to his previous moniker and dropped a blazing solo record that was the equal of his best work solo or otherwise.  This is no Pixies self-imitation though – Black uses all the colors in the palette he developed over his many years solo (often in the wilderness of semi-obscurity) to essay a supercharged tribute to Dutch punk poet Herman Brood.

24. Les Savvy Fav – Let’s Stay Friends

Les Savvy Sav had seemingly hung up their hats after the great singles comp Inches so it was a pleasurable surprise to find the reformed and re-energized band dishing up the best album yet of their career. Killer songs about teen girls possessed by Babylonian spirits, living like wolves, and freeloaders romp around gloriously as if they hadn’t been away at all.

23. Beck – Guero

Dismissed by many as Beck “doing” Beck, this feels to me like a summation of his many strengths along the lines of Radiohead’s In Rainbows or The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers. It also contains some of his best songs from the murder ballad dance moves of “Girl” to the chugging “Rental Car.”

22. The National – Boxer

A deep dark look at the darkness permeating the decade, Boxer is a masterpiece that calls bullshit on the hollowness at the core of so many lives in 00 America. The thundering drums portend a guitar blazing album that only emerges on “Mistaken For Strangers.” Elsewhere they are contrasted with surprisingly muted accompaniment, heartbreaking laments framed by magisterial horns and  strategically deployed piano.

21. Belle and Sebastian – Dear Catastrophe Waitress

I truly love this album despite the occasional groans it engenders from the B & S faithful. Made up of inexplicably discarded songs and muscularly produced by Buggles and Frankie Goes to Hollywood mastermind Trevor Horn, this is a fantastically far ranging set of songs from the horny Bacharach workplace double entendres of “Step Into my Office” to the orientation questions surrounding Mike Piazza on the acoustic “Piazza, New York Catcher” every song hits home, and the intricately arranged instrumentation seals the deal.

20. The White Stripes – Elephant

The White Stripes Elephant is aptly, if punningly titled. Like Hannibal they ride in as conquering heroes reversing the decade long trend of pilloried follow-up albums. Instead Jack and Meg build on their breakthrough album in every way here – bigger songs, bigger sales, better songwriting, meatier guitar playing. An absolute triumph.

19. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead – Source Tags & Codes

Cursed by a perfect 10 out of 10 from 00s premier indie rock tastemakers at Pitchfork.com, Trail of Dead made some good follow-ups but were roundly pilloried by their former celebrators. Still, none of their subsequent works were as great as this marvelous synthesis of Sonic Youth moves, Elephant 6 referents, Replacements nods, and other indie signification wrapped in sturdy songs and powerful playing. Though their influnces are always apparent they are also transcended and transmuted, aided in part by the rich variety of sounds on the album.

18. McLusky – McLusky Do Dallas

McLusky gathered a rabid cult after the release of this, their second album. They would go on to do better songs on it’s wake but never a better collection of songs and more importantly, snotty attitude. After all, the ballad number is called “Fuck This Band”, (“Fuck their holes,” lead singer Andrew Falkous sweetly implores) which is contrasted by the sentiment of “The World Loves Us and is Our Bitch.” Elsewhere the scream singing and dynamic guitars along with Steve Albini’s production all nod towards the Pixies without slavishly imitating them. A raging joy of an album.

17. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

Improbably The Hold Steady simply kept getting better and better culminating in this whopper of a record, one that takes in elements of new wave and chamber pop while only ratcheting up the anthem factor. Bonus points come from referencing John Cassavettes and the sheer awesomeness of the songs and arrangements.

16. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

This debut clearly owed a debt to the rise in guitar rock that followed in the wake of The Strokes debut record (see Kaiser Chiefs, Futureheads, Arctic Monkeys, The Hives et al) but Franz Ferdinand did the others one better by infusing their rhythm section with the other spirit of ‘76 – disco. The unstoppable combo of punky Wire-like guitars chugging and churning over Chic like ass shaking rhythms are irresistible, as are the the love as spygame lyrics that have an internal logic all their own with recurring eye and hand imagery. i wanted to punch these guys when I saw their  slick suits and matching record covers but there is real substance inside their style.

15. The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

A letdown in some quarters following the breakthrough of the previous record The Soft Bulletin, to my ears this ranks as the better album, infused as it is with unexpected electronic flourishes to go with the band’s advanced popcraft. Unexpectedly moving, particularly when seen performed live.

14. Stars – Set Yourself on Fire

A leftfield masterpiece Stars made you wonder how you missed their first two albums when this proved just how damn good and wide ranging they could be. From contemplating doing your high school crush at the reunion to the tyranny of the Bush administration this cuts a wide lyrical and stylistic swath under the co-guidance of angel-voiced Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell’s croon.

13. Bob Dylan – Love and Theft

Who could foresee that Dylan would make one of the best records of his long career in 2001, fully embodying the voice of several eras of gritty American music while still holding forth with verve and vitality not to mention humor and randiness.

12. Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica

Taking advantage of their biggest budget yet Modest Mouse respond with their most focus songs musically, but their most expansive lyrically. Blowing minds by taking you from the outer edges of the universe to the quiet trap of a lonely big city apartment, it’s a bracingly challenging yet accessible album – one they’ve yet to top.

11. The New Pornographers – Electric Version

The second album from this Canadian supergroup of sorts ust lays on the killer guitar riffs, driving drums, and massed vocals until you simply have to cry “Uncle” and surrender. This makes sense since the whole thing functions as a sideways critique of Bush era America.

10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell

Karen O and Nick Zinner are singular musical talents, the yin and yang of one of New York’s greatest bands. While she whoops and swoops vocally he creates sharp shards and huge monuments with his guitar – it’s all there on this debut. Oddly it’s front loaded with the driving abrasive stuff (all of which is great), saving the killer pop songs for the one-two punch of “Y Control” and classic ballad “Maps” close to the very end.

9. Jay-Z – The Blueprint

Essentially the album he keeps trying and failing to follow up, The Blueprint showed Jay-Z swaggering into the new century on a nagging Jackson 5 sample, when not taking Nas down with an equally nagging and even more audacious Doors loop. A monster.

8. TV On The Radio – Dear, Science

TV On The Radio distill everything they’ve learned on this streamlined grower, a record that suggests they could be as big as U2 if they so desired. Every song is opened up to breath and pulsate, with hooks aplenty and their trademark vocal contrast at its best.

7. The Strokes – Is This It?

The record that blew open the doors to good old fashioned New York style punk in the new century, The Strokes revived vintage Tom Verlaine moves like they were invented yesterday. More important was the verve and delight they took in playing and the freshness of their attack. For a moment it seemed like guitar bands might rule the decade.

6. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver

Not easily pigeonholed as electronica or anything else really, this record saw LCD Soundsystem master the art of great album making. Each song has it’s own setting and atmosphere -  there is a maturity and world weariness here that sinks down deep into the bone.

5. M.I.A. – Kala

M.I.A. caused a sensation with her debut but a large share of the praise was leveled at her producer, Diplo, who slung far flung, far out beats her way and strung it together into ass moving coherence. With this follow-up M.I.A. went out on her own, adding even more varied flavors and proved her talent was big enough to swallow borrowings from groups as diverse as Pixies, Jonathan Richman, and The Clash and transmuting it into her own deep groove.

4. Arcade Fire – Funeral

Montreal became a new indie rock nexus in the 00s in part because of this band and this amazing album. Making the world safe for deeply felt (as opposed to 90s era irony) music may have seemed corny to some but to others it was affecting stuff, leading to the mass catharsis that was their live shows.  The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink instrumentation  is always impeccably arranged to highlight rather than overwhelm the sturdy songs at the heart of the record.

3. Spoon – Kill The Moonlight

Spoon stripped it all down to the basics on this record – it’s as much about what’s not being played here as what is being played. Handclaps, lonely pianos, stinging guitars, all twine and combine to form exquisite songs of lust, loss, and longing. Then there’s the human beatbox on “Stay Don’t Go” and the punching horns on the bullying “Jonathan Fisk.” This is where Spoon comes into a sound that’s entirely their own.

2. Radiohead – Kid A

Radiohead started the decade with a rousing blast of artistic freedom, an electronic album by a rock band that upended expectations for the band, the genre and even the music industry. The predecessor, 1997’s OK Computer had already vaulted them from under-appreciated one-hit wonders to prog rock space geniuses. Yet Kid A still confounded expectations while adhering to the theme of the 00s. Blending music that previously had been kept in separate spaces, appreciated by very different fan bases, into a coherent and bracing whole. This is where Radiohead earned the sobriquet of best band in the world.

1. Girl Talk – Feed The Animals

Choosing this as the album of the decade has already led to strained friendships and personal hardship but I call’s ‘em as I see’s ‘em.  Girl Talk is the mastermind of DJ Gerg Gillis and no-one better embodies the 00s ethos of short-attention span, the song’s the thing, put it all in a blender and give me the highlights than his two most recent Girl Talk albums. This second one gets the edge just for upping the number of sonic filchings and for creating even more creative juxtapositions between hip-hop and indie rock, classic rock and electronica. It’s all grist for his booty-shaking mill. The rise of file sharing meant that listeners no longer were subject to the 80s and 90s trend of genrefying music into marketable sub categories with their own radio stations, labels and fans. In the 00s all the categories came together. As it should be.