Now I admire Iggy’s fight against the tyranny of the shirted but it’s not like we’re looking at LL Cool J’s abs here. More to the point, is there any activity that Iggy does that he feels actually requires a shirt?

According to his label and every other music site in Blogistan Neil Young’s new album Chrome Dreams II is set to be unleashed on October 16th. What’s that you say, you missed Chrome Dreams I? Well that’s because it was due to come out sometime in 1976 before being unceremoniously yanked form the release schedule and returned to the man’s extensive underground climate-controlled vaults. And speaking of those vaults, the first volume in Young’s planned Archives boxed set series is not coming out this fall as planned but is being pushed back to next February. Or so. Las Vegas oddsmakers are once again taking bets on whether Archives, Guns N’ Roses long gestating Chinese Democracy, or actual Chinese democracy will come first. To give the uninitiated an idea of how long Archives has been planned, the first time it was scheduled for release was when I was in college. And I graduated in 1995. So Chrome Dreams II, the sequel to a release that only hardcore Neil junkies have ever heard (although many of it’s songs like “Like a Hurricane” would later show up on either releases or in other forms) in place of another Neil set that, again, only hardcore Neil junkies have ever heard. Oh Neil, you’re so meta!

Girls marvelous debut album is reminiscent of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted in how it transmutes standard indie sounds into something irresistibly their own through sheer talent and force of will.

49. Outkast – Stankonia

Outkast spent much of the decade bidding to be the new Prince, or at least Andre 3000 did. They nearly got there with the massive “Hey Ya” single but it’s on this record that they are at their most consistent from song to song.

48. Eels – Souljacker

Not beloved by most Eels fans or detractors Souljacker found Eels frontman E hiding behind a Taliban beard (soon to become a standard hipster accessory) and a toy poodle, and brandishing a never before heard yen for feedback and rocking out. It’s his toughest and leanest album and to my mind one of his best.

47.  Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco’s bruising experience with their record label and the subsequent internet release of this album, their best, followed by a proper in store release is a capsule story of what was wrong with the record industry and why the Internet was right to destroy it. It’s also a damn fine record.

46. Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele

Ghostface’s most unhinged means that it’s also his best – sheer pleasure and off centered rhymes from beginning to end.

45. Pulp – We Love Life

Pulp’s last album was also a marvel of great songwriting and arrangements from the chugging strings on “Trees” to the brilliant jokes on “Bad Cover Version” (check out the video that the morons at their record company won’t let me embed because it might, you know, promote the album).

44. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema

The Pornos vary their sound and experiment more on their third album, with some of their most stunning results. Thankfully fuller arrangements don’t blunt the bands drive (as the follow-up record would) and only highlight the energy.

43. Cake – Comfort Eagle

It can be argued that the basics elements of any Cake album are essentially the same – killer rhythm section, horns for color, a bandleader whopping to exhort his colleagues. Yet here it all comes together on their best set of songs, from the one about Rick James doing the singer’s girlfriend in a kidney-shaped pool to the one about how pretty people don’t get cancer.

42. Green Day – American Idiot

Green Day was lucky to have the masters of their new album stolen. Lucky because it forced them to reinvent themselves on the fly, digging out of their pop-punk rut to deliver an angry Bush-bashing Who-loving concept album that magnificently rocked over 2004.

41. Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped

Sonic Youth closed out their long tenure on Geffen records (they were the ones who had convinced Nirvana to sign) with their best record since the early 90s, a concise, swinging statement of purpose that contained some of their prettiest guitar lines and poppiest melodies as if to say “If you can’t figure out how to market this, you don’t deserve to have it.”

40. Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Kevin Barnes’ band Of Montreal found it’s full flowering after his marriage hit the rocks in Norway, leading to this throbbing thumping album that channels Prince by way of Neutral Milk Hotel. A wild rewarding ride.

39. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective spent the decade as an art band on the cusp of greatness, transmuting elements as wildly varied as The Beach Boys, jam bands, primitivism, and glitch-pop into their own unique stew. Finally they delivered this brilliant album that seems to find ways to port hooks and melodic elements through the backdoor.

38. The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America

By all rights Craig Finn’s post-Lifter Puller band should have flamed out after their sarcastic debut but against all logic they keep getting better and better, writing songs with more depth and playing past the E-Street band comparisons to find their own sound beginning with this subtle devastator of a record.

37. Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights

Paul Bank’s nasal drone earned him unwanted comparisons to Joy Division’s late Ian Curtis, a burden few bands would want to try to live up to. A good listen to their debut however showed a band that married the late 70s moves of fellow NYers the Strokes with a lean and lithe rhythmic attack to flesh out their tales of louche romance and empty city streets.

36. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Neko Case hit her stride on this record, filling out her songs with fuller arrangements and a sound that defies easy categorization. As always above all is her glorious honeyed voice drawing the listener in.

35. Justice – Cross

The best pure dance feast of the decade, Justice took up the mantle of such fine 90s acts as Propellorheads, Fatboy Slim, and Daft Punk and created an album the equal of the best of their forebears.

34. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP

Eminem followed up his hit debut by expanding and deepening his themes, most notably the blurring of fact and fiction that so fueled the ire of his critics. His prickly (and prick-y) intelligence animate even the harshest of these songs, as does his devilish sense of humor.

33. The Fiery Furnaces – EP

It’s fitting that one of the most interesting and frustrating bands of the era would have a compilation of odds and ends as their best and most listenable album. Starting as an actual brother and sister duo in the mold of The White Stripes they did a radical shift with the multilayered intricate song sites of Blueberry Boat and never turned back. EP‘s songs reflect both eras and are often more tuneful than anything else they’ve done, avoiding the overstuffed left-turns that can sometimes sink their other records.

32. Radiohead – In Rainbows

In Rainbows got as much attention for being released online without a record label as a name-your-own-price download (quite successfully)  as for the music within – another nail in the coffin of the traditional record biz. Yet the contents were remarkable as well, a tour de force restatement of everything Radiohead can do from rhythmic electronica spiked songs to stately ruminative ballads to rousing guitar rock. Light years ahead of their competition.

31. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Pig Lib

Malkmus throws off the yoke of his former band Pavement by embracing his increasingly virtuoso guitar pyrotechnics. At the same time though his offbeat lyrics still hold fast as do his joy in warping traditional rock sounds to his own aims.

30. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig Lazarus Dig!

After a few years of uneven output Nick Cave stormed back wonderfully with this record, a hip-swinging travelogue through the US with the titular bible personage who seems to spend an awful lot of his post-resurrection on his back with members of the opposite sex. A lusty triumph.

29. Cat Power – You Are Free

Chan Marshall has since embraced the easy-on-the-ears sound of Memphis soul, much in the same way and with the same cohorts as Frank Black attempted to. Beforehand though, she made her most interesting and engrossing album, a rough hewn gem that used a stripped back lo-fi sound to offset her smoky warble with edgy guitars and bone dry drums.

28. Spoon – Gimme Fiction

Spoon showed some unexpected moves here, building on their growing mastery of negative space to put over the falsetto groove of “I Turn My Camera On” as well as the simmer to a boil edge of “The Beast and Dragon Adored.” Britt Daniel firmly established his bands rubbery punch as a sound all it’s own, with some antecedents but few equals.

27. Jay-Z – The Black Album

If only Jay-Z had actually really retired after this monster, which supposedly represented his farewell to rap. All his strengths are played to her with some of his best and most personal rhymes and a set of superstar backing tracks that treated his words like settings for jewels.

26. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Arcade Fire did the impossible, following up their beloved debut with a second album that built in many places on the strengths of the first one, if a shade unevenly. Nevertheless the Canadian band became a worldwide sensation, catapulted to playing with heroes from Bruce Springsteen to David Bowie in the kind of indie rock fairytale that few believed in anymore.