Take a deep breath — you’ve made it to the final day of The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s countdown of the Top 100 Albums of the Decade. I promise only greatness. To click through the entire list, click below.

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1

The 20 best albums of the decade, 2000-2009, after the jump.

20. Destroyer – Destroyer’s Rubies
The album that brought me into the fold — and Dan Bejar’s most fully realized release. Whether by choice or by necessity, Destroyer had never sounded as expansive and hi-fi as they do here, thanks to better production values and a fantastic new band (which remains his touring band, I believe). Each song explodes with unreal lead guitars, trademark Dan zingers and endless ba-da-da choruses. Tall ships made of snow, invading the Sun.
>> “Your Blood”: mp3

19. The Wrens – The Meadowlands
That we’ve had only one Wrens album to get us through this decade (and that it hasn’t sold a million copies and allowed them to quit their jobs) should be punishable by death. But The Meadowlands is about living — through suffering, through bum jobs, through break-ups, through punk rock. Few bands in rock music thread the needle of soft and loud better.
>> “This Boy Is Exhausted”: mp3

18. Beulah – The Coast Is Never Clear
Speaking of break-ups — Beulah left us too soon, still at the peak of their game with this album and its follow-up, the edgier Yoko. After a muddier start, with the summery Coast, the band embraced hi-fi production that let its ’60s influences — Beach Boys harmonies, Motown horns — have their day in the sun. Come back, guys!
>> “Popular Mechanics For Lovers”: mp3

17. Weakerthans – Left and Leaving
Ostensibly a punk band, the Weakerthans have too fine a sense of melody and too broad a vocabulary to shout along with the best of them, which leaves Left and Leaving in a peculiar, massively enjoyable place. More of my friends, from all walks of life and listening, count this as a favorite than any of the higher profile releases on this list — it remains a special record, quietly waiting for future generations of not-quite-angry geeks to stumble upon it.
>> “Aside”: mp3

16. Jon Brion – Meaningless
Like his pal Aimee Mann, Jon’s sense of humor knows no bounds — Meaningless, a very important pop record and the only true solo disc of the L.A. legend/producer’s career, is full of self-deprecating odes to lost girlfriends and ghosts of the past. The real album, of course, is the ever-evolving show he puts on at Largo every Friday night, but until he drops a sophomore disc, this will continue to hold us over.
>> “Meaningless”: mp3

15. Elliott Smith – From A Basement on the Hill
As an Elliott fanatic, I had my qualms with Basement, the posthumous album gathered from the late singer/songwriter’s last sessions. In many ways, I still prefer the live, acoustic compilation I’d compiled in the run-up to its release, but Basement, if not quite the gritty White Album he’d said he was planning, is a blistering record. Noisy and chaotic, it found a musician tired of the orchestral pop he’d delved into, turning toward something far more raw. Basement also contains a number of his best lyrics — high praise, given the rest of his catalog. His state of mind during what are thought to be drug-influenced, dark recording sessions may never be truly known, but Basement is his look, stunning and brutal, into the abyss.
>> “King’s Crossing” (live): mp3

14. The Softies – Holiday in Rhode Island
Sadness doesn’t need noise to show its face. The strength of the Softies, a guitar-playing, twee-pop duo that remain probably my favorite musicians after Elliott, has always been in their subtlety. The album’s title track says it all: entrancing and mysterious, its brittle major 7th chords pull you in before Rose Melberg’s words leave you hanging. What really brought her out to Rhode Island? And why so serious, for a love affair? You’ll have to keep listening to find out.
>> “Holiday In Rhode Island”: mp3

13. Hem – Rabbit Songs
This album should have been titled Gorgeous Songs. Thanks to lavish arrangements and the singular voice of Sally Ellyson, Hem — a New York band who sound steeped in Nashville’s finest traditions — craftede a record of elegance and beauty that adds more than a few numbers to the Great American Songbook it pays tribute to.
>> “Half Acre”: mp3

12. The Strokes – Is This It? (UK edition)
9/11, among other things, ruined this album’s flow — the U.S. version kicked off the awesome, inflammatory “NYC Cops” in favor of the half-assed “When It Started.” That aside, though, give the Strokes credit for the decade’s first great garage rock album and more importantly, for making it mainstream cool to play rock music again instead of wearing a damn baseball cap and pillaging Kurt Cobain’s grave. Some of you may be too young to remember, but the early 2000s were a dark time, filled with bubblegum pop, third- and fourth-wave grunge knock-offs and frat boy rap/rock acts. The Strokes started the paradigm shift, even if they were on a major label and trust-fund babies to boot — so are the Arcade Fire. And so, as likely as not, are you! The jams, and that timeless, early twenties urban disillusionment, are beholden to no one.
>> “New York City Cops”: mp3

11. Radiohead – Amnesiac + b-sides
I’m cheating a bit on this one because the Knives Out single looms ever larger in retrospect — a fork in the road Radiohead failed to take. Songs such as “Fog” (my favorite Radiohead song, easy), “Worrywort” and “Cuttooth” were recorded in a fresh session after the long haul that led to Kid A and Amnesiac, and as such, revealed a band with innovation yet ahead of them. Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows went elsewhere, but at least we have those scattered tracks — and of course, Amnesiac, to these ears a richer record song-for-song than Kid A. The Christmas version of “Morning Bell,” “I Might Be Wrong’s” inexorable stomp, the broken jazz of “Life in a Glass House” — it’s Radiohead gone wild.
>> “Fog” (live): mp3

10. Jim O’Rourke – Insignificance
Like Jon Brion’s Meaningless, Insignificance is an album with an extremely untruthful title. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche play on this record, which may have led to the trio’s collaboration on this list’s No. 4 album, but for this blurb’s purposes, they’re just players in Jim’s laser-sharp vision. He rarely turns his solo material toward pop, making this album valuable as both a rarity and evidence of his blackened sense of humor. There are laughs here, sure, but the music’s tenderness makes one wonder if the joke’s on him.
>> “Therefore I Am”: mp3

9. Ryan Adams – Suicide Handbook
Cheating again — this album was never officially released. Recorded between Heartbreaker and Gold, it captures a stripped-down Adams with only guitars and vocals to aid in his lovelorn pleas. Apparently there’s a version with strings that we’ll maybe someday get to hear — till then, though, this one’s pretty much perfect.

8. Sufjan Stevens – Michigan
It helps to see Michael Moore’s Roger and Me before listening to Michigan, Sufjan Steven’s sad-eyed chronicle of the fall of the Great Lakes State. Whether or not Sufjan ever continues in his touted 50 states series, it’s hard to imagine him ever topping this collection, a symphony of orchestration and delicate folk filtered through his most intimate, personal songwriting.
>> “Holland”: mp3

7. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Earning the title of “Decade’s Most Depressing Album” may not be the career crown Yo La Tengo were gunning for when they made this, a subdued, cocktail-hour rumination on marital woes made all the more poignant by Ira and Georgia still being married. So I guess they worked it out. Whatever happened, happened, but either way, they’ve left one of the all-time great guy/girl albums as a lonely document of, well, whatever it was.
>> “Madeline”: mp3

6. Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjun
Some albums don’t just seem otherworldly. Sigur Ros’ celestial soundscapes — e-bowed guitars, clattering drums, swelling string sections, Jonsi’s Thom Yorke-toppling vocals, all building into a tumultuous bombast unmatched by any album since – could’ve legitimately been from Saturn. I suppose that saves the band’s native Iceland the trouble of putting a guy on the Moon.

5. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People
Sometimes too many cooks hit on something incredible. The recipe for You Forgot It In People included some dozen ingredients from the Toronto indie scene’s many movers and shakers, all of whom saw their popularity grow as this album was unleashed upon the world. I say “unleashed” because an album this staggering is unstoppable — from the opening notes of “Capture the Flag” to the searing guitar solo of “Cause = Time” to the post-Bono solemnity of “Lover’s Spit,” You Forgot It In People holds the kind of the music you remember for a lifetime.
>> “Cause = Time”: mp3

4. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot doesn’t need to be told again, so I’ll note the elements that made YHF the album that turned Wilco from one in a handful of Great American Bands to the only one that mattered: New addition Glenn Kotche’s playful, unpredictable drumming; last-minute producer Jim O’Rourke’s sculpting of a mess of static and guitars into a statuesque art record; Jeff Tweedy’s lyrical shift toward poetic images over pop song cliches; and finally, song after song of rich, endlessly satisfying music striving tirelessly to be something more than just a very good band’s next studio album.

3. Sea Snakes – Clear As Day, The Darkest Tools
Luck was against Sea Snakes. Their first and only album came out a week before Christmas 2004; their label, the beloved Three Gut, folded the next year; they broke up six months later and, as far as I know, never really toured. But those who have heard Clear As Day, The Darkest Tools can agree that listeners have largely missed a revelatory record, an intimately, warmly produced disc with the atmosphere of a vintage Blue Note collection applied to a set of passionate, cinematic folk. And then there’s the voice of frontman Jim McIntyre, an instrument so pure and sweet it would make Ben Gibbard blush — or anyone fall in love.
>> “A Pall-Bearer’s Calendar”: mp3

2. Hayden – Skyscraper National Park
The 2000s, almost more so than with any other genre, were an amazing time to be a folk fan. The best artists of the ’90s (Oldham, Callahan, Smith, etc.) were still firing on all cylinders, while new artists from Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens to Grizzly Bear and Chad VanGaalen were breaking ground with vital new releases. But none of the many, many guy/gal-and-guitar albums I’ve listened to in the last decade (and there are many) have affected me as much as Hayden’s Skyscraper National Park. Its title, and the song “Dynamite Walls” seem to be in answer to the ugly battle of man against nature, but that’s hardly its only conflict. Hayden’s waveringly falsetto’d narrator faces off against robbers (“The Bass Song”), friends, lovers and his own insecurities. It’s an intimate, tuneful record made miraculously more inviting by some of my favorite recording and production work of the decade. In an era where too many people’s exposure to music consists largely of 128kpbs MP3s through iPod earbuds — the equivalent of dipping a rotten apple in dog shit before biting into it — Skyscraper National Park was recorded for those with the patience and means to really hear its singer’s delicate vocals, his soft guitar strums, the violence of “Dynamite Walls’” fiery electric climax. This album could be your best friend — but being a good friend means being a good listener.
>> “All In One Move”: mp3

1. The National – Alligator
So here we are. The best album of the decade. Alligator is special for not being special — not a great leap forward or something shockingly new. It’s a rock album, pure and simple. There are no production tricks, no samples, no genre-hopping, no lo-fi, no mud-covered Brian Wilson homages. Just a few layers of solemn chamber-pop, brittle guitars and the baritone of singer Matthew Berninger, a vocalist of quiet power and charisma. Sometimes, he cuts loose — amazingly so, on ragers such as “Mr. November.” But his words stand out even when he steps back. “Karen, put me in a chair, fuck me and make me a drink / I’ve lost direction, and I’m past my peak”… “I’m a birthday candle in a circle of black girls”… “I pull off your jeans, and you spill jack and coke in my collar / I melt like a witch and scream.” There are dozens of these, these lines that shudder with imagistic magic, windows into a darkened noir fantasy. Berninger’s protagonists are sarcastic, self-involved, depressive, hubristic, would-be Bonnies and Clydes — it’s an album about towering over the staid limits of modern life from the safety of one’s cubicle. An album about the mysterious, heroic selves we can’t be. About pulling things together as they threaten to be fucked over. It’s an album for the overwhelmed. An album for New York City. “I’m the Great White Hope,” Berninger sings on “Mr. November.” He was wrong. Alligator is Muhammad Ali: the greatest, pure and simple.
>> “All The Wine”: mp3

***

The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade:

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1

Almost there, gang! Welcome to the penultimate day of The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s countdown of the Top 100 Albums of the Decade. To click through the entire list, click below.

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1

#s 40-21 after the jump.

40. Rufus Wainwright – Want One
I could never understand why people liked Poses better. Rufus’ penchant for dramatic, bombastic music — dude just wrote an opera — hit its apex here with a flurry of orchestration and boisterous songs with enough awareness to drop the occasional self-deprecating joke. He’s even better when he strips things down, though — take “Natasha,” a ballad beautiful enough to survive being about the star of Slums of Beverly Hills.

39. Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury
OK, yes: a hip-hop album! I’m an early ’90s Nas/Gang Starr/Tribe dude and I’ll confess to spending too little time with the decade’s acknowledged rap pinnacles — The Black Album, Supreme Clientele, etc. — but this one, oh man. I reach for it all the time, especially after seeing them play a free show at Columbia University (opened by a pre-fame Vampire Weekend!) wherein they rapped about “college hos” while said college hos danced mindlessly. (So proud of my generation.) An all-Neptunes production, one of my Cokemachineglow cohorts once said he could imagine Pusha and Malice sending the beats back to Pharrell with orders to make them scarier. And the lyrics, if admittedly one-note (selling coke!), are as clever and dexterous as the genre gets these days.

38. Beachwood Sparks – Beachwood Sparks
An utterly unique record. It picks up where the Byrds and Gram Parsons left off with their early ’70s “Cosmic American Music,” blending country-western twang with ’60s psychedelia — but the Sparks wrap it all up with a modernist indie pop twist worthy of their Sub Pop Records home. The band was too short-lived; seeing a pair of their reunion shows last year was an honor and a privilege, despite Echoplex security harshing a number of dudes’ mellows.
>> “Silver Morning After”: mp3

37. The Arcade Fire – Funeral
What came first: Pitchfork or the Arcade Fire? Chronologically, the answer is easy, but it wasn’t until the success of Funeral, zealously hyped by those three-pronged tastemakers, that Pitchfork transitioned from touting bands that were already successful to ensuring the fortunes of unknown debut artists. So my affinity for Funeral sometimes gets mixed up with the site’s latter-day sins, but we can all agree on one thing: At least they were right. Funeral is a glorious album, sweeping in sound, sprawling in tone, mature in production, the kind of record most bands would be thrilled to make at their peaks let alone have as their debuts. Would it have been as popular had Pitchfork not recognized this? Obviously we’ll never know, but it’s hard to begrudge the Fire their success because of the hype — or the indie-as-mainstream movement they helped birth.
–Jake Tracer (Note: Some past Rawkblog contributors and friends were going to help with this list, which didn’t work out — but Jake nailed my feelings on this one.)
>> “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”: mp3

36. Iron & Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle
Iron & Wine is my favorite success story of the decade. A bedroom folkie, his four-track recordings seemingly direct from the Reconstruction-era American South, becomes a huge crossover star thanks to genuine talent and fortuitous TV/movie soundtrack placement — and uses his cachet to expand his sound and collab with the likes of Calexico, Califone and Mike Watt (!) and generally keep making fresh, adventurous music. Guy couldn’t be nicer, either. The whole discog’s worth celebrating, but it’s his winning debut that holds the most unguarded charm.
>> “Lion’s Mane”: mp3

35. New Buffalo – The Last Beautiful Day
Good things happen when you’re married to a member of the Avalanches. Sally Seltmann, future co-writer of Feist’s “1234,” holds that honor, and husband Darren’s samples add character to an already vibrant, optimistic singer-songwriter collection. (One better than any of Feist’s records, by the way.) Bonus points for dueting with Jens Lekman on a single version of “Inside.”
>> “I’ve Got You And You’ve Got Me (Song of Contentment)”: mp3

34. Kings of Convenience – Riot on an Empty Street
Speaking of Ms. Feist, Leslie makes a pair of appearance on the Norwegian folk duo’s sophomore album, showing herself as usual to be a first-rate interpreter. But the Kings, a jazz-tinged modern-day Simon & Garfunkel without the ’60s social commentary or comedic leanings, have no trouble singing for themselves.
>> “Homesick”: mp3

33. Jim Guthrie – Now, More Than Ever
The former Royal City member’s Now, More Than Ever is in many ways a collaborative record — Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett adds string arrangements arguably better than the ones he lent to the Arcade Fire’s albums — but it’s also the crowning moment of the Canadian musician, a chamber-folk classic as masterful as Sufjan Stevens’ better work. Listen for the Elliott Smith-style doubled vocals.
>> “All Gone”: mp3

32. Math and Physics Club – Math and Physics Club
Math and Physics Club’s debut (another one!), like the aforementioned Dylan Mondegreen album, is another slice of perfect, effortless pop — and yes, one that owes much to Belle & Sebastian and Morrissey. Everything comes from somewhere, and these songs are simple, sweet and keenly felt; what more could you want?
>> “Darling, Please Come Home”: mp3

31. Aimee Mann – Bachelor No. 2/Magnolia OST
Aimee needs no introduction, but here, with an assist from Jon Brion, she finally tossed off her early grunge leanings in favor of full-fledged left-field pop as biting and cynical as it is instantly memorable. Like conjoined twins, these two releases share a number of songs and you’ll need both to survive.

30. The Autumn Defense – Circles
Detractors of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky didn’t seem to realize that with bassist John Stirratt and new member Pat Sansone, the band had annexed John’s side project, the Autumn Defense — and made a really good Autumn Defense record. This is a better one. Crackling with some of the fuzzy inspiration of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, John croons through ’70s soft-rock-indebted California love songs as good as those of his Laurel Canyon influences.
>> “Silence”: mp3

29. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
An unexpectedly inspired album from Spoon, who had previously peaked (to these ears) years earlier with Girls Can Tell. Turns out they saved the best for last, or at least later, filling out their usually utilitarian sound with dub reggae production, Motown horns and aching-heart lyrics.
>> “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”: mp3

28. Interpol – Turn On The Bright Lights
As a teenager in 2002 who’d never heard Joy Division, Turn On The Bright Lights was a revelation. (Hearing Joy Division later: Not a revelation.) They had a titanic sound, from the angular guitars (best catchphrase) to the burrowing bass lines and burly percussion — and of course, Paul Bank’s unearthly vocals. In other words: “You’ll go stabbing / yourself in / THE NECK!” DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO.
>> “Obstacle 1″: mp3

27. Ryan Adams – 29
The best of late-period Ryan, and through a confluence of events that made it his final album of 2005 — a year in which he released three albums — his most overlooked. But strip away the context and you’ll find a loose concept album filled with his most vivid narratives, from the shoot-out of “Carolina Rain” to the mysterious meeting of “Starlite Diner” — an ascent to heaven? The music, too, shows him as vulnerable as he’s ever been, recorded with magnificent clarity. There’s enough depth in this album lyrically alone to write another few hundred words about, which I did for Cokemachineglow a while back and will link you to now.

26. Radiohead – Kid A
I was never a Kid A guy. It never spoke to me in quite the way OK Computer or even Amnesiac did — it always felt like a relatively morbid collection that never quite congealed. The beauty of recorded music is that it gets to age with you; listening to Kid A now, it’s abundantly clear that the band has never been more focused. Each moment leads into the next, with not a second wasted, blossoming with gloriously uncompressed mixing and mastering that the band seems to have shied away from in recent years. For a future-shock album meant to pull away from rock toward something more mechanized, the sound itself is palpably vital. That and “How To Disappear Completely,” obvs.

25. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born
The fractured, migraine-addled follow-up to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot never aimed for the full-album art record of its predecessor, instead trying out a handful of styles — Krautrock (“Spiders (Kidsmoke)”), Jim O’Rourke-influenced pastoral glory (“Muzzle of Bees,” a serious song of the decade candidate), Beatles pop (“Hummingbird”), scorched-earth Neil Young solos… etc. It all works, cementing Wilco, at least at the time, as the best band in America.

24. The Microphones – The Glow, Pt. 2
Calling the Microphones lo-fi would be a mistake. Phil Elvrum’s recordings are crisp and clear, mixed with the full magic of the stereo spectrum. And yet, you’d never mistake him for Radiohead, or even the Flaming Lips. The Glow, Pt. 2 is what happens when a seemingly hermetic existentialist becomes a studio wizard. Acoustic guitars chime, others thunder into microphones, and Phil searches for purpose — and relationships — against the metaphoric and literal backdrop of nature itself. It hasn’t aged a day.
>> “The Moon”: mp3

23. Jens Lekman – When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog
Jens’ best work may yet be ahead of him, but for now, I’m content to let his debut — itself a compilation of assorted singles and recordings — stand as his masterpiece-so-far. With his subversive sense of humor and disarmingly earnest croon, Jens’ songs would be charming enough on their own — the samples that so effectively adorn tracks like “Maple Leaves” (the Left Banke!) raise them even higher. Dog only hints at the exotic, Avalanches-style dance beats he would later explore on Night Falls Over Kortedala, but I like him better this way, swaddled in warm lo-fi against the chill of heartbreak and another cold Swedish winter.

22. The Clientele – Strange Geometry
The aforementioned “Benton Harbor Blues” aside, if there’s a better song than “Since K Got Over Me,” I don’t want to know about it. On their least lo-fi full-length, the Clientele honed their brand of luminous, mystic psych-pop to perfection, leaving a trail of softly plucked electric guitar arpeggios and innumerable faces in the trees and half-forgotten city evenings behind them. Strange Geometry adds up just right.
>> “Since K Got Over Me”: mp3

21. Elliott Smith – Figure 8
If you’re a purist, this is Elliott Smith’s final album — the last one he had complete authority over before he cut his own life short on a terrible night in October 2003. As such, it was his most ambitious yet in the Beatles/Big Star-influenced style he’d begun to embrace on XO and earlier with Heatmiser. A decade after my discovery of Elliott, and this album, I have yet to stumble upon another artist whose catalog is so thoroughly affecting — with songs such as “Everything Reminds Me of Her” and “I Better Be Quiet Now,” Figure 8 holds some of his most touching moments, but also a number of his best rockers — “L.A.” and “Son of Sam” among them. He turned toward another, equally interesting direction in the sessions that would become his posthumous From a Basement on the Hill, but this is ground I’m glad he explored.
>> “I Better Be Quiet Now” (live): mp3

The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade:

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1

Halfway there! Welcome to the middle of The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s countdown of the Top 100 Albums of the Decade. To start from the beginning, click below:

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1

#s 60-41 after the jump!

60. Joanna Newsom – Ys
10-minute songs. An original folktale about a doomed romance between a monkey and bear. Played on a harp. A mission impossible? To the uninitiated, perhaps. But Joanna Newsom, her sore thumb of a voice ever a target for those who’d rather listen to fucking Death Cab for Cutie or whatever, authored perhaps the decade’s most ambitious release with Ys, assisted by the able hands of Van Dyke “Smile” Parks, Jim “Wilco, Sonic Youth, and Insignificance” O’Rourke and Steve “Every good rock album” Albini. And beyond all that, it’s just so goddamn pretty.

59. Andrew Bird – & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Easily one of the decade’s most intriguing artists, Bird’s Eggs is a world unto itself. From the opening violin crescendoes and high, lonesome whistle — his trademarks — it emerges with wry confidence and purpose, a post-modernist’s answer to Sgt. Pepper’s. Bird is at times too clever for his own good (“Mx Missles”), but for the part, his wordplay hits its targets as forcefully as his elegant musicianship.
>> “Sovay”: mp3

58. Exploding Hearts – Guitar Romantic
Without a doubt, the saddest album of the decade, and not for its exuberant sound. Three of the quartet’s four members were killed in a tragic car accident within months of their debut’s release, punctuating Guitar Romantic with an awful exclamation mark. Nevertheless, they birthed an album that still sounds heartbreakingly vital. The back-to-lo-fi garage movement of the last few years wouldn’t exist without this record, and as is, even the best of the shitgaze scene (Times New Viking, No Age) pale in comparison to this album’s effortless power-pop. Recorded at speaker-breaking volume levels, the fuzz fires up a set of ballsy Buddy Holly riffers built on rock-solid hooks. Play it loud and pour one out.
>> “Rumours In Town”: mp3

57. David Gray – White Ladder
The ’90s and ’00s are littered with failures of Van Morrison followers, from the Counting Crows to that asshole who sang “Bad Day.” David Gray is not an asshole. While “Babylon” was the surprise hit, the whole record is a post-Van, pre-Once ode to the redeeming power of love, booze and acoustic guitars. And with its electronic accents, also the male answer to Beth Orton’s wondrous Central Reservation. (Aside: Somebody, not me, really needs to write something about Merriweather Post Pavillion-as-folktronica-vindication.)

56. The Decemberists – Her Majesty, The Decemberists
Song for song, sophomore album Her Majesty is on par with debut Castaways and Cutouts, but the royal follow-up gets the edge here thanks to better production, a tighter tracklist and a total lack of shame from folk-pop’s most bookish band. Colin Meloy sings about soldiers, chimbley sweeps and gymnasts, disses Los Angeles and proclaims his touched-by-God stardom with nary a wink or a nod. Just an unspoken invite to sing along.
>> “Los Angeles, I’m Yours”: mp3

55. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
This was the record that introduced me to the rock ‘n’ roll glory that is the Hold Steady, so it’s the one that makes this list. In short: Springsteen anthems built for stadiums sung self-awarely for kids in clubs. If they were a lesser band, they’d be on KROQ, but they’re far too smart (and too joyful) for that. “Lord, I’m Discouraged” is indie rock’s “November Rain.” Feel that shit on your skin, Natasha Bedingfield.

54. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Ah, the rare ’00s album-that-sounds-like-an-album. Easily the best record of 2008, Cut Copy’s sophomore record is a feast of beats — but its searing guitar tones and impassioned vocals are more indie rock than the bloghouse set (LOL so hard at bloghouse btw) would like to admit. Even at its most grooving, the songs are suffused with bliss-out synths and distortion, shifting from track to track with the sureness of a master DJ — or, y’know, Radiohead. Anthems for a dance floor utopia that never arrived.
>> “Unforgettable Season”: mp3

53. Rogue Wave – Out of the Shadow
Kitchen sink lo-fi, delicate folk, barnstorming guitar jams. Rogue Wave’s debut knocks it out of the park; if the Shins got there first, well, nothing wrong with some company.
>> “Every Moment”: mp3

52. Constantines – Shine a Light
Say it with me: This fucking record. At their best, nobody was as awe-inspiring and charismatic as the Constantines in their prime, a band who put on the single best performance I saw at All Tomorrow’s Parties 2004 — at 1 in the afternoon. It’s all there in songs such as “Young Lions,” a Bruce-meets-Sonic Youth epic that taps into rock ‘n’ roll’s primordial ooze with the rippling strength of men on fire.
>> “Young Lions”: mp3

51. The One AM Radio – A Name Writ In Water
Going through this list, one can trace the trail of my taste — and my appreciation/tolerance for electronica. Drum machines and acoustic guitars kiss gently on The One AM Radio’s best album, a haunting piece of work that hints at the fuzzier stuff I’d go on to embrace so wholeheartedly later in the decade (see No. 43), but is no less moving for its softer approach. The music is airy, but the lyrics sink with heavy mystery — like the lost “secret” of “Buried Below.” Dig deep.
>> “Buried Below”: mp3

50. Jens Lekman – Night Falls on Kortedala
This record may have saved my life. Or at least, I can say with confidence, my heart. I discovered Jens on a New York subway in the summer of 2007, hidden away on my iPod; weeks later, I dumped my college girlfriend, drank too much Spanish wine and hugged Jen’s freshly arrived tropical post-Bacharach masterpiece close to my chest. I’ve since seen him live three times in the last three years and completely revised my approach to songwriting — and girlfriends.
>> “The Opposite of Hallelujah”: mp3

49. Akron/Family – Akron/Family
Too many bands on this list lost the plot after their first record, as was the case with A-Fam, who descended into a hippie haze and never came out. But their debut remains a total wonder of an album, a fractured folk collection splintered by found sounds and bouts of hazy dissonance. A perfect match between experimentation and well-honed writing and one of the decade’s most masterful, satisfying entries into the genre.
>> “Running, Returning”: mp3

48. Chad VanGaalen – Infiniheart
Like Akron/Family, Calgarian musician/hermit/mind-boggler Chad VanGaalen combines offbeat sounds — he makes his own instruments — with familiar, charming craftsmanship. If his singer/songwriter sound wasn’t singular enough, his lyrics turn toward a subject seldom explored in rock vocals — science fiction (suck on that, sea shanties!). Songs like “Blood Machine” and “Clinically Dead” pulse with the dystopian dreamscapes of The Matrix or Philip K. Dick; worthy company, as is Neil Young, who shares Chad’s trembling falsetto.

47. Dave Matthews Band – The Lillywhite Sessions
A cautionary tale on working for a major label, no matter how much pull you think you have, the scrapped (Steve) Lillywhite Sessions became a ubiquitous burned CD in college kids’ Case Logic binders in 2000 thanks to the emergence of high-powered Internet, Napster, and the best songs of Dave Matthews’ career. (Accounts vacillate on whether the band dumped the material or the suits did. A mistake either way.) Say what you will about the guy (my defense of him is here), he wrestles with big issues here — God, mortality, alcoholism. Hardly the stuff of frat-boy anthems, even when it was brightened, and neutered, for release on the band’s Busted Stuff. The rest of the group is at its best here as well, especially on the 10-minute “Bartender” — an epic jam (with, yes, actual jamming) that lifts into something heavenly.
>> “JTR”: mp3

46. St. Vincent – Marry Me
This is a list made largely of debuts — few of them more fully formed than St. Vincent’s Marry Me. Alternately blistering noisy and sublimely pretty, it’s a hell of an introduction to one of the most compelling musical personalities of the last few years — and an artist who’s a sure thing for my 2019 best-of-decade list, too.
>> “Now. Now.”: mp3

45. Spoon – Girls Can Tell
Indeed they can. Cutting their sound down to its bare essentials on this record, Spoon borrowed from “Come Together” and Elvis Costello and turned bitter and cool for an album-length tell-off to true love. But it’s on “Anything You Want” that their true colors come out: “If there’s anything you want / come on back, ’cause it’s all still here.” Indeed it is.

44. The Shins – Oh, Inverted World
A near-flawless look at indie rock’s softer side, the Shin’s murky, wordy pop stood head and shoulders above a bargain bin’s worth of winsome predecessors — high enough, for better or worse, to appear in an awful, zeitgeist-capturing Zach Braff movie and become a Life-Changing Band. On Oh, though, they’re still an awesome one.
>> “New Slang”: mp3

43. The Radio Dept. – Pet Grief
Deep, bleak, immersive — the Radio Dept.’s music plays like a borderline-suicidal Cut Copy, pasting electro programming and shoegaze guitars over could-be twee pop lyrics in tracks such as the uber-nerdy “The Worst Taste in Music.” When the music’s this good, though, you’d have to have the worst taste to ignore them — and as we’ve discussed, they’re easy enough to Learn to Love.
>> “The Worst Taste in Music”: mp3

42. Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts of the Great Highway
Folk juggernaut Mark Kozelek, like Oldham, Callahan and others, has a catalog almost too daunting to dig into. Thank God for this record, then, a late-career assertion of all his strengths. His vocals have never sounded more pure and his airy guitar figures are as inspired (and gloriously Zeppelin-like) as ever. Dude will probably need an editor forever, but even with a 14-minute mid-album epic, Ghosts is as close to filler-free as he’s probably ever going to get.
>> “Glenn Tipton”: mp3

41. Maritime – We, The Vehicles
Out of the ashes of the Dismemberment Plan (R.I.P.) and the Promise Ring came this record, the second effort in a collaboration between D-Plan bassist Eric Axelson and PR frontman Davy Von Bohlen and drummer Dan Didier . Eric left the group soon after, but the brief marriage birthed a cherubic child. Crisp, bright and immaculately produced, Vehicles purrs like a new Audi. A whine-free love letter to the best parts of second-wave emo.
>> “Twins”: mp3

The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade:

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Welcome to Day 2 of The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s countdown of the Top 100 Albums of the Decade. To start from the beginning, click below:

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Take the jump for today’s picks!

80. Harlem Shakes – Technicolor Health
As discussed yesterday, indie rock as we used to know it — I think we can draw the line in 2004, with the explosion of Garden State, the Postal Service, the Arcade Fire, and the term “blogosphere” — has spent much of the decade grappling with the genre’s increasing indefinability. Technicolor Health may be the last of its breed, a record of wiry guitars, over-your-head references and unflappable enthusiasm. Also, a lead singer with a frog reassuringly embedded in his throat. So scared of 2k10, y’all.
>> “Strictly Game”: mp3

79. Lambchop – OH (Ohio)
A simple, disarming record, Lambchop’s latter-days masterpiece sways breezily between full-bodied chamber-pop excursions and patient, deftly enunciated solo guitar meanderings. Kurt Wagner, as with many of this list’s singers, invokes a scream with a whisper and a broken heart with a smile.
>> “A Hold Of You”: mp3

78. Ted Leo – Shake The Sheets
I don’t know how Ted would feel about hearing this is my go-to gym album (on the handful of occasions I’ve made it that far over the last 10 years), but the man’s energy has never been more contagious. From “Me and Mia” on, Ted’s palatable punk slams the pedal down and never looks back.
>> “Me and Mia”: mp3

77. Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump
Capturing the same sort of techno-paranoia as Radiohead’s OK Computer, the album — its title a play on a perhaps-expected sophomore failure — remains Grandaddy’s best, synthesizers and fever-dream dystopia recorded with the fuzzy edge of faltering (read: low-budget) technology. The machines may rise, but they remain man-made.
>> “Chartsengrafs”: mp3

76. Eluvium – Talk Amongst The Trees
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. The cover of Eluvium’s ambient masterpiece captures its foggy, processed-guitar sonics better than a blurb ever could — bleak but beautiful, the album drifts through some Norwegian woods like Beethoven in slow-motion.
>> “We Say Goodbye To Ourselves”: mp3

75. Destroyer – Thief
One could make a case for Destroyer as the artist of the decade. Though none of his records had quite the cultural impact of more lauded bands such as Radiohead or Animal Collective, he released a staggering six front-to-back great full lengths. 2000′s Thief remains, for my money, the best of his early work. His Hunky Dory fixation was already in full effect, as was his Dada-meets-Dylan way with words — “Your love of shit knows no bounds / Trust me this spells / the premature end of us!” What a romantic.
>> “Destroyer’s The Temple”: mp3

74. The Pipettes – We Are The Pipettes
The Pipettes, a pretty young British girl group with an album chock-full of weirdly post-Spice Girls grrrrl power, were not without kitsch, shtick, or schimilar schtuff (schorry), but were only more charming for it. The harmonies are spot-on and the retro songs, thanks to songwriter/ringmaster Monster Bobby, are nearly as good as their mid-century influences. We can suss out their impact on feminism later, let’s pull some shapes over here.

73. Animal Collective – Sung Tongs
Animal Collective, for better or worse, are an A- band in a decade that demanded only A+++ (see also: TV on the Radio). And so a hype machine was born. Each of their major albums, Feels, Strawberry Jam and 2009′s triumphant Merriweather Post Pavillion, has its merits and flaws, but it’s 2003′s Sung Tongs — the album that made them Big Panda Bears on Campuses — that remains their most daring, successful piece of work. Toying with folktronica production styles over nonsense chants and mangled chords that belied the album’s complexity, the well-titled Sung Tongs was a bracing, blinding assault on folk music, too violently unpredictable to ignore. (Like Nevermind and Loveless before it, it also launched 1,000 awful imitators. Dodos = Staind? Discuss.)
>> “Who Could Win A Rabbit”: mp3

72. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
Young alt-country crooner Ryan Adams never sounded older, or wiser, than he did on his post-Whiskeytown solo debut. In a sense, it was the album that ruined the rest of his career — he would never really return to the raw, heartfelt country-folk present here, and was wrongly burned at the stake by critics and more than a few fans over it. It’s his Harvest; he had to make his Tonight’s The Night (we’ll get to that). That said, it’s an album of fantastic craft and beauty, especially on unstoppable cuts such as “Come Pick Me Up.”

71. Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye
This one took a while. At first, the album seemed too empty, too cool — Steve Aoki’s refrigerator. But “Like a Child” caught my ear, as did the mournful cover of Sinatra’s “No One Cares,” and so began my latter-decade romance with beats, synthesizers and breathy, chill-out grooves. (A New Order infatuation came next. Due credit also to Lost in Translation.) Less a dance floor banger than a bedroom classic, Goodbye bulks up like an angry Hulk on the right headphones — and you will like him.
>> “In The Morning”: mp3

70. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
In high school, Radiohead was my favorite band; I spent a good month of my senior year listening solely to their b-sides. Hail to the Thief leaked weeks before I graduated, and by the end of the summer, I was all but burnt out on the group. So it’s hard to rank this record, which hasn’t earned as many spins as its processors over the years but still holds a place close to my heart. (The same goes for In Rainbows, an album that just missed the final draft of this list.) But even now, songs like “2+2=5″ and “There There” still smoke, as does “Wolf at the Door,” a rare Jonny Greenwood gem — and “Scatterbrain” aside, HTTT has no obvious misfires from the band I’d still call the best in rock.
>> “Wolf at the Door” (unmastered leak): mp3

69. Leona Naess – Thirteens
This feels awkward next to the monolith of a Radiohead record, but welcome to list-making — let’s have a couple drinks and move along. On her fourth album, Leona — Ryan Adams’ ex-fiancee, I just learned — comes into her own with a set of low-key folk-pop. The songs are filled to bursting with keen and cutting observations on the triumphs and tragedies of young adulthood, a theme that resonates sympathetically with 24-year-old me. (See also: Ryan Adams.)

68. Fiery Furnaces – Bitter Tea
What a strange odyssey this band’s been through. They emerged as a psychedelic, real-life brother-sister duo and garnered White Stripes comparisons; they made an art record and became Internet heartthrobs; they made an album with their grandma and fell from grace. Bitter Tea came next, and captured them at arguably their best, most overlooked moment — one finally tempering rampant experimentalism with sugary pop warmth. “Benton Harbor Blues” is as good as a song can be.
>> “Benton Harbor Blues (Again)”: mp3

67. Dylan Mondegreen – While I Walk You Home
Another after-the-fact discovery, Home is a breezy, blissful pop record that never met a jangle it didn’t like or an ex-girlfriend it didn’t hate. Like some forthcoming albums on this list, it’d be easy to throw in the Belle & Sebastian bin and forget — don’t.
>> “Wishing Well”: mp3

66. Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
In the early 2000s, in-the-know pop fans were anticipating a new renaissance thanks to ubiquitous genius Jon Brion and his handiwork in the records of Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright and Badly Drawn Boy, among others. Though Jon’s so-called “unpopular pop” never quite caught fire, the albums of the era still stand tall. Bewilderbeast came before Badly Drawn Boy’s also-worthy About a Boy soundtrack and his collabs with JB, but it offers his best songwriting — “Magic in the Air” remains one of the decade’s best love songs — buried in an absent-minded professor’s charming murk of segues and half-remembered folk scribblings.

65. Trashcan Sinatras – Weightlifting
The criminally underrated Sinatras took over a decade to arrive at a perfect Britpop album, but, well, here it is, Oasis! I can think of few albums as celebratory of the splendid pairing of guitars and soaring songs as this one — a complete pleasure.
>> “Freetime”: mp3

64. Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
At the time, I called this album a “minor classic,” and so it remains, a loose concept record (and yes, a “literate” one) full of doomed, Gothic protagonists and cathartic, scorched-earth folk-rock.
>> “For Real”: mp3

63. Ryan Adams – Love Is Hell EPs
Ah — here’s his Tonight’s the Night. Adrift in New York, immersed in Smiths albums and seething with frustration at his label, Lost Highway, who depending on who you believe, screwed him on Demolition (a stopgap collection compiled from three full-length sessions) and turned the first version of this album down, Ryan revealed a previously unseen range. Forget the lack of alt-country accents for a minute and listen to his vocals warble on “This House is Not For Sale” or “My Blue Manhattan” — this is not the same husky-voiced guy who recorded Heartbreaker just a few years earlier. Like all of Ryan’s mid-period records, the production and arrangements are note-perfect, but the songs are just undeniable. (For the record, his other 2003 release, the much-maligned Rock N Roll, didn’t make the list so other bands could have a fighting chance. Go get it, it’s awesome.)
>> Ryan Adams – “I See Monsters” (live): mp3

62. Modest Mouse – The Moon And Antarctica
If the Internet did anything to bands in the last few years, it made them lazy. The album’s far from dead, but with singles-driven iTunes an easy excuse, few full-length albums in recent years have received the intensity of focus and craft that The Moon and Antarctica or its brother-from-another-mother, Kid A, obviously showcase. The sequencing alone deserves a medal, and the narrative arc of the album is as moving and powerful a story as any classic rock concept. Moon is a journey into the coldest ends of the universe in search of the meaning of life. If that sounds like heavy stuff, wait until you hear Isaac Brock sing.

61. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
After the early-decade success of more traditional folkies — on the pop side, Elliott Smith or Aimee Mann, and on the rootsier one, Will Oldham and his brethren — the freak-folk movement opened the door for more experimental players. Not that this record has anything to do with Devendra Banhart’s self-satisfied bong-huffing. Instead, it’s a glimpse into a haunted mansion, songs filtered through cobwebs, dark passages and otherworldly harmonies — Brian Wilson and John Fahey’s beautiful, abandoned baby.
>> “On A Neck, On A Spit”: mp3

The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade:

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Dear Friends,

It is with great joy, pride and excitement that I present to you this week The Rawking Refuses To Stop!‘s Top 100 Albums of the Decade. In 1998, with Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” atop the VH1 music video charts, I began taking music seriously. (I also became a man. Ask my rabbi.) In 2002, my first pieces of music criticism — and my first year-end list — were published. To say things have changed tremendously since then would be the understatement of the decade, but if nothing else, it’s been a hell of a ride — and an endlessly exciting time for great albums. This list represents that journey of discovery; it is, and is nothing more or less than, a record of the records that have made an impact on yours truly over the last 10 years. Apologies in advance for the dearth of releases by, say, (spoiler!) TV On the Radio, Bjork and Relevant Elephant, among others. (If you’re going to ask “But what about…,” the answer is, “No.” Sorry. To coin a phrase, tell it to your blog.)

That said, before launching into this list, you should know a few things about me: I like acoustic guitars, scrawny dudes and odd voices; songs about girls; songs; girls; cymbal-heavy percussion; major 7th chords; harmonies; emotions; dynamic range; the production style of Jim O’Rourke; the early 1970s; the late 1990s. I like dancing — to rock music. My favorite hip-hop albums were released between 1992 and 1994. I don’t like hype, trends or the vast majority of Brooklyn. You’ve been warned. Excelsior! 

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100. Coldplay – Parachutes
Might as well start off embarrassing, huh? It’s easy to forget now, but in 2000, Coldplay was just one of the abundance of bands picking up where Radiohead left off with “Fake Plastic Trees” — and despite their latter-day sins, songs such as “Shiver” and, yes, “Yellow,” are sterling efforts from Britpop’s last days.

99. Ravens & Chimes – Reichenbach Falls
Without ranting too much about the lackadaisical state of post-2004 indie rock, Ravens & Chimes are the rare New York band who really sounds like they mean it. At times, Reichenbach Falls — an urgent, haunting record produced with care by ex-Arcade Fire drummer Howard Bilerman — evokes Arcade Fire’s hungry desperation, but with none of that band’s big-tent ambition. It’s music for bedrooms and street corners, sweaty and intimate.
>> “January”: mp3

98. Guided By Voices – Isolation Drills
The story of indie rock in the 2000s is at least in part a battle between ’90s heroes competing for relevance (and Internet buzz) with their younger, tighter-pantsed counterparts. On Isolation Drills, lo-fi progenitors Guided By Voices cleaned up their sound with the help of Elliott Smith and his usual production team, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, with the result a collection of power-pop singsongs as engaging as any of the band’s earlier garage epics.
>> “Chasing Heather Crazy”: mp3

97. The Long Winters – When I Pretend To Fall
There’s a special place in my heart for so-called “literate bands” — read: former English majors who realized guitars were a better way to get girls than Shakespeare folios. But few of these acts are as sharp as the Long Winters, whose power-pop sounds squeezed from a life given lemons — and great choruses.
>> “Stupid”: mp3

96. The Magic Numbers – The Magic Numbers
A band boondoggled by a misfired sophomore album, the British quartet were at their best the first time around, when they polished ’60s pop into urgent, updated anthems. To their credit, they were equally energetic live — even at a 1 p.m. shift under the Coachella sun in 2006.

95. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
One of the decade’s most prolific folk luminaries along with fellow ’90s holdovers Will Oldham and Jason Molina, age has been kind to Bill Callahan and his Smog moniker. Well, not so much in this record’s case, but the songs — crisp, atmospheric, wryly heartbroken — reveal an artist as hungry and hugely creative as ever.
>> “Eid Ma Clack Shaw”: mp3

94. Boat Club – Caught The Breeze EP
In the last few years, I’ve leaned less on acoustic tunesmiths and more on the washed-out sounds of bands like Boat Club — music informed by both the drifting haze of shoegaze and the sweaty sonics of house and disco. The result is a set of perfect summer songs, melancholic and groovy — dance music for dorks.
>> “Warmer Climes”: mp3

93. Calexico – A Feast of Wire
A feast indeed. Calexico has never sounded better than they do here, when all of their influences — Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film scores, Fleetwood Mac-sized rock, Mexican rhythms and cowboy melodies — earn a day in the sun.
>> “Not Even Stevie Nicks”: mp3

92. Richard Hawley – Cole’s Corner
On Cole’s Corner, the former Pulp sideman and Longpigs guitarist does everything right. The album is a breathtaking sweep of jazz balladry, jovial rockabilly and New Wave jangle — a summation of rock and pop’s softer side without losing its edge.

91. Centro-Matic – Fort Recovery
With the best of the alt-country movement long behind us, Centro-matic might play too loud to be mistaken for Whiskeytown or Wilco. Still, the band sounds quintessentially American even when it looks to Canada for inspiration: songs such as “Patience For the Ride” roar with the passion of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s most vital efforts.
>> “Patience For the Ride”: mp3

90. Morning Recordings – Music For Places
As the title implies, Morning Recordings’ debut is a quiet, dimly lit record, but a gripping one nevertheless. Much more so than vocal theatrics or heart-on-sleeve sobbing, I’m always attracted to more subtle, reluctant emoting; this album is full of it, pain eased by pills and chamber pop.
>> “Your Light Has Never Shown”: mp3

89. Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Out of This Country
The Glaswegian heirs to Belle & Sebastian’s high-drama twee step out of their predecessor’s shadow on an album buoyed by joyfully muddy Motown production and songs to match.
>> “Let’s Get Out Of This Country”: mp3

88. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Indie’s best elements — Black Francis’ yowl, Johnny Marr’s guitars — collided here, never to be seen again. Unfortunately, with this debut’s success, the band got too weird, too fast, but it remains full of brave, brilliant efforts — showing once again that playing outsider rock doesn’t have to mean sacrificing songs. Thanks to a surreal 2005 tour after their buzz reached a fever pitch, their success also aided that of fellow Top 100 band The National, which deserves notice here.
>> “In This Home On Ice”: mp3

87. The Walkmen – Bows + Arrows
The last Great White Hope of the decade’s pre-Brooklyn noisy New York rock scene, the Walkmen never sounded better than they did on their sophomore album, pitting clattering rock (“The Rat,” “Little House of Savages”) against late-night bar ballads all fueled by singer Hamilton Leithauser’s dour, Dylanesque angst.
>> “The Rat”: mp3

86. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Contrary to popular belief, Illinois wasn’t Sufjan Stevens’ best effort — just his most colorful. But it contains too much of his best material to ignore, and as 2005 eases further into the rearview, it stands, like the “Tallest Man” it sings of, ever larger as the last great album of a chamber-folk genius who seems to have turned his back on his calling too soon.
>> “Chicago”: mp3

85. John Vanderslice – Cellar Door
In 2004, I gave this album four-and-a-half stars in the UCLA Daily Bruin roughly around conducting a 30-minute interview with John, in which he was exceedingly nice and explained that “guitars and marijuana love each other.” Five years later, the album — a film geek’s oddball studio opus — remains my favorite effort in his exceedingly consistent catalog.
>> “Pale Horse”: mp3

84. The Thrills – Teenager
Most wrote the Thrills off after a less Byrds-y, more Wedding Present-y sophomore album, but Teenager, a semi-concept record about small-town suffering and big screen romance, captures the restless spirit of rock ‘n’ roll with sweetness and heart.

83. Whiskeytown – Pneumonia
There are a lot of Ryan Adams albums on this list. This is because they are fucking great. Pneumonia, his third and final album with Whiskeytown, is one of his weirdest releases — Nashville pop mingles with hushed existential angst and alt-country twang. The shape of things to come? Perhaps — but if nothing else, arguably his best set of choruses.

82. Midlake – The Trials Of Van Occupanther
I was unfortunately a latecomer to this, a record that sounds like the Decemberists with their tongues sans cheeks. Singing of simpler eras with rich musical backing that wouldn’t be surprising from mid-period Steely Dan, the band’s earnestness carries the album — and propels it toward the same vividly imagined world occupied by out-of-time storytellers from Joanna Newsom to Tim Hardin.
>> “Roscoe”: mp3

81. Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like That
The French band’s more recent Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is its most exciting record, to be sure, but this is its most consistent — start to finish, a set of sleek, exuberant rock anthems tailor-made to soundtrack summer in the city.
>> “Long Distance Call”: mp3

Discuss today’s picks in the comments or we can rap on Twitter at #Rawkblog100.

The Rawking Refuses To Stop!’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade:

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