TOP 100 (WELL, 101) ALBUMS OF THE DECADE, 2000-2009

December 31, 2010

     Here it is, and only a year too late!  Having 101 albums on my top 100 for the decade, 2000-2009, may indicate indiscipline, but I really wanted to talk about Flaming Fire and could not see leaving that band’s achievement off the list.

     There are some minor discrepancies between the ordering of songs on this list and that of the lists for my 2008 and 2009 posts (the only ones for which I gave a top ten ranking).  This simply results from my reserving my right to change my mind, month by month if not minute by minute.  In any case, the gradations are subtle and, by their very nature, not terribly precise.  The rankings here are purely subjective—no attempt was made to measure each album’s quality “scientifically” by various criteria.

     I tried wherever practicable to choose an “official” Youtube video to link to (i.e., one from the record company or the band itself rather than a pilfered one).  Happy reading!


1.    ARCADE FIRE, Funeral (Rough Trade Records, 2004)  Arcade Fire’s stunningly original and affecting full-length debut (the band released an EP the previous year) restored my faith in the possibilities of rock at a time when most music sounds depressingly derivative.  Thematically coherent (four of the ten songs are titled as variations on “Neighborhood”), Funeral draws on folk inspirations and homespun textures to create music that is wrenchingly emotional and yet never over the top.  On the final track, “In the Backseat,” Régine Chassagne begins tentatively in a silvered voice, but by the end, she is belting the chorus, pouring her heart out.

Sample song  “Neighborhood #2 (Laika)”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siFsdInZqC0&feature=fvsr

2.    ZUCO 103, Whaa! (Ziriguiboom/Crammed Discs, 2005)  Sometimes dubbed “Brazilectro,” Zuco 103 is a quasi-Brazilian (the lead singer is Brazilian and often sings in Portuguese) European electronica trio whose third CD, Whaa!, represents its peak thus far.  High-spirited and fun (“Futebol,” for example, makes soccer the reigning metaphor for the romantic chase, complete with play by play à la Meatloaf on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”), the record draws on the talents of Spain’s Dani Macaco (of Macaco) and the Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry to play off the vocals of Lilian Vieira, whose lightning-quick tongue and stylistic versatility are astonishing.  There is not a weak track on the album, but the bhangra-tinged “Garganteira,” with its spitfire vocal pyrotechnics from Vieira, may be the best of them all.

Sample song  “Na Mangueira”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pehbMl93V6A

3.    BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, You Forgot It in People (Arts & Crafts, 2003)  The Toronto-based collective that helped jump-start the careers of Stars, Metric, and Feist (all of whom appear on this list) put out one truly great record, on which it played around with stylistic variations.  The lyrics are cryptic (and the album title bizarre), but the radical genre-shifting works as the large band hits the mark time and again, from grunge-tinged rockers like “Almost Crimes” to the mellow instrumental “Pacific Theme” to the broadly beatific “Lover’s Spit.”  “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” an antique-sounding little diary confessional, voiced by Emily Haines and Leslie Feist, is like nothing I have heard before—a true sign of a group willing to take risks.

Sample song  “Almost Crimes”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksMEXz_YOCI

4.    MUNDO LIVRE S/A, Por Pouco (Abril Music, 2000)  Underappreciated in no small part because the band sings solely in Portuguese, Mundo Livre, co-originators of the “mangue beat” (or “manguebit”) movement with Chico Science and Nação Zumbi in Recife, followed up Carnaval na Obra (1998) with an equally strong recording two years later.  Por Pouco’s fourteen tracks, once one filters through the neo-Marxist manifestos and anti-imperialist rhetoric, offer a varied buffet of pleasures, from the ska-like “Treme-Treme” (with an allusion to “Shakin’ All Over”) and hard-charging “Concorra a Um Carro” to the bizarre superhero-comic number “Super Homem Plus” to the smooth 1970s-style synth-funk of “Mexe Mexe” to the cavaquinho-driven “Minha Galera” to the strangest cover version of “The Girl from Ipanema” that you are ever likely to hear.  Tom Zé blesses this album with a suitably eccentric answering-machine message that constitutes the track “6:30, Um Abraço!” [an embrace].

Sample song  “Super Homem Plus”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7gXuNpGic

5.    STARS, Set Yourself On Fire (Arts & Crafts, 2005)  Elegant and restrained, with violins and cellos more prominent than drums on the opening piece, “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead,” Set Yourself On Fire marked the coming of age of this Montreal band.  Lead singers Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan complement each other nicely on songs portraying romantic awkwardness (“What I’m Trying to Say”) or soberly reflecting on fragile relationships (“The Big Fight”), but at times the music takes on a harder edge, as in the George W. Bush-damning (without ever naming names) “He Lied about Death.”  The shimmering “Ageless Beauty” became the band’s signature piece on tour.

Sample song  “Ageless Beauty”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yUYlOx5KM&feature=channel

6.    ZERO 7, The Garden (Atlantic Records, 2006)  Similar in its refinement to the Stars album above, The Garden features the vocals of Sweden’s José González and Australia’s Sia Furler to grace the “downtempo” electronica of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker.  Sia’s presence is warm and engaging, particularly on the emotionally brittle “This Fine Social Scene” and the carnivalesque “Pageant of the Bizarre.”  Subtle, supported by live instruments, the album encapsulates a worldly exoticism without forsaking the bliss of familiar domestic comforts.



Sample song  “This Fine Social Scene”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7EWtbSMVQQ

7.    ARCADE FIRE, Neon Bible (Merge Records, 2007)  The eagerly anticipated follow-up to Funeral did not disappoint:  it takes a turn toward Bruce Springsteen territory, with songs about hardscrabble lives and the struggle to get by in uncertain times; Win Butler’s voice itself becomes Springsteen-esque.  But a number of the songs explore the nature of religious fervor and the delusions that can accompany it, with an emotional intensity to match or even exceed the debut record.  “Antichrist Television Blues” is a tour de force, expressing a desperate father’s dreams of stardom for his child.

Sample song  “Black Mirror”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuymDSGCko

8.    RADIOHEAD, Hail to the Thief (EMI/Capitol Records, 2003)  While not quite at the exalted level of the band’s best albums from the 1990s, Hail to the Thief did mark a return to form for a band that had seemed to grow increasingly introspective and withdrawn over its prior two recordings, Kid A and Amnesiac.  More immediate and accessible (more guitar and less electronic processing), Hail to the Thief effectively sustains an atmosphere of dream and fable throughout its fourteen tracks.  “A Punchup at a Wedding” has an oddly Western feel to it, odd, at least, for a band that hails from Oxford, England, but it is of a piece with what the hallucinogenic songs surrounding it conjure.

Sample song  “There There”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUzW-fDNEJ0

9.    NATALIA Y LA FORQUETINA, Casa (Sony/BMG, 2005)  This album, the only one the talented Natalia Lafourcade has done thus far with a backing band, shows remarkable self-assurance and sophistication for a performer who was just twenty-one at its release.  Inspired by the Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi and with production from Café Tacuba’s Emmanuel del Real, the record strikes a nice balance between the soft and personal (such as “Alimento de la Vida” [Nourishment of Life] or “Cuando Todo Cambia” [When Everything Changes]) and guitar-driven power numbers (“El Amor Es Rosa” [Love Is Pink], “Suelo” [Ground], “Ser Humano” [Human Being]) so appealingly original and deft as to burnish the reputation of the “rock en español” genre.  All the tunes are sung in Spanish, including the João Gilberto-originated “O Pato,” which was used in Lafourcade’s version (“Un Pato” in Spanish) for a Mexican movie titled Temporada de Patos [Duck Season].

Sample song  “Ser Humano”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB1qGauKNbU

10.    THE FIERY FURNACES, Bitter Tea (Fat Possum Records, 2006)  Seemingly a compendium of eccentric and esoteric non sequiturs, Bitter Tea manages in its own weird way to hang together, even as Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger link the song titles to form a sort of Mad Libs sentence on the back cover of the CD.  What really makes the record great are the final two tracks, the reprises of “Nevers” (typical Fiery Furnaces whimsy in a song, inspired by the French city, about towns with names suitable for an Abbott and Costello routine) and the gently wistful, rolling “Benton Harbor Blues.”  Coming at the end of a fascinating but challenging record, full of digressions, subversions, and abrupt changes in direction, these two pieces, sweet and hummable, form an unexpectedly harmonious coda.

Sample song  “Benton Harbor Blues (reprise)”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7Aejur6EzE&feature=related

11.    ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino Records, 2009)  The echoey reverb accompanying Panda Bear’s (Noah Lennox) voice has drawn comparisons to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys; no surf music this, though, rather Animal Collective’s inimitable kaleidoscopic swirl of sound, both childlike and intricately conceived.  Although missing the guitar of Deakin (Josh Dibb), the record, the band’s most enjoyable and consistent to date, shows Animal Collective continuing to grow creatively.  The CD ends memorably with “Brother Sport,” which, following a highly repetitive opening section, culminates in a round-like chorus that the band rides for all it is worth—like one of those waves the Beach Boys sang about, perhaps.

Sample song  “Brother Sport”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQjyGT1-mc

12.    PORTISHEAD, Third (Mercury Records, 2008)  One of the most anticipated albums of the decade, preceded by several years of rumor, it ended an eleven-year hiatus from recording by the media-shy British trip-hop trio.  If the unimaginatively named Third does not rank with the band’s previous, self-titled disc, its masterpiece, that is mainly because it is not as relentlessly dark, but its chiaroscuro offers its own rewards and intrigues.  The biggest surprise is a folky, near a cappella number (just a mandolin or ukulele as accompaniment), “Deep Water,” that is a departure from anything the band had previously recorded and a genuine ray of sunshine penetrating the nail-biting angst that is Portishead’s natural state.

Sample song  “Nylon Smile”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCrGPv4qXwk

13.    LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, Sound of Silver (Capitol Records, 2007)  James Murphy, essentially a one-man band, is pitch-perfect on his second recording as LCD Soundsystem.  Sound of Silver is smart, beautifully polished dance-oriented pop—just listen to “Someone Great” to witness how self-assured, how precisely right Murphy’s craftsmanship is at its pinnacle—whose political message gets muddled in the inchoate nature of its lyrics, most pointedly on its signature anthem “North American Scum.”  The record throws in a change of pace for a closer:  “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” abandons the dance beats as Murphy sings a torch song bluesy ode to his hometown.

Sample song  “North American Scum”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieT_lf9wK28

14.    JUANA MOLINA, Un Día (Domino Records, 2008)  Atmospheric and intoxicating, Un Día is the musical dimension of classic Latin American magic realism, expressive notwithstanding its dreamlike interiority.  Juana Molina, who sings and handles most of the electronics/instrumentation, started out as a soap opera actress in her native Argentina.  The eight tracks on the album, employing scatting and murmurs, acoustic guitar, chiming and harplike glissandos, spectral and murky electronic effects, are free-form and unconventional yet cohere thematically, ensuring that the spell remains unbroken throughout.

Sample song  “Un Día”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGlJjVdzPDY&feature=channel

15.    BRIAN ENO, Another Day on Earth (Rykodisc, 2005)  On this record, Eno at least partially reconciles himself, with felicitous results, to the song form, which he had discarded in favor of longer-form sound experiments in recent years.  The simple song structures, melodies, and rhythms he chooses, pared to their essence in “How Many Worlds,” with its lutelike accompaniment, belie a sophistication worthy of this practiced master of composition and arrangement.  The disturbing imagery of “Bottomliners” and “Bone Bomb” aside, Another Day on Earth projects a warm and burnished glow, reaching an apotheosis with the tidal swells and stratospheric soundscapes of “Just Another Day.”

Sample song   “Just Another Day”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SowJrtquP3w

16.    TOM ZÉ, Jogos de Armar (Trama Records, 2000)  Tom Zé occupies his own unique space within the musical universe—or possibly a universe parallel to our own; Jogos de Armar (Jigsaw Puzzle) recasts a 1970 song of his, “Jimi Renda-Se,” as a symphony for blaring car horns stuck in São Paulo traffic, while in other selections he sings satirically about the gross domestic product (“O PIB da PIB”) or the arrival of a very important diplomat at the IMF (“A Chegada de Raul Seixas e Lampião no FMI”).  The political specifics can be tough to follow for anyone not a student or native speaker of Portuguese, yet the general spirit of his philosophy is readily apparent.  However, the record is much more than social commentary:  reveling in wordplay, it is full of inventive touches like the female Greek chorus and otherworldly keyboard dissonance of “Passagem de Som” or “Pisa na Fulô” or the a cappella overdubbing that turns Zé’s voice into a contemplative chamber group in the brief “Cafuas, Guetos e Santuários”; the CD package includes a second disc that essentially deconstructs the songs on the primary disc.

Sample song  “Jimi Renda-Se” (live performance, not the studio version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9qBBX04akQ

17.    OZOMATLI, Street Signs (Concord Records, 2004)  The multiethnic Latin/hip-hop band from Los Angeles really came into its own with its third studio release, freely mixing in salsa, cumbia, merengue, boleros, and elements of Mexican music on “Santiago.”  The signature song on Street Signs is the rousing, genial rap party number “Saturday Night,” but “(Who Discovered) America?” is a probing identity song with Latin percussion (güiro, chekeres [shakers], etc.) and a fresh-from-the-streets feel.  “Ya Viene El Sol (The Beatle Bob Remix)” is a delightfully original, Caribbean-flavored reconceptualization of “Here Comes the Sun,” while “Nadie Te Tira,” the best-sounding piece among many strong selections, is a furious descarga (jam session), ably assisted by the legendary salsa pianist Eddie Palmieri.

Sample song  “(Who Discovered) America?”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbJnZO9RT8A

18.    BLUR, Think Tank (Virgin Records, 2003)  The seventh and perhaps final studio record from one of the two quintessential (and rival to Oasis) Britpop bands of the 1990s, Think Tank took the band in new directions—electronic music, more open-ended pieces, Moroccan music—guided by the interests of lead singer Damon Albarn, who asserted full creative control upon the departure of guitarist Graham Coxon (who only appears in the final, and weakest, track, “Battery in Your Leg”).  By turns noisy and shimmeringly layered, mellow in a bluesy sort of way, Think Tank is appropriately contemplative, from the opening “Ambulance,” with its war-on-terror-defying “I ain’t got nothing to be scared of,” to the closing “Battery in Your Leg.”  The most unabashedly rocking tune, “Crazy Beat,” partakes of the same youthful vibrancy that drives Albarn’s other project, the cartoon hip-hop group Gorillaz, yet it is the simple, doleful “Jets”—just a plaintive repeating guitar motif paired with some crunching bass chords and the words “Jets are like comets at sunset”—that will work its way deepest into your soul.

Sample song  “Out of Time”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRkX1Up1vnc&feature=channel

19.    ATERCIOPELADOS, Río (Nacional Records, 2008)  With Río, the Colombian band’s fullest artistic statement to date, Aterciopelados finds ways to make the protest song sound fresh, lively, and relevant.  From the deceptively breezy title track, which laments the pollution of the Bogotá River, to the free-immigration polemic Bandera, the “message” songs tend to be straightforward rockers, powered by Héctor Buitrago’s guitar and instrumental arrangements and Andrea Echeverri’s charismatic, husky voice.  Not everything is pointedly political, though:  “Vals” is a dreamy, romantic waltz, while “No Llores” is a country tune spiked with cries—a Colombian analogue to the Mexican ranchera—and on “Agüita,” the closing song, celebrating the cleansing power of pure waters, Echeverri wears her heart on her sleeve and produces her most powerful vocals yet.

Sample song  “Bandera”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rizSr6diHo

20.    REGINA SPEKTOR, Begin to Hope (Sire Records, 2006)  The follow-up to Soviet Kitsch, which gave Regina Spektor a hipster/cult following, Begin to Hope aimed at a broader audience; its songs are more fleshed out, coherent, and openly melodic, yet some of the quirkiness that made Soviet Kitsch so intriguing was polished away in the process.  Not all, however:  “That Time” is a song of reminiscence about phases of youthful obsession that draws its power from its progression from the trivial to the tragic, and the songs on the CD’s bonus disc (included on the album version with the yellow color, not the white) give free rein to Spektor’s fertile imagination, in particular, “Uh-merica” (a sinister update on the Beatles’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun”) and “Music Box” (a bizarre fantasy about figurines wanting to experience the most mundane aspects of humanity, set as a habanera), a gem of a miniature.  Of the more conventional songs on the main disc, the most affecting is the blues-tinged “Field Below,” but Spektor’s blossoming songwriting talents also make numbers like “Samson,” “Après Moi,” and “Edit” each its own tiny universe worth exploring.

Sample song  “On the Radio”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHAhnJbGy9M&feature=fvsr

21.    SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS, Alpinisms (Ghostly International, 2008)  The ethereal, soaring debut from School of Seven Bells is all the more impressive an achievement in light of its formal conventionality.  Its rhythms are regular, the melodies consonant, but, oh, the pinnacles Alpinisms attains within those bounds!  Layered, highly synthetic (but hardly bloodless, thanks in good part to the clear, tensile vocals of the twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza) “dream pop” that is akin to progressive rock in its compositional sophistication, the album climaxes with the eleven-minute, pulsating “Sempiternal/Amaranth”—the protracted buildup of anticipation in the verse finds sudden release in the bittersweet, quavery refrain—followed by a slow wind-down with a touch of oriental exoticism in “Prince of Peace” and the sweetly affirmative “My Cabal,” with shoegaze-style ringing guitar from bandleader Benjamin Curtis.

Sample song  “Connjur”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6DbL96O4MU

22.    LILA DOWNS, Una Sangre/One Blood (Narada/Virgin Music, 2004)  Even if the album’s philosophical message of cultural and racial unity is undermined by the Mexican/American singer’s emphasis on the south-of-the-border side of her heritage, Una Sangre/One Blood is a powerful artistic statement.  A treasury of folklore, expression, and passion, the record mines Afro-Mexican and Amerindian sources from Michoacán and Lila Downs’s native Oaxaca for songs like “Malinche” and “Viborita” (taken at a modern dancefloor tempo) or the more traditionally set “Tireneni Tsïtsïki,” sung partly in the Purepucha language, while “Paloma Negra” is a traditional, heart-on-sleeve Mexican ballad in the ranchera tradition.  For Americans unaccustomed to these styles, it might be more fun still to listen to Downs’s interpretive spin on two far more familiar songs:  “La Bamba” and “La Cucaracha,” the latter restored to its Mexican Revolution context, while the former may date back to seventeenth-century Veracruz.

Sample song  “La Bamba”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94SO41xMQuY

23.    GNARLS BARKLEY, St. Elsewhere (Atlantic/Downtown Records, 2006)  This debut recording from the duo of Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Callaway) took the world by storm upon release, particularly its ubiquitous, soulful single “Crazy.”  Little wonder, for it is a supremely entertaining collection of stylish pop songs, informed by a hip-hop sensibility without actually being rapped.  Cee-Lo’s powerful and expressive voice summons gospel fervor in “Go-Go Gadget Gospel,” wistfulness and heartache in the title track, a ghoulish sorcerer’s glee in “Necromancer”; Danger Mouse applies his mixmaster skills to the faux-Asian “Feng Shui” and the astonishingly inventive “Transformer,” with its rapid rhythmic pivoting and its swirly flute chorus.

Sample song  “Crazy”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6SjMh_w&feature=related

24.    BATTLES, Mirrored (Warp Records, 2007)  Although this album is mostly wordless, and those songs that do have lyrics are all but indecipherable, it is hard to wrap one’s head around it.  Once you accustom yourself to the oddball vocals of Tyondai Braxton—the processed falsettos and Munchkin warblings—you can properly appreciate the experimental daring of Battles’ debut:  sometimes called “math rock” (a term that has no meaning for me), it is rock diced up, reconstituted, massaged, twisted, and projected through extensive electronic filtering, as on the lengthier instrumentals, “Tonto,” “Rainbow,” and “Tij.”.  “Atlas,” the closest thing to a “hit” on the disc, is also the most songful piece but in a cartoonish way, with a bouncy, boingy rhythm; “Leyendecker” carries a heavy-metal drumbeat that is later deconstructed and vocals that work their way up to falsetto; the stuttering vocal suggested by the consonant doubling of the title in “Ddiamondd” is offset by guitars locked into a churning cycle and some goofy whistling.

Sample song  “Atlas”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpGp-22t0lU

25.    BRAZILIAN GIRLS, Brazilian Girls (Verve, 2005)  New York’s premier ersatz Europop group (there are no Brazilians and just one “girl”) has never been as on target as it was on this, its debut record.  The sly, tongue-in-cheek humor, the casual, almost blasé cosmopolitanism that multilingual lead singer Sabina Sciubba wears like her own skin, the lush arrangements, all contribute to a warm, nostalgia-tinged sense of romance.  Particularly louche is “Sirènes de la Fête” (Mermaids of the Feast), a magnificently lavish number, by turns mysterious and swoony, featuring great washes of sound, with “Lazy Lover” not far behind, but Brazilian Girls shows its versatility with songs like the quasi-Caribbean “Pussy”; the setting of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Me Gustas Cuando Callas” (I Like It When You're Quiet), full of suave intrigue; and the slinky milonga “Die Gedanken Sind Frei (Thoughts Are Free).”

Sample song  “Lazy Lover” (live performance, not the studio version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKAsnFna6f8&feature=fvsr

26.    HERBERT, Scale (!K7 Records, 2006)  Matthew Herbert, classically trained and a fan of aleatoric methods, played around with dance and electronic music from early on, but it is his wife, the jazz singer Dani Siciliano, who loosens him up and makes Scale an alluring record.  Her warm, inviting vocals humanize the electronic whiz-bangery that incorporates (according to Herbert) the sounds of 635 objects—many of them things no one is accustomed to thinking of as instruments (breakfast cereals?)—spicing the songs with old-fashioned verve and sexiness as they progress from “The Movers and the Shakers,” which is more about propulsion than thematic development, to “Moving Like a Train, its antimelodic chorus in stark contrast with the boogie-woogie verse, to the ear-friendly but sophisticated “Harmonise” or “Movie Star” (which begins and ends with the sound of a film projector), to the dreamy and experimental “Just Once.”

Sample song  “Moving Like a Train”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvfXn9Z8jE8

27.    BURIAL, Untrue (Hyperdub Records, 2007)  The second recording from Burial (William Bevan, to his mother) sounds like nothing else I have ever heard:  deeply immersed in its dubstep electronica drum and bass rumblings, it samples other pop songs, soundtracks, and bits of dialogue from various movies, manipulating the human voice to such a degree that one cannot always discern the gender of the singer (for example, India.Arie’s voice is processed to sound at intervals like Michael McDonald).  For all that, songs like “Archangel” and “Endorphin,” “Etched Headplate” and “Raver” (the only song with a real steady beat to it), have a genuine musicality and remarkably manage to generate warmth and a sense of human connection amid the sonic murk and dark shadings that are the album’s unrelentingly clammy background.

Sample song  “Archangel”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlEkvbRmfrA&playnext=1&list=PLAE2680E8516C46FB&index=3

28.    FANFARE CIOCǍRLIA, Queens and Kings (Asphalt Tango Records, 2007)  Balkan music has enjoyed a vogue with Western performers from Gogol Bordello to the one-man show who calls himself Beirut, but I prefer mine unadulterated, played by real gypsies (Roma).  On Queens and Kings, the Romanian ensemble Fanfare Ciocǎrlia (Skylark Brass Band) invites fellow Roma performers from across Europe to sing and play along, everything from Gipsy Kings-like Catalan rumba from the Perpignan-based group Kaloome to the rapid accordion pumping of “Sandala,” from assembled Serbian guest artists, to the more traditional-sounding “Pănă Cănd Nu Te Iubeam” (In the Time before I Loved You), sung by Hungary’s bubbly, helium-voiced Mitsou; the record ends with the strangest cover of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” you are ever likely to hear (or may have heard already, if you stuck with the movie Borat all the way through the closing credits), full of growls, whoops, rapid brass oompahs, and staccato-tongued nonsense syllables—a real delight!

Sample song  “Born to Be Wild”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YWvUJOQf8g

29.    ALICIA KEYS, The Diary of Alicia Keys (J Records/BMG, 2003)  The neo-soul singer had already made a big splash with her debut record, Songs in A Minor (2001), at age twenty, and her follow-up, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was anything but a sophomore slump; its signature song, “You Don’t Know My Name” (co-produced by Kanye West), in which a Harlem waitress gets up the nerve to ask out a regular customer, is a touch schmaltzy, with its tinkling piano runs, but plenty affecting nonetheless as a romantic idyll, working-class variety.  Other ballads that are rich in pop craftsmanship and sophistication are “Wake Up” and “Slow Down”; for a change of pace, there is the frantically funky “Heartburn,” reminiscent in its choral melody of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Heatwave,” with Timbaland producing alongside Keys, or the midtempo, sultry rhythm and blues “Dragon Days” (the days “drag on” as anticipation of passion builds).

Sample song  “You Don’t Know My Name”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJiLcNQdye4

30.    GORILLAZ, Demon Days (Virgin Records, 2005)  Declared the world’s most successful virtual band by the Guinness Book of World Records, Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn’s cartoon project, on its second album, conjures a post-apocalyptic world, a mood it sustains throughout with songs like “Last Living Souls,” “Kids with Guns,” “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead,” and the parable “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head” (narrated by Dennis Hopper), though it ends on a more measured upbeat note in the title track, loftily assisted by the London Community Gospel Choir.  Inevitably, given Albarn’s leading role in creating and performing the music behind the cartoon characters, quite a lot sounds like Blur outtakes, notably “O Green World” and the “windmill, windmill” chorus of the hit “Feel Good Inc.” (which features the gentle rapping of De La Soul; other notable guest appearances are made by Neneh Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, and Ike Turner), which is no bad thing in itself.

Sample song  “Feel Good Inc.”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Qp38qT-xI

31.    METRIC, Live It Out (Last Gang Records, 2005)  Of the various bands orbiting the Canadian collective Broken Social Scene, Metric offers the most straightforward power pop, fronted by the appealing lead singer Emily Haines, and Live It Out, its third recording, was for most people its coming-out party.  Yes, the record runs out of steam following its climax, the goth rock smash “Monster Hospital,” with its memorable refrain “I fought the war, but the war won; STOP for the love of God!” but the buildup to that point is terrific:  “Empty” starts off like fast-folk before erupting into raucous bass chords framing the sardonic chorus “Shake your head; it’s empty”; “Glass Ceiling” is trippy and tremulous, as if in homage to Portishead; “Handshakes” muses on the futility of careerism; and “Poster of a Girl,” Haines’s heartfelt statement, gently skewers the two-dimensional unreality of young male fantasy with the album’s most lyrical theme.

Sample song  “Monster Hospital”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlW-r5BF-Oo&feature=fvsr

32.    INTERPOL, Our Love to Admire (Capitol Records, 2007)  Interpol, the best straight-ahead guitar rock New York band of recent times (forget the Strokes), delivers a solid and consistently good rather than spectacular effort with Our Love to Admire, with greater keyboard presence than on the band’s previous two releases adding texture and a more pronounced tendency toward the pealing chords of the shoegaze movement, particularly in the buildup to the stirring, clanging climax of “Mammoth.”  British-born lead singer Paul Banks’s voice strikes me as a little ponderous and overly declamatory, but it is a stamp of the group’s identity, marking the catchier tunes like “Rest My Chemistry” and “The Heinrich Maneuver” as unmistakably Interpol.

Sample song  “The Heinrich Maneuver”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWGJTYVW_0&feature=channel

33.    BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP, Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp Records, 2009)  Puzzlingly labeled a “mini-album” (it is longer than any number of full-length CDs), this collaboration between Broadcast (Trish Keenan and James Cargill) and the Focus Group (a.k.a. Julian House) is a delightfully original treasury full of phantasmagorical tunes, many of them mere snippets of spacy, occult pyschedelia, incorporating a travelogue’s worth of external sound effects.  On “The Be Colony,” the first fully fleshed-out song on the disc, the modulating music is strongly reminiscent of Stereolab (even Keenan’s singsong voice recalls that of Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier), but the record overall is less like Stereolab than like a jukebox distorted by a passage through Alice’s Wonderland—bits of familiar-sounding, even nostalgia-inducing, themes stirred like an aural kaleidoscope through all manner of peculiar sonic background settings.

Sample song  “The Be Colony”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JF-udkGoT8&playnext=1&list=PL827C6D3D6F490D33&index=8

34.    GOMEZ, In Our Gun (Virgin Records, 2002)  Over time, Gomez’s output has become blander and less distinctive, so it is salutary to go back and listen to just how good—and how original—In Our Gun was.  The standout song is the soulful ballad “Even Song,” which is textured like a country-Western tune (notwithstanding Gomez’s English origins); similar in tenor is “Shot Shot,” its rapid-fire strumming enhanced by sax and horn tracks, while “Detroit Swing 66” is tightly structured with an easygoing swing above its throbbing bass grounding, “1000 Times” is a rock lullaby—but one with a bridge that resounds with churning guitars and reverb—and “Army Dub,” starting from a Middle Eastern-sounding intro filled with keyboard glissandos, lays on the pulsing synthesizers for a very different feel.

Sample song  “Even Song”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIJn3H7ARJ0

35.    PETER GABRIEL, Up (Geffen Records, 2002)  This record, Peter Gabriel’s last studio album of original music to date (he has focused his energies in recent years on producing various musical acts worldwide and humanitarian initiatives), is the slightest of his solo efforts—if less slickly commercial than his previous release, Us—yet still plenty intriguing; not quite as navel-gazing as Us, it extends the psychological interiority of that record, while adding a note of morbidity and mortality on songs like “I Grieve” and “No Way Out”; even songs meant to be more uplifting (the Daniel Lanois-produced “Sky Blue” and “More than This”) are pretty damned somber in tone.  “Signal to Noise” is particularly affecting as a cry for reason against spreading ignorance and chaos, incorporating the backing vocals of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (who died before song could be produced), yet the album’s highlight is the scabrous “Barry Williams Show,” about a cynical, manipulative, Jerry Springer-type talk-show host, a song whose Sean Penn-directed music video included (as a visual joke) the Barry Williams who played Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch, presented as an audience member.

Sample song  “The Barry Williams Show”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAls9jb7tg8

36.    YO LA TENGO, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador Records, 2006)  Like They Might Be Giants, Hoboken, N.J.-based Yo La Tengo’s core members, the husband-and-wife team of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, are musical magpies; thus, there is a wide stylistic range on I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (the album title is a paraphrase of something Tim Thomas said to teammate Stephon Marbury on the New York Knicks’ bench several years ago).  The album is mostly short songs but begins and ends with longer jams (the grungy “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” and the mock-autobiographical “The Story of Yo La Tango”), with a lengthy, quiet instrumental interlude called “Daphnia” in the middle of the tracklist; among the highlights of the shorter pieces are the roiling “The Room Got Heavy,” with its cheesy, repetitive organ ground bass and flourishes (like something from the Doors), the brassy and bouncy “Beanbag Chair” (more like the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky”); and “Mr. Tough,” which is ironically, given its title, the one song sung falsetto.

Sample song  “Beanbag Chair”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uckj_Qpynys

37.    JUSTICE, † (Downtown Records, 2007)  Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé have released just one studio album to date as Justice, but that record is an exemplar of danceable electronica from the big-beats end of the spectrum; heavy-footed but never lugubrious, † will not take any prizes for originality but skillfully mixes in genres like funk on “Newjack” or “Waters of Nazareth,” or industrial noise and Midnight Express-era disco on “Stress” (with a touch of harpsichord at the close to add a Baroque touch), and it employs microsampling throughout.  The recording is mostly instrumental; in fact, the least appealing tracks are those with words, starting with the relatively inoffensive “D.A.N.C.E.” (Justice’s big hit, dedicated to the then-still-living Michael Jackson) and reaching a nadir with the insufferable “Tthhee Ppaarrttyy,” featuring the abominably smug Uffie (Anna-Catherine Hartley).

Sample song  “Stress”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5S0dkLZoTg

38.    DATAROCK, Datarock Datarock (Nettwerk Records, 2007)  “Computer Camp Love” (Leader:  “Ran into her on computer camp.”  Chorus:  “Was that in ’84?”  Leader:  “Not sure; had my Commodore 64; had to score!”) is a deliciously snarky, tech-geek updating of the song “Summer Nights” from the musical Grease; the rest of the record maintains the sly, knowing tone, whether in frantic uptempo numbers or Bill Murray-grade mock-crooning ballads.  Although Datarock is from Bergen, Norway, singer Fredrik Saroea and his keyboard partner, Ket-Ill (Ketil Mosnes), nail the Americanisms needed for their New Wave revival, taking inspiration from the bands they grew up with, particularly the Talking Heads and Devo.

Sample song  “Computer Camp Love”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=140ea47ndME

39.    PALMS, It’s Midnight in Honolulu (Rare Book Room Records, 2008)  Elemental, even primitivist in its approach, this transatlantic collaboration between Berlin-based Nadja Korinth and New York’s Ryan Schaefer is surprisingly self-assured and effective, in no small part because Korinth’s voice is lovely, powerful, and versatile, and she is unafraid to deploy it in ways that sound like primal scream therapy:  a harsh, ringing tremolo on “Monte Alban”; more like an Amerindian war chant on “Hang Your Head.”  But she sings with a silvered tenuousness on the delicate atmospheric filigree of “New Moon,” with an almost cartoonishly strident gothic foreboding on the opening “Der Koenig,” and with an oddly touching domesticity on the concluding “Our Home”; to give Schaefer his due, “Das Lowenfell” and “Boundary Waters” stand out for the stark minimalism of their electronic arrangements and samplings.

Sample song  “New Moon”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRhEvfHnKLk&feature=related

40.    RADIOHEAD, Kid A (EMI/Capitol Records, 2000)  The boys from Oxford, already portrayed in some media as the saviors of rock music in an era of declining record sales, wrongfooted the expectations of their fan base with this inward-gazing, diffuse, heavily electronic and dance-influenced (viz. “Idioteque”) fourth record, temperamentally the opposite of the brash extroversion of The Bends or the ringing anthems that characterized much of OK Computer, just three years earlier than Kid A.  Thom Yorke’s nerve-jangled voice is miked more clearly than on earlier records yet sounds more diffident than ever on songs like “Everything in Its Right Place,” “Morning Bell” and “How to Disappear Completely”; still, the album’s introspective experimentation yields mesmerizing soundscapes throughout, from the long synthesizer tones and buzzy sampled background vocals of “Everything in Its Right Place” to the dire bass riff and jazzy horn charts of “The National Anthem” to the plaintive monotone chant, like that of a Buddhist priest, of “Morning Bell.”

Sample song  “The National Anthem”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-7MeqSIj4E

41.    STARS, In Our Bedroom after the War (Arts & Crafts International, 2007)  To hear what makes Stars a great band, just listen to “Personal” from this record:  a delicately limned, painful tale of a proposed encounter via the personal ads that goes awry because of conflicting and perhaps unrealistic expectations; in an era when most everything is loudly oversold or overstated, this band’s exquisite refinement is truly a treasure.  Some tracks on In Our Bedroom after the War are knotty or problematic—the juxtaposition of romance and thuggish violence on “Barricade,” the clashing imagery and head-scratching obscurantism of “The Ghost of Genova Heights”—but the songwriting craft shines throughout the album, whether on lacy or soulful ballads such as “Window Bird” or “My Favourite Book” or on rockers like the scene-setting “The Night Starts Here” or “Bitches in Tokyo.”

Sample song  “The Night Starts Here”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh1qwAM97Q&feature=channel

42.    KATE BUSH, Aerial (Columbia Records, 2005)  Kate Bush’s first studio album in twelve years felt, on its release, like welcoming back an old friend who had been sundered far too long.  Of the two discs on Aerial, “A Sky of Honey,” which is a sort of portrait of an artist over the course of a long day, is less successful than “A Sea of Honey,” which offers thematically unrelated songs and manages to make poetry out of such idle or abstract concerns as watching a washing machine spin or contemplating the nature of pi, but the most stirring song is the leadoff on “A Sea of Honey,” “King of the Mountain.”

Sample song  “King of the Mountain”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPW4DdGo2Z0&feature=fvsr

43.    TINARIWEN, Aman Iman (Water Is Life) (World Village/Harmonia Mundi, 2007)  It might seem odd that a floating band of Tuaregs from remote northern Mali, singing songs about obscure rebellions mostly in an inaccessible language (Tamashek), would create a sensation, even one limited to the cognoscenti, in the West.  Rightly or wrongly, American fans viewed the gritty, wailing, bluesy guitars on Aman Iman as a kind of roots music and responded to the raw emotion of songs like “Assouf” or “Cler Achel,” which are as expansive as the broad landscapes that gave them birth, even if the politically secessionist-tinged laments and romanticization of struggle are themes that escape many Western listeners.

Sample song  “Soixante Trois”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrWkC85NySA

44.    ZERO 7, Yeah Ghost (Atlantic Records, 2009)  For fans of Zero 7’s previous release, The Garden, the song that best approximates the lilt of that album’s solo numbers by Sia (Furler) is “Swing,” with a bit of steel pan percussion for spice, although the vocalist who most fully embodies Sia’s vocal stylings and warm accessibility is Martha Tilston on the decidedly chill, downtempo “Pop Art Blue.”  The singer of the moment on this CD, though, is Eska Mtungwazi, who has also sung with the Matthew Herbert Big Band and who brings her own brand of verve and soul to the four tracks that feature her; Henry Binns himself—one of the two partners at the core of Zero 7—takes the low-key vocals on “Everything Up (Zizou),” dedicated to French soccer star Zinedine Zidane.

Sample song  “Swing”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw8-Yt2Ai3Q

45.    M83, Saturdays = Youth (Mute Records, 2008)  Anthony Gonzalez, the French multi-instrumentalist and producer who in effect is M83, brought in Morgan Kibby from Los Angeles to take lead vocals on this, M83’s fifth recording; her pure, light, high soprano is like a bowl of vanilla ice cream (the good stuff; I don’t mean plain vanilla), shown to best effect on the gossamer “Skin of the Night” and the slightly more treacly “Up!”  M83’s electronica is directed toward a reinvention of 1980s pop sounds on Saturdays = Youth:  teenage romantic idealism, escapism, and ghostly images recur, to music that in its breathy vocals, limpid tones, and rich consonance can resemble that of Gonzalez’s compatriots in Air; elsewhere, shoegaze-style guitars chime (“Graveyard Girl,” “Highway of Endless Dreams”) or dance/electronic effects prevail (“Couleurs” and the closing “Midnight Souls Still Remain,” which is a single shimmering chord with some cycling undertones, held ad infinitum).

Sample song  “We Own the Sky”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzge5vY72hE&feature=channel

46.    FORRO IN THE DARK, Bonfires of São João (Nublu Records, 2006)  Mauro Refosco’s band of Brazilian expatriates in New York, with the help of David Byrne, fashioned an appealing hybrid of traditional forró and rock/country/various types of Caribbean music, aided by a roster of New York guest singers that included Byrne himself as well as Bebel Gilberto (herself a New York-Brazil hybrid) and Miho Hatori (formerly of Cibo Matto).  The most powerful song is Luiz Gonzaga and Humberto Teixeira’s classic baião “Asa Branca” (White Wing), from 1947, relating a story of calamitous drought, displacement, and yearning for home best expressed in its native tongue, but here David Byrne gives the English-language rendition; other songs that lean toward the traditional include “Riacho do Navio” (also co-written by Gonzaga years back) and “Oile Le La”; meanwhile, Gilberto offers her characteristic suaveness and mellow sheen on “Wandering Swallow (Juazeiro)” and Hatori adds a touch of exoticism to “Paraíba.”

Sample song  “Asa Branca”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8OWpeF8jy0

47.    ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, Strawberry Jam (Domino Records, 2007)  The band’s seventh studio album marked another step up in musical sophistication; the songs are still wild-eyed, with unpredictable outbursts of falsetto, wildcat screeches, and head-scratching lyrics, but the piano ostinato that grounds “Cuckoo Cuckoo,” the dreamiest piece on the record, for example, is a thing of beauty.  A number of songs have a graceful, quasi-Caribbean lilt, including “For Reverend Green” (the band’s tribute to Al Green, one would think), “Unsolved Mysteries” (with its nightmare imagery and alarming lyric), and “Derek” (until the song is subsumed in electronic noise); “Unsolved Mysteries” is oddly bubbly in sound, and “For Reverend Green” shimmers with intermittent pulsation, while “Fireworks,” with its rapid-fire triplets, and “Peacebone” are set to jittery rhythms.

Sample song  “Peacebone”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxvGHQHiY70

48.    PETER BJORN AND JOHN, Writer’s Block (V2 Music/Almost Gold Recordings, 2007)  The Swedish trio’s third album is a droll pleasure of mostly spare songs with snappy arrangements; although the big hit (predating the album) was the catchy “Young Folks” (featuring Victoria Bergsman of the Concretes as co-vocalist), whose cartoon-Japanese-y pentatonic theme is introduced with whistling, my favorite track is the no less infectious (and also introduced with whistling) and delightful “Amsterdam.”  Via directness and simplicity, PB&J affectingly conveys moods and messages, as on the boulevadier song “Paris 2004” or the more elaborately produced, percussive “The Chills” or the neo-surf tune “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” while avoiding the trite and hackneyed (and writer's block).

Sample song  “Young Folks”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51V1VMkuyx0

49.    ZUCO 103, After the Carnaval (Six Degrees Records, 2008)  On Zuco 103’s follow-up to Whaa! the Amsterdam-based band moves away from electronic sampling toward a more naturalistic sound, one that draws more directly on Brazilian sources (the record was recorded partly in Rio de Janeiro, with Brazilian musicians such as Sergio Chiavazzoli on guitar, cavaquinho, and banjo and Marcos Suzano on drums pitching in).  The album’s rich variety—from retro-funk on “Back Home” and “Beija a Mim (Saudade)” to the folky, back-countryish “Fulero” to the bossa nova-inspired “The Same Way” to the film noir-esque “Begrimed”—is matched by the marvelous flexibility and versatility of lead singer Lilian Vieira’s strong and expressive voice (she is herself a native of the Rio region).

Sample song  “Nunca Mais”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZuJEfAqimA

50.    SIGUR RÓS, Ágætis Byrjun (PIAS America, 2001)  Glacially paced, surging with massed strings, lofted as in the anthemic “Starálfur” (Staring Elf) by long tones and peculiarly Nordic sonorities, not least of which are the characteristically Icelandic, elfin high-pitched singing of lead Jónsi Birgisson (in Icelandic, be warned, with no English translations offered), this is no one’s idea of rock music; still, it does contain passages of rock drumming and guitar and Procol Harum-style churchly organ.  Like the Iliad, it is tedious at times in its obsessiveness, yet its rigor also builds to peaks of cavernous haunting and thrilling majesty, notably in “Svefn-g-englar” (Sleepwalkers) or “Flugufrelsarinn” (The Fly’s Savior), that lesser records can only dream of.

Sample song  “Svefn-g-englar”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWiJWLiSKro&feature=related

51.    THE MARS VOLTA, De-Loused in the Comatorium (Universal Records, 2003)  The debut from this neo-progressive band is a concept record based on the cryptic tale of an attempted suicide via overdose of one Cerpin Taxt (based on El Paso artist Julio Venegas), his subsequent hallucinations, and ultimate demise; the record is characteristically prog-rock in that passages of anguished singing from Cedric Bixler-Zavala (the band’s emo roots revealed) and furious, churning, virtuoso guitar passages by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez are separated by vast sonic longueurs in which nothing much is happening, but the album has the dramatic sweep of Genesis’s classic The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Sample song  “Inertiatic Esp”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neSQgkEy_xQ&feature=fvsr

52.    BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW, Eating Us (Graveface Records, 2009)  The appeal of this peculiar, dippy, child-of-the-flower-children band from Pittsburgh lies in its ability to conjure obvious-sounding melodies with plush, bubblegum arrangements and develop them into something magically atmospheric, mind-blowing, and even triumphally grandiloquent in their own bizarre way, as exemplified by “Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise”; Tobacco (a.k.a. Tom Fec), the lead singer and composer, uses a vocoder to process his voice into a breathy, quasi-feminine, buttery spread.


Sample song  “Born on a Day the Sun Didn't Rise”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRNmvCWueEw

53.    DE PHAZZ, Days of Twang (Phazz-a-delic/Kriztal Entertainment, 2007)  The laid-back, lounge-y sound of De Phazz is at its infernally catchiest in the songs “Hell Alright” and “Devil’s Music,” with their Jerry Lee Lewis/Elvis Presley-style vocals and mellow, Herb Alpert-ish trumpet licks on the latter; elsewhere, there are songs that recall calypso, dub, or reggae (“Le Petit Bastard,” “Better World”), roadhouse blues (“Rock’n’Roll Dude,” “Shadow of a Lie,” the harmomica and baritone sax in “My Society”), or trip-hop (“Nonsensical Thing”)—Days of Twang is not a terribly ambitious record, but it consistently manages to avoid misfires.

Sample song  “Devil's Music”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj59IbT05Z8

54.    FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS, I Told You I Was Freaky (Sub Pop Records, 2009)  The New Zealander folk duo who star in the HBO comedy series of the same name range from the merely droll (“Friends,” “Angels”) to the hysterical on their second studio album (with the participation of Kristen Schaal, Jim Gaffigan, and Arj Barker), never funnier than on the opener, “Hurt Feelings,” in which put-upon rappers reveal their sensitive side; among other twisted parody highlights, “Rambling through the Avenues of Time” is a yarn-spinner in the mode of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”; “You Don’t Have to Be a Prostitute” is a gender-reversed “Roxanne” from the Police; and “Carol Brown” is a side-splitting upending of Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover,” in which Jemaine Clement is accused of all manner of shortcomings by a bevy of exes while he is left to wonder, “Who organised all of my ex-girlfriends into a chorus and got them to sing?”

Sample song  “Sugalumps”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozSSseCh3U

55.    SI*SÉ, Si*Sé (Luaka Bop Records, 2001)  The Brooklyn Latin/electronica group never sounded better than it did on its moody debut record—even the snappier, breezier tunes like “Steppin’ Out” and “Dolemite” have a doleful, trip-hop coloring—especially on the plangent “The Rain (Where Do I Begin),” a cover of a song by Oran “Juice” Jones, or on “Bizcocho Amargo” (Bitter Biscuit), another lament, this time with Spanish-style guitar; Carol C.’s cool (but far from remote) voice above the strings and electronics is perfectly suited to the laid-back yet edgy music.


Sample song  “Bizcocho Amargo”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdyG1O3XzaM&feature=related

56.    THE FALL, The Real New Fall LP (Narnack Records, 2004)  Even when the sound of this band, a veteran of the punk movement in the United Kingdom now well into its fourth decade, is at its most industrial and sludgy, as in “Green-Eyed” or “Mad Monk Goth,” it is troweled on with surprising lightness; Mark E. Smith’s “singing” is as tuneless as Bob Dylan’s but hardly artless—in fact, his curt delivery is inimitable, though quite a few have tried.



Sample song  “Contraflow”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXUO1x9hCkY

57.    ASOBI SEKSU, Citrus (Friendly Fire Recordings, 2006)  Neo-shoegazers Asobi Seksu muster ringing guitars to sound like U2 followers such as Cactus World News or Kitchens of Distinction but with the cotton-candy soprano of Yuki Chikudate floating above them; the catchiest tunes, such as “Thursday” and “Lions and Tigers,” summon a distinctive majesty through the massing of sound, which reaches an extreme in “Red Sea,” a song that sustains a gigantic, thunderous continental shelf of chord over three minutes; a nice change of pace is the blistering “Mizu Asobi,” like a sleigh-bells song with a rocket-powered Rudolph pulling along.

Sample song  “Thursday”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paDhfGQH4E

58.    ISSA BAGAYOGO, Mali Koura (Six Degrees Records, 2008)  The music of Malian singer/lutenist Issa Bagayogo is sufficiently dance oriented (and shaped with an eye to the international audience) to have earned him the moniker “techno Issa,” but Mali Koura explores other moods and modes as well:  “N’tana” has skewed rhythms and unconventional harmonics; “Dunu Kan” has a funky electric guitar part and electric organ/piano accompaniment and is, apart from the sung refrain, quite chatty; a couple of other songs have a lounge-like vibe.


Sample song  “Poye” (live performance, not the studio version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_AhbHZEr-0

59.    SIDESTEPPER, 3am (In Beats We Trust) (Palm Pictures, 2003)  Other bands like Si*Sé or Dark Latin Groove have attempted a similar synthesis of Latin/Caribbean rhythms and instruments with moody electronica, heavy on the production effects, but not with the consistent success of Colombian-based Richard Blair, Iván Benavides, and company:  “Deja” and “Más Papaya” from this record deserved an audience well beyond the dancefloors on which they were from time to time heard.


Sample song  “Deja”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns_HUjOWBo4&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXevboJeVnHe8X6VBNis98eX

60.    THE KNIFE, Silent Shout (Rabid Records/Mute Records, 2006)  Pitchfork Media’s top album of 2006, Silent Shout is full of odd sonorities, distorted vocals (primarily those of Karin Dreijer Andersson),and Swedish-style Goth horror/creepiness; paradoxically, the electropop underlying the spooky lyrics and foreboding voices is frequently bright and bouncy, the unrelenting use of minor mode notwithstanding.





Sample song  “Marble House”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhQ5TiBHVk

61.    THE DANDY WARHOLS, Welcome to the Monkey House (Capitol Records, 2003)  Lighthearted and perhaps a little lightweight, Welcome to the Monkey House is great fun for listening, as it adeptly refashions and shamelessly recycles riffs from the American and British New Wave into songs with surprising staying power:  “We Used to Be Friends,” “I Am a Scientist” (on which lead singer Courtney Taylor collaborates with David Bowie), “I Am Over It,” “You Were the Last High” (with ex-Lemonhead Evan Dando), and “I Am Sound” are infectious in a nostalgically groovy way and full of heart and stand up to repeated playing.

Sample song  “We Used to Be Friends”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm1g5Yg0hUw&feature=related

62.    GANG GANG DANCE, St. Dymphna (The Social Registry, 2008)  St. Dymphna is the patron saint of confusion and madness, according to the band, and Gang Gang Dance’s tape looping and dense layering of sounds influenced by Afrobeat and Cabaret Voltaire and anything in between them yields a blend that is free-form, repetitious, and trance-like under Liz Bougatsos’s (a.k.a. LZA) rather bratty voice; at its best, as at the climax of the track “First Communion,” the electronica snippets cohere into something powerfully swaying; at other times, the music comes across as spacy or is simply too diffuse to stir the viscera.


Sample song  “House Jam” (live performance, not the studio version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sam1Ybm-cRE

63.    TRIO MOCOTÓ, Beleza! Beleza!! Beleza!!! (Crammed Discs, 2004)  This trio, formed in 1968, was the backing band for Jorge Ben, the progenitor of the “samba-rock” genre, in 1969-70 before breaking up a few years later, only to reunite at the dawn of the new century, with a new guitarist/vocalist, Skowa, replacing Luiz Carlos Fritz; the old guys, though, João Parahyba and Nereu Gangalo, both percussionists and singers, have not lost a step on a disc that fuses the urban street rhythms of the samba (and the more urbane shuffling of the bossa nova) with trapped-in-amber 1970s Hammond organ funk; special treats are the rendition of the Jackson do Pandeiro classic “Chiclete com Banana” and the guest appearance of Lilian Vieira and Zuco 103 on the sensual “Onde Anda o Meu Amor.”

Sample song  “Chiclete com Banana” (live performance, not the studio version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suj2fw70xQc

64.    FEIST, Let It Die (Interscope Records/Universal Music, 2004)  The second solo effort from the Broken Social Scene vocalist (Leslie) Feist is, despite its grim title, gossamer light and sexy, with a refined pop sensibility (among the several covers is one of the BeeGees’ “Inside and Out”) that set the indie and NPR-listener crowd abuzz with excitement over finding a new soubrette; her own original compositions trade in styles from cool jazz to bouncy country-pop (befitting her Alberta upbringing) to bossa nova.




Sample song  “Mushaboom”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0qU5WSew

65.    KINKY, Reina (KIN KON Records/Nettwerk Records, 2006)  Monterrey electro-pop that is infectious and winning if slight, much of Reina synthesizes a Mexican-style New Wave, one that took two decades to wash south of the border (and many of the songs have English lyrics), but with touches of norteño and banda, particularly in the opening track “Sister Twisted,” with its accordion; “Uruapán Breaks,” a short instrumental featuring rapid-fire drumming and trombone runs, is a favorite of mine.




Sample song  “Sister Twisted”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzWPrn7HWrs

66.    THE FIERY FURNACES, I’m Going Away (Thrill Jockey Records, 2009)  With I’m Going Away, Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger turn from their customary compositional style, the musical equivalent of rapid-cut cinematography, in favor of more sustained melodies; the guiding concept appears to be the reworking of snatches of old folk ballads and commercial jingles, resulting in an antique feel and a faux nostalgia for an era none of us is old enough to remember; while tunes like ‘Charmaine Champagne” and “Take Me Round Again” are rollicking, the record allows space for poignancy, as in the auxiliary theme of the ballad “Lost at Sea.”

Sample song  “Even in the Rain”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVSstQ8_dHA&feature=fvsr

67.    BASEMENT JAXX, Kish Kash (XL Recordings/Astralwerks, 2003)  The electronica duo of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe never scored as big as with their third release, Kish Kash, with collaborators ranging from Siouxsie Sioux to Me’shell Ndegeocello, Dizzee Rascal, and J C Chasez (formerly of N-Sync), as well as lesser lights like Lisa Kekuala of the Bellrays and Totlyn Jackson; the punchiest and most energetic concoctions like “Cish Cash” (Siouxsie’s big number) and “Plug It In” (Chasez’s) are the most engaging, though sparer midtempo offerings such as the electro-neo-soul “Hot ’n Cold” and “Tonight,” with its Spanish guitar and Middle Eastern harmonic inflections, offer pleasures of a different stripe.

Sample song  “Cish Cash”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4UCFiXuGlo

68.    BOARDS OF CANADA, The Campfire Headphase (Warp Records, 2005)  Blurry, ethereal electronica, trippy soundscapes, psychedelic bending of sustained notes:  this Scottish duo is, at least at this stage, all about atmospheric effects and interesting harmonics rather than rhythm or melodic development; for a representative sampling, listen to “Chromakey Dreamcoat,” “Dayvan Cowboy,” “Sherbet Head,” and, most of all, “Hey Saturday Sun.”



Sample song  “Dayvan Cowboy”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lEsLcGB7Vo

69.    THOM YORKE, The Eraser (XL Recordings, 2006)  The lead singer of Radiohead’s first solo release sounds, not surprisingly, like Radiohead, circa the glum, introspective era that produced Amnesiac, particularly on “Black Swan”; the dark-cloud atmospherics may make listening tough on those prone to seasonal affective disorder, yet there are a couple of evocatively eerie mood setters, “And It Rained All Night” and “Harrowdown Hill,” the latter a reference to the place where the body of UN weapons inspector David Kelly was found after he gave evidence casting doubt on British intelligence regarding Iraqi weaponry.


Sample song  “Harrowdown Hill”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8ybWaIvmaM

70.    SIGUR RÓS, Takk . . . (Geffen Records, 2005)  Somewhat warmer and less craggy than Ágætis Byrjun, Takk . . . nonetheless retains the stately pacing, the shifts in dynamics, the elfin, high-pitched vocals (in Icelandic and in a nonsense tongue called Vonlenska), and the earthy imagery of its predecessors, with titles that translate as “Hopping Puddles,” “I Have a Nosebleed,” “The Haystack,” “Glowing Sole,” and “I See a Train.”






Sample song  “Glósóli”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr_MJAOyOeU

71.    OVER THE RHINE, Ohio (Back Porch Records, 2003)  This is an unusual choice for me:  Over the Rhine, named for the Cincinnati neighborhood where the band members have settled, is a Christian-inflected (though more philosophical than explicitly religious) country-folk duo; its double-record paean to its home state is a powerful statement of spiritual and economic struggle emanating from Ohio’s hardscrabble Appalachia region—the album’s thematic unity and integrity are such that, at the end of the journey, in “Idea #21 (Not Too Late),” the addition of a black gospel chorus seems earned rather than gratuitous.


Sample song  “Idea #21 (Not Too Late)”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvO1d3RBSiY

72.    BIRDSONGS OF THE MESOZOIC, Petrophonics (Cuneiform Records, 2000)  The Boston quasi-classical instrumental band’s sixth recording suffers from imbalance, in that the title track (written by guitarist Michael Bierylo) is breathtaking, building to a gripping climax of relentlessly hammering syncopations, and nothing that follows (while pleasant enough listening) comes remotely close to that visceral thrill.




Sample song  “One Hundred Cycles”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVxQ8h5jEjg&playnext=1&list=PL0F0C122062DCE3B7&index=14

73.    GALACTIC, Ruckus (Sanctuary Records, 2003)  Melding New Orleans Crescent City funk with electronica and influences from hip-hop and jazz, Galactic’s fourth studio album, adroitly ranging across a spectrum of styles and (mostly laid-back) moods, manages to be both soulful and spacy, showcasing what sounds like a roadhouse bar band with global ambitions.






Sample song  “Bongo Joe”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91jMA9GZeqA&feature=related

74.    STEREOLAB, Sound-Dust (Elektra Entertainment Group, 2001)  By this stage of its career, Stereolab’s conceptual brilliance was starting to give way to tinkering, but this languid recording still has a sophisticated sonic cool and can surprise by veering off in unexpected directions; tragically, it was also the last album to feature the dual vocals of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen because Hansen later died in a cycling accident.





Sample song  “Les Bons Bons des Raisons”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txSF4S90HrU&NR=1


75.    BORIS, Pink (Southern Lord Records, 2006)  One of the prime purveyors of noise rock, Japan’s Boris tones it down some on Pink; the slower songs like “Blackout” and “Afterburner” have a brutal majesty amid the bombastic reverb and drone, while the band rips through the faster numbers with blitzkrieg efficiency, but the record never descends into sonic bludgeoning for the sake of aural masochism—there is always a compositional intelligence at work.




Sample song  “Blackout”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGnQQH3H9Fs&feature=related

76.    AIR, Talkie Walkie (Source/Virgin Music/EMI, 2004)  Of all the French duo’s synthesized, Air-y confections, I like this one best:  “Cherry Blossom Girl” and “Surfing on a Rocket” (check out the absurdly phallic video), with their bubbly, androgynous vocals, became bona fide hits; yes, the English lyrics are trite and stupefying, but Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel are skilled pop composers whose thematic progressions create the illusion of inevitability (“that melody was there all along, waiting to be discovered”).



Sample song  “Surfing on a Rocket”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siJlPtWkmzw

77.    ANTIBALAS AFROBEAT ORCHESTRA, Security (Anti/Epitaph, 2007)  At its best, as in the opening “Beaten Metal” and in “I.C.E.,” the music of Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra has a craggy majesty, its dusky horns and saxes sharply outlined against the rhythm section, synths, and guitar; at its worst, it becomes structurally flaccid and overstays its welcome, as on the thirteen-minute “Sanctuary”—Antibalas waves its leftist, anti-racist credentials with little subtlety but with occasional humor as well.



Sample song  “Beaten Metal”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-azpduB34WI

78.    TORTOISE, Standards (Thrill Jockey Records, 2001)  The Chicago “postrock” ensemble makes instrumental music that is always intelligent, if somewhat abstract and less than emotionally engaging; "Seneca" employs plenty of guitar distortion and fuzz, while "Monica" goes for a cleaner, brighter synthesizer sound, and "Benway" interrupts its initial eerie theme with electronic blips leading to an unexpectedly sunny vibraphone melody.




 Sample song  “Monica”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0QH4K7JXpI&NR=1

79.    MATÍAS AGUAYO, Ay Ay Ay (Kompakt Schallplatten, 2009)  Aguayo, a Chilean-born disc jockey who has worked in Germany and Argentina, has created a light, fizzy electronica with songlike qualities despite the lack of verse, chorus, or bridge, while his rhythmic impulses owe much to the African music he was exposed to in his club days in Europe.




 Sample song  “Rollerskate”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ziexgDAHYg

80.    BEBEL GILBERTO, Tanto Tempo (Ziriguiboom/Six Degrees Records, 2000)  Of the four records Bebel Gilberto has put out with Zirguiboom and then Verve, I favor the first by a slight margin—they all deliver the same gentle, warmly soothing, languid bossa nova interpretations with a heaping serving of nostalgia for a genre whose creative peak happened almost a half-century ago.





Sample song  “So Nice (Summer Samba)”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpcg5Pg4zHY

81.    GOMEZ, Split the Difference (Virgin Records, 2004)  The follow-up to In Our Gun eases up on the emotional restraint and goes for a somewhat warmer and more poignant approach, still with the band’s characteristic mellowness even in the more driving numbers (such as “We Don’t Know Where We’re Going”) but also with some richly sophisticated arrangements.





Sample song  “Catch Me Up”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCLw3zwr4VI&feature=fvsr

82.    MANU CHAO, Próxima Estación . . . Esperanza (Virgin Records, 2001)  Manu Chao’s strength is as a musical magpie, more like a DJ than a songwriter per se; the pan-Caribbean Próxima Estación . . . Esperanza is fascinating in its multilingual/multiculturalism and its samplings from radio ads and various other sources, but he also does quite a lot of recycling on this disc, making it more lightweight than it might have needed to be.




Sample song  “Infinita Tristeza”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwNkLSvbKA

83.    METRIC, Fantasies (Metric Music International, 2009)  Consistently enjoyable if less than spectacular, Metric moves toward arena rock with big numbers like “Gold Guns Girls,” “Gimme Sympathy,” and “Stadium Love,” though there are still a few more personal, confessional songs like “Help I’m Alive” that keep its indie-cred current.





Sample song  “Gimme Sympathy”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq3-wZs64n4&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

84.    NATALIA LAFOURCADE, Hu Hu Hu (Sony Music Entertainment Mexico, 2009)  The young Mexican chanteuse ditched her backing band and started taking English lessons in Ottawa; Hu Hu Hu is a far quieter, more intimate affair than the rocking Casa, yet it shows Lafourcade’s songwriting strengths to great advantage.






Sample song  “No Viniste”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkxYUinnTgM&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

85.    HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR, Hercules and Love Affair (DFA Records/Mute Records, 2008)  Notwithstanding the debut record’s homage to glam disco, some of the simpler songs are best, from the film noir touches of “True False/Fake Real” to the dark sensuousness of Antony Hegarty’s androgynous vocal that makes “Easy” affecting.






Sample song  “Blind”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpX4fJsiS1U&feature=fvw

86.    GRINDERMAN, Grinderman (Mute Records/Anti, 2007)  Nick Cave’s side project is leavened throughout with his unique sense of humor, starting from the spoken intro to the first song, “Get It On”; grungy and raw, yet with a veneer of refinement in spots where one would least expect it, Grinderman abounds with titles that stick in the memory like “Electric Alice,” “No Pussy Blues,” and “Depth Charge Ethel.”





Sample song  “No Pussy Blues”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL3dNfxcpnw

87.    RADIOHEAD, In Rainbows (TBD Records, 2008)  With its seventh release, Radiohead took a step back toward the interiority of Kid A and Amnesiac; the songs are of similar (dark) hue, self-castigating, plaintive, and neuralgic, yet at its best moments (such as the closing of “Nude”) achieving an ethereal sublimity that few rock bands today can even aspire to.




Sample song  “Nude” (‘Scotch Mist’ version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZT_nrrpe8c

88.    ALI FARKA TOURÉ, Savane (World Circuit/Nonesuch Records, 2006)  Touré, referred to in the West as the “king of the desert blues,” was fading from cancer as this album was being recorded; Savane is highly traditional in its song forms, borrowed from several ethnic groups native to northern Mali, yet with Western-produced embellishments that occasionally distract (too much harmonica or sax); all the same, this is an authentically felt and affecting tribute to the master’s homeland.




Sample song  “Savane”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcmdiS1ahlQ

89.    THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, Twin Cinema (Matador Records, 2005)  Perhaps the most appealing thing about this straight-ahead indie rock recording is the voice of Neko Case, featured on “Bones of an Idol,” “Three or Four,” and “These Are the Fables”; the songwriting generally is deft and stylistically versatile, if a little too slick.






Sample song  “Use It”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpvqU2cmK8I

90.    SQUAREPUSHER, Just a Souvenir (Warp Records, 2008)  The best part of this mostly wordless and multifaceted electronica album is the three-song neo-prog-rock sequence, “Planet Gear,” “Tensor in Green,” and “The Glass Road”; another impressive homage to 1970s-style acid jamming is “Delta-V,” brute force expertly channeled by guitar and drums.





Sample song  “Delta-V”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_QCU6S7du0

91.    ROBYN HITCHCOCK & THE VENUS 3, Goodnight Oslo (Yep Roc Records, 2009)  The song “Saturday Groovers” is a cheery, casual throwback to some of Hitchcock’s more whimsically hip ditties from the 1980s; so are several other tracks, from the slinky “What You Is” that opens the record to the neo-psychedelic travelogue of a title track that concludes it; the eccentric singer/songwriter never fails to entertain, even when creatively recycling old material.




Sample song  “I’m Falling”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91CkPS8yIjM&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

92.    REGINA SPEKTOR, Far (Sire Records, 2009)  In the process of becoming a more sophisticated pop composer, Regina Spektor also ironed out some of the quirks that made her early records most interesting; the trade-off was more acceptable on Begin to Hope than for the more uneven material of Far, but the latter still has its high points, including the swingy “Dance Anthem of the 80’s” and the quasi-operatic, sci-fi “Machine.”



Sample song  “Dance Anthem of the 80’s”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-okd1I1V3q8&feature=channel

93.    ESPERS, III (Drag City, 2009)  The unimaginatively named third original release from the Philadelphia-based neo-folk group is exquisitely understated, marred only slightly by Meg Baird’s thick-textured, breathy voice; there are numerous sublime moments in the course of the record, but “Another Moon Song,” with its mood of nocturnal mystery limned by synthesizer overtones, is a particularly lovely melody worth repeated listenings.



Sample song  “Another Moon Song”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKAwU5xtz8M

94.    HOT CHIP, Made in the Dark (EMI/Astralwerks, 2008)  Too glib for some tastes, Hot Chip is nonetheless one of the U.K.’s premier dance/electronica outfits and demonstrates it here on rump-shakers like “Ready for the Floor,” “One Pure Thought,” “Touch Too Much,” and the funky-robotic “Bendable, Poseable”; there is humor as well in the love-as-WWE-spectacle ballad “Wrestlers” and in the Gumby-like elasticity of “Shake a Fist.”



Sample song  “Ready for the Floor”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PCSiPuDx8w

95.    TV ON THE RADIO, Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope Records/Universal Music, 2006)  My frustration with TV on the Radio is that “I Was a Lover,” the bizarrely inventive first track off this album—with its reiterating woozy horn chart sample, playing off bass and sitar loops and drums—shows just what greatness the band is capable of, yet, of the other songs on Return to Cookie Mountain, only “Dirtywhirl,” a waltzing, cyclic tribute to the Hindu goddess Durga, comes close.




Sample song  “Province”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xigAXL5e5Kw&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

96.    ÉTIENNE JAUMET, Night Music (Versatile Records/Domino Records, 2009)  Electronica for eggheads, making use of Detroit techno specialist Carl Craig for the mixing, this music at times puts me in mind of Kraftwerk, at other times, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic or the Midnight Express theme from 1978; the opening track, “For Falling Asleep,” is like brain waves that diminish gradually in intensity and frequency over the long course of twenty minutes.




Sample song  “Entropy”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfGmoXU2heg

97.    PLASTILINA MOSH, All U Need Is Mosh (Nacional Records, 2008)  This disc from Mexico’s Plastilina Mosh produced one of the funniest songs of the year, “My Party,” in which Milton Pacheco, over a light marimba rhythm section, raps, shamelessly name-dropping celebrities who supposedly want to be part of his scene; All U Need Is Mosh bristles with new wave energy and clever lyrics, sung mostly in English.




Sample song  “Pervert Pop Song”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN0u3mzAwj8&feature=channel

98.    GRIZZLY BEAR, Yellow House (Warp Records, 2006)  Low-fi with a folky vibe, unassuming to a fault, Yellow House is a record whose quiet embellishments and tensile compositional strength grow on the listener over time, culminating in the stark piano chords and mournful chorus of the suitably spacious and atmospheric “Colorado.”






Sample song  “Knife”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJpC9JqSnJk

99.    NISENNENMONDAI, Destination Tokyo (Bijin Records/Smalltown Supersound, 2009)  To appreciate this all-female Japanese trio requires a high tolerance for minimalist repetitiveness since the songs—particularly the droning, doomy opener, “Souzouburu Neji,” with its squeaky, grating, violinlike guitar line—take a single groove and draw it out ad infinitum with only modest pattern variations, but the band’s singularity of purpose drives jamming compositions that are hypnotically visionary.




Sample song  “Disco”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7kNr5P64TA

100.    DUNGEN, 4 (Subliminal Sounds/Kemado Records, 2008)  Retro-groovy and psychedelic, with lyrics (for those songs that have words) exclusively in Swedish, 4 at its weakest sounds like Lite FM but reaches a pinnacle of shimmering poignancy in the string arrangements of “Sätt att Se” (Ways to See), while “Mina Damer och Fasaner” (My Ladies and Pheasants) sports an intriguing, Arabic-sounding modal guitar accompaniment to its meandering flute melody, and, among the instrumentals, “Fredag” (Friday) is tightly composed with terrific ensemble work and “Samtidigt 1” is all about “Guitar Hero”-style riffing and wailing.

Sample song  “Sätt att Se”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXF_-jXyto8

101.    FLAMING FIRE, When the High Bell Rings (Silly Bird Records, 2007)  This record, uneven though it may be, is a real hoot, in particular its tour de force, “Lemon Isis,” a religion-skewering layering of the transgressive Serge Gainsbourg/Charlotte Gainsbourg song “Lemon Incest” from the 1980s with the Egyptian legend of Osiris and Isis; the album also contains a peculiarly vindictive-sounding cover of “Astral Traveller” by Yes.





Sample song  “Farmer Wolf” (live performance, not the studio version):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg3sTSiHXHY