Brendan Benson, Lapalco (2002)
A wall-to-wall outstanding slice of pop rock. There's pretty much nothing I don't enjoy about this album - the melodies are fabulous, and Benson seems to inject a lot of himself into the record. The keyboards are particularly well-used, with a driving piano on the opening track, "Tiny Spark," and the fuzzy keys on the closer, "Jetlag." Why isn't this higher? I think it's full of grade-A tracks, but so are all the albums at this point, and only a couple tracks nudge past the rest to me. To use a baseball metaphor, every track is a double with two or three triples. But to get into the top ten, you need more homers. Nevertheless, I would recommend this album highly to any indie pop/rock fan.
#19
Spoon, Gimme Fiction (2005)
An awesome, moody rock album with gritty guitars and often mysterious lyrics. I don't think it would have been out of place in the early 70s scene. Britt Daniel's voice is just strained enough to sell the darkness in each track. My personal favorite from the album is "They Never Got You," but "I Turn My Camera On" is the track most people will have heard, and with good reason.
#18
Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
Bizarrely, I didn't really discover this album until just this year even though it pretty much dragged Wilco into the mainstream. I've got no real excuse except that until 2006 or so I was regularly behind the curve on music like this and I guess it took some time to work my way backwards. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" alone makes the album; it's an absolutely monster opener, and not in the anthemic sense, but just in the way it builds and builds, and somehow manages to make what at first seems like a droning opening into a perfect coalescence of instruments just before Jeff Tweedy starts singing. "Jesus, Etc." and "Poor Places" also stand out to me, but the album is stunningly consistent. iTunes lists Wilco as country, but just listen to the record - they can't be pigeonholed that easily (and under no circumstance would I call them country, anyway). I have a real appreciation for a band that can pull out several different sounds on one album and have the whole thing hang together - see also Sgt. Pepper's and Physical Graffiti in particular. And yes, I just compared this album to those. Had I found it sooner, it might have had time to move higher than #18...
#17
Jack's Mannequin, Everything in Transit (2005)
Andrew McMahon is almost exactly my age (five days younger), which might have something to do with my affinity for his work. I haven't had many life experiences like the ones he relates on Everything in Transit, but his two albums as Jack's Mannequin have both been extremely personal, and that sense of twentysomething anguish can still really resonate when you're the same age. Plus, the guy just writes great melodies. How many bands could take a song about a mixtape good enough to "burn a hole in anyone" and make it anything other than completely ridiculous? It's a goofy premise, yet "The Mixed Tape" has me going every time. "Into the Airwaves," the album's closer, is brilliant. There are a few self-indulgent moments on the record, in particular the spoken-word portion on "I'm Ready," but overall it's a great collection of music and lyrics that really bring home a moment in time.
#16
The Killers, Hot Fuss (2004)
I probably like the Killers' last two albums more than most people who aren't 16 years old, but the one that everyone liked is still the best overall. I admit I think the second half is a little weaker, but you can't deny that first half - five straight techno-pop grand slams. "Change Your Mind" is a grand slam too and "On Top" another home run, but the remaining four songs are not nearly as strong, a main reason why this didn't crack the top ten. "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" and "Mr. Brightside" back to back, though, are about as good a one-two punch as any band ever opened their career with.
#15
A.C. Newman, The Slow Wonder (2004)
For anyone who was wondering just who was most responsible for the success of the New Pornographers, Carl Newman's first solo album answered the question and then some. Brilliant front to back, the album hits epic indie rock highs with "On the Table," "Secretarial" and "The Town Halo." After this album came out I concluded that Newman simply could do no wrong; his next solo album, 2009's Get Guilty, unfortunately couldn't live up to that kind of expectation (which is why it's not on this list, though it's still a good album). Fortunately, later New Pornographers work still could.
#14
The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (2007)
Following up a masterwork (spoiler!) is always difficult, and it took the Shins more than three full years to put out a sequel to 2003's Chutes Too Narrow. In spite of a sound that might have seemed dangerously broadened on first listen, Wincing very nearly matched its predecessor with a rollicking opening and track after track of winning melodies, whether disarmingly sunny ("Phantom Limb," "Turn On Me"), more obviously dark ("Sea Legs"), or just curious ("Red Rabbits"). It's hard to live up to perfection, which might explain why it's now been very nearly three years since Wincing's release and we're once again stuck waiting for the next album.
#13
The New Pornographers, Electric Version (2003)
The title is absolutely accurate, because the driving force behind this album is track after track of ringing melodies pounding out of electric guitars. There's nothing close to an acoustic number, or anything like that. The similarity of the overall sound really helps blend Dan Bejar's songs into the whole, perhaps more so than on any other NPs record, too. Oddly, even though you could argue that the sound is almost too consistent, that never becomes a problem for me. The different arrangements spread out just enough to keep massively entertaining tracks like "From Blown Speakers," "It's Only Divine Right," "Miss Teen Wordpower," "The Laws Have Changed," "All For Swinging You Around" and "Ballad of a Comeback Kid" from really sounding anything alike, in spite of the consistent aesthetic (which no other NPs record matches).
#12
Sufjan Stevens, The Avalanche (2006)
It's really saying something when you can release a collection of "outtakes and extras" and market that as a whole new album when you've only got four albums to your credit (and really only one or two that most people have heard of). It's saying even more when that album is nearly as good as the one that spun it off. The unified tone that makes Michigan and Illinois so brilliant (spoiler!) is missing on The Avalanche, but it's about the only thing lacking amid delicate folk-pop tunes like "Pittsfield," slightly more rock-leaning songs like the title track, "Springfield" and "No Man's Land," and Stevens' typical instrumental collages like "Kaskaskia River" and "For Clyde Tombaugh." In spite of the less cohesive progression from start to finish, and not one but three alternate versions of "Chicago," The Avalanche proved both that Illinois could easily have been a double album and that Stevens' leavings were just about as good as anyone else's best work.
#11
Ben Folds, Rockin' the Suburbs (2001)
We might all have been better off had the Five not broken up - their first two albums are likely both in my 90s top ten - but with solo albums like this, who was complaining? If anything, Folds' piano was cut even further loose. Just watch him go on tracks like "Zak and Sara" and "The Ascent of Stan," to say nothing of the solo on "Fired," one of my favorite solos on any instrument in any song in history. What's more, we basically got a whole album full of vintage Folds character sketches, in particular "Fred Jones Part 2," one of his most moving songs. "Still Fighting It" is also brilliant and "The Luckiest," while perhaps a little sappy, became a go-to wedding song for a reason. Folds' ability to create genuine emotion in even small sketches has always been nearly unparalleled - look at "Eddie Walker," which sounds half-finished and is still somehow perfect - but here he almost outdoes himself. In this world, the title song is actually kind of out of place, but it's still incredibly fun and perhaps a needed break from the heaviness of songs like "Carrying Cathy." (Whatever and Ever Amen followed "Brick" with "Song for the Dumped," after all.)
Coming before the end of the year: the top ten!
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