——

25) Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls (In the Red)

This album is like an old beloved stuffed animal. It’s soft, warm, and comforting, but a little tattered in a charming way. While this album sounds very similar to Tiger Trap or the Shop Assistants, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome as quickly a some of those bands for me. There’s only so much warm, bubbly innocence that I can take, but done right it also leaves me wanting to come back to it more & more often which this album does.

——

24) Black Mountain – In The Future (Jagjaguwar)

So many bands are doing stoner & doom metal these days, but only taking their sound influence as far back as the Melvins, Kyuss, and Sleep/High on Fire. It’s refreshing that Black Mountain really takes things back to the Zeppelin and Deep Purple roots of the sound. The air hangs thick with smoke, with each song as a mini riff-filled epic of the kind of future you’d expect might come out of 70′s stoners.

——

23) Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak (Roc-A-Fella)

I really wanted to hate this album. I can’t stand that every hip hop and R&B release uses auto-tuner, the early single leaks left me less than inspired, and, well, Kanye West’s general public persona leaves much to be desired, too. Despite everything I would have thought this album had going against it, it just really seems to work well. I can’t explain how or why, it just does. It’s catchy, and it sets a mood and runs with it. For the first time in a while, this is a hip hop album that truly feels like an album, and not just a few singles sandwiching filler tracks. It’s surprising how simple the production is (being that it’s Kanye West and all); it’s very strong, but so stripped and bare. I’m assuming that ever since working with Daft Punk and Justice, Kanye’s discovered the vast world of minimal synth-based pop. After hearing this album, I now wonder if the cover is an intentional homage to New Order’s Power Corruption & Lies. The unfamiliarity and enthusiasm in discovering and working with something new really shows in his production, in a way that only a truly talented producer could make work. I know this is a serious departure for a Kanye album, and a stretch for the typical hip hop fan, since it’s mainly electropop in the vein of something you might hear from an 80′s Phil Collins album (and in this context the auto-tuner works for me). But that’s exactly what I’m looking for out of hip hop these days… something different & exciting. Seriously, color me impressed for what I’m sure is a very polarizing and possibly influential album.

——

22) No Age – Nouns (Sub Pop)

I couldn’t help but think of Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West when I first heard this album. Outside of the typical trappings of an indie rock band, No Age really sound nothing at all like Modest Mouse. They do, however, tap into the same feeling that those early Modest Mouse releases would incite within you. There’s this innate intricacy within the album’s off-kilter simplicity that seamlessly marries the northwestern indie rock sound of the 90′s with the shoegazer sound of the 80s.

——

21) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazurus, Dig!!! (Mute)

Nick Cave’s earlier albums The Boatman’s Call and No More Shall We Part really put me off from someone who is one of my favorite artists of all time. I applaud his attempts to expand his musical repertoire, but I couldn’t stand the soft piano balladry he seemed infatuated with at the time. The Nick Cave I fell in love with was a dirty low-life, whose beautiful and poignant lyrics were set to music slick with a layer of filth. And while Nocturama and Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus saw Nick Cave slowly creeping back to his old form, it’s Dig, Lazurus, Dig!!! that is the Nick Cave album I’ve been waiting for since Murder Ballads. This is a return to form for one of my idols, a man who makes being a degenerate into a romantic ideal.

We’re halfway done! Come back tomorrow for albums 20-16!

• For albums 30-26 on the list click here!

• For albums 35-31 on the list click here!

• For albums 40-36 on the list click here!

- My Pal the Crook