The Top 10 Albums of the 21st Century (so far)

The all-mighty KEXP is asking its listeners to select their favorite albums of the 21st century, with the results being broadcast during the nonprofit station's Fall Donor Drive starting September 13. (You have until September 4 if you'd like to submit your own ballot.)

This countdown seemed like a perfect excuse to start thinking about my own picks for the new century. You may recall that I put together a list of the top albums of the first decade -- the "Aughts" or whatever it was we decided to call it -- and occasionally I'll mentally rearrange that list and add new worthy albums to the hopper as each year passed. But KEXP's pledge drive inspired me to put them down in some sort of concrete form.

It also inspired me to do some serious listening. There were about 15 albums I considered for my final 10, and the last two weeks have been devoted to me popping them in, an album at a time, and focusing from start to finish. This was incredibly valuable, revealing how a record's strength can sometimes grow significantly by hearing its songs in order. This should be obvious, but it was good to be reminded of such a simple truism. Even in our digital, single-driven era, sequencing matters.

As is probably obvious, I spent more time thinking about my KEXP ballot than probably any other contributor did, including maybe even some of the station's DJs. As a longtime list obsessive, I believe that putting one of these things together should be undertaken with the utmost seriousness. Of course there's pleasure involved -- you're judging different degrees of artistic excellence -- but if it's actually possible that something this subjective can be done "correctly," I'm hellbent on achieving it.

So, of course, I also went to the trouble of ranking them. And explaining why each album appears where it does. You'd think I actually had the free time to waste on such enjoyable ephemera. 

10. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)

Erykah Badu's first album in five years came about after suffering from writer's block and finding a new way of expressing herself by screwing around making music on the computer. New Amerykah Part One extends the hypnotic black-hole introspection of D'Angelo's Voodoo and points the way toward Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak (which came out nine months after New Amerykah Part One) and later gems like the Weeknd's House of Balloons. Bedroom funk that wrestles with issues both personal and political, New Amerykah Part One can't help but feel a touch self-absorbed, but the intensity of Badu's feelings extend out to the rest of us, touching on death ("Telephone"), self-empowerment ("Me") and sex ("Honey"). 

9. Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (2006)

The Neptunes' best production work, even better than In Search of..., comes on this dense, hard, not particularly listener-friendly effort by Clipse, the Virginian duo who were angry about their label issues and wanted everyone to know how much better they were at the crack game than your favorite gangster rapper was. Unsentimental and sonically inventive, Hell Hath No Fury is hardly the first hip-hop album obsessed with money, crime and loose women. But what's endlessly startling is how little Pusha T and Malice's rhymes benefit from shock value. The violent "Chinese New Year" and the jet-setting "Mr. Me Too" are equally matter-of-fact in their steeliness, Clipse going about their ill-gotten business as if it's just another day.  

8. Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000)

Yo La Tengo's most beloved albums tend to be the ones where the trio stretch out in all directions, as on I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. But I've preferred this more monochromatic follow-up for more than 10 years now, which I suppose means it's a permanent condition. With Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon having called it quits, Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan are our greatest indie-rock marriage, their albums a fascinating and comforting back-and-forth between the two musicians about the minute ups and downs of a relationship that sure sounds like it's built to last -- but only if they continue to do the work that all great relationships require. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out is one of the band's quieter, gentler efforts, but you'd be hard-pressed to name an album with so many ballads that are so suffused with anxiety. But there's guarded optimism in these songs, too -- the same sort you see at the end of Before Midnight, when everything seems terrible between Celine and Jesse and yet you're sure they're going to find a way to figure it out.

7. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange (2012)

First catching my attention with his supremely soulful, moving and searching "We All Try" from his Nostalgia, Ultra mixtape, Frank Ocean went on to release this official debut, which the whole world loved, including me. Navigating a musical terrain where R&B and pop are essentially the same thing, just more intriguing and more personal, Channel Orange got a lot of press at the time because of Ocean's admission that his first meaningful romantic relationship was with a man, which no doubt inspired some to scan the album for clues. (They needed to look no further than the wrenching gospel confessional "Bad Religion.") But my hunch is that, as time goes by, we'll forget that media frenzy and simply appreciate the fluid musicianship of the record, which calls to mind Prince and Stevie Wonder while displaying a sharp eye for lyrical portraits, such as the spoiled L.A. of "Super Rich Kids" and the sympathetic tale of a drugged-out loser on "Crack Rock."

6. Bob Dylan, Love and Theft (2001)

Forever linked to 9/11, the day the album hit stores, Love and Theft seemed to echo the dark, uncertain months that followed the deadly terror attacks. But from today's vantage point, it's also clear that the album was Dylan at his most lighthearted and devil-may-care, staring down bad women, war and metaphorical floods with a shit-eating grin and a debonair strut. Bono once called Love and Theft a comedy album, and he meant it as a compliment. I do, too: The juxtaposition of bad puns, good puns and clever turns of phrase matches the easy sweep of the album's transition from rockabilly to swing to Bing Crosby-style balladry. That he made such a life-affirming album as he was approaching 60 is both humbling and inspiring.

5. Kanye West, The College Dropout (2004)

The 21st century's greatest musical artist quite possibly made his best album first time out. But the richness of The College Dropout, especially thematically, is such that it's provided the road map for the rest of his career. His love/hate relationship with materialism ("All Falls Down"), his struggle with the divine ("Jesus Walks"), his troubling attitude toward women ("The New Workout Plan"), his constant reminders to the world that we haven't given him his rightful props ("Last Call"), his tenderness toward his family ("Family Business") and his anger toward White America ("Spaceship") have powered powerful, glitzier subsequent records -- all of them with their distinct selling points. But The College Dropout tops them because of the one quality none of the others possesses: a winning, natural charm that the young up-and-comer utilized as deftly as his beats and samples.

4. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs (2010)

It seems that Arcade Fire fans prefer the band's first record, Funeral, which has always felt too self-consciously "arty" and "epic" to work fully on me. By my count, this group has only gotten better with each album, crystallizing Bush-era angst superbly on Neon Bible and then delivering a mature self-portrait on this third disc. It is very easy for acclaimed, commercially successful indie acts to write songs about those damn hipsters and how weird it is getting old. But The Suburbs is something different: a genuinely stately and personal approach to overdone topics like fame and age that's matched by music that rarely reaches for the epic but is far too supple and deeply felt to be described as navel-gazing. 

3. Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006)

This album's first two tracks, "Margaret vs. Pauline" and "Star Witness," are so perfect -- fraught with feeling, dense with inscrutable detail -- that one can be forgiven for overlooking the array of treasures that stretch on afterward. But with Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, the onetime punk and New Pornographers vocalist lives up to her promise by adopting an Old Weird America persona that's attuned to gospel, country and rock in equal measure. She's always had that unbelievable voice, but with Fox Confessor she found a language to express her enigmatic longing that's always enchanting without ever being concrete. You keep listening in the hopes of unraveling the song's mysteries that, happily, are never, ever revealed.

2. The Roots, How I Got Over (2010)

Has any band benefited more from selling out? When the Roots decided to accept Jimmy Fallon's offer to be the house band for his late-night show, they secured for themselves one of the most stable paying jobs in all of popular music, especially for acts of their age and profile. And all the Roots have done during that time is produce some of the finest work of their career. The anxiety of balancing that day job is all over How I Got Over, sometimes explicitly in the lyrics but also subtly in the let's-get-down-to-business vibe of the no-nonsense arrangements. Reaching out to indie rock but focusing on the urban fears that fame hasn't completely erased, How I Got Over is astoundingly eloquent in wondering how life's choices open some doors while closing others.

1. The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

What would the world think of James Mercer if Garden State had never happened? That 2004 film with its earnest indie-rock soundtrack cemented him and his band the Shins as the champions of a particular era's sensitive-feelings musical sweepstakes. Consequently, Garden State also made anything the Shins did afterward anticlimactic: Their glowing pop craftsmanship had reached its peak, and it was destined to be all downhill from there. Which is my way of saying that while Chutes Too Narrow may seem like little more than a time-capsule item, it remains stunningly fresh. A wimp he may be, but Mercer enters the pantheon of indie songwriters on this 10-track, 34-minute beauty, in which the songs are predominantly gentle while masking their darker feelings about modern life ("So Says I") and irretrievable happy memories ("Pink Bullets"). Only rarely since has Mercer produced songs of such emotion and effortless precision. That's fine: For one exquisite album, he went 10-for-10. 

My Top 20 Albums of the Last 40 Years

My beloved KEXP is celebrating its 40th anniversary by asking its listeners to pick their Top 20 albums of the last 40 years. In other words, what do people think are the best albums of the post-Beatles/Kind of Blue era? For the fun of it, I decided to vote and, like with my Sight & Sound ballot, I opted for quick, intuitive picks rather than laboring over my selections. In both cases, I feel like I got to something purer -- and, hopefully, more honest -- than if I had allowed second thoughts to cloud my process. KEXP didn't ask for these to be ranked, so I won't bother doing that here. Instead, they'll be listed alphabetically by album title, with a few stray observations where appropriate...

Appetite for Destruction, Guns N' Roses
Nothing any of these people have done since came close. 

Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
Confirmation that I'm a sap at heart, Blood on the Tracks cuts me deeper than Dylan's '60s masterpieces. Opens with "Tangled Up in Blue," possibly his greatest song. Concludes with "Buckets of Rain," also possibly his greatest song. Such a magnificent album even the so-so "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" can't derail it.

Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen
I've been told that if I was from another generation, I'd understand that Born to Run is really Springsteen's best record. Maybe, maybe not.

Call Me, Al Green
Never-ending beauty.

Chutes Too Narrow, The Shins
More thoughts on this album here.

The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
I'm the furthest thing from a stoner or a concept-album fanatic. And yet I love this record.

Endtroducing..., DJ Shadow
For the record, he's made good albums after this one.

For the Roses, Joni Mitchell
Not a popular choice among Mitchell fans, who would probably cite Blue or Court and Spark. I prefer the challenging arrangements and thoughtful anxiety of For the Roses, which she put out in between the other two.

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Sinead O'Connor
Lord, do I worry for the sanity of this talented woman.

Illmatic, Nas
I slept on Illmatic when it came out. I'm making up for it by playing the hell out of this album throughout my adult life.

In Utero, Nirvana
Why, yes, I am one of those guys who thinks this is the better Nirvana record. Just as catchy as Nevermind but even angrier and confused. Probably the greatest dealing-with-fame album ever.

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy
Friends have made convincing arguments about why Fear of a Black Planet is PE's true masterpiece. For now, I'm sticking with this one.

Marquee Moon, Television
I always swear I'm going to just listen to "See No Evil." And then I listen to the whole thing.

Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, Sex Pistols
The Clash have the greater legacy, but none of their albums is top-to-bottom as corrosive as Bullocks.

OK Computer, Radiohead
Remember when people claimed this was the '90s' answer to The Dark Side of the Moon? Wow, were they dumb.

Pretzel Logic, Steely Dan
My favorite band who don't have one indisputably perfect album. There's a Steely Dan record for every mood, but I went with Pretzel Logic because, when push came to shove, it's the one that called to me the most.

Ramones, Ramones
My biggest surprise in the Top 20, mostly because I don't listen to it all that much. But, c'mon, how can you argue with its bam-bam-bam-bam brilliance?

Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young
In retrospect, should I have gone with After the Gold Rush? You know, maybe I should have. (Update: Ah, yes, After the Gold Rush came out in 1970, so it doesn't count.)

Sail Away, Randy Newman
12 Songs and Good Old Boys have their champions. Sail Away has less filler.

69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields
One day, I will get my wife to understand what a wonderful album this is.

The Shins - "Simple Song"

When you write about music, you have to be a realist. Bands break up and get back together all the time, and quite often it has to do with money. No one should be surprised by that: To paraphrase someone I once interviewed, you have to remember that "music" isn't the most important word in the phrase "music business." Still, I found myself deeply annoyed when it came out that Shins main man James Mercer was firing his bandmates a few years ago. There's something undeniably communal about the Shins' music, which rides high on its vulnerable, delicate humanism. Well, I thought so, anyway. But Mercer claims the lineup change was an "aesthetic decision" -- "I started to have production ideas that I wanted to do that basically required some other people," he said in 2009 -- although to me it feels like divorcing the wife who stuck with you during the tough times and marrying the actress once you get famous. But, like I said, it's completely silly to hold grudges about things like that.

This brings us to their new song, "Simple Song." By all rights, it's a very conventional Shins song: pretty melody, lilting vocals, big chorus hook. Couldn't the old members have done it just as well? That's not for me to say. But I confess I can't quite shake off a bit of bitterness about the whole thing. That's my problem, not Mercer's -- but I do wonder if other old-school fans like me aren't feeling the same thing at the moment.

broken bells - the high road

I haven't had a chance to absorb the whole Broken Bells album, but this lead single is the sort of thing James Mercer does really well with his regular band, the Shins: It feels slight, but its melodic assurance helps give it a real heft.

My Top 10 Albums of the Decade, and What They Say About Me

Between all the movie listmaking and LAFCA awards preparation I had to do at the end of last year, I skipped putting together a best-of-the-decade album list. But it wasn't because of any disinterest on my part: Even during all that busyness, which included heading out to Sundance, I would still jot down potential candidates for such a list and give them a listen to see how they held up.

So now that I've caught my breath and had a moment to compile a formal "Top 10 of the 2000s" list, I'm struck by just how far removed I am from the consensus. It's not that I hate Radiohead's Kid A -- in retrospect, it really is the band's Dark Side of the Moon-esque head-trip that people initially thought OK Computer was -- but like a lot of the other consensus "best of the 2000s" records (The Blueprint, Funeral, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot), it's an album that feels more "significant" and "important" than clearly spectacular. (In other words, if you changed the name of the list from "Best Albums of the Decade" to "Most Important/Groundbreaking/Trendsetting Albums of the Decade," it would be exactly the same group of records.)

With all that in mind, here's my list of the decade's best albums. There are some consensus picks in here, granted, but there are also a few that I alone cherish. And since you've probably been inundated with another weighty pontification about why this or that album was a game-changing masterpiece, I thought I'd do something different: I'm going to explain what these albums' inclusion on my list says about me. I'm a big believer that when you make a Top 10 list, you're expressing preferences -- you're revealing what artistic merits you value over others. So, I'll try to figure out those preferences while going through the list, acknowledging the inescapable fact that while aesthetic criteria are crucial when determining what's the "best," sometimes personal factors creep in as well. From 10 to 1 ...

10. Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)
I don't think it's coincidence that three albums in this list are from 2003. That's the year my wife and I started dating. It was a crucial, emotional year in my life, and certain albums were part of the background, even if they didn't necessarily play into my courtship with her.

The parallels between Fountains of Wayne and my beloved Steely Dan are obvious -- they both make very pretty music about very miserable people -- but on Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne serve up their best collection of songs about bad jobs, bad relationships, and just flat-out bad lives. "Stacy's Mom" was the slick hit, but the lingering sadness of some many of these tracks stays with me. Beyond great tunes, I really came to care about the people in these songs and worry about them. This album represents for me all the folks I knew in college who went out into the world and just ... well, what happened to them, exactly? That unanswerable question is at the heart of Welcome Interstate Managers, as careers and the outward trappings of success start to eat away at personal happiness. Amazingly, these are pop songs.

9. Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism (2003)
Another 2003 record. There is a part of me that really hates Death Cab for Cutie -- well, more accurately, I hate what they represent. Pasty-faced whiners playing delicate indie-pop songs about girls who won't date them -- god, what a tiresome genre. But after loving this album when it came out and then experiencing a bit of a backlash against the band in subsequent years, I've come around to remembering what makes Transatlanticism so special: It's probably the only emo album that's self-aware and self-critical about its strategies. And that's probably why it's the only album of its genre I can still listen to without cringing. That pain of being single and lonely is all over it, but Ben Gibbard at least tries to understand his own flaws as a mate, which puts him above 99% of his mopey colleagues.

8. Kanye West, The College Dropout (2004)
For most of the decade after this album came out, I really missed the Kanye West I had come to love on The College Dropout. This dorky, insecure guy with a chip on a shoulder as large as his talent, West seemed like every aspiring artist I had met in film school and since, except he fashioned his doubts into compelling music that the world was embracing. When West became a superstar, his albums started becoming more ego-centric in a way I found off-putting, although I could clearly enjoy their skill. But still I prefer the debut, which is where a young man becomes a sensation in front of our eyes -- er, ears.

7. Ambulance LTD, LP (2004)
This spectacular collection of great guitar songs gets to the heart of what I was saying about my disinterest in gravitating toward consensus picks. If I was part of a team of editors at a music publication putting together such a list, the argument against including the debut from Ambulance LTD is that (1) nobody's heard of it; and therefore (2) it didn't have that big of an impact on the decade. But I don't think my job as a critic is to tell you what made an impact -- hell, you can figure that out just by listening to the radio. No, my job is to highlight stuff that I think is really special, and this album's lack of major visibility doesn't diminish its astounding musicianship. A million people could like this album, or four friends could dig it -- the album is as objectively "good" either way. I've tried over the last 10 years to really cultivate this part of my personality -- if I'm the only person who loves a certain album or movie, then it's my responsibility to be the representative for those who don't write about entertainment to explain why it's so fantastic. I think about these things a lot while listening to LP.

6. Band of Horses, Cease to Begin (2007)
At under 35 minutes, this album probably isn't "substantial" enough to qualify for a list such as this. (Warning: There's an even shorter album coming up later.) But the outsized emotions compensated. Ben Bridwell's sincerity is probably the thing I like about him most: Indie-rock is so filled with sarcasm, and even those songwriters who are emotional tend to be slightly icky with their why'd-you-break-up-with-me? complaints. But this lovely album is emotionally graceful, suggesting that he might be the most well-adjusted guy in his field. As someone who prefers gentlemen to overgrown boys and macho meat-heads, I recognize a fellow traveler. I can only hope he continues to thrive.

5. Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (2006)
Almost without exception, I don't care too much about hip-hop's drug/crime contigent. (Remember when we used to just call it gangsta?) But the thoroughly unredeeming Hell Hath No Fury is that exception, an album knee-deep in the crack game that makes a life of lawless hedonism sound absolutely addictive. Really, not since I was an impressionable kid who got his morals warped by Appetite for Destruction have I been so seduced by an album's stone-cold misanthropy. But it's not the milieu -- it's the way Pusha T and Malice make their arrogance a twisted kind of underdog tale. I note that the two hip-hop albums that made the list are opposite sides of the same coin: Kanye tells a heartwarming story about not letting hard times pull him down, while Clipse tell a cautionary tale about how to get rich off crime. When I needed a shot of inspiration, Hell Hath No Fury was my go-to record this decade. Make your judgments as you see fit.

4. Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000)
A band that's celebrated (rightfully so) for their elastic, eclectic sound, and I love them most for their quietest record. And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out came out the same year as Kid A, and they share certain similarities: Both sound fantastic late at night, both are deeply worried records full of nagging self-doubts. But the Yo La Tengo record hit me deeper -- and still does. This decade was filled with adult relationships, and this record was the one that felt the most truthful in regards to that subject. Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan are the band's long-term married couple, and here is where they really fleshed out the intricacies of married life. Just like some movies evolve over time as you go back and re-watch them, so too does And Then Nothing feel like a new record every time I go back to it. It's an album that's as fluid as marriage is -- as they sing on the nervous, deeply romantic, eternally hopeful "The Crying of Lot G," "Stop and remember/It isn't always this way."

3. Bob Dylan, Love and Theft (2001)
The album you perhaps refer to as "The 9/11 album" is, for me, "The Album That Got Me Through the Worst Breakup Ever." For quite some time, Love and Theft became not just a collection of songs but, rather, a road map for how to rebuild myself after essentially falling apart. And this is where it gets tricky: How much do emotional states play a part in determining what music we respond to? Do I love this album because of Dylan's brilliant adoption of so many different musical guises, or do I love it because of the personal memories forever attached to songs like "Lonesome Day Blues" and "Sugar Baby"? I think any good critic consistently asks himself these questions: We should strive to combine our ability to recognize great work with our capacity to feel the emotions that work sparks. With that being said, Dylan got me through a very rough time, but so did other albums from that period. But now that I'm way past that time, I can see even more clearly how flat-out fantastic the record is. And that's the point: Even in highly-charged emotional times -- 9/11 or otherwise -- we gravitate to the music we absolutely love. In other words, we don't love the music because it got us through hard times -- we got through the hard times because we relied on the albums we love.

2. Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006)
It's dangerous to give favorite albums as gifts to the unsuspecting, but my wife must have purchased about five copies of Neko Case's breakthrough record for friends and family over the '06 holiday. Put simply, the first two tracks of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood are perfect expressions of mystery and uncertainty. Who can listen to "Margaret Vs. Pauline" and not think he or she is the luckless Margaret, always looking at spotless Pauline across the room with unfathomable envy? And then there's the feverish sadness going on in "Star Witness," a song that I have never been able to suss out completely: A lover drowns, a couple babysits the narrator's sister's kid ... what's the connection? All I know is I spent a good chunk of 2006 and 2007 trying to figure it all out. At a time when every modestly-talented female singer wants to be an ingenue, Case seemed like a mature (if messed-up, but not in an overblown drama-queen kind of way) grownup. Give me an album full of beautiful melodies that feel like half-remembered fragments, and my adoration will be just about eternal -- it's like a dream that you can't quite forget but can't quite recollect. And add on top of all that a voice that is utterly extraordinary, full of longing and pain and empathy -- how can you say no?

1. The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow (2003)
10 songs. All perfect. About nothing more than their exceptionally articulate and simple sentiments: I'm leaving you ("Gone for Good"); you left me ("Pink Bullets"); civilization is nuts ("So Says I"); your world is ending (or is it just beginning?) ("Still to Come"). So what does it say about me that I put Chutes Too Narrow at No. 1? That I like three-minute songs that sound flawless and hold up over repeated exposure. That I like concise albums without an ounce of fat that contain a beginning, middle and end of emotional continuity. That perhaps an album's vaunted artistic legacy is less important to me than a record's immediate accessibility, melodic complexity and pure pleasure? That's just a guess on the last one. I still don't know all of this myself. That's why I write about this stuff.

the shins' james mercer knows that his band is for wussies

From the Los Angeles Times' interview with James Mercer of the Shins:

He knows fans will be waiting and that for others, the Shins will remain a symbol of the soft, contemplative side of indie rock, and therefore a target for contempt. Mercer understands.

"I remember being in high school," he says with a laugh, "and you had to draw those lines and define yourself. I don't think when I was in high school I would have been willing to admit that I liked the Shins. I was into TSOL and Black Flag. I probably would have listened to the Shins secretly in my bedroom."

As someone who was into Matthew Sweet, Public Enemy, R.E.M. and Nirvana in high school, I think I would have dug the Shins. I'm starting to look ahead to best-of-the-decade listmaking, and I have to say: I think Chutes Too Narrow is going to place very high on my album list.

the shins: pink bullets

This might be the saddest video ever. If it's not, I'd love to hear your alternate picks.

hot fuzz

I loved Shaun of the Dead, but Edgar Wright's new film, Hot Fuzz, isn't up to the same level. Also in Consumables, I review Jindabyne, Red Road and the Shins live.

a woeful oscar night

I didn't have a problem with the winners, but the broadcast was one of the weakest in recent memory. Elsewhere in Consumables, reviews of new albums by the Shins and Clipse, new singles from Timbaland and Modest Mouse. Plus, a look at Mike Judge's Idiocracy.

who loves the shins?

I do. You should too. And with their new single, "Phantom Limb," there's more to love.

Elsewhere in Consumables, I gush about Sonic Youth, Sparklehorse, and the best hip-hop album of the year: The Coup's Pick a Bigger Weapon.