The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 1

Sigur Rós
Ágaetis Byrjun

Ágaetis Byrjun is born in reverse: Drummer Agust's stuttering snare swishes in space; Georg Holm's bass hums like a vintage pedal synth; Kjartan Sveinsson's piano tones bleed and blip; and Jónsi, the instantly memorable voice, swirls in the cosmos. Something roars in the distance, like far-off rocket engines billowing, and then, softly ... ping ... ping ... ping. A call across the void. There's a brief moment of fuzz, then everything snaps into place. Sveinsson's organ tones are slow and meditative, the ping keeping time like breath. Jónsi runs his rosin-coated cello bow across his guitar, and a whole world spills out, as if articulating a life's worth of radiance and suffering in one transcendent groan. The track ends with the snow of a radio transmission followed by a heart beating faster and faster, another touch of flesh-and-blood on an album that so often feels celestial in origin. Slipping the bonds of his native Icelandic, Jónsi also sings in glossolalia -- Hopelandic, as the band calls it -- proving that all you really need is sound. Sound bridges cultures even as it leaves words behind. Even when we can't decipher what he's saying, we understand the emotions and identify with them. Throughout Ágaetis Byrjun, songs graze the sky and tumble to earth. They rise from incalculable trenches and crest into second sunrises. "Viõrar Vel Til Loftárasa" unfolds with elegant piano and strings, guitar shimmering like pedal steel, and ultimately cedes to the freedom of disharmony as the orchestra members play differing passages, all approaching some kind of rapture in the clash. By comparison, "Olsen Olsen" unites its brass section and piper with a full choir for a jubilant sing-along. When the murky keys of "Avalon" skulk in and we hear a clacking like the guts of a piano being plucked, it is then that we can see the other side of Ágaetis Byrjun's circle as it closes in and pulls us into the darkness.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 2

Death Cab for Cutie
Transatlanticism

After Transatlanticism, there was no way Death Cab for Cutie weren't going to break into the mainstream. Besides the stellar songwriting and instrumentation, it had all the subtle indicators of a classic album, from the pacing to the running order to the transitions and right down to the evocative cover art. A man who knows his way around the picket fence, Ben Gibbard essays suburban dramas --- where a broken vase means so much more than a spill to clean up --- and he doesn't spare himself when wielding the lens. "We Looked Like Giants" communicates its gnawing angst in the opening dull tone from Nick Harmer's bass, with piano cautiously moving in before --- crash! --- the band streak out in a burst. Jason McGerr's snare cracks and the fulminating guitars of Gibbard and Chris Walla yank us from the aerial view to arm's length. We can see the gray subcompact. We can smell the cold mountain air. We can feel the emotions churning in his stomach as he approaches real intimacy with the woman in the backseat. And yet ... there's always that distance. In the epic title track, he equates it to the Atlantic Ocean: "too far for me to row." McGerr gradually boosts the intensity of his playing, and the others follow suit, Walla repeating the central guitar riff and Gibbard calling across the sea, "I need you so much closer. I need you so much closer." They come back stronger every sequence and join in a chorus of "Come Onnnnnnnn! Come Onnnnnnnnn!" until the music is crashing down upon us, a monolithic force of passion and ambition. The distance doesn't matter. We know he'll get there.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 3

Cat Power
The Greatest

This could have been Chan Marshall's final album. It nearly was. Ground in by her own heel, after years of personal turmoil, she was ready to disappear into the abyss. The album was cut and only two weeks from release. Something snapped, and she retreated to her apartment, where, as she later related in interviews, she turned off her phone, stopped eating and sleeping, and tried to drink it all away. A friend from New York who feared she was in trouble flew down to Miami and found Marshall crazed and unwashed. The friend took her to a treatment center. Marshall has since rebounded to become more comfortable with herself and with the stage. She's not necessarily at home --- she might never reach that state --- but she says she's doing better. If we examine The Greatest in the frame of a would-be suicide note, there is the glaring, Cobain-esque plea "I hate myself and want to die" ("Hate") and the title track, in which she's preparing herself to be buried (metaphorically or otherwise). Yet the album ends on a charged note, with her connecting with a loved one. Although sorrow is the defining emotion in Cat Power's music, The Greatest is the warmest and lushest of her catalog, the result of her backing band at the time, who included Al Green collaborators Leroy Hodges and Mabon "Teenie" Hodges. Together, they made an album that courses with life even as it brushes by death.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 4

Deftones
White Pony

If you want a shortcut to understanding Deftones, you can jump to 2:43 on "Pink Maggit," the moment when the slow, emotion-choked groans of Stephen Carpenter's ESP are about to reverberate out of earshot. That's when the band explode with a throbbing wound of guitar vehemence, and they burn it in over the next three minutes like they're blanching the earth.

White Pony, the band's third album, came riding in strong and bold, showing them refining their songcraft while branching out in new directions. "Teenager," a soft, pouty song, exercises the turntable talents of then-new member Frank Delgado, while "Elite" points a flamethrower of hardcore metal at the haughty people who exhibit the vanity of royalty without even possessing the fame.

Chino Moreno unleashes an incredible vocal performance in "Digital Bath," maintaining the tunefulness of melody even while pushing his voice past the point where singing ends and screaming begins. In similar territory, the murky "Knife Prty" makes blood run cold with guest singer Rodleen's contributions, which begin as woozy intonations and advance to dog-whistle shrieks. The mixing and the layering are so skilled here that even her most piercing moments move in stride with the musical storm.

When Maynard James Keenan of Tool shows up, he and Moreno trade lines on a slick, menacing California drive in that damp window between the moon and the dawn. Ever discerning, the singers tantalize us with clues as to the nature of the drive, and leave the rest to imagination and interpretation: "Roll the windows down / this cool night air is curious / let the whole world look in / who cares who sees anything." It's J. G. Ballard meets David Lynch, and scenic drives are as valuable as shortcuts.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 5

The Pipettes
We Are the Pipettes

[U.K. edition]

The Pipettes are in danger of sharing the fate of so many '60s bands -- the ones who put out a remarkable album or EP, broke up, and then were forgotten within 10 years. The U.K. edition of We Are the Pipettes was never issued here, so if you want the physical CD, you'll have to look for the import, and it will likely be hard to find. Mystifyingly, the album released in the U.S. was remixed by a pop producer who kind of missed the point. As I wrote in my review of that album, "It's counterintuitive that a band birthed from '60s nostalgia would benefit from a modernistic recording instead of one in the tradition of Phil Spector, which is what the British version follows." Although cursory listeners probably wouldn't notice much of a difference, the original edition sets the standard. Joy is alive here: every chime sparkling, every chorus brimming with enthusiasm. It's not all just harmonies, either: Listen to the way Gwenno, Rosay and RiotBecki interplay on "One Night Stand," structuring their vocals to ping-pong off one another, perfectly timed. The union of these talents lasted for but one album, with Rosay and RiotBecki moving on to other pursuits in 2008. At least they left us this memento.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 6

Madvillain
Madvillainy

MF Doom had a clutch of underground-rap classics under his belt when he teamed up with producer and Stones Throw cohort Madlib for the Madvillain project. The duo was indeed dynamic, spiraling out vignettes that crackled with comic book whimsy and intrigue. Madvillainy's beats, rhymes, skits and samples blend seamlessly, as if the racing thoughts of a mad genius.

The supervillain theme plays right into Doom's hands, and he takes on the varying roles with gusto, whether shining in the glare of a club spotlight ("Rhinestone Cowboy") or presiding over the imaginary opulence of the "Madvillain Bistro Bed & Breakfast Bar & Grill Cafe-Lounge on the water" ("Bistro"). His gobs of pop culture references dovetail with the scraps of dialogue mined from old TV shows and radio broadcasts, begetting a vortex where the expression "egads" sidles up to "true that."

Humor abounds, with the emcee taking on halitosis in "Operation Lifesaver Aka Mint Test" (choice line: "Fellas don't fess / some of 'em just need to eat the whole thing of Crest"). Madlib, playing his Quasimoto character, gets in on the vocal action, fostering some friendly competition on "America's Most Blunted."

Given the overall zaniness, Madvillainy's crystallization of romantic betrayal on "Fancy Clown" is unexpected and stirring. Having first weathered the blow of being cheated on, the supervillian feels burning embarrassment when word makes it around on the street, and his reaction is a mixture of lashing out at his lover and, believe it or not, blaming himself. It's a moment that rounds the cartoonish characters, pulling back the mask to show a mortal man beneath.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 7

Radiohead
Amnesiac

Kid A will always be cited as the more important album, for it was the first one bearing Radiohead's stylistic shift to chilly electronics. And there can be only one first. But the overlooked jewel of Radiohead's '00s output was Amnesiac, Kid A's snakier, arcane cousin, which dropped only months before 9/11, and whose cryptic messages we digested during those anxious times.

"Pyramid Song" wafted out with Thom Yorke's eerie oooos, somehow eternal. Like sand. "Knives Out" belied its jazzy tempo, a sunken-faced rogue of a song beneath. The somber sighs of brass and chirruping clarinets of "Life in a Glasshouse" harked back to the 1930s, and its reference to lynching swung a pointer to Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" as a possible ancestor.

On the more technological side, "Like Spinning Plates" gasped, with Yorke's vocals threatening to splinter under strain. Going further, there was no voice at all in "Hunting Bears," two haunting passages of Jonny Greenwood's electric guitar. Played twice over a nodding synth and faded out. "I Might Be Wrong" lathed its synth drone while the blunted drum pops and rhythm guitar wriggled forward and snapped back, like limbs removed from a body but still psychically attached.

And of course there was the limited-edition packaging (which can also be seen on the album's cover): a frayed red hardcover book suggesting secrets it could not reveal.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 8

Coldplay
Parachutes

Before Apple. Before Gwyneth. Before all those Make Trade Fair gestures. Chris Martin was just a student playing with Will Champion, Jonny Buckland and Guy Berryman, unconsciously exploring his vulnerability as he sang a paean to a woman ("Yellow"), wished she would notice him ("Shiver"), and longed, in one respect or another, for connection. He was someone more like us.

On this concise monument to young adulthood, Martin's appeal for love and togetherness is part quaver, part croon. The tender sway of "Sparks" could have served as the soundtrack to much dorm-room necking, but Parachutes wasn't focused on the sex. Intimacy was the goal. If only it wasn't so hard to reach ...

"Trouble" starts out with stately piano and a confident guitar riff, but then, like anxiety creeping up, they fade out, and in comes Martin's opening: "Oh, no / I see / a spider web is tangled up with me." This idea of being trapped also comes up on "High Speed" ("We been living life inside a bubble"), and the dour, largely acoustic "We Never Change" sees him stuck repeating his mistakes, unable to move forward and achieve what he wishes.

"Don't panic," that hoary air of reassurance, seems like something Martin would have heard a few times amid his fretfulness, and "Don't Panic" bookends with "Everything's Not Lost," the album's last track. While "Everything's Not Lost" bursts with jubilance, having made it to the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, "Don't Panic" finds Martin with a chorus of "We live in a beautiful world." He sings it with something less than certainty: He sings it as if trying to convince himself it's true.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 9

Beck
Sea Change

There's a scene in the movie "Adventureland" where the main character, a highbrow college grad stuck doing summer work at a carnival, introduces his foxy co-worker to his "bummer tape." "These are my favorite bummer songs," he tells her. "They're truly miserable, pit-of-despair-type songs. I think you'll love it." Later on, when they're in her car, she plays it. As they drive, the cassette fills the space between them as he stares at her, needing her. They stop by a bridge in Pittsburgh, where he overtakes her with an intense kiss. But the relationship they embark on is not an easy one.

In 2002, after nine years together, Beck Hansen and his longtime girlfriend split up. In his wreckage, the stylistic vagabond became a bard of the brokenhearted. He strums in a shell-shocked funk on Sea Change, an apt description of his retreat from the whirling, fluorescent Jell-O shots atmosphere of 1999's Midnite Vultures. Sea Change is a part of Beck's chameleon cloak, and with Midnite Vultures preceding it, the albums must've looked like a bipolar breakdown. Seen another way, Midnite Vultures fits the giddy, carefree highs of stock market euphoria, and Sea Change is the burst bubble, the goo running out.

It's an album of resignation ("I'm tired of fighting / tired of fighting / fighting for a lost cause"), wounded confessions ("It's nothing that I haven't seen before / but it still kills me, like it did before") and crippled composure ("'Cause it feels like I'm watching something dyyyyyyin'"). There's even the emotional scavenging of "Round the Bend," in which he achieves an eerie Nick Drake-level of desolation, the strings curling and eddying like wind pushing fog over a moor.

Naturally, he'd do a 180 again, but this was his moment alone, outside. Adrift. This was his bummer tape.

The top 10 albums of the '00s: No. 10

Norah Jones
Come Away With Me

Though its ubiquity after the 2003 Grammys spawned a backlash that exists to this day --- that of deriding Norah Jones' music as bland or corporate or insignificant --- Come Away With Me, if anything, puts the lie to all those charges. It's undeniably significant in terms of sales and awards, and it likewise rocketed Jones from obscurity, changing her life and basically giving her a blank check as to her artistic career. But let's not get too technical. Come Away With Me showcases Jones' tremendous appeal as a singer, and it introduces us to her fruitful collaboration with guitarist and songwriter Jesse Harris, which resulted in her best-known song, "Don't Know Why," along with almost half the album's originals. The covers, no less significant, show her to be adept at assimilating country ("Cold Cold Heart") and FDR-era pop ("The Nearness of You"). She's so cozy with the material that her take on J.D. Loudermilk's "Turn Me On" (which she may have heard by way of Nina Simone), from the '60s, and the Carmichael-Washington composition "The Nearness of You," from the '30s, don't feel like dusty relics. There's no stiffness or uncertainty in her delivery, only a deep love and understanding of the music, which she internalizes and passes on to us in her warm, maple syrup tones.

Update

It's with some chagrin that I return, slinking in with my best-of-the-decade picks when we're already a year into, well, whatever this post-aughts decade ends up being called. On the upside, I haven't felt any regrets about these best-of picks, so they have already stood the test of time.

I'd like to say I'll be posting more reviews soon after this list, but my job situation changed last year and has been contributing to my shiftlessness. So, if you see a long gap in my publishing, check back, but don't check back as often.

For the curious

These are the albums I heard in full last year, and here's how they rank, relative to one another:

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart- The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Nite Jewel- Good Evening

Grizzly Bear- Veckatimest

Speck Mountain- Some Sweet Relief

The Flaming Lips- Embryonic

Crocodiles- Summer of Hate

The Raveonettes- In and Out of Control

Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics- Inspiration Information, Vol. 3

Mastodon- Crack the Skye

The Bird and the Bee- Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future

Depeche Mode- Sounds of the Universe

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions- Through the Devil Softly

Yo La Tengo- Popular Songs

Prefuse 73- Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

Built to Spill- There Is No Enemy

M. Ward- Hold Time

Wilco- Wilco (the Album)

Gun Outfit- Dim Light

Jay-Z- The Blueprint 3

Kid Cudi- Man on the Moon: The End of Day

Doves- Kingdom of Rust

Major Lazer- Guns Don't Kill People ... Lazers Do

Mason Jennings- Blood of Man

Animal Collective- Merriweather Post Pavilion

N.A.S.A.- The Spirit of Apollo

Au Revoir Simone- Still Night, Still Light

Norah Jones- The Fall

Eels- Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire

Asobi Seksu- Hush

Dirty Projectors- Bitte Orca

VAST- Me and You

Dan Deacon- Bromst

Flipper- Love

La Roux- La Roux

Bat for Lashes- Two Suns

The Dead Weather- Horehound

Camera Obscura- My Maudlin Career

St. Vincent- Actor

Neko Case- Middle Cyclone

Zero 7- Yeah Ghost

Doom- Born Like This

Yeah Yeah Yeahs- It's Blitz!

Chris Cornell- Scream

Morrissey- Years of Refusal

Air- Love 2

John Mayer- Battle Studies

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson- Summer of Fear

K'Naan- Troubadour

Imogen Heap- Ellipse

Green Day- 21st Century Breakdown

The Prodigy- Invaders Must Die

Lady Sovereign- Jigsaw

Amy Speace- The Killer in Me

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band- Outer South

Passion Pit- Manners

David Bazan- Curse Your Branches

Royksopp- Junior

Sonic Youth- The Eternal

Moby- Wait for Me

Erin McKeown- Hundreds of Lions

Basement Jaxx- Scars

Girls- Album

Super Furry Animals- Dark Days/Light Years

Mos Def- The Ecstatic

BlakRoc- BlakRoc

Dinosaur Jr.- Farm

The Mars Volta- Octahedron

Simian Mobile Disco- Temporary Pleasure

Amadou & Mariam- Welcome to Mali

Felix da Housecat- He Was King

Sufjan Stevens- The BQE

Maxwell- BLACKsummers'night

The Big Pink- A Brief History of Love

The Church- Untitled 23

Kings of Convenience- Declaration of Dependence

Cake- Motorcade of Generosity

U2- No Line on the Horizon

Crystal Stilts- Alight of Night

Dolores O'Riordan- No Baggage

Viva Voce- Rose City

Al B. Sure!- Honey I'm Home

Mariah Carey- Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel

Paramore- Brand New Eyes

Peter Bjorn and John- Living Thing

Jadakiss- The Last Kiss

Metric- Fantasies

Weezer- Raditude

Sunn 0)))- Monoliths & Dimensions

Rodrigo y Gabriela- 11:11

Porcupine Tree- The Incident

Wolfmother- Cosmic Egg

Shakira- She Wolf

Echo & the Bunnymen- The Fountain

Flight of the Conchords- I Told You I Was Freaky

Maps- Turning the Mind

Franz Ferdinand- Tonight

Cracker- Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey

Patterson Hood- Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)

Whitney Houston- I Look to You

Silversun Pickups- Swoon

The Crystal Method- Divided by Night

Tinted Windows- Tinted Windows

Better Than Ezra- Paper Empire

Trans-Siberian Orchestra- Night Castle

Wyclef Jean- From the Hut, to the Projects, to the Mansion

Soundtrack of Our Lives- Communion

MSTRKRFT- Fist of God

Meat Puppets- Sewn Together

Scarlett Johansson and Pete Yorn- Break Up

Lionel Richie- Just Go

Os Mutantes- Haih...Ou Amortecedor...


2009 albums I heard in full after the cutoff date:

The xx- xx

Health- Get Color

Tegan and Sara- Sainthood

Clipse- Til the Casket Drops

Devendra Banhart- What Will We Be

R. Kelly- Untitled

Lil Wayne- Rebirth


2009 albums I heard most of but not quite all of:

The Avett Brothers- I and Love and You

Bebel Gilberto- All in One

Pink Martini- Splendor in the Grass

A Fine Frenzy- Bomb in a Birdcage

The Phenomenal Handclap Band- The Phenomenal Handclap Band

Our Lady Peace- Burn Burn

Mario- D.N.A.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 1

The Pains of Being

Pure at Heart
The Pains of Being

Pure at Heart

In what plays like a love note to mid- to late-'80s jangle pop and shoegazer distortion, the debut album by New York foursome The Pains of Being Pure at Heart skips and zips, chirps and chimes, altogether chipper and defiantly alive. With élan that verges on delusion, their bright-eyed melodies defend a heroin casualty and a brother-sister tryst, as well as relate more familiar youthful pursuits, like the raging impulse to lock lips and hips.

Such urges fuel anticipation and impatience in "Come Saturday," sprinting drum rolls and a tumbling guitar rush playing the role of the firing-on-all-cylinders adrenal glands. The library, such a testament to the pent-up, the potential, is one place where desires erupt and give the microfiche something to stare at, in the cheekily titled "Young Adult Friction." The male-female vocal blending of guitarist Kip Berman and keyboardist Peggy Wang-East fosters the Romeo-and-Juliet overtones.

True to Shakespeare, there is tragedy, though you probably wouldn't know it before you read the lyrics. A plucky snare-and-kick-drum beat and a guitar line evoking the piano hook of David Bowie's "Modern Love" open "A Teenager in Love," belying the fact that Alli, the teenager in question, has died, most likely as a direct consequence of her lust for life, which happened to involve heroin. When someone impugns Alli as being "dead all along," Berman scornfully tells the heavens (or quite possibly her gravestone), "He hadn't lived a day / the way you lived in your final days."

Murkier --- or what would be murkier if Berman and Wang-East didn't sound so chaste --- are the apparent tale of incest in "This Love Is Fucking Right!" (blithely unrepentant) and the not-necessarily-consensual couplings in "The Tenure Itch" ("These late night sessions, he's master still / Just one more lesson leaves you twisting to his will.")

But the album's brilliant melodies and endearing optimism bathe everything in a radiant, innocent light. It's all too easy to get lost in the sweet alliance of burbling bass, frisky drums, jangling guitar and singing keyboard. So pure at heart, so high on life.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 2

Nite Jewel
Good Evening

When we're first introduced to Ramona Gonzalez's voice, on "Bottom Rung," it's buried; perhaps it is the rung.

And yet it's all around us, enfolding the sanctuary- or pagoda-suited keyboard, as if she's pulling a curtain of raindrop beads.

Read my review of Good Evening here.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 3

Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest

On Grizzly Bear's follow-up to the much-praised Yellow House, they again draw inspiration from setting. This time the title is a little island off Massachusetts that isn't even recognized by the Census Bureau. But that's only the start of the mystique.

Read my review of Veckatimest here.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 4

Speck Mountain
Some Sweet Relief

The sophomore album from Chicago's Speck Mountain is infused with a spiritual energy. Just don't expect mitres and pulpits.


Read my review of Some Sweet Relief here.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 5

The Flaming Lips
Embryonic

Listening to Embryonic, I can't help but think it was meant to be experienced in a format other than CD. Vinyl, maybe: spread out over two or three records. Or perhaps on cassette, giving it an A side and a B side. Or maybe its songs were meant to be beamed directly into your brain and arranged to match your mood, care of some device to be invented decades from now.

Of course, this is the same band that released Zaireeka, a four-disc curiosity intended to be consumed simultaneously. (In other words, you'd need four different stereos.) Unlike The Soft Bulletin (1999), which came two years after Zaireeka, and unlike Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) or At War With the Mystics (2006), Embryonic scales back the pop melodies and indulges in atmosphere. This atmosphere vacillates from frenetic and clattering ("Aquarius Sabotage," "Scorpio Sword") to peaceful and drifting ("The Impulse").

"Gemini Syringes" is trance-inducing space rock: As German mathematician Thorsten Wörmann deliberates on an equation, the slow throb of Michael Ivins' bass sways us into a haze. And there's an intermittent clacking, too. It sounds reptilian (but is later revealed to be ... Karen O[!]).

In quiet ballads "Evil" and "If," which could be parts I & II of the same song, Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd examine the good-vs.-evil duality of human nature. They show considerable sensitivity in these, Coyne wanting in the former to spare someone pain, and in the latter Drozd weighing which human motivation is stronger. Bad news: They conclude it's evil, although they do preface that by implying we have more than a small choice in the matter. Drozd sings, "They can be gentle, too / if they decide."

In that spirit, Coyne and Karen O collaborate, almost flirtatiously, on "I Can Be a Frog," with her providing imitations of whatever animal he mentions. There are moments when the two nearly break out in laughter, but Coyne's sincerity sells it. You can bet that even as he throws O a loop, like tossing in "helicopter" before "wolf," he has the underlying message in mind, which is that the woman in the song can be anything she wants to be. (Perhaps coincidentally, O did the soundtrack for the 2009 big-screen adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are.") It's remarkable how tickled and carefree she is here, given how cold she can come across in her Yeah Yeah Yeahs material.

With another cameo --- this one an uncredited David Bowie (or if not, an amazing likeness) --- Coyne picks up the thread of good and evil and loops it around the stargazing theme. After Bowie/pseudo-Bowie counts up to 10 (signifying blast-off?), he gives voice to the dark side ("Free to eat the fruit / from the evil tree"). Also, it seems that those sticky-palmed heathens grant their bodies and/or their souls to "the silver machine" in exchange.

Planets and stars, whether astronomy or astrology in nature, fit the Lips' proclivities; after all, they did spend the better part of the past decade working on their eccentric sci-fi venture, the film "Christmas to Mars." Yet there's a Pink Floyd-esque vastness about Embryonic. Wonder how it would sync up to "The Wizard of Oz." Or would "2001: A Space Odyssey" be more appropriate?

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 6

Crocodiles
Summer of Hate

When I write poetry, I most commonly do it as a form of exorcism. I have feelings I need to vent, whether frightful or painful or thoughtful, and writing them down allows me to process them, or to make sense of them, or to move past them. This has the side benefit of allowing me to create something out of a raw experience. Sometimes I end up with something beautiful, even if all I started out with was something troubling.

I suspect musicians do this, too. Certainly not all the time, but it's wonderful when their irrepressible impulse to share love or humor or angst or despair culminates in a great piece of music. Think of all the breakups and setbacks and breakthroughs they survived or overcame or championed. And it might never have been, had they chose to, say, go watch TV.

Crocodiles, a band from San Diego, have funneled their throbbing temples and clenched teeth and aching hearts and wistful stares into a 34-minute nerve net of emotion. Merging tremeloed guitar with drum programming and '60s pop sensibility, Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell capture the tender as well as the brutal.

Some tracks spurt confrontational energy. "Refuse Angels" lashes out with rapid-fire rimshots. "Flash of Light," which begins with swing and swagger, disintegrates into a full minute of caustic, repellent shooshing effects, like an aural strobe gone haywire. In the latter song, Welchez sings, "Tonight I'm gonna set my house on fire. ... Gonna rewrite my life."

The title track and "I Wanna Kill" would seem similarly inclined, although "I Wanna Kill" displays a gallows humor. Featuring a riff that could have been cribbed from The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me," the song links a man's meager beginnings to his present frustration. It's the poppiest song on the album, with a back-and-forth chorus that includes "all the kids sing swan songs / all the kids sing along with me." This is somewhat more disturbing when you take into account that Welchez is a teacher by day.

Often, the message might be one of struggle, but the mood is anything but oppressive. "Sleeping With the Lord" assembles majestic vibratoed synths, almost like a take on Vangelis' classic theme "Chariots of Fire."

The CD, containing no liner notes, is scrawled "lovingly dedicated to Willy Graves." Graves was their bassist in a previous band, The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. He died in autumn 2008 at the age of 28. So it's reasonable to assume his passing informed or influenced the tone of at least some these songs. Death and the afterlife is a recurring theme, with religious imagery popping up in several songs.

Summer of Hate has many highlights, but "Here Comes the Sky" is something extra special. Rowell's tremolo really shines here, shimmering amid a wavering synth that flows over it like an aura. There's something crushing about this track's tenderness, in the same way that some of Brian Wilson's songs go for that lump in your throat. Welchez tells us that his love has departed --- nothing special there --- but when he confesses, "In your absence, my heart's overflowed," it's such a powerful and unusual statement. He's not mad at her (or him, I suppose, although he equates her/him to a rose, which is a pretty strong feminine symbol); he actually has so much in his heart that it pours out. Continuing the metaphor, he says, together, they could grow to the sky, "where the weeds who are after us dry up and die."

It's so fanciful, so preposterous: a garden in the sky! And yet he's so unfaltering in his delivery, there's no denying that this is a deep avowal. Core-deep. It's a hope that we know is a dream. An impossible dream.

And Rowell's guitar gently weeps.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 7

The Raveonettes
In and Out of Control

Bang!

Read my review of In and Out of Control here.

The top 10 albums of 2009: No. 8

Mulatu Astatke

and the Heliocentrics
Inspiration Information, Vol. 3

Contrary to what you might expect from the title, this is the first album made by Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics. Together, that is. He's an Ethiopian jazz master, and they're a young U.K. band with worldly tastes (which is to say that their talents encompass instruments beyond the standard, Anglo-centric array of guitar, bass, drums, piano and keyboard). Their pairing was facilitated by the Strut record label of London for its Inspiration Information series, an influential-veteran-meets-hotshot-newcomer arrangement.

The two have chemistry, for sure. Ghostly Moog whines in "Dewel" give way to a chorus of horns, the sax, trumpet and trombone pattering in common conversation. Waiting in the bass groove, Astatke emerges with twinkles of vibraphone. Then the horns chatter anew.

The bulk of the songs were composed by Heliocentrics members, who number Malcolm Catto (drums), Jake Ferguson (bass), Oliver Parfitt (keys and synths), Adrian Owusu (guitar), Jack Yglesias (flute and percussion), Tom Hodges (theremin and saw), Dan Keane (cello), Kat Arney (harp), James Arben (clarinet and sax), Shabaka Hutchings (tenor sax) and James Allsop (bass clarinet). It's a full house.

Mulatu Astatke (piano, percussion) seems more mentor than bandleader here, although the tracks are bent toward traditional Ethiopian arrangements rather than new age eclecticism. Some guest players bring in washint, krar, begena and masenqo, instruments little-heard in Western music. Dawit Gebreab plays washint on "An Epic Story," the flute tones offset against a synth wind. It would seem befit for a warrior, one surveying his future kingdom from atop a bluff, perhaps at the cusp of daybreak.

The players save the best for last, though. "Anglo Ethio Suite" unfolds with suspense, a deliberately paced composition with a solemn and recurring cello theme. Malcolm Catto's kit skittering opens the piece, and Kat Arney dusts the scene with harp before Jake Ferguson's combo of bass and begena establishes the hypnotic groove. Astatke, at the piano, darts out, then retreats. Dan Keane's thin, high strings squeak out, and from there the track narrows in on cello and flute, as if the two are trapped in the face of impending tumult. The strings worry and scurry, then scrabble feverishly. A clarinet squeals. The end is near. Literally.