TK #54: Ron Sexsmith – Retriever (2004)

Ron Sexsmith’s brilliance lies in making a hard thing seem easy. Melodic, concise songs pour out of him with such stunning consistency that it’s easy to think that anyone can do this. But anyone can’t, which is why he’s earned the respect of masters like McCartney and Costello even while toiling in relative obscurity. But don’t let the professionalism fool you, there’s a vulnerable, sentimental heart behind every song, always willing to go out on a limb, like on “Whatever It Takes.” That song would be sap in lesser hands, but it’s pure amber in Sexsmith’s.

Retriever - Ron Sexsmith

TK #55: Santogold – Santogold (2008)

The perfect album for the multi-culti new millennium, it effortlessly crosses barriers of race, gender and nationality. It takes all the shop-worn pointless questions (Is it pop? Is it rock? Is it rap?) and responds “who the $%#& cares?” It’s music, and damn fine music at that.

Santigold - Santigold

TK #56: U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)

Once I would have considered this a pejorative, but now it’s a high compliment: This is a thoroughly professional rock album. The songs are perfectly constructed and executed. Bright, sturdy, resilient. And the sound is clean and huge, the kind of thing that effortlessly reaches the back row of a football stadium. And despite all the technical brilliance, it retains the trait that has always marked the band – a big, overwrought, generous heart.

All That You Can't Leave Behin...

TK # 57 - Lucero - Nobody's Darlings (2005)

Lucero - "Anjalee"

Lucero wears their desperation and outsider status as a badge of honor, mixing equal parts pathos and self-loathing in an explosive cocktail of punk country, worthy heirs to Jason And The Scorchers and The Replacements’ throne of misfit desperado losers. The songwriting tightens up a bit, on this, their fourth record, and if you’re not a convert after the first 15 seconds of “Anjalee”, then god have mercy on your soul.

Nobody's Darlings - Lucero

TK # 58 - The Felice Brothers - Tonight At The Arizona (2007)

Forget the Dylan/Band comparisons, this is timeless folk music by one of the best American bands of the last ten years. Tonight At The Arizona is creaky, dark corner, gothic campfire tales, its somber mood broken only by the backwoods stomp on Jimmie Rodgers “T For Texas” and the ramshackle rave-up of Leadbelly’s “Take This Hammer”. Ian Felice’s Dylan wheeze may be an initial roadblock, but stick around, the beautiful ache in songs like “Ballad of Lou The Welterweight” and “Hey Hey Revolver” will reward your effort.

The Felice Brothers - "Roll On Arte"

TK # 59: Kasey Chambers - The Captain (2000)

Kasey Chambers sings folk songs rooted in the deep South, it’s just the deep south of the Australina bush of Nullarbor. Featuring lived-in, wide eyed romantic lyrics, Chambers calls to mind the ache of Lucinda Williams, but without the bitterness. The title song is a wonderful tribute to a brother’s selfless dedication.

The Captain - Kasey Chambers

TK #60: Ryan Adams – Gold (2001)

Adams is famous for throwing stuff against a wall and seeing what sticks, and never has more stuck than on this album, which is loaded with songs that would have been radio staples had they come along thirty years before (and thanks to Tim McGraw, “When the Stars Go Blue” achieved that fate this decade). “Harder Now That It’s Over” is a classic heartbreaker, and “New York, New York” took on its own spooky aura in light of the events that transpired just after its release.

Gold - Ryan Adams

TK #61: Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)

A half-century in, anyone who can make a rock and roll record that sounds strange and unprecedented pulls off quite a feat. Emo in the best possible sense of the word, this is music that makes something well up inside, a rising of voices and flicker of light. Luminous.

Funeral - Arcade Fire

TK #62: David Byrne & Brian Eno – Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008)

After a 25-year hiatus from making a string of classic albums together, this could have been a disaster. Instead, it was a revelation, two old masters bringing the best out of each other again, and doing it in entirely new ways. Their previous collaborations (under their own names and with Talking Heads), were dark, brooding and funky. But here, it’s mostly lush and light and open. Comeback album of the decade.

Everything That Happens Will H...

TK #63: Lily Allen – Alright, Still (2006)

This album is so disarming, so wry, and so full of surface appeal that it’s easy not to notice that it’s also great. Not in that dismissive great-for-a-pop-record sense. Just great. Melodic, bouncy, buoyant, and wickedly funny, with more awareness of tradition than it lets on. There’s old English dance hall music here, there’s soul, there’s Two-tone. And joy. Lots and lots of joy.

Alright, Still - Lily Allen

TK # 64 - Ike Reilly - Salesmen And Racists (2001)

Matching the sneer of prime Dylan with the swagger of early Replacements, Ike Reilly plums the seedy underbelly of the urban Midwest. He spits out tales of lovable losers – these are the stories you share with drunken, jackass pals when you’re way past your limit. Salesmen And Racists is jam packed with instantly memorable choruses wrapped around biting, funny and often touching lyrics that inspire and bewilder. “Hip Hop Thighs # 17” is the greatest song you’ve never heard.

Salesmen & Racists - Ike Reill...

Ike Reilly - Hip Hop Thighs # 17

TK #65: Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis (2006)

Reflective, wry, bitter, joyous, but most of all, consistently memorable, ex-Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker stepped into the solo spotlight and delivered a batch of songs ranging from whispers to screams. Well, not screams as much as a complicated man loudly proclaiming interesting things. And his sample of the Tommy James classic “Crimson and Clover” on “Black Magic” makes for one of the decade’s best recycled sounds.

Jarvis - Jarvis Cocker

TK #66: Aimee Mann – Bachelor No. 2 (2000)

Mann succeeds where so many sullen singer-songwriters fail, because she possesses a facility with melody and a belief in the power of the chorus. She’s also a fine editor, which results in the songs on this album – her best – being densely packed with ideas and pop hooks. Her icily detached persona makes lines like “now that I’ve met you/would you object to/never seeing each other again” all the more powerful.

Bachelor No. 2 - Aimee Mann

TK # 67 - The Strokes - Is This It (2001)

It’s great to see a band indebted to both the Velvet Underground AND Chuck Berry. Coming on like the class of ’77, The Strokes made making music sound fun again. And soon a thousand similarly mono-monikered bands plowed the same field, but nobody matched the accessibility and muscle of this stunning debut. Of course, none of them wrote songs like “Last Nite”, “Someday” or “Take It or Leave It”.

Is This It - The Strokes

TK #68: LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem (2005)

Rock and roll isn’t any one thing, but one thing it used to be is dance music. Now it is again because James Murphy knows that a riff is as good as a vamp when it comes time to get your boogie on. And “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” is my song of the decade.

LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsys...

TK #69: Ron Sexsmith – Blue Boy (2001)

Classic songcraft from Canada’s uber-troubadour. Not many songwriters squeeze the likes of “This Song,” “Foolproof,” “Cheap Hotel” and “Just My Heart Talkin’” into a career, let alone a single album. Thirty years earlier, songs like this made people superstars. Now they just make cult heroes.

TK #70: Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit (2006)

Though it’s hardly heavy metal, The Life Pursuit marks a clear break from the band’s gossamer past. The songs are fully fleshed out, and in places, verging on muscular, while delivering the wry, off-kilter hooks that form the foundation for B&S’s entire oeuvre. And “The Blues are Still Blue” ranks with the Pretenders’ “Watching the Clothes” among the best songs ever to be set inside a laundromat.

The Life Pursuit - Belle & Seb...

TK # 71 - Jamey Johnson - That Lonesome Song (2008)

To a suburban yankee brought up on Motown, Springsteen and punk rock, country music was an anathema to me until 1986 when I heard Dwight Yoakam’s Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. and Steve Earle’s Guitar Town blow the cobwebs out of Nashville’s slick big hat machine. The floodgates properly opened (hello Johnny, Willie, George, Waylon, Merle and Gram), now 22 years later Jamey Johnson’s That Lonesome Song sounds like a revelation – the best country record in recent memory.

That Lonesome Song - Jamey Joh...

TK # 72 - Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country (2006)

There’s enough heartbreak, broken promises and shattered dreams to last a lifetime on this record. But the 60’s girl group sheen, sharply drawn portraits and impeccable arrangements make feeling bad sound pretty good. The title track updates the universal theme of youthful escape - think "We Gotta Get Outta This Place" shot through with estrogen. Sadly beautiful.

Let's Get Out of This Country ...

TK # 73 - Old 97's - Satellite Rides (2001)

On Satellite Rides, the Old 97’s leave the country behind and dive headfirst into no frills power pop. Lead 97 Rhett Miller has a mile-wide romantic streak, and here he burnishes the proposal to be of “Question”, the flirty come-on of “Buick City Complex” and the titanic “King of All The World” with insidious melodies that just won’t leave you alone. A special shout out to Philip Peeples, whose propulsive drumming is the band’s secret weapon.

Old 97's - "Question"

TK # 74: The Postal Service - Give Up (2003)

While it basically sounds like a couple of guys and their laptops, two things set Postal Service apart from thousands of cheap imitators – Ben Gibbard’s sweet, choirboy voice and classic pop songwriting that eludes so much of indie rock. Loaded with pleasant blips and gurgling beats, Give Up’s shimmering dance pop endures on the strength of the Pitchfork nation wet dream of “Such Great Heights” and the gentle but anthemic declarations of “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” and “We Will Become Silhouettes”.

Give Up - The Postal Service

TK #75: Radiohead – In Rainbows (2007)

How can a band so conventional – this is a guitars/bass/drums outfit, after all – sound so consistently original? How can they take elements that have been around for forty years and make them sound like they’re from the future? And how can they sound like androids while making music that’s so deeply human?

In Rainbows - Radiohead

TK #76:Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (2004)

Two albums released simultaneously in a single package, but Abattoir Blues is where the real action is, as Cave backs his literary ambitions with the Bad Seeds’ full-throttle roar and a gospel choir’s Pentecostal furor, and creates a spiritual/sexual reverie unlike anything else this decade. “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” name-checks both Dylan Thomas and Johnny Thunders, and the album sits precisely atop that unlikely intersection.

Abattoir Blues/Lyre Of Orpheus...

TK #77: M.I.A. – Kala (2007)

Welcome to the future, a cross-pollinated, cross-continental, cross-generational, utopian/ dystopian amalgam of contradiction and conquest. With drums. Big, big drums. And one giant, mind-bending Clash sample.

Kala - M.I.A.

TK # 78: Tilly And The Wall - Wild Like Children (2004)

A tap dancing drummer? More precocious than Conor Oberst? More fun than free beer? Creating a ruckus that could be fatal in lesser hands, Tilly and The Wall sound like nothing less than the joy of kids making music for their friends, with boy/girl vocals filled with the excitement of Saturday night. It’s DIY bubblegum for the aughts.

Wild Like Children - Tilly and...

Tilly And The Wall - "Bessa"

TK # 79: Willie Nile - Streets of New York (2006)

Bustling with the electric energy one associates with “the city”, Streets of New York is a love letter to the New York we always hope to see. The ringing guitars and sentimental lyrics showcase Nile’s gift as a plain spoken everyman while capturing the joy and terror of “Asking Annie Out”. Bonus points for his Joe Strummer tribute, a rollicking cover of “Police on My Back”.

Streets Of New York - Willie N...

Willie Nile - "Police On My Back"

TK # 80 - Brendan Benson - The Alternative to Love (2005)

Is it rock and roll? Is it power pop? Is it singer-songwriter AAA? As XTC said “This is pop! Yeah Yeah!” Best known as Jack White’s wingman in The Raconteurs, Brendan Benson has quietly, if sporadically, been making effortlessely well crafted pop records since 1996. It was a tossup between this one and the previous Lapalco, but Alternative to Love gets the nod based on the McCartney-esque “Cold Hands (Warm Heart)” and the Spector-meets-Fountains of Wayne brilliance of “The Pledge”.

Brendan Benson - "The Pledge"

TK #81: Joe Henry – Civilians (2007)

After some forays into the jazzy ether, Henry rediscovered gravity on this 2007 effort, his best song cycle in years. That he could create a song called “God Only Knows” that rivals the Beach Boys’ tune of the same name testifies to his immense and understated talent.

Civilians - Joe Henry

TK #82: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

The back story, the documentary and the cultural heft tend to obscure how Jeff Tweedy managed to take the conventions of country rock and turn them inside-out, to create something that is both recognizable and difficult, and in many songs, disarmingly simple. And “Jesus, Etc.” is the band at its most luminous.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco

TK # 83 - Ike Reilly - Hard Luck Stories (2009)

Ike Reilly returns with ten Hard Luck Stories about sex, drugs, returning vets, fucked up losers, fucked up winners, sex and drugs. Drawing on Dylan's deep, twisted phrasing and the feral gut punch of prime punk rock, Reilly is a master storyteller who's bringing back two things sadly missing in rock and roll - humor and swagger. The dude is a fist fight wrapped up in a three minute explosion of rock and roll, complete with pulsing, soaring chouses that imbed themsleves deep. If we did this roundup six months from now, this would place much higher.

Hard Luck Stories - Ike Reilly

Ike Reilly - "The War on The Terror And The Drugs"

TK # 84 - Two Cow Garage - III (2007)

Foot-stomping, bare bones greaser rock that takes the early Uncle Tupelo template for punk country and filters it through the self-destructive, self-loathing desperation of The Replacements, adding Pogues-style fist-pumping choruses. Singer Micah Schnabel’s 5 pack a day croak on “Camo Jacket” out-phlegms Craig Finn and Tom Waits. A blazing rock and roll band best experienced in a 3/4 empty dive at 1 am on a Friday night.

Three - Two Cow Garage

Two Cow Garage - "Camo Jacket"

TK #85: Passion Pit – Manners (2009)

Electronic, but not electronica, Manners delivers meat-on-the-bones songs that are enhanced by squiggles, squeaks and squonks. In Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, protagonist Rob Fleming is the DJ for a happening recurring party billed as “Dance Music for Old People.” Rob’s crowd would have eaten this stuff up.

Manners - Passion Pit

TK # 86 - Buffalo Tom - Three Easy Pieces (2007)

In the least heralded but most welcome reunion of recent vintage, Buffalo Tom returned with something most other reunions lacked – a batch of finely crafted rock and roll songs. The ghostly Big Star harmonies of “Bad Phone Call”, the propulsive jangle of “Bottom of The Rain” and the blast of urgency “Good Girl” remind us that these guys were one of the great lost bands of the early 90’s indie gold rush.

And please check Buffalo Tom kingpin Bill Janovitz’s essential blog, which comes complete with hyper-literate rambling and a free to download “cover of the week”.

http://billjanovitz.blogspot.com/

Three Easy Pieces - Buffalo To...

TK #87: Marah – If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry (2005)

This is the most consistently engaging album by Philly’s rock and roll true believers for the obvious reason: It’s their best batch of songs. From the Stonesy crackle of “The Closer” to the elegant imagery of “Walt Whitman Bridge,” the band displays maturity and versatility without sacrificing their trademark calamity. And “The Demon of White Sadness” delivers precisely on its thorny title.

If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry...

TK #88: Drive-By Truckers – Southern Rock Opera (2001)

The album that put these clear-eyed Southern boys on the map, it’s a ferocious and lucid reflection on the complicated heritage handed down to thoughtful men born beneath the Mason-Dixon Line. And by the end of “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” you’ll realize that Bear Bryant, George Wallace and Ronnie VanZant had more in common than you could previously have imagined.

Southern Rock Opera - Drive-By...

TK # 89 - The Shins - Oh, Inverted World (2001)

You gotta hear this one song. It'll change your life, I swear.

Oh, Inverted World - The Shins

TK #90: Spoon – Girls Can Tell (2001)

Spoon opened the decade by maturing from alt-rock also-rans to indie superheroes, and Britt Daniel emerged as a songwriter with few peers. With drummer Jim Eno providing a swinging backbeat, Daniel uses warmth and space as much as guitars and piano to sculpt ideas into songs. And on “The Fitted Shirt,” he fondly recalls his dad’s wardrobe over a low-key Led Zep riff.

Girls Can Tell - Spoon

TK # 91 - Romantica - America (2007)

Miss the Jayhawks? Think Gram Parsons could do no wrong? Long for a touch of pre-migraine Wilco? Then belly up to the bar for a taste of Romantica, led by Irish immigrant Ben Kyle and featuring moody, lilting Irish-American tales sweetened by the moving pedal steel of Eric Heywood. Album standout "The National Side"imagines Ryan Adams fronting Calexico for a lament of dashed dreams and hopeful schemes. Lovely.

Romantica - "The National Side"

TK # 92 - The Libertines - Up The Bracket (2002)

More famous for their in-fighting, myriad addictions and supermodel girlfriends, The Libertines also found time to make a couple of slam-bang rock records. Their debut, Up The Bracket, is a sloppy, exhilarating mess of shaggy power pop, arms together “lad” ballads and mod rock. A Faces Oasis.

Up The Bracket - The Libertine...

TK #93: Crooked Fingers – Dignity and Shame (2005)

After crafting one of the last decade’s best songs (Archers of Loaf’s “Web in Front” from 1994), Eric Bachmann scrapped his band and created one of this decade’s best, “Call to Love” under his new nom de rock, Crooked Fingers. The sparkling songs are cut by a creeping darkness that recalls Lou Reed in places (especially on “Destroyer”), and the title track is a duet for piano and broken heart.

Dignity and Shame - Crooked Fi...

TK #94: Amadou & Mariam – Dimanche a Bamako (2005)

African music accessible to American ears. Mali’s leading exporters of indigenous pop team with Manu Chao to produce songs with layer upon layer of rhythms, guileless guitar, and stacked vocals. Don’t fret that you don’t know the language. You’ll understand the music.

Dimanche a Bamako - Amadou & M...

TK # 95 - A.A. Bondy - American Hearts (2007)

AA Bondy makes music that comes from the “old, weird America”, a term coined by Greil Marcus to describe The Basement Tapes. Bondy, a spiritual kin to the rickety folk rock of The Felice Brothers, picks at the scabs that threaten to bleed the demons and devils that lie just beneath the skin’s surface. His debut, American Hearts, is a ghostly, weary affair that examines faith and despair in equal measures of darkness and redemption.

A.A. Bondy - "Vice Rag"

TK # 96 - Jason Heath & The Greedy Souls - The Vain Horse of Hope (2008)

Mixing a down-on-his-luck everyman’s socially conscious worldview with a sly sense of humor, Jason Heath & the Greedy Souls debut sparkles with the same clean, effortless sound Uncle Tupelo captured on Anodyne, their magnificent swan song. Heath shoots (and scores!) for Petty and Springsteen territory, his sound sweetened with an alt-country stew of fiddle, accordion, standup bass and harmonica. I dare you not to fall in love with Heath’s “Anarchist Girl”.

Jason Heath & The Greedy Souls - "Anarchist Girl"

TK #97: New Pornographers - Mass Romantic (2001)

Not since peanut butter first slammed into chocolate has there been a confectionary collision as satisfying as the head-on smash-up between the spun sugar of Neko Case’s voice and the heavy syrup of Carl Newman’s songs. On this, the band’s first, jagged melodies swarm like fireflies, and none glows brighter than “Letter From An Occupant,” one of the decade’s great indie singles.

Mass Romantic - The New Pornog...