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SLEATER-KINNEY: The Woods (2005): The Woods wasn’t so much a move in a new direction for Sleater-Kinney as it was a return to the initial punk fire that ignited their first self-titled release. But there is no denying that The Woods unleashed a far bigger sound from the trio that evokes more Monster Magnet than Joey Ramone. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein’s guitars growl and distort like never before, giving Janet Weiss’ pummeling beats and Tucker’s warbling yell something to compete with. Opener “The Fox” is downright punishing, but it's the eleven minute “Let’s Call It Love” where the baby is prophetically thrown out with the bath water in an undulating and unrelenting jam. What initially signaled something new, with nothing to lose, should have been the writing on the wall for the band’s dissolution and perpetual “hiatus.” Rock and roll has always been about rebellion, and the best bands are able to channel the opposition and frustration of social convention. So when Tucker points out the superficial motivations of bands and asks, “Where’s the ‘fuck you’?” on “Entertain,” The Woods answers with conviction—here it is. Kathie Smith




OKKERVIL RIVER: Black Sheep Boy (2005): Might as well consider this a vote for three consecutive Okkervil River records: 2005's Black Sheep Boy, 2007's The Stage Names, and the latter's 2008 sister-record, The Stand-Ins (the most underrated of the bunch). Will Sheff remains one of the most consistently compelling songwriters of his generation, delivering knotty, usually dark folk-rock, laden with disarming fierceness. Consider Black Sheep Boy standout "For Real," which hums with intensity, calls for blood and finds Sheff shouting with throat-wrenching conviction, "You can't hide." Throughout Black Sheep Boy in particular, Sheff swings like a pendulum between combustible rockers and quietly strummed, beautifully sung ballads like "In a Radio Song." In some sense, Sheff inherited the mantle of Jeff Mangum, having released his first single with Okkervil just a year after the last Neutral Milk Hotel album. Both songwriters have a penchant for raw-nerve narratives, and both harness a diverse ensemble to score those narratives. (You can hear Mangum's influence in various ways on Black Sheep Boy: the horns that rest in the margins of "A King and A Queen," Sheff's emphatic delivery on "For Real" and the propulsive "Black.") But in the case of a song like "A Glow," Black Sheep Boy's gorgeous finale, Sheff proves the diversity of his own identity, its dissonant guitar cords and tear-jerking strings acting as a perfect summation of the record's underlying feeling: longing. Black Sheep Boy may not even be my favorite Okkervil album (I've got a fierce love-affair going with the "Sloop John B" aping The Stage Names, this week), but together with its eight-song Appendix (released one year later), this is still the band's most cohesive and consistent front-to-back LP to date. SCM




THE WRENS: Meadowlands (2003): By the time Meadowlands was released in 2003, The Wrens had been together for some time with little output to show for it. Label troubles plagued the group, putting the band into limbo soon after the release of their second effort, Secaucus, in 1996, and halting any further progress for a full seven years. But each member continued to write as the band drifted in and out of being, and eventually the quartet was able to record and release their third, last (to date, anyway) and most acclaimed effort. That the Wrens survived in the first place is amazing, but that they managed to craft such a relevant, fascinating and moving album is nearly unbelievable. The album marks a notable departure from the group’s previously energetic rock sound, trading in bouncy pop guitar riffs and catchy choruses for a softer, less edgy approach. There are definitely more than just traces of their former style in rock songs like “Happy” and “Faster Gun,” but over the course of 15 tracks there’s a decidedly more world-weary, introspective feel to the music. Interestingly enough, the songs are often best when the Wrens play against their strengths, showing their versatility with everything from weightless ballads (“Thirteen Grand”) to melodic folk-rock tunes (“Ex-Girl Collection”). Meadowlands is probably most easily appreciated by fans of the band’s earlier work, but no matter your experience, it’s not difficult to hear the many reasons why this record deserves mention here. CN




DIRTY PROJECTORS: Bitte Orca (2008): Bitte Orca represents a realization of potential. As chronicled in a series of eccentric full-lengths, the odd EP, and one truly confounding reproduction (from memory) of Black Flag's punk-rock landmark Damaged (2007's Rise Above), restless prodigy and lead Projector David Longstreth has delivered inconsistently brilliant collections with just as inconsistent a line-up of musicians. It's always been apparent that his band, no matter what the incarnation, is a formidable indie-rock act. But the material they churn out—wildly eclectic and often maddening compositions, coupled with Longstreth's otherworldly falsetto—is often easier to admire than love. Shards of Longstreth's crystalline art-pop tend to find themselves sandwiched between lesser experiments; not so with Bitte Orca, a collection of nine songs that are each just about as good as anything the band has ever done. This isn't just a great album, it's some kind of lightning-in-a-bottle miracle: Longstreth channels his tendency toward going-nowhere diversions into one song, "The Bride," the only weak moment in this whole set. No other missteps occur in the 41-minute span between the riverb’d-out guitar chime of opener "Cannibal Resource" and the fading synths of percussive stunner "Fluorescent Half-Dome." There were two of these rock-solid art-rock albums in 2009—hint: the other was by a collective of animals—and I'm of the mind that this one is actually more accessible, musically, than the other. Just get over Longstreth's damn voice already. SCM




BOARDS OF CANADA: Geogaddi (2002): Arriving four long years after their genre-solidifying classic, Music Has the Right to Children, Boards of Canada's sinister Geogaddi presented the mysterious Scottish duo as soothsayers of the impending apocalypse. The album's black magic and spirit-realm connotations lend a pervasive sense of dread to the proceedings (and the liberal use of backmasking effects results in a refracted companion album when played backwards, which I wouldn’t recommend for the superstitious or faint of heart). But what endures most vividly, despite the occult connotations, is the group's meticulously layered beat programming and their unparalleled sense of nostalgic wonderment. Geogaddi is the sound of the world halting on its axis, the heavens raining down amidst the most beautifully destructive sound field electronic music has ever seen. JC




FIONA APPLE: Extraordinary Machine [Brion Version] (2005): It's possible to love Fiona Apple just because she sleeps on a dog bed and because she, at one point, had the longest album title in the world. The fact that she's also an incredibly talented singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist is a nice bonus. After several meltdowns, most notably her tirade against mainstream media during the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards and her on-stage breakdown in March of 2000, it seemed like Apple might fade into the ether of musical obscurity. However, unbeknownst to most, the artist teamed with musician/producer Jon Brion to work on her then-untitled album, way back in early 2002. The result of those sessions was Extraordinary Machine: Take 1, a highly idiosyncratic creation. The melodies are raw, Apple’s voice is gravelly, and the work as a whole surpasses anything she's released. Unfortunately, Apple's record label deemed the album "unmarketable," and she was compelled to re-record the tracks with Mike Elizondo, a more mainstream producer. It’s only by pure chance that Brion's Extraordinary Machine was leaked in its entirety before the proper album’s official release, and listeners were presented the opportunity to compare the two versions. One can only hope that Apple will release both records in one package at some point down the road; Brion’s Extraordinary Machine is dark, mysterious, and is the most challenging work of Apple’s career. The official version is…just ok. MK




THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: Sunset Tree (2005): The Mountain Goats’ spectacularly prolific John Darnielle may have called his finest album The Sunset Tree, but it might just as appropriately have borne a phrase like For the Drunken, Angry Bastard Who Was My Stepfather on its cover. That's exactly to whom Darnielle dedicates this extremely personal record, which details a troubled childhood in an abusive home and references his guardian by name in the liner notes as the reason the album was “made possible.” The majority of the tunes on The Sunset Tree deal intensely with this tempestuous period of Darnielle’s life, but though there’s certainly a lot of venom coursing through songs like “Lion’s Teeth” and “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod,” the album rarely comes across as pure bitterness or hatred. Instead, it deals with a range of ugly incidents and emotions in a complex and mature manner, and the results are wholly engrossing. The record also makes more use of studio production than previous Mountain Goats recording, resulting in a warmer, more polished sound. A familiar base of acoustic guitar and vocals continues to characterize Darnielle’s aesthetic, but the sinister strings of “Dilaudid” and the arpeggio piano lines on “Dance Music” show him moving away from the decidedly lo-fi approach of previous albums. Like any Mountain Goats record, the lyricism is what shines brightest, and The Sunset Tree contains many of Darnielle’s finest songs, perhaps due to the reflective, introspective nature of the material. In many respects this record is a modest one, but it's one of the finest and most powerful examples of pure songwriting of the past ten years. CN




BATTLES: Mirrored (2007): Post-rock taken to its logical end. Math-rock taken to its most cerebral and extreme conclusion. Minimalism refracted through a modern landscape of hardcore maximalism, with a lead single as dementedly awesome and ridiculously anthemic as any genre could ever hope to spawn. It's all filtered through a living, breathing man-machine supergroup—consisting of Tyondai Braxton, Don Caballero’s Ian Williams, Lynx’s Dave Konopka, and, most crucially, Helmet’s unflinching percussionist John Stanier—who together have rendered critical opinion of the resulting music nothing more than intimidated hyperbole. Nevertheless, this is Battles and this is their masterwork: Mirrored, the most (un)dance-able, (un)funky, (un)godly slab of art-rock this decade has produced. Tread lightly, it feeds on the weak. JC




ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009): To call Merriweather Post Pavilion a refinement of the Animal Collective sound would be an understatement: the serrated edges that prodded ears on 2007's Strawberry Jam have been smoothed into an oceanic swirl of psychedelic watercolors. To call this a crossover bid would be a mistake: Animal Collective—a trio once again—have been moving in this direction for years. Listen closely; it’s there in the sound-collage nightmares of Here Comes the Indian, in the wide-eyed wonderment of pop breakthrough Sung Tongs, and most noticeably in the communal picnic-haze of Feels. Sure, they’ve jettisoned the acoustics and reigned in the vocal acrobatics, but as time continues to pass (a whole year now), we can more clearly see this as the purposeful comedown record that it is. And after a decade of campfire-lit tribal dances and hurtling anti-pop confections, Merriweather’s peacefully rippling surfaces feel more like a well-earned gift than any sort of concession. Hiding amidst instantly accessible fare like “My Girls” and “Brothersport” are infinitely more rewarding tracks, such as the tender “Bluish” and the spring-loaded “Lion In a Coma.” Each interlocking piece is intrinsically linked to the whole, and Animal Collective have nicely concluded the decade with an album of cohesion and supreme confidence, evidencing a total mastery of their medium. The scariest part is that this may not even be their best record. JC




FLEET FOXES: Fleet Foxes (2008): In a day and age where there's very little to get truly excited about, at least musically, Fleet Foxes emerged fully formed, as if from another time altogether, their creaking sound feeling ancient in a time of over compressed, large-sounding rock records. Listening to their debut EP, Sun Giant, felt like eavesdropping on a private musical world, one in which Appalachian folk music runs in stride with gospel hymnals and a capella harmonies. When their debut full length arrived just months later, it was hard to not be fully impressed by this band's out-of-time sensibilities and heavenly voices. And those voices are the binding characteristic and driving force behind the Fleet Foxes sound, as integral to their aesthetic as the wistful instrumentation. Their uniqueness was even more pronounced in a year that saw the release of Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket's consciously experimental failure of an album. Fleet Foxes was the record My Morning Jacket should have made, had their ambition been less purposefully forced. Sometimes it pays to hold back and resign oneself to quiet ruminations. JC




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