Best Albums of the Year: 15-11

15. The Decemberists - Picaresque
I would have never given the Decemberists the time of day had Austin not played them continuously senior year and performed "Eli, the Barrowboy" with Beth and left everyone speechless. English folk songs by exceedingly literate Oregon white guys? Really? I’m all for being touched on a metaphysical level, but I studied for 8 hours a day, and all that was playing was that LCD “Beat Connection”. My snobbery obscured the fact that this album took you on pirate expeditions with the Spanish. And then I was sold. But it's the obscene number of touching ballads that pushes this excellent album over the top. "The Engine Driver", "The Bagman's Gambit", "From My Own True Love (Lost At Sea)", and the aforementioned "Eli, The Barrowboy" rank as perfect late night postcards to nights spent trying for so much more.

14. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have it so Much Better
Basically just a concept album about not fucking up your sophomore album, I'm not sure if any band worked as hard as the Franz did on this album. Remarkably complex, the intros give way to completely different songs before popping back up as the bridge. Furious high-hat drumming patterns rampage before slowing to Led Zepplin stomps. "The Fallen" alone morphs three or four times before lead singer Alex Kapranos tries to spit out every line he can possibly think of. There are even three good acoustic songs. Still it's the manic energy of "Do You Want To" and all that riled up sexual energy that shows the Franz Ferdinand will always occupy the sex-starved-lust-obsessed place in most of our hearts.

13. M.I.A. - Arular
All of the implied political messages don't mean shit when you're drinking free stella from a plastic cup in the middle of central park dancing for two solid hours with your two roommates and four beautiful Spaniards who just bought the beer with everyone dancing because Mathangi Arulpragasam is fucking getting down in her tight spandex and an over-sized fluorescent colored shirt looking liked she watched I love the 80's from a Sri Lankan bunker and the whole crowd chants along to Galang "yahhh yahhh heyyyyyyyyy" and you think it couldn't get any better and then you look behind you who is sitting behind you watching sex and violence unfold in front of your eyes on this Manhattan summer day? Salman Rushdie. Fucking cool guy. Me dancing for two hours? Well, I mean I guess I didn't dance the whole time, wait, hold on, "yahhh yahhh heyyyyyyyyy". Sorry, what?


12. Gorillaz - Demon Days
Where their debut drifted seemingly for whatever idea happened to be laid out on the digital table, this one looks like the cartoons were actually present at committee meetings and the large black dude got pissed that he hadn’t rapped enough, and the gnarly english looking guy said “na, ya no this is my band”, and the black dude said “fuck that I’m going to clobber your fucking head”. And so the other two guys just decided that they should write “Dare” and dance the contest off. The english dude lost because his fucking shoes were untied. But the two made up and made "Feel Good, Inc" and lo the best song of the year was made.

11. Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights
If Adams is a pastiche artist then this is by far his most convincing facade. Liberated by the need to actually worry about crafting a hit single, this album just rumbles through the cliched country characters Ryan secretly wants to be if he'd ever move out of the East Village. And where Cold Roses could bore you to death if actually tried to listen to the whole thing, this one keeps it to a manageable one album with more than half of the songs worth an extra spin. "The End" is the most moving song he's made since the Suicide Handbook. "Hard Way to Fall" sees him starry-eyed for the first time since, well...Gold. But it's the completely over the top "My Heart is Broken" with its Nashville Strings and completely ridiculous lyrics that set my southern Indiana heart aglow and reminded me why I ever gave a fuck about Adams in the first place. And why I still look for some sort of salvation to my confused rural upbringing.