27.) Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way (2006)

Who would have thought at the tail end of the last decade that the Dixie Chicks would go on to become on the most controversial bands in the country? Probably no one, however if all they had going for them was controversy they wouldn't find themselves on this list. That they rode that wave of controversy and challenged themselves to be a better band makes them a story.

Prior to the whole "George Bush fiasco", the Dixie Chicks were a serviceable country group. In fact, their pre "George Bush fiasco" record Home was the best thing they had done up to that point. It was a really good record. Almost great. It wasn't what fans were expecting, but it was certainly something they could understand and digest. It's a nice record and, it just so happens, a record I liked a lot.

I was a Dixie Chicks fan before any of the hoopla. I had dutifully bought their records since Wide Open Spaces (I'm a sucker for good country singers and Natalie Maines is one of the absolute fucking best) and I saw them become something fantastically unfamiliar with Home. They became an honest to goodness no frills country group. I mean home was a bluegrass record for fucks sake. But then Natalie Maines told a crowd in England that she, like so many of us, was embarrassed of the ass we put into office and the Dixie Chicks became something no one would have imagined.

Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks deserve a ton of praise for not backing down from their stance...for not apologizing for feeling the same way as more than half of the country and they should be further lauded for recording a song as incendiary as Taking the Long Way's lead single "Not Ready to Make Nice" - for me the official anthem of the Bush administration. These women were flogged by the right and they justified it by claiming it would have been one thing had Maines said what she said on American soil, but because it was in England it amounted to treason. In a long history of slinging bullshit, that's one of the worst. Please! The Dixie Chicks' lives were threatened and they generally feared they would be attacked. All for practicing their right to say whatever the fuck they want about whoever the fuck they want wherever the fuck they want.

Phew. Anyway. Sorry. This isn't a political discourse, this is about a record. Taking the Long Way is a fantastic record and aside from "Not Ready to Make Nice" it's not that political. It's a great representation of what the Dixie Chicks do best and in turn it's their best record. Let me just say Natalie Maines is the kind of artist who, for me, could sing anything and I'd buy in, that she doesn't rest on these laurels only makes the Dixie Chicks more important in my eyes. Taking the Long Way is at it's best in it's quieter moments especially in "Easy Silence", "Silent House" and "Bitter End". Just beautiful songs all three. Sure, they're heart-on-your-sleeve lyrically, but I like that in my country music. Country music when it's done right, should be music you want to listen to with your family, maybe sing along to a few chorus' and then ultimately break some bottles and put on your shit kickers. Taking the Long Way touches all of these nerves and manages to both stay true to and transcend country at the same time. It's a really great record.

28.) Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (2007)

Here goes - Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is the most fun record about a marriage on the brink of collapsing ever recorded. Has their ever been a greater disconnect between the sounds you're hearing and subject matter ever in pop music? I mean, sure "Timothy" by the Buoys is a pop song about cannibalism and there are some sure-fire pathos in "Common People" among other Pulp favorites - but the pure, gut wrenching agony at the underbelly of Hissing Fauna is actually tragic.

Lead Montreal-er Kevin Barnes and his wife have since reconciled, so there's a happy ending, but getting there was not easy. Having said all that, Hissing Fauna still manages to sound like your at a party in a fun house surrounded by carnies and people in masks clad only in pink and purple. Eschew the lyrics and this record is a back to front dance party, but it's not a dance record. Its a psychedelic rock/pop record of the highest order. In fact, it's one of the best. It rivals the best Flaming Lips records. Of Montreal are operating at that level, at least for me.

Though the theme of the record is difficult at times, Of Montreal refuse to wallow in the pity. When things get tough, fuck it let's dance! No band can make a line like "I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway" as fun as Of Montreal. There are certain records that I'll hear and think "how can someone not like this record?" and Hissing Fauna is one of those records. How can you not enjoy this record? Are you alive? Do you not like Prince either?

Of Montreal sound like aliens. Fun party-time aliens... you know aliens who are nice and just want to drink your Goldschlagerr, eat all your pills and have sex with you. But aliens nonetheless. Hissing Fauna sounds like all of that. And though the record is technically twelve songs long, it's really just one long piece of pop music heaven. It's best to just put it on and hang back, it'll do all the work even if at points it may make you want to cry.

29.) The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

Please don't blame The Shins for Zach Braff's ill advised hyperbole. Here's the deal - The Shins probably won't change your life, unless your an adorably eccentric epileptic in her mid-twenties - but they'll sure as hell make it better.

The Shins' first record, Oh! Inverted World, was a good record. A fine record. A record worthy of faint praise and strategic placement of its songs in films. A nice record. Want to know a secret, though? Apart from the singles, I don't remember it. Chutes Too Narrow, on the other hand, I can recite line for line and lick for lick. It's a record I have consistently gone back to years after its release. I listen to it, in full, a few times a month and on the off chance that I'm going to be driving somewhere, it's a record I always take with me.

This is all about personal preference - there are scores of people, I'm sure, who never got past Oh! Inverted World. That's their choice. Those people, however, are missing out on Chutes Too Narrow, a record that takes all the good parts of O!IW and make them better.

The Shins, by default, are probably the band that made indie rock safe for mainstream tastes. Who cares? Chutes Too Narrow is such a pleasurable listening experience. It's the kind of indie rock record that nerds hear and say "if there was any justice in the world this would be a hit record" and it was and then everybody turned on them. That backlash stuff is stupid.

Anyway, stepping off my high horse for a moment - I love the Shins and their brand of indie pop. It sounds great, it's well done - almost seamless - but it's quite the contrary. It's a complex record both musically and lyrically that masquerades as the most instantly likable record you've ever heard. That's the joy of The Shins - a band destined to feel the pangs of a sophomore slump but who not only avoided it but spit in it's face.

30.) Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker (2000)

I find Ryan Adams is at his best when he's being romantic. I don't mean romantic in the "boy meets girl, boy woos girl" way either. In fact I mean the complete opposite. I mean romantic in terms of absolute misery. In fact one could say Ryan Adams romanticizes the unromantic. There isn't an artist who has made sadness sexier than Ryan Adams and this, his greatest skill, is all over Heartbreaker.

Heartbreaker establishes it's tone very early on, right after the crackerjack opener "To Be Young" in fact. This is going to be a sad record. A record about heartbreak (natch) but also homesickness and that great mid life crisis sticking point - general malaise. It's all very juvenile in some ways and if you weren't that age when it was released, you may find it all a bit gross. But I was and I still can't help but get choked up when I hear "Amy", "Oh My Sweet Carolina" and of course, Adams' greatest moment, "Come Pick Me Up."

The subject matter is rote and passe, but the lyrics aren't. Adams has a way with words and his voice is what really makes the whole thing feel transcendent. It cracks and it's lived in and in those vulnerable moments can be so beautiful. "My Winding Wheel" still breaks my heart everytime I hear it ("Cause I feel just like a map/without a single place to go of interest") and it's general message of "go ahead, find someone better than me, see if I care" just goes to prove that there is very little difference between being 25 and being 15. Ryan Adams knows this better than anybody and with Heartbreaker he made a record full of nostalgia even if you had never heard it before.

Another favorite moment of mine comes in "Oh My Sweet Carolina", a song about Adams missing his southern home of Kentucy while he's living in New York. I've lived in New York my whole life, so I shouldn't get it but when he says "Now up here in the city/It feels like thing's are closing in/the sunset's just my lightbulb burning out" I do. That's his genius. He makes you relate. It's a beautiful moment. And a fucking amazing line.

I love, love, love this record. Still. I can listen to it and it immediately puts me back in my teeny tiny apartment on 63rd street (which had no natural light and therefore led to that "lightbulb" line having so much meaning for me) where I wore Heartbreaker out and would listen to "Come Pick Me Up" on a loop. No matter what becomes of Ryan Adams, and we all know he's become a punchline-in my opinion an undeserved one - he can always hang his hat on having written that song. I still get goose bumps when I hear that opening harmonica bit. "Come Pick Me Up" is proof positive that every man should have his broken like that at least once. If you never feel that pain, that song won't work the way it should. And that's Ryan Adams. Making pain sexy.

31.) Morrissey - You Are the Quarry (2004)

Ol' Mozzer sure has had one helluva decade. Among the typical hero worship he always (and happily) endures, he's managed to launch quite a comeback with regard to his recorded output. Since 2004 Moz has released three great records, a live record, a dvd and countless b-sides which have landed on their very own compilation, not to mention a few great tours and an on-stage collapse. He's had a truly prosperous aughts and the best part about the whole thing is that he has not devolved into parody.

Morrissey's 2000's studio output of You Are the Quarry, Ringleader of the Tormentors and Years of Refusal is the best 1,2,3 punch of his career. I'm not saying they're his best records ever but as far as in a row, they can't be beat (NOTE: This is Morrissey solo I'm talking about). Blame Kill Uncle for getting in between Viva Hate and Your Arsenal/Vauxhall. As it stands You Are the Quarry is the best of the lot. It had been seven years between Maladjusted and You Are the Quarry, so I had no idea what to expect. Now, as someone who worships at the altar of all things Moz, I was excited but also prepared for disappointment.

I wasn't disappointed. No one was. In fact, it was something different altogether. This wasn't a changed Moz, we wouldn't be able to stand it if it was, but it sure as shit seemed like a revitalized one. Quarry turned out to be part one of a trilogy of great records that found Morrissey settling into his role as an elder statesmen of indie rock - but he wouldn't settle in quietly. He's an angry young man on "America is not the World" a sniveling little brat on "The World is Full of Crashing Bores" and his normal petulant self on "How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?".

I understand people hating Morrissey, but I prefer to think those people just don't get him. Most critics hate that he's so "depressed" all the time, but truth is he's not. He's actually really funny and all the depression stuff, at least now, is mostly done with a wink. I sort of buy in whole. I find him endlessly amusing and tend to see the fact that this is the kind of record he's making 25 years later is pretty amazing. And I always feel justified in my unending devotion to Moz when I hear songs like "Irish Blood, English Heart" and "First of the Gang to Die" because they're absolutely perfect songs. And that's something.

Plus, the album covers. Come on, guys!

32.) The White Stripes - Elephant (2003)

Damn, Elephant is a really great record. Elephant signified the moment when the garage rock revival that began in '01 became solidified. Seeing as how none of the other "the" bands would live up to their potential, it fell on the White Stripes to ensure that the whole movement wouldn't end up being a punch line. Elephant did just that.

I remember how excited I was for the release of Elephant. It was akin to my excitement regarding the release of In Utero nearly a decade earlier. There's probably something to that - there's a good possibility that there wasn't a band I had been more excited by than the Stripes since Nirvana. Hmmm. Could be. At any rate, Elephant is quintessential rock 'n roll - steeped in the blues but electrified and plugged in. It's basically a classic rock record. I wondered if Jack White sold his soul to the devil to play guitar like that.

Jack White loves his heroes. He idolizes them and he pays tribute to them all over Elephant - from Robert Johnson to Jimmy Page, Dusty Springfield and Burt Bacharach. The hodgepodge of influences make Elephant an exciting ride. There's something for everybody and it all felt so big. For a band that was cutting their teeth in an indie scene (and they were a two piece!), their sound was so full. They became rock stars on this record and deservedly so. What they were doing wasn't new, but at the time it was fresh. Rock 'n roll, I mean real rock 'n roll, had dipped out of the mainstream but Elephant made it sexy again.

Since Elephant Jack White has become a ubiquitous force not just in rock music, but in the zeitgeist itself. He's everywhere. He has a million bands, he's been in movies and I'm not sure any of that would have happened had Elephant not been so damn good. I'd have to point to Jack as being the musician that most defined this decade for me - with Jay-Z a close second. He never took a break and every record he's been involved in, from his work with Loretta Lynn down through The Dead Weather and the Racontours, has had something interesting in it. As for the White Stripes - they've been consistently good since Elephant. Maybe not as top to bottom perfect on record, but still damn good and incredibly important. I know the legacy doesn't start with Elephant, but it was firmly planted by it.

33.) The Avalanches - Since I Left You (2000)

Let me tell you a little bit about the person I was when The Avalanches released Since I Left You in 2000 - I was the kind of person who would have never, ever sought out The Avalanches Since I Left You. Never. I was an indie kid and I didn't really know the first thing about what could only be described by me at the time as dance music.

I was assigned to review Since I Left You by my college paper and I decided to approach it with an open mind. I didn't not like this type of music, I just didn't know it. Needless to say it didn't take much to get me on board. In fact, anyone who hears Since I Left You, for the most part, loves it. It's impossible not to love.

It plays like the greatest mix-tape ever made. The record is stacked with something like 900 samples, which is nuts. Even Girl Talk, who've made two records I like a lot, still can't hold a candle to Since I Left You. Whereas Girl Talk relies on songs you know, the Avalanches fill their record with samples of songs you've never heard. And it's not just songs. There's pieces from old comedy shows, spoken word stuff...horses. Sonically, it's an amazing feat and one that hasn't been matched. It's wonderfully constructed and there are no boring moments to be had. It's a great record to put on at a party and just let it go.

The Avalanches haven't put out a record since Since I Left You was released almost ten years ago. Rumors have been swirling that something's coming up soon but, as expected, there has been difficulty getting the rights to many of the samples. Hopefully by 2010 we'll have another Avalanches to love for the entirety of the next decade.