5. Radiohead - In Rainbows

How come I end up where I started? To say Radiohead was a band with something to say would be to make a fine understatement. These five fine men were obsessed with it. They fought the world. They planted their standard in the ground and lashed out against consumerism. Against alienation, against coldness. They stood for moving mountains, they stood for pushing things forward. They raised flag against the news, against the false sense of order, against the yuppies networking. Against everything that is broken. Their metaphors grew with their scope, their conviction. They crafted car crashes, sinking ships, ice ages. Aliens hoping to get out, star crossed lovers climbing out the window. Math equations that didn't add up. They predicted the apocalypse.

And the sun rose. And the sun set. And its on again, off again. And years passed. And they're still here. And every day they get out of bed and take a crap and hope to find something to eat. They did not understand what it is they did wrong. And the world is still the world. Ten years after the car crash and begging to be pulled out alive. Ten years with computers and coldness and #1 records and legions of hipster devotees and the world was still the world. Despite everything they had to say. How come I end up where I started?

And I guess they're stuck. And so what is there big to say anymore? How come they ended up where they started? The same. They don't know what to say anymore. They don't know if there was anything to say in the first place. This goes around, it's on again, off again. In Rainbows is simple. In rainbows is circular, it begs for climax, for crescendo, and it doesn't come, because as far as Radiohead can tell - it just doesn't come. So fuck it. So give it away for free. So they look at their lives and they look at their wives and girlfriends and say, look, the world hasn't changed, my life hasn't changed from it. But you can change my life. You're all I need. You're all I need. They wrote love songs because love had more to say than car crashes. Because your eyes move me. Because I do not want to be your friend, I JUST WANT TO BE your lover. And thats the truth of the matter. Thats more true than any grandiose metaphor. Because the beat just goes round and round, so you might as well come on and let it out. Because they thought they had it in them, but no. They're stuck. We're stuck. I am stuck. And there's no real reason.

-Stuart

6. The National - Boxer

It’s extraordinarily rare to hear a melancholy album that can be described as “likable”. In doing so The National made Boxer one of the defining albums of the decade and created something that’s close to impossible to argue with.

Many have compared Matt Berringer to Ian Curtis, vocally, and the same have made the observation that the album’s ethos is similar to that of many in the drearier strand of college-rock from the ‘80s. But what these distinctions miss is that Boxer is an album that could not have been made in any other decade. It wouldn’t have made sense in any other context. Isolation, now more than it’s ever been, is as much of a cultural staple as Mom and apple pie, and while many artists and albums have touched on this, none of them have so thoroughly committed themselves to the idea as The National.

Certainly, the key is less in the delivery than in the engine that runs the music itself. James Murphy and Arcade Fire have built their careers trying to make loneliness seem fashionable. The main difference is that with The National, that suave, pleading heartbreak isn’t the point, but merely a side effect. Berringer never takes his eye off the ball. He presents these feelings as being sexy and cool not because they are, but because as long as they’re going to be around anyway they might as well sound nice. It makes for a crushing dichotomy: What you hear on Boxer are fountains of rage and confusion being explained but never quite understood, controlled but never comforted. As quiet as it may be, it proves to be the perfect album to lose one’s mind to.

None of these thematic elements would amount to anything if the music itself sounded like garbage. Without question, half of this album’s success lies in the orchestration and drums. There’s no grandeur to the backing orchestra-it is there simply because the music could not be communicated any other way. Likewise, Brian Devendorf’s drumming is commanding but never overblown, only taking center stage when it’s necessary for the music. For all its moving parts, Boxer is an album of musical utilitarianism. It is dark and it is lush, but less as an expression of emotion and more as a statement of fact.

Boxer, then, is the Great American Tragedy for the modern age. It is a cocktail party where everyone is carrying a loaded gun, a series of paradoxes raised as questions but never answered, leaving you to wonder why the more you look at your problems the less you understand them and how trust can really be possible if you never really know anyone, ever. These canyons between us exist, and The National makes no pretenses about trying to build bridges between them. But they might stop you before you fall in.

-CJ

7. Electric Wizard - Dopethone

In ways the front cover of Electric Wizard's third album gives exactly the correct impression of it's continents. Black and white, loosely rendered, a devil smoking from a bong. The cover does not beat around the bush, it's blunt, in every scene of the word. The music found within delivers on all the promises. Electric Wizard craft some of the heaviest, swirling dark doom metal ever created, and they focus themselves mostly on the subjects of death, destruction, and heavy heavy pot smoking. If there was ever an album to get baked and destroyed to, this is it.

On the other hand there is something about this album that almost makes you want to scrap the cover all together. Call it a red herring. As every repeating riff makes you see red you think the cover should have been darker. As Jus Oborn's voice distorts further and further into violence you think the whole cover should have been covered in black, it should have been much much angrier.

And there in lies what must be the miracle of Dopethrone - it is full of contradictions that are simultaneously true. It is a fun album and it is a violently powerful album. It is an album with an incredibly singular sound, yet it is instantly accessible. It's an album to bang your head along with but it will also drown you.

Perhaps I just love it so much because it borders on so many other things that peak my interest. It's the most passionately angry thing around without devolving into noise, and by god it must be the most destructively repetitive thing this side of the minimal spectrum. Perhaps its the sound, so unique and direct that even friends of mine who seek only abstract beauty demand right away to know who made these sounds tearing up my speakers. But I don't suspect that's it. I think it's because - contrary to most metal music where I'm just in it for the fun, the epicness - when Jus Oborn shouts "I. Don't Care. The World. Means Nothing." my god I believe him. I feel every ounce of his words. This is not a game for these people, it's not fun. And through everything else that has to be why this album has such a hold on Everyone who hears it.

It makes you want to tear the world down.

-Stuart

8. Wolf Parade - Apologies to Queen Mary

Although the bands that spawned from the Canadian indie explosion of the early 2000’s didn’t intentionally set their focus on how quirky or odd their overall sound turned out, it ended up being one of the trademarks of the movement. That being said, Wolf Parade stood out because of their ability to combine their own eccentricity with actual substance. Loosely overdriven guitar and synth lines, chugging rhythms, and passionate yet hardened vocal deliveries yield an aural and thematic sound rooted deeply in reality. Completely relevant to the observation and failures of both personal and social struggles, Apologies contains nothing ethereal or otherworldly to diminish the directness and purity of Wolf Parades delivery. In conjunction, their instrumentation and timbre is formulated around incredible pop songwriting that generates another level of depth along with the more immediately noticeable stylistic flairs.

Every song on this album is substantial contribution to the album as a whole, and every song has enough diversity to really capture the interest of the listener. ‘You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son’ opens the album, instantly showcases the style that Wolf Parade is known for: a thumping rhythmic pattern starts the song off, complemented by carnivalistic piano playing after a few measures. Vocals that recall some twisted variation of the yodel, and the snarls of a drunken man, sound out in perfect harmony. Eventually, dirty guitar chords permeate the mix, which eventually bursts into noise and segues into the next song seamlessly. Already, the obvious trademarks to their distinctive sound display themselves within the first few minutes.

The distinction between Wolf Parade and other odd & quirky indie bands is not only their ability to showcase such a style but to fortify it with genuinely strong base songwriting (songs that could still display a formidable structure even when played with just an acoustic guitar or piano), and thematically consistent lyrical content, despite there being two lyricists. Because of their fundamentally solid songwriting, the songs manage to be incredibly direct and cohesive despite the frenzied nature of their sound.

The feelings are dark, and the deliveries imply impassioned individuals on the brink of admitting defeat- but Krug and Boeckner march forward regardless, not because there is hope, but because there just might be something worth marching forward for. In ‘Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts’, Krug belts the lines ‘So I got a plan / It's the best that I can do / Now we'll say it's in God's hands / But God doesn't always have the best goddamn plans, does he?’, only to be followed by ‘I’ll Believe in Anything’ where Krugs unrelenting delivery once again exemplifies a lack of control with passionate desperation, despite understanding the limitations of his own actions. ‘This Heart’s on Fire’, ends the album, appropriately titled and delivered.

The only comparison I’d like to make to another band is to Modest Mouse, and only a philosophical one at that: Apologies contains a practically unrivaled directness, unhinged and borderline-maniacal vocal delivery, songs that are incredible on their own yet enhanced by the order the album, and unmistakable and distinctive instrumentation. Sound wise, despite Isaac Brock producing most of the album, they are dissimilar- Wolf Parade sounds like Wolf Parade, and their madness and genius are their own. Disregard comparisons to Wolf Parades contemporaries such as The Arcade Fire, or Frog Eyes. Dynamic, brutal, passionate and dark, Apologies to the Queen Mary takes baroque pop and morphs it into their own incredibly eloquent yet crazed form.

-Adrian

9. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

It's not lost on many people that the first line of Arctic Monkeys' first album begins "Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment" and though of course the song goes on to describe the projected outlook for a crazy evening - ending up with you drunk texting fluid love poetry to an unwitting and unreceptive girl - the line has also always stood for Arctic Monkeys' view on what had happened to them thus far. You see by January of 2006 Arctic Monkeys' were the biggest band in England.

A bit odd for a band writing tales about a normal guy, drunk, alone in a bar at 3 0'clock, professing his love via the most impersonal and desolate of mediums? They thought so too. And with serving up the quickest selling debut in English history and being called by more than one source the next Beatles, Alex Turner and co found themselves increasingly uncomfortable.

You see, Arctic Monkeys' main premise is that they hate people. They hate people. They hate your lies and your scorn, your cynicism and your callousness, your advanced capacity for flat out faking. They hate you to levels that would normally stick them in with Elliott Smith level recluses, Minor Threat level moralists, or even Nirvana level violent outcasts - and yet. And yet Alex Turner didn't want to have to live those lifestyles, alone in his room. People are awful, he thinks, this is not going to change. This is not going to change. Not with all the angry bedroom sitting I could ever do. So I might as well get drunk, I might as well go out and dance, you know, fuck all this shit I intend to get laid.

Most of Whatever People Say I Am is spent in the back of clubs, angry at the rubbish band, furious at the large white wine drinking crowd pretending this band is the peak of art, worried blind about the girl he's trying to pull and the quantity of fluid he's consumed and WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE PUT ON SOMETHING WITH A DESCENT FUCKING BEAT SO WE CAN DANCE?

Surly this did a lot for a fifteen year-old newly faced with an unfair and unconcerned social system. It became my bible. I was angry. Surly it becomes even more relevant as I get older, as I emerge into a world of clubs and concert halls and alcohol. As my libido slowly begins to override my principals. I am angry. At fourteen Arctic Monkeys asked for instruments for their birthdays, five years before. At nineteen, five years later, Arctic Monkeys were the biggest band in England. So at fourteen me and my friends asked for instruments for our birthdays, at nineteen we have no money, with every ounce in our bodies dedicated to music. All Arctic Monkeys to blame and thank.

In January of 2006 England exploded, heralding a new age of anger and guitars that never actually came about. Alex Turner always looked incredibly off put when on stage. He could not believe the amount of people shouting lyrics he wrote. They stood and played their instruments and did not put on a show. Don't believe they hype, they seemed to say. Whatever people think I am, that's what I'm not.

-Stuart

10. Battles - Mirrored

A quirky pop sensibility, electronic experimentation, and brainy math rock all collide in unique and interesting ways in this, Battles’ first full-length record. Which is about what’d you expect of a supergroup made up of personnel from Don Caballero, Helmet and Lynx loosely fronted by an avante-garde electronic composer from Boston, but from that starting point shit just goes wild—outside of John Stanier’s trademark metronomic precision behind the drumkit and Tyondai Braxton’s oddly endearing Chipmunks-on-acid vox, it’s almost impossible to discern who is playing what. Guitars sound like keyboards, keyboards sound like guitars, samples pop in and out of the mix and all of them loop and pulse and bounce within the framework of a bizarre yet muscular robot funk that recalls King Crimson and Talking Heads filtered through Kraftwerk and modern IDM.

The chirpy, winding instrumentation of the first track “Race: In” serves as a nice intro before laying into the epic stomp of “Atlas,” an instant anthem that is as infectious as it weird with a bizarre Tyondai warble for a chorus (“Sing this hook”) and Stanier setting up the gradually evolving groove that drives the whole machine, the whole band tight as a fist. After the short “Ddiamondd” follows “Tonto,” a track that is as guarded and reflective as “Altas” was bouncy—a spiraling electronic melody intercut with dissonant yet spare guitar and a seemingly static, robotic swing that again mutates and shifts underfoot. As it slowly stretches out, ending on one sustained note fading into silence after seven minutes you’d wish it last longer so you could figure out its sublime intricacies.

And the palette only gets more varied from there. “Leyendecker” features more electronic chortling over a somewhat more ominous soundscape of moody bass and beefy industrial drums, worlds away from the giddy clockwork of “Rainbow” (which oddly features the only vocals on the album that don’t sound filtered); the atmospheric oddity of “Bad Trails” that sounds like Brian Eno circa-Another Green World stepped into the studio for a little while; and the jumpy math rock mania of “Tij.”

Regardless of the labels you slap on Battles, this is some of the most vivid and engaging rock you will hear in the ‘00s, the sound of innovation with a sense of fun and none of the clueless SRS BUSINESS vibe that grounds most things deemed “progressive.” And you can even dance to it. Sorta. That alone makes it worth more than a stack of Mars Volta albums.

-Steven

Drafting your Lineup.

Being "one of those finicky assholes who spends a lot of time and money on headphones," I've spent a lot of time and money on headphones over the past couple of years. I've collected my fair share of cans, swapped them out and had them stolen from me, and I've finally and definitively selected what I believe to be the best headphones in the "Portable" "Midsize" and "Fullsize" headphone classes; it's a given, of course, that every headphone aficionado should own at least one pair of cans in each class. Here are my three choices, for you.

In the Portable Class:

Apple Earbuds. That's right. I don't care that you don't have an Apple MP3 player, you should still own these earbuds; here's why: for one thing, I don't want to hear your shit about Bose in-ear headphones and their ilk / price-class. Fuck you. You spent too much on them. Right now, you can pick up a pair of Apple's buds for like five bucks on eBay. Let's consider the basics here: in my experience, these things have a life span of about 8 months given just the basic amount of care. I've got a pair now that's sounded fine for over a year, and they've taken a beating. I've spent more than 5 bucks on earbuds that stopped working within a month, and it makes me mad every time I think about it.

It's not just the price and disposability that makes Apple Earbuds pretty awesome though, it's also the sound quality. Yeah, I said it. The sound quality. No, they don't sound "good," but if you want to find buds that match Apple's in terms of sound quality, you're going to be spending $20+ and if you're spending $20+ on pair of portable headphones, smh, you're making your biggest mistake. Portable headphones are good for one thing: short walks with an MP3 player, and, newsflash: MP3 players sound like shit. They don't drive headphones the way they're meant to be driven, and don't deserve or need anything better than Apple earbuds. If you're looking for a pair of nice sounding headphones for something like the library or an airplane, you shouldn't be looking for earbuds anyway. If you care about how your music sounds then don't spend stupid amounts of cash on speakers that are smaller than your pinky, buy the Apple buds for short walks, and invest in some mid-size cans for chilling in public places.

Lastly, there's the whole "style" thing. I know, this isn't important, it's the music that counts, blah blah blah. But it should be noted that stylistically, these things do one thing right, and it's just about the only thing that earbuds SHOULD do right. They stay out of the way. They're small, white, and so ubiquitous that most of the time I don't even notice people wearing them. The same can't be said for those hideously bulky "Skull Candy" buds that probably cost you more and definitely sound worse.

So here's what I'm saying to you: Apple's earbuds are dirt cheap and they're better than most of the earbuds out there that are less than $20. Hell, they're better than most buds in the <$40 range. So do yourself a favor, and make your portable cans Apple earbuds.

In the Midsize Class:

I think the concept of Midsize headphones is lost on a lot of people, which is a shame, because they're key players in my opinion. Often looked down upon as "earbuds for people who care too much," which is, er, sort of the true, Midsize cans actually excel in a lot of areas that that reasonably priced earbuds don't touch, like sound quality for example. Midsizers do, however, come with their share of limitations: for one thing, they're bigger than Portable cans. Is that obvious? Maybe not: they're actually relatively small, which might give your average mogul the impression that they're good for, oh say, short walks with an mp3 player. Which they're not. I have a pair of Koss Porta Pros which run for about thirty bucks, and I can't stand carrying them around with me in my pocket or around my neck. And yet, I never leave them behind for plane-rides, trips to the library, and other occasions which allow for extended "chilling," which, as we all know, is best served with good music. The reason? I don't want to actually listen to music on earbuds, and when portability isn't a factor, I'll opt for something bigger and better. And the Porta Pros are fantastic by the way.

In terms of comfort, it doesn't get a whole lot better- the Sennheiser PX 100s are actually just a tad bit more comfy, but they're thirty dollars more... and feel about five dollars better. In terms of sound quality, the Porta Pros blow the Senns away; don't take my word for it, check them out online, they're unanimously loved for a good reason. I don't think much more needs to be said for Midrange cans. If you're going in for a pair, and you should, go in for the Koss Porta Pros, with their hilariously dorky 80s aesthetic, nice, round bass, shockingly open-sounding L/R soundstage, and general unreasonable value.

In the Fullsize Class:

Here we have the Audio-Technica M50s. I just picked up a pair of these babys and I'm still working on burning them in, but after a good 10 hours of listening, I can already say that they're leaps and bounds better than the Sennheiser HD280s which were my go to cans for mixing and at-home listening... before they were stolen out of my bag on the subway. So there's a great example of why you should have three pairs of cans: if you get stuck with a single, expensive pair of headphones, you just might try and bring them along, and then they just might get stolen. Or broken. And then you just might cry yourself to sleep (not that I cried myself to sleep after I lost my 280s or anything.)

Good fullsize cans are useful for two things: studio work, and listening to music at home. Generally, they're going to be responsive enough that you'll be able to distinguish between high and low bitrate music, so they're no good mated with an MP3 player, unless you keep a small collection of high bitrate music on your mp3 player... you weirdo. Another factor that has to be taken into consideration when looking for Fullsize cans is amplification- some headphones, like the above-mentioned M50s and Grado's selection sound fine with on-board amplification from iPods and computers, but some cans with higher impedance require an external headphone amp, a nice soundcard or a good receiver to really shine. Bored yet? My point is, Fullsize cans are best left at home, where they sound the best, stay out of your way, and probably wont get messed up or stolen.

I've tested the M50s against my old Sennheiser HD280s, a pair of Senn HD595s, and AKG K-240s, and the M50s are clear winners- they've got a cleaner bass and treble response, smoother mids, they're more comfortable, and their frequency response is just flat-out flatter. I've yet to find a pair of Fullsize cans I like better, but then, I work in the >$200 price range... still, I can't imagine a pair of phones sounding $100 better. Feel free to let me know if you're interested in more A/B tests.

In Conclusion:

If you're here on this site, reading this, you really ought to have three pairs of headphones. My choices? The Apple Earbud, the Koss Porta Pro, and the ATH-M50. I strongly recommend the first two, but remember, there are TONS of great fullsize cans out there, I just prefer the M50s. Regardless of which headphones suit you, make sure that you've got a solid lineup that'll keep you groovin' regardless of where you are and what you're doin'.

-Parker