TK #50: The Hold Steady – Stay Positive (2008)

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. When Stay Positive came out, I wrote a lot of words comparing the arc of Craig Finn and company to that of Bruce Springsteen, and I stand by every one of them. Here’s The Hold Steady’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, an album about the complications of growing up, bolstered by hope, and powered by the relentless belief that rock and roll is a bridge to better things, an idea that sounds naïve only until you hear it come to life.

Stay Positive - The Hold Stead...

TK # 51: Roddy Frame - Surf (2002)

A completely solo affair with a surplus of indelible melodies, Surf features only the acoustic guitar and wounded tenor of the once precocious, teenaged linchpin of Aztec Camera, who burst on the scene in 1983 with the brilliant High Land, Hard Rain. These are late night, love gone wrong songs, and often the pain is self-inflicted. This particular refrain crystallizes the album’s lovelorn mood:

“When I was young the radio played just for me. It saved me,
And now I don’t want anyone who wants me, baby
Tuning out the darkness,
Turning on the dawn,
If life was like songs, I’d surf into the waves,
And in a flash of silver she’d be gone’

Roddy Frame - "Surf"

TK # 52: Linda Thompson - Versatile Heart (2007)

Linda Thompson has kept a spectacularly low profile (3 albums in 25 years) since her high profile personal and musical split with uber-guitarist ex-husband Richard. Versatile Heart is a subtle, austere collection of brusied heart ruminations on the pains of being pure in love, bathed in an acoustic glow that sits somewhere between Olde English folk and Nashville pop. But the stone cold stunner is a solemn live reading of Tom Waits’ “Day After Tomorrow”, a heart-breakingly gorgeous plea from a soldier who wants nothing more than to see his 21st birthday. Goose bumps.

Linda Thompson - "Day After Tomorrow"

Versatile Heart - Linda Thomps...

TK # 53 - Hayes Carll - Trouble In Mind (2008)

For those who believe Steve Earle lost his way after 2000’s Transcendental Blues, you need to check out Hayes Carll’s Trouble in Mind. His world-weary drawl and slyly dry sense of humor give just the right amount of punch to beat-up narratives like “Drunken Poet’s Dream”, “Bad Liver And A Broken Heart” and the how-could-he-compare lament of “She Left Me For Jesus”.

Trouble In Mind - Hayes Carll

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 ...