2007-2016: The Albums (5-1)

5. Cymbals Eat Guitars - LOSE (2014)

A sweeping, at-times operatic rock album stuffed with songs about growing up with some dirt on your cheek, being a 20-something and being a mess. Drugs, New Jersey, the shore, lost love; all of it rolled up into nine tracks that vacillate between frenetic ("XR") and patient ("Laramie"). Much like Carrie & Lowell at No. 6, the key ingredient to LOSE is its lyrics, a collection of words nothing short of brilliant and possessing all the colors of the palette with which LOSE is painted.

Standing in contrast to the pained perfection of an album like Veckatimest - wholly different sounds aside - LOSE often comes across as totally organic, Joseph D'Agostino's voice anything but angelic and the tracks often sounding like they're rips of the best live performance of a song rather than a studio cut. D'Agostino's nasal delivery - like a grown-up Jordan Pundik - slips effortlessly between vocal fry and falsetto ("Chambers"), and can go from wail ("XR") to lullaby ("Child Bride") in a matter of moments. Matt Whipple's bass playing is terrific; the best riffs can be found supporting "Place Names" and the outro to "2 Hip Soul," the album's closer.

A large part of LOSE's appeal is in the confluence of deft storytelling and uniquely anthemic rock leanings, a stadium-ready group of songs that punish as easily as they can enlighten. It's subtle intelligence, masked in hard-nosed rock. Be sure you read beyond this book's table of contents.

4. The Antlers - Hospice (2009)

Of every album I've ever listened to, none so regularly moves me in a haunted, ghostly way as this, a concept album billed as the story of a hospice worker and terminally ill patient, their ensuing romance and the patient's eventual death. It's long been debated whether this album is autobiographical - Peter Silberman himself won't really disclose - but it's always felt like an allegorical album to me. There's so much symbolism in Silberman's pulverizing, falsetto delivery that could only be fueled by personal experience.

At least, that's what I draw from the experience of listening to this album, and it's a big reason why I value it so highly.Like some of the other albums in its immediate company on this list, Hospice is a story marked by grief and loss, but it also details the struggle to salvage whatever's left in such unique detail that I always find myself struck but just how these songs manage to both keep the hospice metaphor alive and never to seem to drift into camp or corniness. Really, it's just the opposite. The whole demeanor of the album makes you feel like you're in the phosphorescent-lit hallway of some caretaking facility with light blue walls and that one light bank that won't stop flickering; another example of decay and the failure of upkeep that plays into the album's larger themes.

As before, I can't recommend enough reading the lyrics along with the music. Silberman's voice can go between being so hushed and so ethereal that words can be lost on a casual listen, and this album won't hit home in the periphery. It's a cover-to-cover capital-A Album with a couple of single-type exceptions that even lose some of their own luster out of the album's run-of-play.

Those singles, though, do still stand out. "Sylvia" crashes out of the droning haze with a cry that comes as close to camp as the album dares - "Sylvia, get your head out of the oven," an obvious reference to Sylvia Plath commingling with Silberman's plea for his patient to stop self-damaging - while "Bear" coos a dark lullaby that could read like a recalling of a pre-hospice abortion. "Two," which follows "Bear" after a spectral vocal interlude from Sharon Van Etten - who's playing "Sylvia" in this album's case - builds upon a simple guitar pattern that sounds almost plastic or toy-like into an emotional convocation with drums and brass and more instrumentation than on any other song on the album. It's the album's catharsis, of sorts: Silberman at his most pained and finally at his wit's end, doing to his best to try, one last time, to reconcile the rift between himself and the "patient" with understanding.

It fails, and the following track, "Shiva," finds the roles reversed: Silberman has assumed the role of the infirmed, his efforts in vain. "Wake," a nine-minute reflection on just what got us into this mess in the first place, ends with something resembling optimism, and that feeling is like the first breath drawn after surfacing from being underwater. Letting people in is still okay, he says; not every war can be won, he says, and that's not your fault.

This was an album that reached me even before one of my own personal experiences brought it closer to the vest. It wasn't an exact match to whatever it is, exactly, Silberman went through. I'm sure of that. But progressing from an unexplainable sadness during a relationship at its end, coupled with the actions of the other half in the postmortem, made me feel like I understood this album more than I ever had before. Chances are, if you've made it this far in life, you can probably find a connecting experience of your own; Hospice is a deeply personal album that the listener can still make their own.

3. Beach House - Bloom (2012)

In contrast to the heaviness and emotional intensity comprising most of the rest of my top 10, we have this palette cleanser. Bloom is an incredibly immersive emotional experience in its own right, but its highs are rooted in beauty rather than in the exploration of our depths. At least, that's how it sounds. There's some trepidation in the lyrics, but they're delivered so airily and effervescently that you'd hardly know it.

Every track on this album can have the "dreamy" label applied without second thought. The arrangements Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally put forth are shimmering and lucid, each one somehow just as beautiful as the next. And there's a constant undercurrent throughout the album, something implicit and understated that ties all of these tracks together in a thematic way, none feeling like it's ever gone too far afield. It could be the gentle transitions between tracks, nearly one linked by a thread of droning note that rarely lets the album go to zero.

Where Bloom also stands in contrast to these other highly-regarded albums is that it's just as rewarding on a casual listen as it is with focused intent; you can let yourself coast down a lazy river with this as your soundtrack, fall asleep and let it steer your dreams. No part of these songs ever feels invasive, every note seemingly coated in an analgesic that soothes your aches and eases your tensions. Even the seemingly strange choice of adding a hidden track after seven minutes of silence on closing track "Irene" feels like it fits right in, in the end. Every track is a standout in its own right, but I've always had a particular fondness for tracks eight and nine, "Wishes" and "On the Sea," their swoops and swells always sounding the most captivating to me, even toward the end of a listen.

For anyone seeking something that's just pure ear candy, it's hard to go wrong with this album. Get on that inner tube and float.

2. Japandroids - Celebration Rock (2012)

Celebration Rock begins with the sound of fireworks, ends with the sound of fireworks, and in between features eight tracks made of the kind of euphoria that only watching fireworks as a 9-year-old can provide. It makes no bones about enjoying every goddamn second of being alive; about driving down the interstate with every window down and your head in the wind; about flipping the world the bird as you base jump from the top of the Empire State Building in a neon jumpsuit.

No other album perfectly manages the delicate balance between sounds and lyrics that are as straightforward as this and the dangers of being too campy. This is the big-budget summer popcorn blockbuster that gets your adrenaline rushing and heart pounding without making about sweeping statements about the world at large or the human condition. Even its weakest moment - a cover of Gun Club's "For the Love of Ivy" - still manages to be a bit of raucous fun.

You could make this argument for a handful of the eight tracks, but for my money, no single song on Celebration Rock encapsulates this feeling of Life And Living It like "Fire's Highway," a truly wonderful and magnificently sweaty piece of rah-rah, fist-pumping exuberance. You are contractually obligated to feel better in some way after listening to it. It is Celebration Rock in microcosmic form, its sound and message converging to form this piece of bombast you just kind of need now and then, y'know?

Filled with quotable lines and enough "ohh-ohs" to fill a box of Cheerios, there's more energy here than you could ever hope to hear in a single album, its loudness a turbo charge for your soul.

1. The National - Boxer (2007)

The greatest album of the last 10 years is a tough nut to crack. The successor to a 2004 album, Alligator, that many had already labeled a "grower," Boxer is a collection of songs about aging, the changes in thought and behavior that come along with, and the malaise of trying to realize just what it means to be an adult of a certain age; it is the darkness on the edge of town.

Boxer turns 10 years old this year. I had it with me every year of my 20s, and now I take it with me into my 30s, but it feels no more or less relevant with the passing of time. The crazy thing about this album is that, despite its mature themes and esoteric deliveries, it always felt accessible even to my college-aged mind. Back then, it spoke to some sort of as-yet-unattained future, a world that awaited off campus. In the early 2010s, it was my anchor to better times as I struggled to find my foothold in an unforgiving job climate and on unsteady personal ground. It was my gateway to The National's earlier catalog, an even gruffer trio of albums that helped lay the foundation for what would become their masterwork. I've been able to hold it close for 10 years because it's never felt unfamiliar, never too distant to ever feel unrelatable.

Boxer will not click on your first listen. Its true treasure is every new nuance you discover as you grow along with it, whether a clever turn of phrase by Matt Berninger you may have missed on first listen, or a chord change, or an ever-renewing sense of marvel and the exacting precision of Bryan Devendorf's drumming. The layers and complexities of this music - both in lyrics and composition - only serve to deepen the album's rewards on further listens. Hell, you're basically dared to get a steady grip on the dueling time signatures right from the start on "Fake Empire."

There are themes and plots to these tracks, and even a callback to earlier material on "Slow Show," but enough ambiguity remains in the messages that this album can become whatever you want it to be. "Brainy" can either be a song about a stalker or someone motivated to be better; "Start A War" can either be the end of a relationship or the point at which it's saved; "Guest Room," one of the most underrated cuts in the band's entire library, is about the complexities of relationship interaction, or as Berninger himself even puts it:

"[It represents] those awkward intimate moments where you have those really stupid, ugly things that you do in a relationship when you get fed up with each other or whatever. You do things that are just ridiculous, but then you eventually let each other off the hook."

Boxer is an album about growing up by musicians who have already done it once. It's reflective and critical, but never damning. It's both self-effacing and self-assured, a sort of confidence that - true to form - really only comes with time and experience, and it will live on in me, no matter how old I get.

2007-2016: The Albums (10-6)

10. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest (2009)

You could say this for every album ahead of Veckatimest on this list, but it feels especially true to say here: There's just nothing else that sounds quite like this album. It's so subtly jarring and exquisitely detailed and layered that it can almost feel overwhelming.

Led by two distinct lead singers - Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen, who split time at the front pretty evenly - the Ben Zobrist-ian multi-instrumentalism and production from Chris Taylor and genius, inventive drumming from Chris Bear, every track sounds like something new unto itself. "Two Weeks" you've heard before, but none of the other 11 tracks approached that level of radio friendliness. That's not to say the album is unapproachable, but it will almost definitely take two or three listens before some things settle in. Outside of "Two Weeks," Veckatimest moves deliberately, gently prodding the fringe between "sleepy" and "psychedelic." It often feels as if you're hearing the guitars and drums from around the corner in a dim, wood-paneled hallway. The snare drum is used so sparingly and the bass is so heavily padded, it can sometimes seem like Bear's drumming is more the heartbeat of these songs than just an ordinary rhythm section.

Every vocal harmony sounds so carefully thought out and placed that I think sometimes this album was laid out as a blueprint instead of on sheet music. But the precision here is organic, free of rote, machine-like exactness and instead full of quietly awe-inspiring composition with just enough roughness around the edges to still feel completely human. It's designed to be listened to on slower days, whether in the dog days of summer or huddled under blankets in February, and it rewards the patience of its listeners handsomely.

9. The National - High Violet (2010)

I remember one night early in 2010 where I heard that The National were going to be debuting new music on Jimmy Fallon's late-night TV slot. Having been enamored with another album of the group's for the better part of three years to that point (more on that other album later), I made Fallon's program destination viewing for myself for the first time.

As they began to play the opening track for the album that would become their vault into a new level of commercial and critical success, I remember the chills I had running down my shoulders and back. This was a time when music had begun to connect with me in a deeper way than it ever had before, the lyrics telling stories and resonating more than simply sounding like melodic accompaniment to whatever collection of instruments was being used at a given time. This was a foundation laid by Radiohead's OK Computer years earlier, but only now had begun to fully blossom.

And so as I laid there listening, I felt taken in by this performance, the anxiety about having to wait another two months from air date for the album to be released not sitting still in my mind. Imagine, then, the relief that built to exuberance when I heard High Violet not only match my hopes and expectations but exceed them. Now, connecting with lyrics like Matt Berninger's when you're in your early 20s is a really good way to prematurely age yourself, but there's something poetic about these world-weary words coming from such an oaky baritone that just can't be avoided.

"Bloodbuzz Ohio" remains an absolute triumph, the closest thing the band has released to "Mr. November" on 2005's Alligator since...well, "Mr. November." As is usually the case, Bryan Devendorf's propulsive drumming deftly ushers the track along, swelling to the point of bursting. And burst it does over the final 50 seconds, bringing the A side to a close in grand fashion. Side B then opens with "Lemonworld," arguably Berninger's most well-written song, and finishes with "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks," an aching elegiac amplified tenfold when the band would unplug during shows and play and sing it acoustically while touring the album, even in the Barclays Center.

8. Torres - Torres (2013)

To this day, one of the most surprisingly devastating collections of songs I've ever heard. This was a debut album, a collection of 10 songs that Mackenzie Scott wrote both autobiographically and impartially that thrust her immediately to my attention and fascination from out of nowhere.

"Honey," for its part, is one of the most simply beautiful songs I've ever heard; two layers of electric guitar and timpani drums are all that are really needed, anyway, because Scott's pained vocal transformations are what the song is all about. Torres as a whole is an album best suited to be listened to in the cold, its stern and brutal messages hitting their most square when you have a coat or blanket to get swallowed up in.

The ending trio of "Don't Run Away, Emilie," "Come to Terms" and "Waterfall" is as strong a closing sequence as I have in my library, one gently transitioning into the next so as to maintain momentum over those 17 minutes. "Waterfall," in particular, is a chillingly bare piece of music; a droning loop of a guitar that sounds more like a steel drum being played in Antarctica rides along the length of these six minutes, buffered only by bass so deep-throated it's barely discernible, gentle cymbal taps beside sharp snare baps and keyboards anachronistically bright amidst the shadows cast by everything else.

Torres rewards patient listeners the most, much like Veckatimest above. It's best enjoyed as a full album - though "Honey" remains a standout unto itself when played apart - as one song stretches into another and the track lengths (just one of 10 below four minutes) feel less strictly defined.

7. Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)

The final track of 2003's Hail to the Thief, "A Wolf at the Door," finishes an album full of protest songs with a sneer, Thom Yorke's speak-sung verses feeling like the soundtrack to a woozy bar fight as he croaks out Three Little Pigs animal allegory lyrics. It sounded like the voice of a man who was exhausted by the 13 tracks that preceded, but had enough in the tank to toss one last snarl out.

Four years later, Yorke, Greenwood & Greenwood, Selway and O'Brien emerged refreshed with In Rainbows, an album just as world-weary as its forebear but crackling with new energy and life and drum machines. "15 Step" is the Kool-Aid Man busting through the front door, immediately launching itself downhill. "Bodysnatchers" is the fuzz-rock cousin to the demonic dance hall bebop of Kid A's "Idioteque." But after busting through the gates and asserting itself, "In Rainbows" settles into moments that could almost be called "pretty" or "beautiful." Yorke's falsetto always straddled the fence between that and "unnerving," but the lilts of "Nude" and "All I Need" and "House of Cards," plus the astonishing falsetto tour de force that is "Reckoner," give In Rainbows plenty of moments of indulgence.

Even apart from its brazen, self-released, pay-what-you-want birth in the fall of 2007, In Rainbows felt like more of a proper marriage between Radiohead's style in the era pre-Kid A and after, two contrasting worlds conjoined in the most fluid way possible. It may not have been the genre-shattering monolith that Kid A was and is, but it remains (to my mind) their most accessible and widely appealing album to date.

6. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell (2015)

Stevens's incredible meditation on life, death and the relationships we foster and let fray in between is, inarguably, difficult to listen to at times. None of the songs contain a hint of the jangly folk Stevens trademarked on 2005's Illinois, and certainly none of the oversized, live-wire electronics of 2010's The Age of Adz. None of the songs are cheerful. None of the songs really even give you much opportunity to breathe, if you happen to be listening in headphones.

Stevens's sense of grief in the wake of losing his estranged mother, who died in 2012 and whose complicated and distant relationship with Stevens inspired this album, is overpowering. That is, through and through, what this album conveys: Grief and the acceptance of it, and the probing of the question of how, exactly, we're all supposed to process it. Carrie & Lowell is 11 tracks long, each sounding similar to the one before it in that it's been stripped to the bolts. It's Stevens and an instrument or two on any given track and that's it, which directs all of the listener's focus on the stories Stevens is telling. The lyrics are crucial to this album, and they should be read as you listen for the first time.

Stevens turns to faith, to self-harm, to thoughts of suicide; his struggles almost play out in real-time, and Carrie & Lowell moves like a thought process, memories and recollections spattering across our ears like raindrops from an April rain shower on a windshield.

What ultimately makes Carrie & Lowell so difficult to fully internalize is that Stevens neither gives nor is provided any answers for any of this: Why was their relationship just so? Why did Carrie have to die? How do you cope? The closest we come to anything resembling resolution is the assertion at the end of "Fourth of July," one of the most harrowing and heart-rending songs I've ever heard: "We're all gonna die." And we will. That's the end of life as we live it, for you and I and Stevens and Carrie. There's no grand solution to that, and Carrie & Lowell doesn't look to end up with one at the end of all its soul-searching. It's a leaning post, a port in the storm, the knees to rest your palms on as you catch your breath; it's a respite for when you'll inevitably struggle with the same themes, knowing that this semi-fruitless search is one we all go through, and you're not alone in it.

Carrie & Lowell will challenge you emotionally. It will push you. Even if you can't find yourself connecting with Stevens on his level, the awesome spectacle of his heart on display is enough to make this album a wonder. But if you find yourself arm in arm with him as he travels this path, the album becomes a journey to a different world altogether.

2007-2016: The Albums (50-11)

50. Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle (2015)         49. Cults - Cults (2011)


48. Chairlift - Something (2012)                           47. The Walkmen - Heaven (2012)


46. Everything Everything - Get to Heaven (2015)
                                                                                            45. Daughter - Not to Disappear (2016)


44. Lucius - Wildewoman (2013)                         43. Alvvays - Alvvays (2014)


42. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago (2007)
                                                                                          41. The War On Drugs - Lost in the Dream (2014)


40. The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt (2010)
                                                                                           39. Kyle Craft - Dolls of Highland (2016)


38. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial (2016)
                                                                                           37. The New Pornographers - Brill Bruisers (2014)


36. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
                                                                                           35. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor (2009)


34. Phosphorescent - Muchacho (2013)
                                                                                           33. Bon Iver - Bon Iver (2011)


32. Wye Oak - Tween (2016)
                                                                                           31. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)


30. Tame Impala - Lonerism (2012)
                                                                                           29. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (2007)


28. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)
                                                                                           27. Lorde - Pure Heroine (2013)


26. Purity Ring - Shrines (2012)
                                                                                           25. The National - Trouble Will Find Me (2013)


24. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (2008)
                                                                   23. Bombay Bicycle Club - So Long, See You Tomorrow (2014)


22. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (2010)
                                                                           21. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)


20. Tame Impala - Currents (2015)
                                                                                           19. St. Lucia - When the Night (2013)


18. Grizzly Bear - Shields (2012)
                                                                                           17. Pinegrove - Cardinal (2016)


16. Chvrches - The Bones of What You Believe (2013)
                                                                                           15. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (2007)


14. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues (2011)
                                                                                           13. Panda Bear - Person Pitch


12. Sharon Van Etten - Tramp (2012)
                                                                                           11. Real Estate - Days (2011)

2007-2016: The Albums (100-51)

100. White Rabbits - Fort Nightly (2007)         99. Jason Isbell - Southeastern (2013)


98. Julianna Barwick - Nepenthe (2013)           97. Kurt Vile - b'lieve i'm goin down... (2015)


96. Interpol - Our Love to Admire (2007)         95. Lake Street Dive - Bad Self Portraits (2014)


94. London Grammar - If You Wait (2013)
                                                    93. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline (2007)


92. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today (2010)
                                                                                           91. case/lang/veirs - case/lang/veirs (2016)


90. Elliott Brood - Mountain Meadows (2008)
                                                                                           89. Young Galaxy - Ultramarine (2013)


88. Hooray For Earth - True Loves (2011)        87. Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time (2013)


86. Spoon - They Want My Soul (2014)              85. Mac Demarco - 2 (2012)


84. Yeasayer - Odd Blood (2010)                          83. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion (2015)


82. Passion Pit - Manners (2009)                        81. Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid (2010)


80. Frightened Rabbit - Pedestrian Verse (2013)
                                                                                           79. Sun Airway - Soft Fall (2012)


78. School of Seven Bells - SVIIB (2016)            77. Sigur Rós - Kveikur (2013)


76. Adult Jazz - Gist Is (2014)                                 75. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz (2010)


74. M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (2011)   73. Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan (2012)


72. Father John Misty - Fear Fun (2012)           71. Hospitality - Hospitality (2012)


70. Girl Talk - All Day (2010)                                  69. Coldplay - Viva la Vida (2008)


68. St. Vincent - St. Vincent (2014)                      67. Daughter - If You Leave (2013)


66. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (2009)             65. The Weeknd - House of Balloons (2011)


64. Everything Everything - Arc (2013)              63. Jessie Ware - Tough Love (2012)


62. Grimes - Art Angels (2015)                               61. Wye Oak - Civilian (2011)


60. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away (2007)
                                                                                           59. Sharon Van Etten - Are We There (2014)


58. Shearwater - Jet Plane and Oxbow (2016) 57. HAIM - Days Are Gone (2013)


56. The Sun Days - Album (2016)                         55. Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE (2012)


54. Mikal Cronin - MCII (2013)                             53. Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - After (2015)


52. White Reaper - White Reaper Does It Again (2015)
                                                                                           51. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Pretty Years (2016)