8. Youth Group - 'The Night Is Ours'
Photo courtesy Ivy League.
Youth Group hail from Australia, singing gorgeously sad songs full of drama and melody. The Night Is Ours deals with addiction, broken hearts, displaced souls, and the fragility of happiness. Oddly though, the album isn't a total bummer, thanks to the band's dynamic arrangements and frontman Toby Martin's moony vocals.
7. Black Crowes - 'Before the Frost...Until the Freeze'
Photo courtesy Silver Arrow.
The Black Crowes have always been the standard-bearer for southern rock's tradition of melody, hard-earned wisdom, and bluesy grooves, but they really embraced their status as the genre's elder statesmen on Before the Frost...Until the Freeze. A double album recorded with an intimate audience in the studio, Before the Frost is one of the band's richest, saddest and warmest collections, and you can hear the Crowes paying full homage to musical idols like the Stones and the Band.
6. Wilco - 'Wilco (The Album)'
Photo courtesy Nonesuch.
Jeff Tweedy deals with romantic self-doubt on Wilco (The Album), a major theme of several recent Wilco records. Moving further away from the radical sonic experimentation of 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy focuses on breezy summer pop ("You Never Know"), gentle country balladry ("Country Disappeared") and '70s-style folk ("Solitaire"), but he also makes room for some guitar heroics on the dynamic "Bull Black Nova."
5. Glasvegas - 'Glasvegas'
Photo courtesy Columbia.
The Scottish group Glasvegas are one of 2009's most exciting new acts, blending garage-band energy with modern-rock sensibilities. On their self-titled debut, frontman James Allan proves to be a deft lyricist, turning "S.A.D. Light" into an ode to loneliness and "Stabbed" into a terrifying mini-narrative about a run-in with some dangerous street thugs. Shoegazing guitar rock and piano ballads come together on this accomplished first record.
4. The Answer - 'Everyday Demons'
Photo courtesy The End.
The Answer act like rock 'n' roll hasn't changed one bit in the last 35 years, and when the results are as fun as Everyday Demons, it's hard to argue with their thesis. Guitar solos that demand an arena full of pyrotechnics and vocals that hit high notes so astounding they could shatter glass -- Everyday Demons is just one guilty pleasure after another done with consummate skill and not a trace of tongue-in-cheek parody. Play this album as loud as humanly possibly.
3. Alice in Chains - 'Black Gives Way to Blue'
Photo courtesy EMI/Virgin.
Most people assumed Alice in Chains were gone forever after the overdose death of lead singer Layne Staley. Instead, the band returned with a new vocalist, William DuVall, and an album that honored their dark past. Black Gives Way to Blue crawls through the murk, hoping that salvation is just around the corner. It's a despairing, brilliant album that suggested that one of the most underrated groups of the '90s might have a lot of life left in them.
2. U2 - 'No Line on the Horizon'
Photo courtesy Interscope.
Commercially, No Line on the Horizon may be considered a disappointment, but artistically it's one of U2's nerviest records. While there's no question that the Irish quartet have mellowed this decade, No Line contains some of the group's greatest ballads and mid-tempo songs, which are complemented by the album's more adventurous and hard-charging moments. No Line didn't reveal all of its surprises on first listen, but over time its themes of loss, love and the terror of life during wartime proved to be potent and moving.
1. Green Day - '21st Century Breakdown'
Photo courtesy Reprise.
Green Day may have been courting disaster by trying to follow up their immensely successful 2004 concept album American Idiot with another concept album, but 21st Century Breakdown more than holds its own in comparison to their last record's greatness. Politics are still frontman Billie Joe Armstrong's main concern, but Breakdown's magnificence is more about music than words -- this may very well be the strongest set of pure rock songs Armstrong has ever concocted. And as the year marched on, it no longer seemed scandalous to suggest that perhaps 21st Century Breakdown was actually the better of Green Day's last two records.
