( Albums of the Year )
27 BAND OF HORSES
CEASE TO BEGIN

This powerful 35-minute dose of dreamlike Americana is stocked with choruses that make you want to holler along with Ben Bridwell’s flashlight-through-the-fog vocals—the “I could slee-ee-eep” wail of opener

“Is There a Ghost” is especially hard to resist. With their mix of dreamy melancholy, Appalachian warmth, and taut guitar revving, the South Carolina–via-Seattle trio have crafted the rare album that attracts typically fractious fans from all sides of the balkanized indie universe. It’s big-tent rock, tailor-made for campfires. MICHAEL ENDELMAN

24

THE SHINS WINCING THE NIGHT AWAY It feels like years since the Shins’ third album arrived on an avalanche of post–Garden State hype, and some critical distance serves the record well. Divorced from any discussion of what it portends for the band or its label or indie rock writ large, Wincing is exactly what singer/songwriter James Mercer wanted it to be: the perfect third album, working just enough sonic experimentation and willful obscurity into their agreeable, lyrically opaque pop to push the band forward rather than to the margins, without turning anybody off. S.K.

26 BRIGHT EYES
CASSADAGA

Turns out that Conor Oberst is a traditionalist; it just took him a decade to work through his shambling sketchiness and embrace the clean sounds that he’s always skirted (check the driving “Hot Knives” for proof). Cassadaga finally gives some credence to those hoary Dylan comparisons, too: Big ideas—politics, fate, existence—are delivered with full-bore sonic polish: Strings swell, words fly, and the kid, now 27, turns in his “bright young thing” card for a steadier gig in the classic songwriters’ club. J.M.

25 QUEENS OF THE
STONE AGE
ERA VULGARIS

Josh Homme is everything you could ask for in a rock star: charismatic and cocky, the friendly crossing guard at the intersection of Black Sabbath and Black Flag. But that wouldn’t mean a thing if he didn’t have the songs to back up the swagger, and his fifth full-length under the Queens aegis delivers plenty: The Guitar Hero– approved “ 3’s & 7’s” and the vocoder-assisted “Misfit Love” are characteristic slabs of ’70s-tinged boogie metal left out in the sun to bake like a clay bong. S.K.

23 PETER BJORN
AND JOHN

WRITER’S BLOCK Record-store clerks (if there are any left) probably got their fill of being asked, “Do you have that whistling song?” in 2007, and yes, the irresistible earwig “Young Folks” is the highlight of PB&J’s U.S. breakthrough. But not by much. Writer’s Block deserves credit for far more than 15 seconds of air blown through pursed lips—moodier and more complex than its gateway song, the album pulls distinctive little pop tarts from morose melodies, shuffling along to ’80s synths one minute and casting longing glances at ’90s American indie rock the next. J.M.

22 ELLIOTT SMITH
NEW MOON

At first, these 24 largely acoustic cast-offs, recorded between 1994 and 1997, felt like the welcome reappearance of a lost friend, new and familiar at the same time. Hardly a cash-grab made up of half-baked curiosities, there isn’t a track here that would’ve felt out of place on Roman Candle or Either/Or, before Smith’s sound—and his problems—got bigger. That he could throw away songs as fully realized as “All Cleaned Out” or “New Monkey” serves to remind us how much talent he squandered. As comforts go, New Moon is a cold but essential one. S.K.

21 MODEST MOUSE
WE WERE DEAD BEFORE
THE SHIP EVEN SANK

The title of Modest Mouse’s sixth full-length seemed designed to squelch suspicions that the mainstream embrace of “Float On” had brightened frontman Isaac Brock’s famously gloomy outlook. Yet, enlisting Johnny Marr of the Smiths to recharge the band’s sound with his muscular guitar jangle, Modest Mouse have never seemed more stoked on perpetual disappointment than they are here: In “Dashboard,” We Were Dead’s pumping disco-grunge lead single, Brock’s boys make it to the radio just in time for the car to go up in flames. M.W.