B est Reissues
BY WILL HERMES

1Sonic Youth DAYDREAM NATION The greatest record by a band whose stature as art-rock badasses only seems to grow. This past summer’s live performances of the full album killed. And this reissue—like their version of the title track to Todd Haynes’ hallucinatory Dylan biopic I’m Not There—redefines “classic rock” for a new generation of noise junkies.

2Neil Young & Crazy Horse LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST It’s a toss-up between this and the sublime acoustic Live at Massey Hall 1971, also released this year. But the first taste of the long-promised vault recordings wins for Young’s raunchy guitar-duel dramas (a 16-minute “Cowgirl in the Sand”) with Danny Whitten, the smack casualty whose death inspired Tonight’s the Night.

6Nick Drake FAMILY TREE Another ace release helps transform Drake’s mythic, post-mortem fame back into flesh and blood art. More casual and less sepulchral than the well-known recordings re-reissued this year on the Fruit Tree box set, these early sketches and covers (Bob Dylan, Bert Jansch, Blind Boy Fuller) show the archetypal Sad Young Man actually having some fun while bowing to some of his influences.

7Pylon GYRA TE PLUS These three Georgia guys-plus-girl deserve a chapter in the secret history of indie rock, splitting the difference between Athens neighbors the B- 52’s and R.E.M., and helping invent American post-punk. That it took what’s basically a dance-music label to spotlight their debut album (plus debut single and one other rarity) tells you a bit about the band’s approach to rhythm, which recent reunion shows prove is just as kinetic as ever.

08 JAY-Z
AMERICAN GANGSTER

To demand that we sit still for a classic album experience in 2007 (no Gangster songs are available on i Tunes) is the height of hubris. But Jay-Z’s lushly crafted tenth album— inspired by the dubious, dealer-glorifying biopic—justifies its 58-plus minutes with an intricate mix of ghettonomics morality tales, yayo mise-en-scène, and ego twinkle. It’s rare to hear a sword-sharp superstar—Sinatra circa In the Wee Small Hours?—throw himself into a project like he’s got everything to prove. Jay needed this one more than we did, but we’re grateful nonetheless. C.A.

07 AMY WINEHOUSE
BACK TO BLACK

Try, somehow, to put tabloid blinders on and ignore the depressing, druggy mess that Winehouse has become. Instead, focus on what made this singer worth our time in the first place: heart-shredding breakup laments, the filthiest mouth in R&B, and a slurry swing that her North London roots and Jewish genes don’t quite explain. With coproducer Mark Ronson and backup band the Daptones providing impeccably modern Motown-via-Brooklyn horns and strings, Back to Black was the rare case where critical and commercial success dovetailed into a perfect pop moment. M.E.

3Joy Division UNKNOWN PLEASURES/ CLOSER/STILL No new revelations, but any excuse to revisit the haunting recordings of these Manchester enigmas is welcome. And the bonus, oft-boot-legged live material is thrilling, if only to prove that singer Ian Curtis was not just a specter, but a rock dude who once walked among us. Anton Corbijn’s biopic Control, which occasioned these reissues, does the same thing without totally sucking, which is a miracle.

8Manu Chao PRÓXIMA ESTACIÓN: ESPERANZA Not as song-for-song addictive as Chao’s debut, Clandestino. But this 2001 follow-up hits harder, forging the multiculti version of the Clash that his first band, Mano Negra, attempted, with better dance beats to boot.

4Young Marble Giants COLOSSAL YOUTH Beside Hole’s “Credit in the Straight World” and Belle and Sebastian’s “Final Day,” few have covered songs by this Welsh post-punk trio—odd, since their compositions are so simple and hooky. But maybe it’s because their few recordings (one LP and some singles, all included here) are so perfect.

5Tabu Ley Rochereau THE VOICE OF LIGHTNESS Vampire Weekend, Extra Golden, and Toubab Krewe gave indie-rock kids a taste of Afropop in 2007. But this is the pure stuff: two CDs of material recorded between 1961 and 1977 by maybe the sweetest singer in modern African music. (Download “Aon Aon” for proof he’s a good whistler, too.) The sparkling guitars are the selling point, though, and as with most Congolese pop of La Belle Epoque, they rarely fail.

9Various Artists DISCOVERED: A COLLECTION OF DAFT FUNK SAMPLES Even if your molecular biology wasn’t rearranged by Daft Punk’s summer tour, this compilation of their source material should convince you that they’re the slyest French pop-art hustlers since Marcel Duchamp. Some tracks are more hilariously incriminating than others (the central synth riff of Breakwater’s “Release the Beast” is “Robot Rock” pretty much in toto). But most are great in and of themselves— see Karen Young’s nasty “Hot Shot” and Chaka Khan’s immortal tranny anthem “Fate.”

OLAF HEINE/ICON PHOTO

10Prefab Sprout STEVE MCQUEEN Too warm-blooded to function as synth pop, too fey to pass as rock, too melodically well dressed to pass as alternative, these Brits were an aberration in the ’80s marketplace. Twenty years later, they sound as peculiarly elegant as ever, with a bonus disc of latter-day acoustic remakes fronting like an M TV Unplugged episode that, alas, never happened.

06

R ADIOHEAD IN RAINBOWS Praise the new distribution paradigm all you like, but save some enthusiasm for Radiohead’s most emotionally resonant songs in a decade: “All I Need” and “House of Cards” embrace the claustrophobic loneliness of modern life rather than railing against it, and “ 15 Step” lends more palatable tones to the band’s penchant for experimental click-clacks. Though it still possesses the contrarian impulse of the Amnesiac years, In Rainbows offers a tremendous exhale after four albums of knotty sonic exploration. It’s the calm after the storm, a perfect time for licking wounds. J.M.