10 BEST REISSUES 2008

13NO AGE NOUNS After 2007’s Weirdo Rippers, Dean Spunt and Randy Randall’s live fury drew attention to the vibrant DI Y Los Angeles punk scene that birthed the duo. But no one thought they were capable of such an exquisitely fragmentary masterpiece. Randall’s guitar shifts between glittering instrumental swells and diesel fuzz, hitting a blissful synthesis on “Eraser.” Spunt’s tireless drumming and atonal lisp proclaim so earnestly that the notion of jaded youth seems as outdated as a panty girdle. ABIGAIL EVERDELL

10MGMT ORACULAR SPEC TACULAR Their persona is cheekily brilliant enough—two dazed waifs in headbands huddling on a Brooklyn street corner hustling an art-pop manifesto cooked up in a private-school yurt. But add songwriting chops that rival the Swedish pop mafia, plus Dave Fridmann’s twinkly production sprinkles, and you’ve got a state-of-the-art party album (that winks and nods). Falsetto funk stroll “Electric Feel” gets Justin Timberlake baked and writes “Property of Timbaland” on his wenis. Funny stuff. C.A.

12ERYKAH BADU NEW AMERYKAH PT. 1:

4TH WORLD WAR

Badu is Lil Wayne for grown folks—she’s just as biting and daft, but with a sense of history and maternal compassion that grounds even her most oblique forays. Laptop R&B that uses hip-hop as its muse, New Amerykah also nods to P Funk’s agit-slop opuses about America’s decay—“Soldier” and “The Cell” are like angrily sensual position papers—but with the help of sonic visionaries Madlib, Jay Electronica, Sa-Ra, and others, Badu croons her own future in your ear. C.A.

09COLDPLA Y VIVA LA VIDA Achtung Maybe After the tepid uplift-by-numbers of 2005’s X&Y compelled Coldplay to plug into the almighty Eno-brain and bandy about talk of “ something different,” it was reasonable to think a wholesale change was in order. Instead, world-music gewgaws aside, Viva La Vida gave us more than labored reinvention, as nakedly inspirational anthems like the holy-rolling title track and the rousing “Cemeteries of London” burned with the audible passion of a great band getting back on track. D.M.

1Steinski WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? 1983 2006 RETROSPECTIVE The patron saint of copyright violation and groundbreaking inspiration to sample jockeys Prince Paul, DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Fatboy Slim, and countless others, Steve Stein was a nice Jewish boy and former adman who, through his witty, danceable “Lessons,” helped sketch the curriculum for new-school hip-hop production in the late ’80s. This two-disc CV collects all his singles and the hour-long “Nothing to Fear” mix, which mines Alec Baldwin’s ball-busting turn in Glengarry Glen Ross.

2Nina Simone TO BE FREE: THE NINA SIMONE STORY A towering figure who has influenced artists ranging from Eric Burdon and the Animals to Antony and the Johnsons, Simone wrote relatively few songs. But with a bracing, protean, gender-indeterminate voice, she made a staggeringly broad range of material— from African folk songs to early Bee Gees—her own. Embodying the Civil Rights era more than any other musician, Simone remains peerlessly universal.

3Nick Lowe JESUS OF COOL Called Pure Pop for Now People Stateside, this playful, hooky album bridged mid-’70s pub rock and the Stiff Records roster (including a young Elvis Costello, who regarded Lowe as a mentor). You might remember “Cruel to Be Kind” and “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass,” but neither is an adequate teaser for this surprisingly diverse, amply augmented set.

GAB ARCHIVES REDFERNS RE TNA LOVE

11 ELBOW THE SELDOM SEEN KID The sun never sets on British mope rock, and nobody’s doing it with more passion and élan nowadays than Elbow. The Manchester band—they share the town, tellingly, with Doves and the Smiths— rescale the heights of their 2001 debut and soar beyond: The Seldom Seen Kid is a grand, moody cabaret full of funny, sometimes acerbic lyrics (“We kissed like we invented it”) and layers of classy sonic trimming. Always dramatic and occasionally sweet, it’s music designed for dark whiskey and wool suits. J.M.

08 HOT CHIP MADE IN THE DARK For music that’s funny, touching, danceable, and features lots of keyboards that sound like lasers, Hot Chip don’t have much competition. The gawky Brits have very nearly perfected their giddy blue-eyed robo-soul. “Wrestlers,” which generates a whimsical love song out of squared circle metaphors and equal parts virginal harmony, Nate Dogg–style hooks, and down-tempo Detroit techno, is only the most airtight of the album’s 13 arguments in favor of information overload. D.M.

4Love

FOREVER CHANGES

American j’accuse as pop symphony, Love’s creepy-pretty 1967 masterpiece gets the deluxe, two-disc treatment, featuring an alternate mix, contemporaneous singles, tracking sessions, and, um, “Wooly Bully.” Nathanael West, Johnny Mathis, and Charles Manson mingle uneasily, obscured by gorgeous orchestrations.

5Augustus Pablo THE MYSTIC WORLD

OF AUGUSTUS PABLO:

THE ROCKERS STORY

The Dr. Strange of dub reggae, Pablo was

master of the eerily meditative melodica and conjurer of atmospheric, mildly Arabic aural dimensions. He cut a fiercely independent path through the Jamaican music business as an all-in-one musician/composer/producer, yet remained a notorious recluse whose influence exceeded his appearances.

6Various Artists THANK YOU FRIENDS: THE ARDENT RECORDS STORY

British Invasion fans Jim Dickinson, Terry Manning, and engineer John Fry presided over a legendary Memphis studio that eschewed R&B and rockabilly in favor of garage psych and po wer pop. They also happened to nurture a little band called Big Star. A model reissue, this double-disc anthology is both a transcendent trove and a heartbreaking story of overlooked brilliance.

7Beck

ODELAY: DELUXE EDITION In which the former “Loser” from East Los Angeles honors his Fluxus heritage, marrying the Dust Brothers’ puckish samples and B-boy bouillabaisse to the more trad strains of Them, the Stones, and Mississippi John Hurt. As generation-defining as Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain .

8Rodriguez

COLD FACT

A dark vision of post-Altamont America as Gomorrah, this breath-taking 1970 obscurity finally receives a proper packaging. Sixto Rodriguez was a Mexican American from Detroit whose politicized gutter poetry perfectly evoked the psychedelic sleaze of his era. He got some help from Motown session men, but no love from U.S. consumers. Huge in South Africa, inexplicably.

9Various Artists FUNKY NASSAU: THE COMPASS POINT STOR Y 1980 1986

A revelatory sampling of the art-dance experiments that emerged from Chris Blackwell’s Bahamanian studio, where heavy riddim section Sly and Robbie laid genre-bending grooves for Grace Jones, Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Ian Dury, and others. Rigorously unclassifiable, mercilessly funky— rubberband-man music for that special robot in your life.

10Mission of Burma SIGNALS, CALLS, AND MARCHES; VS.; THE HORRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT BURMA

Often called the American Wire, these arty Boston post-punks brought full-throated emotionalism and angst to the nervy, angular guitar scree of their Brit forebears. Tape manipulations, too. Complemented by DVDs of early Burma gigs, these generous editions allow you to see, not just hear, how singer-guitarist Roger Miller contracted tinnitus.

WE’RE HERE FOR YOU. GO TO SPIN.COM JANUARY 2009 51