Aaron's Best of the Decade: #70-61

#70
Beirut - Postcards From Italy
Gulag Orkestar
2006
Zach Condon was only 19 years old when he put out Beirut's first full-length, the excellent Gulag Orkestar. "Postcards From Italy" was the instant highlight of the album's gorgeous, brassy Eastern European fetishism - total mixtape material for its accessibility, but worlds apart from any other contemporary artists.

#69
Aesop Rock - Daylight
Labor Days
2001
Aesop Rock numbers among the greatest pure MC's of his generation, and is one of many reasons to miss the legendary label Definitive Jux. "Daylight", from the seminal Labor Days, is a primer on the innovative underground MC. Far from the backpacker, golden-age vibe of Jurassic 5, he lays down complex rhyme schemes and alternates between total abstract flow and mind-blowing, topical wordplay. As a guide to depressing pragmatism, you can't beat imagery like 'This origami dream is beautiful, but man, those wings'll never leave the ground / without a feather and a lottery ticket, now settle down."

#68
Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage
Fire
2003
Just a balls-out ridiculous party anthem. I don't generally like instruments with reeds in rock music of any kind. It just winds up feeling annoying and indulgent, but here I barely notice the extended solos, thanks to a classic mid-aughts new-wave guitar lick, judicious use of distortion, and aggressively catchy vocals (backed up by a moonlighting Jack White!). This track is sure to put a little fire in your disco, and probably also your Taco Bell.

#67
Nada Surf - Blonde on Blonde
Let Go
2002
A leisurely, lovely exercise in nostalgia. Seattle's own KEXP repeated this song more than I've ever heard them repeat anything besides their call-sign. Nada Surf don't hurry to the hook and never fully crescendo, content to ride the 60's AM-pop vibe even as they name-drop Mr. Bob Dylan's classic game-changing LP.

#66
Eminem - Lose Yourself
8 Mile Soundtrack
2002
This is what hunger sounds like. When they say that someone sounds hungry, this is what they are talking about. Eminem had built an enormously successful career through singles where he was frankly fucking around ("My Name Is", "The Real Slim Shady") - here he cranks up the absurd wordplay he showed off on little-known debut Infinite in 1996 and grabs the mantle of illest MC by the throat. And then he eats it, because he is HUNGRY.

#65
Spoon - The Way We Get By
Kill The Moonlight
2002
One of Spoon's defining moments, fleshing out their usually restrained arrangements with a grooving keyboard riff and easily relatable lyrics. "The Way We Get By" is so irresistible that I overplayed it and barely listen to it anymore, but it opened the Spoon catalog for many and will continue to do so as long as people like good music.

#64
A.C. Newman - The Town Halo
The Slow Wonder
2004
Power-pop maestro Carl Newman released his first solo album in 2004, after a career with Zumpano and a pair of albums as the primary songwriter and a founding member of The New Pornographers. "The Town Halo" rides an electric cello riff (ohhh yeah) through an experience that most closely resembles going on a roller coaster while stuffing your face with cotton candy and your favorite song is playing and the girl you have a crush on is sitting next to you and you are totally overstimulated, but you wouldn't trade any of it for the world.

#63
Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
Set Yourself On Fire
2005
From my favorite Stars album (milking tears from intra-band divorce just never gets old), the opening track summarizes everything to love about their sound. I am generally a sucker for guy-girl harmonies, evocative, depressing lyrics and over-use of strings in the background as independent entities. When a band competently uses all three, I am putty in their hands.

#62
Sage Francis - Broken Wings
Personal Journals
2002
This song is too low on the list. Way too low. It's too late to do anything about it, but Sage Francis utterly breaks my heart every time I listen to "Broken Wings". Do yourself a favor and listen to it on headphones, or on nice speakers with no one in the room to distract you, and pull up the lyrics if it helps (it did for me). This is why language was created - to express something this eloquently, with this level of depth, structure and meaning. Fuck.

#61
The Futureheads - Hounds Of Love
The Futureheads
2004
The defining track of The Futureheads' career is from their debut album, and get this - it's not even their own song. Their cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds Of Love" is a thing of wonder, with a capella style harmonies mashing over brash post-punk guitars. It's got oodles of that first album 'we are so psyched just be here and making music' vibe that is utterly irresistible.