1. American Saturday Night by Brad Paisley
Country's most underrated star capped a decade-long run of crisp, self-penned hits with his most complete album yet. The Obama tune ("Welcome to the Future") attracted its share of ink, but Paisley's liberalism, optimism and multiculturalism fall safely within the confines of Nashville's most important ideology: commercialism. (The title track praises our mongrel nation for such revolutionary impulses as Dutch beer, Canadian bacon and Brazilian leather.) The real risk-taking emerges on his songs about women, which, as on the brilliant "The Pants," manage to be funny, sexy and sensitive: "In the top drawer of her dresser there's some panties/ Go try on that purple pair with the lacy frill/ With your big old thighs I bet you can't get in 'em/ With that attitude of yours, hell, I bet you never will."
2. Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors
The job of a music critic is essentially to describe music. For the past few years, the job of Dirty Projectors mastermind Dave Longstreth has been to make the critic's job undoable. On Dirty Projectors' fifth album, Longstreth doesn't cede his affections for octave-jumping and abstraction so much as redirect them, allowing his female band members to do the bulk of the singing while he clips some of his stranger musical impulses into less meandering, more memorable phrases. There are real live melodies here, notably on the standouts "Stillness Is the Move" and "Two Doves," which are no less accomplished for being riveting pieces of pop, and the Led Zeppelin–ish "Cannibal Resource," which is no less a pop success for being completely incomprehensible.
3. Crack the Skye by Mastodon
The band name doesn't inspire confidence. Nor does the warlock-strewn album cover. Nor the fact that Crack the Skye is the last of a four-album cycle about Earth's elements. But before you sneer, "Hello, Cleveland," listen to Mastodon's thunderous, disciplined and expansive brand of metal. There are plenty of bass-drum carpet-bombings, and "The Czar," a four-part ode to Rasputin — O.K., go ahead: "Hello, Cleveland!" — has all the whiplash rhythm shifts of vintage Metallica. But the album also has nods to European folk, free jazz and prog rock, and as produced by Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam), it fronts a brawny sound that doesn't overwhelm the clarity of individual notes. Chuckle at lyrics about "the space-time paradigm" if you must, but the ambition and tenacity of Mastodon's music makes Crack the Skye sonically unforgettable.
4. Revolution by Miranda Lambert
"I got a mouth like a sailor, and yours is more like a Hallmark card," snarls Lambert on "Only Prettier," one of several songs that cement her role as Nashville's best tough chick. Her vengeful side gets plenty of play on Revolution — there's a dig at country radio as well as a scorched-earth love song co-written with her boyfriend, Blake Shelton — but there are also prolonged episodes of maturity, from the pointed cover of Fred Eaglesmith's "Time to Get a Gun" to "Dead Flowers," a song that proves she can build an emotionally convincing performance atop even the lamest of metaphors. With each album Lambert gets better — and inches closer to becoming country's next great superstar.
10. The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga
If her innuendo, wardrobe and instincts for self-promotion recall Madonna, her albums, as of yet, do not. There's still a little too much filler for global domination to be a real goal. But the hits — "Bad Romance," "Speechless," "Telephone" — are towering and undeniable. They also demonstrate a complete understanding of what dance audiences require and vocal talent that's easy to forget underneath all that platinum hair.
5. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix
There are those who find this Versailles quartet's choruses a little too catchy, their perfectly honed hooks a shade too perfect. Could these Frenchmen be rocking out ... ironically? Perhaps a little. You can't write a wonderfully sunny song about Franz Liszt as a teen idol ("Lisztomania") or have an appreciation for the comic potential of disco without at least some sense of the absurd. But these 10 economical tracks are hardly without feeling. For proof, just listen to lead singer Thomas Mars on the wonderful "1901," as passion subsumes wit and he's left warbling the purest rock lyrics of all: "I'll be anything you ask and more/ You're going hey hey hey hey hey hey hey."
9. I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers
The Avett Brothers (Scott and Seth, plus bassist Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon) specialize in epic sincerity played on acoustic instruments — which means that their major-label debut could have gone spectacularly wrong. Instead, almost everything went right, starting with producer Rick Rubin's decision to grant these 10-year coffeehouse and club veterans some of his bearded wisdom. Rubin stripped the band of its fetish for musical digression and focused almost exclusively on melody. As a result, the Avetts' abundant emotionalism — they're tortured about being in love, or not being in love, on nearly every song — is scaled down to something far more intimate. On the title track and the mid-tempo ballad "Laundry Room," it's like having a good friend with a honeyed voice whispering in your ear.
8. Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear
Bow ties. Four-part harmonies. Humming. Make no mistake, Grizzly Bear is a seriously wussy band — but a pretty good one too. All four members sing with equal skill and range, and this album, named for an abandoned island off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., is dedicated to their ability to blend their voices into swirling little atmospheres. On "Two Weeks" a wordless harmony lifts a melody line out of chaos, allowing nominal lead singer Ed Droste to guide it home. "Dory" is a choral exercise that would sound just as at home in a cloister as in a concert hall. The emphasis on sound over message can feel a little precious by album's end, but Grizzly Bear doesn't have to say much of anything when nothing sounds this good.
6. Love vs. Money by The-Dream
Over the past decade, R&B has existed mainly as rap's baked potato, a side dish occasionally brought in to fill up the plate. Terius (The-Dream) Nash — co-writer of "Umbrella" and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" — is on a mission to restore his favorite genre to main-course status, and his second album as a performer does a lot to advance the cause. Nash is a modestly talented singer whose chirpy vocals dance above his songs in a fair imitation of Michael Jackson. But it's the songs themselves that are the stars, placing tenderness above hardness, mixing love and lust in a way that makes it clear The-Dream is in love with the idea of love, and with its frequent expression in the bedroom.
7. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt 2 by Raekwon
The sequel to Raekwon's much loved 1995 solo debut picks up as if no time has passed. He's still rhyming about cocaine deals, hustlers and urban menace — which makes for an elevated degree of difficulty, since a song about the production of crack ("Pyrex Vision") should be not only impotent in 2009, but deservedly so. The reason it works, like all of Cuban Linx, Pt 2, is that Raekwon is a poet of grime, a storyteller who understands that rap is less about an easy hook than the collision of carefully chosen words. He's also a melancholic who prefers replaying the circumstances of growing up in hell ("All my life around drug niggas, villains who want millions/ Niggas with them hoodies on with Teks in the building") to celebrating the trappings of success. With production from nearly every top name in hip-hop, it's a spooky and sad monograph — not lovable, but quite powerful.