A Pack of Mutts

As far as music goes, I am not a tribal person. I am not prodded by Pitchfork, nor narcotized by Relix, nor are my spirits lifted by No Depression. Not to say that those media sources are entirely flawed -- indeed, each has its virtues. But each of these influential outlets has an overweening aesthetic: Each approaches a CD from a sort of preconceived ideal, and should a work stray from that imagined purity, it often suffers in their estimation. And those mongrels and strays are the very albums I love -- the ones that are too artsy and meandering for No Dep, too rootsy and plainspoken for Pitchfork, and too concise for the hippies at Relix. Here's a list of ten of those records for all you other lone wolves out there.

1. My Morning Jacket, Z (ATO): Sure, the lyrics are stupid (burning kittens and babies in blenders, anyone?), and the pub-rock/Hawaii 5-0/carnival-in-hell middle stretch of the record sags a bit, but the seven majestic masterpieces that bookend Z more than make up for those shortcomings. It'll remind you of everything from the Celtic righteous-rock of bands like U2 and the Waterboys ("Wordless Chorus" and "Gideon") to the fretboards afire/full-tilt keyboards attack of the Allmans ("Lay Low") to the narcodelic wooze of mid-period Floyd and early Radiohead. All that and occasional tinges of classical piano, and soca and West African highlife guitars. Z is grandiose in the best possible way -- an album that'll turn the inside of your head into an ornate, vaulting cathedral.

2. M. Ward, Transistor Radio (Merge): Ward's Transistor Radio broadcasts from a stack of 78s that fell through a crack in time from Greil Marcus's "old, weird America," back when country was blues was jazz was pop; back when people drank legal cocaine in soda bottles and shot morphine before lunch. Ward has a ghostly tenor and is a deft acoustic fingerpicker of the John Fahey school, and with fellow West Coasters Two Gallants and Jolie Holland, there's a whole new generation of blues-drenched folkies out there who will be heard by a wider audience in the next few years. Might as well get on the bandwagon now.

3. Otis Taylor, Below the Fold (Telarc): Imagine if Flatt and Scruggs did a tribute album to Mississippi Fred McDowell with new lyrics written by Chuck D and sung by Ted Hawkins. That's the best way I can come up with to describe the eerie, cathartic, postmodern trance blues of Chicago-born, Denver-bred Taylor, who sings and plays guitar, banjo, harmonica and mandolin here. He is also one of the darkest and most compelling songwriters ever to have worked in the medium, a guy who says explicitly what earlier generations of bluesmen would say only in code. And come to think of it, Taylor is not a bluesman at all -- he's an artist who works in blues in much the same way Picasso did.

4. Freakwater, Freakwater Is Thinking of You (Thrill Jockey): Nobody in alt-country keeps it realer or rougher or more plaintive than Freakwater, whose coarse female harmonies sound exactly like what you still hear on crackly AM gospel radio in backwoods Appalachia. Lots of artists pay lip service to the ramshackle charms of the Carter Family -- but only Janet Bean and Catherine Irwin carry it off masterfully. This is the kind of music that'll brighten your nights and darken your days. Together with fellow Kentuckians My Morning Jacket, Freakwater helped make this a great year for Louisville's hugely strange music scene.

5. Bobby Bare, The Moon Was Blue (Dualtone): In this comeback album, Bare's son Bobby Jr. and Lambchop's Mark Nevers create neo-countrypolitan arrangements -- replete with cooing female backing vocals and spacey outros -- that glisten like disco balls around the elder Bare's baritone. Bare père always did have a dab hand at song selection, and The Moon Was Blue is no exception. Material ranges from the tragically mundane (Shel Silverstein's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan") to the utterly cosmic ("Fellow Travelers"), and the opulent opener, "Are You Sincere," is as plush and silky a country tune as you'll ever hear.

6. Clem Snide, The End of Love (spinART): The first album since Eef Barzelay's move from New York to Nashville finds him exploring the Snide half of the band's perpetual happy-angry yin-yang. As always, Barzelay sets his death-ray wit on narcissism, this time as manifested in Christians ("Jews for Jesus Blues," "God Answers Back") and hipsters on the title track and the foot-stomping "Weird," with its memorable chorus: "You're not as weird as you'd like me to think." Barzelay's surreal imagery is as fanciful as ever -- in his world, tiny European cars run on Spanish wine and choirs of James Taylor-crooning pedophiles worry they'll be seen as trendy. And if you're mad at your lover, there are few better laments to roar along with than "Something Beautiful."