Is there anything new that can possibly be said about Loveless? Any stone as yet unturned? So much has been written about this album, and so much of it reads the same: "It's about tension, noise vs. melody, ugliness vs. beauty... It's a return to the womb... It foregrounds the background and favors texture over development... Kevin Shields is Brian Wilson... Smart went crazy..." It's all true, of course. There's no arguing with any of that, just as there's little reason to talk about this album which so many people love. When it comes to Loveless, we understand each other so well that we nod and grunt like we're standing in front of Hank Hill's house. For me, it's been that way for some time: Seeing the letters "M", "B" and "V" next to each other in a review of another band's album is enough to get said record on my "music to check out" list. I suspect I'm not alone.

Now that Kevin Shields is in better health and is slowly returning to the scene, he's explained that Loveless was something of an albatross for him, that he never could find a proper way to follow it. He should be comforted by the fact that no one else has been able to follow it, either. I've long dreamt of an album that was "Like Loveless, but more," but I haven't found it. And so many hundreds of albums have tried. Perhaps this is the sound of a single idea perfected. We should move on and continue to explore the vast spectrum of sound and feeling music provides, but we'll always return to Loveless for what it alone can deliver.

The end of the 90s will be seen as the end of the album. The rise of MP3 technology and file downloading returned pop music consumption to collective pre-Beatles mindset, where songs are judged as singles. Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac were shallowly criticized as B-side collections because they were downloaded and assembled as such on home computers. "Treefingers" and "Hunting Bears" were torn apart, not a piece of a 60 minute or so record, but as worthwhile 34-minute download times (this, remember, was right before DSL/Cable). The resurgence, and arguable final entrenchment, of manufactured Pop Stars by their handlers over supposedly more artistic fare-- and more importantly the acceptance of such common pleasures by critics-- razed the significance of the complete album. Which is why OK Computer, and it's Best Albums Ever companion Loveless, eternally top these polls: somehow we doubt we'll ever see their like again.

Modern thinking has led to debates and revisionism over the effect of tracks like "Electioneering" and "Fitter Happier" on OK Computer's importance, as if removing "Turd on the Run" and "Pet Sounds" would somehow make Exile on Main Street and Pet Sounds five-and-a-half-star albums. What's interesting in the case of "Electioneering" is that, at the time, it stood as the one track most similar to the beautiful guitar rackets of "Just", "Creep", and "My Iron Lung". The band even performed the song on The Tonight Show upon the album's release. Beyond its political intent, the song could have fit easily on Radiohead's two previous albums.

Regardless, any arguing or defending of the record seems pointless and redundant. Which is why it's here at the peak. It should be reiterated, however, just how much better OK Computer is than Loveless, and why people somehow forget this. Loveless, a masterpiece of form and noise, impresses the brain like stylized photography. Surely, it is breathtaking. It provides the senses with a romantic, heightened ideal of music, experienced through an unbreakable medium. The sound overwhelms to such an extent that multiple listens are unnecessary and taxing. OK Computer, in contrast, sounds crystalline and liveable-- a true, enterable aural landscape packaged with press-delivered mythology describing its creation (Thom Yorke singing on his back staring at Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman's castle ceiling).

Those overly familiar with this album's details doubt its brilliance only in the way a Loveless-like beauty sitting across the restaurant from your mate questions your life commitment. You haven't seen the armpit stubble, shower drain residue, high-school poetry, morning dental state, and Disney-induced tears of Loveless. Psychologically, one needs those fantastic diversions, but there has to be something real to return to again and again. OK Computer simply is the anxious, self-important, uncertain, technologically overwhelmed 1990s

s an aging, sarcastic man, The Flaming Lips remain my favorite contemporary group because they demolish two short-sighted contemporary rock 'n' roll notions: you have to be young and serious. Wayne's salt-and-pepper beard, pea coat and bullhorn raised the bar for any musician pushing forty. Another debatable myth dispelled by The Soft Bulletin is that heroin destroys. Steven Drozd's addiction to the horse was hard and heavy right through the production of Yoshimi, and his addition to the band clearly took them to their current creative level. Aside from Keith Richards, has anyone produced such godlike music while mired in the junk, that it almost seems like an endorsement for the drug?

Remarkably, the band's music maintains a general air of feel-goodness while their lyrics concern sobering subjects as bleeding, bites, and mortality. Death seeps from within every sweeping disco-ball light bath of a song, deep down to the drummer's gums. A year after The Soft Bulletin's release a spider nailed my calf, corroding the skin. When detailing the infection I was constantly comforted by a poorly (perfectly?) sung refrain of, "When you got that spider bite on your leg!" That's cultural impact. The Flaming Lips: the official soundtrack of near-fatal insect bites.

My beleaguered "generation" and I may attempt to protect ourselves from emotional harm (and our grim inheritance) by stockpiling absurdities, but we will probably still go prostrate during a moment of disarming simplicity, pathetic mortality, or genuine romance. I See a Darkness is rife with such moments (though the exultant finale of "Nomadic Revelry" defies categorization). Will Oldham's latest moniker is his canniest since back when he went by variations on Pushkin, and under this banner, his work has retained the bawdiness, hybridity, and compassion that characterized the Russian poet. In this guise Oldham exploits a salty freedom and an epicurean brio; on this album, his least "country," he was a bulimic Falstaff milking medieval dread/mirth. Sung sans-warble, these non-sequiturial folk anthems, seasoned with Robotussin Skynyrd licks, confirmed that Oldham is indie's detached and brilliant DeNiro. (After all, the Bonnie Prince Charlie of history was called "The Young Pretender.") A masterpiece of comic negation, "Death to Everyone" invokes a holocaust, "coming kids," "hosing," and how "balls burn." That the late Johnny Cash rendered ISAD's title track as a sobriety hymn only deepens the song's mystery, as well as the album's sense of play.

Forget lo-fi. Though often cited as the defining album of the misleading faux-genre, there's a lot more to Bee Thousand than tape hiss. At its core, this record is one of the most unique and inventive pop records ever made; the best and brightest hooks from rock's golden age filtered through a fractured and kaleidoscopic vision of hardcore UFOs, hot freaks, and robot boys. As an album, Bee Thousand can barely contain itself. The numbers are striking enough-- Robert Pollard and his Dayton cronies plow through 20 songs in a mere 36 minutes. But what's really amazing is just how many good ideas Pollard manages to cram into the album's slender frame. While many songwriters are content to beat a single strong hook to death, Pollard approaches his songs like an excited child, working through a single idea with unabashed enthusiasm and then eagerly moving on to the next. The fact that this record was recorded in a basement rather than a studio seems entirely essential to the album's epic and unforgettable nature. With more and more overproduced studio artifacts from the mid-90s sounding painfully dated, Bee Thousand still seems vibrant, relevant, and timeless.

In 1996, it was something of a shock to see Weezer jump from the sungazing confines of the Blue Album to a stalker-heavy concept album about blue balls. Soundscan numbers reflected this, chasing the band off the charts and back into the cult status preferred by their core fans. But Pinkerton soon became the Little Album that Could, building up enough steam during the band's hiatus to bring Rivers Cuomo, et al out of retirement, for better or worse (okay, for worse). It's still easy to see how people looking for some more "Buddy Holly" quirk were frightened away, what with Pinkerton's ferocious Frid-drums, overdrive switches stuck in the "on" position, and Rivers Cuomo's disturbingly literal lyrics. (There had to have been a few restraining orders filed in Cambridge after its release.) But songs like "Why Bother?" and "Falling for You" are sing-along catharsis that should be prescribed to people with social anxiety disorder, and "The Good Life" is a beerglass-swinger for the indie set. Modern emo may have sprung from Pinkerton's Asian art loins, but I'll be damned if it ain't the catchiest LiveJournal blog I've ever heard.

When all the grandpaboys made their death-is-coming-to-get-me albums in the 1990s (Reed's Magic & Loss, Dylan's Time Out of Mind, et al) only one of them didn't go all selfish. Tom Waits told transcendent, cinematic stories set in barns, colosseums, nursing homes, bars and temperamental oceans from the viewpoints of religious alcoholics, hairy-chested ex-cons, embittered nonagenarians, jilted Ophelias and would-be suicides. Waits' wails were lizardly and warm throughout; Bone contains the finest showcase of his Frank-Oz-meets-Francisco-Goya pipes.

Although it's a mystic love song, "Earth Died Screaming" was scary enough to turn the staunchest global-warming skeptic into an environmentalist. No existential ballroom could clear its floor without Ralph Carney's mournful woodwinds accenting "Dirt in the Ground". The myths of Christ, Lucifer, Sleepy Hollow and Johnny Cash blend on the chiller "Black Wings", which suggested that saviors are born out of gossip. Joey Ramone would go on to cover "I Don't Wanna Grow Up", and Waits would go on to outlive the beautiful bastard. If you don't weep to the twilit sendoff "Who Are You", then I must ask who the hell you think you are; of course, the chorus' question could easily be turned on its consummate-actor source. Waits, Beck and Radiohead form the trifecta proving that the "Best Alternative" Grammy can get something right, but only Waits fisted every Yankee idiom into a stain-pocked opera gown.

Americans still have difficulty understanding the impact and importance of this record. The Labor party manipulated Damon Albarn into a political icon, inviting him with Noel Gallagher to 10 Downing. Even as a drunk, coked tart Albarn had the sense to turn down the offer. Despite his public ego, Albarn has always been keenly self-aware and subtly self-deprecating-- essentially British. Parklife's facade sounded royally appointed and funded, sophisticated and ornate, overlying sharpened satire. This dynamic keeps the album eternally fresh. New, young ears can marvel at Graham Coxon's guitar molding post-punk into mellifluous melody. Old listeners settle into the harmonies and Naugahyde nostalgia. In an era of one-dimensional emotion, Parklife set itself uninvited at the classic album table, nicking from every china plate and bottled beer.

The influences peel off like stickers on a notebook. Utilizing Bomb Squad-confrontational production and subtly primitive IDM textures, Tricky's uniquely muddy form of soundclash shocked the mid-90s listening populace with his merger of angular, raw sampling, dark synth innovation, and pseudo-intellectual lyrics to build the convention-destroying music of Maxinquaye. A collaborative effort from a former husband/wife team, Adrian Thawes and singer Martina Topley-Bird, demonstrated a bizarrely genuine chemistry in such shielded music. Topley-Bird's distinctively British dialect developed a refreshing retreat from her more typical peers, yielding a more modern voice for a changing musical landscape. As she sings, Tricky's monstrously cracking vocals shadow hers to make the listening experience a more personal feat than many pieces before it.

Borrowing more than lyrics from his previous tenure guesting for Massive Attack, Tricky's producer/singer relationship is stronger than the interplay in more linear genres, making this an obsessive work of customization. Unforgettable moments appear frequently, from the gorgeously hard drum break of "Ponderosa" to the clicking future saloon shootout screamer of "Strugglin'" to the Michael Jackson-sampling "Brand New, You're Retro". It's hard to imagine the landscapes of modern electronica and underground hip-hop without this record's influence.

It's difficult to name the best Mouse on Mars album because Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma have such different goals for each. Over the course of their career, they've made atmospheric soundtracks, collaborated with vocalists, and dabbled in noise. No two records sound alike. But Iaora Tahiti is often cited as a favorite simply because it's so damn listenable. With its squishy, organic synths, swaths of space and dub references, Iaora Tahiti just feels good, especially the record's first half. Eventually, Mouse on Mars would head off in more abstract directions, but here, there's nothing deep or challenging about songs with names such as "Saturday Night Worldcup Fieber". The record's second half is filled with longer, more intense tracks that touch on techno and drum-n-bass while incorporating guitars and live drums (some people called this post-rock, see), but Iaora Tahiti never strays too far from pop. This is sunny electronic music operating in accordance with the pleasure principle.