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1 Modern
Times
[Listen]
BOB
DYLAN
"Thunder on the Mountain" kicks off with a salty old Chuck Berry
riff, stretched out into a six-minute lust letter to Alicia Keys,
and things only get weirder from there. Dylan hasn't sounded this
frisky since John Wesley Harding in 1968, and like that
underrated masterpiece, Modern Times is a groove album
disguised as a poetry album, leaning hard on the rhythm section.
Dylan breathes fire while his current road band beats up on some
tough blues and country licks: the Muddy Waters stomp "Rollin' and
Tumblin'," the Irish parlor ballad "Nettie Moore" and the mean Slim
Harpo strut "Someday Baby," which as an iPod commercial became the
closest thing to a hit single he's had since the Traveling
Wilburys. Where can he go from Modern Times? Anywhere he
goddamn wants.
2 Stadium
Arcadium
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
Love songs, nothing but love songs, across two CDs of encyclopedic
variety and explosive verve: Stadium Arcadium, the Chili
Peppers' first Number One album, is also a confessional and
creative triumph. Anthony Kiedis sings of commitment and
contentment with naked need and joy, as the rest of the band swings
through psychedelic bravado, sunburst pop and supercharged funk,
often in the same song. The icing everywhere: John Frusciante's
Hendrix-in-my-head guitar flourishes and blowouts.
3 Rather
Ripped
[Listen]
SONIC
YOUTH
Their mean age now up to forty-eight with thirtysomething
troublemaker Jim O'Rourke gone, indie's gray eminences made a
light, simple, terse, almost-pop album. Granted, the guitar hook
on, for instance, "Do You Believe in Rapture?" wouldn't sound so
lovely if they and all their progeny hadn't long since adjusted our
harmonic expectations. But who better to play to our expanded
capacity for tuneful beauty? The vocal star of Rather
Ripped is Kim Gordon, breathlessly girlish at fifty-three as
she and her husband evoke visions of dalliance, displacement,
recrimination and salvation that never become unequivocally
literal.
4 Return to Cookie
Mountain
[Listen]
TV
ON THE RADIO
This Brooklyn band's major-label debut comes with David Bowie's
seal of approval -- the Thin White Duke contributes vocals to
"Province." More important is the fact that you can hear Bowie so
clearly, nestled into the distinctive vocal blend of Kyp Malone's
police-siren falsetto and Tunde Adebimpe's R&B tenor. The
deliberate enigma of TV on the Radio's art rock has given way to a
spacey magic, especially in the dark drone and drive of "Wolf Like
Me," which sounds like the Bowie of Low -- with a pair of
Arthur Lees at the mike.
5 Fishscale
GHOSTFACE
KILLAH
With crack-rap ascendant, Wu-Tang's iron man dares Young Jeezy to
tell everything he knows -- not by showing off fresh slang but by
displaying his knowledge of old-school slangin'. As always, Ghost
raps on the edge of some kind of breakout or breakdown, but whether
revitalizing Bomb Squad freneticism or settling into the ominous
luxury of RZA soul, it's the beats that seal the deal.
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6 The
Greatest
[Listen]
CAT
POWER
Chan Marshall faces up to death and despair on a record that
justifies every lofty claim her devoted fans have always made for
her. On The Greatest, she cuts deep soul with Memphis
session men, which brings out the country in her Georgia-bred voice
on hard-won ballads like "Could We." Ten years after her first
great album, What Would the Community Think, she sounds
like she's just getting started.
7 Hell Hath No
Fury
[Listen]
CLIPSE
Hell Hath No Fury is, in part, a showcase for Clipse's
longtime buddies the Neptunes: All skeletal, insistent grooves and
mind-fuck atmosphere, cuts like "Chinese New Year" are ill enough
to raise goose bumps. Brothers Pusha T and Malice simply love to
rhyme, and on a series of coke-slinging anthems their clever,
singularly fluid flows intertwine like the two guys share a brain.
And the banging "Wamp Wamp" and snap-track "Mr. Me Too" are simply
head-and-shoulders above almost anything on radio.
8 Boys and Girls in
America
[Listen]
THE
HOLD STEADY
Keyed to the Jack Kerouac line "Boys and girls in America, they
have such a sad time together," the Hold Steady's third release in
three years doesn't approach the faith-based weight of 2005's
Separation Sunday, but it does make its point with an
abundance of narrative flair. The saddest entry is "You Can Make
Him Like You," for a pretty girl who always finds another guy when
she gets tired of her boyfriend's buddies or music or drugs. The
happiest is "Chillout Tent," where the sadness is comic, and the
mook has his moment with the Bowdoin girl.
9 Blood
Mountain
[Listen]
MASTODON
When it comes to metal, subtle is just another word for not trying
hard enough. So glory be to Mastodon for piling it on like there's
no tomorrow, in the most acclaimed, most innovative, most
iron-tusked and just plain heaviest metal album since Metallica ran
out of gas. The lyrics go over the top with warrior-fantasy mythos,
full of lion slicers, ice gods, ogres and dwarves, not to mention
something about "the sheep's- head curse." These four Atlanta dudes
grind it out fast or slow, or leap between math-prog tempo shifts
without losing their sense of primal paranoid thunder.
10 Orphans:
Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
[Listen]
TOM
WAITS
The running tale through this collection of fifty songs -- more
than half are new recordings -- is the way Waits rummages through
roots for inspiration, then bends them to his singular will. Waits
still finds magic, waiting for overhaul, in Lead Belly, Jack
Kerouac and the Ramones -- the cover of Da Brudders' "Danny Says"
is a ragged stunner. So is the harrowing "Road to Peace," Waits'
imagining of a young Palestinian's transformation into a suicide
bomber -- and how the path of fundamentalism, on either side, is
always a dead end.
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11 Continuum
[Listen]
JOHN
MAYER
Mayer's sixth disc made one thing clear: Homeboy has his shit
together. Continuum is Mayer's most assured album yet,
channeling familiar gifts -- fluid guitar-playing, sexy white-boy
croon, strong tune sense -- with more subtlety, more focus and less
lady-baiting cheese than ever. The result is a breezy pop-rock
record that surrounds supremely crafted songs like "Vultures" with
soul like "Gravity" and weightier stuff like "Waiting on the World
to Change."
12 One Day It Will
Please Us to Remember Even This
[Listen]
THE
NEW YORK DOLLS
David Johansen is no longer twenty-four, so this reunion album
surprises by revealing the dirty little secret beneath the
Seventies Dolls' playful pansexuality: religious emotion. "Dancing
on the Lip of a Volcano" is explicitly pagan; "Take a Good Look at
My Good Looks" begins, "Spirit slumbers in nature and awakens in
mind" before asking, "So what if this old world is just artifice?"
Everywhere Johansen mourns mortality and celebrates contingency in
the most searching lyrics of the year -- lyrics deepened by how
much fun the band is having.
13 Pearl
Jam
[Listen]
PEARL
JAM
Pearl Jam's best studio album in a decade is like Vs. with
politics -- iron-rock riffing and a lyric righteousness forged in
real battle. "World Wide Suicide" and "Army Reserve" don't just
protest the Iraq War and its disastrous consequences. These are
songs about universal accountability (you need two sides to have a
war) and the still-revolutionary power of individual dissent. "I
will not lose my faith," Vedder sings on "Inside Job," a climactic
fusion of Zep and Seventies Who. Now that's classic rock.
14 American V: A
Hundred Highways
[Listen]
JOHNNY
CASH
The man in black was dying when he made this record, and he did not
hide the truth of his condition. It is shocking to hear Cash fight
to stay on pitch in "If You Could Read My Mind." But there is a
deep strength and dignity in his performances and in the wisdom of
songs such as Hank Williams' "On the Evening Train." V
also includes the last song Cash ever wrote, "Like the 309," on
which he growls and cracks wise like a guy on his way to a party
instead of his last reward.
15 Wolfmother
[Listen]
WOLFMOTHER
This wild-haired Australian trio flattened crowds all year with
organ solos, 'nad-crushingly tight pants and riffs heisted from
Zep, Sabbath and the Purp. Andrew Stockdale brings the Ozzy-Plant
screech, the lyrics are true metal poetry, and when "Joker and the
Thief" hits its power-drive climax, there isn't a bat in the room
with its head still attached.
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16 Food &
Liquor
[Listen]
LUPE
FIASCO
"Now come on everybody, let's make cocaine cool/ We need a few more
half-naked women up in the pool": Fiasco's debut is smart, ballsy
hip-hop both backpackers and Jay-Z fans can love. The A-list
production helps: Kanye pumps "The Cool" full of dark funk, and the
jazzy "I Gotcha" has the best Neptunes beat the Clipse didn't
get.
17 Whatever People
Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
[Listen]
ARCTIC
MONKEYS
Arctic Monkeys came charging out of England, blowing up worldwide
with no looks, no fashion, a dumb name and garage-punk nuggets
built in the grim steel town of Sheffield. What makes them special
is that they're common-as-muck lads from down the pub, full of
slang and cheap lager, singing about bouncers who won't let you in,
bad benders and one-night stands. All this plus "The View From the
Afternoon," the best drunk-texting song ever: "You can pour your
heart out around three o'clock/When the two-for-one's undone the
writer's block."
18 Game
Theory
[Listen]
THE
ROOTS
The best band in hip-hop still refuses to make records conventional
enough to get over on radio and luxury-SUV stereos. Game
Theory is classic studio Roots, full of invention and left
turns. It doesn't quite have the lift of the band's shows, but
there's a consolation prize for Philly-soul heads: a cameo on "Long
Time" by one of the city's R&B greats, Bunny Sigler.
19 Taking the Long
Way
[Listen]
DIXIE
CHICKS
The Dixie Chicks respond to their rough past few years with brass
balls: This disc shows they didn't regret speaking out against the
Iraq War, and Natalie Maines sounds almost punk at times. There is
also a whole lot of craft -- Long Way is a widescreen pop
record with gorgeous country rock, killer power ballads and fierce
honky-tonk.
20 The Black
Parade
[Listen]
MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
This New Jersey band's third studio album is the best mid-Seventies
record of 2006 -- an ingenious, unrestrained paraphrasing of the
over-the-top glam theater of Queen and classic Alice Cooper. The
relentless message of Parade is: Life sucks, and death is
no great escape. But My Chemical Romance rev up the pathos with an
arena-ripe panache that ensures their trip to the mausoleum will
run right through Madison Square Garden.
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21 Begin to
Hope
REGINA
SPEKTOR
On Begin to Hope, the Russian-born New York
singer-songwriter offers her thorniest collection so far, building
on the poetic, eccentric, piano-based style that won her so much
acclaim for early records like Soviet Kitsch. Her vocals are
intense, whether she's singing dark love songs like "Apres Moi" or
urban-single vignettes like "Summer in the City" ("I went to a
protest/Just to rub up against strangers"). The bigger production
augments her songs instead of drowning them out -- although it's
hard to imagine what could drown out Spektor.
22 Night
Ripper
GIRL TALK
One remarkable fact about Pittsburgh DJ Gregg Gillis: To date, he
hasn't been sued. On his virtuoso mash-up record Night
Ripper, Gillis uses hundreds of unlicensed hip-hop, pop, rock
and dance samples. The bedfellows are strange: One short stretch
strings together Neutral Milk Hotel, Juelz Santana, Panjabi MC and
Sophie Friggin' Hawkins. But he also blends them into something
coherent and sublime, like when Biggie's "Juicy" blends with "Tiny
Dancer."
23 The Crane
Wife
[Listen]
THE
DECEMBERISTS
Real life seems light-years away from the fantastical murder
ballads and desperate-love stories that singer-guitarist Colin
Meloy wrote for his band's major-label debut. In the title suite, a
man marries a bird, then literally works it to death. The soldier
serenading his pregnant wife in "Yankee Bayonet" is already quite
dead. But the union of arcane folk and Eighties Brit pop on the
Decemberists' indie albums is pumped up here with electric guitars,
prog-rock bravado and even Seventies funk in the Elmore
Leonard-like tale "The Perfect Crime #2."
24 The
Information
[Listen]
BECK
The Information is the best of both Becks -- the
sample-delic warrior of Odelay and the confessional
troubadour of Sea Change. Beck has wily fun with loops and
historical references in songs like "Soldier Jane," a compact blend
of droning sitar, John Lennon-like vocals and star-shine
electronics. But there is a moving clarity to Beck's cleverness,
summed up best in the gentle shimmy of "Think I'm in Love." When he
sings, "I think I'm in love/But it makes me kind of nervous to say
so," it is the sweet, plain-spoken sound of a loser about to
reverse his fortunes.
25 Blue
Collar
[Listen]
RHYMEFEST
A freestyle veteran who's worked many jobs to support his habit,
Chicago's Rhymefest is life-size. He can brag because that's part
of the tradition he loves, but he's funny about it. Blue
Collar is the rare big-label hip-hop record to honor the part
of black street life that wishes there were no corner boys. A major
talent we're lucky to have, Rhymefest makes you wonder how many
others like him don't happen to know Kanye West.
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26 FutureSex/LoveSounds
[Listen]
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
It's been only four years since Timberlake established his solo
cred with Justified, but from the sounds of
FutureSex/LoveSounds, he has been keeping Cameron Diaz
extremely busy. Timbaland lets his musical imagination run wild all
over these tracks -- the results may be too arty and disjointed for
some fans, but both the singer and the producer prove themselves
worthy of the challenge in one of the year's most enduringly
pleasurable hits.
27 Pieces of the
People We Love
[Listen]
THE
RAPTURE
The Rapture's 2003 debut, Echoes, was a punk-funk shiver
of late-night desolation, like catching your reflection in a mirror
and noticing you've turned into a zombie. Now -- with help from
Danger Mouse -- the New York quartet sounds warmer, happier,
stronger, with Mattie Safer yelping, "I used to think life was a
bitter pill/But it's a grand old time," over the studly bass of
"W.A.Y.U.H." It's like the evolution Talking Heads made between
Fear of Music and Remain in Light.
28 Broken Boy
Soldiers
[Listen]
THE
RACONTEURS
The Raconteurs are a side project that rocks like a main dish.
Jack White brings the raw garage-rock aesthetic, Brendan Benson
shows pop sense and brightens the vocals with heavy-Badfinger
radiance, and bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler nail
it all down with elementary muscle. The album's only drawback:
Everything here -- especially "Steady, as She Goes" and the closing
glam-Zeppelin blues "Blue Veins" -- sounds even better live. Maybe
they should have cut the album after the tour.
29 We Shall
Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
[Listen]
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
The stories in these songs are as old as the Oklahoma Dust Bowl
and sixteenth-century Scotland. But the truths and lessons of
natural disaster, war and citizenship are as immediate as New
Orleans, Iraq and the midterm elections. These big-band treatments
combine Dixieland brass, cantina accordions and barn-dance fiddles
and feature Springsteen in rough but vintage jubilant voice -- as
if John Henry himself is hammering those spikes through the stage
at the Stone Pony.
30 Robbers &
Cowards
[Listen]
COLD
WAR KIDS
The Cold War Kids' debut wasn't quite the best indie-rock record
of the year, but it might have been the most original: all cracked,
soaring croons and shambling story-songs about alcoholics, killers
and other shady characters, courtesy of L.A. boys doing
Seventies-style rock with a dash of Southern gothic.
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31 Like Father, Like
Son
[Listen]
BIRDMAN AND LIL'
WAYNE
New Orleans' Cash Money Records may be past its heyday as a
hitmaking cartel, but with Like Father, Like Son two of
the label's biggest names were able to reinvigorate a familiar
sound: thick, exuberant drawls about guns, cars and girls backed by
locked-in, hard-charging bounce.
32 Supernature
[Listen]
GOLDFRAPP
So you thought they stopped making dance-pop records like this in
1988, when the Eurythmics started to slow down? Or in 1998, when
trip-hop hit the wall? Goldfrapp exist beyond time and space, in a
metropolitan interzone of sleek computer beats and dark melodies
and after-hours club-slut ambience. First lady Alison Goldfrapp's
sex-robot vocals hold it it all together -- when she sings "Ooh La
La," it sounds like a threat.
33 The Devil You
Know
[Listen]
TODD
SNIDER
This veteran folkie's third consecutive great album finds voices
for an assortment of Middle Americans who "didn't want to throw a
fishing line in that old main stream." Although Snider likes the
coke-snorting Romeo, the hard-as-a-carapace slut, the dayworker
just out of prison, the bank robber he lends his car keys, he
doesn't romanticize them. He just believes that with "a war going
on that the poor can't win," each of them is enough like him to be
worth a song. And generally that song is pretty damn funny.
34 The
Eraser
THOM
YORKE
Major Thom managed to keep his first solo album a secret until just
before it dropped -- the reason, he explained, is that he didn't
want to raise any questions about whether Radiohead were breaking
up. The sound recalls Kid A's quiet glitch-tronic moments,
in disarmingly straightforward verse-chorus-verse tunes. But even
in morose ballads such as "The Clock" and "Atoms for Peace,"
Yorke's steely intelligence shines through.
35 Once
Again
[Listen]
JOHN
LEGEND
The very talented Legend is a mama-friendly smoothie, a devout
sex-lover and a skilled songwriter who makes good use of his
hip-hop buddies. Once Again finds him playing all those
roles, often on the same great song: Legend goes from Nat "King"
Cole to Jeff Buckley on a dime. His manly croon and pretty tunes
might suck you in, but it's the less obvious stuff -- his wit and
big ears, namely -- that keeps you hooked.
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36 I Am Not Afraid
of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
[Listen]
YO
LA TENGO
Nobody else should even bother entering the competition for the
Year's Dumbest Album Title, but this is the most effortlessly
spectacular music Yo La Tengo have made in years. The
attention-getters are the opening and closing ten-minute guitar
jams, with Ira Kaplan mangling the feedback over Velvets-sharp
trance-riffs. They mess with acoustic ballads, country, Motown
soul, but there isn't a bad song on the album, with special honors
for the folk-rock twang of "The Race Is On Again."
37 Alive and
Kickin'
FATS
DOMINO
Topped only by Nonesuch's Our New Orleans 2005 among
Katrina records is an old man's album recorded in and around 2000.
Like the levees, but with far better follow-through, these tracks
had to await the disaster before they got the funding attention
they deserved. The sense of irrepressible fun that made Domino the
biggest African-American rocker of the Fifties is replaced by a
reflectful calm that never turns blue. Rhythmically it's so astute
you can only assume his reflexes are as sharp as ever.
38 10,000
Days
TOOL
The pointlessly elaborate packaging (the 3-D specs just give you a
headache) contradicts the no-gimmicks fury of everything else Tool
does, to obsessive perfection, on Days -- and that includes actual
songwriting. Even at seven and six minutes apiece, respectively,
"Vicarious" and "The Pot" are packed with clever twists on
instant-hit-single kicks: Adam Jones' nagging, grinding guitar
riffs; the catchy, mounting-fear stammer of drummer Danny Carey's
odd time signatures. That's more than enough to leave you seeing
double.
39 The Tragic
Treasury
THE GOTHIC ARCHIES
These songs, aimed at the precocious youngsters who jones for the
gleeful gothic gloom of the Lemony Snicket novels that have made
sometime Magnetic Fields sideman Daniel Handler very rich, are of a
thematic piece. Perfect for Stephin Merritt's melancholy baritone,
they also satisfy his appetite for rhyme. "The world is a very
scary place, my dear," Merritt intones. "It's hurled and it's
twirled through outer space, I fear." Comedy album of the year.
40 Make
History
[Listen]
THUNDERBIRDS ARE NOW!
In sweet home Detroit, Thunderbirds Are Now! are not garage
enough; in outer Alternia they're not arty enough. Les Savy Fav
fans think they're a rip-off. But there's a reason you've never
heard Les Savy Fav, and that reason is tunes. Figure that keyboard
man Scott Allen provides those, with his guitarist brother Ryan
pitching in when he's not riffing angularly or yelping, generally
about something social if not political. Perfect for anyone who
believes complex song structures are best served by punk attitude
and pop amenities.
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41 Friendly
Fire
[Listen]
SEAN
LENNON
As the son of a Beatle, Sean Lennon certainly has the right to
make music in his father's mode. Indeed, Sean's boyish, nasally
voice is a near-spittin' image of his dad's Rubber
Soul-ballad croon. But there is also a lot of the Pet
Sounds-era Brian Wilson and Brazilian tropicalia in the
disciplined sparkle and feathery distress of Friendly
Fire. Actually, the most overt Beatlesque moment on this
record is the bottlenecklike effect of the lead guitar in
"Spectacle" -- it sounds like George Harrison's spirit dropped by
to say hi.
42 Under the
Skin
[Listen]
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
In "Not Too Late," Buckingham looks back at his life in Fleetwood
Mac with frantic flamencolike guitar: "Reading the paper, saw a
review/Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew/Now that's been a
problem/Feeling unseen." He could fix that by making records more
often. But the eccentricity of Skin suits Buckingham's
reflections on his past life and current blessings. And he is
secure enough to cover madrigals by Donovan ("To Try for the Sun")
and the Rolling Stones ("I Am Waiting"), with quietly magnetic
results.
43 Tropicalia: A
Brazlian Revolution in Sound
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Finally: a comprehensive, junk-free compilation of Brazilian
tropicalia, which in its late-Sixties heyday was a political,
pop-friendly mix of rock, bossa nova and other native rhythms.
Tropicalia cherry-picks from the genre's biggest names --
Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Tom Ze -- without
settling on a single sound. Any of these twenty cuts could light up
a mix tape.
44 Show Your
Bones
[Listen]
YEAH
YEAH YEAHS
The New York mod squad's hotly awaited second disc is a triumph:
dark, spooky, lithe, broodingly sexy, with Karen O venting her
heartbreak and libidinal heebie-jeebies into post-punk tunes with a
new kind of goth-cowgirl twang, and Nick Zinner deploying a fresh
array of vampire guitar-noise splatters. Bonus: "Gold Lion" made it
onto Pants-Off Dance-Off, the ultimate rock & roll
desideratum of 2006.
45 Fox Confessor
Brings the Flood
[Listen]
NEKO
CASE
For the country-rock fan who wonders why they don't make them like
they used to, Case brings her smoky voice (Emmylou Harris meets Liz
Phair), rootsy band (featuring members of Calexico and the Band's
Garth Hudson) and cryptic songwriting, as in the scary "Dirty
Knife."
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46 You Don't Know
Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker
[Listen]
WILLIE
NELSON
The outlaw-country king of Texas pays loving tribute to the
state's songwriting queen. Nelson played many of the songs on this
album in his youth, on the way to his own songwriting fame, and he
revisits them with such affection and Texas-dance-floor
authenticity that you can almost smell the sawdust.
47 Brightblack
Morning Light
[Listen]
BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT
With their second album, Alabama bohemians Nathan Shineywater and
Rachael Hughes created the perfect chill-out soundtrack for
roots-music fans, all slow, glacially pretty songs that toss in
traces of the Band, the Dead and grimy blues. The result: Zen-like
peacefulness that keeps your ears perked.
48 Public
Warning
[Listen]
LADY
SOVEREIGN
Public Warning was one of the year's oddest hip-hop
discs: a daft, electro-tinged record starring a nineteen-year-old
Brit girl fond of booze and shepherd's pie and given to playfully
barbed rhymes like "Just check how my flow differs/I'm droppin'
lyrics like a ho droppin' knickers." But the album is also
completely lovable: Nimbly rhymed cuts such as "Gatheration" show
that cheeky monkeys who sound more like Austin Powers than Jay-Z
can make it in hip-hop.
49 Pick a Bigger
Weapon
[Listen]
THE
COUP
Longtime Oakland, California, rapper Boots Riley does things his
own way -- big Afro, a live band and a militant leftism better
informed than that of, say, Dead Prez. "Baby Let's Have a Baby
Before Bush Do Somethin' Crazy" is his sexy love song, and glory
be, it's actually erotic. "Head (of State)" shares a character with
that one and is also sexy in its own way: "Bush and Hussein
together in bed/Giving h-e-a-d head/Y'all motherfuckers heard what
we said/Billions made and millions dead."
50 It's Never Been
Like That
[Listen]
PHOENIX
These sleek french rockers made their none-too-French name with
light, dreamy synth confections designed for film soundtracks, such
as their Lost in Translation theme "Too Young." But
Phoenix achieve a harder, more aggressive guitar-driven sound on
this, their third and best record. "Second to None" and "Long
Distance Call" rock out, without losing the band's original
conception of elegant melancholy; the exquisitely surging "North"
is their pithiest ballad yet.