The Top 50 Albums of 2007

19 Devendra Banhart
Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (XL)
This freak-folk-scene daddy is not as bombed on vintage Laurel Canyon cool as he looks. Devendra Banhart cultivates this nirvana party aura with deliberate loving, soaking his songs in Brazilian tropicalia, the contact high of David Crosby's 1970 album If I Could Only Remember My Name and the casual communion of Dylan and the Band on The Basement Tapes. "Sea Horse" runs wonderfully long, from bedroom-folk om to Crazy Horse-guitar rumble, and a part of "Tonada Yanomaminista" sounds like the Doors at sea. Stoned corn like "Shabop Shalom" makes Smokey longer that it should be, but most of this excess is a guaranteed buzz.

20 Melissa Etheridge
The Awakening (Island)
Etheridge has always had passion to burn. But there is a special urgency to the classy folk pop of her first studio album since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. Etheridge is the fighting picture of health and hope as she hits and holds the high note in "California." There is intense reflection too in the quiet lessons of "All There Is" and the guilt of "An Unexpected Rain." In the latter, when Etheridge sings, "I've come so far in my Kansas dancing shoes," you hear every mile. On the rest of the album, you hear the thanks — and the determination to keep going.