Muse Picks 2001’s Best CDs

1. Radiohead – Amnesiac – This band continues to bring people to their knees in worship with their ability to experiment and push the boundaries of conventional rock beyond all known limits. You can either believe they are the most overly hyped band of the past year or love them to the point of obsession. I prefer the latter.

2. Remy Zero – The Golden Hum – This album should receive as much praise as possible for a group that has been together for years, but with little to no recognition for what they are capable of. The Golden Hum has “leave me in your CD player for days without removing” written all over it.

3. Incubus – Morning View – The rap-funk-metal-rock isn’t as present as it was in S.C.I.E.N.C.E. or Make Yourself, but slightly poppier doesn’t mean it isn’t amazing it it’s own right. And yeah, Brandon Boyd is hot.

4. Travis – The Invisible Band – Weepy, self-loathing lyrics about unrequited love and pipe dreams couldn’t be done better. Plus, putting a banjo to brit-pop is simply too cool.

5. Pete Yorn – Musicforthemorningafter – Beautiful. You can either cry to it or dance to it; either way, it works.

6. Weezer – Green Album – Yay, Rivers is back from hibernation, and he’s still putting the “rock” back into “rock out.”

7. The Strokes – Is This It – They’ve been touted as the best thing since … uh … the last best thing out there, whatever that was. Well, they sound as if the Velvet Underground fornicated with a couple of brit-pop bands. Hybrid music rules.

8. Starsailor – Love is Here – Gorgeous piano and vocal stylings — yes, stylings. Starsailor’s first album of a good many, I think.

9. Bjork – Vespertine – Bjork’s talent transcends the superficiality of most music today. Even so, no one else could pull off wearing a swan dress to the Oscars.

10. Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American – The world has discovered emo, and I like it, damnit.

1. Bob Dylan – Love and Theft – He’s 60 and he still rocks — enough said.

2. John Mayer – Room for Squares – Poignant lyrics, simple acoustic guitar. A good album for a walk in the rain.

3. Pete Yorn – Musicforthemorningafter – Characterizes the scruffy-hippie-guy-with-guitar genre, a creative return to the roots of rock-and-roll — a bold step in light of the drab, poppy music of the past year. This album defined my summer.

4. “Vanilla Sky” – Soundtrack – Cameron Crowe lends Hollywood his newest mix tape, featuring Radiohead and Todd Rundgren, Bob Dylan and the Chemical Brothers — yet it all seems to flow.

5. Jack Johnson – Brushfire Fairytale – A mellow, West Coast feel; a perfect chill album for a night with friends. Not much depth, but full of pure joy.

6. The Strokes – Is This It – An interesting hybrid of the Velvet Underground, Cake, Stiff Little Fingers and a variety of other sources; an addicting “listen all the way through” album, reminiscent of ’60s drug-pop and a kinder, gentler time.

7. Rustic Overtones – Viva Nueva – Not like anything you have ever heard, a jarring mix of rock, pop, funk and soul — improvisational rock at its best; plus, they are from Maine and David Bowie loves them (he even sings on two of the songs).

8. Ryan Adams – Gold – The closest thing we’ll ever get to a new Bob Dylan. Adams earns this title with his strong folk influences and penchant for the blues and harmonica. Definitely worthy of its Grammy nod.

9. Dashboard Confessional – The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most – Perhaps the most moody, melancholy album on my list; goes great with heartbreak and gray moods — the poster children for emo.

10. Nikka Costa – Everybody Got Their Something – The 28-year-old goddaughter of Frank Sinatra lets her funky, unique side out to play on this eclectic album; it moves to its own beat.

1. Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjun – This was technically released in 2000, but didn’t wash up on American shores until this year. And though it’s from Iceland, it sounds more like music from another planet. Unpronounceable song titles; vocals so strange and so mesmerizing, they need to be heard to be believed; and dreamy, atmospheric guitar effects (created, in part, by a violin bow) all contribute to a sound that is equally transcendent and unique.

2. Joy Division – Les Bains Douches 18 December 1979 – OK, so I’m cheating. A concert album recorded over 20 years ago probably shouldn’t count for this list, but I don’t care — Ian Curtis can still rock from beyond the grave. This recording helps to expose a side of Joy Division rarely seen: not the glacial, haunting sound found in the studio sessions, but an extraordinary live act that was full of energy and seething with rage.

3. Lali Puna – Scary World Theory – All right, kids, here’s your chance to be hip. Lali Puna happens to be one of the favorite bands of Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood. They’re so cool that he supposedly went through multiple copies of their album Tridecoder. Forget the music; buy this album to impress your friends, before these guys become too popular!

4. The Faint – Danse Macabre – The “guilty pleasure” album of the year. The Faint have taken the ’80s new wave sound into the 21st century and given it a darker spin, creating an album that can make all but the stuffiest of indie rock kids attempt to dance. And the band members wear all black! Tres chic.

5. The Strokes – Is This It – Like the White Stripes, the Strokes are making a strong bid to bring rock back to the basics. And while no band could live up to the hype of being called “the second coming of the Velvet Underground,” the Strokes still managed to produce an album full of swaggering pop gems. They won’t reinvent rock, but they serve as a reminder of what was so good about rock in the first place.

6. Bjork – Vespertine – I managed to catch Bjork in concert last year, and hearing her voice in a live setting literally sent chills down my spine. There’s always been something otherworldly about her, but when you complement her amazing vocals with equally strange and entrancing music, the result is pure sonic magic.

7. Circulatory System – Circulatory System – From Will Cullen Hart (Olivia Tremor Control) comes an album that is equal parts sad, beautiful and profound. Some of OTC’s psychedelic edge remains here, but the overall tone is decidedly darker. It seems like Hart had some sort of existential crisis — but who cares if the results are this good?

8. Radiohead – Amnesiac – OK, I’ll bite the bullet on this one: Radiohead are damn good at what they do. They aren’t as groundbreaking as some people seem to believe, but few rock bands working today are this adventurous and compelling. Kid A was more cohesive as an album, but Amnesiac definitely didn’t disappoint.

9. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells – I’ve found the White Stripes to be hit-or-miss, and this is no exception, but songs like the blistering “Fell in Love with a Girl” more than compensate. Their brand of blues-tinged garage rock is as raw and energetic as anything that came out of their native Detroit 35 years ago.

10. Arab Strap – The Red Thread – If any band were to ever convince me to give up drinking and sex, it’d be Arab Strap. Just about every song they’ve written is a desperate, disillusioned look at sex and love, seen through the haze of a few too many pints. Bleak, but undeniably powerful.

1. Bob Dylan – Love and Theft – More lyrically playful and musically diverse than Time Out of Mind, Dylan’s latest presents a man back from the dead and having the time of his life. Thirty-nine years after his first album, Bob Dylan continues to make vital, evocative music.

2. Gorillaz – Gorillaz – The logical and wonderful next step in Dan “The Automator” Nakamura’s musical takeover features the coolest band to never exist. Lovage, also featuring Nakamura, is the coolest group to actually exist.

3. Tool – Lateralus – The best prog-rock album since 1997 (OK Computer) features shifting time signatures, a brutal sonic assault of both guitar and drum solos and one of metal’s best voices in Maynard Keenan. Proof that a metal band doesn’t need to scream to be heard.

4. Ryan Adams – Gold – Former Whiskeytown (yes, “fans,” he was previously in a band) frontman delves further into rock ‘n’ roll while maintaining his hold on the heart of alt-country. Splurge for the import with the 5-song bonus CD.

5. Tenacious D – Tenacious D – Two fat men, one of them balding, barge past the past year’s whiny nu-metal and vapid pop to “Rock Your Socks Off.” This is hilarious without being stupid, and the album as a whole is unbelievably coherent. If you don’t have it, buy it. If you do have it, buy a copy because you probably have already soiled the hot cover.

6. ELO – Zoom – Jeff Lynne, one of three remaining Wilburys, returns with a splendid collection of songs for every Beatles lover who didn’t need to buy 1. A great album that was hardly heard, it combines ELO’s affections for classic rock and orchestral pop without the silly obsession with futuristic technology that marred some of the band’s previous work.

7. Ben Folds – Rockin’ the Suburbs – Wuss-pop hero Folds puts out an album not completely devoid of the wiseass attitude that prevailed in his now-defunct band, Ben Folds Five, but enough so to legitimize him as a serious artist. A great singer-songwriter record with enough humor in the title track (and its video) to forgive the boredom that is “Losing Lisa.” And the leadoff song has a clap track — what can be better than that?

8. Radiohead – Amnesiac – Taunting naysayers with “You and Whose Army?,” Amnesiac’s remaining 10 tracks offer more than enough evidence to prove the band victors in the battle against what people want them to be.

9. Elton John – Songs From the West Coast – Elton John abandons his mid-tempo rut and delivers an album that few thought would come to pass: a post-’70s classic Elton John album.

10. Stone Temple Pilots – Shangri-La Dee Da – STP’s best album since Purple is divided into hard rockers and pop songs, and it’s the psychedelic pop songs that stay with you the longest. Great tunes, excellent vocal work and some of Weiland’s most personal lyrics result in a Stone Temple Pilots album that actually makes them look better than Pearl Jam.