#3 – @#%&*! Smilers – Aimee Mann
Aimee Mann’s @#%&*! Smilers topped my 2008 list, and sits in the top three of this one, having not lost a bit of its staying power. Another record did leap frog it, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear about that one.
Sometimes an artist releases an album that pulls it all together in a way that none of their previous records could manage. @#%&*! Smilers was that album or Aimee Mann.
#4 – The Life Pursuit – Belle & Sebastian
The most-represented year in this little reconsideration of top ten lists past is 2006, with four albums. And the top-ranked among those four seven years ago remains the top-ranked today.
At the time, I made a case for Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit as the best album in the band’s catalog. Today I stand by that assessment with even more confidence.
#5 – Modern Times – Bob Dylan
My top five albums from the five-year period 2006-2010 are an amazing bunch. Even more impressive is that all five are actually spread between 2006 and 2008, a wonderful three-year span in hindsight.
Bob Dylan’s Modern Times could have topped this list if I were in a different mood when I finalized it. When you’re dealing with albums this good, whatever you happen to be listening to at the moment has the edge in the rankings.
Paul Simon’s ‘Loves Me Like a Rock’ is the perfect finish to his wonderful second solo album, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. It’s hard not to smile listening to this.
But this song is also an important milestone in Simon’s storied career. Six years after the first Simon & Garfunkel record (and 40 years ago), this track represents the first real departure from what has been his signature acoustic sound.
Sinéad O’Connor peaked in 1990 with the smash album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, her beautiful crying face in the ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ video becoming an iconic image of the early 90s indie scene.
She followed that album two years later with a disc of covers titled Am I Not Your Girl? and released a decent but unspectacular album of original material — Universal Mother — in 1994.
Meet Me In Montauk 