TOP 10 CDS OF 2009

1. Passion Pit

Manners

(Frenchkiss)

Michael Angelakos has the gayest hetero falsetto since Barry Gibb, but his band’s debut album wouldn’t be the indie-disco monster it is without it. The sun-kissed synths are the heart of Manners, but the soul belongs to the kids’ choir that powers several songs. One of the decade’s happiest records.

2. Miranda Lambert

Revolution

(Columbia Nashville)

This Nashville bad-ass kills her supper, refuses to play dress-up and takes zero shit from anyone. On her terrific third album, she explores the divide between the left and right, the blue and red, and the pretty and the ugly. It’s a monumental record filled with great songs and kick-ass attitude.

3. Phoenix

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

(Glassnote)

Just when you thought France was capable of spawning only dangerously hip electronic duos, these dangerously hip indie-rockers inject their cheery songs with blasts of brittle guitar and relatively soulful vocals. Plus, they have hooks as big as the Eiffel Tower. Oui, oui!

4. Animal Collective

Merriweather Post Pavilion

(Domino)

These NYC noisemakers get a little less noisy and a little more tuneful on their eighth album, a psych-soaked mash-up of Beach Boys pet sounds and tribal freakouts. There are no real songs here – just a series of not-so-random sounds that fall together in gorgeous, four-minute chunks.

5. The-Dream

Love vs. Money

(Radio Killa/Def Jam)

The year’s best R&B record is filled with bedroom jams for people who like some winks served with their bump-and-grind. The-Dream wrote Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” so he knows how to hook. On this towering album, he also shows he has staying power.

6. Jay-Z

The Blueprint 3

(Roc Nation/Atlantic)

It’s more a collection of great singles than a knockout album (the first Blueprint is the standard), but what great singles: “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” “Run This Town” and “Empire State of Mind,” which hit one after the other in the sequence. Plus, Jigga still has hip-hop’s smoothest flow.

7. Green Day

21^st Century Breakdown

(Reprise)

Green Day’s second concept album about how fucked we all are contains Billie Joe Armstrong’s best batch of songs since Dookie. It’s also a tougher record than American Idiot. The whole rock-opera thing falls together as haphazardly as it did in the ’70s, but it sure beats those clunky Yes albums.

8. U2

No Line on the Horizon

(Interscope)

Originally seen as the third part of the band’s new-millennium resurgence, Horizon now sounds like a self-reflective meditation on the two albums it released earlier this decade. It’s big, heroic and epic – everything you want from U2. It’s also vulnerably human beneath all the myth-making.

9. Bruce Springsteen

Working on a Dream

(Columbia)

Springsteen’s most hopeful album in years is also his loosest. After the stifled Magic, the Boss quickly went into the studio with his band and recorded a set of songs about love, life and Obama. It’s sexy, optimistic and brimming with casual songcraft. It’s the sound of legend settling in.

10. Neko Case

Middle Cyclone

(Anti-)

On this nature noir, the modern-day torch singer imagines herself as Mother Nature, a killer twister and a big-ass whale. It’s all very epic and earthy, right down to the endless choir of crickets that ends the record. Case breaks down genres into spectacular set pieces that are as big as her voice.

--Michael Gallucci