In the far-off future, when pop-music archaeologist sift through the rubble that was 2006, they won't just find a cache of extraordinary art created by wild-haired eccentrics; they'll also encounter a pair of Internet upstarts that forever altered the way the music industry does business -- and creates stars. To borrow the year's best (and most ubiquitous) adjective: Crazy.
40.
Cold War Kids, Robbers Cowards
Before the album, there was a rumor. Something about these California guys who played tent-revival shows before they had a MySpace page, who howled the white-boy blues without irony or eyeliner, whose marching-band percussion built to such a fervor they'd bang on whatever was around (tambourines, heating ducts, the nearest head in the front row), and who were gonna bring the spirit of back-to-basics rock to kids who'd normally fast-forward to the next guitar solo -- all on their very first record. Then it wasn't just a rumor anymore.
MELISSA MAERZ
Like a young-adult Book of Job, the third record from these Portland indie-punk scrappers hurtles in a powerful panic, with guitarist and unhinged narrator Hutch Harris taking on God, righteousness, and hypocrisy with a boyish bullhorn of a voice. It all could descend into college-quad glossalalia, but Harris and bassist/ drummer Kathy Foster churn up a raw, full sound, and songs like "Here's Your Future" (in which Jesus' dad yells at him like the Great Santini) turn into chilling high drama.
Harris may think we're all pitiful pillars of salt, but his music keeps a furious kind of faith. CHARLES AARON
Ward, Post-War
While Conor Oberst was penning vote-rocking anthems for '08, an old-timey guitarist from Oregon did something even more forward-thinking: He imagined an America after Iraq, just before the Democrats won back Congress on the same platform. Like the best antebellum music of the '40s and '50s, Ward's tender folk ballads and fingerpicked odes to veterans and has-been heroes, backed by the ghostly murmurs of Jim James and Neko Case, get to the heart of both tragedy and optimism: finding yourself in the twilight years of your era and still asking what's next. M.
MAERZ
Wolfmother were known first for frontman Andrew Stockdale's afro and their blistering, balls-out live show. But here, using the big rock tools of the trade -- power chords, fuzzy low-ends, more cowbells -- this Aussie trio pull off a rare feat: They balance the tongue-in-cheekiness of their throwback stylings with legitimate tunes.
Wolfmother pay homage to Sabbath and Zeppelin, as well as '90s stoner metal, but the measure of a truly heavy album is whether there is at least one song that sounds like the apocalypse ("Dimension") and one that sounds like sex ("Love Train"), which proves that these wolves' teeth are plenty sharp. KYLE ANDERSON
Remember when hardcore meant Government Issue and not Hatebreed?
When, after learning how to play, bands ignored the mosh-pit peanut gallery and upped their ambitions? These L.A.
bruisers do, taking the fury of their 2003 debut and adding whatchamacallem...
songs.
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