Super Furry Animals – The Man Don’t Give A Fuck (1996)
‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ might just be the finest politically-inspired British rock song of the mid-90s Britpop era. Based around a Steely Dan sample, the song is a swirling psychedelic rocker full of disillusioned thought and anger. “Out of focus ideology/Keep the masses from majority” sings Gruff Rhys before launching into an unforgettable repeating chorus of “They don’t give a fuck about anybody else”, taking on the power-abusing leaders of the world. The song incorporates the word ‘fuck’ 47 times, a record for a British single (a live re-release in ’06 saw this tally doubled) and anyone who has seen the Furries live will know the song makes for an unforgettable finale to their sets. As thrilling and vital now as it was then, ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ is a song well worth giving a fuck about. – Matthew James

Mark Lanegan – Bubblegum (2004)
It’s been said that only the cockroaches could ever survive a nuclear winter. However, when I hear Mark Lanegan’s booming growl, it’s hard not to think he’d be a contender for the last thing standing. Since Screaming Trees broke up, Lanegan’s voice has added depth and muscle to a remarkable number of albums under his own name as well as in support of others. Bubblegum is his sixth and strongest solo album. These fifteen songs are like a pop joyride to the wrong side of town during the night’s darkest hours — and back home at sunrise. Lanegan shows us a portrait of addiction that is anything but romantic in the dirty and relentless ‘Methamphetamine Blues’, then he croons and woos us with beautiful tracks like ‘Strange Religion’ and ‘Come To Me’. PJ Harvey bolsters the proceedings with a second powerful voice, lending hers to the pulsing anthem ‘Hit The City’. This album manages to be both tender and unforgiving while never being contradictory. Bubblegum is a beautifully layered album that reflects life at its most beautiful and also at its ugliest. Lanegan’s voice simply cannot be ignored. – Jeremy Schaefer

Menomena – Friend And Foe (2007)
This group’s music is a lot like what their name suggests, and 2007’s Friend And Foe stays true to form, in which a rather full set of instruments crowds a playful, off-kilter rock album from start to finish. Set with witty lyrics, refreshingly flippant vocals, and an irrationally bipolar attitude, this record can be enjoyed from several perspectives and fits a strikingly wide range of moods. Maybe you’re partial to the happy-go-lucky ‘Muscle’n Flo’ where “lofty goals [are] met too soon”, or perhaps you skip right to the slow-burning balladry of the seventh track, where “all those opposed can rotten hell”. Maybe you just like the way their band name sounds. I know I do. – Rick Southwick

Sleater-Kinney – The Woods (2005)
Most critics seemed to make it a point to label Sleater-Kinney’s seventh and final album as their “classic rock record”. Comprised of ten tracks that say something that more people want to say, but can’t, or worse yet, won’t, The Woods has no odes to the cock-n-balls, grits-and-gravy, sweat-and-swagger guitar muck of decades past, beyond the most basic formula of refrain/chorus/refrain guitar music. Instead, The Woods is still punk, but not in the juvenile sense of being loud, flamboyant, and nihilistic. Rather, in the fact that the trio records songs like ‘Jumpers’, which doesn’t aggrandize suicide while discussing it. The lyrics aren’t making fun of or exploiting the experiences that lead to taking one’s life. This isn’t about titillation in an era where torture porn is a valued form of art and pain is a novelty to be laughed at. It’s about ennui, it’s about ugly lethargy. While most songs about suicide are meant to be sad in an emotionally exploitative, dishonest way, ‘Jumpers’, backed by the incredibly catchy interplay of the angular rhythm and the muscular lead guitars and conveyed through the anything-but-bored and breathy wailing of Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein, is simply about mid-life monotony, which may seem devoid of meaning at first but as the trio speaks of the condition as an epidemic, it becomes incredibly distressing. It’s fitting that The Woods is the final work of the most consistently great underground band of the 90s and 00s. Starting primarily as 2nd wave feminist separatists, we’ve witnessed their evolution into a near-socialist, universally concerned band who wanted unity in a lack of distinction, while also embracing difference.

Tackling the matrix of oppression in all its forms — from epistemological-shaping and media oppression in entertainment to classism and personal autonomy in Modern Girl — this is Sleater-Kinney’s tour de force; the culmination of everything they’ve worked for in six albums and ten years before this record. It also benefits from being the tightest-sounding work of their careers. While guitarists Weiss and Brownstein have never been afraid of a hook, in The Woods, they’re writing the rest of the arrangement to complement the hooks, which make the tracks all the more cohesive. The production by indie superproducer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Mercury Rev, Mogwai, etc.) adds a new edge to their sound by nearly drowning it in noise. At times, the sludgy sound competes with the instruments, but mostly, Weiss’ voice transcends the engineering, in a fierce battle that makes the tracks all the better for it, while adding weight and gravity to their tried-and-true sound. If you listen to only one Sleater-Kinney album, you’re silly, because they’re all good in their own respective ways. However, the sheer amount of worldly concern and catchy bits of vitriol and love shows the musicians at their proudest, their weakest, and their most vulnerable. This is a must for anyone with ears. – Todd Kearns

Ponytail – Ice Cream Spiritual (2008)
Ponytail is one of the best acts to emerge from the Baltimore scene of late, and Ice Cream Spiritual manages the difficult task of rivaling the exuberant energy of the band’s infamous live shows. The guitars are frenetic and mathy, and the rhythm section is unrelenting — think thunderous pounding and liberal use of cymbals. But what really sets Ponytail apart is frontwoman Molly Siegel whose demented vocals are usually lyric-less, more like rhythmic spasms of noise than actual “singing”. The resulting sound is hectic and deeply weird, but the band’s sense of melody and order make Ice Cream Spiritual dancier and more accessible than one might imagine when hearing the words “experimental queer art punk.” Take Ponytail’s only official single, ‘Celebrate The Body Electric (It Came From An Angel)’: the 7-minute track contains the album’s first audible lyrics, “away we go now,” which the entire band chants jaggedly before the song descends into total chaos and then grinds to a halt; a cycle that is repeated twice. It captures Ice Cream Spiritual at its best — vigorous and bizarre, but operating on a self-contained logic that makes it wholly compelling. – Laura Mojonnier

Flying Lotus – Reset EP (2007)
If you watch Adult Swim as often as I do, chances are you’re much more familiar with Flying Lotus’ work than you think. This space age beatmeister does the music for many of their bumps, including a track off of this EP, ‘Massage Situation’. But while FlyLo may have gotten his start by leading into shows like Venture Bros. and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, his mastery of laptop electronics goes beyond simply constructing a beat to keep a bored, possibly stoned audience attentive for 15 seconds between a commercial and a television show. He combines far-flung genres such as dubstep, ambient, hip hop, jazz, and breakbeat, creating a sound that is solely his own. ‘Tea Leaf Dancers’ is the most apparent of these conglomerations, with FlyLo placing R&B vocals side by side with aggressive, wavering, and fading keyboards and backing them with conservative jazz drums, showing the influence his mentor and great-aunt Alice Coltrane had on him. ‘Spicy Sammich’ is his best impression of what a DJ/rupture-Boards of Canada collaboration would sound like, dovetailing ambience with fat, erupting digital noise and two-step beats. And though it is the song everyone is most likely to already know by him, ‘Massage Situation’ is still an impressive feat, placing a dense palate of vocal samples on top of a dubstep beat and funky bassline, and then breaking down into a thick, hazy, viscous dance number. It’s scary to consider that four years ago FlyLo wasn’t even making music, and he’s now producing a brand that can’t properly be defined. Lord knows what’s in store for us as this young man’s career progresses. – Brian Riewer

Manu Dibango – Soul Makossa (1972)
Due to incessant howling winds, February has kicked off in far more frigid fashion than January did. Not only are days colder and grayer than any other time of the year, they also seem inconceivably longer than they already are. Regrettably, one can’t just forsake the daily grind to collapse into a bed of fluffy pillows and snug blankets until spring’s arrival. There are interminable errands to run, appointments to keep, duties to fulfill. To counteract any harebrained designs of hibernation, equip yourselves with Cameroon’s finest musical export: Manu Dibango. His second full-length Soul Makossa is glutted with insistent grooves and zestful saxophone flourishes during which snowy doldrums are sure to be traded in for unsightly, uncontrollable gyrations. The songs themselves sound just as instinctual as the motion they induce, as heard on the now famous (due to Michael Jackson’s ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ which features a reworked Dibango riff) title track, the rambunctious opener ‘New Bell’, and the torrid closer ‘Oboso’ which kicks the door down as vehemently as Dylan did when he spoke of chrome horses and diplomats. Dibango doesn’t ask politely, his infectious jazz-funk tunes manhandle us into shaking what our mothers probably shouldn’t have given us in retrospect. Soul Makossa carries itself with tremendous brio, with the firm belief it can get the job done regardless of the pace employed. By way of the near-Middle-Eastern flavor of ‘Nights In Zeralda’ or Dibango’s singular brand of tropicalia in ‘Lily’, this record sports precisely the type of triumphant, propulsive energy required to lift our spirits to life in the dead of winter. – Vinh Cao