Blender's 1001 Downloads: The 33 Best Albums of 2008

10. Fall Out Boy, Folie A Deux
Has Pete Wentz ever posed for one of those posters that encourage kids to R-E-A-D? The FOB lyricist is Gen Y’s most word-crazy rock star, brimming with puns, self-reflexive nods and homespun koans. Here he adds smack-you-in-the-face slogans to his arsenal: “Boycott love!” “Detox just to re-tox!” “If home is where the heart is then we’re all just fucked!” The arrangements are luxuriously overblown, the guitars Who-jumbo, Patrick Stump’s sing-alongs plentiful and plump—a perfect balance between neurosis and swagger.
Download “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes,” “America’s Suitehearts,” “The (Shipped) Gold Standard”

11. Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs
Their lyrics can be wussier than an asthmatic 12-year-old at a dodgeball convention, but musically, these Northwestern nebbishes have been hitting the heavy bag. Over the most propulsive riffs of their career, Ben Gibbard sighs about disintegrating relationships  and missed opportunities, his towering dissatisfaction finally finding a squall to match.  And as the nearly nine-minute stalker jam “I Will Possess Your Heart” proves—uncharacteristically, gratifyingly—wusses can sometimes be creepy, too.
Download “No Sunlight,” “I Will Possess Your Heart,” “Long Division”

12. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
After a decade of woodshedding, these grizzled Kentucky mountain men have become freewheeling Southern rockers—old-school formalists who get their jollies tweaking old-school forms. This fifth studio album is their boldest yet: a funky, space-age jam odyssey captained by singer Jim James, whose wolf-howl falsetto sounds like Prince rehearsing inside a missile silo. Confusing for the hacky-sack circle at Bonnaroo; fantastic for the rest of us.
Download “I’m Amazed,” “Touch Me I’m Going to Scream (Pt. 1),” “Highly Suspicious”

13. Al Green, Lay It Down
Here’s the most 1974 album of 2008. Unlike recent producers who tried to update his sound, Roots drummer ?uestlove and organist James Poyser take the emperor of bedroom soul back to his gently percolating early-’70s grooves, with strings and horns. Reverend Green pays them back with his most spine-tingling secular performances in ages. Even the dents and scratches time has added to his voice have become weapons in his arsenal of seduction.
Download “Just for Me,” “Lay It Down,” “What More Do You Want From Me”

14. Jenny Lewis, Acid Toungue
Rilo Kiley’s fox in chief filled her 2006 solo debut with redemption tales and pleas for “the grace of God.” No. 2 is plenty graceful, but God has been evicted from the premises. “It’s a bad man’s world, and I’m a bad, bad girl,” Lewis teases. Whether the music’s Southern-gothic folk or Appalachian blues stomps, sins of the flesh abound. It’s great, naughty fun, but if you suspect there’s a sucker for love hiding beneath the straps and garters, you’re right.
Download “Pretty Bird,” “See Fernando,” “The Next Messiah”