Treats, Sleigh Bells.

Norman: Sometimes you just want to rock. Sometimes you just want to listen to something so loud and noisy that it feels like you are swimming in literal airwaves. Sometimes you want to drive around in your car feeling like you could drive straight into a building and the building would be destroyed by your music. When I want to rock, I’ll pull out one of my Helmet albums or Sleigh Bells’ 2010 debut, Treats. 

The sound of this album is singular. So singular that it kind of trapped the band’s future. But it doesn’t matter, because Derek Miller’s staggering blown out guitar riffs and Alexis Krauss’ airy, sexy, precise vocals are too busy wrecking everything around them to care about the band’s future. 

It’s not an album that I can listen to every day, but when I do listen to it I feel power surging through every inch of my body. When the album is over, I am exhausted and spent. 

Favorite Tracks: “Tell Em,” “Rill Rill,” “A/B Machines”

The King Is Dead, The Decemberists.

Tyler: A dear friend and his college girlfriend gave up on The Decemberists when they saw the band bring a fake whale onstage. A former girlfriend of mine, too, piled onto the group not unreasonably in describing them as “prancing around with a lute.” I myself never knew much of their work, apart from a couple stray tracks like “Sons And Daughters” and “The Crane Wife 1 and 2.” These selections I liked, but they didn’t drive me to any special celebration of the music. The Decemberists were a band people I knew liked, not a favorite of my own.

That changed for good with the release of The King Is Dead. Gillian Welch on backing vocals alone is enough to merit a listen, pairing somehow grandly with Decemberists lead singer Colin Meloy’s self-effacingly-described “donkey bray.” Bringing in Welch indicates where the album is meant to stand, amidst the best Americana of its time. I had no idea this band could bust out an opening track so inspiring as “Don’t Carry It All,” or a stirring anthem so lovely as “Rise To Me,” and the months in 2011 when I spun King Is Dead regularly established The Decemberists as, in the very least, authors of a considerable personal favorite. More often than not, when I return to this album, I need a bit of a boost. Without fail, it does the job.

Reveal, R.E.M. 

Norman: R.E.M. has been my favorite band since high school and they probably always will be. But even as a super fan, I find it difficult to talk about late period R.E.M. After Bill Berry left the band, they didn’t have a strong sense of direction and purpose. Their albums ranged from truly embarrassing (Around the Sun) to unruly but fascinating (Up) to “I think I’m bored now” (Collapse Into Now). When they broke up, I was relieved. 

But in the middle of that late period roller coaster was Reveal, an album that sounds like the Beach Boys took a trip into outer space. More than any other R.E.M. album, I might describe this one as a vibe. When I listen to it, I get the sense that I’m floating around in a pleasant groove. It was released in May of 2001, so all of my memories of the album revolve around that summer of 2001, just before 9/11. I was getting ready to go to a new school in Chicago. I had a steady girlfriend. I was tooling around my hometown like the horizons of life were endless. This album, bouncy, bright, and hopeful, was the perfect soundtrack for the time. 

Favorite Tracks: “The Lifting,” “Beat a Drum,” “Chorus and the Ring” 

Passage Du Desir, Johnny Blue Skies.

Tyler: After releasing the playful The Ballad Of Dood & Juanita in 2021, country-rock artist Sturgill Simpson withdrew from the scene. With a decade of remarkable music under his belt, Simpson released no new work for three years, and, upon his return in 2024, draped himself in the moniker “Johnny Blue Skies.” Whatever difference the name made within the man, his resulting LP Passage Du Desir is superb. Nodding affectionately to his onetime self in the absolutely terrific strut “Scooter Blues,” the new Sturgill croons “People say ‘Are you him?’, I say ‘Not anymore.'”

Not that the bulk of the album is lighthearted. Quite the contrary. Passage Du Desir is a very resigned, heartbroken piece of work, allowing for spare glimpses of romantic satisfaction, but anchored by two devastating songs about different kinds of heartache. “Jupiter’s Faerie,” a haunted song describing the loss of a former partner to suicide, concludes side 1; “One For The Road,” a broken ballad about leaving behind a long-term lover, closes the album. Work this good is no surprise from the reliably tremendous Simpson, but such subject matter approached this frankly is the hallmark of few popular musicians period. There’s a lot of bravery, and beauty, in whatever Johnny Blue Skies is doing, whomever he happens to be.

Philadelphia Songs, Denison Witmer.

Norman: Denison Witmer is a little-known folk artist from Pennsylvania. I’m not quite sure how I discovered his music, but he has associations with other artists I love (Sufjan Stevens, The Innocence Mission) and his music eventually made it into my orbit. His early records are the folk soundtrack of post-collegiate heartbreak, young adult wandering, and romance with the urban world. In short, a perfect soundtrack for my late college years and the rest of my 20s. Even now those early albums bring up in me a wistful long for days gone past. 

The musical arrangements aren’t exactly complex, but the execution is earnest and direct. In Denison Witmer’s world friends are moving to the city for the first time, young lovers are trying to figure out how they can make sense of themselves, and neighborhoods are visited. 

Witmer’s best album, in my view, is his first, 1998’s Safe Away. With that one out of the running for this article, it was incredibly difficult to pick a record of his from the 21st century. For my money, the three best albums are Of Joy & Sorrow, Philadelphia Songs, and American Foursquare. If you like any of these, you’ll probably like all of them. He’s been one of the most consistent artists over my adult life. For this list, I’ve landed on Philadelphia Songs for almost no particular rhyme or reason.

Favorite Tracks: “Sets of Keys,” “24 Turned 25,” “Do I Really Have To?”

Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers.

Tyler: Phoebe Bridgers first came to my musical attention as the pandemic took hold in 2020, her murmuring second album Punisher drawing my attention as workless days led to endless nights. Even at its liveliest, the brisk “Kyoto,” Punisher is concerned with emotional traumas and lingering memories of loved ones lost or left behind. It’s a quiet but stunning LP, and I return to it years later looking for that irresistible late-night melancholy, sunny days be damned. The crescendo of the final three tracks draws the threads together into a lament that nails down the despair of the Trump era, leaving us riveted while Bridgers finishes up her lyric—“I turned around, there was nothing there. Yeah, I guess the end is here”—and deconstructs into full-throated screams. It’s terror on digital tape.

Incidentally, in the wake of the first installment of this feature I was taken to task by Loom pal Boss Buddy, who noted that we’ve declared these selections “essential,” not “favorites.” A wry point made by a winking wiseacre, but one I’ll address here, because Punisher is a relevant example of the offbeat selections Norman and I are choosing to make. There are albums I’ve listened to obsessively since 2000, ones I can damn near recite from memory, indicating a devotion that to the naked eye would rank such records above one like Punisher, which I listen to only on occasion. Sometimes I need a challenge, though, as that challenge can lead to catharsis. I can name dozens of songs that I know better than, say, Bridgers’s “ICU,” but damn, I want “ICU” in my life, when the moment is just right. Putting on Punisher leads to that moment, and others like it. It might not be essential to, just an example, Boss Buddy—who for all I know has a boygenius bicep tattoo—but it is on this end, every now and again. And that, by way of belated explanation, is enough to place it here.

Only God Was Above Us, Vampire Weekend.

Norman: When Vampire Weekend released their much-hyped eponymous debut record, I saw them on Saturday Night Live and thought they sounded like trash. The hype, however, didn’t die off, so I gave that album a proper listen and loved it. Over the years they’ve made themselves a solid reputation for making indie pop/rock with afropop influences. Unique beats, unique instruments, but always in the service of fantastic, catchy songcraft. 

I’ve enjoyed every one of their albums to one degree or another, but 2024’s Only God Was Above Us took them to a new level of insane baroque pop. This is the kind of album you put on with a good pair of headphones and find yourself amazed every other minute. This album gets at one of my musical soft spots. I’m an absolute sucker for maximalist arrangements with classical instrumentation. Vampire Weekend. These songs are BIG and BOLD! And yet this is not an art experiment. The songs are just as catchy as ever. I hope they keep going in this direction. 

Favorite Tracks: “Capricorn,” “Connect,” “Mary Boone”

Is This It (UK edition), The Strokes.

Tyler: So fucking good. I was late to the ballyhooed rock rebirth of the early ’00s, apart from a neglected copy of The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells, a 2001 album I liked but didn’t quite get. At the time there were plenty of bands from New York or Detroit or distant shores flooding the scene, from The Hives (terrific) to The Vines (never explored) to The Von Bondies (the band with the dude whom Jack White assaulted the shit out of, an altercation that speaks well of neither participant). Finally, when the Stripes dropped Elephant in 2003, I got hooked into an era of popular music that very nearly blew right over my sheltered head.

Now, Elephant is a hell of a rock record. It does not, however, make my list. The White Stripes were a badass duo with a monster sound. I love a whole lot of their music. But no album they ever released serves as a monument to its time. “Seven Nation Army” is the titanic song of the era, absolutely, played out as it’s been for well over a decade. That thing is performed by school bands between halves of NCAA football, so it wins.

The all-time full-length album from those days, though? It’s Is This It, and the margin isn’t close. The Strokes are still around in ’25, dropping an album every few years, looking attractively scuzzy to an age-appropriate extent, showing up and doing the work. Good for them. As far as I’m concerned, they released one of the all-time top, what, 100? 50? Definitely one of the top fifty rock debuts dating to the 1950s. It’s that good, and it’s that iconic. Just as shit-hot innovators like The Ramones thrillingly captured a filthified New York in the mid-to-late ’70s, The Strokes tipped their cap and walked the walk twenty-odd years later, catching an NYC of their own, one just as quickly mythical, timeless nonetheless. Is This It is a thrilling fucking listen, one that makes you want to party and drink and make out and dance, even as all of those actions might follow inexorably to catastrophe. That danger, and those ecstasies, are the stuff of all-time rock and roll. Is This It follows those traditions, sounding wholly individual and irresistible to this day.

Kid A, Radiohead.

Norman: Welcome to my most pretentious pick, everyone. But it’s not pretentious, because I don’t care, because I love this album. And there is a fun backstory. 

In 1993 Radiohead released their debut album Pablo Honey, with the hit track “Creep.” Somewhere around 1995 my dad’s friend Steve gave me a cassette copy of that album. You see, Steve had heard the aforementioned hit song on the radio and thought it was great. He bought the cassette and realized that there were a few “fucks” in there that had been cleverly edited for radio play. Steve was a Jehovah’s Witness, so “fucks” were a no-go. He gave the tape to me, because I was not a Jehovah’s Witness. Anyway, I played the tape and, other than “Creep,” hated the album. I wrote the band off. 

Over the rest of the 90s Radiohead would release two critically acclaimed albums, The Bends and OK Computer. I had heard about the acclaim for those records and thought to myself, “Oh for fuck’s sake. That band?” and continued to write them off.

Then I got to college and a friend of mine on my floor had Kid A and was raving about how great it was and how he’d gone to see them play and they were amazing. Incredulous still, I borrowed the CD from him and my mind was blown right off. Kid A was sonically unlike anything I had ever heard before and, quite frankly, so different from Pablo Honey that I had a hard time believing these two records came from the same group. Anyway, I got hooked on Kid A and drove my roommate, who was not exactly musically adventurous, crazy. He decided to room with someone else the next semester. Now I recognize that Radiohead is a great band with a truly awful debut album. I had dismissed them and have now learned from my mistakes. 

Discovering Kid A‘s bleak electronic landscapes in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was perfect timing. 

Favorite Tracks: “The National Anthem,” “Optimistic,” “Idioteque” 

Something More Than Free, Jason Isbell.

Tyler: Jason Isbell was recommended to me around the time of his album Southeastern, a masterful 2013 LP that marked the musician’s first released effort since he quit drinking. Throughout the record are references to sobriety, to looking back upon a past that wasn’t so well-behaved, to romance in the midst of and in the wake of rampaging addiction. Not for nothing do Isbell’s audiences, to this day, erupt with cheers at the lines “I sobered up; I swore off that stuff” during live performances of Southeastern‘s breathtaking opening track, “Cover Me Up.”

Isbell today, in 2025, remains a titanic force in popular music’s Americana subset, releasing album after album of heavyweight material, touring to no end, headlining Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium for at least a week every autumn. An album released just this year, Foxes In The Snow, almost took this slot, which I’d allotted for whatever Isbell album felt right in the context. Foxes shows us an artist stripped down to songcraft, vintage acoustic guitar, and vocals. It’s a wonderful collection.

But, for this list, on this occasion, I opt to celebrate the recording that took me over in 2015, two years after I learned of the man, approaching two years after collapsing into my own journey out of alcoholism. I’d given up booze in December of 2013, timing that surely informed my allegiance to Southeastern. There was something about Southeastern, though, that I could never quite touch back then—much of the album was inspired by either Isbell’s then-wife Amanda Shires, or his ex-wife Shonna Tucker, and the tortured, scorched soul of the work is romantic. From the end of a long-term relationship in 2011 through the darkest cataclysms of addiction, into my own sobriety and for a couple of years beyond, I went without any real physical or emotional attachment to a partner, and that void, however a blessing, left my heart at a slight angle to Isbell’s more direct odes and apologies.

Then, Something More Than Free. It begins with a song that topped my iTunes count for 2015, “If It Takes A Lifetime,” a short story about a man facing life beyond the bottle, taking on a workaday existence, adjusting to living alone and ending days in front of a television. It’s not a downbeat tune, though, but rather a sprightly dose of major-key optimism, the mood livened especially by Shires’s bopping fiddle. “Lifetime” is a fine example of the wonderful noise that that married couple could produce in tandem, but this was no hindrance to my obsession with the song. I was hacking away at finding the right job, now dry eighteen months or thereabouts, and I was reflecting upon friendships lost, loved ones cast away in the years I spent drowning the best of me. “Man is a product of,” Isbell sings, “all the people that he ever loved.”

The songs go on. “24 Frames” and “The Life You Chose,” straightforward rock tales from forlorn narrators. The title track, which Isbell performed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “Palmetto Rose,” which rocks until it reflects; “Hudson Commodore” and its longing for grown family and abandoned dreams. “How To Forget” and “Flagship” are both clear and clearly personal narratives, while the similarly vivid “A Band That I Loved,” closes the album on a strange, unsettling, wavering tone.

It’s “Children Of Children” that ascends above all others, though, a masterpiece that takes its first sweeping breath five tracks into Something More Than Free. The song is a towering achievement, this exhalation of the guilt that comes from being a child, looking back on your parents. “All the years you took from her, just by being born.” Piercing sentiments, gorgeous arrangement. I was lucky and saw Isbell with his band The 400 Unit earlier this year, 2025, and the moment of realization that the group would be closing with “Children Of Children” was heart catharsis. I adore the song, even more than I love “If It Takes A Lifetime,” though it is the combination of those works in this one place that leaves me placing Something More Than Free above all other Isbell from the 21st century. I could list the catalog, but there is no need. Whether the man releases a single worthwhile recording after Foxes In The Snow leaves no mark on his impact. Include his 2000s as a Drive-By Trucker, years full of songwriting belying Isbell’s tender age, and a body of work emerges that covers nearly all of the 21st century so far, 25 years in. That’s a remarkable musical legacy, one that leaves plain a reassuring truth: Jason Isbell ranks among the best of his generation. I’m grateful for him, because there can be no doubt that, in the very least, his tales of beating addiction gave me subconscious faith in my teetotaling self. There’s no repayment for that. So I’ll listen, on a loop, to his work in the studio and from the stage, taking time and soapbox effort here to recommend it. If you have an ear, it might please you, and if you’ve a yearning soul, it might leave you feeling a little less alone. Something More Than Free, seemingly just an album, is something so much more than that. It’s music at its best.

---