Rolling Stone's 25 Best Albums of 2009

25.

September 8, 2009
Critic Score
86
21 reviews
This one will make heads from Shaolin to San Diego happy.

24.

September 22, 2009
Critic Score
75
31 reviews

Everyone shines — although James, whose lead vocals open and close the set, beams brightest, the eclecticism of My Morning Jacket's 2008 opus, Evil Urges, brought into sharper focus by the company. Sometimes too many cooks are precisely enough.

23.

June 30, 2009
Critic Score
75
7 reviews

22.

January 27, 2009
Critic Score
69
35 reviews
Franz Ferdinand mainly stick to their small, intensely flavorful basics, packing songs with tempo changes and propulsive guitar riffs.

21.

May 26, 2009
Critic Score
86
38 reviews

The third disc from this Brooklyn quartet has a sound that is completely its own: an opulent, intimate rumble built on churning acoustic riffs, haunted croons and precise string parts.

20.

March 31, 2009
Critic Score
80
35 reviews

The big news ... isn’t YYY’s groovier sound — it’s the heat they radiate.

19.

April 7, 2009
Critic Score
79
34 reviews
Pounding on pianos, cranking out delicate little click-clack beats and shivering through choruses with an ultraromantic soprano, Khan proves she's a powerhouse under her billowy sleeves.

18.

April 28, 2009
Critic Score
75
30 reviews

There is a grim magnetism coursing through these 10 new songs — and most of it is in Dylan’s vividly battered singing.

17.

June 9, 2009
Critic Score
78
30 reviews

With shadowy beats from Madlib and the late J Dilla, plus dense rhymes about Darwin and a rough Brooklyn upbringing, Mos Def's fourth solo album is both mildly strange and a clear step up from his dismally undercooked 2007 record, True Magic.

16.

June 30, 2009
Critic Score
75
33 reviews
Wilco's seventh studio album is a triumph of determined simplicity by a band that has been running from the obvious for most of this decade.

15.

September 22, 2009
Critic Score
80
25 reviews

On Girls' debut, he's made peace with his past and crafted ace tunes to go with his tales of redemption.

14.

January 6, 2009
Critic Score
92
37 reviews

The ninth disc from this Brooklyn/Baltimore crew tries balancing shameless beauty with ecstatic weirdness, and when they nail it, it's breathtaking.

13.

September 15, 2009
Critic Score
72
3 reviews

12.

March 24, 2009
Critic Score
81
25 reviews

There will be naysayers among the band's extreme, tatted legions. But Crack the Skye is an awesome display.

11.

September 22, 2009
Critic Score
72
23 reviews
Backspacer, Pearl Jam's ninth album, backspaces to that boyish spirit, with the shortest, tightest, punkiest tunes they've ever banged out.

10.

June 9, 2009
Critic Score
75
34 reviews

The irony is that The Eternal might be their most concise record ever. It's also a rock & roll ass-kicker.

9.

August 17, 2009
Critic Score
84
28 reviews

Four pouty kids from South London, barely out of their teens, the xx see nothing wrong with playing Timbaland or Jam and Lewis-style R&B with an indie band's chops.

8.

March 10, 2009
Critic Score
74
10 reviews

7.

March 3, 2009
Critic Score
78
27 reviews
Her high, hard voice invests her most elliptical lines with warmth, longing and other emotions that any human animal can feel.

6.

June 9, 2009
Critic Score
86
38 reviews
It's at once attention-deficient and micromanaged, exhilarating and aggravating.

5.

May 15, 2009
Critic Score
67
27 reviews

21st Century Breakdown is even better, so masterful and confident it makes Idiot seem like a warm-up.

4.

September 8, 2009
Critic Score
68
28 reviews
By all indications, he'll continue to make good but not great music, replicating the form of his finest records minus the electric charge.

3.

May 26, 2009
Critic Score
81
30 reviews
The 10 songs are sleek and clean, as if the Strokes had kept pushing a little longer and maybe bought some old disco records.

2.

January 27, 2009
Critic Score
72
29 reviews

Working on a Dream is the richest of the three great rock albums Springsteen has made this decade with the E Street Band — and moment for moment, song for song, there are more musical surprises than on any Bruce album you could name.

1.

March 3, 2009
Critic Score
71
30 reviews

He is still singing about singing, all over No Line on the Horizon, U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's Achtung Baby.

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