Top 20 Merge Albums of All-Time

Tomorrow marks the start of the huge celebration Merge has planned for its 20th Anniversary! It seems fitting that we take a look at the great albums the label has released over the years, the ones that brought us to this insane world of independent music and endeared us to it forever. Merge has obviously been wildly influential over the years and looking at the list below you will immediately see how far it reached and the true power of the label. Obviously not all of you will agree with the list, some will want re-number, some will change an album or an album there, and some will probably want to scrap the whole thing all together, and I urge you to share those thoughts and feelings in the comments. If you're heading to XX Merge have a blast and let us know if Jeff Mangum comes out of hiding to play a few songs down there! Enjoy the list!

20. Spoon Gimme Fiction; When I did my Matador list a couple of weeks ago it was pretty obvious that Pavement were the best band ever to grace the label, but with this Merge list it's a little bit trickier. Do you go with the creators of the label Superchunk? Do you go with a band that doesn't have too much of a history like Arcade Fire or Neutral Milk Hotel? No, you pick Spoon who have consistently churned out good to great albums throughout their entire career. Gimme Fiction is the first of three that make an appearance on this list and it just edged out Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by the narrowest of margins. Still, you know you can sing just about every word to every song on this album and you know you still get excited when it randomly pops up on your iPod. You might not play it on purpose as much as you used to, but this record still is something you love.
Spoon - "I Turn My Camera On"

19. Camera Obscura Underachievers Please Try Harder; For most of their brilliant career Camera Obscura have been underrated and under valued, with people always just skipping right over them for whatever hot new thing is coming through the pipeline. But after more then 10-years you've probably sold back more of those hot new things then you have Camera Obscura because they are consistently incredible with their music but never more so then on Underachievers Please Try Harder, and album full of heartbreaking, beautiful pop tunes that should be listened to on a fairly regular basis. A lot of folks may opt for the slightly more popular Let's Get Out of this Country, but track for track this is a much stronger record.
Camera Obscura - "Before You Cry"

18. East River Pipe The Gasoline Age; If ever you plan on making a road trip it would be good to bring The Gasoline Age along with you. The record is built for the car, hence the title, the album cover, and the multitude of tunes the refer to cars or driving or the road. It's perfect in every way for just such a trip, even if that trip is just around the corner. Beyond all the literal car references the real reason this is such a car album is all the lo-fi aesthetic that permeates every inch of the record. Throw this record on your fancy record player with thousand dollar speakers and it sounds poorly produced, but put it on in your car with its cheap sound system and you'll be rocking out to every note in no time. For some reason some albums just sound better in the car and this is definitely one of them.
East River Pipe - "Down 42nd Street to the Light"

17. The Clientele God Save The Clientele; Spoon isn't the only band that appears on this list more then once, The Clientele also manages to get three nods throughout and deservedly so. The Clientele are another one of those bands that have never put out a bad record, the subtle sounds may melt into one another but they are always pretty amazing to behold. God Save the Clientele is a little bit different from everything else the band has put out, the addition of a pedal steel and slide guitar add a new layer to their sound but the rest remains unchanged. Still listening to Alasdair MacLean's voice and the rest of the bands perfect sounds is enough to have us grinning ear to ear for the rest of the day.
The Clientele - "Isn't Life Strange"

16. Caribou Andorra; For most of his career Dan Snaith was better known as a producer and composer of sounds then he was a writer of songs. Despite this his Manitoba and Caribou projects flourished thanks to the blending nature of his sounds, mixing parts of electronics with parts of psychedelica, but on Andorra Snaith really made a jump with actual songs that could be sung along to as well as devoured for their musical depth. The leap resulted in a 2008 Polaris Prize as best Canadian album and definitely the finest recordings of Snaith's long career. It even led to three separate singles including the amazing and appropriately titled "Melody Day" a song that celebrates the sharp changes on this album.
Caribou - "Irene"

15. Spoon Girls Can Tell; If you can remember back to the early days of Spoon you may recall a short time where they released a solid album on Matador Records and then made the jump to Elektra. Well the Elektra album was great but the label unfortunately disagreed and sent the band running back to the indie world. They settled with Merge and thus a new history was born for the band as they started pumping out classic albums faster then anyone else in the indie world was. The first one, Girls Can Tell, was the first sign of the new focus and the growing talent of Britt Daniels as a songwriter. It was an album with remarkable emotional depth and with music to accompany the range of emotions as well. It was an amazing record considering where they had come from, but we know now it was just the start of something bigger.
Spoon - "Take A Walk"

14. Lambchop How I Quit Smoking; Lambchop has never been known to stick around one idea or one sound for very long, heck they don't even keep band members very long, but for one album the band practically gave birth to the while alternative country genre of music. How I Quit Smoking is a wondrous record full of the authentic country instrumentation you would expect from a band out of Nashville combined with some experimental sounds and foreign instruments that make this something very different from standard country albums. There is a mild twang to it, but there is so much more here from the use of woodwinds to the offbeat lyrics of Kurt Wagner. As strange and Southern as this record may be it is certainly a thing of beauty to listen to.
Lambchop - "Smuckers"

13. Portastatic I Hope Your Heart Is Not Brittle; Mac McCaughan, the founder of Merge Records, has had a long and brilliant career with a variety of projects. His solo output under the Portastatic moniker his definitely up there with some of his finer work, and this second solo record is probably the best of it. There is a wide array of sounds on the album, ranging from the raging rock tunes to quieter, introspective songs and somehow they blend together brilliantly. There are moments of absolute catchiness, but the album really stands out for the remarkable number of layers built in here which make it perfect for repeated listens. Each time you hear it you can peel back a layer and find something completely new to like about the record, and if there anything better then that in music. Probably not.
Portastatic - "Polaroid"

12. Destroyer Destroyer's Rubies; Dan Bejar has long been hailed as one of the patron saints of the indie rock world. His work with the New Pornographers is adored by critics and popular audiences alike, but his solo material as Destroyer is the stuff more people should be paying attention to. Of course after Rubies more people started to get the point. This record with its wonderful wordplay and catchy sounds truly launched Destroyer to a much larger audience, but it also showed that all the albums prior to this one had been building to this one moment. It showed a little bit of every facet of Bejar's game and rolled it into one fantastic record, with which we will never tire.
Destroyer - "Watercolours Into the Ocean"

11. The Clientele The Violet Hour; When it was finally released in 2003, The Violet Hour marked the true full length debut of The Clientele despite several years of releasing singles and EP's. That may have led to some of the mixed reviews the album was met with that had people complaining it sounded too similar to what we had already heard, but over time we've come to realize that the album is as full and deep as anything The Clientele have ever done even if it does follow the same basic formula of pretty and quiet indie tunes that their earlier releases were also known for. The sounds here were hazy and beautiful like everything The Clientele has come to be known for, and there's nothing wrong with sticking to a tried and true formula.
The Clientele - "Porcelain"

10. M. Ward The Transfiguration of Vincent; Sadness has often led artists to some of their most brilliant work and such is the case with M. Ward's The Transfiguration of Vincent an album recorded in tribute to his deceased friend Vincent. Full of melancholy folk tunes, the album shows off a variety of styles while M. Ward truly came into his own on this record. There's some old time Americana, some psych-pop, lots of folk, and as evidenced by the tremendous cover of Bowie's "Let's Dance" some true roots in pop music. There are moments where the album could lull you to sleep thanks to the overall quiet melancholy of it but really the beauty of it all should be enough to keep you listening to every word and every note.
M. Ward - "Helicopter"

9. Polvo Today's Active Lifestyles; For most of the mid-90's Polvo flew totally under the radar, releasing classic albums in relative obscurity while bands with a similar sound; Pavement, Sonic Youth, etc. managed to flourish. Of course Polvo weren't a copycat act they just shared a similar aesthetic to noisy, guitar driven sounds and never did it sound better then it did on Today's Active Lifestyles an album that simply does not play by the rules. By using multiple tempos and some intricate distorted guitars Polvo crafted an album that would not sit still for anyone and really did not want to classified as this or that. There were bits of punk and grunge and pop, but with all those layers the only way to really classify the record is by saying it's an absolute classic!
Polvo - "My Kimono"

8. Destroyer Your Blues; With its use of MIDI instrumentation some might mistake Your Blues for a video game soundtrack, but nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is Dan Bejar was trying something new, branching out into new sounds on this record and did see with great patience and wonderful ability to craft something that is absolutely amazing. The mix of his theatrical voice, a strummed guitar, and the synthetic sounds makes for an album that can be jarring at times but ultimately winds up as endearing and wodnerous. This was the first time Bejar had ditched the normal band format with Destroyer and he really went out on a limb with all of it but it worked out so tremendously well that it is tough to argue the importance of this record on music since its release. Yeah, it's that kind of record but it's also one we love.
Destroyer - "The Music Lovers"

7. Superchunk Foolish; Let's face facts there had to be a Superchunk record on this list and there probably could have been two or three to make it. Ultimately I thought the list was better with just the one, the best one, Foolish. The album came at a time when everything about Superchunk was in flux, Mac and Laura had broken up, the band had abandoned Matador opting to release its records on Merge for the first time, and the music totally echoes all of these changes. More somber, orchestrated tracks replaced the band's signature high energy punk tunes, but somehow they managed retain the melodic qualities the band had become known for. That saved this record from drowning in the sad sack pool, but it also combined with the more melancholy parts of it to make some of the finest music in the band's history. This is definitely their landmark album, one that we will listen to for all-time.
Superchunk - "Kicked In"

6. The Clean Anthology; It may be cheating to include The Clean's 2002 collection of their early material on this list but in all honesty it was my first exposure to The Clean and it is definitely one of the strongest releases in the history of Merge Records. Top to bottom there is no weak point in the two disc compilation, it is loaded with some fast and furious post-punk tunes that had gone out of print or were tough to find. Songs like "Tally Ho", "Fish", and "Big Soft Punch" are absolute classics. And without The Clean would New Zealand have a rock scene at all? Probably not, so cheating or not The Clean's Anthology definitely belongs on this list so don't even bother arguing it.
The Clean - "Safe In the Rain"

4. The Clientele Strange Geometry; Once again The Clientele don't stray far from their hyper literate, dreamy indie pop, but once again the fact that they are sticking to a wonderful working formula doesn't mean very much. The difference between Strange Geometry and the rest of the band's very strong history is that this album adds a bit of emotion, a surge of wit, and tweaks the sounds ever so slightly to make a deeper and more full record then anything else in The Clientele's discography. It's a record that is remarkably layered but also immediate with it's beauty so whether you are hearing it for the first time or the fiftieth time you will find something to fall head over heels in love with. Oh, and this one probably has the band's finest singles with "Since K Got Over Me" and "E.M.PT.Y.", but that's just a bonus.
The Clientele - "Since K Got Over Me"

4. Spoon Kill the Moonlight; If Girls Can Tell was considered a comeback album after the horrific way Elektra had treated Spoon then Kill the Moonlight is the record that takes everything the band has been through, runs it through a blender, and makes the finest concoction your ears have ever heard. Spoon broke down their sound, taking the subtle sounds of Girls, mixing it with the bigger parts of A Series of Sneaks and puts it all together to create the finest record Spoon has done so far. The album bristles with a hint of anger but it also has the same depth and range of emotions that Girls Can Tell introduced us to. Of course a lot of this has to do with the continued improvement of Britt Daniels songwriting but it also has a lot to do with the hooks that were put back in for this record. Tunes like "The Way We Get By" and "Stay Don't Go" simply latch onto and don't let go while the others make sure you don't skip past any of them. It's a complete, top-to-bottom record that everyone should own, listen to, and adore.
Spoon - "The Way We Get By"

3. Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs; If there wasn't a label like Merge out there do you think a crazy concept album like 69 Love Songs would ever have existed? Who else would have given Stephen Merritt and his merry bunch of misfits the opportunity to release a three disc concept album that was originally meant to be a live revue? No one that's who, but thanks to Merge's affinity for music that didn't stay within the parameters of pop music we were rewarded by 69-ingenious love songs ranging from inane to beautiful and poignant. It is such a magnificent work of music and it was such a crazy idea at the time, but somehow they came together and made it work.
The Magnetic Fields - "The One You Really Love"

2. Arcade Fire Funeral; At the end of this year music critics everywhere will be scrambling to list the best records of the decade and surely Funeral will have more then a few votes and will land in a ton of top 10's. The album has helped to bring Merge Records into the 20th century and into the golden age of Merge Records. Over the last 10-years the label has grown from a niche indie label to one of the biggest names in the growing world of independent music and the Arcade Fire are obviously a huge reason for that. Funeral is a beautiful and huge record, with an enormous amount of sounds that permeate every inch of the record. They can be loud and anthemic or they can quiet everything down trying to speak to your soul, but no matter what the songs on this record are always impressive no matter how many times you've heard them.
Arcade Fire - "Rebellion (Lies)"

1. Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea; An argument can be made for why each of the last three or four albums could take the top spot on this list, but in terms of my own personal taste the nod must belong to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. In my mind this is the record that truly defined the independent sound of the 21st century, even though it was released in the last year of the 20th century. It paved the way for this sudden interest in the geeky bands that have been making music like this for decades, and it is spoken of in hushed and reverred tones wherever you go. A lot of it's mythic status has to do with the fact that Jeff Mangum hasn't released any new music since it was released and because of his reclusive status most people have never seen it performed live, but really when you listen to the music there is so much more to it then that. A concept album about Anne Frank that pulls on every heartstring we have so that we feel the same way Mangum felt while reading her diary. It's an amazing record, built on an odd concept that somehow touches us all in a number of extraordinary ways. That is why this is the greatest album Merge Records has ever released and that is certainly saying something.
Neutral Milk Hotel - "Holland, 1945"

(Editor's Note: after listening to them all together I realized the mp3's in this post make a pretty sweet, hour and half long, mix for you guys to take along with you on your way to XX Merge! Download the zipped and ordered file right here!)