3. David Bowie – Outside

The title of this record is actually 1. Outside. It was initially going to be the first installment of a series of albums that would relate the sinister adventures of detective Nathan Adler. After the less-than-lukewarm reception of the album, however, plans for a follow-up were shelved. True enough, the album isn't entirely successful, but overall it's a reprieve, a desert oasis, after the barrenness of Bowie's output in the Eighties. Skip the segues, the cameos of suspects and witnesses in a mostly incomprehensible bizarre murder story, forget the Nathan Adler character altogether, and you're left with a solid album. Bowie is on a journey here. He experiments with song structure and sonic themes. Most of these songs sound unlike anything else in the Bowie catalogue. Take the brooding shuffle of "The Heart's Filthy Lesson," or the explosive "Hallo Spaceboy," which spawned a minor hit in Europe in the version remixed by the Pet Shop Boys. It's surprising that Outside was met with so much derision, especially since throughout his career Bowie has displayed a chameleon-like ability to reinvent himself, always traveling down new, surprising (okay, with a few missteps here and there) avenues. Outside is a fascinating record. It's dark and twisted: witness the silent despair of "The Motel" or the disorienting "I'm Deranged" (which was included on the soundtrack of the equally disorienting David Lynch movie Lost Highway). It's a hard pill to swallow whole, but some of the songs on the record scale those lonely heights of his last real masterpiece, Scary Monsters.

4. R.E.M. – Up

On a declining slope ever since their move to Warner Bros., R.E.M. should have packed it in when drummer Bill Berry quit the band after 1995's New Adventures in Hi-Fi. But they didn't. They went on as a trio and released the drum-computer-heavy Up. Reviled by critics, the album sounds as much like the old R.E.M. as, say, Jay-Z does. The problem with Up is painstakingly clear: it fails to reconcile two conflicting elements, namely electronic music and R.E.M.'s signature jingle-jangle folk-rock. Up is no Murmur or Automatic for the People, but it still has plenty to offer that makes it worth the five-dollar bargain price you pay for it at music stores nowadays. The singles "Daysleeper" and "At My Most Beautiful" are arguably the album's strongest tracks, and they are fine songs. And when looking past semi-experimental noodlings like "Airport Man," songs such as "Sad Professor," "Parakeet," "Falls to Climb," and "Hope," which uses a sample from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," also reveal themselves to be carefully-constructed melodies worthy of Michael Stipe's beautiful voice.

5. Neil Young – Zuma

By far not the worst Neil Young record, nor the one with the worst album art (that award goes to Everybody's Rocking or Trans or, well, at least a dozen other albums of his), Zuma is perhaps the most wrongfully overlooked effort in the considerable Neil Young catalogue. I say "wrongfully" primarily for three reasons: one, the stunning "Through My Sails," two, the epic "Danger Bird," and three, the monumental "Cortez the Killer." That last song is Neil Young at his prodigious best: a seven-plus minute guitar-fueled beast that sings of genocide in the ancient world and that somehow manages to be infinitely moving. Perhaps this album should have no place on this list, and yet it does. For the odd absence of any of Zuma's songs on Young's recent Greatest Hits collection (which was based on number of downloads, among other things) goes to show that this disc is somewhat of a hidden treasure.

6. The Flaming Lips – Hit to Death in the Future Head

So this album followed what might be termed the Lips' first creative peak (In a Priest Driven Ambulance) and preceded their critically acclaimed foray into the realm of sonic genius (Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, Clouds Taste Metallic, and beyond). This certainly put pressure on Hit to Death as its creators had set the standard of their music incredibly high and were about to move it up a notch or, oh, say ten. The album is sort of like the guy who dated Angelina Jolie between Billy Bob Thornton and Brad Pitt (if there ever was such a guy, of course). As such, it is bound to feel a little disappointing or unspectacular. After all, what is up with Wayne Coyne's voice on this album, which sounds weirdly distorted and echoing as if the Eighties have suddenly caught up with him? "The Sun" might be the most annoying song the band ever recorded this side of "Hell's Angels Cracker Factory." Nonetheless, there's much to love here. Opener "Talkin' Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues" is a stab at unqualified radio-friendly college rock that succeeds resplendently. "Gingerale Afternoon" and "Halloween on the Barbary Coast" are equally memorable. Anyone who likes the Lips should get a kick out of Coyne singing, "Boy, you've still got shit for brains." And "Felt Good to Burn" introduced ear-thumping bass noise long before Kid A came along.

7. Wilco – A.M.

Within ten years of the release of their debut album, Wilco went on to create their magnum opus, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and win a Grammy for A Ghost Is Born. By then, the band had strayed away so far from its debut album A.M. that a casual Wilco fan might not even know the disc exists. To make matters worse, A.M. was followed by a two-disc extravaganza of country and folk-infused rock, which makes it clear why this modest debut is all but overshadowed by the rest of the Wilco catalogue. How unjustly so! "Casino Queen" is an boldly raucous Exile-era Rolling Stones knock off that the band still performs from time to time. There is an uncomplicated honesty and openness to this record that is moving and, when compared to experiments like the never-ending outro to "Less Than You Think," refreshing. It's almost what their latest, Sky Blue Sky, attempts to be but without the complacent attitude toward their American Radiohead title (an honor they didn't yet have to struggle with when A.M. was released). "I Must Be High," "Box Full of Letters" and "Passenger Side" are all perfect car songs in the best sense. Truth to be told, the album does wander off into the land of country-schmaltz here and there, but these minor moments are countered by tender cuts such as "Should've Been in Love" and "I Thought I Held You." Closer to Whiskeytown than Wilco progenitors Uncle Tupelo, A.M. is hard on its way to becoming a lost gem.

Then stop reading American reviews. Cause that's the only gang that says it.