Last year, we bullshitted you guys. "There's no such thing as a bad year for music!" was just rhetoric that, frankly, betrayed our optimism. The more we look back on it, 2001 sucked. Maybe it's just that 2002 saw such a steady influx of Top 20 contenders that we never had a moment to come up for air. At no time in the last year did our staff feel "on top" of music; it was constantly kicking our collective ass. It took almost as much time to narrow this list to just 50 records as it did to write about them. Honestly, we debated going with a Top 100, but figured that might be overkill. Regardless, we can say with absolute, bald-faced honesty that each of these records own, and though no one person will dig all of them, we think anyone could find enough greatness here to take them through the next year.

50: Comets on Fire
Field Recordings from the Sun
[Ba Da Bing!]

Comets on Fire's breakthrough second album may be the year's most psychedelic dirty bomb. This American quartet came armed with MC5-grade vocalist bravado, a half-dozen amateur percussionists (read: "drunk friends") and a multi-pronged guitar attack: Ethan Miller knocked axes with guests Ben Chasny and the Fucking Champs' Tim Green on "electric destruction guitar," "floating guitar," and other effects-laden, imaginary instruments, all detonated through Noel Harmonson's omniverous, sound-stretching Echoplex, erupting with a bloat-free intensity in a blast radius of exactly 5.43 miles. --Chris Dahlen

49: Dälek
From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots
[Ipecac]

Phil Spector's wall-of-sound was never this thick or intimidating. Dälek's music is dense, literate, often abrasive, a challenging entry into an increasingly impressive underground hip-hop canon. "Voices of the Ether" fluttered, then faltered; "Black Smoke Rises" assaulted spoken word convention with a brutal sound collage that would do Nurse with Wound proud; "Spiritual Healing" cracked open religion and racism with a single strike. Through it all, Dälek never forgot the listener-- and there were enough incredible beats and textures to cover a few albums, all combined with a deft hand. His filthy tongue has the power to cleanse, challenge, and inspire. --Joe Tangari

48: Tom Waits
Alice and Blood Money
[Anti]

Midyear, as the phrase "inured to the horror" became a conversational-- then journalistic-- cliché, Waits emerged from his cabin-tomb with a disc to cover each ear. Alice is more of a piece, and was the free world's favorite of these two ugly twins: it got away with the searing sap of "Fish & Bird." The rollicking Blood Money's unflappable bulldoggery was the ideal complement; Waits comes across like a town crier during an abortive evacuation, yelping, "Don't go down that road!" even though it's the only road. Both platters boasted musicianship that reached into our European ghost-past, underplaying every exotic instrument: crepuscular riffs here, exilic swoon there, as if jazz were invented by pirates. It's amazing what Waits milks from a conceit on par with some hippie's epiphany: What if the normals are the freaks, and the freaks the normals? --William Bowers

47: Songs: Ohia
Didn't It Rain
[Secretly Canadian]

Jason Molina's music has always been a whole lot of bleak to take; with his sparse guitar and mournful howl, Songs: Ohia albums have always had the power to conjure up a dark cloud around any listening environment. But on Didn't It Rain, the presence of bluegrass duo Jim & Jennie took some of the lacerating edge off of Molina's moans, particularly the harmonies of Jennie Benford, who proves yet again that every dark-eye-ring Folkie sounds better with an Emmylou perched on his shoulder. Mind stuck on the night sky and the industrial wasteland of Chicago's stockyards, Molina turns in his strongest effort to date, including the stirringly concise "Two Blue Lights" and "Blue Factory Flame," the best song On the Beach -era Neil Young never wrote. --Rob Mitchum

46: Blackalicious
Blazing Arrow
[MCA]

To celebrate their first record on a major label, Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel threw a party-- and you could get lost just checking out the guests: some backup vocals from Gil-Scott Heron, a tour-de-force rap by Saul Williams, ?uestlove's smooth soul contribution to "Nowhere Fast"... The list goes on, yet it's the men of Blackalicious who show up with their best work yet. While not as conventionally hip-hop as its predecessor, 2000's Nia, Blazing Arrow's side-trips through decades of soul and funk show the breadth of Chief Xcel's intricate productions. Meanwhile, Gift of Gab's rapid-fire staccato rhymes veer from the show-off virtuosity of "Chemical Calisthenics" to the lighter-hearted, bouncy title track. And the single, "Make You Feel That Way," sums it all up, cutting straight to the positive vibe that pulls this far-reaching material together. --Chris Dahlen

45: Acid Mothers Temple
In C
[Squealer]

In an era when ambient music, via clicks, cuts and glitches, threatens to consume a generation obsessed with synthetic bliss and too much information, a modest Japanese noise commune delivered the goods with indigenous instrumentation. Acid Mothers Temple's take on Terry Riley's 1964 minimalist classic wasn't the most faithful ever performed, but it may very well be the most immediate. Like a distant, off-kilter cousin to Boredoms' Vision Creation Newsun, In C thundered quietly, phasing its rhythmic drive to the background to make way for a raw mixture of steel drums, sitar, and surprisingly, not much guitar at all. And just in case you thought this band couldn't swallow its pride, "In D" stripped away the stomp for a 20-minute TM exercise. Nirvana: It's not just for Maharishis anymore. --Dominique Leone

44: Hrvatski
Swarm & Dither
[Planet µ]

Keith Fullerton Whitman made quite a splash this year: Playthroughs gets its just desserts later in the countdown, but for the best in overstuffed digitry, this album/compilation/resumé was one-stop shopping for the discriminating, detail-obsessed consumer. The keen breaks here are instant entertainment for anyone who thinks Squarepusher just isn't manic (or intelligent) enough, though the more lasting impressions emit from 21st Century tone poems like "Paint It Black" and "Anesthetize Thineself." What makes this record so extraordinary isn't the amount of work that went in or tumbles out, but that it makes clear we have come to a point when the most interesting sounds in the world come not from a guitar, sampler or laptop, but from a spontaneous, unexpectedly natural fusion of the three. --Dominique Leone

43: Pretty Girls Make Graves
Good Health
[Lookout!]

I told them emo was over; they beat me over the head with a backpack full of bricks until I was forced to admit that, yes, it could be rehabilitated. I tried to reason with them: it's mathematically impossible, I said, to cram that many guitar hooks into a single song, much less repeat the feat over an entire album. They shoved my abacus down my throat, made me shout along to "Bring It On Golden Pond," and then physically etched the melody of "Sad Girls Por Vida" onto my brain with a crochet hook. I appealed to history: rock critics know it's impossible to reconcile technical perfection with emotional depth. They swooped in, garroted me with guitar strings, and plunged a drumstick through my still-beating heart. As my effervescing soul wafted away, I watched Andrea Zollo humming serenely as, sure enough, she dug my place of eternal rest, and I realized that, for a rock critic, I sure am wrong about a lot of things. --Brendan Reid

42: Beck
Sea Change
[Geffen]

Few albums released this year were as divisive as Sea Change, the album that saw a matured, more sophisticated Beck discovering his sensitive side. On one side you had those that championed the album's majestic Godrich orchestra, and Beck's ability to summarize so much emotional depth with seeming non-sequiturs; on the other were those who perceived the lack of eccentric mischievousness as critical acclimation. The Pitchfork staff found itself as evenly divided, trading shouts of "virtuoso!" and "diva!" across our desks. I'm somewhere in the middle myself, but this is how I figure it: Beck is the closest our generation has come to a David Bowie multi-personality, and if Midnite Vultures was his Young Americans, Sea Change is undoubtedly his Station to Station: a searching crooner's epic, punctuated by paranoid, lovelorn poetry, and production radiant enough to illuminate the most minute details. --Ryan Schreiber

41: Talib Kweli
Quality
[MCA]

Five years after changing the hip-hop landscape with his group Black Star, Talib Kweli dropped his incredible solo debut, Quality, to near universal acclaim. For this one, Talib parted ways with longtime collaborator Hi-Tek and enlisted the considerable production talents of Kayne West, DJ Quik and the Souliquarians. The fresh blood gave Talib a funkier, more polished sound that suited his ever-expanding fiat of subject matter. Kweli's lyrics managed to speak to both the personal and the political, and did so in a manner that was alternately joyful and mournful, but always optimistic and honest. --Sam Chennault