I like to consider the album here at #28 and yesterday’s Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop album) as two parts of a whole. Both albums were produced, mixed and engineered by the inimitable Tucker Martine. Both feature artists that have strong careers separate from the arrangement of people featured on these albums. And both are quiet, country-esque affairs that are better heard as background music than actively listened to.

That’s not a slight on either album. It’s not easy to make music that can bare repeated listening while being so completely unoffensive as to fade into the background like a fuzzy, flocked off-white patterned wallpaper.

You know and love these artists. Laura Veirs has been recording lovely singer-songwriter stuff since the late 90s. Neko Case has appeared on the Top 31 at least twice. k.d. lang is a legend. This is almost too much awesomeness to be contained in one record. And yet…

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29. Love Letter for Fire by Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
30. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future by Underworld
31. Preoccupations by Preoccupations