This Post Brought To You By The List: 30-26

30. Smashing Pumpkins -- Siamese Dream (1993)

Between Jimmy Chamberlin’s drums and Billy Corgan’s guitar, Siamese Dream is all about well-produced noise. Only the whiny, droning “Disarm” hasn’t aged well. Most of the more aggressive guitar-fueled songs -- “Hummer,” “Rocket,” “Geek USA” -- sound remarkably healthy in 2008. And yes, Corgan’s general silliness is a drawback, but the band often makes enough of a pleasurable racket to distract from lyrics like “A crown of thorns / an image formed deformed / the mark I’ve borne / a mark of scorn to you.” Yeah, I’d better stop now before I drop this record about 45 places.

29. The Streets -- Original Pirate Material (2002)

With 22 one-star reviews on Amazon, it’s clear that Original Pirate Material isn’t for everyone. One reviewer calls it “amazingly bad,” but several others stretch for something more evocative: “insipidly bad and insultingly stupid” or “nothing more than a monotonous series of vapid and dull monologues” or “uniformly uninspired, sloppy, and irritating” or, quite simply, “this is the worst thing that has ever happened to music.” But my favorite is, “I am now dumber for having heard this album.”

I obviously agree with the (more numerous) positive reviews. American rap fans might find Mike Skinner’s cockney accent and goofy concerns (video games, soccer, a girl who doesn’t like him showing up late) off-putting. But it’s his sense of humor, the fact that he doesn’t take himself (or the genre) too seriously that makes him refreshing. (Or made him refreshing. This and the follow-up are very good -- the two Streets records since have been frequently embarrassing. He insists on singing more and more, which is just horrendous, and his lyrics are a shadow of their earlier sharp wit.)

There’s a sameness to several of the songs here, but three stand out for me -- the extra-propulsive “Same Old Thing,” the trippy and pretty “Weak Become Heroes,” and the hilarious “Irony Of It All,” which takes the form of an argument between a meat-headed beer drinker, Terry (backed up by a menacing beat) and a twenty-something pot smoker, Tim (“Now Terry, you’re repeating yourself / But that’s okay, drunk people can’t help that.”)

28. Radiohead -- OK Computer (1997)

I divide this album into two halves, and the first half does much more for me than the second. If the strength of the first six songs was maintained for OK Computer’s duration -- a tall order -- I wouldn’t be writing about it quite yet. But then, after the silly seventh song, “Fitter Happier,” in which a computer-coded voice lists life’s humiliations as presumably imagined by a disaffected middle-schooler, the songs sound more average and muddier to me. This is with the exception of “No Surprises,” a depressive’s lullaby that is one of the most beautiful things the band has done. In fact, the content of “No Surprises” is not radically different from “Fitter Happier” (disillusionment, routine, resignation, etc.), so I guess it’s all in the delivery.

27. Simon & Garfunkel -- Greatest Hits (1972)

I didn’t want to include too many compilations on the list, but this one was necessary. It would be disingenuous to list another album by this duo when the hits are what I listen to most often. Released in 1972, it was also right on that border when collections were still respectable summaries, rather than something put out after two albums for the sake of extra sales. The songs here speak for themselves -- “The Boxer,” “Homeward Bound,” “America.” I think Paul Simon is one of the best songwriters of all time, so this is a lay-up. He’ll be heard from again on the list, too.

26. Stevie Wonder -- Signed, Sealed, Delivered (1970)

This was Stevie Wonder’s 12th record. Upon its release, he was 20 years old. Yeah. Get off the couch.

I love Wonder’s earlier albums. The later records that are even more critically acclaimed -- Talking Book, Innervisions, etc. -- are terrific. I love them, too. It’s a love-fest. But even though less is going on musically here, there’s something about the simple soulfulness of the songs and Wonder’s delivery that I slightly prefer. On the opener, “Never Had a Dream Come True,” just the way he repeats the title is stirring. Both the social ballads (“Heaven Help Us All”) and the personal ones (“Don’t Wonder Why”) are top-shelf. His cover of “We Can Work It Out” is considered by some superior to the Beatles’ original (I think they’re both great). And “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours” is one of my very favorite overplayed classics -- to listen to the whole thing, alone, away from an Obama rally or a greeting-card commercial or wherever it’s being played these days, and to hear him sing “I’ve done a lot of foolish things / that I really didn’t mean” is to take a great song back.