9. Speedmarket Avenue - Way Better Now
I was a little put-off by this album at first. The title track above is this amazing power pop track. Mind-blowingly good. But then the rest of the album is totally subdued. But I came back to it a few months later and realized, oh crap, this is the Yo La Tengo album they never made. It’s atmospheric, dreamy, and shoe-gazy. Would I prefer an album of the power pop I expected? Probably. But what I got instead was just as good, just in a completely different way.
