1. Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
As introspective as a letter written by candlelight in the wee hours of the night and as refreshing as a breeze flowing through your window in the summertime, Norah Jones’ debut captures the essence of jazz, but places just enough blues, country and folk to pull in the masses. With timeless songs like "I’ve Got to See You Again" and "Feelin’ the Same Way" the album highlights her vulnerable and unique voice compared to jazz favorites Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Stretching her country background, her cover of Hank Williams’ "Cold, Cold Heart" transforms the song from a twangy jangle to a majestic bass driven soulful ballad full of piano overtones and heartfelt lyricism. Stirring hypnotic visions with lyrics like "And I want to wake up with the rain/ Falling on a tin roof/ While I'm safe there in your arms/ So all I ask is for you/ To come away with me in the night" and circling the seasons on "Shoot the Moon" we’re sure to see much more from this simplistic, yet magnificent unclassifiable crooner.

2. Beck – Sea Change
Beck turned full circle this year with the release of Sea Change, from wearing rhinestone covered bellbottoms and dancing to Cubana-retro-rock to utter dismay over heartbroken lovers gone wrong. Written in about 2 days after a 9-year relationship ended with designer Leigh Limon (whom he began dating before stardom), Sea Change turns us around to see that everyone’s favorite "Loser" isn’t as untouchable as we thought.On past albums this flashy crooner tried a hand at getting to your heartstrings, but with this album Beck doesn’t give you a choice to cry or not – he weeps and doesn’t care if you join him. If Mutations was Beck poking at acoustic blues with a gem covered conductor’s baton, Sea Change shows him after shooting a songbird with a BB gun and forgetting all else until he’s had the chance to pay due respect. The wistful "Guess I’m Doing Fine" drags your emotional headspace with a bit of country twang while keeping a rhythm with your windshield wipers in the cold desolate rain while the isolated "Golden Age" shows you that "these days [he] barley gets by." With songs like "End Of the Day" and the melancholy "Lost Cause" we see haunting, yet familiar vocals that far proceed his usual lasse-fair attitude and an artist in bloom teetering on the edge of discovering a higher level of intimate performance.

3. Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
With their former drummer in rehab and out of the thrown, who better to replace him for recording the follow-up to the critically acclaimed R than super drummer Dave Grohl? And if your going to have Grohl on the drums, why not mix up the singers and let Mark Lanegan (of the Screaming Trees), Dean Ween (of Ween) and your usual line-up trade off for the fun?The result was one of rock’s best records of the year kicking off with the powerful and innovative "Know One Knows," which turned critic’s heads faster than the bargain bin at a vinyl swap meet. Of course with Grohl in the band, practically every critic in the country had something to say like, ‘could this be the next Nirvana?’, but of course they’re not anything like them and as a matter of fact – should I even say – they’re better!With a breath of fresh air to the genre, Queens stripped the sound down to it’s roots and built an album piece by piece to get the best bang for their buck (plus or minus a few obnoxious radio DJ interludes).

4. Tom Waits – Alice
Many fans who first discovered Tom Waits in 1999 with the release of Mule Variations found his grimy saloon music dark and howling, while older fans remember his big round hat protruding from behind a piano and a thick haze of cigarette smoke as his whiskey torn voice belted on about broken hearts and old lament. For an artist who usually takes his time between albums, Waits has quite prolific in his recent releases. Releasing Alice and Blood Money on the same day drove many penny-pinching fans crazy over which album to buy – the album of creepy love songs or the dark and tormented one. Alice, loosely based on the obsessions that writer Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass) had with inspiration Alice Liddell and the love that could never be, proved to be Waits’ most intriguing and masterful album. With love torn lyrics and the back-to-back metaphorical genius, Waits paints a disturbing and beautiful scene with lyrics like,"And the skates on the pond they spell Alice…But I must be insane/ To go skating on your name/ And by tracing it twice/ I fell through the ice of Alice." Love is a ghost haunting this album, where cinematic memories turn into sardonic pity for the characters of broken hearts and inescapable loss. But above the sadness and pitty, we see a reformed Waits ready to take on stranger and stranger subject matter only to twist and turn it tightly until it becomes his own.

5. Audioslave – self titled
Since Zack de la Rocha’s departure from Rage Against the Machine 2 years ago, fans have been following the exiled members and the many singers they have been working with (from Snoop Dog to DMX) and the only man to fill the shoes (and then some) is ex-Soundgarden front man Chris Cornell - one of the best rock voices the genre’s seen. With super producer Rick Ruben behind the boards and a group ready to shed their past, the ex-members of Rage surprised us all with two ballads (something all of them said ‘Rage would never do’). Kicking off the album with the radio hit "Cochise," the band detonates into twisted stop-on-a-dime rhythm full of Tom Morello’s signature bombastic guitar solos. Beside opening Morello to more blues on the album, Cornell astonishes us by adding a great rock scat throughout "Exploder" that redefines the art by opening it up for a heavier clientele. By far one of the best hard rock records of the year, Audioslave picks up the broken pieces of metal and puts them back together with precision and a profound dexterity. With Cornell quitting the band before the album’s release and rejoining afterward, we’ll probably only see one disc from these traditional nineties rock wizards – but at least we got a great taste of what was brewing in the caldron before they kicked it over.

Dan Marek