8. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
Separation Sunday is a concept album about a born again Christian/drug-addicted prostitute named Holly, and her encounters with a pimp named Charlemagne and a skinhead named Gideon, which all occur during her quest to find God. The album is as lyrically complex as anything Styx ever wrote, and Craig Finn said he had stuff taped up all over my walls, drawing arrows, trying to envision the whole thing, when he put the album together. The result is a stunningly poetic look into the trashiest of rock n' roll lifestyles. Every song is witty and memorable and TV movie-esque in all the right ways. In fact, the content is so genius that by the second or third song, you entirely overlook Finn's somewhat obnoxious, nasally bleat that he uses in place of actual singing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi9FCw5FK60