The 20 Best Albums Not in the Canon: 10-1
See also: The 20 Best Albums Not in the Canon: 20-11 
Fugazi
*Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time
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10. Built To Spill
Perfect From Now On (1997)
Not really grunge but not springy enough to be pop, Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On is that rare, practically non-existent indie rock epic, practically a concept album in its brooding, temperamental contemplation of the cosmos. Lyrically it vacillates between the abstract and the concrete, throwing out images that stick more often than not. ("By the time you read this/ You kicked it in the sun.") The guitars, meanwhile, sound like they'd like to tell you everything's going to be all right, really, if only they believed that to be the case. -Ben Westhoff
9. Goodie Mob
Soul Food (1995)
More than just a judge on The Voice, Cee-Lo also anchors Goodie Mob, a group that was integral to hip-hop's evolution. In fact, one could easily make a case for Soul Food as the most influential southern album of all time. The template for those who followed, it's a slice of Atlanta, from the gospel-influenced morality tales to the sermons about their region's unjust history. Fellow Dungeon Family members OutKast are frequently included in the canon, likely because their visible early influence from groups like Souls of Mischief made them more palatable to rap critics at the time. Many still, however, react to Goodie Mob's unabashed Southern-ness as if they were speaking a foreign language. -Chaz Kangas
8. Fugazi
Repeater + 3 Songs (1990)
Back when flannel-clad kids, drunk on Nevermind and Ten overran record stores shelves fixing for more "alternative," good record store clerks offered up Repeater + 3 Songs. Washington, D.C.'s Fugazi represented the prefect marriage of co-frontmen from the seminal Dischord scene: Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat (with his visceral political hardcore) and Guy Picciotto (with his emotional post-postpunk). Released a year before the '90s alt-rock explosion, Repeater stoked the furies of a generation of maturing punks and activists with its earnest anti-corporate rage ballads. Songs infused with blistering punk, tempered by angular hooks and forcefully narrated with searingly sharp lyrics are the reason Fugazi became universal shorthand for, "My music is my politics." -Paul T. Bradley
7. Elliot Smith
Either/Or (1997)
Everything you love about Elliot Smith -- the gutter punk narratives, the perfect song-structure, the desperation -- is here on Either/Or, which with any justice will be remembered for as long as the Kierkegaard tome for which it's named. From its first verse it's absolutely devastating, the high water mark of a tortured poet who thankfully managed to get his depression on paper before he went down. "Nobody broke your heart," he sings on "Alameda." "You broke your own." -Ben Westhoff
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