what high school kids are up to these days

You know that LCD Soundsystem song "Losing My Edge," when aging hipster James Murphy remarks on kids who are full of "nostalgia for the unremembered 80s?" If you imagined a band entirely composed of those sorts of kids, you might have "Natalie Portman's Shaved Head," an unfortunately-named and yet shockingly entertaining band out of Seattle.

Their 2008 album, Glistening Pleasure, is the sort of album made by hipsters who have learned that dance music is fun and sexy, but who feel just enough doubt about the enterprise that they're forced to add generous helpings of irony and absurdity lest anyone think that they're going about it straight-faced. Ultimately what they've delivered is the best party-album parody since Beck's Midnite Vultures (and maybe better, since Glistening Pleasure doesn't seem to have the queasy racist undercurrents that mar Vultures' good-time vibe.)

Listen: "Me + Yr Daughter," by Natalie Portman's Shaved Head

For added fun, here's a pretty astonishing video. Godspeed, high school kids:

natalie portman's shaved head - sophisticated side ponytail from thatgo on Vimeo.

10 albums from 2007 (#3)

3. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver

On my top ten list from two years ago, I praised the LCD Soundsystem debut as being deeply enjoyable but mostly devoid of anything resembling significant content. Perhaps the exception on that album was "Losing My Edge," a song that got simultaneously funnier and more sobering the more you were able to recognize the aging hipster's lamentations as your own. Sound of Silver takes this intersection between irony and melancholy its central emotional ground, and it inhabits it brilliantly, crafting songs that are wry, moving, melancholy, and still (relatively) dance-floor friendly. If there's ever been a better pop album about adulthood, it's not coming to mind.

Listen: LCD Soundsystem: "All My Friends"

10 albums from 2007 (#6)

6. M.I.A., Kala

It may lack the revelatory force of her debut, and it doesn't exactly shine light on her famously slippery politics, but M.I.A.'s Arular follow-up contains enough head-scratching WTF moments to make it one of the year's most engagingly anarchic releases. A song about bird flu? A guest appearance by Timbaland? A guest appearance by a group of preadolescent aboriginal Australian rappers? Covers of the Pixies and the Modern Lovers? Sure, why not.

Listen: M.I.A., "Hussel"