What can I say? I like to rock. Sure, The Flaming Lips, Interpol and Mastodon probably could've/should've bullied their way into my Top 10 this year. But as metal got tired, radio rock got alternately classic and chic, indie rock got weird, and commercial hip-hop got nowhere it hasn't been for the past three years, what I got the most out of in these past 12 months largely occupied a space completely removed from burgeoning trends, critical raves or mass acceptance.

10. Piebald: We Are The Only Friends We Have (Big Wheel Recreation) — Easily the enduring Boston emo institution's most ambitious effort yet, We Are The Only Friends We Have mixes off-time grooves, endearing/irritating lyrics and hooks big enough to hang a Rubens tapestry on. The result is an eminently listenable heavy-pop record with a ton of personality, and the kind of infectious arrogance to which you've just gotta tip your hat.

9. No Knife: Riot for Romance (Better Looking) — Pink Floyd and The Clash had a four-headed baby; it grew up in San Diego, making great records of angular but textured post-pop and touring ceaselessly with Jimmy Eat World. The fourth record is its best so far, and continues its trend of subtly trading bombast for clever, mellifluous lunar soundscapes, but still, you know, rocks. It might seem hyperbolic to say No Knife could be underground rock's most consistently and terminally underrated long-running act, until you realize that it's making sounds no one else has thought of — with hooks and heart, yet.

8. TIE: El-P: Fantastic Damage, Mr. Lif: I Phantom (Def Jux) — They've both got pretty bleak worldviews — Lif philosophizes while El-P rants, but it all comes down to a couple of groovy and pummeling suggestions that you kindly take a fucking look around you, yo. El-P's dense, layered production on both discs imbued the backpack hip-hop scene's poetry and originality with a bite unheard since the Bomb Squad exploded, and it sounds as good behind his visceral expectorations as it does under Lif's eclectic, multifaceted vignettes. If sociology classes made you want to dance and thrash as much as these two releases, we probably wouldn't have needed them in the first place.

7. Superdrag: Last Call for Vitriol (Arena Rock Recording Co.) Knoxville's finest returned in top form this year, with the most rollicking collection of infectious, bar-ready pop-rock since their '96 debut. Primary songwriter John Davis' hooky melancholia is ably offset by bassist Sam Powers' emergence as a crafter of quality upbeat tuneage, lending the album a well-rounded vibe missing from In The Valley of Dying Stars, which, while great, was something of a downer. This solidly constructed and powerfully earnest set of songs served as a welcome antidote to some of Big Rock's more fashion-victimized radio-comers.

6. Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Nonesuch) —Yeah, yeah, I know. I got my copy of the Music Critic Cabal's guidelines for this year's Top 10, and it none too obliquely promised that bad things would happen to me were I not to include the subject of 90 percent of all 2002 music-snob conversations in my list. For what it's worth, I think Wilco's latest would have ended up on everybody's year-end love fest had it come out on Reprise and in 2001, because it's really, really good. Experimental yet exceedingly ear-friendly, rootsy and warm yet futuristic, and pop yet visionary, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot takes Tweedy and Company's heartworn sound to its next iteration. And while it seems like they're not quite comfortable, they found a lot of great songs along the way.

5. Slobberbone: Slippage (New West) — For their latest, rising Denton, Tex. quartet Slobberbone put away the down-home instrumentation and front-porch vibe of 2000's Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today, and got back to filtering clever, beery garage-rock through a prism of uniquely Southern identity. Brent Best's lyrics are as small as your hometown and big as the world, and Jess Barr makes a hell of a tastefully understated guitar hero. The rhythms simultaneously rock and swing, providing the apotheosis of alt- country genre assignations while rendering them utterly irrelevant. This is a rock 'n' roll band, one of the best around, and Slippage evinces a combination of talent, poignancy and loose-but-tightness comparable to The Replacements at their best.

4. Dillinger Four: Situationist Comedy (Fat Wreck Chords) As more and more Warped Tour veterans watered down their sound in the name of being "developed" by major labels, Minneapolis misanthropes Dillinger Four deliberately kept their heads down, and delivered the year's best punk record. About the only thing they've got in common with their radio-aspiring brethren is hooks, hooks and more hooks; otherwise, D4's raw, rambunctious and intelligent blasts bear blessedly little resemblance to a Hot Topic compilation. A lot of bands trumpet their integrity while eschewing opportunities for pop-culture relevance, but then again, a lot of them are about as good for the ear as a rusty ice pick. Situationist Comedy couples muscle and sarcasm with an innate understanding of what makes great songwriting.

3. onelinedrawing: Visitor (Jade Tree) Former Far principal and part-time New End Original vocalist Jonah Matranga has been issuing intimate homespun tracks as onelinedrawing for several years now. 2002, however, marked the release of the project's first proper full-length, a stunning collection of emotional snapshots. Visitor is an extremely involving listen, thanks in large part to both its simplicity and creativity. An earnest presence, Matranga's utter lack of guile carries everything off, from bald acoustic sentiment to a solo by a toy R2D2, with refreshing sincerity. The music is not exactly childlike, but it's wholly unpretentious and compelling on a level that songwriters who create with some external listener in mind will never attain.

2. John Vanderslice: The Life and Death of an American Fourtracker (Barsuk) Innovative and evocative Frisco songwriter Vanderslice followed last year's excellent, vaguely conceptual Time Travel Is Lonely with an even better, and more clearly conceptual, tale of love, lo-fi and suicide. Not lo-fi with regard to the record itself — Vanderslice's unique production ideas and talented friends always result in a sound that successfully melds the raw and the ambitious — but rather in the album's protagonist's obsession with home recording. Where Time Travel drew Beatles comparisons, his confident, warbling voice and easy characterization on Fourtracker echo, more than anything else, the multiplicity of vintage Bowie. But the tunes, powerful and strangely beautiful paeans to the search for understanding, are all Vanderslice.

1. Desaparecidos, Read Music/Speak Spanish (Saddle Creek) Bright Eyes main man Connor Oberst and company's anguished full-band indictment of the American dream was among the first discs to hit my desk in January. And in the ensuing 12 months (during which I witnessed an amazingly rowdy but decidedly unmusical set by the group at Orpheum), rarely did anything else even come close to matching its impact. For me, this is everything that rock 'n' roll should be — dynamic, passionate, resonant, inventive, catchy, ballsy and cathartic. With its mangled guitars, car-crash rhythms and Oberst's edge-of-breakdown vocals struggling to get his point across amid the fray, Read Music/Speak Spanish offers a singularly compelling and often overwhelmingly visceral experience that stays with you long after the last track fades.

Some Amazing Songs from 2002 (In Semi-Particular Order)

10. Korn, "Thoughtless"

9. Our Lady Peace, "Somewhere Out There"

8. Hot Water Music, "Remedy"

7. My Hotel Year, "Breathing Patterns"

6. Eminem, "Lose Yourself"

5. The Chase Theory, "Disenchanted"

4. Campfire Girls, "Motorola Casanova"

3. Sparta, "Collapse"

2. Mclusky, "To Hell with Good Intentions"

1. Missy Elliott, "Work It"

Music critic Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.