7. The Great Destroyer (2005)

Low have something of a punk history, including a fabled 1998 Halloween gig covering the songs of the Misfits. A tad incongruous, yes, but they’ve always been punk in spirit, and The Great Destroyer was the record on which their numbers most closely approximated the genre sonically, lent a forceful jolt courtesy of producer Dave Fridmann. Kicking off with the buzzsaw pulsations of “Monkey,” the churning, sun-bleached “California,” and the jittery swagger of “Everybody’s Song,” the album is certainly a massive stylistic departure for the band. It occasionally grows monotonous, but the highs easily outstrip the lows, and the accentuation of hooks and choruses are a more than welcome development proving that on their seventh album and over 10 years into their career, they had plenty of tricks remaining in their seemingly boundless artistic reservoir after the slightly underwhelming Trust.