Marrying the Mainstream

10. Various Artists, Garden State Soundtrack (Epic). Even if you didn't see the movie -- a group hug to adrift, self-medicating twenty-somethings -- you can still find transcendence in its tunes. A Big Chill soundtrack for the iPod generation, Garden State captures the humbling romantic desperation and frustrated ennui of post-college living. Classic folk ditties by Nick Drake and Simon and Garfunkel anchor more modern examples of poetic vulnerability: Iron & Wine deconstructs the Postal Service with breathy melancholia, Frou Frou trip-hops through a tribal electronica freefall, and -- oh, yes -- the Shins just might change your life with their coffeehouse strummer "New Slang."