The Wrong Child is just annoying.
OKAYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I don't know how you can be so entirely dismissive of Accelerate, CrashedCarDriver. What do you mean, no patience for it? It's not worthy of being ranked among their best (see my comments below), but what's so offensive about it?
What I still like from the middling years:
Up: there are only one or two tracks I don't care for; I like the album overall
Reveal: The Lifting, Imitation of Life (It's a pretty easy call to say that for me, this is their worst album by a long shot.)
Around the Sun: Leaving New York (despite that fucking awful line in the chorus), the title track (until the coda, which is unnecessary), The Boy In the Well, I Wanted to Be Wrong
(I hated that album until I saw them touring behind it, and then my opinions softened a bit.)
Accelerate: I honestly like most of the album. I've said it was a good return to form, but missing the spark, but I listened to it this morning and enjoyed it quite a bit.
Collapse Into Now: I have to be honest - I really liked it upon first listen (except for the final track, which is awful), but have not listened to it since.
Although I blame my obsessive "listening to all my CDs" project for that, not the album itself, as I have tons of recent CDs I've barely listened to more than once. Project's almost over (under 350 CDs to go!) and I can go back and catch up a bit.