Which isn’t to say that I loved Ten when I finally got it. Sure, there were songs like “Even Flow,” “Alive” and “Porch,” but to me, a lot of the album got buried deep in the murk that producer Rick Parashar ladled on top of them. (And, in fact, I much prefer the 2008 Brendan O’Brien remixes which blew the dust right off.)
That said, there wasn’t anything that was going to keep me from eventually loving what I now think is the album’s best track, the devastating break-up ballad, “Black.”