Top 50 Albums of 2005
Our list includes a pair of self-released records, two singles collections, a mixtape, a genre comp, a DJ mix, and an unreleased collection of mp3-only demos, reflecting that the biggest sea changes in contemporary music aren't the sounds but the ways tracks are compiled and distributed to audiences, as well as the ease in which artists-- even ones without corporate backing-- can engage directly with an listeners. The slow decentralization of the music industry-- radio and video increasingly being supplanted by ezines, band and label sites, blogs, and boards-- helped bands such as Sleater-Kinney, Spoon, the New Pornographers, and others sell crazy amounts of records on indie labels, and assisted a large number of people in finding new, exciting acts.
Childlike music saw a mini-boom this year as bands like Architecture in
Helsinki, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Bearsuit reclaimed
glockenspiels, recorders, and tinkling percussion for their own
ramshackle ends. This ingénue aesthetic runs deepest for English duo
The Boy Least Likely To, who on debut The Best Party Ever
shed new light on monsters, tigers, spiders, and, oh my, adulthood.
Many of the album's best songs beam with simple joy, but beneath the
cartoonish playfulness lie deep-seated fears about the mortality of all
things, from butterflies and cherry blossoms to the people we love the
most. Amid shimmering synths and spring-day acoustic guitar, "Paper
Cuts" brandishes a broken heart, while playground torch song "The
Battle of the Boy Least Likely To" confesses a devastating loneliness.
"I don't know when to hang on/ And when to let go," lyricist/singer Jof
Owen half-whispers. Like the best children's authors, Owen and
composer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Hobbs understand that kids feel as
much hurt and sadness as grown-ups do. --Marc Hogan
50: Orthrelm
OV
[Ipecac]
2005's most physically demanding record either impressed the shit out
of you or put you to sleep. I say it was like a shot of cocaine in the
arm of minimalism-- and fittingly, it came out the same year as Steve
Reich's first new piece in years. Mick Barr and Josh Blair should
probably be inducted into the Mad Chops Hall of Fame, and this record
used as the entrance exam for Berklee School of Music. Yet, in spite of
the inhuman riffs and patterns intricate enough to make even Georg
Cantor proud, it's the hypnotic, Zen-calm of the thing that lingers
longest. Over 45 minutes of dizzying runs, a million details begin to
blur into just one. It's like catching a glimpse of every neuron in
your brain at once, slipping into a coma and coming out of it able to
see the rest of the world in slow motion. --Dominique Leone
49: Fiery Furnaces
EP
[Rough Trade]
It's funny that the Family Friedberger will end 2005 with the
reputation of being a "difficult" band, considering that they rang in
the year with their most accessible record yet. Since most of the songs
on EP
were recorded with the intention of fitting onto a single, the more
adventurous side of the Furnaces was forced to cram itself into
bite-sized packages, creating an enticing pop tension. Nevertheless,
the band found ways to stretch the boundaries of indie pop; the opening
three-song suite, comprising a roughly 11-minute epic of sentimentalism
gained and lost that, fused together, would be the among the
best songs of the year. Elsewhere, the band escorts the listener
through travelogues, tongue-twisters, and tropical-icy-lands, with
deceptively nursery-rhymeish melodies and whimsical calliope keyboards.
And okay, so I don't really hate you if you don't like it, but
if there's no room in your heart for rock music this giddily
adventurous, I do have a little bit of pity. --Rob Mitchum
48: Okkervil River
Black Sheep Boy
[Jagjaguwar]
Without ever broaching the subject directly, Okkervil River's ragged
third album may be the year's most accurate document of our Bushwhacked
era. Calamitous and conflicted, Black Sheep Boy's
lo-fi Americana-rock holds a sonic mirror up to the anger and confusion
of a world muddied by the zealotry of terrorists, warmongers, and
fools. More overtly, Black Sheep Boy is thematically built on a
song of the same name by 1960s folkie Tim Hardin (and later covered by
Scott Walker). Okkervil frontman Will Sheff's vocals embrace
raw-throated anguish with the drunken abandon of Neil Young and the
landlocked bluster of a wiser Bright Eyes, thirsting for real love,
threatening throat-rending violence, and imagining what stones might
dream. "Just pause and add your own intentions here," he screams midway
through "All the Latest Toughs". It's a searing rocker about asking for
proof, or else being led to the slaughter. --Marc Hogan
47: The Boy Least Likely To
The Best Party Ever
[Too Young to Die]
46: Fiona Apple
Extraordinary Machine [Jon Brion Version]
[mp3]
This isn't about hipster cred: Fiona Apple's not actually cool; she's
embarrassingly earnest. And we know it wasn't big bad Sony that kept
this on the shelf: It was her prerogative. (Still wrong, though.) So
there will be no Mike Elizondo smiting here; Dr. Jon Brion, he of the
innumerable stringed weapons, simply coalesces with the Sad-Eyed Lady
of the Slow Jams better than anyone else in the world. "Used to Love
Him" was fine the way it was, all swishy bell tolls-- no drum machines.
"O'Sailor" ought
to be six-and-a-half minutes long. These songs, so stagy and
irrepressible, need their languid drapery. All the heartquake in
Apple's voice goes down better that way. --Sean Fennessey
45: M83
Before the Dawn Heals Us
[Mute]
Imagine M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzales explaining the album's devilish pulp cinema to his Tuesday night drinking buddies: "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts was just baby steps. This time I'm blowing everything up, like Michael Bay did in Bad Boys 2.
But, don't get me wrong, it'll be creepy-- like David Lynch being
seduced by the twilight. And, of course, there'll be drama." Sounds
audacious, eccentric, and even ridiculous, but it's Gonzales'
conviction to the absurd that makes this hot purple dawn blaze so
brightly. The meticulously grand instrumentation is shot into a
super-melodramatic space rife with broken brains and disembodied
voices. Unafraid to bring the bracing sounds and stories in his head
into beatific being, Gonzales believes in his earth-on-fire visions so
vividly that even the most outlandish charades gain an extraordinary
credence. --Ryan Dombal
44: Vashti Bunyan
Lookaftering
[Fat Cat]
Apparently time stopped for Vashti Bunyan in her three-decade stretch between albums-- Lookaftering sounds like it could have been issued right after 1970's Just Another Diamond Day.
But that's because both albums exist out of time, in a place without
genre or era. Of course, there are twinges of Nick Drake in Bunyan's
sound, but her fine ribbon of a voice unfurls across the bed of
guitars, recorders, glockenspiels, and Joanna Newsom's harp, and the
results aren't really like anything-- folk or otherwise. Sharing some
similarities with Kate Bush, her sound is one that she owns outright, a
homespun idyll that's captivating whether she's searching for peace or
wishing on a memory. --Johnny Loftus
43: Spoon
Gimme Fiction
[Merge]
Ever since Spoon moved past flattering imitations of he who is Frank
and Black, Britt Daniel has whittled away at his songs, trying to see
how far he can get with as little as possible. With Gimme Fiction,
he pushes aside the jeweler's tools and lets it all hang out. This
"hanging out" is relative, of course-- changes and drop-ins (cf. the
"Taxman" riffs on "The Beast and Dragon, Adored") still happen with the
precision that comes with hours practicing addition by subtraction. But
there's something else here, too-- a swagger, a swing, and in the case
of "I Turn My Camera On", a strut. Where tracks like the clap-happy
"Sister Jack", the string-swooning "Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine",
and the pensive mellotronic "They Never Got You" would be obvious high
points on previous albums, they're all vying for space on a record
that's full of the stuff. --David Raposa
42: My Morning Jacket
Z
[RCA]
Evolution-infatuated careerists wise up: The re-defining statement is
where it's at. A far cry from the Phishy populism some feared, Z
welcomed us to the apotheosis of jam-rock, its once densely-reverbed
square-dance squawk being purged in favor of compression and restraint.
But that stripping down hardly left the band naked. Instead, Jim James'
thrilling, echoing yowl pushes against the best dynamics of the year.
Caravaggios of sound, "Gideon" and "Dondante" threw light off dark,
soft off heavy, with equal doses of gusto and tenderness. Bouts of
prismatic synths and haunted/haunting lyrics raised flags with veteran
fans, but while Z seemed to mark a transformation of Mean Girls
proportions, the ol' Louisville torch still flickered in the soaring
"Anytime" and "What a Wonderful Man", which wailed on all fronts. So
who said Southern Rock has to be bone-headed? The rag-headed dudes in
MMJ may struggle with scissors, but they were the first 2005 band to
make it to space. --Sam Ubl
41: Róisín Murphy
Ruby Blue
[Echo]
Matthew Herbert's dance records, composed under a prohibitively strict
set of rules about sampling, sound vastly cooler than your standard
808s, 909s, and sampled bongos. But the focus on process obscures
Herbert's real talent: showcasing the female vocal in a post-house
context. Ruby Blue,
a collaboration with Moloko singer Róisín Murphy, is Herbert's most
complete statement to date, a string of dusky torch songs, slo-mo
dance-floor grooves, and clattery glam pop. But it's Murphy who makes
the album something of a mini-masterpiece. Leaving behind the
mannerisms that sometimes marred Moloko, her jazz-tinged (but
thankfully not "jazzy"), dark-chocolate-rich voice fully inhabits each
of these songs in a way no sample ever could. Sublime. --Jess Harvell
40: Young JeezyLet's Get It: Thug Motivation 101
[Def Jam]
Young Jeezy's lyrics read unimaginative and redundant, but their
meaning goes worlds beyond words. Backlit by emphatic sibilation, Thug Motivation's
fatuous punchlines became instant catchphrases-- even the album's
windiest hustler bullshitting sounded revolutionary. Self-help gurus
and stadium church sermonizers use similar oratory chops to brainwash,
but Jeezy doesn't need an industry or a pulpit to rally a crowd. He
offers inspiration by the truckload ("like the bread people") over cold
steel beats. Thug Motivation's best tracks even flirted with
poignance; at very least they were pithy. Coke, rap, academics:
Whatever your hustle, "Sky's the Limit" exhorted, "get on your grind
and get it." And respect the similes: A player in the game "like John
Madden," Jeezy knows Money Talks... "like Charlie Sheen." Call it
Trivial Pursuit. --Sam Ubl
39: Robyn
Robyn
[Konichiwa]
Who's that girl? You mean the former Swedish pre-teen pop star, turned
fly-by-night trans-Atlantic Billboard baby, turned major label
detritus, turned entrepreneurial pop polyglot? The one that's sick of
the rules that said she couldn't rap or perform stripped-down rock
ballads or sing about robots? The one that goes from telling a Nazi
creep to piss up a rope to making her bad boy toy mittens and pie? The
one that introduces her newest album with the best résumé ever
("Tetris" queen and Cosa Nostra consigliere!) and actually backs it up?
Oh, she's just one of the best things that happened to music this year
that folks on the wrong side of the Atlantic never heard. The
manservant reading her curriculum vitae has the right idea: Please turn
it the fuck up. And don't eat in her jacuzzi. --David Raposa
38: Devendra Banhart
Cripple Crow
[XL]
If Devendra Banhart arrived in the new millennium with something of the
prophet about him, anticipating the torrents of hippie-folk to come
with a wild-eyed fervor, then 2005 might be the year he finally went up
to the mountain. On Oh Me Oh My, he hunkered down in the densely canopied and lightless regions of the wilderness, raving. Nino Rojo and Rejoicing in the Hands found him on the outskirts, traversing clearings that let some air into his suffocating dirges. Cripple Crow
represents a clean separation-- Banhart's body digs into the elegantly
rootsy arrangements on the ground, but the music hangs somewhere high
and remote in the cold, thin air, weirdly iconic. The meat of the
vision has been revealed, and though its vaguely disturbing aspects are
sometimes tough to swallow, they remain extremely palatable to chew
over. --Brian Howe
37: Dominik Eulberg
Kreucht & Fleucht
[Mischwald]
Virtually any serviceable DJ mix is able to make tracks from disparate
sources sound as though they belong together. But only the very best
mixes can make their various tracks sound as if they were composed
together, a feat Dominik Eulberg achieves on his brilliant double-disc
mix Kreucht & Fleucht.
Over the course of this set's two complementary halves, Eulberg
provides a dazzling cross-sectional of inspired post-minimalist techno,
joining crucial tracks from usual suspects like Michael Mayer, John
Tejada, and Ricardo Villalobos (as Termiten) so seamlessly that each
seems to be germinated from a single root system. On Kreucht he stays close to the ground, creeping through the shadowy digital underbrush of Dub Kult and Losoul, while Fleucht
quickly soars via Steve Barnes' lithesome "Cosmic Sandwich" for the
satellite's-eye perspective of these same fertile regions, territories
worth frequent exploration whether by land or air. --Matthew Murphy
36: Keith Fullerton Whitman
Multiples
[Kranky]
How did he make this work? A series of rigorously focused
single-instrument studies that seems to effortlessly telescope across
the historical and technical spectrum of electronic music from Varese
to Fennesz. But instead of being museum-grade mummy dust, this album is
listenable as hell. You want to ride this ride again. If Whitman had
just stuck to rippling, pointillist pools of piano and cycling moiré
patterns of acoustic and electric guitar, he'd have made one of 2005's
loveliest albums, easy. Instead, he also included the sneaky cathedral
funk of his Farfisa track, and three compositions for Serge Modular
Prototype that are as otherworldly as a Martian lawn sprinkler, and in
the process, created one of 2005's best albums. --Drew Daniel
35: The Game
The Documentary
[Aftermath/Interscope]
Before he became G-Unit's fallen angel, doling out disses by the
bar-ful, the Game played messiah for a West Coast scene on life
support. A diamond in the rough whose gruff voice lacked the magnetism
to rely on club hooks, he meticulously spit powerful verses before
deferring to a wisely chosen guest to bring the chorus home-- all while
maintaining album cohesion. Although The Documentary
perpetuated Game's factious mixtape persona, emotionally charged tracks
like "Dreams", "Hate It or Love It", and "Like Father, Like Son"
parlayed the urban pastoral, revealing another dimension to Dr. Dre's
raw protégé. We wouldn't truly see the Game having fun until "300 Bars
& Runnin'", but with G-Unit's embarrassingly simplistic 2005
releases, someone needed to sober up rap. --Adam Moerder
34: Silver Jews
Tanglewood Numbers
[Drag City]
In the runup to Tanglewood Numbers'
release, David Berman began to address his horrendous recent drug
meltdown in interviews that normally feature studio anecdotes and
lessons about the thics of downloading. Reading the results was as
painful as being confronted with a close relative's collapse. Whether
Berman likes it or not, his pained disclosures are now part of this
album; it's impossible to take the vicious punch of the record's
opening couplet, or the raw lament of "K-Hole", or even the half-hidden
desperation of "Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed" without genuinely
worrying for the man talking to you. That said, it's also impossible to
miss the intact precision of the trademark cracked similes, or the
humor-- all three cited songs also happen to be hilarious-- or the
welcome scrape and wail of Stephen Malkmus's guitar getting our guy's
back. --Michael Idov
33: Bloc Party
Silent Alarm
[Vice]
Rising above their numerous de facto neo-post partners, these four skinny lads from London have a gift for urgent bursts of tidy treble. Thanks to not-so-brave spawns of Franz, the sound alone-- metal-scratch upstrokes, dexterous bottoms, alternating bass and snare pops-- isn't making indie kids pretend to dance anymore. So Bloc Party bolster their oft-tried attack with finely articulated pop songwriting, some lush balladry, and an emotional core. "Like Eating Glass" rips away shards of static as jittering hi-end duels raze maddening rhythms. Kele Okereke's blatant British wail aces the insistent anthems, his yelping delivery still steeped in a youthful vigor full of big ideas finding their form. The progressive "Pioneers" sums sweetly; "we will not be the last" isn't a copycat warning as much as a full-force mantra. --Ryan Dombal
32: Beanie Sigel
The B.Coming
[Roc-A-Fella]
The B. Coming is the sound of darkness closing in and hope
slipping away. Beanie was always the guy in the Rocafella camp who
could never quite relax; he didn't seem at home popping champagne in
stretch limos, but he wouldn't think twice about leaping off a tour bus
to stomp some fool out. Sigel recorded this album between being
sentenced on a federal gun charge and starting his prison term, and his
burly voice drips with an angry, regretful bitterness. The curled-lip
gun-talk ferocity is still there: "Only clap from the neck up, I'd let
the heck-lar plug 'em/ I don't think they make Kevlar skullies." But
along with it, there's the sad, quiet understanding that he'll have to
pay for his short fuse: "I do my dirt so my kids can see heaven on
earth/ But the pain in my heart, it weighs heavy, it hurt." All the
while, his producers reimagine post-Blueprint East Coast street-rap as sweeping, cinematic gutter-blues. --Tom Breihan
31: Konono No. 1
Congotronics
[Crammed Discs]
The band's unabridged name is Orchestre Tout Puissant Likembe Konono
No. 1 de Mingiedi, the first part of which translates to "All-Mighty
Likembe Orchestra." It's difficult to argue otherwise: Konono No. 1 is
like nothing you've ever heard, unless you happened to catch them on
the streets of Kinshasa performing their rudely amplified take on
traditional Bazombo trance music with improvised microphones and
hand-made speakers. Distorted thumb pianos blast jagged melodies,
vocals are shouted through megaphones, and a percussion section whales
on both scrap metal and
actual drums. It's a startlingly funky sound that effortlessly--
indeed, accidentally-- launches traditional music into the avant-garde,
and must be heard to be believed. --Joe Tangari
30: Franz FerdinandYou Could Have It So Much Better
[Domino]
The snappy Scots went through their expected growing pains this year, and You Could Have It So Much Better is undeniably less immediate than their debut. Then again, listening back to Franz Ferdinand,
you start to hear the strain of two or three exciting ideas stretched
across a whole album. I'm not totally convinced by their balladry
(Alex's love song to a Fiery Furnace on "Eleanor Put Your Boots Back
On"), and the tempo shifts on "That Was Easy" are fussy the way smart
lads showing off always are. But "Do You Want To" and the title track
are as fist-pumpingly great as anything from the debut, and after a few
listens, even the less immediate rockers start to sound catchy and
strangely familiar, like the greatest Britpop B-sides collection you
never heard. Plus, they're still one of the two or three rock bands in
the charts that I'd actually want to have a beer with. --Jess Harvell
29: Serena Maneesh
Serena Maneesh
[Honeymilk]
Make-out album of the year? Wobbly, riff-tastic, narcotic, Norwegian quintet Serena Maneesh pilot a Jesus & Mary Chain, Velvet Underground, MBV, and Spacemen 3 purple haze. The band is fronted by Emil Nikolaisen, who does for Loveless what Dungen-hero Gustav Ejstes did for late-1960s/early-70s pastoral acid-rocked psych. The best tracks allow time for cycling through blissful pop-noise dynamics and elevator musings, sprinkling in syrupy boy and/or girl harmonies when necessary. The shorter songs are stunners, too: Less than two minutes long, "Un-Deux"'s sugar swirl outshines shoegaze tracks four times its size. --Brandon Stosuy
28: Sunn O)))
Black One
[Southern Lord]
Metal for Morton Feldman fans? Pimping the signature soundwaves, Sunn
0)))'s sixth is the duo's darkest, heaviest, most exquisitely recorded
wall-of-howl to date. For those turned off in the past, Black One
occasionally chops drone into manageable chunks, offering unsheathed
power chords and dank well rattles casting bite-sized gloom. Of course,
more than a few doom mammoths remain, none more glorious than the
16-minute blood bath "Báthory Erzsébet", anchored with notorious
mummified casket-in-hearse vocals of Xasthur architect, Malefic. Black
Metalists should be equally pleased with the cameo by Wrest and an
extended cover of Immortal's "Cursed Realms (of the Winterdemons)".
Harsh noise guru John Wiese and ambient guitarist Oren Ambarchi also
add details, but per usual, the Sunn 0))) solar system is powered by
core members Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley. It's been well
documented that the duo began as a self-proclaimed Earth cover band,
but it's time to update the bio-- more than anything, Black One proves Anderson and O'Malley worthy of their own acolytes. --Brandon Stosuy
27: Jamie Lidell
Multiply
[Warp]
Escaping the reductive seductions of his weird-core past-- harder,
faster, grainier-- Jamie Lidell multiplied himself into a new
polymorphism: blue-eyed soul devotee, self-sampling beatbox (if
beatboxers imitated Merzbow, perhaps), multimedia showman. Onstage, he
handily strips the title "performance artist" from lesser acts with
more props-- his larynx-shredding, demon-exorcising blasts of naked
funk and deadpan discomfort are more Marina Abramovic than
Fischerspooner. Straighter than his recordings with Crisitan Vogel as
Super_Collider, and nothing like his live shows whatsoever, Multiply
is Sunday morning with tea and a kiss, complete with pretty much the
whole Stax/Motown/etc. catalogues playing in the background. There are
just enough glitches to make the Warp label stick, but the joint's
really just about Jamie doing what he does best: splitting himself six
ways at once-- until he comes crashing back together in the most
unexpected harmony you've ever heard. --Philip Sherburne
26: The Decemberists
Picaresque
[Kill Rock Stars]
As the bullies, jocks, and corporate thugs grew ever more powerful this
year, the Decemberists marched onward in their quest to make the world
safe for pansies. Armed with the grandest melodies, swankiest
arrangements, and silliest costumes of their career, Colin Meloy and
his merry gentlemen and women delivered an album that could be adored
far beyond the drama club. The love songs are straightforward and
universal, the "Lust for Life" rip works despite the odds, and the
anti-war protest succeeds without condescension. Even the nine-minute
nautical one-act play doesn't suck. In 53 minutes, Meloy is a teenage
prostitute, a disgraced athlete, a drowning lover, a government
official trysting with a spy, and a vengeful seaman trapped in the
belly of a whale. But most of all, he's a writer, a writer of fictions,
and these are his most captivating stories yet. --Amy Phillips
25: Alan Braxe & Friends
The Upper Cuts
[PIAS]
Remember dancepunk and how indie-America had suddenly come to party a
few years ago? Well, this is the year they really wanted to dance,
jamming to Annie, M.I.A., Vitalic, Optimo, Isolée, and Daft Punk
associate Alan Braxe. Braxe first came to most indie folks' attention
last year when "Rubicon" appeared on Erlend Øye's (now seemingly pretty
damn seminal) DJ-Kicks set, but singles comp The Upper Cuts
demonstrates why he was destined to cross over to the rock kids at some
point anyway. Be it the classic house anthem "Music Sounds Better With
You", the nostalgic, Avalanches-esque impressionist disco of "In Love
With You", or any number of tracks produced with frequent partner Fred
Falke, Braxe knows how to turn 80s MOR veneer into contemporary
dancefloor heaven. No, I don't get the fake G-Funk track either, but
everything else is just sparkling. --Dominique Leone
24: The Mountain Goats
The Sunset Tree
[4AD]
Stories of abuse can prick plenty of ears, but maturity is a more
difficult sell. Imagine our surprise when the incisive John Darnielle
silenced armchair dissectors with a full-blown autobiographical song
cycle, and it came out all grown-up sounding. Stately and somber
through the end, the juicier details take a back seat to elegiac
centerpiece tracks like "Dinu Lupatti's Bones" or "Pale Green Things".
There's hope in some moments, but the sole smile cracked comes from a
tiny record player in "Dance Music" (in a sneaky pre-chorus deadpan,
"so this is what the volume knob is for"). Is the same guy who birthed
the doomed Alpha couple? Where's the venom? Save for the revenge
fantasy of "The Lion's Teeth", the worst thing he can say is, "There's
always gonna be a few things, maybe several things, that you're gonna
find really difficult to forgive," on "Up the Wolves". But with the
usual evocative lyrics (particularly on "Broom People") and the richest
sonic palette since the Goats went high-fidelity or bust, The Sunset Tree is more a journey to find peace than a document of dark times. --Jason Crock
23: Ladytron
The Witching Hour
[Rykodisc]
Ladytron used to be rather abstractly cool-- less a great band than an irresistible idea of one-- and filled their first two albums with tracks that hewed perfectly to their bandname, instrumentation, fashion, and appearance. What else would these four do if not coo about cracked LCDs over icy electro? On The Witching Hour, the ghost of Ladytron's brilliantly trashy cover of Tweet's "Oops (Oh My)" (not included here) hangs over the album: The song's the thing, and style is secondary. The stark Bauhaus (school, not band) lines of "Destroy Everything You Touch" and "International Dateline", the brave fragility of "Beauty", and the endless upward spiral of "All the Way" would still be there if the songs were played on an acoustic guitar, or by a jug band. This is what we all wanted Depeche Mode's comeback to be. --Michael Idov
22: Broadcast
Tender Buttons
[Warp]
Maybe every band should strip down to a duo for its third album: The change has left Broadcast sounding fresher and more purposeful than ever, and it's turned Tender Buttons into a minimalist wonder. Old synths buzzing and humming, vintage drum machines ticking time, Trish Keenan's voice swimming in old-fashioned reverb: The sounds could be otherworldly, but their raw bite-- and the big, empty room they're coming out of-- make it all feel like that "other world" is just the basement next door. Whether those pop-drone basics are lulling and soothing or kicking up touches of psychedelic snarl, this stuff feels pure, simple, and weighty, from the inside out: Like Young Marble Giants and Kraftwerk, these two are taking handfuls of warm, spare lines and making them feel like something fierce. And when was the last time you heard a saw-tooth wave swing like "Michael, A Grammar?" --Nitsuh Abebe
21: Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Matt Sweeney
Superwolf
[Drag City]
No matter your tastes, somewhere there's a Will Oldham record waiting just for you: Superwolf sees Oldham's Bonnie "Prince" Billy incarnation pairing with Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney to crank out grim, skeletal gothic folk that's alternately absurd and heartbreaking. For the most part, Superwolf is so bare-boned it feels spontaneous, looping around a stark guitar melody or a bit of nonsensical wordplay, and eventually oozing into something so weird and beautiful it's almost hard to hear. Opener "My Home Is the Sea" neatly highlights Sweeney's penchant for scrappy guitar play, but "Bed Is for Sleeping" sees both artists at their most vulnerable, a gorgeous tangle of harmonized voices and see-through guitar. --Amanda Petrusich
20: The Hold SteadySeparation Sunday
[Frenchkiss]
"Tramps like us...and we like tramps." Taking the same liberties with the Bible as it takes with Born to Run, the Hold Steady weave an album-length "comeback story" about a Catholic girl named Holly (who a generation ago could have been Rosalita or Crazy Janey), full of Minneapolis landmarks and incidental characters: hoodrats, skatepunks, junkies, whores, the resurrected, and the redeemed-- all born to run to something they'll run from later on. But the Hold Steady's so stoked over its classic-rock touchstones-- Springsteen obviously, but also Meat Loaf, Thin Lizzy, Bob Seger, and Fleetwood Mac-- that the sound proves just as crucial to the story as Finn's lyrics. These aren't the likely sources shared around the indie scene-- most bands are still trying to cop some inspiration from postpunk-- and maybe that's the point. Separation Sunday is enormous guitar rock that tells an equally outsize urban epic. --Stephen M. Deusner
019: Sleater-Kinney
The Woods
[Sub Pop]
Upon the release of The Woods, much was
made of Sleater-Kinney's increased debts to the classic rock of Jimi
Hendrix, Cream, and Led Zeppelin. But though the album does indeed
signal a transformation in the trio's approach, the influence of these
ancestors is felt as much in the group's brash, authoritative swagger
as in any musical specifics. From the wry, gritty fable of "The Fox" to
the audacious 11-minute jam of "Let's Call It Love", The Woods
features players without a hesitant bone in their bodies, confidently
allowing their music to surge repeatedly from its banks into powerful,
barely-contained metallic cascades. The lyrics of the harrowing
"Jumpers" or the caustic "Modern Girl" craftily frame portraits of
societal alienation. Never before have Sleater-Kinney sounded so in
command of their resources, and on The Woods they're at their
most effective in those moments when they simply allow Carrie
Brownstein's molten guitar to carry their collective disaffection back
and forth into the red. --Matthew Murphy
018: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
[Clap Your Hands Say Yeah]
Great artists redefine the limits of their chosen art forms. Brooklyn five-piece Clap Your Hands Say Yeah gleefully nudge the bounds of good rockness on this self-released debut, daring you to dislike their froggy Violent Femmes vox and childish instrumentation, their carnie-barking intros and endlessly incanted finales, their bizarre but inscrutable lyrics and, of course, their unignorable, instamockable moniker. Easy to lose amid all that (and the Bowie sightings) is the melodic pop songwriting justifying the band's quirks. "Details of the War", in its wafting Dylan-like grandeur, may be the best entry for non-indie ears, but the joyous synths of "My Yellow Country Teeth", the crackling surge of "Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away", and the melancholy post-Loveless jangle of "In This Home on Ice" all have their own rewards. It's a record about rebirth: moving to the city, finding a new face, falling in love, and picking up the pieces-- clapping your hands and saying, finally, wtf. --Marc Hogan
017: The Clientele
Strange Geometry
[Merge]
On their first two albums, the Clientele enjoyed a limitless supply of
bewitching melodies, literate lyrics, and sopping psych guitars.
Nothing's changed on Strange Geometry,
and Alasdair MacLean seems even more insufferable and embittered: He
gets dizzy, quotes Tom Verlaine on his MySpace, and stumbles around
London intersections in a haze of desire and despair. The album's
somewhere between a world-weary travel guide and an inebriated interior
monologue. Even their best attempts at spiritual euphoria ("Spirit",
"Step Into the Light") are overwhelmed by gnomic invocations of loss,
silence and amnesia. But Geometry's not just music for seducing
grad-school scribes. (Christ, even the string arranger was a philosophy
teacher at the École normale supérieure.) It's also surprisingly warm
and serene, as equally capable of soundtracking Sunday croquet
tournaments as your next psychic breakdown. Still, there's really no
point in offering praise. On "Since K Got Over Me", the Clientele
malign even their own success: "I'm pretty tired of making lists/ It's
just this emptiness I can't chase away." MacLean must've been a rock
critic in another life. --Alex Linhardt
016: Love Is All
Nine Times That Same Song
[What's Your Rupture?]
A lot of today's rock bands seem caged by the blueprints of their own styles. "Dance band," "new wave revivalists," whatever; sometimes it feels like someone wrote three pages of a novel just so he could bind it in some lovely leather covers. The building blocks of this Swedish band's shouty pop, though, are too basic to even start wondering where they came from-- and tossing out all that stifling "style" triangulation leaves them free to blaze through a set of massively affecting songs. Moody slow burns, sax-squealing singalong, guitar-swinging boogie, joyous background shouts, and carefree heel-kicking: This is a short but thrilling run of happy neuroses and happy surprises, packed with text and wrapped in a lovable post-punk binding. Funny how most of the acts you could compare it to-- Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Life Without Buildings, early Psychedelic Furs-- have exactly that same quality: They're stylish, alright, but the style is all theirs. Doesn't that mean everything else they do will be just as great? --Nitsuh Abebe
015: Clipse
We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2
[mixunit.com]
Taking the year's best instrumentals and pushing them into coke rap's
most malicious, take out the bottom/rise to the top, vaguely Monte
Cristo depths, Clipse make good on that venom-in-jar dream of hard rap
sanctifying the ugly, ghetto sublimation chic, etc. The duo (now
foursome) didn't have the majors backing them á la Jeezy and Juelz, but
they flow more literary with it than both, sniffs of which (we hope)
brought people to their neighborhood Amadou for this Clinton
Sparks-instigated re-up. Now, nobody wants to read another armchair
cracker moralizing about all this shit, so I won't. But beyond their
revenge-bent and sinister crackle, Clipse get me most because no one,
not even Cam, is fucking with language as hard as these guys, cracking
words open, letting them sprout then tangle: "Quite frankly I don't
understand these claims/ You ain't know I was Pusha aka Brick James?/
You can't touch this, on all the fans lists of names/ and I hibernated
immediate when Pusha hit fame/ I'm cold-blooded." If hell has no fury,
maybe that's why. --Nick Sylvester
014: Vitalic
OK Cowboy
[PIAS]
The singles were a gimme; between "La Rock 01", "Poney Part 1", and "Poney Part 2", there's always been ample evidence to build an airtight case for French techno wizard Pascal Arbez as a singles artist of A1 calibre. What was less evident up until the release of OK Cowboy was whether he could slow-heat and stretch his pummelling Formula 1 techno to fit the longform format. The answer, as it turned out, was that he didn't really need to; with the wonky, misshapen electronic of "Polkamatic", the dorky organs of "Wooo", and the quaint Walter/Wendyisms of "The Past", Arbez proved himself as adept in the bedroom as the airplane hangar. Rare is the techno producer who translates his bangers into longform keepers; rarer still is a record whose recipe calls for rubber bands, motor oil (high viscosity), Drano, broken glass (shards), and fingernail gunge (pref. Daft Punk's). --Mark Pytlik
013: Various Artists
Run the Road
[679]
Ha ha, remember grime? That late-nite p2p fight to stay tops on some fast-paced, viciously insider teen-scene, one that's thousands of miles away, hocked in new code daily with so many "key" players that the keyest of them's fantastic 679 debut, Kano's Home Sweet Home, somehow passed us by quicker than a Sheek Louch freestyle? This youthful genre's endless fountain of new means, possibly, endless rewards, but for how great some of these beats come, most grime kids still can't rhyme. The disillusion that followed from there, frankly, has been unfair-- so much of what we're hunting down, from what I can tell, is brute learning on the job, sometimes nothing serious at all. Which makes Run the Road invaluable not just as a one-stop-- all the cuts hit really hard, good rhymes, none of that grime&b shit-- but ideally as something of a standard bearer, a Now That's What I Call Music! we're not embarrassed to buy. Some people hacked at RtR because it was so out of date upon release-- some of these tracks are a few years old-- but run the numbers, that's probably why it's so damn great, too. --Nick Sylvester
012: New Pornographers
Twin Cinema
[Matador]
Yes, Twin Cinema is another fantastic guitar pop album from Canada's catchiest collective, and yes, centerpiece "Sing Me Spanish Techno" is classic pop gobbledy-gook. But Twin Cinema's staying power comes from its drama. Carl Newman's nod to "the hero's journey" shines through the poppy surface (and "wtf?" lyrics): you can hear the searching quality in his vocals on "Falling Through Your Clothes", or the ballads that get diva-like cameos from Neko Case, or when Dan Bejar's cracked yelp explores the hallucinatory "Jackie Dressed in Cobras". Or how about Newman's reunion with his long-lost niece Kathryn Calder, who showed up just in time to play back-up Neko? Introspection has ruined a lot of pop albums, but the New Pornos strike a perfect balance; they're grown-ups who keep getting older, but they still play music to make teenagers dance. --Chris Dahlen
011: Isolée
We Are Monster
[Playhouse]
Rajko Müller's debut album, Rest, was the first time microhouse really logged a bonafide dancefloor smash (the infectious, Brazilian-influenced "Beau Mot Plage"-- fiery like cachaça, it gave a new meaning to the word "caned" as it became ubiquitous throughout 2000's clubs and mix CDs). The five-years-later follow-up doesn't have the amphetaminized muscle to outperform the electrohouse hits of the day, instead opting to go bang in quieter, quirkier ways. Thanks to a few guitars and a general debt the mutant-disco revival, the crossover this time makes nice with indie kids looking for something more urgent than Boards of Canada's wan kaleidoscopism. But in the end this record's not about scenes or even particular sounds-- though Isolée's sounds are particularly peculiar here, even for him-- but rather about seeing what kind of transmogrifying powers a song can take on when it's slipped in a dance track's skin. With its four on the floor, We Are Monster is a beast with two backs. --Philip Sherburne
10: Wolf ParadeApologies to the Queen Mary
[Sub Pop]
Wolf Parade might be 2005's most begrudged indie heroes: The Montreal group's debut was produced by Issac Brock, and a handful of loose associations with the Arcade Fire and Frog Eyes left the band buried in a pile of Modest Mouse comparisons and overblown Montreal-scene gab. Apologies to the Queen Mary is stranger and more complicated than its reputation admits, riddled with theremin and keyboards, and lyrically preoccupied with ghosts, machinery, and fuddled relationships, all powered by the mesmerizing tension between dueling songwriters Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. The fist-pumping "Shine a Light" is apt fodder for house parties and road trips, but "I'll Believe in Anything" is the record's shining center, a gut-punchingly perfect portrait of shit gone awry. --Amanda Petrusich
09: Cam'ron
Purple Haze
[Roc-A-Fella]
Oh, Pitchfork, you're so December 2004! It's called deadlines, rabble-rousers, breathe out. Purple Haze,
right now, remains as important and combustible a rap album as has been
made this century. So much blood and ink has been spilt (though it has
sold less than 700,000 copies to date) that it's easy to forget the
virtuosity contained therein. Killa Cam posits himself a token, if
flashy, street hustler, but his verbals say something else entirely.
He's renaissance writer, global traveler, and comic genius. Hell, even
the skits are still funny. Musically, a mostly undistinguished group of
beatsmiths make outstanding use of their time and Cam obliges with
stratospheric verses. On "Down and Out" he says, "Play razor tag, slice
ya face, you're it." Thing is, no one's responded in kind yet. --Sean
Fennessey
08: LCD Soundsystem
LCD Soundsystem
[DFA]
We may have heard many of these tracks more than a year before this
LP's release, but there was something edifying about cramming the James
Murphy catalog into one double-disc album. Retro/new wave/post-punk
revivalists saw their significance evaporate when Murphy exposed indie
kids to dance-rock without excessive hi-hats or leather jackets. From
blatant Daft Punk name-droppage to affected disco-infiltrating meta
commentary, Murphy's proactive style benefited most from its
galvanizing impressionism; pleasure sensors go apeshit long before
neurons notice there's no guitar part, and we're all the better for it.
Really need no-strings-attached rock? Fine, "Never as Tired as When I'm
Waking Up" is a suaver "Ten Years Gone", and "Great Release" pays its
respects as a great fake-Eno track. Of course, by then you probably
haven't even realized your Led Zep t-shirt's been replaced with a silk
button-down. --Adam Moerder
07: Animal Collective
Feels
[Fat Cat]
It's a familiar indie template: the band that begins difficult and
gradually takes on songwriting as they become more accomplished. Every
kid loves the sound of his own noise but it takes something more to
write a great tune, and some wait to try until they know what they're
doing. You knew the first time you heard Feels
that the band's audience would grow; fortunately, Animal Collective's
more explosive and chaotic ideas can easily be grafted onto poppier
flesh. They chant where others would croon, vomit childish screams
where rock'n'roll tradition calls for an "Oh yeah!", and they're not
afraid to write one long bridge leading nowhere. As they keep sounding
like no other band around we'll allow them another rock record,
especially if they continue to traffic in this degree of empathy. Even
with its darker shadings Feels is at its most basic a pure
expression of positivity from four guys trying their hardest to bring
something beautiful into the world. --Mark Richardson
06: Deerhoof
The Runners Four
[Kill Rock Stars]
It's not in Deerhoof's DNA to be a pop band; their strange amalgam of
octopus drumming, lyrical manga, and Siamese-twin acrobat guitars is
far too unwieldy to be conveniently packed into mass-digestible form.
Luckily, nobody bothered to tell them about this limitation, and as a
result The Runners Four
gives us 20 different misses at conventional songwriting, silly
attempts at traditionalism that go fascinatingly awry in every way
possible. All the noisy interludes and muso noodling of Deerhoof's
previous work weren't so much discarded as assimilated, creating songs
that give fleeting impressions of normalcy before shooting off down
unpredictable alleyways, bursts of noise that give way to eerie,
beautiful calms or absurdly tight rhythm-holding-the-band-hostage
moments. Even in that alternate dimension critics love to cite, The Runners Four
would be too weird for radio; on Earth-1, it's one of the year's most
playfully dense, eminently relistenable calamities. --Rob Mitchum
05: Antony & the Johnsons
I Am a Bird Now
[Secretly Canadian]
In an eclectic musical era buzzing with grime, reggaeton, dancepunk, crunk, freak-folk, and Architecture in Helsinki, I am a Bird Now
was the cool, palette-cleansing drink that washed away all traces of
spicier curries. Quite simply, there was nothing else like it in 2005,
and while I relished analyzing a smorgasbord of intricately plotted
musical graphs this year, this album seemed to penetrate their spikes
and shudders like a baseline. This is extraterrestrial,
atmosphere-charging, just-realized-I'm-holding-my-breath music, and
while purity is a sketchy value, it's physiologically difficult to
perceive Antony's beautiful gender mutations, consecrated vibrato, and
efflorescing cabaret pianos as anything but. Chrysalises birthed
themselves like Russian dolls; bright winged things fluttered into dark
rafters; and the greatest shock of all, it turned out that the second
coming of Boy George is something we should've been hoping for all
along. I Am a Bird Now played like raw sound achieving its Platonic ideal, making everything else seem like an interesting deviation. --Brian Howe
04: M.I.A.
Arular
[XL]
Arular arrives after a long year of critical storm and stress.
Dissenters painted Maya as a living, breathing Che t-shirt, a
distressing signifier of the insidious commodification of Third World
culture and rebellion. Had she hollered vague revolutionary sentiments
over indigenous Sri Lankan folk, the pros/cons may well have flipped,
but such a move wouldn't have made her any more or less authentic.
But M.I.A. is from the melting pot council estates of London, not a shanty in Sri Lanka, and Arular was her coming to terms with the contradiction of being a tagged terrorist's child living amongst those who'd done the tagging. If her politics are not necessarily poignant, it's because they are personal. While her inner clash spoke universally, the underlying music appealed to the universal ass. With hints both obvious (dancehall) and neglible (grime), her producers-- including Richard X, Diplo, and Steve Mackey-- merged the global urban beats that mingle in every major metropolis, group-thinking an album that expressed the diversity available to anyone with a modem. In both form and content, Arular exemplified the community that no longer has a base in any city or country but every city and country. --Peter Macia
03: Art Brut
Bang Bang Rock & Roll
[Fierce Panda]
When Art Brut issued their first single "Formed a Band", you'd have put
good odds on these upstarts being merely a brilliant one-off and
nothing more. A pinprick in the sides of their more overcooked
colleagues, the track came with a wink and a sneer but felt like a
complete manifesto rather than mere prologue. Yet on their debut
full-length, the band nods to the earliest recordings from the Fall or
Television Personalities, bucking the frankly odd notion that smart yet
cynical meta-pop is inherently ephemeral.
Coming across like a triangulation of Jarvis Cocker, Jonathan Richman, and Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge (were he in on the joke), singer Eddie Argos wields charisma and one-liners in equal measure, disguising pointed pop-cult criticism as humor and vice versa. In the process, he's grabbed UK indie by the lapels and implored it to wake. the. fuck. up. and stop accepting post-punk hand-me-downs and tabloid fuck-ups as its heroes. With a punk-era clarion call-- go and form a band, do it yourself-- Art Brut scowled at (and even picked fights with) stuffed-shirt revivalists, wrote about sex as something other than groupie-baiting myth-making, and punctured the lie that avant-posturing is an appropriate substitute for just putting your head down and rocking out, and they (and we) had a hell of a good time in the process. --Scott Plagenhoef
02: Kanye West
Late Registration
[Roc-A-Fella]
Let's not get it twisted: Kanye West wasn't one of Barbara Walters' Ten
Most Fascinating People of 2005 because he made a dazzlingly complex,
precedent-smashing impressionist opus of a rap album; he's there
because of seven words he said on a live telethon. That was a brave
move, but it wasn't Kanye's first. Before he called out the president,
he remade rap into what he always wanted it to be: a sunkissed sonic
cathedral with room for conflicted political rants and coke-slanging
memories and please-don't-die-grandma songs and chest-puffed bravado
and Common and Paul Wall and swelling strings and cascading harps and
burbling synths.
Co-producer Jon Brion lent West an expansively ecstatic lift that West had never had before, and West lent Brion a genially self-important strut that Brion had never had. Together, they crafted a cathedral of sonic details-- a gorgeous, tangled, heartfelt strings-and-samples masterpiece. --Tom Breihan
01: Sufjan Stevens
Illinois
[Asthmatic Kitty]
Stories always feel more important when you tack them onto a map. Real
places, people, and myths give us a way into a private story-- or cast
the story in doubt. And while for years, the singer/songwriter
tradition has assigned the mopiest songs to the lone acoustic guitar, a
ballad can sound even sadder if you bring in a banjo and a choir.
Sufjan Stevens' gift for crossing the grand with the intimate partly
explains how Illinois
landed at the top of this list: He wraps his stories in landmarks and
footnotes, ornaments them with glorious countermelodies, and celebrates
them like a Fourth of July parade.
We thought Stevens' breakthrough came two years ago on Michigan, but Illinois improves on it in every way: He takes more chances with humor and myth, the palette's richer, and the new drummer puts oomph behind Stevens' falsetto. It's still tempting to look for messages and slogans in his view of America, and to ask whether his gift for seeing us as we are comes with an urge to tell us how we should be. But Stevens insists that he's interested more than anything in singing about people, from beside a death bed, to inside the head of a serial killer, to someone tearing away his past in a van heading out of town. And he made a classic by empathizing with the loves and needs of those people, and watching them seek and wander while the landmarks on his map of Illinois stay fixed. --Chris Dahlen
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