The best albums of 2005

When it was all said and done, 2005 was not an outstanding year for music. There were a few truly amazing records, but lots of mediocre ones as well. Did anyone really break out this year? My gut reaction to that question is to answer with a "not yet." This time last year, Arcade Fire were already being heralded as the new kings of indie rock and roll, but the various "next Arcade Fire" bands we have been subjected to this year have yet to strike a chord with a more mainstream crowd, for better or for worse. All that aside, however, there was much to be happy about when it came to music in 2005, and if you've read other lists like this one, you probably already know that.

I would like to point out that the list I am about to unfurl was composed before I saw any of the big lists from the big media outlets, such as Pitchfork or Pop Matters. You may notice that the broad strokes of these lists are essentially pretty similar, which is more a comment on the music than on the media which covers it. I heard many, many more albums than I have included on this list, but these are, quite simply, the best of the year. I refuse to bow to the hipster tradition of including seemingly random albums that two or three people have heard of, just to show that I'm not a slave to the popular indie media. The fact is, that Physics of Meaning record just wasn't as strong as these 20 discs. Anyway, on with the show...

20. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning

Conor Oberst gets shit on all the time, and I don't really think it's quite fair. Sure, he will always be the poster boy for sad-bastard music, and his earnestness makes him a damn easy target. But whatever; with I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, he has made the best anti-war record of the year, and it he made sure we heard it at a time when it was desperately needed. Bright Eyes had a permanent spot in my stereo in the aftermath of the '04 election, mainly because listening to this music reminded me that it isn't my entire generation that lacks the passion needed for change.

19. Broken Social Scene - s/t

Broken Social Scene had a near impossible task ahead of them in recording their follow up to You Forgot It In People, their second album which came out of nowhere a few years ago to propel the Canadian collective to indie superstar status. How do you top an album that was so pleasurable, but so unexpected? Part of the enjoyment of YFIIP was the surprise of hearing it. What Broken Social Scene wound up doing is creating the best headphones album of the year. While the songs have an undeniably immediate kinetic energy, the real joy of the record comes on a close listening, when you notice that this thing is truly overflowing with sound. Tracks are stacked one on top of another to skyscraper heights. Musically, this is the most dense and interesting album I heard all year.

18. Dirty Three - Cinders

It was a good year for Australian music between this and the excellent new album from The Drones (which would have been #21 on this list). Dirty Three change their formula slightly to a shorter song format, but the end result is much the same. Highly evocative post rock, this time with a heavier guitar in the mix, and vocals for the first time on a Dirty Three record.

17. Spoon - Gimme Fiction

Like I said in a previous post, Gimme Fiction is 2005's most difficult and possibly most rewarding grower. Their is a pop sensibility in these tunes that is hard to see at first, but once you find them, they grab you and don't let go. At times both invigorating and hypnotic, Gimme Fiction is perhaps not what you would expect from Spoon going in, but going out you realize it is their best album by a wide margin. Also, my favorite cover art of the year.

16. Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Matt Sweeney - Superwolf

Sweeney's electric guitar gives Will Oldham's lyrics some much needed weight. These songs don't float into nothing like on other Oldham efforts. Quite simply, these two make a fantastic pair and are constantly going in weird and interesting directions.

15. M. Ward - Transistor Radio

M. Ward explores what Greil Marcus calls the "old, weird America" on this impressive disc. No one else makes music quite like M. Ward. He is at once a curator of musical traditions of the past, and an innovator bringing old ideas to a new audience.

14. The Clientele - Strange Geometry

The Clientele also make music that sounds fresh out of a time capsule, but where M. Ward explores depression era traditional songs, The Clientele are much more focused on a pop/rock tradition rooted in 60s psychedelia. This album is full of sunny melodies and jangly, reverbed guitars, not to mention the songs themselves, which reveal a deep paranoia and druggy self doubt. "Everything's so vivid, and so creepy," indeed.

13. Iron and Wine - Woman King/Iron and Wine & Calexico - In the Reins

This year may well be remembered as the one in which Sam Beam, the man behind indie (not freak) folk outfit Iron and Wine, came into his own. These two EPs rock harder than anything Beam has done previously, and may well indicate an exciting new direction in his sound. Yeah, there is even some guitar feedback in the Woman King EP. Ponder that for a minute. Sam Beam. Guitar feedback. They go together now, and it sounds fantastic. While In the Reins sounds more like the Iron and Wine we've gotten used to, it has a majestic quality to it which is obviously the Calexico influence at work.

12. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

Plenty of ink has already been spilled on Bloc Party, and I don't have much to add. I'll just say that this is great unpretentious guitar pop from Britain. They aren't afraid to be formulaic and relentlessly hooky because they know they do it so well. Every song could be a single.

11. New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

Speaking of albums where every song has single potential, the New Pornographers latest album is a power pop masterpiece, filled with terminally catchy tunes. This is the type of album you play at 11 in the morning, and are still humming a song from it laying in bed that night. These songs get in your head, but like those on the Broken Social Scene album, there is more to them than meets the eye. A close listening reveals what was obviously a painstaking construction process for each tune. This band was once considered a one-off supergroup of sorts - a bit ironic that they now make music with such obvious care and attention to detail.

10. Wilderness - s/t

My favorite release of the year from the Jagjaguar label, which is one of the most consistently interesting labels out there right now. The debut album from Baltimore band Wilderness sounds like a call to action - lead singer James Johnson's voice soars above a guitar squawk that will be familiar to fans of certain shoegaze and post-rock bands. Johnson is angry or frustrated about something, and he sings with the passionate intensity of a street preacher who thinks God is at his side. But it's the guitar heavy songs which truly shine on this deep and impressive debut album. The riffs jolt the listener in a way that few bands even attempt any longer.

9. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll

This is the funniest album of the year. Film director Jean-Luc Godard famously said that the best way to criticize a film is to make one yourself, and Eddie Argos and crew have done the equivalent in the musical spectrum with this small masterpiece of a record. Essentially a collection of the band's recent A and B sides, Bang Bang Rock & Roll's great subject is the declining state of rock music. When all anyone wants to do is make a quick buck and move to L.A. to get laid and sit by the pool, what happens to the quality of the music? Argos knows that it suffers, and his lyrics satirize the corporate rock world, one in which artists are compromised by their own superficial goals. Argos's do-it-yourself attitude comes through in the form of scathing commentary on our pop-culture obsessed society. Top of the pops.

8. Animal Collective - Feels

Animal Collective operate on another plane - they do not make music within a tradition of rock, punk, pop, or anything else. It is amazing that these guys were able to find each other to make these sounds. Listening to "The Purple Bottle" recently, I had to ask myself, how the fuck did they think of this? The balance of catchiness with truly avant-garde sounds is a wonder to behold. The music seems both otherworldly and incredibly listenable. Perhaps the most telling lyric on the record, and one of the few that is immediately clear, is "silence is a bore," which you can hear on the aforementioned "The Purple Bottle." I can't think of a more apt mission statement for this band.

7. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - s/t

The only sound more deafening the summer of '05 than the hype stirred up by a single 9 point whatever Pitchfork review for this album was the backlash that came after it started to appear in your local independent record store. How could it have lived up to that impossible hype? Listen to this disc with an open mind and there are wonderful sounds to hear, but if you come into the experience expecting a second coming of the Talking Heads, you are sure to be disappointed. The fact is, there are probably a lot of great unsigned bands making music like this, but this is the one I heard, and I like the sound they make. No, CYHSY are never going to be rock icons, but that doesn't mean they haven't made a fantastic record.

6. The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan

This is the White Stripes at their most unconventional. Get Behind Me Satan finds them all but abandoning the blues in favor of R & B, offering a thrilling interpretation of the other great American musical genre. The piano doesn't merely replace the guitar on this album, but represents an alternate sonic direction in the same way Bob Dylan's New Morning album, released on the heels of his 1960s classics, showed his audience what Dylan would sound like had things been just a little different. Apart from the academic interest in this album (the 'what can Jack White do besides play blues riffs?' question is finally answered), these songs are adventurous and unique, and show that the Stripes continue to be one of the most vital and important bands in the rock sphere. For all the pop brilliance of "My Doorbell," this album also features the dissonant and dark "The Nurse," and the even darker and more dissonant "Red Rain," one of the few tracks on this album to prominently feature Jack's guitar, which we are shown can still create a brilliant, spiraling noise.

5. Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now

You either love this album or you feel indifferent to it, but there is no hatred for it, simply because Antony's voice is the most exciting musical instrument to be heard this year. These songs have an undeniable power to them because Antony makes his very specific struggles with sexual identity all of our struggles with identity in a much broader sense. Believe me, you need not be gender confused to get something meaningful out of this album. In the end, though, what you discover is that there is a strong sense of hope in these songs which overshadows the confusion and pain, because Antony knows who he is and finds beauty in it. This album is unlike anything else released this year, and is a breath of fresh air at a time when popular music is dominated by ironic showmanship - this is a real and important record.

4. The National - Alligator

The National bring a strut and swagger back into rock 'n roll. This is not your geeky friend's rock band. You know the guy I'm talking about - he thinks rock music can be summed up by a math equation, and he probably wears glasses with dark rims and hasn't cut his hair in the last year. He thinks Bright Eyes is some weak shit but has the same thrift store wardrobe. People like that need to remember that rock music is about getting drunk and getting laid. Enter, The National. Brash and confident, but at times overcome with self doubt and pathos, The National make rock music behind gorgeous melodies that could somehow fit on both a Coldplay record and the back of the bar. If the music isn't gritty enough for you, the lyrics more than make up for it ("Karen put me in a chair, fuck me and make me a drink."/"I'm a birthday candle in a circle of black girls."). By the time we get to "Mr. November," there is no doubt in our mind that we are listening to the ravings of a man who sees himself as a king of rock 'n roll, but who everyone else sees as some geeky kid.

3. The Hold Steady - Seperation Sunday

A band with a punk aesthetic makes an epic rock opera, but rather than basing it on the state of our country (because, seriously, that's way too easy), it's written about a Catholic girl who is both saved and destroyed by rock and roll. Green Day suck, and I'm sick with myself that I've compared them to The Hold Steady, but everytime someone says that no one has made a rock opera like American Idiot in years, I want to blast "Stevie Nix" in their ears as loud as possible. Seperation Sunday is a brilliant piece of work, and the only album denser than this to come out in '05 is number 1 on this list. Craig Finn's lyrics come fast and furious, and reference the Bible as easily as Springsteen lyrics. The Springsteen connection should not be ignored, as The Hold Steady create a similar feeling in their music about lost, young souls living in times too fast for their years. The Hold Steady are not afraid to sound like a cock-rock band, the anti-cool for their main audience of indie rock nerds. Thoughts of hair bands brought on by self indulgent guitar solos are put to rest once you hear the stories in these songs, which could only be set to this kind of operatic music.

2. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary

So what if they sound like Modest Mouse? This is great disjointed rock music, made all the better by the explosive vocals of the two lead singers. This is another band we were told were the "next _______", but they are true originals despite the spot the influence sound. I think that this album's greatness comes from the band's ability to take all the best elements of indie rock and combine them into something that is very much their own. Different musical elements are introduced seperately, then brought together at the end of a tune into a crushing climax that leaves your jaw on the ground. Songs speed up, slow down, get tight, then get sloppy with perfect precision. Wolf Parade somehow find a balance between a technical wizardry and a thrown together aesthetic that gives them their charm. Really though, the main draws are the voices. Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner sing with a sense of real urgency that fits the theme of everything going to hell that is most often covered in the lyrics of these songs. Apologies to the Queen Mary is a great album and, from start to finish, the most exhilarating musical adventure of 2005.

1. Sufjan Stevens - Come on Feel the Illinoise

This is an easy choice. Sufjan Stevens is at the top of his game, and improves dramatically on the already great formula that he used on his Michigan album two years ago. Every one of these songs is like a mini movie, with its own style and goal. Some are sad, some are happy, some are operatic, and some are simple. All of them create a particular mood. What is great about this record is the way that all of the different elements at play hang together as a whole. Nothing ever seems out of place - this is the equivalent of a painter using the whole canvas. In any case, anyone who can write a pop song about the World's Columbian Exposition is a stone cold genius in my book. No other album comes close to this in '05. It is a towering masterpiece, a record for the ages, a perfect 10. It is epic, quiet, catchy, heartbreaking, and awe inspiring. This record represents the best of out American folk tradition and at the same time heralds the arrival of a new master of pop songcraft. In short, this is an album that makes you realize why you listen to music in the first place.

So those are the best 20. In addition to those albums, I also enjoyed releases by these artists in '05 (in no real order): Hanne Hukkelberg, Deerhoof, Tom Vek, Kate Bush, Vashti Bunyan, Edan, Super Furry Animals, Kanye West, Devendra Banhart, M83, Andrew Bird, The Drones, Okkervil River, Jens Lekman, Feist, Caribou, Boards of Canada, Wooden Wand, M.I.A., The Silver Jews, Fiona Apple, Franz Ferdinand, and others.