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2005 Albums (21-25)

I’m not sure whether to call this “The Best 25 Albums of 2005”, or “My Favorite Albums of 2005”, or just “Top 25 Albums of 2005.” Really, it’s just a list of the albums that I found the time to get into this year, since there were too many good ones to listen to. Music is exploding along with the rest of the internet, and it’s impossible to keep up. So these albums were the ones that were too good to stop listening to, or were too highly recommended to avoid, or hit me in the right mood at the right time, and I so I went back to them repeatedly.

There are other albums that I’ve heard once or twice which I know I would love and potentially rank higher on this list, but it wouldn’t be fair to put them on. So this is a list of albums that I’ve found the time to obsess over, dance to, talk about, sing along with, and incorporate into my life.

They will be posted in installments of five, simultaneously with two friends Austin and Nick, one each day this week.

25. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
The first time I heard this album I had just woken up from a nap, a state in which I feel more able to inhabit a song’s space. The first track is a careful, impeccable balance of rhythm and melody, organic and electronic, consistency and off-kilter rhythm. It stops and starts, speeds up and slows down. The album proceeds to maintain this all-overness along with a sense of cohesiveness. It’s punctuated with exemplary, tight singles, such as “My friend Dario,” yet landscape around those tracks doesn’t ever feel cavernous or Eno-ambient--just consistently interesting.

24. Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
My friend Nick listened to this album for a few days before I picked it up myself, and there was a noticeable increase in his level of happiness. Building with snippets of 70s-sounding melodies, quick, smiley beats, and characters from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the whole thing sets out to blend cartoons, hip-hop, tongue-in-cheekness, and a dose of childhood nostalgia. The collaboration of Danger Mouse and MF Doom is a marriage of the technicolor happy with imaginative silliness--and it works marvelously. Plus, you get to hear Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters rapping.

23. The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
I usually don’t have that much patience for the unapologetic cuteness of some indie rock outfits, and The Boy Least Likely To is exactly that--the album starts with the tinkering high notes of a xylophone, and the then a twee banjo comes in and leads the song to the end. But it’s one of my favorite songs of the year, bar-none. The lyric goes “Just be gentle with me, and I’ll be gentle with you,” a plea of self-deprecation whose bravery really stands in relief to a lot of ironic standoffishness that one normally finds in songs these days. The album’s cuteness is balanced by a lot of vulnerability and honesty, and for that reason it’s meant a lot to me. And the songwriting is masterful.

22. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have Had It So Much Better...With Franz Ferdinand
Speaking of ironic standoffishness. That’s basically what this album is. And it’s so awesome. “Do You Want To,” once you get past the first tinny refrain, opens into the sexiest combination of drums, bass, and guitar that you could ever hope to listen to. Though I really like the tries at more heartfelt moments--”Fade Together”--those times feel like posturing, too . I really, really like two thirds of this album, and I liked it all immediately. Even if the scope seems at times limited, who said rock stars need to be good people?

21. Fiery Furnaces - EP
Maybe this isn’t a real album (it’s a collection of b-sides and re-recorded tracks and things, I think), but anyway, it’s ridiculously good. This was my first introduction to the Furnaces (I managed to miss Blueberry Boat, but I’ve since gone back and scraped my jaw off of the floor), and it took some time to digest. My friend Nick hates them because they’re deliberately difficult, and he’s right, but he’s also wrong. They’re a frenetic, confusing, cacaphonic band, but that’s what makes them so refreshing, since underneath all of it there’s a complete pop genius. Their work doesn’t offer up its secrets easily. They make demands. And the fact that they can do that to me without the benefit of an album’s cohesive setting makes it that much better.

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music

Published Sunday, December 11, 2005 | E-mail this post

31 Comments

Nick

11:16 PM

I don't hate the Fiery Furnaces because they are willfully difficult. I just hate them. Pure and simple.

Blake

11:22 PM

Well, that was a reason you gave me once, and that you don't like her voice. Nevertheless, your hate continues to be illogically fiery. cough, cough.

Michael

5:15 PM

blake,
I saw yours, austin's and nick's top 25 lists, and was inspired to publish my own at readmichaelreid.blogspot.com
am I copying you three? most certainly. nice list though, although the vitalic for me was much higher.