Tuesday, January 03, 2006
2005: A Remembrance
Okay. DOA is up and running again, after a four-month hiatus; this list appeared there a couple days ago, but with less comments and a few spelling errors and just generally in a slightly shabbier fashion. There's also been one addition and one subtraction; I bought the new Fall album the day I had to submit my list to DOA, and thus hadn't really listened to it enough to tell whether it merited inclusion or not. I swapped it out with Deerhoof's The Runners Four instead of pushing everything down a notch and dropping number ten; after listening to the new Deerhoof a few times on the way to work the last few days, I've decided it isn't quite as good as I thought it was. It's actually a little boring, and definitely no match for their last few records.
Okay, enough jabbering. Here's the list thing.
1) Excepter - Throne
Throne is like thrusting your head headfirst into an infinite-degree vat of pure future Biblicalism. It's beauty and power and minimalism and poetry and God and maximilism, and shit.
2) Animal Collective - Feels
Their third straight excellent album, and a close second in 2005. Slightly more formless and thus less pop-oriented than Sung Tongs, it's still catchy and memorable enough to appeal to those who can't stand drone or noise stuff. So yeah, good for them.
3) Oneida - The Wedding
We like strings, and Oneida, and feeling. The Wedding contains all three. We like The Wedding.
4) Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
So I'd avoided this band in the past, due almost exclusively to the awful name. I'd also read they were insufferably pretentious and obnoxious and shit. I was pretty much shocked, then, when I first heard God's Money. It's genuinely staggering in spots, particularly "Glory In Itself / Egyptian", which is some good experimental art-pop you could probably dance to, were you so inclined.
5) The Fall - Fall Heads Roll
This didn't make the list on DOA because I didn't get around to giving it a full, thorough listen until this past weekend. I feel safe in calling this the best Fall record since 1986's Bend Sinister. Maybe a bold assertion, but I felt the same way about last year's The Real New Fall LP, and this one's even better than that. Not to say they haven't been good in the interim - four of the five albums released between '97 and 2002 were actually very good, with 2002's Are You Are Missing Winner being something of a minor stinker. Anyhow, Fall Heads Roll is basically an instant classic, at least for Fall fans.
6) Still Flyin' - unreleased demos
The debut album by Still Flyin' shall be the cultural event of the epoch, whenever some right-thinking and financially stable record concern gets around to releasing it. Reggae makes indie-pop better.
7) Kanye West - Late Registration
(I wrote this last Monday night, the day I bought both this and the Fall album mentioned above)
I just bought this record today. I like it!
8) Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
So here is the man's best full work since probably Wowee Zowee, which is more a comment on how inconsistent he's been since then than any strong commendation of this album. Face the Truth is a resolutely fine record that occasionally reaches peaks commensurate to mid-level Pavement. So it's mostly really damn good, and occasionally great. "Baby C'Mon" might be the song that got played the most on my radio show this year.
9) Crooked Fingers - Dignity and Shame
With each passing year, Eric Bachmann comes closer and closer to being a complete Springsteen simulacrum. As such, "Twilight Creeps" is the best Boss song since "I'm on Fire".
10) The Skaters - Rippling Whispers
So maybe this came out in 2004. Who the hell knows, or cares, other than two guys in the Mission, and some other guys elsewhere who like the two guys in the Mission? The Skaters make resolutely anti-pop noise that somehow contains the best and most touching elements of popular music.
Okay. DOA is up and running again, after a four-month hiatus; this list appeared there a couple days ago, but with less comments and a few spelling errors and just generally in a slightly shabbier fashion. There's also been one addition and one subtraction; I bought the new Fall album the day I had to submit my list to DOA, and thus hadn't really listened to it enough to tell whether it merited inclusion or not. I swapped it out with Deerhoof's The Runners Four instead of pushing everything down a notch and dropping number ten; after listening to the new Deerhoof a few times on the way to work the last few days, I've decided it isn't quite as good as I thought it was. It's actually a little boring, and definitely no match for their last few records.
Okay, enough jabbering. Here's the list thing.
1) Excepter - Throne
Throne is like thrusting your head headfirst into an infinite-degree vat of pure future Biblicalism. It's beauty and power and minimalism and poetry and God and maximilism, and shit.
2) Animal Collective - Feels
Their third straight excellent album, and a close second in 2005. Slightly more formless and thus less pop-oriented than Sung Tongs, it's still catchy and memorable enough to appeal to those who can't stand drone or noise stuff. So yeah, good for them.
3) Oneida - The Wedding
We like strings, and Oneida, and feeling. The Wedding contains all three. We like The Wedding.
4) Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
So I'd avoided this band in the past, due almost exclusively to the awful name. I'd also read they were insufferably pretentious and obnoxious and shit. I was pretty much shocked, then, when I first heard God's Money. It's genuinely staggering in spots, particularly "Glory In Itself / Egyptian", which is some good experimental art-pop you could probably dance to, were you so inclined.
5) The Fall - Fall Heads Roll
This didn't make the list on DOA because I didn't get around to giving it a full, thorough listen until this past weekend. I feel safe in calling this the best Fall record since 1986's Bend Sinister. Maybe a bold assertion, but I felt the same way about last year's The Real New Fall LP, and this one's even better than that. Not to say they haven't been good in the interim - four of the five albums released between '97 and 2002 were actually very good, with 2002's Are You Are Missing Winner being something of a minor stinker. Anyhow, Fall Heads Roll is basically an instant classic, at least for Fall fans.
6) Still Flyin' - unreleased demos
The debut album by Still Flyin' shall be the cultural event of the epoch, whenever some right-thinking and financially stable record concern gets around to releasing it. Reggae makes indie-pop better.
7) Kanye West - Late Registration
(I wrote this last Monday night, the day I bought both this and the Fall album mentioned above)
I just bought this record today. I like it!
8) Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
So here is the man's best full work since probably Wowee Zowee, which is more a comment on how inconsistent he's been since then than any strong commendation of this album. Face the Truth is a resolutely fine record that occasionally reaches peaks commensurate to mid-level Pavement. So it's mostly really damn good, and occasionally great. "Baby C'Mon" might be the song that got played the most on my radio show this year.
9) Crooked Fingers - Dignity and Shame
With each passing year, Eric Bachmann comes closer and closer to being a complete Springsteen simulacrum. As such, "Twilight Creeps" is the best Boss song since "I'm on Fire".
10) The Skaters - Rippling Whispers
So maybe this came out in 2004. Who the hell knows, or cares, other than two guys in the Mission, and some other guys elsewhere who like the two guys in the Mission? The Skaters make resolutely anti-pop noise that somehow contains the best and most touching elements of popular music.
