The beginning of the new year calls for the Hiatus editor to weigh in on the best albums of the past year. There were more than a few great albums in 2005, but here are my 10 favorites.
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
Far and away my favorite release of the year, Broken Social Scene is a sprawling, impassioned mess of an album. The beautiful chaos truly sounds like the collective minds of the 17-person supergroup, with each member’s own style and talents combining with the others to form something called “fucking great music.” It’s the kind that makes you feel something, whether manic anxiety, intoxicating depression or orgasmic euphoria. The album’s clumsy grandeur is instantly memorable, like an all-too-familiar dream experienced for the very first time. It is at once an album-long mood piece, a collection of bedazzling songs, and a series of moments too sublime to describe. The majestic disorder is epic, grander than any individual could singularly conceive. It’s nearly too much for any one person to handle.
Boss Ditties: “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)” and “Swimmers”
The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Perhaps the most fun to be had listening to music in 2005, the British mixed-gender, multiethnic Go! Team mashed up something quite special. The insistent drums, funky bass, street-chanted raps, indie-rock guitars, feel-good pianos, dueling recorders and old-school scratching and sampling are irresistible, providing mini-soundtracks to made-up ’70s car chases and storybook moments of fuzzy-wuzzy romance. There’s one thing that’s for sure: Listening to the Go! Team feels fucking great.
Boss Ditties: “Huddle Formation” and “Everyone’s a V.I.P. to Someone”
Sufjan Stevens – Come On Feel The Illinoise!
It’s a story about America, the supposed “real America” with flat farmland, endless suburbia and, of course, the Windy City. Playing just about every instrument on the album, Sufjan Stevens manages to capture the romance of the 20th-century Midwest with rolling guitar and piano arrangements, flutes, horns, xylophones and just about anything else that can play music, including Sufjan’s own whispery voice. Heartfelt and preciously pieced together songs about American life (and, of course Illinois) are the game here. Even Superman and serial killer John Wayne Gacy are allowed their own songs, but better than the songs’ subjects are their elegant, purring arrangements.
Boss Ditties: “Casimir Pulaski Day” and “Chicago”
Amadou and Mariam – Diamanche á Bamako
When world music star Manu Chao decided to produce an album for one of Mali’s top acts, the blind, married Amadou and Mariam, he did a vast service for the world, sparing us all from another one of his 15-song albums based around the same four parts. Instead, armed with the pair’s smooth voices and winning charm, Amadou’s spectacularly accomplished guitar, Chao’s catchy beats and of course, his omnipresent, nasally voice, the three of them managed to create the perfect mix of African-sounding music for Western ears. Chao’s insistent energy balances perfectly with the duo’s laid-back liquidity; the result is like a street parade in Senegal, but without the need for a travel agent or any inoculations.
Boss Ditties: “Coulibaly” and “Senegal Fast Food”
The Boy Least Likely To – The Best Party Ever
Few things make me happy these days, but this irrepressibly cute batch of twee-pop is akin to slamming a syringe filled with sunshine into my veins. It’s easy to feel warm and fuzzy-like while listening to the whimsical bag of instruments played, it seems, by the band of stuffed animals that adorn the cover. Counter to the sugar-sweet melodies and toy-chest instrumentation, the lyrics are paranoid, neurotic and insecure, but wrapped in a security blanket of childhood wonder. It’s quite liberating to look at life’s struggles through the eyes of a child, and its one of the happiest experiences of 2005.
Boss Ditties: “I See Spiders When I Close My Eyes” and “I’m Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star”
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings – Naturally
Nobody who hears this can believe it came out in 2005; instead they imagine the husky-voiced Jones was once female competition for a young James Brown sometime in the mid-’60s. Jones lays it down, hot and soulful, and her almost entirely vanilla backing band is incurably tight and groovin’, simply impossible not to dance to. No good time is complete without some of that hot buttered soul — the kind that flows fom the heart, smooth and funky. Mrs. Jones will have no problems bringing the smooth, soulful spirit, and her Dap-Kings will be sure to funk you up.
Boss Ditties: “Your Thing Is A Drag” and “How Do I Let A Good Man Down?”
M.I.A. – Arular
For some reason, the question that always comes up regarding M.I.A.’s not-quite hip-hop is, “Why is this shit any good?” Her rhymes are simple, repetitive and hard to understand, and her beats are harsh, bare and hardly produced. But in spite of these glaring faults, or perhaps because of them, the album is imbued with a sloppy, sexy spirit that makes it a tantalizing reward for anyone that can get past the first few unfamiliar listens. Her electro-beats are hot and dirty, much like her British/Sri Lankan-accented dancehall toasts, and if it doesn’t get bodies to the dance-floor, you’re at the wrong fucking party.
Boss Ditties: “Galang” and “Bucky Dun Gun”
Fiery – Furnaces EP
The team of bro-and-sis weirdsters trimmed down their fully insane sonic jumble into a set of almost-passable poppy creations (Note: “pop” for the Fiery Furnaces is still pretty damn strange). Don’t worry, the strange electronic noises are still here, as are the theatrical pianos, the disjointedly insane lyrics and, of course, the ever-toothy guitars. This time, though, they are combined into something that isn’t a mock opera about the high seas or a charmingly stumbling Velvet Underground homage, but just something that’s eccentric, charming and toe-tappingly cute.
Boss Ditties: “Here Comes the Summer” and “Smelling Cigarettes”
Thelonius Monk – Quartet with John Coltrane At Carnegie Hall
Monk. Trane. Playing live jazz. At Carnegie Hall. They just found the recording last year. What else do you want from me?
Boss Ditties: “Epistrophy” and “Blue Monk”
Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
I think by now, we’re quite familiar with how melodramatic the shaky-voiced Conor Oberst is. Regardless of how clumsy and nearly embarrassing his words can be, Bright Eyes is completely shameless about it. Though he may be 25 years old — not quite the adolescent boy he appears to be on record — he sings with the voice of American youth, realizing all at once the shittiness of the world around him, his miniscule place in it, the lingering beauty of youth that can’t ever be recaptured, and the importance of love in such a place. He sings as if realizing everything for the first time, like the child he pretends to be. Added to a background of achingly bittersweet alt-country, it’s a remarkably memorable revelation.
Boss Ditties: “Lua” and “At The Bottom Of Everything”
Honorable Mentions
Beck: Guero
Sigur Ros: Takk…
Deerhoof: The Runner’s Four
Animal Collective: Feels
Devendra Banhart: Cripple Crow
The New Pornographers: Twin Cinema
British Sea Power: Open Season
Dishonorable Mentions
Bloc Party: Silent Alarm
Kaiser Chiefs: Employment
Nada Surf: The Weight Is A Gift
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Howl
Bright Eyes: Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
