Staff Lists
Top 50 Albums of 2005
by Pitchfork Staff
December 31, 2005
And that's that for 2005. All that's left is for us to close out the year with our favorite part of this gig-- chirping at you about our favorite music. The year wasn't dominated by many overarching trends, but rather, a smattering of smaller themes: mewling, post-Modest Mouse/Arcade Fire vocalists, classic rock-influenced indie, trap-hop, psych-tinged ketamine house, continued cultural and genre cross-pollination, and a lot of love for our hometown, Chicago.
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.
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]
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
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
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