top ten 2005
broadcast - tender buttons
if i ever become a haute couture model with a strong coke addiction, i will vomit into the toilet to this record. that’s how much i love it.
jens lekman - oh you’re so silent jens
the most charming swedish record since Ace of Base’s The Sign. plus, he writes songs about anti-war demonstrations. i always wished i would meet a girl at an iraq war protest.
tom vek - we have sound
people keep on describing this record as ‘proletarian’, but i think it’s more of a party boy record. and i like that.
joggers - with a cape and a cane
this record could go it alone on the sheer awesomeness of ‘wicked light sleeper’, but it is so much more. i am still tearing away at the many, many guitar riffs in this jungle.
stephen malkmus - face the truth
everything from a drugged-robot groove (’kindling for the master’) to a song about putting on cleats to climb a shitpile (’pencil rot’). who needs drugs when you have this?
wilderness - wilderness
my friend nick shouts loud at his band’s shows. i think if he listened to this record, he’d have a much better idea of how to do it.
fiery furnaces - ep
this is the fiery furnaces record that convinced me that it matters both very much and not at all what the lyrics are. and any remake of ‘tropical iceland’ is a good one. ff get extra credit for continuing songs about seafaring.
decemberists - picaresque
here the merry band of portland anachronistics eliminate the weaker material that plagued their earlier albums, and pare down the sound to unleash a barrow full of compelling sounds and stories.
wolf parade - apologies to the queen mary
i’m pretty sure i would be held back in hipster school if this didn’t make the list somewhere.
double - loose in the air
this band mostly qualifies because i think of them as an ‘evil’ french kicks. though to be fair the french kicks are themselves dastardly bastards from what i hear. and by ‘what i hear i mean’ their music. duh.