Top Five Albums of 2005
It’s end-of-year, and for lack of anything better to write about, I will offer my undiluted opinions on the best albums of 2005.
We’re going to do this a little differently this year.Firstly, I will give a list of the albums contending for this auspicious honor:
- Kate Bush, Aerial
- Wolf Parade, Apologies To The Queen Mary
- M83, Before the Dawn Heals Us
- Bob Mould, Body of Song
- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
- Engineers
- The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan
- Beck, Guero
- Shout Out Louds, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff
- Daft Punk, Human After All
- LCD Soundsystem
- Metric, Live It Out
- Minotaur Shock, Maritime
- Mew, Mew and the Glass Handed Kites
- British Sea Power, Open Season
- Death Cab For Cutie, Plans
- Belle & Sebastian, Push Barman to Open Old Wounds
- Bloc Party, Silent Alarm
- Sigur Rós, Takk…
- Broadcast, Tender Buttons
- Louis XIV, The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
- Boards of Canada, The Campfire Headphase
- Low, The Great Destroyer
- Longwave, There’s a Fire
- Sam Prekop, Who’s Your New Professor
- Ladytron, Witching Hour
- Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth
- Coldplay, X&Y
- Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have it So Much Better
- The Subways, Young for Eternity
I have exported my song data from iTunes and have created an Excel spreadsheet. Using the ratings and playcounts, we will determine empirically, which are the best albums of 2005!
Now, to be perfectly honest about this, I should really be using my iPod’s playlist data as well, since my home collection is really only half of the story (not to mention in-car listening + Xbox), but I am reasonably-satisfied that this is statistically representative of my usage and ratings.
For the selection process, I have taken averages of the album’s track ratings and play counts. This gives me a per-album rating and average play count. Selections were made for albums ranked over 65%. Albums with rankings within this range but with playcounts less than 3.0 were disqualified from the running.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! (70%, 25 plays)
“Clap Your Hands Say Yeah” (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
Often described as “the band your blogging friend won’t shut up about,” I was fortunate enough to see these guys at Zaphod’s a few months ago and they put on a great show. Their album, a mix of Ramones meets Talking Heads, is fun, artsy and rocking. Creative stuff and competent musicians with a unique sound. Love them.
LCD Soundsystem (72.50%, 19 plays)
“Lcd Soundsystem” (Lcd Soundsystem)
Energetic, art-rock. The opening track on “LCD Soundsystem” is a funky song story about a kid saving up to throw a party in his basement with Daft Punk as the headliner. The energy and grooves continue through a double CD set, the second CD featuring a few obligatory remixes of LCD’s raunch-dance tune “Yeah”. What impressed me most about this album was the musical range James Murphy injects into it. Not afraid to expose his influences, James borrows liberally from the Talking Heads (Yr City’s A Sucker), The Fall (Losing My Edge), Brian Eno (The Great Release) and disco-era funk (Tribulations) to post-disco punk (Movement). It works as an homage and something altogether new.
The LCD Soundsystem are touring currently complete with a real band. fantastic stuff. They have a message board for tracking them and, if you’re really lucky, James will even talk to you!
Sigur Rós, Takk… (70%, 16 plays)
Sigur Rós is a strange band. They’re also very special, creating ethereal sometimes disturbing, sometimes uplifting rock music. “Takk…” is Icelandic for “Thank you”, the name of the opening track. The album starts softly with a child-like toy piano and the gentle vocals and merges into Glósóli which erupts into a mass of swirling guitars and drums. The album carries this vibe through to the end and is pure musical magic. I can’t recommend this enough. Buy this album. Then buy their previous ones.
Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth (76.92%, 18 plays)
“With Teeth (Advisory) (Digi)” (Nine Inch Nails)
I was somewhat surprised to see this make it into the top five. I was, however, pleased that it knocked out Bloc Party which I’ve grown somewhat tired of, probably due to the inclusion of one or two tracks from that album in my wakeup playlist. Nevertheless, upon further reflection, this was a pretty solid effort that managed to venture into different territory for Mr. Reznor. Although, that was certainly not the norm for this, with the title track and other single, “Only” feeling somewhat formulaic. Still, even Nine Inch Nails’ worst album is a far-sight better than most and deserving of a spot here.
and finally,
British Sea Power, Open Season (81.82%, 56 plays)
“Open Season” (British Sea Power)
Wow. Did I ever listen to this album a LOT. I was really surprised to see this, though, upon reflection, I do remember pressing “play” on this album a whole bunch of times. A good weekend album, British Sea Power have developed their sound and taken some interesting directions and I couldn’t be happier to see them doing well. After their first album, “The Decline of British Sea Power”, I expected them to fade out into the obscurities of one-off UK alternapop acts. With this new album, they’ve shown they have a depth and song-writing ability unusual for their genre. “Larsen B”, an ode to the chunk of antarctic glacier that dropped off the shelf and wandered into the ocean is a lament for global warming and one of my favorite tracks of the year.
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1 Comment
Hah, a nice twist on all the year end best of lists overrunning the blogosphere right now. Almost makes me wish I used iTunes. Not quite, but almost.
Posted by Mocking Music on 20 December 2005 @ 2am