after some deliberation i have arrived at a decision about my favorite albums this year. i finally signed up for amazon's affiliate program, so i can choose the stuff that amazon advertises to you. in all seriousness, if you don't own these albums, go buy them. no doubt i'll lose scene points from every group of people i share musical taste with, since there's not really any cohesive thread between the 5 albums, since it's dominated by ambient prog metal and has a whole lot of wanna-be indie kid cool thrown in. nonetheless, these are the albums i liked best this year. despite guilty pleasures like gratitude and coheed and cambria dominating my 'most-played' lists. so here it is: top 5 albums of 2005:
#5: bonnie prince billy, matt sweeney - superwolf: good god, i swore it would never happen. a country album. a COUNTRY album. granted, i found out about will oldham through tweaker, a spin-off from nine inch nails, but still. and yes, i owe a huge mea culpa to ben for this, since i berated him for will oldham's tortured vocals when he played them at k2. granted, none of the vocals on this album have that off-key faltering stuff that i so fiercelty objected to on his older stuff, but nonetheless, i do owe an apology.
#4 spoon - gimme fiction: this album could get the nod if it only included 'i turn my camera on' and 'the infinite pet' don't get me wrong, i like the rest of the album, and it's great rock music all the way through, but those two songs are instant eargasms. it's not as straight-ahead-rock as 'girls can tell' but it's just as good an album.
#3: wolf parade - apologies to the queen mary:this album is a dance party for sad kids. the first ten songs are sooooo dancable and soooo angsty. even the last two songs, which are considerabley weaker, are amazing live. and 'i'll believe in anything' makes a good run at the best song of the year.
#2: opeth - ghost reveries: yeah, i grew up a metal kid, and it still shows up sometimes. this is their first normal(?) album since the black/white trade-off of 'deliverence' and 'damnation', which is probably part of why i like it so much. the album has so many standout moments, from the moog stomp of 'baying of the hounds' to the ambient pink-floyd-esque wanders of atonement' and 'hours of wealth'. and 'reverie/harlequin forest' uses clean vocals all the way through, making it the best song for showing non-death-metal people the genius that is opeth.
#1: dredg - catch without arms: if your 2005 mix disc doesn't start with bug eyes, minus 10 points. interscope did everything they could to dumb down and pop-ify this album, and it's excellent IN SPITE OF IT. more memorable than 'el cielo', albeit less varied than 'lietmotif', it's their best album thus far. it's not the best that they can do, though. dredg's perfect album is still coming. in the mean time, check out b-sides like 'stone by stone' on their myspace page
Previously:
Retractions
top 5 of 2004
3 Comments
What? No Nickelback? No Green Day? Oh wait, I thought I was back leading youth group again. Caught up in trying to listen to the music they like so we have something to talk about.
So, you knowing my tame(?) musical tastes. Which of these albums would you recommend?
they wouldn’t be on this list if i didn’t heartily recommend them to EVERYONE.
a lot of the opeth CD would probably be outside of your tastes, so you should probably steer clear of it. superwolf might be a bit too… meloncholy? for most people, but it’s still great for when you want that kind of thing.
dredg is fantastic, dense, layered, progressive, and even catchy. absolutely worth it. spoon and wolf parade are both great rock records.
I’ve heard a lot about wolf parade so I think I”ll check them out first. Melancholy is not a bad thing, those kind of albums usually have a permanent place in my top 20 because you never know when you’ll need some company in your misery. Dredg intrigues me, I may have to check into it too.
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