The Best of 2005

1. Beck/Guero

A multi-genre stew of grooves, meanderings, and meditations. As you wake up with mind abuzz after a tequila-drenched night in the middle of some real-life rural Mexican travelling circus, with all the uncertainties and hilarities that would bring, Guero provides a personal little soundtrack. Who was that mujer? Donde esta mi popsicle? A little scuzzy rock, a little electro boogie, a little TJ toodle-oo, topped off with a stop at the lounge. Nobody shakes up the bag like Beck Hansen.

2. Jimmy Chamberlin Complex/Life Begins Again

If modern music had a comeback player award, surely the winner would be Jimmy Chamberlin. The supremely sophisticated, almost effortlessly cool Life Begins Again moves with total command of its forms: alternating rock and jazz joints, given pulse and clatter by Chamberlin’s typically prodigious drumming. That skinwork, in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Billy Mohler and a Hall of Fame roster of great vocalists (consider Rob Dickinson of the Catherine Wheel, fellow Pumpkin Billy Corgan, the ever-righteous Bill Medley), forges a collection that brings to mind great works of fusion of the past.

3. Minus The Bear/Menos El Oso

Seattle quintet Minus The Bear create a mesmerizing, casual musical tension, an almost cinematic lyrical suspense, on their second proper album Menos El Oso, self-titled in Spanish. Over eleven smart, crisp, eloquently arranged and played songs, Minus The Bear move themselves forward as a group and offer promise of future masterworks. Accompanied by the occasional electronic swirl, MTB present a taut, cohesive collection of inventive and extraordinary guitar melodies (the wistfully noisy featured track "Hooray," chronicling the greatness of unplanned snow play, offers a telling example), a rhythm section that propels with Police-like efficiency, and leader Jake Snider’s clean, unassuming, sometimes world-weary vocals. It all suggests an improbable Steely Dan for the twenty-first century—Pacific Coast version, without the saxes and the smoke—starring Menos El Oso as the new Aja.

4. Brazilian Girls/Brazilian Girls

There’s something totally cosmopolitan about New York’s Brazilian Girls—the group, the album that bears their name—although nothing specifically Brazilian, unless you count the sensibility and the relentless heat and percolation of the music. There very definitely is a girl. Brilliant, charismatic singer Sabina Sciulla, personal roots in Italy, France, and Germany, wraps her lyrics, seductive vocals, and fatale presentation around melodies and moods by turns clubby, jazzy, of the lounge, organic, sometimes even brassy and traditional—at all times transfixing. Brazilian Girls becomes the flawlessly rendered soundtrack of an urban jet-set life, where it’s always summer.

5. Open Hand/You And Me

Los Angeles quartet Open Hand’s brilliant You And Me rocks totally straight-up, like an argument in progress, like an emotional car crash you ought to look away from. Its fourteen tracks alternately brood, smoulder, and crackle with tension and barely controlled ferocity. They transmit a continuously smoky lyrical and sonic mood deftly created by leader Justin Isham and his cohorts. Among them, drummer Paxton Pryor’s sticks and voice speak richly of soul, while three memorable, in-your-face performances by guest vocalist Hayley Helmericks—on the blazing "Tough Girl," "Take No Action," and "Waiting For Katy"—intensify the depth and drama of these songs.

6. Laurent Garnier/The Cloud Making Machine

7. Nine Inch Nails/With Teeth

8. Cave In/Perfect Pitch Black

9. Kate Bush/Aerial

10. The Books/Lost And Safe

11. System Of A Down/Mezmerize

(Three Essential Tracks: "B.Y.O.B.," "Cigaro," "Radio/Video")

12. Billy Corgan/The Future Embrace

(Three Essential Tracks: "The Cameraeye," "Mina Loy (M.O.H.)," "Strayz")

13. Death In Vegas/Satan's Circus

(Three Essential Tracks: "Zugaga," "Anita Berber," "Sons Of Rother")

14. Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom/The Days Of Mars

15. Deadbeat/New World Observer

(Three Essential Tracks: "Abu Ghraib," "O Little Town Of Bethlehem," "Slow Rot From Rhetoric")

16. Stars/Set Yourself On Fire

(Three Essential Tracks: "The Big Fight," "Soft Revolution," "What I’m Trying To Say")

17. Days Away/Mapping An Invisible World

(Three Essential Tracks: "Keep Your Voices Down," "Gravity," "Mirrors")

18. Fiona Apple/Extraordinary Machine

(Three Essential Tracks: "Get Him Back," "Not About Love," "Red Red Red")

19. Crosstide/Life As A Spectator

(Three Essential Tracks: "Opposite Day," "Empathy," "Capable")

20. Veda/The Weight Of An Empty Room

(Three Essential Tracks: "Safe," "Still Standing," "The Falling Kind")

Other worthy releases (random order): Ils/Bohemia; Hail Social/Hail Social; Aimee Mann/The Forgotten Arm; Oasis/Don’t Believe The Truth; Tori Amos/The Beekeeper; Red Sparowes/At The Soundless Dawn; Bruce Springsteen/Devils And Dust; Mira/There I Go Daydreamer; Doves/Some Cities; New Order/Waiting For The Sirens’ Call; Bluprint/Sleeping Giant; Caribou/The Milk Of Human Kindness; SubtractiveLAD/Giving Up The Ghost; Vendetta Red/Sisters Of The Red Death; Tristeza/A Colores; Hammock/Kenotic; Plat/Compulsion; Elbow/Leaders Of The Free World; Tarwater/The Needle Was Traveling; Marco Passarani/Sullen Look; Marsen Jules/Herbstlaub; Ellen Allien/Thrills; Kevin Yost/Future Flashback; Madonna/Confessions On A Dance Floor; Midaircondo/Shopping For Images; Tosca/J.A.C.; 302 Acid/0005; Daft Punk/Human After All; 13 & God/13 & God; Adrian Belew/Side One; The Starting Line/Based On A True Story; Folie/Eyepennies; Facing New York/Facing New York; Coldplay/X&Y; Skalpel/Konfusion; Let Go/Let Go; Franz Ferdinand/You Could Have It So Much Better; Colder/Heat; Baumer/Come On, Feel It; Chin Chin/Shallow Dive; Depeche Mode/Playing The Angel; The Like/Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?; Silhouette Brown/Silhouette Brown; Kosma/New Aspects; Nada Surf/The Weight Is A Gift; Rogue Wave/Descended Like Vultures; The Audition/Controversy Loves Company; Discover America/Psychology; Silicone Soul/Staring Into Space; Röyksopp/The Understanding; Lakota/Hope For The Haunted; Audioslave/Out Of Exile; James Hardway Collective/Over Easy; VNV Nation/Matter + Form; Maria Taylor/11:11; Mando Diao/Hurricane Bar; 50 Foot Wave/Golden Ocean; Turin Brakes/JackInABox; Statistics/Often Lie; Broadcast/Tender Buttons; Damon Aaron/Ballast; BEDlight For BlueEYES/The Dawn; David Gray/Life In Slow Motion; Neil Young/Prairie Wind; Plain White T’s/All That We Needed; Bettie Serveert/Attagirl; Sarah Bettens/Scream; Michael Penn/Mr Hollywood Jr 1947; Nu:Tone/Brave Nu World; Amusement Parks On Fire/Amusement Parks On Fire; Ezekiel Honig & Morgan Packard/Early Morning Migration; Clue To Kalo/One Way, It’s Every Way; Our Lady Peace/Healthy In Paranoid Times; Tracy Bonham/Blink The Brightest; Copeland/In Motion; Cruiserweight/Secret Weaponry; Nural/The Weight Of The World; Esthero/Wikked Lil’ Grrrls; Sheryl Crow/Wildflower; Metric/Live It Out; Better Than Ezra/Before The Robots; Daphne Loves Derby/On The Strength Of All Convinced; Richard Davis/Details; Sleater-Kinney/The Woods; Mike Doughty/Haughty Melodic; The Academy Is/Almost Here; Alana Davis/Surrender Dorothy; Kevin Devine/Split The Country, Split The Street; Kathleeen Edwards/Back To Me; Recloose/Hiatus On The Horizon; Idlewild/Warnings/Promises; The Chemical Brothers/Push The Button; Longwave/There’s A Fire; Hood/Outside Closer; The Pale Pacific/Urgency; Mia Doi Todd/Manzanita; A Guy Called Gerald/To All Things What They Need; Mae/The Everglow; Greenskeepers/Pleetch; Masha Qrella/Unsolved Remained; Montag/Alone, Not Alone; Paramore/All We Know Is Falling; Garbage/Bleed Like Me; Dishwalla/Dishwalla; Anberlin/Never Take Friendship Personal; Thievery Corporation/The Cosmic Game; Eric Matthews/Six Kinds Of Passion Looking For An Exit; Ernesto/A New Blues; Gratitude/Gratitude; Butti 49/Habit; Ivy/In The Clear; M83/Before The Dawn Heals Us; A Day At The Fair/The Rocking Chair Years; Stereophonics/Language, Sex, Violence, Other?

Glossary of Artists (2005)

The Music Page