Reality Is The New Fiction, They Say—- 2k5’s Top 10 Albums Plus (D&D W/O)
Jan 02 '06
The Bottom Line Dance Dance Revolution is all The Bottom Line is gonna get.
The one truly “grown-up” lesson that I learned during my first semester in law school is that there are certain times when it’s impossible to do enough to be satisfied. That tasty carrot is always going to be dangling just out of reach and, whatever your intentions and whatever the eventual outcome, you just have to make some sort of peace with that futility. Some systems are simply stacked overwhelmingly against you: it isn’t possible to synthesize and to reproduce the knowledge you (may) have gained from 900 pages’ worth of caselaw and legal theory in a single three-hour essay test (per class!), so you just do the best you can.
It’s a lesson that, though I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the process of learning it, has actually made it productive and even fun for me to write about music again, in a way that it hadn’t really been for some time, as borne out by my general lack of output around this site for the better part of two years. Conflicted about issues of would-be critical objectivity and lingering self-doubt as to the degree of authority I could legitimately invoke in my writing, I just couldn’t resolve certain problems with “criticism”— my own and most other writers’, professional and otherwise— in a way that I found satisfying.
There’s a nice line in Scorsese’s bizarrely dismissed The Aviator, when Eva Gardner tells Howard Hughes that we can’t ever get anything truly clean, but we do the best we can.
As for the music of 2005, I feel good, by and large, about what I’ve said and what I still have to say. I heard, at last count, some 197 of the year’s “new release” studio albums in full and fully double that number in part— a pretty big number all by its lonesome, but a number that equals roughly the total of new releases in any two-week period: a single plankton about to be inhaled by a blue whale. Of those, I’ve reviewed nearly 60 (that’s a 1400% increase in productivity), either here or at Slant, with enough of a balance of the obviously good and the obviously bad that I’m willing to state for the record that 2005 wasn’t the sh!terrible year for music that the mainstream media have declared it. In fact, the music that I liked in 2005, I liked more and for a greater variety of reasons than I liked what I felt was the best music of the past two years.
With the country albums excised for separate review, what was so great about 2005:
10). Gimme Fiction, Spoon. Merge. **** ½.
Definitively proving the already obvious point that hipster kids aren’t any brighter than their mainstream counterparts, 2005 offered a hilarious variation on the ol’ “Paul is Dead” trope with Spoon’s excellent Gimme Fiction. Circulating around the blog circuit for nearly a full month before the band’s frontman, Britt Daniel, set the record straight was a rumor that the hipper-than-thou tastemakers didn’t like the album on first impression because Gimme Fiction was actually sequenced in the reverse of its intended order, and playing the album starting with “Merchants of Soul” and ending with “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” would reveal a true pop masterpiece; the album, as released, was just an elaborate inside-joke. The only joke, though, is that Gimme Fiction was, if not quite a masterpiece, already an album that played like a classic indie-rock record of the Pavement or Exile in Guyville variety, and it was the perfect counterpoint to Death Cab for Cutie’s Plans as to how a great band can follow-up having one of their singles featured on The OC. With its commentary on the creative process and its stuttering, nervous energy, Gimme Fiction is the sound of a great band promising never to repeat themselves.
09). You Could Have it So Much Better, Franz Ferdinand. Domino. **** ½.
Over the course of two years and two albums, Franz Ferdinand have turned into music’s version of the recently cancelled Arrested Development: it’s something of a personal litmus test. If you believe any of the most common criticisms against Franz Ferdinand, it’s more likely than not that I probably just don’t or just wouldn’t like you. It’s still possible, of course, that we might get along, since even the most rational, intelligent, and reasonable of people can have an “off” opinion or two, but the odds simply aren’t in your favor. On You Could Have it So Much Better, Franz Ferdinand are still strutting along like the new millennium’s very own Blondie, tinkering slightly with their not-at-all-broken formula (multiple hooks per song, disco backbeats, striped fitted shirts) enough to suggest that they’re fully aware of what makes that formula work, and coming up with a second album on which every track argues its case as the band’s “One Way or Another” (“The Fallen,” “I’m Your Villain”), “Call Me” (“This Boy,” “You Could Have it So Much Better”), or “Sunday Girl” (“Eleanor, Put Your Boots On,” “Walk Away”). That the classic Parallel Lines was Blondie’s third album and that Franz Ferdinand’s learning curve has been more impressive on their first two outings than was Blondie’s suggests that the album title isn’t just a response to the success of their debut but a guarantee of what’s in store.
08). I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, Bettye LaVette. Anti. **** ½.
Possessed of a voice so textured and soulful that most other singers should just give it up, combining the sexy rasp of Ronnie Spektor with the power and phrasing of vintage Gladys Knight, sixty year-old Bettye LaVette is making up for lost time. A behind-the-scenes player in the Northern Soul scene for decades— and, of course, a recognized name throughout much of Europe— LaVette released her first album in the US in over twenty years with 2003’s A Woman Like Me, but it’s I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise that drives home the injustice of a woman of such talent having been ignored to the benefit of artists who don’t deserve to mentioned in the same sentence with her. An album of covers of songs by a diverse roster of some of music’s most acclaimed women— including Sinead O’Connor, Joan Armatrading, Dolly Parton, Fiona Apple, and Aimee Mann— I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise is nothing less than a primer on true interpretive singing. So striking and of so profound a personal depth are LaVette’s renditions of these ten songs that she accomplishes something rare. I’ve heard Mann’s “How Am I Different” and Parton’s “Little Sparrow” countless times, but, listening to LaVette’s versions for the first time, I honest-to-God couldn’t place them, that’s how authoritatively she takes possession of a song. The high point of the album is her take on Lucinda Williams’ “Joy,” which returns a song that played as a blistering rock anthem on Williams’ landmark Car Wheels on a Gravel Road to its roots as a co-opted gospel number and illustrates the debt both contemporary country and R&B artists owe to vintage gospel forms. Denied for so long of the opportunity to make her extraordinary voice heard, LaVette sings of looking for her joy with fire, and there’s no doubt that she’ll find it and that she’s going to raise hell in doing so.
07). Broken Social Scene. Arts & Crafts. **** ½.
What with the unwieldy number of people involved in its production and its ties to catchphrases like “We Hate Your Hate,” the self-titled release from Broken Social Scene could, on its face, be approached as something from The Polyphonic Spree School of Ambling Neo-Crunch Nonsense. But where The Polyphonic Spree trade equally in sunshine and bullsh!t, Broken Social Scene are more interested in the interplay between beauty and cacophony. Broken Social Scene, like much of Wilco’s exceptional A Ghost is Born, is about how form and, more importantly, big emotional expression can evolve from what initially appears to be chaos; executive producer Dave Newfield deserves a MacArthur Fellowship for putting all of the album’s disparate elements— contributed by no less than fifteen artists— into something that emerges as a coherent statement about creation. The album also comes with fascinating liner notes: rather than lyrics to the songs, ringleader Kevin Drew has handwritten “to-do lists” inspired by both the content and the structure of each track. At every level, Broken Social Scene knows that creation is all well and good but that it’s to no real end if no one ever engages the work, and the album succeeds in that it’s impossible not to engage it in ways even beyond the directions in Drew’s notes.
06). Face the Truth, Stephen Malkmus. Matador. **** ½.
The class D dungeon master who’s the envy of all of the other indoor kids makes his first uneasy steps toward adulthood on Face the Truth, and the album stands as his most interesting— and his most consistently great— statement since Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The truth that Stephen Malkmus faces with a surprising degree of confidence is that he’s always going to be rock’s most endearing underdog, and it’s a role that he both embraces (on opener “Pencil Rot”) and rejects (as on “It Kills” and “Post Paint Boy”) over the course of the album. What makes Face the Truth such a compelling statement is Malkmus’ recognition that he has the autonomy to do both: his artistic persona is one of a man-child, so he can strive for more mature insights even as he rhymes the name “Timmy” with the word “limb-y” (on killer single “Baby, C’mon”) and not come off as strident. Face the Truth is a smart album from a smart guy, and it’s a great guitar-rock album on top of that.
05). Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, Junior Senior. Crunchy Frog. **** ½.
With the possible exception of rapper Mike Jones, whose album, as far as I can tell, consists of songs that are permutations of a scant three lines (“My name, Mike Jones,” “My album, Who is Mike Jones,” and “Hit me up at 281-330-8004”), no other artist defined their own self-contained aesthetic in 2005 as well as Junior Senior. On their sophomore album, Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, the Dutch dance-pop duo distill the best elements from their debut album, 2003’s D-D-Don’t Stop the Beat, into a sound that can’t be disregarded as a mere gimmick. Their songs are all built on the same elements— the fake strings of disco, the basslines from funk, sing-songy rhymes, girl group harmonies in the choruses, and handclaps— and cover similar thematic territory— meeting new people is fun, dancing is even more fun, girls are pretty, boys are pretty, music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel— without ever becoming redundant or, even more importantly, veering into “novelty” or “camp” territory. It’s the most aggressively happyfun album in a year full of albums both happy and fun, with revealing song titles like “Happy Rap,” “I Like Music,” and “We R the Handclaps,” and it even implores Bigfoot himself to get down. Both for its understanding of the distinction between a rigid aesthetic and a shtick and for its first-rate musicality, Hey Hey My My Yo Yo is dance-pop’s equivalent to The White Stripes’ De Stijl.
04). I Am a Bird Now, Antony & The Johnsons. Secretly Canadian. **** ½.
For an album that I admire in a pretty rare way— from the significance of the haunting photograph on its cover to Antony’s interplay with duet partners Boy George and Rufus Wainwright to just about every single lyric Antony croons over the course of its ten tracks— I’d be lying if I said that I Am a Bird Now is an album that I listen to very often. For an album that seems so delicate— consisting mostly of Antony’s instantly jaw-dropping voice and some unobtrusive cabaret-style piano— I Am a Bird Now packs the kind of emotional wallop that makes for truly demanding, difficult listening. It’s all just so devastating, what with its first line’s being “Hope there’s someone to take care of me when I die” and all, that, well, it isn’t anything that I’m going to listen to while I’m driving. While plenty of albums do “somber” as well as I Am A Bird Now, I can’t think of another that plays like a graduate thesis on gender identity theory and sexual politics, let alone one that does so with such grace. For all the hoo-ha over Gay Cowboys Eating Pudding, pop culture’s most daring and most artful exploration of sexual identity in 2005 comes in the most unassuming of packages.
03). Illinois, Sufjan Stevens. Asthmatic Kitty. *****.
The state-by-state gimmick should, rightfully, overwhelm the project, but what Illinois confirms in new ways on every listen is that Sufjan (that’s SOOF-yen) Stevens is the real deal: the hype surrounding Illinois was deafening, but, upon reflection, entirely earned. It really is that good. Stevens understands the relationship between a song’s structure and its content better than just about any other contemporary pop songwriter, he’s able to mine the humanity in stories he’s borrowed from other people and to turn that humanity into deeply personal and evocative fictions, he plays about fifteen different instruments, and he does all of this, somehow, without making Illinois the kind of Look At Me stunt performance it could’ve been. The album’s show-stopper, “Casimir Pulaski Day,” is the best-written song of the year, telling the story of a first love lost, despite prayers for intervention, to bone cancer; it’s the kind of song that’s heart-wrenching such that I’d be worried for anyone who didn’t get even just a little bit choked up hearing it. Not everything in Illinois is so dire, thankfully, though John Wayne Gacy does make a make a memorable appearance, and it’s hard to imagine that the next 48 albums— or the rumored Puerto Rico EP— in the series will best it. But it’s equally hard to imagine anyone other than Stevens with the talent or vision even to try.
02). The Woods, Sleater-Kinney. Sub Pop. *****.
The most singly tiresome line of criticism of 2005 centered around Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods. Despite the fact that they’ve been hailed repeatedly (by Time magazine, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere) as the best rock band in America over the course of the last decade, critics seemed taken aback, stunned even, that the best balls to the wall rock-n-roll album of the year could be created by three women. Still refusing to believe that Exile in Guyville may have been a fluke (Liz Phair, indeed, is taken to task here on the scathing “Modern Girl”) and still confused by most of PJ Harvey’s output, male critics, even when praising The Woods, resorted to an antediluvian, “This sh!t is vaginas, V-A-G-I-N-A-S!” routine that would’ve been easier to label as misogynistic if it weren’t so flat-out stupid. And if there’s one thing that The Woods makes clear, it’s that Sleater-Kinney aren’t in the mood to suffer fools, be they the current crop of retro-cool rock stars (on lead single “Entertain,” which looks to uproot the whole of popular culture, from reality tv to… Sleater-Kinney) or simpering politicians (on the allegory of opener “The Fox”). And it all comes to a head on the thrilling, 11 minute grudgef’uck of “Let’s Call it Love.” Confident to the point of aggression, The Woods is sprawling, dense, and ambitious rock.
01). Pixel Revolt, John Vanderslice. Barsuk. *****.
Because he enlisted John Darnielle, the man behind The Mountain Goats, to serve as the “editor” for his songwriting, John Vanderslice added yet another wrinkle to what would already have been the most artistically layered album of 2005. Following last year’s Cellar Door, which only sounds better with time, Vanderslice’s Pixel Revolt suggests that he would make for an exceptional fiction writer, even as the album mines some of its trickiest territory in the interplay between his first-person story-songs and his third-person narratives. Whoever the protagonists of his songs are and however much Darnielle may have contributed, Vanderslice constructs an album of profound self-reflection, set in a sociopolitical climate that treats such introspection with hostility. “trance manual,” for instance, tells the story of a western journalist’s solicitation of an Iraqi prostitute post-“liberation,” while “exodus damage” is a remarkably dense song that demands at least 1,000 words in explication and which is the first song I’ve heard that’s “about” 9/11 that’s really worth a damn. His political insights are probing, his take on the creeping influence of pop-culture is perceptive (the chorus to “exodus damage” name-checks Dance Dance Revolution to brilliant effect), and his humor is pitch-black; as great a songwriter as Sufjan Stevens is, Vanderslice matches him step-for-step and ultimately surpasses him in his scope. While its songwriting would be enough to guarantee a place in my year-end top 10, that Pixel Revolt stands as a triumph of production— recorded by Vanderslice in his own studio, using all analog equipment— elevates it to essential status. Just as new layers of meaning in its lyrics are revealed on each listen, so too are new details of Vanderslice’s meticulous production, which layers seemingly dissonant elements into structures that are immediately recognizable as “pop” songs. When every hack who’s ever been given a recording contract self-identifies as an “artist,” John Vanderslice’s Pixel Revolt is a reminder of why that label should be used sparingly; it’s both “pop” and “art” of the highest order.
And, More Concisely:
11). Multiply, Jamie Lidell. Warp. **** ½.
At its best, Multiply recalls in-form Prince; at its worst, Nikka Costa’s entirely respectable Everybody Got Their Something. And it’s always dressed in a gold-fleece bathrobe.
12). Arular, M.I.A.. XL. ****.
Political stumping in its form, if not in its content, but great driving music all the same.
13). Get Behind Me Satan, The White Stripes. ****..
Because “I’ve been thinking about letting you check my oil” just isn’t quite as catchy, now is it? To be fair, I do like Nurse Betty a lot, but it’s not like signing up for Team White was a hard decision to make. It’s only their third-or-fourth best album, but it could’ve easily been in the top 10 for the year.
14). Oh, No, OK Go. Capitol. V2. ****.
An album that recalls the best guitar-pop of Weezer, except with none of the filler of either the green or blue Weezers. OK Go handily win this year’s “Most Improved” ribbon.
15). Naturally, Sharon Jones & The DAP Kings. Daptone. ****.
The sterile retro fetish makes for flawlessly executed funk, sure, but it’s suffocating after a while. Jones’ pipes, however, never fail to impress, especially on her cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land.”
16). The Sunset Tree, The Mountain Goats. 4AD. ****.
Only the second-best album of 2005 to which John Darnielle’s name is attached.
17). Late Registration, Kanye West. Roc-A-Fella. ****.
The only rap album I’ve ever owned on which the skits are actually worth listening to. Only the 10 seconds of Jamie Foxx bug.
18). Guero, Beck. Interscope. ****.
Rock critics spent the last decade b!tching about how Mutations, Midnite Vultures, and Sea Change didn’t sound like Odelay!. So Herr Hansen puts out an album that sounds a lot like Odelay!, and what do the rock critics do? B!tch about how it sounds like Odelay!.
19). A Healthy Distrust, Sage Francis. Epitaph. ****.
The beats fail the material on occasion, but is that material ever great. Politically, Sage Francis sounds perfectly at home on punk label Epitaph.
20). Tournament of Hearts, The Constantines. Sub Pop. ****.
The band that should’ve been pushed as the new U2.
21). Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, Shout Out Louds. Capitol. ****.
What Clap Your Hands Say Yeah would sound like without a singer whose voice makes right-minded people want to rend their own ears from their heads.
22). Takk…, Sigur Ros. Geffen. ****.
Translated from Icelandic— and, hey, they’re using a real language this time!— I have a sinking suspicion that their lyrics are every bit as banal as Coldplay’s. But, since Babelfish is unreliable: so pretty!
23). Descended Like Vultures, Rogue Wave. Sub Pop. ****.
Evidently, Zach Rogue would prefer comparisons to transitional-period Radiohead to the comparisons last year’s Out of the Shadow drew to The Shins.
24). Be, Common. Geffen. ****.
There are some biases I just can’t get by: I seriously just don’t effing get effing John Mayer. Wonderbread can show up to sing just a single word, and it’s enough to stop a perfectly good album dead.
25). Blinking Lights & Other Revelations, eels. Vanguard. ****.
At turns brilliant, witty, poignant, and, yes, revelatory songwriting, the double-album could still benefit from some choice pruning.
Best Live Album:
Live at Paradiso, Beth Hart. Koch. **** ½.
Rock music desperately needs a new Janis Joplin. Though she’d long shown the potential to be precisely that performer on her studio albums, Hart’s live album finally captures the complete out-of-body abandon of the deepest, greatest blues singers. Her cover of “Whole Lotta Love” actually makes the whole of Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods sound downright demure in direct comparison, but the album as a whole confirms that Hart is the best rock singer recording today.
Best It’s New To You Album:
EP, The Fiery Furnaces. Rough Trade. **** ½.
Released all the way back in the second week of January, The Fiery Furnaces’ compilation EP is not only a great stand-alone album— at ten tracks and 41 minutes, it’s comparable to many full-length studio albums— but it also shows the heights from which the band plummeted over the course of the remainder of the year. Starting with a collection of songs that could be described as “accessible” even without a “for them” qualifier, they spent 2005 growing unlistenable and obtuse to the point of being insufferable. I’m not a fan of reactionary backlashes, but when it’s the artist’s own fault, I’m not really inclined to be sympathetic. When your B-sides and rarities set comprehensively outclasses your “real” output for the year, it’s probably time to step back and reprioritize, Friedbergers. I still want to like you as much as I like EP, but I’m not optimistic, given the way things are going.
Best Soundtrack Album:
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Hollywood. ****.
Classic David Bowie tunes, arranged and performed to near-perfection— in Portuguese, no less— by Seu Jorge, plus a few killer instrumentals from Mark Mothersbaugh. This is how you make a soundtrack, Zach Braff.
Notably Missed: Wearemonster, Isolee; Beauty and the Beat, Edan; Oceans Apart, The Go-Betweens; Oh You’re So Silent Jens, Jens Lekman; Bang Bang Rock & Roll, Art Brut; Martha Wainwright.
Notably Meh: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah; Z, My Morning Jacket; Silent Alarm, Bloc Party; LCD Soundsystem; Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple; Lost and Safe, The Books; Feels, Animal Collective; Frances the Mute, The Mars Volta; Tiny Cities, Sun Kil Moon.
What 2005 may have lacked in an overarching theme to its music, it certainly compensated for in overall quality- which, ultimately, may have had as much to do with my renewed interest in writing about music as anything.
As with my list of 2005's Best Singles, this review is part of Demon's and Drew's write-off.
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