89. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary (2005)

Wolf Parade stand at the center of a dizzying number of Canadian indie rock groups such as Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, Swan Lake and the Handsome Furs and while a little more palatable, this stuff is much the same: synthy indie rock fronted by Dan Boeckner and/or Spencer Krug, both of whom sound like bleating goats and neither of whom I can distinguish from the other. This album is notably less "polished" than later albums but it's a lot less boring (their 2010 album Expo 86 is one of the most boring, pointless albums I've ever heard in my life). Listening to stuff like this only confirms my suspicion that the Talking Heads were the most important and influential rock group of the postpunk era: this stuff is basically Speaking in Tongues-era Heads with a little less synth and dance influence. The vocalists sound like nerds, the music is herky-jerky and angular and weird little synth noises poke in and out of the music occasionally--not enough to dance to but enough to make it so the band isn't just labeled a "punk" band. Do I like it? I do, sometimes--"Shine a Light" is great fist-pumping rock, "We Built Another World" has a great arrangement and is lyrically fascinating, and "I'll Believe in Anything" is a near-epochal single, the kind of thing that would have sounded perfect on a mid-90s modern rock station coming between Nirvana and Cake and and the Toadies and so forth. What it does it does very well, although it's a little retrograde--it's the same old modern rock stuff dressed up in a new outfit. But that's fine, and when there are enough great songs as there are on this album, I'm willing to forgive just about anything.

MY RATING: 7.8

Wolf Parade - "It's a Curse"

102. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree (2005)

I don't think I'll ever be able to appreciate John Darnielle's music; his voice is so annoying and unlikable (for me) that everything he sings, no matter how gorgeous or well-written, is utterly mangled. This album is about his relationship with his abusive stepfather, and while that's an interesting subject to approach through music the lyrics have a tinge of safeness to them, of overly-studied "tossed-off"-ness. Maybe it's just Darnielle's voice that's throwing me off, but everything here is just so composed that it's bloodless. Listen to Will Oldham's music for comparison--even on a (relatively) weak recording like The Letting Go he blends in perfectly with the music, and songs like "The Seedling" and "Strange Form of Life" have real emotional power. Also someone like Jason Molina--his music and subject matter is similar to Darnielle's but there's a power in his lyrics and arrangements that Darnielle almost completely lacks. It sounds like a self-help record, an album that would have a hotline listed in the liner notes for someone to call if they also have an abusive family member. Again, it's not the subject matter that sinks this record; it's that the subject matter is not interpreted in an interesting way. Darnielle needs to give his stuff to other musicians, maybe; his voice sinks everything he does. He sounds kind of like Thomas Dolby; just imagine the guy who sang "She Blinded Me With Science" trying to sing super-emotional folk songs and you'll understand my ambivalence toward this record and everything else the Mountain Goats do. The arrangements are boring; the vocals weak. Just another folk record.

MY RATING: 3.7

The Mountain Goats - "Broom People"

113. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem (2005)

James Murphy might be too smart for his own good. I saw LCD Soundsystem perform at Lollapalooza in 2007. They were the second-to-last performer of the night, right after which was to be, holy of holies, Daft Punk. It was like the heavens had aligned, but Murphy almost seemed embarrassed by real life's lining up with one of his songs, simply saying "I'm not even going to comment on this." Murphy might be rock's most ironic frontman--even his attempts at sentiment in later records have this apologetic thing about them, like "Isn't it crazy that a cynical guy like me is being so emotionally direct?" The pose seems so...calculated. Again this would all be moot if the music were more interesting, but LCD's first record is pretty boring, an album as bleached-out as its cover. I've never understood exactly how this could work as dance music, since Murphy refuses to put any low end into any of these songs. Everything is harsh and trebly and minimalistic--dance music for art installations. The attempts to combine dance and rock don't work as well as they did on the two follow-up records and a couple of these songs are nothing more than eight-minute-plus odes to percussion and screeching synth noises. James' method is to start out quiet and get louder and louder and louder, which might work if you're Mogwai but gets awfully irritating in a dance track. The only track that really works is "Tribulations", but nevertheless it's depressing to note that it's the album's least adventurous song. "Losing My Edge" is a shaggy-dog story set to music, "Great Release" starts out as an alright Brian Eno ripoff but ends in three minutes of pointless noise, and "Yeah" is just too noisy to enjoy. At least the album's, uh, clever?

MY RATING: 5.5

LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge"

127. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)

This motherfucker is loud. The mix is so distorted and in-the-red that it rivals, and possibly surpasses, Iggy Pop's infamous remix of Raw Power (which I prefer to the original, btw) as the loudest single piece of music I've ever heard. For this record Sleater-Kinney largely dropped any semblance of "punk", instead settling for gigantic, terrifying exercises of guitar that almost approach Jimi Hendrix in their ferocity. Opening track "The Fox" barely seems to hold together outside of its unbelievable volume, but that's what makes it thrilling--you're basically too busy scraping your brain off the back wall from the power of that colossal opening chord to even think about whether it's a "good song" or not. And that's a good thing, because the songwriting here is, in general, far weaker than their preceding record. There are no bad tracks, but the songs are a lot more pedestrian than I was used to hearing from Sleater-Kinney--most of these tracks are basically generic riff-fests that could have been written by pretty much anyone. "Jumpers", in addition to sharing a title with a Third Eye Blind track, is about as generic. But I'm willing to throw a lot of that aside out of sheer respect for the sound on this record--while I assume audiophiles will tear their hair out upon hearing it (some tracks are so loud they devolve into static) I love it because when turned up high enough, it sounds like a goddamned jet engine. If there's no place in this world for insanely loud music, you can count me out.

MY RATING: 8.4

Sleater-Kinney - "The Fox"

130. Clipse - We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 (2005)

Ah, the hip-hop mixtape. Usually, it's an art form designed to be listened to and quickly forgotten; a chance to show off a rapper's skills and tide fans over until a real album. But it took four years for Clipse to follow up Lord Willin' with the masterpiece Hell Hath No Fury, and this was one of the only things we got to tide us over. Clipse seem to have realized this and stepped up their game--certainly it's one of the few mixtapes that is comparable in quality to a regular album. Granted it still falls victim to some of the same problems as other mixtapes (some mismatches between beats and vocals, outdated cultural references, occasional moments where the rappers seem like they're treading water, underwritten lines) but the highpoints outweigh the low ones. The first half of this record is one hot line after another--"Re-Up Intro" in particular is about as great a trunk-banger as I've ever heard; car stereo systems were built to blast this track. Their take on the Game's "Hate It Or Love It" knocks his out of the water, and "Zen" is just as much of a classic single as it ever was. So overall this is about as great as an intrinsically flawed type of record can be; mixtapes are generally never more than placeholders, but this is one of the first times the word "mixtape" didn't seem to connote "something we threw together in two days to keep us in the public eye." Great, and a nice appetizer to the atom bomb these guys would drop on our heads a year later.

MY RATING: 8.1

Clipse - "Re-Up Intro"

143. The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005)

The Decemberists have their own sound and their own purpose, and you either have to give yourself over to it and accept it, or reject them entirely. Their sound is a super-bookish collection of overwritten songs about pirates, star-crossed lovers, sailors, spies and so forth, the lyrics loaded with three-dollar words (just look at the opening track: "palanquin", "largesse", "infanta", "folderol", "chaparral", "phalanx", "rhapsodical"). The singer, Colin Meloy, sounds just like Al Stewart (I also look exactly like him--Meloy, not Stewart--in case you wanted to get a picture of your humble webmaster), so if that's your thing...I actually enjoy a great deal of this, and its preciousness really doesn't get on my nerves too much simply because the lyrics are (mostly) well-written in spite of their studied archness and the melodies are (mostly) excellent and the songs are well-performed. What separates this group from every other roaming pack of drama and English majors is that they have a real talent at constructing a world for each song they write: the instruments and arrangements are perfectly chosen for each topic. They are masters of atmosphere. Actually, the followup record The Crane Wife seems, to me, to be easily this group's masterpiece, and I'm not sure why this one was chosen to represent the group on this list. This album, for example, contains the infamous "The Mariner's Revenge Song", a minimalistic story-song that might work well in concert but recorded is a near-disaster, where it seems little more than an interminable nine minute long novelty track. "On The Bus Mall" has wonderful, evocative lyrics but the melody is too undistinguished to support its six minutes, and I don't know what the hell the band is trying to do in "The Bagman's Gambit". Overall this is good, but I'd only recommend it if you've already picked up The Crane Wife and want to hear more.

MY RATING: 7.3

The Decemberists - "We Both Go Down Together"

146. My Morning Jacket - Z (2005)

I feel like this record is a good deal more ambitious than it was credited for being--most gushed over it, yes, but basically on the level of it being a "great classic rock record", filled with great melodies and musicianship and nary a weak track to be found, and really neglected to mention what, to me, is this album's greatest asset--an attempt to combine 70s and 00s rock styles on an almost molecular level. Now, aping the 70s today is no new thing--there are a million bands that do it, some excellently (The Black Keys), some pretty well (The Datsuns, Black Mountain) and some fairly terribly (Wolfmother, Eagles of Death Metal). What My Morning Jacket are doing here, though, is far more interesting than anything those bands have yet tried--what's going on here is an attempt, I feel, to try and figure out the links between Neil Young and Radiohead, between Skynyrd and the Strokes, between the Rolling Stones and Beck, and slam them together so seamlessly that there's no way they can be accused of cheap nostalgia or contemporary scene-following. And (mostly) it works. When it does, it's a hell of an achievement--"Off the Record", to pick one, is something else, a track that simultaneously invokes Bob Marley, Neil Young circa Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere and Radiohead, and does so so efficiently and effectively that it sounds like entirely its own thing. When this album is on its game it's one of the greatest examples of rock music stretching across decades that I've ever seen. When it doesn't (a few tracks on the second half of the record) it just sounds like a slightly updated version of Mountain or the Allman Brothers Band--certainly not bad, but not inspired either. It's a kind of miracle, this album, and I certainly can't think of another this decade in which a band stepped so far outside its comfort level and had it work so well.

MY RATING: 8.9

My Morning Jacket - "Lay Low"

150. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema (2005)

Power pop is probably my least favorite type of music in the world. I like music that, for lack of a better phrase, creates some sort of coherent emotional world--and while that sounds complicated it really isn't. Music, of all the arts, is probably the one that works most on pure emotion. The problem with power pop, to me, is that it neglects everything else music can do in favor of one thing--melodies. That's it. Power pop is the quest for the catchy melody, and nothing else much matters. The New Pornographers are as guilty of this as anyone--I find Electric Version near-unlistenable, and it's a good lesson on what happens when a band neglects everything else in favor of melody. You stand on melody, and you fall on melody. If the melody isn't memorable, the rest of the song is worthless. But I don't know what the hell happened here, because Twin Cinema is, quite possibly, the greatest single collection of melodies on one album in the entire decade. The music--that is, the arrangements, the performances--are pretty middling. There's the neat stuttering part in "Falling Through Your Clothes", and the horns in "Stacked Crooked"--but that's about it. But God, the melodies! I don't know what family member A.C. Newman had to sacrifice to his god to come up with these, but even if it was his only son it was worth it. Surely I'm not the only one who repeatedly thought of Lennon/McCartney when these songs were playing. No other pop group even comes close to this level of melodic invention--each track contains so many gorgeous, intertwining chorus melodies that the level of complexity almost approaches progressive rock at times. Just listen to "Use It"! I count at least four melodies in that track that any other band would have killed to have written. These guys seem to get more acclaim these days for Mass Romantic, but this--this is the one. It even made me like power pop.

MY RATING: 9.5

The New Pornographers -  "The Bleeding Heart Show"

156. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (2005)

Bloc Party resemble Gang of Four both in their sound and in the fact that a brilliant first album was followed up by two albums of meandering crap. Granted, Gang of  Four's meandering crap wasn't nearly as bad as Bloc Party's would end up being, but the point still stands. But luckily this album is before the rot set in, and it's still as great as I thought it was five years ago--super-energetic guitar rock in the vein of 80s U2 (but with a funkier low end), masterfully written and played. It's one of those albums where every song is a potential single, which is all the more impressive because of its variety--there's catchy singles ("Banquet"; "Pioneers") funky dance tracks ("Positive Tension"; "She's Hearing Voices") tearjerkers ("Blue Light"; "This Modern Love") and creepy, Joy Division-y stuff ("Luno"; "Compliments"). It's such a near-masterpiece of 00s guitar rock that in retrospect it seems like the band was blowing its load here; everything since has been awful. It's just fantastic guitar pop, in the old style--setting sad words to pretty music. If the album has a problem it might be that it's entirely too serious and poker-faced--there is not a hint of humor or irony on this thing, and every single track is attempting to be a GLORIOUS NEW ANTHEM for the YOUTH OF TODAY. It's a testament to the band's skills that they didn't fall on their face, and while they didn't exactly become the new Radiohead at least they made one great record, which is more than what most groups of this type can say (remember Maximo Park?)

MY RATING: 9.0

Bloc Party - "Positive Tension"

174. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy (2005)

Okkervil River's breakout record is so good that it probably renders the rest of their output irrelevant; The Stage Names was alright, but why listen to it when you've got this? This is one of the best fusions of folk and rock music I've heard this decade, and it's all the more powerful for the fact that it sneaks up on you slowly. The melodies are subtle and sophisticated, and the lyrics are peerless. There's a line between self-pity that is affecting and self-pity that is annoying, and this album straddles it like a master. "A Stone" is probably the single most impressive unrequited-love song written by anybody this decade--the lyrics are based upon a medieval conceit, yes, but the fantastical imagery gives the song power and does not trivialize it. If this thing had a fault it's that it's a bit samey and there are probably one or two too many slow folky pieces for my taste (the album could stand to be about ten minutes shorter) but overall this is an excellently written, produced and performed piece of work. The combination of folk and throat-shredding vocals shouldn't work, but it does. All the more disappointing that afterward, frontman Will Sheff seemed perfectly content to crank out folk-pop in the mold of Andrew Bird and the Decemberists rather than pursue the dark, violent and disturbing vision that led to this record. "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" in particular is heartrending, an eight-minute dirge built around somewhat horrifying lyrics of the utmost self-debasement. This kind of why-doesn't-she-love-me stuff is a minefield, and I am in awe of how Sheff manages to avoid every cliche of the genre. A major album.

MY RATING: 9.0

Okkervil River - "So Come Back, I Am Waiting"

178. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter II (2005)

Lil Wayne is a genius, if one of an especially specific kind. He doesn't ever know when to stop; his albums are all overlong, and this one (22 tracks in about 80 minutes) is no exception. It's hard to sit through the whole thing, but this is probably due less to the quality of the songs, which are excellent, than Wayne's enervating, scattershot delivery. This thing is huge, and in the pantheon of Epic Rap Albums it surely beats the previous year's Purple Haze, by Cam'ron. While Cam'ron seemed to be an average rapper who, through luck, managed to hook up with some excellent producers, Lil' Wayne always seems in control. Everything on this album happens because he wanted it to happen. Listening to this album on random might even be better: it's not very well sequenced. It's basically just one track after another, so listening to each track one at a time, without the cumulative effect of 22 other tracks just like it, is the best way to find out how well-written the whole thing is and how fantastic the beats are.  "Mo Fire"! Listen to that! Stevie Wonder himself couldn't have come up with a more ass-shaking beat than that one. Wayne's later work is more popular, but aside from the novelty value of throwing a nutcase like Lil' Wayne in the ring with mainstream guys like Robin Thicke, it has about one tenth the depth of this stuff. This is probably his best album: it sits right between the off-the-rails insanity of Da Drought 3 and the pop-rap exercises of Tha Carter III. If you have to buy one Lil Wayne album (and you really should) this is the one. He doesn't compare himself to a geese erection in this one, though. Too bad.

MY RATING: 8.1

Lil Wayne - "Mo' Fire"

181. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005)

Another album of inoffensive folk-pop, except this time there's some Beatlesy instrumentation to convince people that it's something more than an album of inoffensive folk-pop. Now here's the thing about this kind of music: I can't stand all that much of it. I love folk music, but the best of it, especially recently (I'm thinking about stuff like Songs: Ohia's Didn't It Rain and Iron & Wine's The Shepherd's Dog here) always contain some kind of darkness in the lyrics or interest in the arrangements that just isn't present here.  The whole thing is just so calculated. It's the kind of stuff designed to make well-off white folks hold their chins between thumb and forefinger and pontificate on how well-produced and pretty it is while they wander around in an art gallery and look at old photos of Andy Warhol altered in clever ways. It certainly is pretty, and almost every track has some sort of nifty production trick to keep you listening. But I play this whole thing and I despair a little bit. It's like a critic-bait movie made for the express purpose of addressing Big Themes and winning Oscars. Sure, the technicals are impeccable and there's no specific thing you can point at and say "That's bad," but it's just lacking heart. It's so goddamned well-behaved and humorless (or if it does have humor, it handles it, in the immortal words of Achewood, with a lab coat and tweezers). Like a lot of this Pitchfork-approved stuff, it makes me want to go and throw on a Meatmen or Frogs record.

MY RATING: 4.3

Andrew Bird - "Skin Is, My"

184. Vitalic - OK Cowboy (2005)

French house producer Vitalic's first album is a weird and fascinating combination of heavy techno and aggressive noise that almost brings to mind heavy metal. Later the Fuck Buttons would expand and improve on this sound, but Vitalic's music is more mainstream and would undoubtedly work better in a club. It's dance music you can headbang to. Daft Punk might party hard, but Vitalic is undoubtedly angrier and parties harder. Vitalic is like Daft Punk's louder, dumber older brother (Following that comparison, Burial could be called Daft Punk's younger, more depressed brother). The album is built around the gigantic bangers "La Rock" and "Poney" parts one and two. Both of these are excellent--some of the decade's best dance music. There are also some shorter, weirder tracks, like the opening "Polkamatic" and the closing "Valletta Fanfares", which in its incessant hi-hat pounding seems to presage Major Lazer. So, is this album a classic? No. It's fairly disposable. Is it fun, and worth sitting down and listening to for 50 minutes? Absolutely. I don't know how much value it has outside of a dance club, but inside one, it kills.

MY RATING: 7.0

Vitalic - "Poney Pt. 1"

189. Jamie Lidell - Multiply (2005)

This is a soul/R&B album released on the Warp label, which used to be better known for electronic stuff like Aphex Twin but has since decided to branch out, adding bands like Battles and Grizzly Bear to their roster. The first thing that comes to mind when you pop this thing in is obviously 70s soul like Marvin Gaye and Al Green, albeit with an updated electronic backing, but other influences are obviously Stax/Motown ("Multiply") and Prince ("When I Come Back Around"). Mostly this is great stuff, classic soul pumped with enough electronic influence to keep it interesting. Lidell has an excellent voice, if somewhat faceless, and he manages to bring songs like "When I Come Back Around" off through just pure force of emotion and personality. This thing is short and every track has something to recommend it, whether it be the pure nostalgia of "Multiply" or the futurist, almost jungle beat of "The City". It's the kind of album that modern radio wants to make you believe doesn't exist anymore. The only weak spot comes at the end--placing two slow ballads right after each other to close out the record wasn't the best idea--but you can always go back and put "A Little Bit More" on again and dance. And you will want to. Lidell's later work hasn't even come close to the promise of this one, but this one is great enough. The level of musicianship here almost comes close to the early "classic period" Stevie Wonder, particularly Talking Book (although it doesn't match a masterpiece like Songs in the Key of Life). It's the perfect thing to play for your grumpy dad in the car when he starts complaining about how they don't make music like they used to. They do, and it's right here. A nice surprise to find on this list.

MY RATING: 8.0

Jamie Lidell - "When I Come Back Around"

192. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll (2005)

If there was ever a record that didn't need a follow-up, it was this one; Art Brut's insanely arch, ironic first album is almost entirely self-contained, featuring an opening track about forming a band and a track near the end about breaking one up. This is probably the most meta rock album ever made, it's about nothing else than rock music itself. Most reviews of Art Brut degenerate into a quote-fest of the album's most memorable lines, and indeed it's full of them. The music itself is a bunch of energetic punk that's been ripped off a million times before and undoubtedly will be reused a hundred times after; it's hardly Art Brut's fault that the guitar riffs they're using have come from the minds of others. It even seems appropriate, given the album's subject matter. Picking a "favorite song" is an exercise in futility since it's all of a piece, but I have a soft spot for "Modern Art", basically because it cracks me up the most consistently ("Modern art...makes me...want to...ROCK OUT!!!" is undoubtedly one of the most kickass moments in rock music this decade).  Critical opinion on this album has kind of soured since it came out five years ago, probably because the whole thing's a sort of shallow joke. But that doesn't mean it isn't entertaining. It's short, it's catchy, it's funny, and for these guys, that's enough.

MY RATING: 7.5

Art Brut - "Modern Art"