Best Music of 2005

Here it is, the end of the year: I am working on a movie Top Ten, but being stubborn, I am waiting for the year to end. Heaven knows what one could see in the last 2-3 days or 2005! But music - I might as well get posted. I have to cite Girish Shambu here, for he said what I think, summing up the difference between movies and music, as far as list-making goes - there's so much music released, in so many styles, and it takes so long to get to know music, to get all the pieces of music, that what I come up with, at the end of the year, feels completely arbitrary. This list, I have to confess, has been further compromised by my increased reliance on the iPod - which splits albums apart, turning my CD collection into a big radio station. Which is a rather odd effect - it does kind of take me back to the days when I bought 5-6 records a year instead of (it would appear) 43, and got all my music by listening to the radio constantly. Thus adding, I suppose, to the arbitrariness of the process of picking a favorite record - it strongly favors the records with my favorite song or two. Though that can't explain the high placement of 2 instrumental noisefests.... It might also bring about another, more song oriented post - we shall see...

Enough intro: the list...

1. Mercury Rev - Secret Migration: while not up to their last couple records, this is still quite superb - lush, sprawling epics in the grand style, Pink Floyd with better tunes...
2. Earth - Living in the Gleam of an Unsheathed Sword: here we enter the experimental part of the program - with an hour or two of feedback and power chords, solo guitar or guitar and drum, recorded live - rather magnificent, in its minimalist grandeur.
3. Boredoms - Seadrum/House of Sun: another long droning workout, 2 pieces, one an army of drummers augmented by piano and vocals, the other a mass of droning strings (guitars, sitars, etc.) playing one chord for 20 minutes, weaving little embellishments around it... another bit of minimalist grandeur.
4. Damon and Naomi (with Michio Kurihara) - The Earth is Blue: handsome folk rock, with one of the world's great guitarists adding color...
5. Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow: the ghost of Nick Drake must be very happy. Look at all the new folk acts around - led, I suppose, by Banhardt... This record brings in a band, expanding the sound; Banhardt continues to write arresting lyrics and pretty melodies - he lives up to the hype.
6. Six Organs of Admittance - School of the Flower: a more experimental version of the new folk movement, combining folk tunes with drones and bits of electric guitar squawk...
7. The Mars Volta - Francis the Mute: maybe it's not so much a folk singer revival as a 1972 revival - for here comes the prog contingent. A good deal more lively than most of the prog I've heard - lots of guitar wanking, spanglish lyrics, starts and stops and full on zep impersonation, Tejano, you name it. Damned exciting stuff, and I am helpless before the onslaught of a full out guitar god, and Omar Rodriguez is a guitar god indeed.
8. White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan: in which the stripes move from last year's garage rock revival to this year's weird folk revival - with acoustic guitars and marimbas and pretty songs... It works, for they write some of the best songs anyone writes, songs that work in almost any setting.
9. Decembrists - Picaresque: along with the Arcade Fire and a couple other bands, taking folk sound into full band arrangements - it's hard to pick one among these bands - but I think I like them a bit more than Arcade Fire or Of Montreal, etc. - maybe just that weird stories and sea chanties get me more than their competition. So here they are.
10. The Kills - No Wow: minimalist guitar and drum and vocals, stripped down raw and lean...

Honorable mentions:

I was very fond of the following live records, which I deliberately excluded from the list above:
Gomez - Out West
Richard Thompson - Live from Austin TX - including an astonishing version of Shoot Out the Lights...
Wilco - Kicking Television - I have never completely embraced Wilco, but this comes pretty close - Nils Cline on guitar gives them a definite edge.
Mars Volta - Scab Dates - how many live records did they actually release last year? who knows? who cares? I'll buy em all...
Bill Frisell - East/West