Best Music 2005 - Bryan Waterman

i've been stewing over my top 10 for 2005, wondering if i can even come up with one. i haven't heard from anyone else yet, so for all i know i may be either so predictable i'm pathetic or so out of tune (for spending my whole year listening to wfmu rather than new music) that i have no idea what's what and i'm starting to slide into routine in my buying habits. some years i have no problem hitting a top 20, this year i could probably have hit 15 if i were lucky. here's where i am this year. am i an aging indie rocker or what? all i have to say is: no antony and the johnsons, new pornographers, or sufjan stevens. fuck the demographic! not that i didn't enjoy some songs by any of the above scrolling across my ipod at random. i just didn't take to their albums as a whole. i'm writing this quickly, late at night, and with more than a couple drinks in me, so i'll reserve the right to amend if someone really lets me have it. for 2006 i aspire to buy an ecclectic enough selection of new releases to rival trouble's or hatch's awesome 2005 top 10s and break out of my little narrow indie window. (see trouble's and hatch's kickass picks at the dj picks at http://wfmu.org/bestof/bestof2005.html ).

these are all released in 2005. they probably don't match up with my favorite purchases of the year, but that's a different list for another night.

10. smog, A River Ain't Too Much to Love: smog grows up on this one, settles into his late 30s. countrified. i may be listing him (and listening to him) out of habit, but bill's songs still work for me by and large. between me and stephanie he got good air time.
9. superwolf, Superwolf. matt sweeny (chavez) and will oldham. the first song still gives me chills. it's a delicate little album with a hard edge nonetheless. i didn't care much for the live show: billy was too ironic, dancing his little jigs, though sweeny was fantastic. an amazing musician.
8. richard hawley, Cole's Corner. pulp's guitarist on a nick lowe groove. nothing can compete with this in terms of orchestration this year. he makes jens lekman sound like junior high school, though i liked the new jens lekman just fine. if anything defines the sound of my sensibility at age 35, this is probably it.
7. broken social scene, Broken Social Scene. it took me a long while to warm up to it. it's no You Forgot It In People, to be sure. but it gets better with repetition (as did YFIP, i have to remind myself). file under: bedroom rock for the 00s.
6. lyrics born, same !@#$ different day. Unlike Guerelito or The Silent Alarm Remixed, this one actually works. In fact, it's better than the album. This isn't just my token hiphop album of the year, it's my party album of the year. This man's voice trumps all the other motherfuckers.
5. my morning jacket, Z. on which the heroes of the post-Dead deadheads take an island vacation. i enjoy this entire album, but i would have included it on the merits of the second half of "off the record" alone.
4. devendra banhardt, cripple crow. I've enjoyed him to a degree before, never to the extent that i wanted to listen to his albums straight through. but this one has a gentleness and a coyness that really balance out. "heard somebody say" is my favorite song of the year.
4. caribou, Milk of Human Kindness. easily one of the most listened to discs i purchased this year. it's from early on--march or april?--but i still listen to it once a week at least.
2. sam prekop, who's your new professor? One of our two summer CDs this year. We couldn't stop listening to it. I did not enjoy the live show at Mercury, which was packed and hot as hell. Plus the band was not as attractive as I expected. (I imagined he looked something like Sufjan.)
1. feist, Let It Die. The album--and series of live performances--that defined my music listening year. I even bought the Bee Gees number ones because of her. Oh Lord what I wouldn't do to make this woman my friend. the other summer CD. but this was winter, spring, summer, and fall. I melt.

honorable mentions: paul mccartney, the fall, kings of leon, andrew bird, jens lekman, clap your hands, deerhoof, jennifer gentle, broadcast, magnolia electric co., animal collective with vashti bunyan, blackalicious, nouvelle vague, silver jews.

compilations: _hearing is believing: the jack nitzche story_; that french new wave anthology trouble played songs from (so young and so cold--i bought it and it's great too: also file under bedroom), the soundtrack to life aquatic

favorite song someone played at record club: jason spinning "lose that skin" by the clash. blew my mind.

favorite new alternatives to pitchfork in 2005: www.3hive.com and www.dustedmagazine.com (why did i arrive so late on these scenes?)

thing that's on everyone's list that my brother nathan told me about early, early in the year and he was actually cool enough to go and see live but like a lame-ass i missed: konono no. 1.