Excelsior!
20. The Briefs - Steal Yer Heart
The Briefs make the kind of punk rock that makes you want to dance around like a damnedable idiot. In fact, most of the descriptors I used for The Soviettes apply here, too. The Briefs are a more consistent band, though, and on their fourth album, the guys have refined their sound to near punk-perfection. The energy is nearly blinding, and completely relentless as the foursome tears through each new tune. Sure, you'll get the occasional mid-tempo number like Getting Hit On at the Bank, but more often you're treated to manic energy on songs like Genital General and My Girl (Wants to be a Zombie). There's nothing overtly political or exceptionally meaningful about the brand of punk The Briefs play, but that sort of stuff would just get in the way of all the fun these guys are having.
Key Tracks: Genital General; Move Too Slow; Stuck On You
19. A Gun Called Tension - A Gun Called Tension
Everybody talked up the self-titled 13 and God album as the big expermentally weird indie/hip-hop album of 2005, but frankly I think that album was mostly overrated. If you ask me, A Gun Called Tension easily takes the crown as the best avant garde collaboration between seemingly incompatible artists across the indie rock and hip-hop planes. Former Murder City Devils and current Modest Mouse member Dan Gallucci and hip-hop MC Sean Reveron are the collaborators in question here. It's a deeply eclectic mixture of varying musical styles. Hip-hop beats, scratchy guitars and varying forms of rap and singing shoot across the album's horizon line at one time or another. One minute Reveron is flowing straightforwardly across a bouncy beat, and the next he's practically singing on a song that sounds more well suited to Modest Mouse's catalog. Guest spots by the likes of Roots Manuva, former Murder City Devils vocalist Spencer Moody, and Pretty Girls Make Graves' Andrea Zollo add to the scattershot nature of the record, but only in purely positive ways. It's not quite indie rock, and it's not quite hip-hop. The term "indie-hop" makes me kind of want to throw up in my mouth a little bit, so let's just split the difference and call it extremely cool, shall we?
Key Tracks: Gold Fronts; Electric Chair; Document
18. Billy Corgan - The Future Embrace
Apparently Billy Corgan's kind of pissed off these days, or at least just really, really mopey. The Future Embrance, the former Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan frontman's first solo album, is a pretty clear venting of all that sullen emotion and sour grapes. But rather than just scream it out ala his rock days, Corgan retreats back to the sort of gothic electro of Depeche Mode and New Order's heyday. And he does it with the deftness and talent of a seasoned veteran of the genre. The beats take on a decidedly mechanized tone throughout the record, adding the pulse to a stream of neverending synthesizers and heavily distorted guitars that sound straight out of David Gahan's basement studio. Lyrically, the album can either be viewed as beautiful or whiny, depending on your predilection, but while it does clearly wear thin in a few spots, there's so much beauty to the record as a whole that those scant overindulgences are easily forgiven.
Key Tracks: Mina Loy (M.O.H.); The Cameraeye; DIA
17. Fort Minor - The Rising Tied
If enjoyment of Linkin Park is a guilty pleasure of mine, then my enjoyment of Fort Minor must be that horrible, unutterable secret that you wouldn't confess with a three hundred pound man standing on your sack with a flaming shoe. OK, maybe that's a bit extreme, but I do find my love of this album completely perplexing. It should suck. Mike Shinoda, bless his heart, isn't exactly the most adept MC out there. Yet somehow he absolutely shines through on this largely self-produced, instrumentalized and mixed album. He gets plenty of assistance from the members of Styles of Beyond, as well as some other guests like Common, Black Thought, and LP DJ Mr. Hahn, but largely this is Shinoda's show, and he shows a truly unique production style with his styles of beats and samples. And he even manages to sound like a better rapper than he probably has any right to be. File this one under completely out of left field.
Key Tracks: Remember The Name; Right Now; Back Home
16. Matt Pond PA - Several Arrows Later
There's a sort of sincerity to Matt Pond PA's music that's just cloying when it comes from other bands. But from this band, it comes across as thoroughly charming. Basically a modern interpretation of the sort of music Wes Anderson frequently puts on his film's soundtracks, Several Arrows Later represents the band's most accomplished work; an album of attractive songs that move from one to another with almost effortless flow. The catchy acoustic rhythms are complimented wonderfully by the band's string duo, and Pond's sometimes witty, sometimes mournful and always enjoyable lyrics. It's not the most easily marketable thing in the world, since it's tough to really pick out any big, "single" among the bunch, but as a pure start-to-finish album, Several Arrows Later gets it completely right.
Key Tracks: Halloween; The Trees and the Wild; From Debris
15. Beck - Guero
Beck's last album of purely meloncholy acoustic tunes was exactly the kind of departure that critics tend to fall in love with, and fans get huffy about, since it's not what they came to know and love over the years. Guero is precisely the kind of return to form that critics bemoan as a silly step backward, and fans proclaim to fall in love with, only to suddenly get bored with because it's not "different enough." Whatever. I'll take Beck in either classic or moody form, and Guero works just great for me. He's back doing the sorts of goofy, glitchy, hip-hoppy numbers that made him famous, and I don't think it sounds one bit forced. It just sounds to me like Beck got over the whole ex-girlfriend thing, and felt like making his special brand of music again--getting the Dust Brothers back certainly didn't hurt. Yes please thank you many much excellent.
Key Tracks: E-Pro; Hell Yes; Go it Alone
14. Coheed and Cambria - Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV
Coheed and Cambria is totally the modern musical generation's answer to Rush; and I'm not just saying that because the lead singer sounds a bunch like Geddy Lee. It's because this band can somehow take a mind-boggling esoteric songwriting saga, attempt to spread it across something like four different albums, and yet still make a single album's worth of material with songs that are individually completely listenable. Definitely more prog-metal happy than their last release, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, Good Apollo rocks your balls off while still maintaining the complex songwriting concepts found previously. It's equal parts Greek tragedy, space opera, and Rush's 2112 album. Everything on this record is epic with a capital E, P, I and C. Pretentious, certainly, but rocking, absolutely.
Key Tracks: Always and Never; Ten Speed (of God's Blood and Burial); Apollo 1: The Writing Writer
Yes, OK, fine, the guys in The Bravery probably owe The Killers about half of whatever they made off this album, but I also kind of don't give a crap. For as largely unoriginal, goofy and simplistic as this album is, it's also one of the most purely catchy records released this year. It's like a bunch of kids sat around, listening to as many Cure and Duran Duran albums as they could, and said "OK, let's do that!" And strangely enough, it works. Vocalist Sam Endicott's style emulates that sort of pained English-by-way-of-NYC moan with startling enthusiasm, and the music itself is the stuff of 80's synth pop haters' nightmares. As an unapologetic enthusiast of pop music at large, I can't help but grin every time I listen to this one.
Key Tracks: An Honest Mistake; Tyrant; Unconditional
12. Death Cab For Cutie - Plans
Certainly not my favorite Death Cab For Cutie album of all time, but even a slightly off Death Cab record is usually about a dozen and a half times better than the average crap most bands put out. Plans is interesting in that it doesn't reinvent the wheel that the band has been rolling on lo these many years, but at the same time, feels like a progression of some fashion. It permeates the lyrics, the instrumentations, and even the production--everything is just a bit cleaner, a bit tighter, and a bit more toned down. No, it's not the major label's fault--it's called maturity, and while Death Cab's music has been nothing if not mature throughout its career, Plans plays like a plateauing of that maturity. This feels like as far as Death Cab can go maintaining this same precise brand of emotionally charged indie pop it always has. And while the next record could concievably suffer if the band doesn't try a little something new, Plans is a perfect plateau. It strikes plenty of pretty chords as singer Ben Gibbard laments with his usual poetic charms. This album, taken exclusively for what it is, is excellent. Next time? Well, we'll see.
Key Tracks: Soul Meets Body; Summer Skin; Brothers on a Hotel Bed
11. Kanye West - Late Registration
Apparently I'm decidedly late to the Kanye West party, in that I wasn't really overly familiar with him at all until this album, and the first big single, Diamonds From Sierra Leone, was released. All I knew was that he had something to do with Jay-Z. D'oh. Honestly, there's really very little creativity in mainstream rap these days, and Late Registration is one of the most creative, bizarre and inexplicably listenable rap albums I've caught in years. Kanye's flow isn't exactly original in and of itself, but his writing is thought provoking and clever, and the beats and samples are dope as hell. Plus, the man really knows how to write a good hook ("We want pre-nup!" anyone?). Of course, all that great production is half due to previous Eels and Aimee Mann collaborator Jon Brion, who evidently coproduced much of the album. Kooky pairing, but it gives the set an intensely intriguing dynamic. Whatever you might think of his political stances, there's no denying the man's talent.
Key Tracks: Touch The Sky; Drive Slow; Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix, featuring Jay-Z)
Tomorrow...the top 10!