Let the path to righteousness continue.
I won't confess to being much of a propponent of Doves' last album, The Last Broadcast. It had some fleeting moments of brilliance, but for the most part it read to me like a peppier, less engaging version of The Verve. Some Cities pretty much spun my opinion of the band around completely. It's not that the pep isn't still there, but lyrically and musically, it feels like it's actually backed up by something other than pure catchiness. The single, Black and White Town, is a perfect example of this. It's got an upbeat tempo and catchy guitar riffs, but the music itself has a richer, deeper texture to it. That same sentiment holds true from the opening title track, to the concluding lullaby, Ambition. Finally, a Doves album that actually warrants its given attention.
Key Tracks: Black and White Town; Snowden; The Storm
29. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have it So Much Better
Franz Ferdinand's sophomore effort has, hands down, THE best one-two punch of opening tracks of any album this year. The Fallen's opening riff kicks the record into gear with absolute fury. So much so, that you might actually think that the band just went and made a straight ahead rock album. But then when the infectious dance groove of Do You Want To hits its stride, it becomes abundantly clear that what made the band so successful to begin with is front and center here. Admittedly, the album does trail off a bit from here. It's not that the remaining collection of tunes isn't completely solid and enjoyable, but nothing ever quite matches the energy and snappiness of those opening tracks. Still, songs like Eleanor, Put Your Boots On and Fade Together provide pretty, mellow counterbalances to the band's archetypal dance rock numbers, and taken as a whole, the album's just a lot of fun to listen to.
Key Tracks: The Fallen; Do You Want To; Eleanor, Put Your Boots On
28. Goldie Lookin' Chain - Straight Outta Newport
Between HP Sauce, Boddington's Ale, and Goldie Lookin' Chain, I'm now convinced that Justin Calvert actually knows what he's talking about (the whole soccer thing had me doubting him for a while there). A bunch of thickly accented British nutballs get together and make borderline unintelligible rap music. Film at 11. It'd be easy to just write off the concept altogether, but the thing of it is, these guys have personality, and it's a damn funny one. They're not quite up to the level of Licensed to Ill-era Beastie Boys or anything, but their bizarre characterizations, completely obscure slang and name-droppings, bargain-basement samples with ridiculously catchy hooks, and constant use of the f-word as a labored crutch when they're short a few syllables are all just too funny not to love. Purely for those who don't take their rap music too seriously, but highly enjoyable all the same.
Key Tracks: Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do; Half-Man Half-Machine; Your Mother's Got a Penis
It's tough to nail down the exact quality that make's The National's sound more intriguing than the average NYC wannabe garage band. There's a little bit of of Interpol's meloncholy rock mentality, a little bit of the Walkmen's penchant for writing harsh sounding ballads, and a little bit of late 80's U2. In no way is the band directly comparable to any single one of these aforementioned things, but again, its sound and style doesn't exactly fit into a neat and tidy comparison. All you need to know is that the lyrics are sharp, the music is pretty without degenerating into lackluster wailings, and every part of this band's package is tight and refined. Easily one of the most surprising albums of 2005.
Key Tracks: Karen; Val Jester; Mr. November
The Soviettes are what would happen if Joan Jett's irrepressable tough chick persona got tossed in a rock tumbler with Sex Pistols or Hives (depending on which is more relevant to you and your particular generation) styled high-energy punk rock. It's female fronted punk that doesn't sound like another lousy Tilt or Distillers rip. There's plenty of three-chord rippers on this album, many of which often don't eclipse the two-minute mark, but shockingly enough, there's also quite a bit of melody and solid lyrical content on top of everything else. And in the rare moments when male vocals do cut in on the largely female-dominated singing, it isn't as jarring or detrimental as it probably ought to be, especially since the dude sounds like he's trying to do his best Johnny Rotten impersonation. The Soviettes transcend base level punk rock by a pretty wide margin, and this album, despite being the band's debut on the notoriously base Fat Wreck label, is entirely indicative of that fact.
Key Tracks: Multiply and Divide; Paranoia Cha-Cha-Cha; Middle of the Night
25. Yourcodenameis: Milo - Ignoto
I'm not sure if this album ever made it out in North America proper, so I'll probably need to do a copious amount of explanation here. Yourcodenameis: Milo is a UK indie band with something of a harder edge. It sounds sort of like a cross between Fugazi's later years, the At The Drive-In albums that came before Relationship of Command, and early Radiohead when they felt like rocking it a bit harder. There's more things you could compare it to, but those are the most obvious, and the most telling. Ignoto is a heck of a debut album, rarely striking a wrong chord tonally, and maintaining a constant sense that these guys are smarter than the average rock band. The whole record rocks, but it rocks in such creative ways that it's impossible to ignore what it accomplishes musically.
Key Tracks: I Am Connecting Flight; 17; The General
24. DJ Muggs vs. GZA - Grandmasters
I'm always wary of any album with the word "versus" in the title. It usually just smacks of bad remixes or lazy production. This album is nothing of the sort. In fact, I don't even get why this is treated as a competitive sort of thing. This is basically just another GZA solo album with Muggs production. It could have just as easily been GZA and Muggs on the cover, dressed as the Wonder Twins, shouting "form of an awesome rap record!" And that's really what this is. There's very little pretense here--well, outside of GZA's notoriously estoeric lyrics and constant references to chess. The beats, however, are almost ancient in design, but not in an archaic or irrelevant way. The loops are intentionally brief, and laid down in an entirely exquisite way. While Wu-Tang member solo albums tend to run hot and cold, and GZA's stuff in particular is pretty all over the map, Muggs' low-key production helps pull together his best album since Liquid Swords, and one that's arguably even better.
Key Tracks: Exploitation of Mistakes; Advance Pawns; Smothered Mate
23. Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
Everybody freaked out when Josh Homme kicked bass player and longtime contributor Nick Oliveri out of Queens of the Stone Age. Everyone automatically assumed at their next album would just suck. Yes, there is something about Lullabies to Paralyze that feels missing in comparison to the unfathomably good Songs for the Deaf--but it's not anything related to Oliveri's playing, the songwriting as a whole, or anything even close to it. It's the distinct lack of Dave Grohl's manically tight drumming. Them's the breaks when you maintain a revolving door of musicians, I suppose. Anyhow, despite the utter lack of Grohl-ness, Lullabies is another completely kick ass rock album with some psychadellically artistic undertones--just like pretty much every other QOTSA album. And this is one case where maintaining the status quo is very much a good thing.
Key Tracks: Everybody Knows That You're Insane; Burn The Witch; Skin on Skin
22. Coldplay - X & Y
I don't quite get the level of hate that got leveled at this record. Yeah, OK, it isn't exactly a giant step forward for the band. It sounds an awful lot like the same music they've put out before, and hell, I'll even grant you that the piano line and rhythmic base to Speed of Sound smacks of a rehashing of the piano line and rhythmic base to Clocks on the last record. All of these things said, this is still an incredibly listenable album. It's just a more produced, tighter installment of the sound that everybody was going completely ape%$#& over three years ago. I'm all for musical progression, but I'm not in favor of it JUST for the sake of being different, especially if you're still capable of delivering a familiar sound that's still really enjoyable, and hasn't gotten mundane yet. In the case of Coldplay, it hasn't yet.
Key Tracks: Square One; White Shadows; Talk
21. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
When I say to you that Broken Social Scene is made up of a collective of random Canadian musicians, your first thought is probably something like, "Oh, great, those jackasses from the Barenaked Ladies, Alanis Morrissette and Bruce Cockburn all formed like Voltron to create a gigantic cyborg's worth of crappy music." Or, at least, that's what I said. As it turns out, 15 different indie musicians from bands like Metric, Stars, Feist, and a bunch of other pretty damn good bands make up this supergroup, and the music is inexplicably good. It doesn't completely play like the sort of noisy, wanky, experimental nonsense such a band would usually make--yes, there are the occasional off moments of pure experimentalism--but largely, the songs here just sound like much more grandiose versions of the kinds of cool indie songs these people would already be making. It's almost orchestral in nature, and surprisingly captivating.
Key Tracks: Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day); 7/4 (Shoreline); Handjobs For the Holidays
That's all for now. More later.