December 14th, 2005
ANDY BATTAGLIA
1) Animal Collective, Feels (Fat Cat)
Ecstatic and unhinged in deceivingly rigorous ways, Feels translates Animal Collective's private-language ritual music to the grammar of rock. Guitars glimmer and drums splash through psychedelic swirls, but the voices are the key: There's no extracting such gorgeous melodies and harmonies once they find a brain to tumble around in.
2) Out Hud, Let Us Never Speak Of It Again (Kranky)
3) Dominik Eulberg, Kreucht & Fleucht (Mischwald)
A double-disc mix rich with timely techno touchstones, Kreucht & Fleucht hiccups and heaves through a lesson in heavy breathing. Some tracks are mellow and melodic; others are slathered thick with effects. All of them map the new netherworld where "ketamine house" reigns supreme.
4) Matias Aguayo, Are You Really Lost (Kompakt)
5) Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty)
6) Jamie Lidell, Multiply (Warp)
A supremely soulful album by a twitchy electronic musician who likes to take it easy, Multiply finds Jamie Lidell sounding more like Otis Redding and Sly Stone than any white Englishman should. It's a genre exercise of a sort, but Lidell's wowing vocal presence spins perceived skepticism on its axis.
7) LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem (DFA/EMI)
8) Supersystem, Always Never Again (Tough And Go)
A singular electro-rock band with a worldly disposition, Supersystem laces antic dance music with simmering guitar leads grabbed from Africa. Why haven't more bands done this? Why don't all bands do this?
9) Antony And The Johnsons, I Am A Bird Now (Secretly Canadian)
10) Gwen Stefani, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (Interscope)
A late-2004 release that gathered weight as this year lumbered on, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. is so pop it doesn't stop to wonder what might work and what might not. Gwen Stefani sounds like 12 different stars surveyed in sequence, and even her bum tracks (there are a few) snap with more sass than anything else on the charts.
Honorable Mentions
Three 6 Mafia, Most Known Unknowns (Sony)
Various Artists, 2Rabimmel 2Rabammel 2Rabum 2Bum Bum (Areal)
Deerhoof, The Runners Four (Kill Rock Stars)
Amadou & Mariam, Diamanche A Bamako (Nonesuch)
Gang Gang Dance, God's Money (The Social Registry)
Listen To The Hiss Of Pages Turning
In a strong year for music books, two in particular made a good case for canon status. Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History Of The Hip-Hop Generation (St. Martin's) charts the roots of rap as a social movement, matching musical genealogy to an impeccably reported survey of the world in which hip-hop first took hold. From the Bronx's arson-scorched ruins to the Reagan White House's ideology-scorched ruins, Chang's backdrops jump to the foreground in a heady history fit for readers of all persuasions. Paul Morley's Words And Music: A History Of Pop In The Shape Of A City (University Of Georgia) is a much different book: Revolving around one man's habitual return to songs by Kylie Minogue and avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier, it addresses nothing short of the history of the universe through the scattered stories that pop music tells without even meaning to. It's a decidedly unfocused tome, to be sure, but why shouldn't Charlie Chaplin and T.S. Eliot share page-space with Brian Eno and The White Stripes?
Synthesize This
It goes without saying that must-hear reissues abounded as music history continued to fold in on itself, but a particular must-hear is the collection of frayed-nerve screeds by legendary New York "no wave" band DNA. Compiling early-'80s studio and live tracks from a group often discussed but seldom heard, DNA On DNA (No More Records) bristles with art-rock played by what sounds like a band of mannequins defleshed and forced to read critical theory while sucking on oxidized coins. It's the sound of a band that couldn't have been less interested in what came before, which sounds like an interesting notion indeed.
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