Localized The decade in local music: 2005

It's December, and you know what that means: lists. But this isn't just the end of a year, it's the end of a decade, which means even bigger lists (and an even bigger chance of pissing people off by forgetting something). Over the next two weeks, The A.V. Club will roll out year-specific lists of our favorite local albums. Is it a best-of? Not quite. We thought it would be more interesting to make it a little looser in scope, the better to highlight both some of the most well-known albums and also the ones that we love even though they've gotten a little lost in the mists of time. We've limited each artist to one album for the entire decade, and limited ourselves to no more than six albums for each year.

The Ashtray Hearts, Perfect Halves (Free Election Records)
The band: This unassuming sextet makes some of the most gentle, least whiny, country-tinged ballads you're likely to hear. Their songs are not so much the sound of sundering and heartbreak as of bitter acceptance.
The album: If there's an antithesis to the dramatics of the build-up/break-down structure found in so much pop music, it's The Ashtray Hearts. The music on Perfect Halves is largely static: Think of your state of mind from the moment you wake up on a freezing winter morning until that first cup of coffee starts humming in your sleepy veins. "Valentine" waltzes in tiny circles across a hardwood floor, Dan Richmond's dark, resigned voice sounding as weary as Aaron Schmidt's clear, high harmony sounds hopeful. It's one of the magical things about The Ashtray Hearts: Richmond and Schmidt's voices show both sides of the coin of loss—regret and hope. The startling exception to the album's frozen-in-amber quality is guitarist Steve Yernberg's stinging solo on opener "Rules." With a few echo-drenched notes, he slashes to ribbons the threadbare curtains of the song like a blind-drunk man trying to knife-fight his troubles. It's one of the greatest songbound solos ever committed to tape, and it's made all the more powerful by its surroundings: an album of bitter pills that go down like honey and Irish whiskey.

I Self Devine, Self Destruction (Rhymesayers Entertainment)
The band: Originally a member of the legendary Micranots with Truthmaze and Kool Akiem, I Self Devine has been in the local hip-hop scene since the beginning, inspiring many rappers' styles and contributing countless hours to the community.
The album: The "result of 16 years of blood, sweat, and tears," Self Destruction is a powerful solo debut from a seasoned veteran. I Self Devine's flow is often slow and meticulous, drawing attention to each carefully chosen word to better convey his message. Over beats made by Jake One, Vitamin D, Ant, and BeanOne, I Self rhymes about personal struggle. The urban storytelling and sound have shades of West Coast political gangsta rap (he grew up in L.A. during the crack epidemic before moving to Minneapolis), detailing police brutality, gang violence, and poverty. While most rappers' "song for the ladies" is typically a cheesy attempt at a love ballad (rarely making up for the album's worth of misogyny preceding it), I Self's rhymes are more than an afterthought: The middle section of his album is devoted to women's daily battles. Ultimately optimistic about the stressful situations he describes, I Self talks about the necessity of action in "Sunshine": "Stay neck deep in the community / If I don't I'm as worse as the enemy."

Low, The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop Records)
The band: This Duluth trio led by Alan Sparhawk pioneered a slow, minimalist take on rock—dubbed "slowcore," though Sparhawk dislikes the term—on albums like The Curtain Hits The Cast and I Could Live In Hope.
The album: It's the dividing line between early, quiet Low and recent, loud Low. Sparhawk had experimented with feedback and volume in his side projects Retribution Gospel Choir and Black-Eyed Snakes, and the sound finally made its way into his main band to excellent effect on The Great Destroyer, showing a remarkable evolution that still carried Low's power to deliver devastating material. Although at the time it seemed like cranking up the volume might torpedo the entire concept behind Low's music, there was always turmoil seething underneath that deceptively quiet placidity. Changing the focus merely gave Sparhawk a way to express it more directly, and a wider range in which to express it. That dynamic shift, most apparent on the segue between the rumbling earthquake of "Everybody's Song" and the icy calm of "Silver Rider," is one of Great Destroyer's most potent weapons. The other is Sparhawk's deft lyrical handling of the album's overarching theme of entropy. The great destroyer is time itself, and—especially on the masterful "Death Of A Salesman" and album-closing "Walk Into The Sea"—Sparhawk grapples with the inevitability of broken dreams and death with heartbreaking forthrightness, and still finds a way to end the album on a quiet but resonant note of hope.

STNNNG, Dignified Sissy (Modern Radio)
The band: The men of STNNNG played in bands including Wicketran and The Vets before getting together to create visceral, chaotic post-punk.
The album: Dignified Sissy shouldn't work—there's just too much going on. Guitarists Nate Nelson and Adam Burt trade new ways to make noise, ripping different textures—stabs, stings, chugs, creaks—from their instruments. Drummer J. Michael Ward (who left the band this year) and bassist Jesse Kwakenat hold things together, guiding the others through disorienting time changes and hitting back twice as hard. But even with this war going on behind him, Chris Besinger remains the band's seething star. He has a lot of hate to spit—for the old and the weak but mostly the stupid—and onstage he takes it out on his mic, throttling it with his leather-gloved hands. 2005 was a frustrating political year for many, and Besinger reacts by suggesting that we pledge allegiance to pill-poppers and panty-sniffers. The self-righteous indignation is contagious, but this antihero also revels in making fans uncomfortable. His muttered "I'm not gonna take it anymore / I'm gonna do something about it" is hopefully as close as we'll ever get to having our very own Travis Bickle.

Tapes 'N Tapes, The Loon (originally released on Ibid Records, re-released on XL Recordings)
The band: The hometown boys made good with a little indie-rock album that became a minor phenomenon and put Minneapolis back on tastemakers' radar.
The album: Its first eight seconds—the casually plucked guitar line before the drums of "Just Drums" kick in—are both a con and a harbinger. The lyrics, as the band has admitted, don't really mean anything. The lo-fi, bluesy country aesthetic could easily be an unlistenable disaster. And the album was named after a convenience store. Despite all that, The Loon has few flaws. It's unapologetically quirky and at times willfully obtuse, but mostly it's just plain anxious fun from start to finish. The best part of the album, however, is discovering all the nooks and crannies you hadn't noticed before. Repeat listens give The Loon the feel of a creaky studio apartment that steadily grows into a Tim Burton-esque mansion as time wears on.

Previously: The decade in local music: 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000.