I know, I know…you have all been waiting with baited breath for the release of my list of top 5 albums of 2005…anxiously wondering what pearls I’ve had squirreled away in the piles of walnut dust in my shop. Well I am sorry to disappoint, but there is nothing new for you boyz on my list but what is a surprise (at least to me), is what I find I have been drawn to most over the past year and can’t get out of the cd player

Top 5 in no particular order…and you’re lucky I managed to actually nail down five!

Arcade Fire – Funeral
Interpol – Antics
Walkmen – Bows and Arrows
Wilco – a ghost is born
Jolie Holland – Escondida
What I find interesting about my top five is that amongst them, there is not a single album that falls into a jazz/afro/electo/latin/dancey slots that got me off in the past number of years. With the exception of Holland, it’s all music in the straight up, pop/rock genre.
The other thing that I find interesting about several of the choices, is that they follow albums that were considered by many, to be stronger. I came to know Interpol, Walkmen and Wilco recently and revisited earlier works only after falling in love with their current releases.
I think that this resonates with the discourse on the blog (which I must admit I find very provocative) in that our perceptions of an artist’s work can’t help but be altered by our understanding or familiarity with their other works. Is it possible for me to hear a ghost is born in the same light as someone who has grown up with Summerteeth or Yankee Foxtrot? (two albums with which I was wholly unfamiliar) Is my perception of Ghost intrinsically different from yours because I was never a fan of theirs before? In any case, The direction that Wilco has gone with Ghost grabs me in a way that Wilco’s work never has before…have I simply entered a new headspace…was Wilco waiting for me to come to them or was I waiting for Wilco to change? I love the album with the exception of all the wanking of the last ten minutes….it’s all been done before and what ever you’re trying to say is either lost on me or empty…and no “you will never hear this song on the radio”!
Interpol’s – Antics? Super strong follow up to their debut…stronger still. The problem with it is that it may be seen by some as “more of the same” after their stellar freshman release. At a session of the cd club a while ago, someone, I think it was Brian, said, and I paraphrase, “if you own one of their albums do you really need to go out and buy another….it’s good music, but is it not just more of the same?…am I really gaining something from this album that was missing in my first experience?” If you ain’t got any Interpol, make it Antics. Antics outshines in its energy, dynamics and production.
Arcade Fire…didn’t see the show at the beginning of the summer so I could not be disappointed by the lack of energy captured on the album as I have heard some were. Again, it’s all about expectations. To my ears the sound is fresh, creative and full of the stuff of life.
The Walkmen?…all I want to know is what’s in it for me?
Jolie…a warm breeze…a swing on the veranda…the scent of magnolia…oh! for an afternoon to do nothing!
…and I gotta say that I’m not hugely disappointed with the year in music…I’ll grant you there was no Nevermind or London Calling