Listening Back

(listening to: a few songs from each album listed below)

It's that time of year again. The time when everywhere you look somebody's giving you some sort of recap of the past year. Shoving the new nostalgia down your throats like it's some sort of panacea (look it up) that you've been waiting desperately for. The bastards.

Well, we here at Manifest Destiny aren't going to stand for it, and we will be doing nothing of the sort. After today. Probably.

I was talking with Neola earlier today, and she asked me if I'd made my top 10 list of 2005 albums yet. I hadn't, but of course, it got me thinking (and obsessing), so then I did. And here it is.

My Top Ten Albums of 2005:
10. Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Cold Roses. This 2-disc set, in my opinion (and really, am I worried about anyone else's right now?) is his best work since his solo debut, Heartbreaker, but still not quite as good as the now defunct Whiskeytown's work with Adams at the helm. He's got a real talent for songwriting, and he's a really talented musician, but man, is he a horrible live performer. We saw him at Austin City Limits festival in 2004, and he was so f'ed up that he kept messing up his own songs! He's prolific enough (this was the first of 3 albums he put out this year!) that he could probably put out about 20 or so albums in the next couple of years, but unfortunately, he's just unstable enough to disappear completely after that, grow a Rip Van Winkle beard and live as a beach hermit somewhere until he's about 65, then show up out of nowhere to help Luke learn the ways of the force. Wait, that was Ben Kenobi. Oh, what the hell. I'm partial to Bens.

9. Coldplay - X&Y. Yeah, that's right, I put a Coldplay album in my top ten. So, maybe I am a wuss. I don't care, this is a good record, and who cares if Chris Martin is married to the beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow and has a healthy baby, the dude can flat out sing a depressing song, and it's no secret that I'm a sucker for depressing songs. I really like "Fix You" despite the fact that it's been in all of the King Kong commercials (yet appears nowhere in the actual movie). For my money, until "The Next U2" turns into "The Next Radiohead," if they put out a record, it'll most likely land in my top ten.

8. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better. This was the second album from these guys. Their first one (self-titled) was like a supernova, man, they were hotter than Hansel, and he is SO hot right now. It was awesome. This one is not as good, but is still good enough to be awesome, proving that they're not a flash in the pan. (Sort of like Interpol's sophomore offering, Antics.) Unfortunately, we missed seeing these guys at ACL last year, but we heard from friends that they were the best performance of the weekend. I don't doubt it. I'd imagine that I might need a Red Bull before one of their shows, b/c I don't dance - I hate it and think it's stupid most of the time - but these dudes just make me want to dance.

7. The Decemberists - Picaresque. This one is probably the biggest surprise out of the group. I had never even heard of this band until about two weeks ago, and I read an interview with them in "The Big Takeover" (which is, without exaggeration, the BEST music magazine I have ever seen. No fluff, no crap like Rolling Stone, they don't cover politics b/c they feel like they have to. They cover music b/c they are a music magazine. Cover to cover, every issue. I absorb every word. Even the editorials are great. Even the letters to the editor are great. Buy a copy, please. Or subscribe. It's only 20 bucks, that gets you four issues which come out about twice a year.). Anyway, it was an incredibly interesting interview, and the band sounded like one I might really like. Fortunately, this coincided nicely with my discovery of a free 50 downloads trial at eMusic, which doesn't have much of a selection, but guess what they did have? If you guessed this album, then you are clearly a genius. So, I downloaded the album for free, and I've probably listened to it about 20 times (no exaggeration) since. It's awesome. I LOVE finding new music. Thanks, Big Takeover!

6. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods. There aren't too many bands out there that rock harder than these chicks, and there are even fewer that do so with a Jewish guitarist/piano player. I don't have much that they've put out, but I've got a few, and this one measures up for sure. These chicks rock so hard they make me feel like I've rocked hard, and I don't think I have. Stay away if you don't like angry, loud music. If you like angry, loud music, come over to my place and we'll turn the speakers up to 11.

5. The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan. This is one that I liked, but didn't love, when I got it back in May, but man, did it grow on me. I still like this one more everytime I listen to it. Neola brought up a very good point while praising Jack White as "a gift to songwriting (I think those were her words)" in that he really does a phenomenal job of making this two-person garage band sound like a five-person ass-kicking powerhouse.

4. Ben Folds - Songs For Silverman. I don't know who Silverman is, but whoever he or she is, they got one hell of a record. Two of the best breakup songs in recent memory in "Give Judy My Notice" and "Landed," which is basically Billy Joel-good as a piano tune. Considering the fact that I didn't even know this record was coming out and only saw it by accident when I went to pick up Bruce Springsteen's Devils & Dust back in April then ended up liking this one about 1,000 times better, then yeah, I'll put this in my top ten, hands down. I also tend to gravitate toward anyone named Ben (see also: Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, below).

3. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning. I don't know if this is a better record than all but two of the records that came out this year, but what I do know is, I sure liked it more than most of the records that have come out in the past year or more, and I listened to the hell out of it. This is what I said about it in a previous post. I thought it was worth reprinting here.

"This is one of the best albums I've gotten in years. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it might be one of the top 10 or 20 albums that I have ever owned. Conor Oberst is a better songwriter than most people out there who started making records after he was born. I think he's about 25. Yeah, one of the best songwriters of the past 25 years. I think I feel comfortable with that statement. He's in an elite group, and some of the other members are dead, so he really doesn't have much competition. This album effortlessly transports you to New York City and keeps you in good company during your angst-ridden nighttime journey. Bonus points for writing a song about an actual protest rally that caused such a major traffic jam that I actually got stuck in it and missed my bus to Boston one afternoon. That's not something I can say very often, that something immortalized in song, or in film, actually affected me when it happened."

2. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans. This is a damn good record, and I am going to exaggerate a little and say that this record will probably be responsible for making a few people's lives a little better (and I'm not talking about the band members). It's just that good, that calming. These dudes are just that in touch with their fans, I think, that for some people out there, they made a record that is the perfect record, and it's going to have that kind of effect on somebody somewhere.

1. Wilco - Kicking Television. Of course, I'm a little biased here, but that notwithstanding, this is a great live record to release. Their performances (judging by the four times I've seen them live) have been getting steadily better since I first saw them 3 years ago, and this record is good evidence that in the 10 months since I saw them last, they have continued to do so. It's quite possible that I like their music more than anyone in the world likes their music. I know that makes me sound like some sort of psycho stalker, but I'm really not.

Honorable Mention:
Gorillaz - Demon Days. That one song, "Feel Good, Inc." gets stuck in my head every couple of days, and it's impossible for me to hear anything else. That's pretty much the only reason I'm putting it here, other than the fact that it's pretty cool that this isn't even a real band, just a creation of some DJs and a good cartoonist.
Echo and the Bunnymen - Siberia. This is a pretty good album, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to make my top ten, especially since I've only been listening to it for about a week. I don't have any of their older stuff, but I'd love to check it out. This release sounds like it was heavily influenced by U2, which is exactly the opposite of what I imagine was the case 25 years ago when they both started putting out records.
Kanye West - Late Registration. Too much hype, combined with not enough of what made his first album great. I liked it a lot, but not enough to give it top ten props.
Bruce Springsteen - Devils & Dust. This makes the honorable mention list for the simple fact that when I got it earlier in the year, I hated it and pretty much decided not to listen to it again. Then one day, I popped it in out of sheer curiosity, and I really enjoyed it. Again, not more than the ten records that are on that list, but certainly enough to give it a shout here.
Better Than Ezra - Before The Robots. This one's not a bad album, not nearly as good as any of their first four, but probably better than the last one they put out in 2001. Bonus points for finally releasing the song "Hollow," which I had downloaded a live version of back in 2000 and instantly became one of my favorite songs of theirs. Now, hopefully, they'll start playing it at more shows.

Albums I haven't listened to but would probably be good enough to at least crack my Honorable Mention category, if not my Top Ten:
Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Turin Brakes - Jackinabox
Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Common -Be
My Morning Jacket - Z
Nickel Creek - Why Should The Fire Die?
Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights