Uncommon music criticized by the common man. (Or, exercises in futility masquerading as critical thought.)

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Can't you hear the hipsters bickering? Ladies and gentlemen...

Pazz and Jop '05

Friday, January 06, 2006

A Revision

An excellent album that completely slipped my mind when I compiled that list was Sleater-Kinney's The Woods. There was no way I could not correct that error, because the album is so damn good. So, I bumped The New Pornographers down into the honorable mentions to make room for S-K.

Really, the album is that good. You should own it. Now go. Go spend money!

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

2005: The Dirty Dozen

As you can see if you come to this site with anything resembling regularity, I have not written much about music this year. (And regularity, in this case, can be defined as "visiting as much as I post.") Part of that is that I haven't been listening to music as much as I would like, part of it is laziness/lack of interest in writing, and part of it is just not having the time to write at length about the music when I do feel the urge. This list is really just the twelve albums from 2005 from which I derived the most enjoyment. Sadly, there was a ton of good stuff that I wanted to listen to but never got the chance. Hopefully, I'll be better about keeping up with music in 2006. Hell, maybe I'll even write more about it, too.

So, in alphabetical order, my top twelve:

Between The Buried And Me - Alaska (Victory)
Danger Doom - The Mouse and The Mask (Epitaph)
Fantomas - Suspended Animation (Ipecac)
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings (Relapse)
The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute (Universal)
Meshuggah - Catch Thirty-Three (Nuclear Blast)
Paal Nilssen-Love Quartet - Townorchestrahouse (Clean Feed)
Orthrelm - OV (Ipecac)
Pelican - The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw (Hydra Head)
Rova Orkestrova - Electric Ascension (Atavistic)
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (Sub Pop)
Trivium - Ascendancy (Roadrunner)

Some other albums that were swell that I listened to just a bit less are:

The Black Dahlia Murder - Miasma (Metal Blade)
Cryptopsy - Once Was Not (Century Media)
FME - Cuts (Okkadisk)
Low - The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop)
New Pornographers - Twin Cinema (Matador)
Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins (Polyvinyl)

One album that would have been in the top twelve (and probably the top three if I ranked it) was Boris' Akuma No Uta. While it got its first domestic release this year (on Southern Lord), it was originally released in 2003. Check it out, won't you?