Ansonsten hätte ich noch die Liste von CMJ (College Music Journal) aus NYC anzubieten:
http://www.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=7047253
30 THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, Twin Cinema (Matador)Brainy, wayward songsters balancing opulence against masterful navigation and Spanish techno, the New Pornographers aren’t just a troupe, but the troupe to merrily tail after. Lightning rods Carl Newman and Neko Case sparked another winding, gratifying rock album, finding nuance and rebirthing what sounded so fresh on their 2000 debut in gushing, replenishing waves. (STEVEN CHEN)
29 THE HOLD STEADY, Separation Sunday (Frenchkiss)
With meticulous and thorough rants about hoodrats and Catholic redemption, Brooklyn’s the Hold Steady tightened the gap between bar rock and bar exams. A Colorado high school even deemed Separation Sunday teachable to at-risk freshmen! (KORY GROW)
28 BRAZILIAN GIRLS, Brazilian Girls (Verve Forecast)
Recall every time you were lured to a dark corner in the VIP lounge or woke up with lipstick smeared you-know-where and be thankful for Sabina Sciubba’s scandalous coo and her band’s sensual down-tempo grooves. After everything they did for our sex lives in 2005, does it matter that none of them are Brazilian? (MATTHEW FIELD)
27 PAUL WALL, The People’s Champ (Atlantic)
The living embodiment of Houston’s slow roll, Paul Wall exudes a candy-coated charisma that turned flossin‘ into an artform. Painting a wide-angle portrait of Houston culture and its excesses on The People’s Champ , this „undisputed king of the parking lot“ taught the whole nation how to drive slow this summer, and how to make a smile really sparkle. (OWEN STROCK)
26 CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Self-Released)
Shouldn’t this happen more often? Brooklyn-by-way-of-Byrne band puts out a great album and the word-of-mouth circuits explode because it was self-released/recorded/titled. The rest is kind of indecipherable, but reveals itself like panning for gold under grits of undulating keyboard and shuffling drums. (JESSICA SUAREZ)
25 JAMIE LIDELL, Multiply (Warp)
IDM beat-splicer Jamie Lidell reinvented himself on Multiply, channeling Prince and Al Green instead of skipping harddrives. The lead-singer of his one-man R&B orchestra, Lidell’s reverent funk proved that you don’t have to wear a stupid hat to show you got soul. (OS)
24 HIGH ON FIRE, Blessed Black Wings (Relapse)
Although High On Fire frontman Matt Pike’s Lemmy-on-ludes snarl and blisters-on-me-fingers guitar licks proved too heavy for Ozzfest, his kitschy World Of Warcraft lyrics and shirtless „Iron Man“ look earned his band massive hit points with the post-Andrew W.K. crowd. Hell, with Joe Preston of Earth and Melvins fame aboard, and a song actually written about real Hessians (not their Reebok-loving fans), Blessed Black Wings flew right into stoner heaven. (KG)
23 DANIEL LANOIS, Belladonna (Anti-)
The man who helped define the echo for the Edge went instrumental for the first time since he and Brian Eno shot for the moon in the spacey Apollo. By re-imagining the way a pedal steel guitar could be played and delayed, Lanois put the ambiance back in ambient with this heady dose of moonlit sonatas. (STEVE CIABATTONI)
22 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, LCD Soundsystem (DFA-EMI)
Chunky, disheveled, irascible and as testy as a record clerk with a Superpitcher import on the stereo and a nose buried in Chunklet—did dance polyglot James Murphy mispronounce „Rakim“ just to fuck with us? Whatevs, since his night job as an enchanting Deft Punk playing at yr house made the dedicated, the ironic and the crypto-ironic ignore their edges for five minutes and lose their inhibitions instead. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. (CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN)
21 ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS, I Am A Bird Now (Secretly Canadian)
Between cover art depicting transsexual Andy Warhol acolyte Candy Darling and duets with Lou Reed, Devendra Banhart and Boy George, Antony And The Johnsons gave androgyny some new rules of cool. With a haunting alto and sparse instrumentation, Antony’s quivering verses about broken love and masochism update the Cure’s self-loathing lovesongs and VU’s boots of shiny leather. (KG)
20 ALVA NOTO AND RYUICHI SAKAMOTO Insen (Raster-Noton/Asphodel)
Keyboard touchstone Ryuichi Sakamoto plays somber soundtracks appropriate for artful furniture or airports. German micro-manager Alva Noto pushes the bytes via some amazing feat of laser surgery or feng shui. It’s a gorgeous, whisper-quiet white-on-white collage assembled with a microscope and a single human hair. (CRW)
19 KONONO NO. 1, Congotronics (Crammed Discs)
The hardest, funkiest inna city beats didn’t come from Detroit or Berlin. You may not have been able to find the Congo on the map (hint, it’s near Gabon), but the trance-inducing sound of Konono’s amped-up thumb pianos certainly found a way to shake the hips of hipsters like no African artist since… um, could you dance to Ali Farka Touré? (SC)
18 GANG GANG DANCE, God’s Money (The Social Registry)
The toast of New York and the place to be when everywhere else seems had, Gang Gang Dance conflate sound and music into one beautiful, multi-textured cacophony as experiential as it is aural. God’s Money is no noisy accident happened upon by drugs and afterthought; it’s tribal and deliberate, with lightness and lucidity dangling at tunnel’s end. (CHEN)
17 DR. DOG, Easy Beat (Park The Van)
Dr. Dog’s breakneck touring behind Easy Beat in 2005 signaled a flannel shirt revival. More importantly, songwriting team Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman brought back the Band’s raucous interplay, some Beatles songcraft, and (gasp) fun to an audience that sorely needs to scream „Wake up, wake up, wake uuuuuup!“ and follow suit. (REED FISCHER)
16 FEIST, Let It Die (Cherry Tree-Interscope)
Don’t be fooled by the selling point that your grandmother is as apt to like this record as much your 15-year-old cousin. Leslie Feist’s gorgeous and no-less-than-breathtaking collection of heartbreak and coastlines, swaying in from the scene of Broken Social, Peaches and Gonzálés, kills with the kind of quiet sophistication you can only live. This is why headphones were invented. (CHEN)
15 CLIPSE, We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol 2 (No Label)
Jeezy! What could be tamer in 2005 than a bunch of trappin‘ claptrap? This mixtape has more powder than the Swiss Alps, but it’s also got more „rewind-that“ moments than anything this side of the Zapruder film. Dealing lines with the type of showy prowess reserved for backpackers and Ghostface, don’t expect anything this hungry to ever come from major-label (or any label) backing. (CRW)
14 SLEATER-KINNEY, The Woods (Sub Pop)
Persistence pays, and yes, you can hear all 10 years of Sleater-Kinneydom, splintered, angled and blasted into The Woods, which, despite sounding unmistakably like old favorites, heaves and pulses with a much heavier glare. On-edge and uneasy have rarely sounded so satisfying. (CHEN)
13 JOSE GONZÁLÉZ, Veneer (Hidden Agenda)
Born to Argentinian parents, living in Sweden, singing in English, international grab bag Jose Gonzáléz has a rootlessness that allows him to tell his story walking. Using nothing more than a hushed guitar and crystalline, effortless voice, Veneer’s incredibly sparse bossa-folk was a simple and sublime exercise in music without borders. (OS)
12 FOUR TET, Everything Ecstatic (Domino)
Generally it takes a few years to realize the impact Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet) has on music. By the time remixers and producers have ripped off his ideas (and watered them down), Hebden is miles ahead, riffing on laptops more like a free jazzman than a pampered celebrity DJ. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but the inability for others to even come close to Hebden might be the truest indication of his genius. (SC)
11 OPETH, Ghost Reveries (Roadrunner)
On Ghost Reveries, Swedish metal mystics Opeth faced certain death when they made their sound even proggier. In some Pavlovian twist, after almost inundating fans with a two-year tour of Pink Floyd-inspired acoustic ummagumma, it turned out Opeth trained its fans to want more keyboards, more guitar solos and lyrics about „hemlock for the Gods.“ Mmmm, hemlock… wait, that’s poison! (KG)
10 ANDREW BIRD, The Mysterious Production Of Eggs (Righteous Babe)
We’ve been fans of this Bird that whistles and his Bowl Of Fire long before the Arcade Fire made rock with violins cool again (sorry Dexy, Midnight Runners, et al). Yes, this Chi-town fiddler has come a long way since his days as a swinging sideman, moving from revisionist hot jazz that echoed Grappelli to heady haute indie pop that snuggles up to Sufjan. (SC)
9 THE DECEMBERISTS, Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars)
It’s like the early ’90s all over again! Top alt band puts out definitive record, gets snapped up by major label. In this case the plucky Portland troupe put out a masterpiece for massive geeks (as if Colin Meloy’s EP of Morrissey covers wasn’t proof enough) and Capitol Records couldn’t help themselves. Pray they don’t kill these indie rock stars. (SC)
8 EDAN, Beauty And The Beat (Lewis) T
The most entertaining of the old school acolytes, Edan is a huge record nerd who loves to make music about, well, being a huge record nerd. While Primitive Plus was an ’88-throwback extraordinaire, Beauty And The Beat reached into Edan’s psych grab bag to make a hip-hop album awash in Purple Haze and Cold Chillin‘ rhythms. (OS)
7 M.I.A., Arular (XL-Interscope)
Hey, the blogs were right for once. (CRW)
6 DEERHOOF, The Runners Four (5RC-Kill Rock Stars)
Deerhoof put their puffiest panda paws forward—all the tricky guitar angles, all the spasmodic drums, all the abrasive cuddliness, all the „alulululu.“ What should be a messy no wave jumble is somehow an expansive noisepop masterpiece full of comfy fables that should warm „the little lemon who still lives inside of you.“ (CRW)
5 JESU, Jesu (Hydra Head)
Playing grumpiness like gloriousness, heartache like heartwarm, Jesu is the post-election doom metal comedown record of the millennium. SunnO))) gave us an empty playground to play, and Pelican offered hypnosis as a panacea, but Justin Broadrick actually feels your pain… and then lets you borrow his copy of Loveless. (CRW)
4 WOLF PARADE, Apologies To The Queen Mary (Sub Pop)
Bombast and backstory can hammer on heartstrings, but the best musicians write records like Mad Libs: here’s the skeleton, you figure it out. Brock shows up on Wolf Parade’s debut, and maybe Bowie and Black too, but Wolf Parade’s uncommonly fragile take on plain ol‘ indie rock opened its chest, showed us its blood and bones, private bits we can make our own, if we’re willing. (JS)
3 DÄLEK, Absence (Ipecac)
Wasn’t this what hiphop is supposed to sound like by now? All that boom-and-pound that crashed through walls and cut through floors? All that terrordome anti-music? All that polemic clawing to be heard under mountains of speaker-destroying, authority-terrorizing squall? Why are we so nostalgic over an album that sounds so forward-thinking? (CRW)
2 SUFJAN STEVENS, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty)
Exhibit „I“ in the case that Sufjan’s 50 states project is more than just a goof, dude actually wrote an indie-rock opera that was silly, soaring and substantial (his song about John Wayne Gacy is more chilling than any NIN track). Compared to the fingerpainting naiveté of most indie rock, Illinois took the Sistine Chapel route, wherein Superman’s outstretched fist touched the delicate tips of Sufjan’s fingers. (SC)
1 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, Feels (Fat Cat)
Arriving in late October, Feels was the ultimate chaser for a year where signal consummated its relationship with noise. Their peers knew it: Lightning Bolt glossed out into Van Halen FM eruptions, Hella warmed up arenas for System Of A Down, Deerhoof made noisepunk’s Soft Bulletin, and Black Dice put on their boogie shoes. Hey, even the best hip-hop singles sculpted splendor from whispers, whistles and furry stretched-out purple gloop. In this ecosystem, Animal Collective was a jam band that couldn’t go wrong. Even when they were tuning up and poking at their outputs (as they were in NYC’s cavernous Webster Hall this year) it sounded gorgeous. A stage light could have fallen on Geologist’s little work station, and the sound would be great to play at your wedding. Sure, their pop songs—“Grass,“ „Did You See The Words,“ the rollicking nursery rhyme „The Purple Bottle“—felt like the epiphanies that they were intended to be. But the real glory was in the sprawling open space of the eight-minute „Banshee Beat“ or „Bees.“ Limitless landscapes that sounded like free jangle at first, but got more comfy and familiar with every trip back. The only words you decided to decipher were the important ones. The choose-your-own adventure record of the year. (CRW)
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To Hell with Poverty