My Favorite Albums Of 2005
I‘ll probably get it together to write a favorite albums of 2025 post by the holidays, but it was a lot easier to go deep on the music I still love from 20 years ago. Looking back at what I posted on blogspot that year (no link, you don't need to see), there's a few obscurities I don't remember at all (no names, I'll be nice). But most of it has held up great and will be represented in this post and the next.
Some caveats: I've decided to leave Robyn's self-titled album off. While I was one of those cool critics who had and celebrated mp3s of the 2005 Swedish edition (where’s our oral history?!), it's the 2008 international release I have now. I'm also leaving off R. Kelly's TP3.Reloaded, as I can't say I glibly enjoy his absurd metaphors and soap operas like I did in my twenties. Have I given the shame-inspiring sex criminal a micro-penny online to giggle at "Sex Weed" every couple years? Maybe. But I have no desire to celebrate him or his oeuvre here.
Some of these albums - including my current number one! - weren't actually heard in 2005. But that's OK. Like you, I live in the present, even if I spend way too much time thinking about music past. Coincidentally, I discovered last week that I like Public Image Limited's This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get! Who could have guessed anyone would? So naturally, I've also discovered some '05 treasures since the year itself. Behold!
Smog, "I Feel Like The Mother Of The World"
- Smog, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love
With previous Smog albums a touch or eight too sloppy, and Bill Callahan‘s following albums under his own name turning towards pastiche, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love gets my Goldilocks vote. The simple arrangements don’t transcend the hipster-folk archetype, but Callahan’s voice sounds casually weathered rather than affectedly ragged. His vocal pauses are arch, but not willful or forced, the rhythm section unafraid to push him forward. Despite the hermetic anxiety of “I Feel Like The Mother Of The World” and “Running The Loping,” there’s an austerity-subverting subtext of joy and self-confidence suggesting why Callahan ditched his long-time alias afterwards. “I guess everybody has their own thing that they yell into a well. I gave it a couple o’ hoots, a ‘hello’ and a ‘fuck all y’all.”
- Louis XIV, The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
Anthony Cougar Miccio
- The Darkness, One Way Ticket To Hell…And Back
Anthony Cougar Miccio
- Low, The Great Destroyer
Low was a great ‘90s “slowcore” band that had been stripping away those sonic signifiers on recent albums, and The Great Destroyer - produced by Dave Fridmann - is when you could no longer mistake the Duluth trio for demurring Galaxie 500 fans. The opening “Monkey” thundered hard enough to grab Robert Plant’s attention, the following fury of “Everybody’s Song” and ominous grandeur of “Silver Rider” keeping it (he’s covered all three). Long-time fans were flummoxed by Low willingness to dance with mere post-Neil Americana. But “When I Go Deaf” and “Death Of A Salesman,” respective fantasies of losing music and giving it up, underscore that The Great Destroyer’s big swing wasn’t commercial capitulation, but creative desperation.
Anthony Cougar Miccio
- The Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree
The Mountain Goats were a great ‘90s “lo-fi” project that had revealed surprising confidence with singer-songwriter studio work on recent albums, and…ok, this parallel doesn’t work. John Vanderslice produced 2004’s We Shall All Be Healed before The Sunset Tree, and the Goats (though now including bassist Peter Hughes along with said singer-songwriter John Darnielle) wouldn’t become a full “band” until 2008’s Heretic Pride. Healed was also a memoir of chaotic times, though more obscured than The Sunset Tree's description of adolescent yearning to escape abuse. “This Year” is only the most famous of the album’s declarations of endurance, bolstered by the album’s narrative but not beholden to it. If the album feels like a big swing, it’s for the unabashed abdication of fiction from an act that was once defined by it. Ironically, my favorite track may be the penultimate “Love, Love, Love” - a litany of historical and fictional precedent for love’s damage, that still reads like a statement of faith.
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Missy Elliott, "Lose Control"
- Missy Elliott, The Cookbook
I’m not sure why this album, which no one could have guessed would be Elliott’s last, gets relatively ignored. Supa Dupa Fly is a tremendous, aesthetic-defining debut, and Under Construction has the imperial hits, but The Cookbook is a beautiful, joyous affirmation of perspective: one of the album’s throughlines is a euphoric shout of “yes!” Flirting with Slick Rick, asserting the dues paid with Grand Puba and Mary J Blige (on the same track!), letting Y2K production all-stars provide the percolation and thump Elliott can shine over. Maybe it’s those outside hands, and the lack of “Missy & Tim” productions, that makes The Cookbook look like mere product to some. But Missy is a vibrant and assured leading lady throughout the album, which captures a pop moment gone before we knew it.
Stephen Malkmus, "Baby C'Mon"
- Stephen Malkmus, Face The Truth
Stephen Malkmus’ post-Pavement solo career is a typical outcome of a band’s singer-songwriter knowing he could hire better, less entitled musicians than his high school & college buddies. It mostly vacillates between professional jam-adjacency and genre exercises, never as thrilling as the gestative, daring work with those old pals. But Face The Truth, his third album, following the proud self-titled debut and a sophomore shirking of the limelight (credited to “SM & Jicks,” his backing band), finds Malkmus trying to recapture the epic whimsy of Pavement while standing proud over the Jicks’ more confident groove. The goofball “Pencil Rot,” the explicit languish of “Freeze The Saints,” the rave-up “No More Shoes” and “Baby C’mon”’s knowing arena rock bracket the staggering self-awareness of “Post-Paint Boy”: “you’re the maker of modern minor masterpieces for the untrained eye.” He’d never top it, and how could he?
Spoon, “Sister Jack”
- Spoon, Gimme Fiction
Coincidentally, Robert Christgau gave Gimme Fiction and Face The Truth B+'s in the same Consumer Guide, regretting the lack of ambition, commercial or political, from these handsome white indie rockers. “I wish this was still a world where the right guitar noise and a heaping helping of hooks were sustenance enough,” sighed the Dean. Twenty years later, the Dubya administration at least a distant second or third when it comes to modern American embarrassment, I think we’ve all grasped that any post-punk combo short of a Fugazi reunion isn’t going to sustain us. And even Guy & company would need alien technology or tanks.
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Where the Dean thought Gimme Fiction failed to build on Kill The Moonlight’s socio-economic small stakes and getting by, I thought that album was a thin mess of echo effects beneath the opening push tracks, and that Fiction reclaimed the band’s slanted swagger, providing wry, romantic devilry for internet kids who could take or leave Billy Joel and Wire equally, on a track-by-track basis. But I already said so in my playlist post.
Wussy, "Airborne"
- Wussy, Funeral Dress
Confession: despite being the kind of once-precocious rockcrit nerdlinger who’s made his acquaintances see & hear the word “Christgau” far more than they ever desired, I’m way behind on the output of the elder critic’s beloved Wussy, in which the guy from the Ass Ponys found a female singer-songwriter to become the Buckingham Nicks of Cincinnati with. “Airborne,” the first song on this, their first album, is such a infectious, pulse-raising celebration of boy vs girl in the world series of hipster love, that I usually need a cigarette or the repeat button more than a second track, let alone eight albums and counting. But when I eventually let the album play through, Chuck Cleaver, Lisa Walker and their compatriots keep shaking the shaggy, midwestern romantic dream of the ‘90s awake. Allegedly, they shake it as great as ever now, and I should find out for myself.
Bloc Party, "Helicopter"
- Bloc Party, Silent Alarm
Thanks to album guides, I was raised under the impression that new wave bands usually made one or two great albums before turning mundane and repetitive, if not into hot garbage. On a selfish level, it bums me out that we can’t give the same cavalier noogies to the ‘00s acts I like to call “Nu-Wave.” I already went deep on Franz Ferdinand’s begging for cruel dismissal earlier this year, and Bloc Party inspires a similar exasperation. Why? Because Silent Alarm is such a frantic, jagged bolt of g-g-b-d that they not only get away with naming a song “Helicopter,” but arguably top XTC’s. Later albums had fewer drums and more wires, the band too afraid of looking retro to admit their magnetism came from the back of the stage forward. But one great dance-demanding full-length of post-adolescent sensitivity is fine…assuming we aren’t expected to pay attention after.
And now, some honorable mentions! As always, in order of descending enthusiasm, and in honor of the aforementioned, almighty Xgau.
MIA. In hindsight, it's not that deep. But great, nonetheless!
MIA, Arular
Still a spirited, searing vision of electronic, global dance-pop (“Bingo,” “Hombre,” “Galang”)
Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche E Bamako
Still a spirited, soothing vision of electric, global dance-pop (“M’Bife,” “Coulibaly,” “Djanfa”)
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Electric Six, Señor Smoke
When I started calling them “the Crunk Roxy Music” (“Rock’n’Roll Evacuation,” “Be My Dark Angel,” “Future Is In The Future”)
Loudon Wainwright III, Here Come The Choppers
Frisell! Leisz! Keltner! Maybe the best accompaniment of his career. The songs are solid, too, but duh. (“Here Come The Choppers,” “No Sure Way,” “When You Leave”)
Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
At this point, I’d never guess which songs were made with Jon Brion and which weren’t; she’s the queen of confessional showtunes either way (“Window,” “Waltz (Better Than Fine),” “O’ Sailor”)
Anthony Cougar Miccio
John Prine, Fair & Square
Just another album of originals upon release, his most “autumnal” in hindsight (“She Is My Everything,” “Long Monday,” “Glory Of True Love”)
Clem Snide, The End Of Love
One of the lovelier, less lonely examples of Eef Barzelay’s skeptical, desperate search for transcendence and relief (“Fill Me With Your Light,” “Jews For Jesus Blues,” “When We Become”)
The Presets. Never considered deep.
The Presets, Beams
Camp ‘00s dance-rock that would seem generic if it wasn’t so hooky (“Girl And The Sea,” “I Go Hard, Go Home,” “Kitty In The Middle”)
Amy Rigby, Little Fugitive
Diary Of A Mod Empty Nester (“Like Rasputin,” “Needy Men,” “The Trouble With Jeanie”)
Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Nu-wave comedy rock (“Formed A Band,” “Bang Bang Rock & Roll,” “18,000 Lira”)
And now, my favorite compilation released in 2005!
Singles from New Order's 2005 album are on the 2005 singles comp. Convenient!
New Order, The Singles
The 7” edits & originals on Disc 1 are a surprisingly worthwhile funhouse mirror of the 12” edits & remakes on Substance Disc 1, punkier and less polished. The later singles on Disc 2 are at least as notable the B-Sides on Substance Disc 2. (“Blue Monday,” “Regret,” “Here To Stay”)
And now, ten more 2005 albums in descending order of enthusiasm!
LCD Soundsystem. I still think they stole the guitar hook from "I Feel Voxish."
LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
I pissed off the guy running DFA Records by deleting the undanceable, and winnowing this 2CD into a single for Stylus. When I tossed my CD-Rs, I decided the 2CD was worth suffering in full (“Daft Punk Is Playing At My House,” “Yeah”)
Giant Drag, Hearts & Unicorns
Solid shoegaze-pop now foreshadowing the found-footage COVID nightmare Dashcam (“This Isn’t It,” “Kevin Is Gay”)
Waco Brothers, Freedom And Weep
If you shout for “Memphis, Egypt” at Mekons shows, I sure hope you’ve explored the Waco Brothers discography by now (“Nothing At All,” “Join The Club”)
Kanye West, Late Registration
I mistrusted him right from the Vanilla Sky reference, but this is where I thought he might make something of his megalomania (“Gold Digger,” “Touch The Sky”)
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Queens Of The Stone Age, Lullabies To Paralyze
Killer compression-rock LP bloated to CD length by some long farts in the middle (“Broken Box,” “In My Head”)
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Death Cab For Cutie, Plans
The only schmindie band (“indie schmaltz” - great term, imo!) to make something of going major (“Crooked Teeth,” “Brothers On A Hotel Bed”)
The Rakes! Worth remembering!
The Rakes, Capture/Release
The third best Paul Epworth-produced nu-wave album of 04-05, and the most Wire-reminiscent (“Strasbourg,” “Terror!”)
The Brakes, Give Blood
Nu-wave novelty rock (“Heard About Your Band,” “Jackson”)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
In hindsight, the Violent Femmes of indie sleaze. So at least keep the debut! (“The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth,” “Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood”)
Eluvium, Talk Amongst The Trees
I wasn’t into ambient artists futzing with fuzz then, but I am now (“New Animals From The Air,” “Taken”)
And now...some other compilations from 2005 I like, again in order of descending enthusiasm!
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Sloan, A-Sides Win: 1992-2005
Enough chewy singles from Canadian alt-Beatles’ lesser albums - plus two just for this comp - to fill in the cracks between the albums you’ve kept (“Money City Maniacs,” “The Lines You Amend”, “The Other Man”)
The glory of "Feat. Lil Jon" isn't acknowledged enough in this post.
Pitbull, M.I. STILL A.M.I.
Joyous, guest-heavy remixes - more Spanish verses, more female voices - that capture young Mr. 305’s Bon Scott-like sexual relish better than his regular albums (“Shake - Remix,” “Culo- Remix,” “Toma (DJ Buddha Remix)”)
Basement Jaxx, The Singles
I was never as enthusiastic about this duo’s crazed club cornucopias as my peers - too many interludes - but I’m so not above the hits (“Rendez-Vu - Radio Edit,” “Lucky Star - Radio Edit,” “Romeo - Radio Edit”)
Blink-182, Greatest Hits
San Diego trio gradually traded pop-punk puerility for pop-goth poetry, drummer helping them get away with both (“Dammit,” “Adam’s Song,” “Always”)
The Offspring, Greatest Hits
OC valedictorian’s punk band accidentally got big crossing Green Day with Nirvana, and stayed big adding “Weird” Al Yankovic and War to the mix, the results either miraculous or horrifying (“Come Out And Play,” “Gone Away,” “Self-Esteem”)
Anthony Cougar Miccio
Blink and the Offspring play major roles in these posts.
Coming up...a playlist of great songs from 2005 albums I didn't mention yet! If the hyperlink hasn't been added yet, and/or you need to tell me something about 2005 right now, send those thoughts to anthonyisright at gmail dot com. Also, the top ten or so here also appears on My Top 400 Albums Of All Time. Click!
