Records of 2005

The HoldingPatterns end of year poll

From best to… almost best.

Sufjan Stevens

Illinois

I almost dropped this one because Pitchfork made it their album of the year, but for once (hard for me to admit it) they must have done something right. The second of Sufjan’s ambitious and foolhardy plan to make an album for each and every US state. Michigan was good, if, I felt, a little shackled and rambling. This is a quantum leap forward in focus, character, and quality. There is a truly vast sonic palette at work here, the album opening with sustained piano and a chorus of woodwind and choir, and getting through most of an orchestra by the time it’s done. The great trick and skill of this album is it never feels weighed down or pretentious by the sheer complexity or density of it’s arrangements. Each track feels light and wonderfully energised, like it’s being played for the first time. Sufjan’s plaintive, high pitched vocals and skilful banjo and guitar are orbited by a harmonised choir, understated strings, brass and guitars, somehow juggling two, three, four irrestible and distinctive melodies in one song. That the whole thing never comes crashing down to earth is incredible, and gives the record it’s captivating force. The songs are literate and unique, scary and funny, great bittersweet slices of American reality and history, interspersed with moments of surrealism and horror, and with often very long (and silly) titles. Most of the press focused on the tale of Illinois’ most infamous serial killer, the quiet quest for humanity on John Wayne Gacy Jr. But there’s so much more here, the slow burn build up of The Predatory Wasp of the Pallisades is Out to Get Us! Going from solo acoustic guitar to Phillip Glass-esque woodwind layers and layers of vocals and choruses, Chicago’s brass refrain, like a bittersweet superhero’s theme tune, Decatur’s rootsy banjo. A massive achievement.

Bloc Party

Silent Alarm

It’s hard to write about Bloc Party anymore, so much having being said in the last 12 months. But try to approach the album with an open mind and there’s more there than the Britpop/post-punk revivalists has been said. Neither the new messiah’s of rock and roll, or Gang of Four pastiche that they’ve been alternately painted as, this is an exciting and current record. Full of blood and youth, it’s a record that feels totally of it’s time, trying to reflect what’s happening outside the windows and doors, equal parts shallow and important. The musicianship is stunning, with more tricks in here than were ever expected. Banquet and Helicopter will shake indie discos for long to come and help kids who can’t dance get laid, but there’s other things, spiralling twisty things, paranoid things and hazy things that reward patience and repeated wear and tear. It feels vital.

The Arcade Fire

Funeral

If you’re British this only came out in January, so there. It qualifies for the 2005 list. My best live act of the year, being lucky enough to cram into an overbooked ULU in London in January to see this incredibly passionate and creative band. Like a nineteenth century Radiohead, these are songs about lost innocence, quiet family tragedies and Canadian weather. As Ben states, there’s a great sense of belief about this record, belief in the songs and the music, and the stories they’re telling. (When you see them live, knocking seven bells out of eachother with drumsticks, you realise they must believe it)

Malcom Middleton

Into The Woods

Malcom has a reputation for being a bit of a downer. When you’ve been guitarist with Scottish miserabilist royalty Arab Strap for the past decade or so, I guess you get that reputation. On the opening track of Into The Woods, Break My Heart, he sings

“You’re going to break my heart I know it,
But if you don’t
You’re going to break my run of unhappiness
And destroy my career”

But this record is still a little doomed, full of broken things, and broken people. The fears and flaws that come out, like monsters that hide in the woods, and as much as we feel sorry, we almost want him to be miserable if it makes such good music (“If you don’t break my heart, I’ll do it myself” he says later) The songs themselves are gorgeous, Middleton’s guitar playing and arrangements are untouchable, fingerpicked acoustic guitar and gentle piano on Devastation, to bursts of Static and reverby drums on Bear With Me. His voice, a little shaky, very unprofessional, very much a guitarist unused to singing, picks apart himself with remarkable honesty. A Happy Medium marries a glitchy, infectous dance beat and guitar with the genuine loathing of the refrain “Woke up today / Realised I hate myself / My face is a disease” Yet, by puncturing any moment of self pity or portentous weight with a joke or a sly Scottish dig, he may be miserabilist but he hasn’t lost his sense of humour. And by the end of the record, I think chinks are forming in the armour, on Choir and A New Heart, that he’s pulling out of a terminal dive. That he isn’t doomed after all, and at the end every time I’m left very slightly and strangely uplifted by this confessional.

Four Tet

Everything Ecstatic

A friend described this record as having a track that “Sounds like a building site” (A Joy) Which, whilst slightly off the mark, shows how obstinate Kieran Hebden can be. His last album Rounds is one of my favourite records, glitchy, cyclical, and very pretty. This is altogether a harder listen. I wasn’t sure about for a long time, but it was when I stopped concentrating, trying to work it out, that I got it. There are some amazing rhythms and beats in here, constructed out of what seems like anything and everything except regular musical instruments, married with some moments that genuinely take your breath away like the piano and funk breakdown from about 1:40 on Sun Drums and Soil. Sometimes it hurts your ears, but sometimes it sounds like the musical version of the image in that Sony advert where they fire a hundred thousand bouncy coloured balls down a San Francisco street.

Laura Veirs

Year of Meteors

This record is a bit folky, but it’s also very otherworldly, having beats and double bass and things that would make Devendra Banhart’s hair turn. With songs namechecking chemical elements and mermaids. Salt water and pigeons. It’s pretty much as un rock and roll as you can get, and Veirs’ voice has a wonderful, grounded, quality that’s equal parts ordinary and soulful. I remain enchanted by this album every time I listen to it. I don’t know why, maybe she casts spells on me.

The National

Alligator

A lot of the focus of this album has been on the dark, character driven lyrics of Matt Berniger, delivered in his wonderfully croaky, low cohen-esque voice. But there’s a lot more to this album than that, the music refuses to be as formulaic as one would expect or may have been led to believe. The drums are key, syncopated and snappy, that sound like Steven Morris’ best work with Joy Division, propel the songs forward and give these great songs energy and a framework and teeth.

Amadou & Mariam

Dimanche a Bamako

This album sounds like it’s title, Dimanche a Bamako meaning ‘Sunday in Bamako.’ Light and breezily produced by Manu Chao, it feels like a long sweep through the Malian capital, songs drifting in and out as if from open windows. The synergy between the blind duo is wonderful to hear, with Amadou’s exceptional guitar playing and Mariam’s vocals. Original funky and playful, one of the most unexpected treats this summer.

Saul Williams

Saul Williams

A magnificent, published, and oft studied poet, you’d expect Saul Williams forays into music to be either half hearted beats-to-poems fare, or something more embarrassing. Turns out this man is just frighteningly talented. On his second album Williams speaks, and rhymes, raps and spits out verse after verse of furious, acerbic, untouchable lyrics. A quantum leap ahead of his peers, the wordplay here is stunning, and his technical skills as a rapper stand up with the best of them. The music is adventurous but always funky, from straight hip-hop production to rock laced tracks courtesy of Zack de la Rocha and Serj Tankian. Angry and political and smart. It appeals to the most base musical urges, and tickles the cerebral cortex with every listen. Lethal.

Low

The Great Destroyer

More slow motion magic from Low. All their best music sounds like a building slowly falling down in a snowstorm, but they’ve added a buzzing Jesus and Mary Chain esque fuzz since previous’ album Trust’s revelatory single ‘Canda’. Opening with some of the catchiest material they’ve ever written in Monkey and California, this is a really strong collection of tracks that show Low haven’t lost their edge or bite, and that nobody does that fine line between heartbreaking and threatening as well as they do. On Death of a Salesman and When I Go Deaf, they talk about stopping writing songs and ‘Scratching out lines’. But if when your ninth album is as good as this, I hope they stick at it.

Caribou

The Milk of Human Kindness

No longer known as Manitoba, this record plays with the same sunny, harmonised, electronica as it’s previous name. He widens the horizons a little, trying a few new hings, with more vocals and some more acoustic tracks alongside the more beat driven ones. Lacking possibly the irrestible catchiness of Manitoba’s Up In Flames, this is still a fantastic box of tricks. A totally charming, innocent, record.

Aimee Mann

The Forgotten Arm

Light years from most female singer-songwriter territory. The Forgotten Arm digs deep through small town America’s characters and problems, Alcoholic and heartbroken and unable to break out of their own cycles. A bit like Raymond Chandler’s What we talk about when we talk about love, it’s acidic and playful with any hope her characters might have. Less playful and witty than her early guitar led stuff, this is rootsy and deep, Aimee not showing off quite as much as she used to, but giving more every time you listen to it.

M83

Before The Dawn Heals Us

This album surprised a lot of people, rather than droning MBV esque soundscapes and white noise of their previous album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, M83 turned to a different palette, making a far more varied album tinged with spoken word interludes, fireworks, car crashes, and bucketloads of eighties pop. When it works, it makes for a pulsating, much higher tempo listen, I even heard the driving hooky Teen Angst heard in the Oxford branch of Topshop. But it’s a very delicate balance to keep, and on a few tracks like Can’t Stop, it unfortunately sounds like some of Vangelis more ridiculous moments. Still, I think the good by far outweighs the bad here, and whilst it’s flawed, it’s a brave experiment that pushes on their sound.

Danger Doom

The Mouse and The Mask

DJ Danger Mouse’s second great achievement of the year, having already revamped and revitalised and produced the Gorillaz second album Demon Days and filling it with some absolute pop gems. On this record he teams up with the schizophrenic but talented MF Doom, on twelve tracks laced with cartoon samples, a strange oriental flavour and infectious twisty beats. His style seems to bring out the best of Doom, who rises to the occasion with some typically complex and off the wall lyrics, wrapping himself round seemingly tongue twisting phrases for fun. Talib Kweli and Ghostface turn up to join in some well chosen guest spots.

The Animal Collective

Feels

An often infuriating band. This is a less self indulgent collection of magical campfire songs, more dreamy, more able to hold their spell than sometimes before. Multicoloured and childish, unable not to bring a smile to bear.

Sigur Ros

Takk…

You all know about Sigur Ros by now. Hey, they even popped up on TV. A hasty retreat from the bleak bleak ‘()’ record and the Merce Cunningham E.P Ba Ba, Ti Ki, Di Do. The argument can be made about retreading old ground, but I think they’ve gained something from their journey. More focused than before perhaps. There are still moments here that can re inspire faith in them.

The Mountain Goats

The Sunset Tree

Whether you like this will depend on your opinion of the mountain goats going from Home made tape recordings, complete with four track hiss, to produced full stereo records. I think John Darnielle’s lost a little bite somewhere on the line, but it makes for more complex emotional terrain. The previous We Shall All Be Healed, is a better album. But even his slightly off material is lyrically the realm of what most of us dream of achieving.

Lightning Bolt

Hypermagic Mountain

This is a scary record. Incredibly fast pounding drum fills circled by a buzzing bass that goes from sounding like a bass to a guitar and then back again. At 300mph.
Add occasional shrieking low down in the mix to make a very strange, curiously danceable, record. And fast. Very very fast.