Best of 2005

Dan

Your Best Entertainment Value 2005

1. Spoon - Gimme Fiction

I'm still kicking myself for not putting "Kill The Moonlight" higher on my list the year it came out. One of my favorite albums of the millennium so far. Since I don't have a clear cut favorite this year, I'll make amends by putting this Plastic Ono influenced CD at the top. Gimme some truth or fiction. I'm flexible.

2. The Redwalls - de nova

Chicago's very own answer to Badfinger. Or is it the Rutles playing it straight? Beatles, Stones, Faces, Lennon, Elvis Brothers - you could wear yourself out playing spot the influence with this album. The most fun release of the year, unless your enjoy skeet shooting. Then it would be the Mariah Carey CD.

3. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - S/T

"Label? We don't need no stinkin' label!" That's reason enough to like this band and forgive them for having a silly name that's hard to abbreviate. (Call them the Clap?) A Talking Heads influence is noticeable, but that's only part of the musical smorgasbord.

4. The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan

Is it a tribute album to Led Zeppelin or merely Jack White's audition tape for the Baja Marimba Band? I'm just disappointed Meg didn't choose "Boys" as her vocal showcase. (Imagine acerbic LEE comment here.)

5. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Is he really going to make an album for all fifty states? Or will he cheat and just make an EP for Rhode Island? Would have placed higher on the list if Stevens had written a song about Ray Rayner instead of John Wayne Gacy.

6. My Morning Jacket - Z

I like their old sound better, but this is groovy, too. Hate the cover so much I moved the album down one spot in protest.

7. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

There's got to be at least one album in the top ten with a vocal appearance by Emmylou Harris and this is it.

8. The Magic Numbers - S/T

Another brother and sister act to deal with and this time there's two sets of siblings shuffling the deck. They've got a pop sound with sunny harmonies and the whole boy-girl-boy-girl thing makes the comparisons to the Mamas and the Papas inevitable.

9. Black Mountain - S/T

I'm thinking Black Sabbath meets Velvet Underground and forms a band in Haight-Ashbury with a Neil Young wannabe as the front man. But enough about what I'm having for lunch. This album is heavy, trippy and all together far out.

10. Bruce Springsteen - Devils & Dust

Hey, only one codger made the top ten this year and he barely crept in at that. Other contenders for the veteran's committee inductee were Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Neil Diamond, but the Boss won out despite the fact he ignored Red Skelton's warning, "Don't do the blue."

Vault Magic

Bob Dylan - No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (Bootleg Series Vol. 7)

And the Martin Scorsese DVD documentary it rode in on, too. Pretty amazing stuff to listen to and watch. You know, it must be sad when the voice of your generation is Eminem.

Also special anniversary editions of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" and Patti Smith's "Horses." Plus The Band's "A Musical History" box set, which I got late in the year and still haven't opened yet. (And I think it has LEE's name in it.)