Loath as I am to give M.I.A. clicks on the afternoon I learn she’ll appear on Info Wars, I won’t lie about the impact of Arular in the spring of 2005: the year I bought the apartment in which I live and the year I joined the ILE message board. The first CD I bought when I’d unpacked, Arular sounded familiar to this Miami boy who grew up with songs about cars that go boom. Switch and Diplo made beats for subwoofers while Maya Arulpragasam chanted/sang with insouciance. Alex Jones and Adolf Hitler — M.I.A. and Kanye sure blemished themselves for the ages.
In 2005, Kanye West became the statue in the park to which pigeons flocked because it was a good place to land before shitting on him had occurred to them. I already found his music quietly turning attenuated on Late Registration, but the arrangements and ambition remained a solid marriage with cracks about to show in the foundations.
I stopped at thirty because on the Sunday before a short work week I lack the fortitude to parse the millimeters separating this National album from that Deerhoof and that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I still appreciate Bloc Party’s debut in theory; singing vulnerably over Coldplay-listening-to-Big-Country was responsible for many thumbs up in 2005. But I still endorse Jack White’s funnest album, in which he plays the piano like the punk he isn’t. And take a bow, Fiona Apple, who like Kate Bush, was tightening her songcraft for the sake of her most addled visions yet.
Meh
John Legend – Get Lifted
Gorillaz – Demon Days
Antony and the Johnsons – I Am a Bird
Sound, Solid
Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock & Roll
The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
My Morning Jacket – Z
Beck – Guero
Common – Be
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
Sleater-Kinney – The Woods
Amadou & Mariam – Dimanche à Bamako
LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane – Thelonious Monk Quartet With John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
Good to Great
The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
M.I.A. – Arular
Kanye West – Late Registration
Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine
The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better
Kate Bush – Aerial
The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree
Spoon – Gimme Fiction
The Jury’s Out
The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Wolf Parade – Apologies to the Queen Mary
Systems of a Down – Mesmerize
Humanizing The Vacuum 