Top 5’s of 2005
2005 was more ‘the year for music’ than it was for film, at least for me. A year of incredible highs and lows personal wise and definitely the most life changing.
Anyway, I did the lists last year, so here they are again:
Top 5 Albums
1.Bloc Party - Silent Alarm. The most exciting indie rock band of 2005 both in terms of a debut album and live performances. Political, emotional and rockin, this has been the most played album of 2005 in the HooveriTunes.
2.Iron and Wine/Calexico - In the Reins. A perfect collaboration between the laid back vocals of Samuel Beam and Calexico’s musical diversity, In the Reins is the crown of new folk sweeping the world. Brilliant.
3.Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning. Comparisons to Bob Dylan are inevitable but you won’t find a rawer compilation of emotions in 2005 than on this record. Probably the 2005 musical equivalent to Elliot Smith’s 2004 A Basement on the Hill. And yeah, speaking of that new folk sound.
4.Beck - Guero (Deluxe Edition). The track ‘Hell Yes’ is now my mobile ring tone because I just love the beats. I nearly broke out in dance on the street while hearing this with my headphones on. The Deluxe edition has some great remixes too (well before they remixed that entire album that is).
5.Sigur Ros - Takk. Sigur Ros are truly one of a kind. While one person hears nothing more than perfect music for their cat, another hears the most inspiring and original music of the year. And if you don’t think Glosoli is the most wonderful and beautiful music videos of 2005, then something is missing inside your soul.
Other Notables: My Morning Jacket - Z, Sufjan Stevens - Illinois, Kaiser Chiefs - Employment, Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, Ryan Adams - Cold Roses, Gorillaz - Demon Days, Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better, Coldplay - X&Y, Kate Bush - Aerial, Wolfmother - Wolfmother, Anthony and Johnstons - I Am A Bird Now. (Note - I heard The Arcade Fire’s Funeral last year so it doesn’t apply this time around)
Biggest Disappointment: David Gray - Life in Slow Motion. What happened to the genius behind White Ladder?
Most Overrated: Coldplay - X&Y - Yeah I’m a fan of theirs but this album isn’t nearly as good as Parachutes or A Rush of Blood to the Head. This sounds redundant but they should go back to their roots if they want to progress their sound.
Top 5 Movies
1. Grizzly Man - Touching, fascinating and will stay with you long after the credits role. Shame no-one actually saw it.
2. House of Flying Daggers - Despite a few too many false endings, this is still the most visually arresting film of 2005 and IMHO slightly better than Yimou Zhang’s Hero. Story wise it’s not on par with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but it’s still amazing viewing. Best seen on the big screen.
3. Shopgirl - A film fall of fallible characters yet so damn interesting to see the choices they make. This one should gain cult status pretty quickly.
4. Dig! - The documentary on the inner workings of two indie bands, the Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. What’s most fascinating is how a band can be on the grasp of greatness and then fuck themselves up.
5. Mysterious Skin - The most disturbing film of 2005 in so many ways but also one of the best. A little uneven here and there but definitely not one of those films you’ll forget about anytime soon.
Other Notables: Closer, Million Dollar Baby, Sin City, 40 Year Old Virgin, Sideways (after seeing it again on DVD, I refrain from my 4/4 rating to 3 1/2/4)
Biggest Disappointment: King Kong - We come to expect more from Jacko and co now. Far too long and not nearly as entertaining as I had hoped.
Most Overrated: Me and You and Everyone We Know. Totally self-indulgent Indie wannabe that tries entirely too hard to be quirky.
Top 5 Gigs
1. Bloc Party (20th July, Hifi Bar) - A sold out gig and hundreds of eager fans shocked these british indie rockers so they put on one hellva show. They’re definitely coming back to tour with album number 2. Get excited!
2. Ryan Adams (The Palace, 27th July) - Adams is one crazy monkey but his two hour plus gig was well worth the cash. I’m just not sure he’s all there but that does make for some exciting music.
3. Sigur Ros (Hammer Hall, 3rd August) - Magical is one word I use a lot but it applies.
4. Micah P Hinson (Northcote Social Club, 7th July) - This gig kinda crept under the radar but I was there to witness a raw talent in the making. Incredible.
5. Airbourne (The Evelyn/Beat Xmas Party, 4th December) - If you’re going to see a band like these guys, the Evelyn is the venue to see them. They also rocked at Meredith apparently and the Beat crowd loved them.
Top 5 Watched TV Shows
1. Lost - One of the most original and most interesting shows since perhaps Twin Peaks, at least season 1 was. Season 2 is proving to be a slight letdown but I’m only half way through.
2. Entourage - This show starts on New Years Day in Australia on Arena but I’ve already seen the first two seasons and it’s well worth a look. The writing is razor sharp. All my male friends love it. Not sure what the girls think. Any takers?
3. Scrubs - God bless DVD because there’s no other format to watch a TV series. A perfect blend of comedy and drama, all wrapped up within 23 minutes. Why this didn’t take off in Australia is beyond me.
4. Curb Your Enthusiasm - Larry David’s hilarious series is kinda like Seinfeld except a little cruder and I love it. David wrote most of the best Seinfeld episodes so you know what to expect here.
5. Beauty and the Geek - Another show just about to air on Australian TV from the creative genius that is Ashton Kutcher (consider that the only sentence ever where you’ll see Kutcher and the word ‘genius’ in one). It’s pure reality trash but more “it’s so bad it’s good”. My female friends love this show.
Top 5 Personal Flickr Photo Favourites
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Top 5 Moments
1. Scoring a graduate job & leaving shiftwork. Leaving shiftwork was one of the best feelings of the year but scoring the new job came a close second. And yes I’m still employed!
2. Graduating University. All those hours and hours spent in lecture halls, tutorials, screening rooms and the uni bar finally paid off.
3. Seldom Seen American Seventies Cinema festival. We drank, we watched, we discussed, we drank some more. I think this will be the first of many festivals held at the Hooverpad since it was great to force myself to watch films I never would have seen otherwise.
4. Purchasing my Canon 350D, three lenses and an external flash kit. Now if only I can take a decent picture!
5. Meeting the Melbourne Purple Sneakers crowd. A friendly bunch of people, giving me the opportunity to photograph people having fun. Not such a bad thing.
So there you have it. Another exhaustive ‘best of’ list. As complete as I can do. NYE in Melbourne looking like a very, very hot one (42 degrees Celsius!) so I shall be running the streets naked looking for as many watering holes as possible. Have fun, play safe and here’s to a busy and exciting 2006!
9 Responses to “Top 5’s of 2005”
I agree that X & Y was a big letdown, but I disagree that they should go back to their roots. I think their biggest problem right now is that there are too many bands copying their sound leading to X & Y sounding like a yet another copycat. I think they should go far away from their roots much like Till Kingdom Come, the best song on the album which happened to also sound the least like classic Coldplay.
Top 5 Films
What a disappointing year 2005 has been for cinema lovers - surely one of the worst in recent memory. Without having yet seen Good Night and Good Luck, Munich, Syriana, A History of Violence, Broken Flowers, or Match Point I really struggled to come up with a Top 5 I was excited about but here goes…
1. Dig!
Hilaaaarious rockumentary tracking the divergent fortunes and outrageous exploits of two bands - The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. One go onto mainstream success (The Dandy’s) the other self-combust under the domineering and slightly deranged leadership of their founding member Anton Newcombe (Jonestown Massacre). Featuring drug busts, wildly over-inflated egos, spaced-out conversations, gigs that break down into brawls with the audience and hilarious rock-star lines (”you broke my sitar, motherfucker!”) the film tops the list for it’s sheer exuberance and vitality.
2. Grizzly Man
Exceptional documentary assembled by Werner Herzog from the increasingly unhinged video-testimonials of Timothy Treadwell detailing his experiences living amongst the wild bears of Alaska. Treadwell’s misguided passion for the grizzlies (and the tragic consequences brought about by his subborn insistence on “taking care” of them) made for one of the year’s most uncomfortable, moving and plain fascinating cinema experiences.
3. The Proposition
Nick Cave’s dark and haunting take on frontier Australia peppered with moments of startling violence and redemptive insight. Featuring great performances, wonderful photography and a uniquely pervading sense of dread. An original and unsettling western set to a mesmerizing score by the big man himself.
4. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Much maligned here on Hooverdust (without it being seen I might add) this is in fact one of the sharpest, smartest, and funniest Hollywood films of the year. Both Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer are great, Shane Black’s screenplay and direction are sharp enough to cut glass, and the film’s tongue-in-cheek approach is both clever and winning.
5. Sideways
A “buddy” road movie about wine, friendship, the opposite sex, and the discovery of self. Terrific return to form from Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt) and Paul Giamatti was most definitely robbed at this year’s Oscars.
Honourable mentions:
Crash
Top 5 Event Movies
None of these were good enought to make my top 5 proper but just for fun…The popcorn flicks:
1. Serenity
While lacking the budgetary and marketing muscle of other films on this list, Serenity was by far the best special effects/sci-fi film of the year. Joss Whedon’s attention to character development and snappy dialogue made the film’s parent show Firefly (and let’s not forget the mighty Buffy and Angel) compulsive viewing so it is little surprise that his feature debut contains all the elements that made his work on TV so special.
2. Sin City
Visually audacious, structurally clever (in a smugly Tarrantino-esque fashion) and truck loads of fun. A roller-coster ride through Frank Miller’s comic-noir universe (brilliantly realised on the big-screen by himself and Robert Rodriguez).
3. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith
In which Lucas finally (well, almost) pulls all the elements together. Whiz-bang action, epic character arcs and the myth-making wonder of the first trilogy are all present and accounted for. If only the dialogue and acting were up to scratch. But then again, since when has a Star Wars actor ever had to ask: “George, what’s my motivation?” Ok, maybe Harrison or Sir Alec enquired in ‘77 but unfortunately Lucas still doesn’t have an answer.
4. Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
Containing all the magic and wonder of the books (for which I have a soft spot) but undermined by the incompetent acting stylings of the now rapidly growing Daniel Radcliffe. Still…pretty hard to resist.
5. War of The Worlds
By no means perfect, Spielberg’s take on the HG Wells classic was nonetheless a finely oiled thrill machine from start to finish. Pretty uncompromising in it’s visceral “in-the-moment” narrative structure as well. The audience only gains information through the direct experiences of the lead characters. There are no cutaways to balding men with rolled-up sleeves and paper coffee cups in a control room somewhere providing expository plot details or portentously intoning the words “Oh…My…God” with as much dramatic gravitas as possible. A real return to form for El Spielbergo.
Top 5 Albums
1. Kate Bush - Aerial
After 12 very long years the first lady of ingenious quirk-pop returned with a masterful double album of extraordinary scope and invention. The first disc contains 7 individual songs that see Ms Bush singing the Pi calculation to 112 decimal places, pondering the possible whereabouts of an elderly Elvis, reciting a domestic spell for how to be invisible and singing moving odes to both her new son and late mother. The amazing song-cycle on the second disc is a continuous suite tracking the course of a single day from afternoon through to sunrise the following morning that has the effect of creating a constant parade of images in your head. Music as aural cinema if you like. Ravishing melodies, wonderful music and that voice. Genius.
2. Micah P. Hinson & The Gospel of Progress
Great country-tinged blues by young twenty-something who sound roughly seventy-five years old. The final cut, “The Day Texas Sank To The Bottom of The Sea” is a quietly building powerhouse of raw emotional that is simply devastating.
3. Antony and The Johnsons - I Am A Bird
Moving album of laid back torch-songs by the gender-confused Antony Hegarty. Features Lou Reed, Boy George and Rufus Wainwright in supporting roles.
4. My Morning Jacket - Z
Nice. Sounds a bit like a rocky update of The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.”
5. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Tepid Peppermint Wonderland
Career spanning best-of. A great introduction to a band that makes authentic 60’s sounding psychedelic rock music with heart. See “Dig!” for more information.
Honourable mentions:
Amorphous Androgynous - Alice in Wonderland
Beck - Guero
Gorilaz - Demon Days
Sigur Ros - Takk
Cheers.
Happy New Year Everyone!
Kudos on the list. I was pleasantly suprised to see a lot of similarity with the list I’m putting together for my blog. Anyway, I’m still working on mine as it has become an annual (fun!) chore.
Nick - I never said Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was shit I simply stated that there was no single reason tempting me to see it.
JR - Lists are exhaustive but definitely fun. I like the new blog look btw. And when did Wordpress 2.0 get released?
Scott - That’s some extensive lists over at your site.
Oh, I was with you right up to your dig at “Me and You and Everyone Else We Know”! - but other than that, I like your film list, even if I thought “House of Flying Daggers” was kinda lame.
Glad you liked “Mysterious Skin”. I also thought it was one of the films of the year.
I am the indie-kid younger brother of Ellen, who made a remark about the best albums of 2005, and was directed to this site. 2005 was, truly, the year of music. Perhaps we all think that music is fantastic when we’re 16, but so many albums released last year have strutted their way into my all-time favourite lists.
My Best of ‘05 List:
#1. Sufjan Stevens - Come On! Feel The Illinoise!
#2. Sigur Ros - Takk…
#3. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
#4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl
#5. Animal Collective - Feels
Honourable (VERY honourable) mentions:
Eels - Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
The Most Serene Republic - Underwater Cinematographer
Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
Architecture In Helsinki - In Case We Die
The Cat Empire - Two Shoes
The Redwalls - De Nova
The Decemberists - Picaresque
Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
Stars - Set Yourself On Fire
Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World
Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock ‘n Roll
Sufjan Stevens, what can I say? The man is a visionary talent, who will only become more and more important in the progression of music as time, and his 50 states project, rolls on. The 2 sides of his lyrical brain are woven beautifully together through a wonderful eye for melody and strange and wonderful rhythmic structures - all I can say is that I will treasure this album for the rest of my life, and it is one of the purest expressions of creative loose-letting I’ve ever come across. Brilliant beyond words.
Sigur Ros: you know it, I know it, the lads are made of different stuff to the rest of us. I don’t fling the word ‘genius’ around as lightly as some, but the sheer beauty - the sheer, unadulterated, sometimes frightening beauty - of this album demands the label.
Okkervil River are an indie band from America who released in 2005 an album so superb as to defy belief. Sliding from timid, beautiful folk to cataclysmic, jarring rock ‘n roll, to heartwrenching ballads, this is one of only two albums in the world to have ever made me cry. And boy howdy, by the time “A Stone” marched around, I was blubbering like a little child. Will Sheff, the lead singer and songwriter, is one of those independent gems who will be revered by the generation of 20 years from now.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club enacted the most intense shift I’ve ever witnessed in a band, going from their brand of droney, psychadelic rock ‘n roll in the Brian Jonestown Massacre tradition, to a back-porch in Alabama in 1890. Part gospel, part soul, part delta blues, this is an album of raw, energised, guitar-driven blues and folk, filtered through a modern psychadelic rock band. This album is simultaneously from another time and vividly our own: jangly tambourine, boot-stomps on a hardwood floor, wailing harmonica, titles like “Devil’s Waitin’” interweave flawlessly (somehow) with modern, epic production. The results are stunning: combining the swagger of, say, Oasis, and the acoustic perfection of Neutral Milk Hotel, BRMC make for some of the purest, most enjoyable listening of the year.
Animal Collective… my goodness, what a band. If you have never heard any of this positively bizarre quartet, I couldn’t recommend it enough. Quite frankly, “Feels” is some of the wierdest music I’ve ever heard, and a fair-sized chunk of my music collection is devoted to the wierd! Not bizarre for the sake of it, Animal Collective are energised and calm, deviously clever and benign, psychotically strange but also unplaceably familiar. This album is what we would have got had the Beatles stayed together and all moved to a hippy commune, smoked even more drugs, and spent 13 years perfectly crafting this beautiful freak.
So that’s my list. Make of it what you will, even venture into something if your curiosity is piqued, but this is mostly for me, as I really do enjoy writing this kind of thing (and propagandising my favourite bands).
Nice to meet you, by the way.
Yes I’ve heard Okkervil River, only recently and liked them very much. But Animal Collective I just couldn’t get into at all. ‘Weird’ music is always extremely subjective ground (and you all know what I mean that this) but these guys just don’t evoke anything inside me at all. I tried a while back, I really did but I just couldn’t connect. But anyone who feels something more than the norm from these types of eclectic avenues, I give full praise to.
Appreciating Animal Collective was not an easy thing. It took me, I think, about 6 months. I’d read some feifying reviews, so I had a listen of the album: my only reactions were confusion and mild revulsion in parts. I deleted the album and thought no more of it. It is only recently, in the last couple of weeks, that the niggling spot at the back of my mind finally got the better of me and I re-aquired it, to peer into the demented mind again. I listened to it three times, and nothing. I didn’t like what I was hearing, but something kept drawing me to keep on listening. On the fourth, it hit me; I couldn’t believe I was listening to the same album I had been. Every single sound seemed so perfect and imtimate, every melody so devastatingly simple, and every second pure musical joy.
It’s hard work (though certainly not as hard as Beck’s “Odelay”, which took me a solid 10 years to appreciate), but it’s magnificently worth it if you can manage it.
[...] And I’m slowly working through my lists at the moment. Same style as last year. Posted on Monday December 11, 2006 in: Music General No Comments [...]