Factory Boxed Cassette lot – $100.00 (+/-)

Canadian etailer Kool Breeze is offering a fine and fairly-priced lot of six Factory Boxed Cassettes from the 1980s this week: Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and Still; New Order's Brotherhood; A Certain Ratio's The Old and the New; and Quando Quango's Pigs and Battleships, which...you can skip that last one.

Over the years, I've come across 16 of the 22 Factory Box Cassettes through casual collecting, but I've never seen Substance, Squirrel and G-Man, the Railway Children's Reunion Wilderness, Wim Mertens' Educes Me, nor the Section 25 releases Always Now and From the Hip (all images ©A Factory Discography). I won't pay through the teeth, but I might as well try for a complete set, so keep an eye out for me.

Cerysmatic have assembled a perfect guide to the cassette series, and are curating an impressive museum of other artifacts from FAC's backlot (including some we'd rather not be reminded of). Dennis Remmer's long-cherished Factory Discography site, which I've lived on since the late '90s, has a worthy partner.

Force 3: Warrior of Light CD – $137.50

Explicit, zealous Christian rock is a tough genre to broach, critically speaking. While you can definitely chuckle at the music and lyrics—no less comical than most '80s metal (Europe*, Dokken, etc.)—the religious aspect of this music is too often a point of mockery. From the outside, Christian self-expression in mainstream art forms—pop music especially—is usually dismissed as lame. It's a reaction, I'll confess, that's still automatic with me, but I try to work past it because I have some very close, very bright friends who've dedicated themselves to Christianity, and when someone just as smart as you is A) given to this and B) willing to humor you in intelligent, even confrontational discussions about their convictions, you have to return the favor. You have to be fair, even if you think the vast majority of devout Christians are not.

The title track from Force 3's 1988 LP Warrior of Light is a touchstone for Christian metal, a subset most people equate with Stryper. In truth it really doesn't go much deeper than Stryper: despite a stable of '80s acts and a sustained explosion in popularity since the mid-'90s, high-energy Christian metal (in all its forms) has not produced a mainstream crossover act since the days of the yellow and black. Plenty of bands have broken through with pop and rock hits (King's X, P.O.D., Further Seems Forever, Switchfoot), but they're generally devotional, emotional acts, based on catharsis and empathy, not the "Let's rock!" bravado Stryper, Force 3, Bride and their ilk were mining in the '80s. As it turned out that battle couldn't be won, since abandon, rebellion and debauchery were the driving forces behind stadium metal's popularity. You just can't replace "Bark at the moon!" with "Warrior of light! Destroy the force of darkness!"

Against these odds, Stryper succeeded—I guess you can replace "Bark at the moon!" with "To Hell with the Devil!"—but whether they were really a triumph for Christian metal has been a bitter argument from day one. Stryper's now-we're-Christian-now-we're-not see-saw was untenable: they suppressed their supposed faith to make money, writing amorphously positive, sure-fire love ballads like "Honestly," and employing an inarguably lascivious image (look at the armadillos in their trousers). Though they tried to blame parent label Enigma (then home to decidedly un-Christian acts like Sonic Youth, the Dead Milkmen and the faux-demonic Cramps) for the mixed messages, Stryper brothers Michael and Robert Sweet constantly fought over how publically and intensely to address their Christianity. In this interview, for example, drummer Robert casually characterizes Stryper as "a rock band who were Christian." His brother was much more expressive of his faith, and clearly won the argument, as by 1987, Stryper were—and this is truly unbelievable—handing out bibles with their logo on the cover in an effort to clarify their stance. Apparently Stryper transcends the whole false idol/blasphemy deal.

Force 3 obviously never made the mark Stryper did, at least outside the hardcore Christian metal fanbase, which, despite its fervor, is not a large flock. Earlier in this post I linked to the discography of Pure Metal records, the preeminent Christian metal imprint of the 1980s that Force 3 called home. By 1990, after modest success, Pure Metal was purchased by larger Christian independent Star Song, who made a lot of money off of Petra's borderline hits "For Annie" and "More Power to Ya" (which Tim McGraw covered in 2001—you can download the performance from John Schlitt's site). Star Song was in turn bought out by EMI, who merged the roster with its Christian imprint Sparrow in 1994. Just how small is the Christian rock world? Check out Sparrow/Star Song's site as of 2006.

Download | Force 3: "Warrior of Light" (at MySpace)

*Between 1992 and 2004, Europe released six albums. They were all greatest hits collections.

XTC: "Science Friction" 7" – $7,050.00

Here's a case of "rarity" gone all wrong. XTC's 1977 debut single, "Science Friction"/"She's So Square," was withdrawn in favor of a more marketable gimmick: a three-track 12" with a 3D sleeve called 3DEP. Setting aside the band's irksome smirking (and Andy Partridge's ass in white pants), this single wasn't deleted for any shocking or secret reason. It just didn't look to make as much money, or draw as many curious eyes in the smaller 7" racks. If both were around, buyers would obviously go for the cheaper 7". Profit margins. End of story.

Unlike Soft Boys troubador Robyn Hitchcock, XTC never had that semi-detached romanticism ("Flesh Number One" = Heaven). They never seemed to say "Yes, our polished songcraft can be overbearingly assured, but we don't take it that seriously." Not that it's a requirement, it's just that when your lyrics are so often so self-deprecating, you can't lay them over theory-rooted, refined pop without begging questions of duality (e.g. you're too smart to be this dumb). By the time you get to the mid-'80s "Dear God" era, the academic cauldron is overflowing with fatuous ivory-tower couplets and self-righteous Puritanism. Of course in 1977 this wasn't an issue—they had an electric accordion player for Christ's sake. Not exactly "Respectable Street." At the outset, XTC were just another precious, elitist "Punk's for yobs" student band. I mean look at his ass. What is that?

The problem gets worse when these artists get older, and mock their youthful bravado. Why should anyone invest anything in these songs if the people who wrote them are on record blushing at how bad they are, all but disavowing them?

"'Science Friction' is just ploddy, a snapshot of you with spots and a haircut like Dave Hill's."—Andy Partridge in Record Collector, February 1999.

Calling out your own insufferable insecurity only confirms your harshest critics' barbs, and confuses your fanbase. Let the music speak for itself, Andy.

Whoever our seller is, he's been trying to get £5,000 for this single for over a year (here's the still-live link to the last post). XTC fans have been chuckling about him since the auction first appeared in late 2004, and will probably continue to for some time, though the recent drop to £4,000 edges us ever-closer to affordability.

Various Artists: Jump Jamaica Way LP – $960.00

Jump Jamaica Way is one of the earliest compilations from Studio One founder Clement Dodd. Dating from 1963 (the year Dodd opened Studio One and signed an unknown local named Bob Marley), it contains formative recordings from the Maytals, Alton Ellis and Skatalites founder Tommy McCook. A few of these tracks (and/or versions) have eluded the unstoppable torrent of Jamaican box sets and retrospectives over the last five years, which helps explain the price tag, but there's a bit more to the story.

In order to make Studio One seem larger than life, Dodd used the aliases "Coxsone," "N.J." and "C.S." Dodd freely, an emerging trend that would dominate and obfuscate Jamaican music from rocksteady through dub's apex in the '70s and '80s. Winking liner note misinformation, undifferentiated UK pressings, poor recordkeeping, and a secretive, cool anonymity ensured very few people would ever know the whole story. The chronology is there—when songs were recorded and charted (scroll down), who performed and wrote them—but production minutiae was just that, and was usually ignored.

Going on this picture of a straight-black Coxsone pressing, it seems clear where this red vinyl version falls in the scheme of things. Coxsone was the primary imprint Dodd used, but most Jamaican records were pressed repeatedly within the island, each run a kind of class designation (an early run for DJs, a higher-priced run for export and those who could afford it, and a no-frills run for locals). It would seem this red vinyl copy is the deluxe version of Jump Jamaica Way, and that ND ("N.J. Dodd") records was Dodd's luxury imprint.

You might be surprised to find colored vinyl goes back to the days of 78RPM records as a marketing tool, but that's about all it's good for: these "collectibles"—especially opaque colored records—are sonically inferior to straight black vinyl. The dyes result in blunt, shallow grooves. Right off the presses you'll notice the treble is fuzzy, and the low end is mud (audiophiles take note: they won't even play on your $15,000 laser turntable). Sound quality aside, this is probably among the more historic post-mento Jamaican LPs, a high-end item that appears to be in superb condition.

Nirvana: "Love Buzz" 7" – $1,225.00

Not long ago, a complete collection of Sub Pop's Singles Club releases sold for $4500. The inaugural release, Nirvana's revved-up cover of the 1969 Shocking Blue track "Love Buzz," is still (arguably) the holy grail of grunge collectibles. This seller is asking $1500 for a copy, which is not (relatively) outrageous or without precedent (it has gone for much more), but it may be a fake. Think about how many Nirvana fans are out there. How many are filthy rich, or young and filthy rich, or sleeping under a six-foot "KURT COBAIN 1967-1994" poster? Kind of like calculating infinity. As you might expect, demand far outweighs supply: "Love Buzz" has been bootlegged voraciously, so much so that the proprietor of the premiere Nirvana discography has tried to document every legitimate copy. Commendable.

During the superbly slick Britpop documentary Live Forever, posh music-crit lifer Jon Savage tossed off the increasingly popular view that Nirvana were the only decent group to come out of grunge. In a very general and dismissive way, Savage is right, but there were loads of good songs from admittedly mediocre bands that thousands of kids might never have heard without the hype. SST, Touch & Go, Homestead—hype kept these labels profitable or at least afloat for a few extra years. And for that the whole thing was probably worth the instant co-option, the exhausting monotony of its undeserving, phony beneficiaries, and your embarrassing old photos (like the one of me at the senior-high pep rally, wearing my huge black sweater. For the record, I was boycotting the rally, but was nabbed in the parking lot by the principal and marched in ceremoniously, to catcalls of "Ott, how drunk are you?" For the record, very).

In the end, Robert Plant was probably also correct. I bristled at his condescending tone, at what it would mean if he were right—that you could brush such a formative moment aside in one sentence—but his brief treatise on What Nirvana Meant, uttered during the History of Rock N' Roll series, is truer the farther we get from 1991: "I think what happened is that you finally got your own punk."

Unlike UK punk, where a prideful caricature exposed and incited an abandoned, impotent class, leading to an explosion of different ideas and ideals—of youth-empowerment and self-expression, DIY, gender equality (uhh...maybe)—grunge was largely a media property. It changed music and fashion, but the profit margins and channels of commerce remained the same. You still went to awful shows, you still did fake drugs, you still drank whatever you skimmed from your parents, and thought they were the most amazing shows ever. You went to school, you made mixed tapes, you wore flannel shirts. You became sexually extroverted and dyed your hair and all of a sudden the skaters and Cure kids weren't so weird anymore. You started dating them. You were having a very, very good time.

This was awful for people who wanted to change things, who wanted to make people care about or at least debate the authenticity of their favorite artists. A lot of people will tell you that's a fool's game, because you can't win, but that doesn't mean you quit playing. You don't have to base your life on these questions to the extent that you ruin friendships, dump girlfriends, or kill yourself, but if you really care about music, it's something you should think about. Most people don't, and didn't then. Most people listened to Candlebox.

Credibility is real, if deterministic and subjective. To ignore it is to allow yourself to be taken advantage of, to become a pawn (in short, to listen to Candlebox). But in the early stages of grunge, we had a possible problem. A legitimate band, a band of people who cared about authenticity, broke through unscathed—Nirvana—and that, as the title of the aforementioned 1991 movie so succinctly puts it, is why punk broke. A lot of critics appropriate this moment as evidence of pop music's meaninglessness, railing against the illusion of its underground, damning an insecure, incestuous, elitist in-crowd with more rules and cold coolness than a Soho opening. That stance, coupled with Nirvana playing at frat parties, was a wake-up call to kids who wanted their own scene. It was a warning that fashion—so liberating at first—is instantly reductive, and that caring about, knowing about, and supporting music—whatever genre you prefer—is hard work.

But Nirvana's success didn't mean "music is just music" or that cred was a sham: it proved that authenticity—reasonable doubt, functional obstinance and unselfish self-determinism—can work on the biggest stages. Cobain shared his unmatched standing and finances with every musician, record label and distributor that brought him the music that mattered. He gave back on a ridiculous scale, in ways that made no sense, and whether or not his music matched up to his heroes' (it didn't), Nirvana did something that hasn't happened since: they reaffirmed the fairytale.

Marc Bolan: "Hippy Gumbo" 7" – $2,200.00

Lo, the sham. Obviously snatched up by a wealthy T. Rex collector, this marks the second time in a year someone has paid more than $2,000 for a copy of this single. Part of the early Bolan fiasco, "Hippy Gumbo" dates from the florid sorcerer's apprentice phase of Mark/Marc Feld/Bowland/Bolan a.k.a. Toby Taylor a.k.a. the guitarist from John's Children a.k.a Zinc Alloy. Marc's fake last name wasn't the only thing that sounded just like Dylan. I rarely see this mentioned by critics anymore, but it's in the Wikipedia entry, so hopefully going forward the etymology of Bolan will be as synonymous with T. Rex as "Get it On": Bo (b Dy) lan.

Mark Feld was a deluded, easily-led famewhore (what, he gets a free pass because he's dead?). People like this are a dime a dozen; you'll run into ten or twenty in a given night on the city, all convinced of their uniqueness, willing to change their look, name, schtick and sound at the drop of a hat if it means playing to a bigger audience. And it's ok, because they're geniuses—anything they do is genius. Most of these people go back to the suburbs they came from, strung out, cursing at the radio from their parents' basements by age thirty. But every once in a while they meet an older, sadder shadow of themselves, whose only remaining weapon—the only blade time can't dull—is the money they'll gladly spend to live vicariously through and/or profit by their puppet. Malcolm thought he was doing this with the Pistols, and was understandably crushed when they out-maneuvered and out-willed him. Bolan, for his entire career, drifted whichever way these mirror winds blew, from backer to backer, manager to manager, agent to publicist to disc jockey to girlfriend, ad infinitum. Well, not infinitum.

I guess when you believe your own bullshit to the extent that you sketch out a renaissance faire rock opera called "The Children of Rarn" ten years deep into a crippling fairy fetish, there's ample room for a revolution of the self. And we have all benfited from Bolan's breakdown, when he sailed half-step strut boogie off the planet with the deliriously unserious Electric Warrior and The Slider. Not least of all for their influence on Bowie ("Uncle Arthur" is timeless), these records were celebrated for killing the '60s in the UK, and left their mark on everyone raised in their wake. Love and Rockets' entire career is one long-winded tribute to the Rex. Smiths ("Panic"/"Metal Guru"), Pixies ("Dress"/"The Groover"), Oasis (half of their discography, but "Cigarettes and Alcohol" is ridiculous)...you could even make the argument Duran Duran lifted "Get it On" for "Hungry Like the Wolf." Every rock band's got at least one T. Rex ripoff in their catalog. But Bolan's underlying desperation—the fathomless insecurity inverse to his stratospheric ego—was his undoing, and he glommed on to Ringo, Bowie, Alice, Elton, Cilla et al to reassure himself it was real.

Bolan had no idea where to go, his success derived from a persona and music he most likely didn't take care about. He wanted to cast real spells, not figurative ones, and though he got off on the fame as some kind of mystic transubstantiation, and forced in the occasional sorcerer/dragon couplet, the press broke his back over T. Rextasy, knowing the upstart had been playing a chameleonic game for some time. At which point Bolan doubled-back on Bowie, positing the Zinc Alloy false-front—grotesquely similar to his bubblegum doppelganger Gary Glitter. He finally jumped onboard Bowie's soul train, before an untimely death in '77, when he was excitedly lobbying for the Sex Pistols while ruing them on record ("Teen Riot Structure" offers some juicy psychotherapy on Rotten: "I fed him with my nightmares, he ate my dreams as well"). It would have ended in tears anyway.

Reign Ghost: Reign Ghost (1970) LP – $1,425.00

Reign Ghost evolved from arguably the most outrageously-named psych/prog band of all time, the Christopher Columbus Discovery of New Lands Band. Like me, you probably thought that name ended before it actually did. Read it again. It's no When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water, but it's close.

The most likely reason this original pressing of Reign Ghost's second LP went for $1,400 is that they became Christmas, a.k.a. Spirit of Christmas, a band with something of a name in these circles. Both Christmas LPs, and Reign Ghost's, have been reissued by Candian, Italian and New Jersey labels over the years, on CD and vinyl (the Reign Ghost CD is a two-fer; you can still pick them up from the stalwart Forced Exposure, without whom, music like this would never be heard again). Unfortunately I don't have an MP3 for you today, because I have never heard Reign Ghost, which is a first for this column. Given the incessant comparison in catalog descriptions, I'm confident that, like every other band in America at the time, Reign Ghost bit Bathing at Baxter's-era Jefferson Airplane. Singer Lynda Squires must have had a pretty appealing set of pipes for this to surpass the Open Mind's $1,258 tag.

The strangest thing about Reign Ghost/Christmas is the Andy Kaufman-esque persistence of their main songwriter, Bob Bryden. Subsequent to prog's fall from grace and two failed solo albums, Bob formed, of all things, a by-the-numbers punk band in 1982, called Benzene Jag (their one 7" was called "Fuck Off 1984").

But that's not even the end of the story. In a career twist to rival Ricky Gervais' pre-David Brent turn as Seona Dancing, Bob went under the ridiculous pseudonym Simon De Beaupre from 1984 through 1988, recording atrocious Euro synth-pop under the impossibly awesome name Age of Mirrors.

Unbelievably, both the Benzene Jag 7" and Age of Mirrors' self-released 1987 album Screenplay are available on eBay right now, from different stores. Do you have any idea how nuts that is? That's Jupiter-Moon-Saturn-Mars times whaaaaat?

50 Songs I Listened to a Great Deal in 2005

50. AFX: "PWsteal.ldpinch.D" | I don't know whether it was all bullshit—whether RDJ was unloading old DATs on us, and spent more time composing the "vintage gear" backstory than the actual music—but amid the uneven Analord 12"s lurked just over 80 solid minutes of melting AFX acid. The synths in "PWsteal.ldpinch.D" (named, like many of the tracks, after a computer virus) make my gums ache every time. In October I did a single-disc comp of my favorites called W32.Fanbot.An@lord, which you may or may not be able to find online.

49. Amerie: "1 Thing" (album version) | Caribou and I were so hella pissed—we sampled "Oh, Culcutta" first! Crucially, we lacked the production, vocal, and compositional skills, physical beauty, dance moves and promotional resources required for anyone to care. "1 Thing" took home "Club Banger" of the year at the 2005 Vibe awards, which Amerie blew off in favor of fashion parties. A good call: hip-hop was using her. The multitude of toasts dubbed over this song for Hot 97 "remixes" made me want to steer Polly into oncoming WSH traffic more than once. Eve's heavy-breathing BS on the single mix was bad enough.

48. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: "Caterwaul" | See below.

47. Apparitions: "Motor Skills" | This won't be out until January '06, but it's around. The full-length is overreaching in the worst way; like Art Brut's "Formed a Band," this song accomplishes everything the Apparitions ever will. Anything more is too much when you pinch the Undertones, Thin Lizzy, Alex Harvey, Roxy Music and the Pistols in just over two minutes. The light at the end of the Darkness.

46. Arab Strap: "Don't Ask Me to Dance" | You can't just put this one on; you have to come home alone on a Friday night with nothing planned, and only the memories of the ass you made of yourself last weekend to comfort you. You have to be staring at her number on the fridge knowing she doesn't want you to call, telling yourself you're not going to drink tonight. The 808 snare (R) and claps (L) save it from utter wrist-slitting miserablism, but you've been warned.

45. Arcade Fire: "Rebellion (Lies)" | Wait, I hate this band. Ah, but they're growing on me. Glad to see they didn't jump for the moon when they got into a real studio, though they did pay too much attention to the snare drum on this one. Like that's a criticism. Great lyrics, tempo, backing vocals, two-note bass slide, and apart from "Haiti," an overall confidence missing on the undeserving Funeral.

44. Björk: "Triumph of a Heart" | The whole concept of Medulla makes me uncomfortable. I've had a problem with hearing my own heartbeat since I was born. It used to keep me up at night, because I naturally sleep on my side, and whenever my ear ended up flat on the pillow, I would hear my heart beating and get completely freaked out. I didn't and don't like that I can't control it, that it's always there, doing whatever it wants without my input. I've tried to ignore it, to pretend I'm over it, but every night I set my head in a position such that I can't hear my heart. You can try not to hear Björk—to pretend you are over her, or that she is over—but she can no more falter or cease than you can stop your heart and write about it.

43. Bloc Party: "So Here We Are" | I swear to God people have been hyping Bloc Party since before they were fucking born. They released 73 EPs in 2004, and by the time Silent Alarm arrived in February 2005, with the creamy winter landscape and Travis font, everyone was sick to death of them. I was big on "Staying Fat" (and thanks to its proximity to "Formed a Band," associated Bloc Party with Art Brut), but the Leeds/Buzzcocks stuff—"Helicopter" and "Banquet"—never grabbed me. I couldn't know how smart these kids really were, but they indeed held on to their best stuff for the LP, a class move. When I heard this song I was so jealous I couldn't even process it until October. I can't imagine where that leaves Lefty's Deceiver, who recorded it five years ago sans the pouting reverb melodrama (I'm kidding, but I'm not kidding).

42. Cardigans: "I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer" | They're still adorable, and finding themselves again. In the wake of a totally unpredicted '90s superstardom, the Cardigans lost the plot, falling victim to the worst sort of clichés (flat live album, check, selfish lead-singer "solo career," check). Their 2003 reunion record Long Gone Before Daylight was justifiably ignored; though "Feathers and Doom" was great, the songwriting just wasn't there. With Super Extra Gravity that piece is back in place. Still can't recommend them in concert, though.

41. Caribou: "The Snow Capes" | People will release twinkling, blurry, "urban" loop songs like this for the rest of time. The style is static; it's the artists that grow in and out of it. Coldcut, Portishead, Massive Attack, DJs Krush, Shadow—all the people who built this house have long since moved out, but it's always there, begging for a fresh coat of paint.

40. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: "In This Home on Ice" | And people say I'm trapped in the 1990s? I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS. Does anyone talking about this band remember Madder Rose? I have to suppress the gag reflex to deal with this guy's hard-panned two-tracked vocals...the forced sloppiness and cracking trail-offs, "Dude my eyes are totally rolling back in my head right now, I'm in a cred trance." I was in this band six or seven times before I graduated from college; if this can move 30,000 units, the Faint should rerelease their first record pronto.

39. Clor: "Magic Touch" | Wait, what was I saying about the Faint? Raging electro funk with an unfortunate Front 242/Chicks on Speed freakout postponing its grand finale, "Magic Touch" was 2005's "Desperate Guys."

38. Coldplay: "Speed of Sound" | Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman's protracted email exchange on ESPN.com was the most appalling piece of inter-literary indulgence published in 2005. The same way actors want to be musicians and musicians want to be actors, sports writers envy the unrestrained topical freedom music writers supposedly enjoy—"Just riffing, man!"—and music writers are fascinated by the hard numbers, big money and undeniable cultural import of professional sports (qualities we can no longer pretend pop music has in common). It was disheartening to see Simmons swing at this foregone pitch, but he's still the best lead-off man in the game: he was crushing it from Thanksgiving through year's end. Klosterman's nostalgia-fueled backpages column has been surprisingly consistent and entertaining, but his juvenile four-letter hatred of Coldplay (which he's been eviscerated for elsewhere) is really laughable given his unrepentant love of "November Rain." Maura once said "Hating Coldplay is like hating margarine," and I'm inclined to agree. I can't believe it's not butter.

37. Constantines: "Soon Enough" | The Cons are starting to grate on me after four years (which is better than I can say of the Grates, who bored me after a few overexcited listens). I was screaming about the Constantines' debut throughout 2001 and 2002, because not only was it one of the best rock records I'd heard in ages, they were and still are one of the best live acts on the planet. But the see-saw is tipping to the Springsteen end of the spectrum, and I just don't buy the working-class poetry thing from these Guelphs: they're too young to really know what they're moaning about.

36. CunninLynguists: "Since When" | You didn't know I'm the premiere hip-hop writer of my generation? I won't pretend to have paid attention to hip-hop in 2005, but between this "Southern rap is not southern rap" kickoff and the downtrodden death-of-the-backpack dream "What'll You Do," their new album A Piece of Strange is bookended wonderfully (unfortunately, what goes on between these two cuts is less spectacular). The twist in "Since When" is its jazz-funk finale, which seems to be saying to the hip-hop community, "Remember when our heroes played instruments?" without attacking turntablism's legitimacy. You can have it both ways.

35. Daft Punk: "Emotion" | Why wasn't Human After All on any best-of 2005 lists? Because it was terrible—I'm not going to pull that contrarian year-end "Everyone slept on it but I totally got this record" crap on you. Thin on ideas and unapologetically ugly, Human After All's singles ("Robot Rock," "Technologic" and the title track) were last-ditch variations on the band's long-established and apparently exhausted talk box electro style. Creatively speaking, the whole record seems like an excuse to stage the far-superior "Emotion" as its last track, the official slot for dreamy downtempo anthems going back to Orbital's "Attached."

34. Deaf Center: "White Lake" | If I had to guess, I would say Deaf Center's Pale Ravine was Prichard D Jams' favorite album of 2005. They skirt Russian waltz self-parody with the plonkier string-hit basslines, but this Norwegian duo manages to mine all the pensive and creepy spaces David Lynch made his career on without explicitly tipping their classicist caps.

33. Doves: "Black and White Town" | Spitting stomp through early-'80s white soul, a little Hall and Oates, lots of Jam...other bad food puns...

32. Drumcorps: "Saddest" | A terrifying proposition from Aaron Spectre, colliding DSP editing and grindcore blast-beats. You can't genrify something this smart and brutal. Get it for free on Cock Rock Disco's earsplitting 2006 MP3 comp.

31. Eluvium: "New Animals From the Air" | I didn't say much about Matt Cooper's music when I called this the Most Overlooked Album of 2005 earlier in the week, because there really isn't much to say. There's nothing cultural or political or reactionary about ambient music. It's not juxtaposing styles or putting forward an agenda, which is why so many people are so personally affected by and invested in the genre, especially people who pay too much attention to pop music. Tunefully amorphous records like this one, natural and distant and foggy, are our sanctuary from the fractious world of bad hair, PR-bullying and unfounded bravado.

30. Fog: "We're Winning" | Andrew Broder is one of The Good Ones, to pinch a phrase from my favorite act of the year, the Kills. 10th Avenue Freakout is not the most commanding album of the year, and you have to suspend disbelief a bit to deal with his earnest delivery, but I still love that Broder cares so little for the stolid ideas of career and legacy that have sapped the underground's once-defining spontaneity. The ghost of Christmas 2002 is calling, "Don't forget Ether Teeth..."

29. Gorillaz: "Feel Good Inc." | The constellations Gallagher and Albarn, once visible along the same parallel, have been in ascendant/descendant contrast since the turn of the century, Albarn growing brighter as the Gallaghers plummet like ostrich necks toward the horizon. That Oasis' revival rave-up was both creatively and temporally limiting is no great shock, but Albarn wiggling out of his prep-school tee and into no-rules collage rock—without missing a beat—was a huge shock. Don't miss the comprehensive Wiki entry, which can tell you more than you ever wanted to know about this grand but still under-realized concept.

28. Herbaliser: "(If You) Close Your Eyes" | I wasn't entirely convinced by the male-bashing chanteuse-on-a-soapbox slant ("How to Keep a Girlfriend")—and it was too long—but Take London offered the best bawdy brass in ages, drawing from velvet lounge haze as much as an icy concert hall. I just wish they'd mixed Jean Grae down a bit more. Obviously they wanted her whispering in your ear, but the vocal tracks are so high-fidelity, it creates a major disconnect with the blurrier backing tracks.

27. Hood: "Closure" | Cheeky title, but I'd rather that Hood never close their post-rock playbook. They're the only band of this kind (since Bark Psychosis, anyway) without a shred of the macho math-rock angularity that dated similar American efforts.

26. Information: "A Simple Plan" | I don't know if they're on hiatus, or writing their next record, or broken up, but I was pretty happy to see some former bandmates of mine "going for it" in 2005, with the gloss photos, messy hair, and timely sound. When I was around—and it was ages ago, and I don't even think we had a name—we were listening to We Have the Facts and bad shoegaze, trudging through February snow—and there is nothing worse than February snow in Boston—to a frigid factory space, where we played the most ineffectual, neutered-by-committee garbage you could ever imagine. I can barely remember one of our songs, and I wish I couldn't. Sam Endicott turns 34 this year. Fuck it, I'm next.

25. Interpol: "C'mere" | I can't remember if they played this during the often lacklustre pre-Antics shows, but "C'mere" gives the impression of having been a last-minute addition to the album, the weaker version of "Evil" they weren't sure they'd use until, at some point in the studio, the moment hit. Songs this simple are agonizing after the 90th time you've played them live, but if you can put them to tape early on, while they're still fresh, you've bottled the reason people get so attached to pop music. Banks is such a remarkable singer. Singer. Not lyricist.

24. JLIAT: "The Ocean of Infinite Being" | Every other song on this list is from 2005, but JLIAT, a.k.a. James Whitehead, is someone I completely missed until this year. He's combined the shock-value apocalypsism of Muslimgauze with the consistently over-thought and overpraised work of his namesake (A.N. Whitehead), injecting simplistic goth manifestos like "My failure to be defined in society is my authenticity." The mask is desperately stiff and paper-thin, but his process loops are often stunning. MP3s are available from the JLIAT website.

23. José González: "Heartbeats" (Rocketboy remix) | Napoleon Dynamite (and Wes Anderson's films before) exposed that nobody much cares for realism with their nostalgia. The story doesn't have to come from or deal with the times, we just need to hear the songs we listened to, to see the books we read, the clothes we wore and the toys we played with. The Rocketboy remix of "Heartbeats" (the original was featured in the Sony Bravia ad I talked about on Monday) constructs a late-'70s/early-'80s club sound with similar disregard for the eras evoked, and like the aforementioned movies, becomes something more than simple pastiche.

22. Kent: "400 Slag" | It would be simpler and funnier if we could just call them Kalt-leiker (Coldplay in Icelandic), but they're Swedish. Cure synths, Sigur Rós vocals, big, Britpop anthems, bass compressed and EQ'd to brick wall...no surprise this got hooks in me. As much as they've tightened up the music, the cover art from Du & jag döden is probably the worst of 2005.

21. Kills: "At the Back of the Shell" | No Wow was pretty much my favorite album of this year, despite the tedious go-go boots n' demerol imagery, always-suspicious older guy/younger muse situation and initial proximity to the White Stripes' success (in short, he might have mapped this one out). I hope they get together with Bobby Gillespie.

20. Lali Puna: "The Daily Match" | The Morr moment seems ages ago, but Lali Puna's 2005 farewell catchall—the awesomely, appropriately-titled I Thought I Was Over That—reminded me that worse things have happened in the past ten years. Although I can't remember most of the compilations I ended up on.

19. LCD Soundsystem: "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" | At once the best (and only) Fall/Neu/Nilsson tribute and two-bass recording since "Other Voices," from a guy I previously could not stand. "Losing My Edge" is the worst song I have ever heard.

18. M83: "Teen Angst" | So let me get this straight: if you have a girl breathing "oooh" in your song, you sound like My Bloody Valentine? Even though everything you have ever recorded is dominated by square-wave '80s synthesizers and bad Pro-Tools loops, and not one of your songs has a discernable guitar track? Score one for music critics! M83 were an appalling and appallingly late entry at the exhausting dusk of IDM, and Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts remains one of the most perplexingly bad records I've seen people get excited about. But I'm glad they did, because it generated the hype that allowed M83 to record Before the Dawn Heals Us, a wonderfully fuzzed-out dance remix of Slowdive's discography.

17. Manual: "Summer of Freedom" | I really don't know what happened to Jonas Munk. I guess he was bored with perfection...because the sound he'd developed through Isares has evolved into too-much-is-too-much track-stuffing indulgence on par with eating an entire drum of frosting; I get vertigo from this record, listening to the melodies overtake each other in turn. "A Familiar Place" fights for space among my favorite songs, but when you take things this far, you lose the drama—the more chaotic a song is, the less it can surprise you. Munk appeared on a number of records this year, but the only decent piece to my ears was "Sunset Rider," from Golden Sun, his collaboration with Syntaks.

16. Matt Pond PA: "Holiday Road" | I went to college with Matt Pond's new drummer Dan Crowell (seen seated at Conan O'Brien's desk). He was a very nice guy/kid, but there was a lot of unspoken tension because we played the same instrument. When I was visiting Saratoga a year or two after I graduated, a drunken Dan riled up one of his friends into trying to start a fight with me (which was only fair as I had at least 100 pounds on Dan). It never happened. Prior to joining Matt Pond PA, the last I'd heard of Dan was a New York magazine fashion spread in which he wore only a baggy diaper. I'd pegged him for a drug casualty, but he seems fine now, apart from wanting to play with Matt Pond PA. Their soporific version of "Holiday Road" stuck out to me because some of Dan's bandmates in the Capital Suite (a record I released) used to played it—properly—in a roots-radical/power-pop beer garden side project called the Jack Russell Band.

15. Mercury Rev: "Arise" | So many critics fawn/ed over Deserter's Songs. It felt—and still feels—like these people didn't listen to Mercury Rev before 1998, and were chasing each other's bylines, blindly accepting them as the Cool Band of Our Times. I've listened to Mercury Rev since the week Yerself is Steam came out, and I still think Deserter's Songs is a jumble of nervous, doleful second-guesses ("Endlessly" is "Silent Night" for Christ's sake). This band was already important and defining—dispatching the Flaming Lips—and would have been even if they'd only recorded "Car Wash Hair" and "Chasing a Bee" (but I'll throw in "Coney Island Cyclone"—"NO I WON'T CHICKEN OUT!"—and "Bronx Cheer" to seal the deal). Plenty of critics recognized The Secret Migration—particularly "Arise"—as a long-awaited return to the David Baker era, but I savored the added sweetness of ignorant Deserter's Songs acolytes painting it as a softening of their sound. For the record, I am still pissed Mercury Rev stole "The Dark is Rising" from Susan Cooper before I could.

14. Morrissey: "Bigmouth Strikes Again" (live from Earl's Court) | "As the flames rose to a Roman nose and her iPod started to melt."

13. My Morning Jacket: "Anytime" | I have never cared much for My Morning Jacket. At Dawn? No idea what people were in such a tizzy about (I was never big on Christopher Cross, or Neil Young). "Anytime" and "Gideon," from last year's Z, were quality Who/Springsteen theatrics, but what really gets me about MMJ is that, in five-plus years, Jim James and this hidden-behind-reverb band still haven't figured out what they are (what the fuck is "Wordless Chorus" all about?). Why are people waiting around for these guys to figure things out?

12. The National: "All the Wine" | Why did it take almost the entire year for people to recognize how good this band and album were? I don't think I took it off my walkman from the day I got it. In the end the National were victims of the worst sort of middle-class guilt: indie rock kids and writers thought they should be "over" this stuff, listening to "Gasoline" and "Fill Up My Gas Tank," paying attention to bullshit like M.I.A. and Antony and the Johnsons (the single worst musical act of this decade). If you live in a 95%-white suburb, and are driving around listening to reggaeton as some twisted identity-crisis VPN connection to New York City, you should know most people are listening to the Dave Matthews Band.

11. New Order: "Krafty" | The latest salvo in the neverending Cure/New Order mutual-ripoff cycle, "Krafty" is a note-for-note rewrite of the Cure's wretched 2002 single "Cut Here," done one better by its unapologetic embrace of a stadium-rock chorus ("Just give me one more day!").

10. Nid & Sancy: "What You Want, What You Get" | If you often ask yourself, "How long can we continue to mine the exhausted imagery and attitude of the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten," Nid & Sancy are the answer, and the answer is 4EVA. People still come up to me when I spin "The Order of Death" like, "Is this New Order?" and I'm like, "No it's Public Image Limited," and they're all, "Oh yeah I love Metal Box!" and I go, "You've never even listened to it, have you," and they're like this. Everyday is Halloween!

9. Owen: "Put Your Hands on Me, My Love" | I hate Matt Pond but I'm ok with Owen? What's wrong with me. I've loved pretty much everything Mike Kinsella's done since American Football; he's the only guy on the planet that can get away with breathy teen-dream dusk nostalgia like this.

8. Plej: "Lay of the Land" | Yes, it's menu music for Wipeout (and I'd love to see Flat Eric hit it), but the future-cute health-rave chillout thing has to come back soon. Too many years of greasy hair, blazers-n-ties and booze.

7. Queens of the Stone Age: "Burn the Witch" | They weren't going to match Songs For the Deaf and probably never will, but as their website loudly demonstrates, this band does not give a shit. They're opening for the Rolling Stones; talking about their import or place in things is just slamming on yourself.

6. Röyksopp: "What Else is There" (Thin White Duke mix) | Couldn't stand their Eurotrash-in-heat LP The Understanding (up there with Kent's for worst album cover of 2005), but Stuart Price (who else) figured out how to properly reassemble this exhausting mid-tempo disaster, heretofore a complete waste of the Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson.

5. Roy Owens Jr.: "No One's Free" | Bar none the best American rock band since the Strokes, though they have little in common. Equal parts Thin Lizzy, Skynrd and early Bee Gees (Quinn might take a swing at me for it, but I'm sure he loves "Words"), Atlanta's Roy Owens Jr. are back in 2006 after a bad case of writer's block subsequent to their flawless 2002 LP This is An Illusion. This is the only band I have fantasized about quitting my job and joining since I turned 25. Good Times is a lock for my 2006 top-ten, and you can sample a few cuts on their MySpace page. The bounding "Bottom of the Sea" (right-click save as) is also available from International Hits, but "Saturday" and "No One's Free" are being held back for the album. This band should have been huge four years ago; if we let them slip away this time around, we deserve a thousand Black Dice.

4. Sun Kil Moon: "Neverending Math Equation" | I hate Isaac Brock's voice. Until Mark Kozelek restaged this song Bruce Hornsby-style, I had no idea how good it could have been (and re: Bruuuuce, hipsters have been listening to End of the Innocence a lot lately, whether they realize it or not). As far as Brock's heartstrings po-boy backstory, give me a fucking break. I love when these flakes complain about the government and three sentences later trumpet the struggle of "making a living playing music" as if it's something they have a right to expect. Like so many before him, this asshole pushed his self-pitying, childish irresponsibility on everyone within five feet and gleefully absorbed the misery and chaos he created as evidence of his importance. And his handlers kept it under wraps, to the extent that Modest Mouse's cutely-packaged Good News For People Who Love Bad Music sold millions. Eat death, minivan shill.

3. Windy & Carl: "Ode to a Dog" | When you get so wound up by the politics of pop that you write "eat death, minivan shill," it's time to put on some Windy & Carl and breathe.

2. White Stripes: "Red Rain" | Meg's the face of Marc Jacobs for 2006 and Jack may or may not have an album out with smoking-hot Brendan Benson as the Raconteurs this spring. Maybe then they'll give up the ghost of the White Stripes, which is turning into a tension-filled "dance with who brought you" albatross.

1. Wolf Parade: "It's a Curse" | Protégés of my new best friend Isaac Brock, Montreal's Wolf Parade heralded the end of the lupine band name era, a worrying concern for Chuck Klosterman as long ago as August and the source of Brent DiCrescenzo's one great piece in 2005, the Indie Fantasy League (I wonder if Chuck cited Pitchfork...nope! Everyone else has given up on the unspoken Kill Pitchfork tactic of the last two years: cold-shouldering them out of the big leagues. TIME, Magnet, Blender and even Entertainment Weekly honorably admitted to cribbing from Pitchfork with multiple print nods in 2005. But SPIN can't, because, despite decades of cream-skimming nonchalance, they seem to think they should have Pitchfork's watchtower reputation. Yeah dudes, you were totally clocking Dungen!).

I don't have any definitive stats for you, because I'm not tracking my own listening habits (woe to the self-made demographic), but I might have listened to "It's a Curse" more than any other song in 2005. The album's not great, or really anything like this song; Brock's hand was poisonous, but if they go down this T Rex + Iron Butterfly road and not the one Isaac paved with "You are a Runner and I am My Father's Son," they could come up cherries in 2006.

The Year in Shallow Rewards

Colour like no other™ + Pardon Our Dust. Like just about everything else in America, television advertising was at an all-time peak during the dot-com boom. Brands took risks, as GAP did with Spike Jonze in 2005, though in this case their impetus was not decadence but the fear of reputational collapse.

In the late '90s, with money to burn, US TV adverts became an edge realm, marrying young, aspirational marketing professionals with young, aspirational film directors. Though a lot of young, aspirational music listeners whined about the supposed cooption of their secret, personal soundtracks, I like to think Nick Drake's long-overdue entree into the lexicon of Important Folk Singers simultaneously shamed them into getting it right: Good Music Should Be Heard. I'm glad to see the trend reborn* with Sony's phenomenal (and entirely real) advert for its Bravia line (which is comically not an American brand).

[*This is not to liken José González to Nick Drake, or to say I'm ok with the exploitation of impactful pop music. There is a difference between an ambiguous—preferably beautiful—piece of film accompanying a song, and The OC using one to shore the heartstrings during meaningless clothing-catalog melodrama.]

The Tanworth demo of "Place to Be" is probably my favorite song from Drake's catalog; I often wish he'd stuck to the plucking. Listen for the delivery truck pulling out at 0:21, just as he sings "I never saw the truth hanging from the door." Something about that moment—how it fixes Nick Drake in the everyday world—crushes me.

On to the man who introduced me to Nick Drake, via a mid-interview name-drop in the '80s: Robert Smith, and the 2005 reissues of Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography. I don't know if anyone's blown their mystique so ingloriously as Smith did on these sets, including impenetrably half-formed detritus and warbling, intoxicated demos on the bonus discs of each. I can't even begin to relate the embarrassing amount of information I've internalized about this group (further blushing here), but I was shocked that so studious a catalog-builder would let us in on such derisory material. I fast-forwarded past "Going Home Time" fifteen years ago, at a time when I was so blinded by Cure-worship as to defend "Throw Your Foot" and "Speak My Language."

Don't get me wrong: it's great to have polished digital versions of "Carnage Visors" and the live cuts from Curiosity (image from On-Fiction), it's just that...exposing stream-of-consciousness garbage like "Temptation" while excluding "All I Have to Do is Kill Her" is a bit of a ripoff.

Forestalling the List Section With Snide Slam Linx:
Middle-Class White Kids Continue to Overthink Blowhard Hip-Hop AND the Village Voice Bows to Ad-Rate Pressure, Becomes Pitchfork's Staff Blog AND He's Kidding but He's Not Kidding, This Newspaper is Over. The worst part is the editors stuck the fork in it themselves...at least Time Out still does their homework on hype (this really is a superb piece, thorough and tempered).

Most Overlooked Album of 2005:
Eluvium, Talk Amongst the Trees | I saw this bottle of burgundy on about three year-end lists—and only one anyone is likely to read. Same goes for Deaf Center's Pale Ravine, though it's more a posh brandy. This always happens...whatever the overriding crit trends of a particular year are, genres outside those lines are ignored. Ambient's big year was 2001-2002, the post-9/11 come-down, which Stars of the Lid/Aix Em Klemm/The Dead Texan, Fennesz, Kevin Drumm, Tim Hecker, Ekkehard Ehlers, Ulrich Schnauss, Keith Fullerton Whitman, William Basinski, and 1 Mile North all benefited from. I'm hard-pressed to come up with an ambient act that's received comparable attention since. Why? "Oh, I thought we were done with that." Pop music criticism continues to degrade, everyone eager to promote their authoritative grasp of the next big thing rather than establish an unapologetic personality (which is no guarantee either—cf. Chuck Eddy in anti-MBV shock horror). My advice: take your cues from Miranda Sawyer, boys, not Robert Christgau. B-

Most Overlooked Song of 2005:
And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, "Caterwaul" | Immense, potent and nearly perfect (predictable breakdown: -2 points, offset by awesome invocation of the Police during finale), "Caterwaul" is the brilliant sun at the center of Worlds Apart, a record otherwise riddled with black holes. In recent years SY-182 (nobody even remembers the SY series, so I guess I have to hang that up) have shouldered a bad case of backbiting from Pitchfork, who will probably never recover from giving Source Tags and Codes a 10.0 (which is a ludicrous source of shame, because it deserved one). If "No, we listen to hip-hop and freak-folk now" abandonment and a disinterested major label destroy this band, I will be fucking pissed off, and I will come for you all.

Most Embarrassing Album of 2005:
Mu, Out of Breach (Manchester's Revenge) | As if Mu had any "haters" going into 2005. Anyone who'd heard of this husband-and-wife duo from Sheffield/Baltimore was operating on crit-spooned NYC praise for their 2003 debut Afro Finger and Gel—and we're not talking about that many people in the first place. This confrontational anti-backlash sophomore LP tipped their hand: Mu wanted to attack their audience before they even had one. Which makes their debut one of the stranger faits accomplis in recent times. Making Records to Hate People Who Hate Your Records, by Mu.

Most Embarrassing Song of 2005:
Lady Sovereign, "Random" | Good Christ, look at that album cover. I still get a kick out of this piece of shit...I bust out laughing every time I hear her voice. You can insert any word in place of "random" and this song does not change at all. Unless you pick "retarded," which was coincidentally my first choice. I settled on "toilet."