You know there’s always tomorrow

My favourite time of the year is around now because all the music dorks get their panties in a bunch over the songs and albums of the year. Is there anything more fun than reading year-end lists? For most people there probably is. Too bad because that’s what I am doing right now. My favourite albums of 2005. In no particular order, and liable to be changed at any point in time.

Top 16 Albums 2005
Thunderbirds Are Now! – Justamoustache
This was the best cd I heard in 2005. Jon put me onto these guys and I was blown away. Thanks Jon.
Best Song: Eat This City

The Decemberists – Picaresque
I found out through these guys thanks to Jeph’s Recommended Listening list. I think I sent “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” to everyone I thought would care within two listens.
Best Song: Too hard to pick

Kanye West – Late Registration
I remember thinking that I wasn’t likely to listen to any other album ever again when this came out. Now I just really like Diamonds.
Best Song: Diamonds From Sierra Leone (remix) feat. Jay-Z

The Arcade Fire – Funeral
So what if this came out in 2004? I listened to it this year and I think it was awesome.
Best Song: Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
I bought this cd thinking I was getting a Snow Patrol cd. Good thing I suck at names. I played this cd for tons of people, trying to get confirmation of how awesome it was. The result was that it is indeed awesome.
Best Song: Like Eating Glass

Slug and Murs – Felt 2: Tribute to Lisa Bonet
This was the best hip-hop I think I listened to all year. All around a stellar cd.
Best Song: Breaker Down Like A Shotgun

The Joggers – With a Cape and a Cane
I really, really like this cd. I think this is further proof that ugly people make the best music.
Best Song: Since You’re Already Up

The Go! Team – Thunder! Lightning! Strike!
This cd blew me away. I’m pretty sure it blew everyone who gave it a chance away. Kind of like listening to The Avalanches, if they had a shorter attention span and a desire to bring back the 80s.
Best Song: Huddle Formation

De La Soul – The Grind Date
I have yet to find a flaw in this cd, beyond being mildly annoyed at the Spike Lee cameo. De La makes excellent music and this is just more of it. Oh ya, and it came out in 2004.
Best Song: Church

Metric – Live It Out
I’m sure everyone has heard this cd by now, which is part of why it is so goddamned awesome. I really should have gone to see this band instead of sitting on my couch.
Best Song: The Police and The Private

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Self-Titled
This cd is really good. Apparently it sounds like the Talking Heads, but I am pretty sure the only Talking Heads song I have ever heard is Psycho Killer, and it sure doesn’t sound like that. The last song on the cd (Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood) is probably the best song I heard this year.
Best Song: Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood

Bright Eyes – Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
Apparently Bright Eyes release two cds at once and this was the bad one. I liked it a lot more than the other one and ended up listening to it a lot more than I thought I would.
Best Song: Easy/Lucky/Free

The Get-Up Kids – Live at the Granada Theatre
I love The Get-Up Kids, and I am happy I got to see them before they called it quits. I think this is a worthy retrospective for the band.
Best Song: Ten Minutes

Broken Social Scene – Self-Titled/You Forgot It In People
I have already chronicled where my fascination with Broken Social Scene came from and that is why I have their new cd and the one from 2003 in here. This shit is solid gold.
Best Song: Hotel

Alexisonfire – Watchout!
I think this cd came out in 2005, not too sure. Either way, it is ridiculously good. Alexisonfire are my favourite Canadian punk band these days regardless of the flack they get. This cd was solid the whole way through.
Best Song: No Transitory

Now I think that is it. It is highly likely I forgot a bunch of stuff from earlier in the year as everything here appears to be stuff I picked up after September. Not my fault. I just suck at remembering things. There are a bunch of cds I left off that were spectacular at the time and got lots of play, I just haven’t been going back to them too much. This depends as much on my mood as it does on the actual replay value, so I am throwing out a list of honourable mentions, best songs in brackets:

Animal Collective – Feels (Purple Bottle)
Blackalicious – The Craft (Supreme People)
Architechture in Helsinki – In Case We Die (Spring 2008)
The Garden State Soundtrack (The Shins – New Slang)
Talib Kweli – Right About Now (Ms. Hill)
Stars – Set Yourself On Fire (Your Ex-Lover Is Dead)
Everything by The Shins (New Slang)
Pink Razors – Scene Suicide (Buglarized!)
Ludacris – The Red Light District (Large Amounts)
Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better (This Boy)
Common – Be (The Food)

Also, here are some real year end lists by people who can actually write intelligently about music. I may have borrowed liberally from many of these.

Pitchfork’s Top 50 singles and albums of 2005
- This one is notable because I read pitchfork everyday. Everyone should so they can see how I poach new bands. Also Mark’s favourite song this year got the #4 spot. Something to think about.
- Another cool thing is that they have each writer’s top 50 for the year. I find it entertainig to see whose top picks got vetoed by everyone else. I noticed MCR on a couple lists, but not on the overall top 50.

PopMatters Best Music of 2005
- Evan got me into this site because some guy he knows writes for it. I don’t mind their reviews for the most part and there list makes sense to me when you get past #25. I honestly don’t think I have listened to a single song by an artist they listed from 50 to 25. Fucked.
- They also have lists for the top metal/country/electronic albums, and top reissues.

PreFix Mag’s Top 50 Albums of 2005
- I found prefix mag when looking for top music lists from last year. I like their style and their picks on this list.
- They have staff picks too.

Jeph Jacques’ Top 20 of 2005
- This guys recommended listing list was sort of my guide to finding new bands this year. I like his taste in music for the most part

Rapreviews Top Picks of 2005
- Rapreviews does it right and lets each reviewer pick their own top 10 with some decent explanations.
- This is the only site I ever really check out to find out what new Hip Hop shit is copming out. They do a great job and I like their year-end picks.

John Allison’s Top 20 Albums of 2005
- This dude is from England and his top albums are presented in an entertaining way. Comics are way more fun to look at than plain old articles, plus his weird British sense of humour is quite entertaining.

And that’s it. I had fun in 2005. Hope you did too.

Peace.

And all those white lines that sped us up

I am slowly compiling my best of 2005 lists. Just so you know.

This week hasn’t really been sweet. I appear to have lost my iPod. Not really that big of a deal seeing as it was free and all, but it is still going to make travelling for the holidays more boring then it should be. It also takes away my sweet music for snowboarding.

I’m off to Kelowna for a few days of snowboarding and watching my cousins get thrown in the drunk tank. After that it is back to the grind. Hope everyone has an awesome holiday.

Peace.

Faith is not something that I grasp, it's something that I fake

Would it be bad form if I declared a jihad on that sweet accounting program I am currently enrolled in? To be quite honest I don’t really know what a jihad is and I couldn’t be bothered to actually look it up, but I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of holy war. There may be official channels one has to go through to get a jihad rolling, but this is just sort of a personal one so I don’t think any paperwork or anything needs to be filled out. I also doubt I need to include Al-Jazeera or whatever that network is, but if they decide to pick this up more power to them I guess. Either way, CASB sucks.

And that is my current mood.

Alright, so I did look it up and according to wikipedia a jihad is “anything from an inward spiritual struggle to attain perfect faith to a political or military struggle to further the Islamic cause”. I think I used it appropriately, as I am certainly having some type of internal struggle to achieve perfect faith or something. Or I'm just ignorant and this is entire post is offensive to the Islamic religion. The possibilities are endless.

Peace.

We roll deep for the money, we don’t want no technicalities

Things I did this past week:

- Went to see Thrice and MCR play. My overall impression was that I should have seen Thrice play 3 years ago in a smaller venue, but they still ruled. Unfortunately, the lack of “See You in the Shallows” killed a small part inside me. MCR played a good set, aside from some of the crowd interaction shit. Also, their new song sounds like Bon Jovi. Not even kidding. It isn’t fast, he sings all crappy and I can picture Jon Bon Jovi up there on stage doing the same thing. I hope they pick it up for the rest of the new album.

- Played hockey and sucked ass/couldn’t breathe.

- Signed up for audioscrobbler, so I can track all the music I listen to. This is officially my favourite thing of the past year. I now know all types of crap about my listening habits, and can share those things with the world. I felt it was so cool that I made a new links section called important shit. I also convinced Sean to sign up so you can see what weird music people listen to in Japan.

- Drank about thirty pints and smoked approximately three hundred cigarettes (see performance in hockey game).

- Worked?

- Read a buttload of random comics that I downloaded for no apparent reason. I should invest in some actual comics, but then again I should invest in a lot of things that are probably a little more important than comics. Like a car. Or possibly just paying down debt. I have been making a conscious decision to have no idea how much money I have in my bank account or riding on my credit cards. I’m not sure if this is fiscally responsible or not.

- Umm, I ate some stuff too.

It turns out I didn’t do nearly as much as I thought I did this week. I should make shit up to sound interesting, but I just don’t have that in me right now.

Take it easy.

Peace.

And since then I've been so good at vanishing

Things I learned today about 90s screamo bands:

Hassan I Sabbah (aka The Old Man in the Mountain) was a missionary who ended up leading the Assassins, an Islamic mystery cult, in the late 11th century. I never would have thought that some random punk band would look up shit like that to find a name for their band. I don’t even know where you start digging to find stuff like that out, although the presence of the Assassins in his story probably had something to do with it.

Shai Hulud were named after the sandworms in Dune. I already knew that, but I still have no real idea what Dune is. I think I have it confused with Tremors in my head.

Saetia weren’t named after anything, but some of the guys from that band are in Interpol now. I can’t say I remember ever hearing a Seatia song, but I do know Interpol and they are really the furthest possible thing I could think of from screamo. Apparently the rest of the band is in Hot Cross or something who are still kicking the screamy thing.

Cobra Kai is impossible to look up due to the fact that they stole their name from Karate Kid.

And that is about all there is to know about these bands. It used to be way easier to find their music online, but now all that seems to come up is a compilation called Death To False Screamo! The exclamation point is part of the name. I don’t do that kind of punctuation.

I had some shit typed up about how these bands names were better than the super long bands names and song names people come up with these days, but it was all disjointed and shitty. Needless to say the only band who gets a free pass on the long name train is Congratulations on Your Decision to Become a Pilot. That name is wicked, and so is the band playing behind it.

I have also decided today that my long term goal is to own a zeppelin and fly around in it. I can’t think of anything cooler or more fulfilling to do with my time. I’m going to spend some time reading up on this.

Peace.

Drunk poolside, screaming “Do or Die”

Ok, so it is officially cold out. Thought I would put that out there in case anyone didn’t realize. Now it’s not like it was super hot out in Jamaica, but I am pretty sure someone said that the wind chill was -26 today. That is at least a 50 degree swing from where I was last Saturday. At least this weather brings snowboarding with it.

I had something to write about that wasn’t complaining about work or hyping up some random band no one cares about, but it has completely escaped me. Maybe it was videogames? Probably not, although I do have plans to pick up both The Warriors and Stubbs The Zombie. Having two new games will definitely help me not fail CASB.

Alright I have nothing to say. Hope everyone is keeping it real. And checking out Schissel’s blog. Matt is still ridiculous.

Peace.