Ten Tracks From 2005

It's been a good year for me musically. I've bought a lot more music, managed to seek out a whole bunch more music myself without relying on word of mouth so much and managed to see more bands live than any other year in the last five years a least. Here's ten tracks from ten bands/artist(e)s in no particular order that I found, re-discovered or generally listened to a lot in 2005.

Captain Beyond: Dancing Madly Backwards (On A Sea Of Air)
(Captain Beyond, 1972)
Great rock, I loved this the moment Chris, my house mate, played it to me. Randomly no one had heard this amongst us despite it being over 30 years old until Chris read a forum post about greatest rock albums ever. This was one persons greatest album so he had to listen to it. The rest is history. This is an amalgam of the first three-part track on the album.

Bright Eyes: Road To Joy
(I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, 2005)
Bright Eyes have/has both curried and lost some of my favour this year, Road to Joy is my favourite song from I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, however listening to the little fucker screeching on Lifted: Or The Story Is In The Soil So Keep Your Ear To The Ground has somewhat soiled the relationship. That album is supposed to be better than I'm Wide Awake... and on full listen through it's pretty good, but I still can't get with the grown man crying thing.

Devendra Banhart: Little Boys
(Cripple Crow, 2005)
Is he a paedophile or just singing from a different point of view? Which point of view, a paedophile's point of view, big gay pirate's or a cheeky little girl's. Or is it something completely different? I can't figure it out, but I like the song despite the cringing lyrics.

Editors: Bullets
(The Back Room, 2005)
Finally something on XFM's play-list that isn't so much commercial dross or something I haven't already discovered. I was a little worried about buying this album in case the two songs I'd heard on the radio were all it had and that the statement above wasn't true, but thankfully it's a good album. I wanted to put an album track down here, you know to be cool, but actually nothing reminds me of Editors more than Bullets, it's good song and I get hairs standing up on my back when I listen to it.

Joanna Newsom: Peach, Plum, Pear
(The Milk-Eyed Mender, 2004)
Freaky deaky Joanna, scourge of my girlfriend, but love of mine. Another randomly discovered artist this year (before the Orange adverts of course). I missed out on seeing her this year due to an administrative error, or is that an administrator's error (eh, Chris?), but there's enough on The Milk-Eyed Mender to make up for that.

Richard and Linda Thompson: The Calvary Cross (live)
(I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, 1974 - live version released 2004 on re-issued album with bonus live tracks)
This was a random purchase this year after becoming more folk oriented during the year. I bought this solely because, for many years, the resemblance between Richard Thompson and my Dad has been joked about and seeing as my Dad is tone-deaf I wondered if his doppleganger was any better. He is.

Belle and Sebastian: If She Wants Me
(Dear Catastrophe Waitress, 2003)
Dear Catastrophe Waitress is an equally good song from this album, which I only picked up this year, but there was something about this that made me want it on the compilation more. Yes, I know that negates the comment about the equality of the two tracks, but deal with okay!

The Arcade Fire: Headlights Look Like Diamonds
(The Arcade Fire EP, 2003)
Along with Editors, The Arcade Fire was a risk worth taking. I bought the The Arcade Fire EP on the way to New Zealand. After passing the Ceara test (she didn't like it) I thought I'd buy Funeral on my return. Both CDs are great, I went with Headlights Look Like Diamonds because a) it's one of the first songs that made me think, "hey I kind of like like this" and b) because I couldn't find my copy of Funeral to choose a song from that as well as Arcade Fire.

The Shins: So Says I
(Chutes Too Narrow, 2003)
Despite Chris, Penny and co. loving the Shins I didn't actually properly listen to them until late in 2005. I wished I bothered to listen to Chutes Too Narrow before. I really like their sound and the album has almost no filler. As with The Arcade Fire, So Says I was the first track that got me hooked after a few listens.

Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues
(Highway 61 Revisited, 1965)
As part of a jumbo pack of Thirtieth birthday classic CDs from James and Chris, Highway 61 Revisited was one of the most frequently listened albums. I re-found some love for Dylan and would recommend the album to anyone. Tombstone Blues is probably my favourite although Highway 61 Revisited itself is also as good because with both the lyrics are either clever or cute most of the time.