Best Albums of 2005

50. The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
I usually don’t have that much patience for the unapologetic cuteness of some indie rock outfits, and The Boy Least Likely To is exactly that--the album starts with the tinkering high notes of a xylophone, and the then a twee banjo comes in and leads the song to the end. But it’s one of my favorite songs of the year, bar-none. The lyric goes “Just be gentle with me, and I’ll be gentle with you,” a plea of self-deprecation whose bravery really stands in relief to a lot of ironic standoffishness that one normally finds in songs these days. The album’s cuteness is balanced by a lot of vulnerability and honesty, and for that reason it’s meant a lot to me. And the songwriting is masterful.
- Blake

49. Fiery Furnaces - EP
Maybe this isn’t a real album (it’s a collection of b-sides and re-recorded tracks and things, I think), but anyway, it’s ridiculously good. This was my first introduction to the Furnaces (I managed to miss Blueberry Boat, but I’ve since gone back and scraped my jaw off of the floor), and it took some time to digest. My friend Nick hates them because they’re deliberately difficult, and he’s right, but he’s also wrong. They’re a frenetic, confusing, cacaphonic band, but that’s what makes them so refreshing, since underneath all of it there’s a complete pop genius. Their work doesn’t offer up its secrets easily. They make demands. And the fact that they can do that to me without the benefit of an album’s cohesive setting makes it that much better.
- Blake

48. Wilco - Kicking Television
I dearly missed poor Jay Bennett, the frazzled, balding tower-of-a-man that lead them through the wilderness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and never found an inopportune moment to place a synthesizer. His presence was sorely missed on A Ghost is Born. Instead of hiding the huge gaping hole in their sound, they accentuated it like a bad sore. That certainly gave a different character to the record, one that they hadn’t explored before. But live they just sounded like they were missing something.
Well, the hole is gone. New guitarist, Nels Cline, who was apparently raised on a steady diet of Jazz scales, rips through every memorable guitar line and adds new heft. It’s thrilling hearing the band have so much fun with Summerteeth standout “A Shot in the Arm” as well as the ending to “Ashes of American Flags” where Cline goes berserk. But the real reason this live CD is so important is the way it sheds new light on A Ghost is Born. Even "Handshake Drugs" which has appeared on two previous Wilco recordings (More like the Moon, A Ghost is Born) sounds alive and brilliant. Simply, the ghosts are gone, and these songs have never sounded better.
- Nick

47. Ryan Adams – Cold Roses
Ryan Adams came out with THREE albums this year, which at first pissed me off because I thought it would be impossible for Adams to release three even semi-quality albums. But he did. And I both hate and love him for it. The first two are good albums and what I’ve heard of the third one, it’s much better than it should be. Alas, I decided I could pick only one Ryan Adams for my list.
Ryan Adams writes lyrics about drinking, heartache, the occasional bar fight and not much else. I know I’ve heard those chord changes in a song before (possibly another Ryan Adams song) so I can’t quite give him points for originality. But for some reason that doesn’t bother me. Adams has tapped into something: a vein of lyricism or a wellspring of honky-tonk arrangement that most people do not even believe exists. The fact that he knows this is both frustrating and endearing.
- Austin

46. Hot Chip-Coming on Strong
At first I didn't like this album much at all outside its AMAZING single "Playboy." I thought Hot Chip was a group who was great at remixing and had a fluke song, but was too jokesy to take seriously. Wrong. After manu, many listens, I think that Hot Chip is a serious group; their lyrics aren't serious, but their music is very mature and fun dance music that I can listen to in summer and winter. If you haven't heard it, it finally just came out in the US: "Throw off your towel and let's get wet wet wet"
- Mike

45. Broadcast - Tender Buttons
This is a really weird album, and it’s only beginning to make sense. I’m still on what may be a lifetime search for something that’s as subconsciously interesting as The Books’ first two albums, especially The Lemon of Pink. This comes close, and I think that I haven’t gotten there because it’s so unmelodious. The lead singer’s icy voice hovers over choppy, lo-fi sampled electronica, but it also feels organic. Every time I listen to this album I understand one small part of it. It’s on my list because it took one listen to know that it would continue to come back until I understand.
- Blake

44. Sigur Ros - Takk
I was never a huge fan of Sigur Ros. I liked them all right, but () I could never get into, and I tend to stray from deliberately spacey music that isn't shoegazey or at least poppy. But guess what? Much to my heart's delight, Sigur Ros did BOTH on their new album, including both pop gems and shoegaze-wonderful tracks. This is exactly what I wished () would have sounded like. Where should Sigur Ros go from here? MORE SHOEGAZE. Seriously, this album sounds, wonderful, though; even if you didn't like Sigur Ros before, give this a shot. ALso: it has great packaging.
- Mike

43. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday
This was my cruising album last summer. Let me rephrase. This was my bike riding around Indianapolis cruising album. On a girls bike. That was too small. I'd like to say that this concept album of lost souls in a dead end town had something to do with my bike riding adventures when I really didn't have a job beyond grading ISTEP tests for junior high kids in Kentucky and my only worries were what Abby and I were having for dinner and whether or not I was going to go to Austin's to have some whisky and listen to Tom Waits. But my memories are probably just mere nostalgia for warm weather. The ride to his house took about 15 minutes and took me from the tree lined canal, around an obscene number of war memorials, and then up multilaned Delaware, to the semi-shady/cool-new-part-of-town where Austin lived. And for some reason the classic rock underpinning these tales and the husky crooner sounded great to the pumping of my overly-long legs. While the characters in the mini-rock soap opera worrying about overdoses and salvation, I just worried about large cars and flat tires.
- Nick

42. Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering
Bunyan’s music makes a perpetual hum, a hum that captures the essence of silence on a winter’s evening in a diner in North Dakota. The comforting presence of a cup of black coffee in an off-white mug under phosphorescent lights in the middle of a stark white and darkened landscape, the old counter lady leans over and asks silently with her old eyes whether you would like something more and you say no. You are completely content. Bunyan’s music paints this scene.
- Austin

41. The Chemical Brothers - Push the Button
In late middle school/early high school, I was a HUGE Chemical Brothers fan. Dig Your Own Hole is one of my favorite albums of all time to this day. I have a Surrender-era poster in my room. However, as I started moving out of breakbeat (and all electronic music) and into more indie-rock stuff, I stopped listening to anything new that the Bros. made. I never got into Come with Us. However, at the beginning of this year, I heard "Galvanize" featuring none other than my favorite MC Q-Tip, and I was blown away. Ditto to hearing the rest of the album; "Believe" is a wonderful track too, I like it more than anything on Silent Alarm. Actually, I like the Magic Numbers Track more than anything on their album. Also, the last track sounds eerily like the music from the water levels on Donkey Kong Country. I mean this as a compliment.
- Mike

40. Prefuse 73 – Prefuse Reads the Books
What Prefuse does to the Books is destroy them, sow them together and further disrupt your perception of reality—and almighty Jove gives his blessing.
- Austin

39. Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Background
Cute Paul is the most embarrassing Beatle to claim as your favorite. While this is might be due to his being a "smug, charmless fuck” as pitchfork so eloquently said, it’s mostly because he’s made 20 or so bad albums that I’ve never wanted to listen to. Each passing year I’ve had to feel even more ashamed of liking the guy that wrote “Hey Jude” and “Penny Lane”. I have to endure the millions who claim that George Harrison was the integral part to the Beatles’ destiny because, you know, he was cool.
Chaos and Creation in the Background isn’t the long lost classic that I want Paul to write, there are no hits here, nor anything that will replace his Beatles contributions. Instead it’s weather-worn collection that feels like a lost treasure trove of b-sides lovingly stashed in a dresser drawer, taken out and shown to those he really cares about. “Jenny Wren” and and “How Kind of You”, like his excellent “Vanilla Sky” released two years ago, appear so accidental, that it shows how natural McCartney’s genius really is when he decides to use it.
- Nick

38. The Apes-Baba's Mountain
One of the most confusing and frustrating phenomena in my recent rock-listening career has been the obscurity of the Apes. Why will no one listen to them? Why will no one listen to me when I say to listen to them? Is it because reviewers drop prog-rock when describing them? They are no Alan Parsons; The Apes sound like what the manic mob of killer children in Lord of the Flies would sound like if they were in an indie rock band. Every time I hear this album I want to paint my face and dance around a campfire. Pitchfork reviewed this album obscenely late, something like 4 months after it was released. I wrote them an angry email. It just so happens that last year's Tapestry Mastery EP has my favorite song of the year on it (the title track), and this album sounds like a continuation of that EP. "Imp Ahh" is one of my favorite tracks of the year, and who can resist a track called "Organ Syrup"? Trust me, please; if you haven't heard the Apes before, give this album a listen. It's worth it.
- Mike

37. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
I was really excited for this album to come out after Carl Newman’s solo effort as “A.C. Newman” and realizing his trenchant gift for pulling perfect pop songs out of the sky. I loved Mass Romantic, New Pornographers earlier album, and this one I liked better. The support of Neko Case’s airy-while-earthy voice and the other members from various bands have always garnered labels like “super group” for the New Pornographers; in that sense they risk sounding contrived. This is not the case. There’s a darker edge to this album, something slightly less cheeky, but in the end Carl Newman and co. simply write impeccable, tight, compulsively singable songs. That it doesn’t sound like the Gin Blossoms is the magic trick.
- Blake

36. M. Ward – Transistor Radio
This pick is for mi abuelita—which makes it hard to write about. She recently decided she was tired of being old, sick and tired so she basically starved herself to death. I was listening to this album when my dad called and told me. The crackle and old time feel of this album immediately created an indelible image in my mind.
My grandmother and I are sitting together in her din that always had a sort of sepia tone glow to it—we are sitting silently of course because I do not speak the language of the dead. But even though no words pass between us I know she’s rejoicing in not being alive, and with this album about death and poverty and love playing in the background I’m happy for her.
- Austin

35. Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
I know how cool it is to be a freak-folk nerd, but I can't dive headfirst into the genre. Try as I might, I can't fall in love with Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective sounds too typically avant-garde to count as a seperate genre to me, and Iron & Wine and M. Ward just sound like regular folk to me. (I do really like Islaja, though, if they count). Anyway, Devendra Banhart has been the exception for me, the figurehead of the freak-folkers that I admire and enjoy. Boy, this year he didn't disappoint, delivering an epic, exhausting album that is as confusing as it is fun. Sure he wrote the best anti-war song since Vietnam, but what the hell does "Little Boys" mean? Yes, his album is more produced than his last few, but the production only enhances his range of emotion, making a whirlwind of a trip that I'm not always up for riding. Oh, and Devendra Banhart also shared another special place in my heart; he is an artist that both my mother and I can really get into; I can't wait to buy her this album for Christmas.
- Mike

34. Nickel Creek – Why Should the Fire Die?
I should start this entry out with how I’m ashamed and I hate myself, but I’m not ashamed and I don’t hate myself. But Austin, they play these guys on CMT. Yeah I know, kiss my ass.
Allmusic’s James Monger put it best when he wrote this album is “the progressive bluegrass/folk-pop genre’s response to Radiohead’s Kid A.” It’s not but that’s not my point. Most who watch CMT aren’t going to understand what an attempt at “a response to Kid A” means, and most that would understand aren’t going to listen to Nickel Creek because well it’s Nickel Creek. They’ve cast themselves into the netherhell of the indefinable and since their major label prodigies they can’t cop out and call themselves “indie”—which makes this one of the more courageous albums of 2005.
All the members can flat play and seemed to have simultaneously lost their significant other and/or their faith. They funnel all this angst and doubt and talent into this album that has everything from orgasmic harmonies to references to James Joyce’s Eveline to lyrics like “let’s find a god we can pray to/ that will take you back” that will upset their evangelical Christian base. It’s not a response to Kid A, but it’s as close as bluegrass will get but since they had the marbles to release such an attempt I’ll pay homage by having the stones to put them in my top ten.
- Austin

33. Jason Forrest-Shamelessly Exciting
Every rare once in a while in one's listening career, one comes upon an album that is not only great, but is also so distant from anything else one has heard before that it is not merely finding a new album or band; it is finding a new sound. This has happened to me with, but not limited to, The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and, most recently, Jason Forrest's The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post-Disco Crash. Last year's album blew my mind; this year's album is an adequate follow-up to its gargantuan predecessor. The sound that Forrest has--I think it's called Break! or Break!core--sounds like an equal combination of 70s rock, hard-core glitch, and cheerleading anthems. It's beautiful; I can't wait for summer again so I can listen to Shamelessly Exciting! when it's sunny out. "War Photographer" is one of my favorite singles of the year, at least as good as the best of last year's album. If any contemporary artist will ever make me have seizures, it will be Jason Forrest--but the other people will only think I am smiling and dancing.
- Mike

32. The Books – Lost and Safe
The Books makes music that I want to break down, analyze and somehow reach some summit of understanding. More than once I’ve been tempted to produce some sort of scholarly work on the audio clips with the painter on “Lost and Safe” –paying close attention to the noises and samples between the clips.
- Austin


31. Beck - Guero
I know that putting the new Beck "disappointment" of an album kills any indie cred. that the Lightning Bolt/Animal Collective albums might have given me, and that almost makes me happy. Beck, I think, is the perfect artist to expose what shits hipsters can be; they can't handle him changing his sound all the time (read some reviews of Midnight Vultures, an album years ahead of its time), but when he releases an album that is arguably like something he's released before, they lose it. Guero is a very good to great album; I am unapologetic about that. Yes, "E-Pro" was a bit of a failure as a single. That I will allow. There are some similarities between this album and odelay. But just listen to the second half of the album; Beck takes some sonic ideas from Odelay and makes them more mature, more subtle--changes that make them altogether different and nuanced. That, I think, is also a great accomplishment, the talent that Beck has always had--taking something older and making it new again. Of course this isn't Sea Change, what I consider to be the best album since 2000 (gasp!), but I don't expect anything to be for a few more years.
- Mike

30. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have it so Much Better
Basically just a concept album about not fucking up your sophomore album, I'm not sure if any band worked as hard as the Franz did on this album. Remarkably complex, the intros give way to completely different songs before popping back up as the bridge. Furious high-hat drumming patterns rampage before slowing to Led Zepplin stomps. "The Fallen" alone morphs three or four times before lead singer Alex Kapranos tries to spit out every line he can possibly think of. There are even three good acoustic songs. Still it's the manic energy of "Do You Want To" and all that riled up sexual energy that shows the Franz Ferdinand will always occupy the sex-starved-lust-obsessed place in most of our hearts.
- Nick

29. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
To most outside the innner indie-rock crtique circle, which oddly includes me though I've been reviewing albums for over 5 years, our first introduction to LCD Soundsystem was through Pitchfork's remarkable Best Singles of 2000-2004. Judged against those three singles ("Beat Connection", "Losing My Edge", and "Yeah") this album can seem almost quaint. Most of the epic dance freakouts are gone, replaced by small fragments with an almost insular focus. "Too Much Love" continues the basic beat principles of their best songs, but "Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up" slows things down to a Pink Floyd stroll. "Movement" furious three minutes rush by like punk. The songs don't flow well into each other, but taken individually, as the album most be heard, they become something of small wonders of musical knowledge. And it doesn't hurt that those three singles are included in the bonus disc.
- Nick


28. Ryan Adams - 29
This album ruined my list. I was going to cop out and have a Ryan Adams slot where I threw all of his albums in one spot and just said good job on not fucking up this year. But they were so different that even when I attempted to chop them up into "my greatest hits of ryan adams 2005" (because the man needs an editor) it didn't make sense. And then I listened to 29 on repeat for about four days. I don't know if this album is going to age well. His albums are notoriously hard to gauge. Love is Hell kind of did if you chopped off 6 of the tracks; Rock n' Roll definitely did not. But I had the most genuine musical moment with this record in the cold winds of 72nd Street where I broke into tears in the middle of a crosswalk because of his voice. I haven't experienced such emotion from any of my top 25 albums, nor with any album in many years. It was something in his voice, the well written lyrics, the way the piano comes in perfectly in "Strawberry Wine". Cold Roses was pleasant and Jacksonville City Nights was great fun, but this exists as something else entirely.
It's at 7 because like everything he's ever done it's padded with at least four average songs. And when there are only 9 songs that is kind of a problem. And I'm scared that my enthusiasm is going to wane because I just got this album a week ago. Hell, it isn't even officially released. But the first four songs achieve a greatness that he hasn't achieved since Heartbreaker.
- Nick

27. Black Mountain-Black Mountain
I was first excited about this band (like oh so many others) because I heard that they sound like the Velvet Underground. They do NOT; what people should tell people who haven't heard them (and E-Harv did): they sound kindof like Broken Social Scene. Their songs are all huge, messy, expansive, and wonderful. "No Satisfation" is one of my favorite songs of the year; "Faulty Times" became something of an anthem to last semester. The band can chill out and make great psychedelic distortion jams like only SOnic Youth could, or they can fucking rock, making you turn up your car stereo until you almost blow the speakers. This album is wonderful as a whole, with each track going to the next in ways I never would have guessed would be so fluid. Pink Mountaintops, the side project, also has a pretty good album, but this album is epic. I hope the band can do this well on its next outing, but I fear they can't.
- Mike

26. Caribou - The Milk of Human Kindness
This album exists, start to finish, without a reference point. It is a world unto itself, untethered and also unconcerned with what is expected of a normal album. A good balance between electronic and organic, it balances samples with the occasional vocal piece by the man behind the curtain. To put it simply, this is the album I often put on when I needed to think and was tired of listening to The Books. When Brian Eno first began to make “ambient” music, his goal was to create a space in which to think, or something along those lines. This isn’t an ambient album, but it manages to introduce somewhat more traditional song structures and pop elements without them infringing on the holy emptiness of your usual ambient stuff. That’s the best way I can explain it. It’s immensely creative.
- Blake

25. Ryan Adams - Jacksonville City Nights
If Adams is a pastiche artist then this is by far his most convincing facade. Liberated by the need to actually worry about crafting a hit single, this album just rumbles through the cliched country characters Ryan secretly wants to be if he'd ever move out of the East Village. And where Cold Roses could bore you to death if actually tried to listen to the whole thing, this one keeps it to a manageable one album with more than half of the songs worth an extra spin. "The End" is the most moving song he's made since the Suicide Handbook. "Hard Way to Fall" sees him starry-eyed for the first time since, well...Gold. But it's the completely over the top "My Heart is Broken" with its Nashville Strings and completely ridiculous lyrics that set my southern Indiana heart aglow and reminded me why I ever gave a fuck about Adams in the first place. And why I still look for some sort of salvation to my confused rural upbringing.
- Nick

24. M83-Before the Dawn Heals Us
Along with the rest of the indie crown, I adored Dead Cities... However, unlike the rest of the indie crowd, I love this album even more. Everyone should know by now my shoegaze-leanings. However, whereas the new Sigur Ros album pays homage to the subgenre of the early nineties, this M83 album suggests that there are new ways for the genre to evolve and remain contemporary. Kyle and I have discussed how this could be considered a concept album about "the cinematic;" this is what the pitchfork people who thought "Car Chase Terror" was awful don't understand. I've gone through many favorite songs on the album throughout this year; I'm beginning to suspect my likings have something to do with the seasons. Actually it's amazing that this album goes with every kind of weather; it isn't stuck to any season, and fits perfectly in a car whenever. Driving around Bloomington this summer with Geoff, I was convinced that this should be a summer album; on the way back from a Roots concert in February, I thought that winter was the way to go. I also had one of the more surreal experiences of my life going to see M83 in April; he was playing at what amounted to be the after-showing of some movie on electronic music at OSU, and Dan, Kyle, Geoff and I drove the 4 hours to see him in a room BEHIND a theater stage full of awkward CS majors who had never been to a rock show. After the show, we went up and talked to him, and he awkwardly but genuinely thanked us for coming to see him; then we drove back in the dreary almost-storm weather. I think that drive may have unlocked a portal to some weird post-modern universe that I live in now. On the way back home from Depauw tomorrow, I plan to rock out to "Don't Save Us From the flames" and hum along to "Teen Angst." This was the first great release of the year, which is often a killer come list-making time; the fact that I love it even more is very telling of the staying power of this album in my heart.
- Mike

23. Vitalic-OK Cowboy
Daft Punk's Human After All was one of the three biggest album disappointments of the year for me, along with the White Stripes and Death Cab for Cutie. I was expecting, or at least hoping for, greatness with each of those releases, and each time I got mediocrity (Daft Punk, Whit Stripes) or shit (DCFC). Thankfully Vitalic was there to catch my Daft Punk fall. OK Cowboy is a great album, one that I have appreciated more as the year goes on, one that, along with new Alan Braxe, makes me still believe in the power of French House music. Maybe next semester will convert me to the German Kompakt school of techno, but the french beat-masters will always have a special place in my heart, even if they are Human After All.
- Mike

22. Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
For some reason this was the hardest album to write about. Do you talk about the great production? MF Doom's flow? Do you apologize for admitting that you actually just really like the skits? How do you say that after 8 hours at work this album always makes the ride home funny? I mean, nothing here approaches to oddball genius of Madvillany, but that's not really the point. It's just the way all three elements (production, rapping, skits) are seamlessly sewn together to create the tightest rap album of the year. Not the best, but there isn't a seam showing in this project.
P.S. I'm waiting for the Meatwad side project.
- Nick

21. Junior Senior-Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
Holy shit. I had to debate whether this should count as this year, since it only has a Denmark release or something, but then again, I've been listenign to it for months. A week or so before Kyle downloaded this album (thank god he got it then; it's still kind of hard to find), I wondered aloud in the duplex: "I wonder what Junior Senior will do next. I liked the debut, but I wonder if they're a one-album band?" I had no idea. This album is beyond description, but I'll try; each track is equal parts Beach Boys, Jackson 5, and gay disco music. I can't get over it. It's maybe the happiest album I can remember. Every track is a potential favorite track; even the intro makes me smile. It's also one of the danciest albums I've heard in a long, long time; at our dance part SCHOLARTRON, "can i get get get" drove everyone nuts. I listened to this album twice a day for at least a month, and that's just me; throughout the duplex at any given moment you could hear the sounds of Junior Senior in 2-3 people's rooms. I'll stop gushing about it; if you haven't heard it, GET IT; it will change your mood for the coming weeks. Whenever I'm feeling down (maybe after listening to Okkervil River) i know that Junior Senior can make me smile. I haven't heard such pure pop bliss in my generation. I mean that.
- Mike

20. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
Oh don’t worry, I’ve only just begin to destroy my snobby “indie cred.”
These guys have gone many places with me this whole year. I listen to it while running, while studying and while driving to Chicago with Ty. Not many records are so versatile. I can sit and thoroughly enjoy Andrew Bird in a dim room but I’m not going to take him on my Rocky run up the Philadelphia Art Museum.
People accuse these guys of trying to hard, being too earnest. And maybe they do try to hard but I’ll take that over aloofness, over “we’re to talented to try hard,” over “the GRE is beneath me why should I pay attention to it, or finals for that matter? They cannot gage my intelligence!” Wait we’re talking about Bloc Party (cough) yeah they rock.
- Austin

19. Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
This album made sense when I saw Antony live at Carnegie Hall, and he made a comment during the show about his intention in making his music: to nurture a sense of joy. As I began listening to this album at first, I remember the siren quality of his voice, the melancholy notes, the rending sadness of his lyrics. It was an utterly beautiful album to play over and over again and become enveloped in, especially “Hope There’s Someone,” the opening track. That alone made this album important to me. But seeing an artist live will always add another layer to their artistry, however unfair that may be to use as in influence in making this list. But I was amazed how lighthearted and funny Antony was, how much he joked around and the general happiness of his persona when he wasn’t singing. It provided the contrast, of course, to the songs themselves, and that’s why his comment about joy makes sense: joy exists as something apart from, and even opposite of, happiness. Not to get all philosophical, but this balance of elements is the kind of revelation that I’m amazed a piece of music can provide. When it comes to the album itself, I can only say that it’s achingly, achingly beautiful.
- Blake

18. Iron and Wine – Woman King
This album reminds me of those lazy, hot summer afternoons I always hated because I was sweaty and bored and pining for the interesting leaves of fall and the creative chill of winter. But when I heard this album I new immediately I was missing something, some fountain of inspiration and beauty that I’d never tapped and most likely never will tapped. Iron & Wine exists in a realm of creation that I think for me is unattainable and I both fear and respect that.
- Austin

17. M.I.A. - Arular
Once again, seeing M.I.A. live made a difference, though I loved this album before I saw her at Summer Stage in 90 degree heat in Central Park with Salman Rushdie. Nevertheless, the anthemic power of the songs came alive when i saw her perform them. But playing it in the car while driving around in the summer is something close: blending elements of hip-hop and world music and dance and electronic into a contradictory, politically-charged, really fun dance party. To be honest, I’m mostly ignorant to her politics beyond a general desire for pulling up the poor and embracing some sort of anti-capitalist globalism sing-along--and I’m sure if I sat down and thought it through, I wouldn’t agree with her on more than one point--but I think that’s somewhat alright. The essence of her message is infused into the music, which is a feat that doesn’t happen easily. Pop music that is infused with politics is usually bad, just as is pop music that is infused with religion and any other system of thought--in most cases, it detracts from the artistry. But she pulls it off impeccably, intrinsically, naturally. For that reason, this album is, in my opinion, an immense success.
- Blake

16. Kanye West - Late Registration
People used to make albums like this all the time. They'd make a bunch of really great songs, make videos for some, attend MTV award shows, win awards, and laugh their way to the bank. Great bands used to do this. So in a year when the music sites I looked at were concerned that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were totally overhyped because people were talking about them so much their album had sold 20,000 copies, when I couldn't even tell you what the Billboard top ten looked like let alone say if I've ever heard of any of the people, it was great to understand at least one mainstream act. Sure it suffers playing it front to back, but that's missing the point. This is a singles album if there ever was one. And taken one at a time it's stunning feat. "Heart em Say", "Touch the Sky", "Gold Digger", "Drive Slow", "Diamonds From Sierra Leone", "Addiction", "We Major", and "Gone". Yes, the skits suck, the song with Brandy is crap, but has any album tried for so much and been so consistanly good this year? And he even says literate things once in a while.
- Nick

15. The Gorillaz – Demon Days
An amazing single can be a blessing and a curse. In most cases it serves to attract the masses to an album and if the album holds up it become acclaimed and a best seller and the next thing you know the band’s living it up at the playboy mansion.
But with a white hot single like “Feel Good Inc.” an album can be eclipsed, especially in the Internet age where people can download just one song. Nothing on the Demon Days measures up to “Feel Good Inc.” but it’s still a freaking amazing album. I know there’s some rule against ranking a side project this high, especially a cartoon one, but I think there’s also some rule against a side project being this good. This album is proof that overindulgence and sci-fi obsession can produce good and quality music.
- Austin

14. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
This is an album that, for some reason, made a whole hell of a lot of sense to me. It must be one of those cases when idiosyncrasies align, or something like that. Most people like it and obviously it’s a masterful album, but I literally could not stop listening to the songs on this album since I first listened to it in February, and I don’t understand why nobody else has the same problem. Every season of the year, this album has made immense sense. The whole thing pulses with this magnetic precision, these masterful arrangements, impeccable songwriting, and abstruse lyrics that make sense on a subconscious level. I have tried to dismantle all of these songs and I can’t “figure them out”, which is when, I think, a song can begin to lose its appeal. Every time I try I get turned around and sent in a different direction. The album has a whimsy, a humor, a wisdom, a poetic genius. I love the mathematical aspects of this album, both in the scientific way the music sounds to the lyrics taking about ones and zeros and GPS. At the same time, the entire project seems effortless, like it’s just the result of a set of formulas that Andrew Bird dreamed up. In fact, that’s the sense his live show gave: all the songs sounded different, way different, so they were sometimes only recognizable by the actual words of the lyrics. All the arrangements were changed and they kept changing, the melodies interacting and harmonizing on the fly. It was absolutely amazing, and I think that these songs are really just complicated formulas that are worked out, and so he just plugs in some different ideas and the thing comes out differently every time. Andrew Bird operates in a mathematical world of music, on a different plane. I am completely convinced that he is a genius.
- Blake

13. My Morning Jacket – Z
Nick and Mike have both given this album well crafted praise and I won’t try to rival or imitate them, because I couldn’t measure up, so I’m left with my mere emotional reasons for placing this album in the top ten.
For the past ten years, and even at times today, If people ask me where from, and I take this question to mean where am I really from, I answer Texas: once a Texan always a Texan even with the Idiot in office. I’m forever homesick Texas, but I’ve never really missed Kentucky though I’ve had to list as my permanent residence for ten years. But this album makes me homesick for Kentucky because it sounds like Kentucky. “Wordless Chorus” – the drive through the cattle and cornfields I made every morning on the drive to school. “Gideon” – the cabins surrounding Green River. “Off The Record” – the mysterious, purgatorial glow of Bardstown Road.
I could go on. This album forced itself into my history, insinuating itself into short film reels of my past in Kentucky—giving my life an appropriate soundtrack, albeit rather late.
- Austin

12. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
For me, Broken Social Scene is exactly where I want contemporary rock to be. They are beyond ambitious, they are political in all the right, subtle ways, they are collaborative (who is in the band? it depends on the album), they sound GREAT. You Forgot it in People has been a landmark album of the past few years, taking me to places I had never been before. This self-titled abum is at least as ambitious as that, but the aesthetic goals have changed; instead of making a beautiful mess within each wonderfully-crafted song, BSS expand their scope to the entire album. All of the songs play off each other beautifully, making a full, wonderful sound that takes an hour or so of intense listening to fully appreciate. Actually, multiple repeat listens, best taken consecutively. Not that I want to characterize this album as intentionally difficult and not-fun (ahem, Black Dice); so many singles work amazingly on their own as well. The first time I heard the leaked 7/4 I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. I went to Intonation Festival to see these guys (well, and DFA79), and I wasn't disappointed; their songs affected me the way that I would imagine a Cream show would in 1970. This album, along with my next two picks, has surpassed the rest of these albums in number of listens, which is amazing since it was released in October, and I got it in late Spetember. It was that good, and remains one of the most important albums to me of the year, mentally, emotionally, and musically.
- Mike

11. Stephen Malkmus - Face the Truth
This may be the surprising album on my top ten; it surprises me. I heard this album once or twice and it didn’t affect me very much--it didn’t have enough hooks to make a huge impression, and the songs were just strange enough to be a bit offsetting. The first song was such an odd combination of weirdo guitar work and falsetto repetitions that I kept skipping it. I put it away for awhile and started playing the album in the background when I was reading or cleaning my room. It wasn’t compelling enough for sitting down and concentrating on intensely, but it wasn’t easily swallowed as a categorizable, middle-of-the-road sort of pop record. But it was in this liminal space that the album began working on my psyche. Lyrics I couldn’t consciously remember hearing would end up in my thinking; parts of the album that frustrated me would end up as melodies I would strain to remember and be unable to place. Then, all at once, the whole thing made sense. The tiny guitar riff at the end of “I’ve Hardly Been” was suddenly immensely interesting; “Freeze the Saints” was suddenly a comforting song about feeling feeble towards a desire to love; all the electronic experimentation became a wonderful respite from the thickness of the melodies; the lyric “You’re a maker of minor modern masterpieces for the untrained eye” made sense. I will concede that Malkmus gives in to his indulgences more than once: the waa-waa guitar stuff at the beginning of “Kindling for the Master” can get annoying--but it turns into such a great song. And the 8-minute long guitar jammy thing in the middle is probably a bit much. But I am one who really hates jam-band luxuriating, and I am willing to give it to him. It could be that I have only a cursory interaction with Pavement and so this style was all new to me, but this album went from vaguely interesting to something which I intensely loved and understood overnight.
- Blake

10. Animal Collective - Feels
What, seriously, makes a good Animal Collective song? Is it the part where they chant in unison or when they play songs without choruses? Sung Tongs was played so much last year in our apartment that it was almost impossible to know really where that album began and ended because I think some song from that album was always in the airwaves. And it was great. Why? No idea. So I worried that this wasn't going to be as cherished as that one, because, well, I still couldn't figure out why I liked the last one and given this monster, it sure wasn't going to be easy to know. Luckily the moment I knew that this album was going to be great was after about three plays Blake and I subconsciously added our sound effects, little "ohhss" and "ekkks". It happened unintentionally and we both looked at each other afterwards, and knew. That's it.
- Nick

9. The Decemberists – Picaresque
I read and write and listen to music to escape, I always have. I was the nerdy kid with the horn-rimmed glasses spending most of recess reading sci-fi novels. Which means at an early age I became quite bored with regular, mundane life. I still constantly imagine my daily activities infused with angelic entities and sword-wielding pirates that would suddenly pull out laser guns.
And then the Decemberists dropped Picaresque and I slightly changed my perspective. In the past Colin Meloy has confined himself to paying homage to pirates and eulogizing Spaniards, but on this album the most moving moments are when he concentrates on modern day occupations. There are certain lines that constantly echo in the back of my head: “There are power lines in our blood lines,” “We’re kings among runaways on the bus mall,” and “There’s a tough word on your crossword.”
These are lines about real life, but it’s real life through the lens of the Decemberists and it seems so interesting. This album made me realize that the day to day can become a mythology, can hold some secret untold story, something other than my digital clock slowing eating away on it’s appetite of numbers.
- Austin

8. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
"No more songs about sex and drugs and rock & roll it’s boring"
With the White Stripes making mediocre albums, the Strokes making bad ones, and my old favorite Billy Corgan making some truly horrible shit, my favorite music is made by Mid-west expats who play modern folk music. I live in New York.
"I’m considering a move to LA (he’s considering a move to LA)"
And so after years of playing electric guitar and swearing my undying love for ear-splitting distortion, I've started spouting out comments about songs in the vain of "this contains the essence of American music" and "what this song really needs is more banjo".
"He no longer listens to A-sides/He made me a tape of bootlegs and B-sides"
And here Art Brut come playing very basic rock n roll with sarcastic lyrics that makes me laugh continuously, all the time, without fail.
"I’ve seen her naked twice, I’ve seen her naked twice!"
And I want to say that this is just hipster shit and that their rock skills are nothing compared to what I usually listen to. It's just pub rock with a guy sounding really English over it all talking about things he hates. But...
"Sweet Jesus, my heart/Is beating faster and faster"
...everytime I laugh. Sure the critiques on Modern Art and bands that sound like the Velvet Underground are clever, but really I just stick around to hear him say witty things at the ends of the songs. And I think Art Brut really say a lot about where I am right now in my life. I'm okay with my life as a sham, with having no discernible future career path, with eating grand meals with wine every night, and am enjoying it way too much. But it's just so hard to accurately say why...wait...oh yeah...I don't care.
"Stay off the crack"
- Nick

7. Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
I got into AiH a little late; I didn't hear Fingers Crossed until December of 2004 (it came out in June, I think). Anyway, from then until I first heard In Case We Die in March or April, well, it was the perfect amount of time to get excited about a new release. The debut had quickly become one of my favorite albums of 2004, and I couldn't wait to see what they would do next. Not knowing when they would release another album, and looking for tour dates, I went to the band website in February, and heard the song "Do the Whirlwind." I lost it. It remains tied for my favorite single of the year (I'll do a list next week of those). That song kept me satisfied until I got the album; once I did, I listened to it nonstop for a number of weeks. This is the reason I didn't immediately get into the Spoon album. It took a Beck release to wake me from the trance of this album. Or maybe I never did wake up. Someone (pitchfork?) compared this album to Blueberry Boat. The comparison can be helpful, but it needs the qualifier: whereas the Furnaces make epic, 10 minute songs with multiple parts, AiH condense that type of complexity into 3-4 minute pop gems that Paul McCartney would love. I'm not going to get into the specific beneficial qualities of all the tracks; you've all heard it. I saw AiH in Cinnci this summer in a little bar; the band was amazing, changing instruments after every song, sometimes in the middle. They had a heap of little toys and things to make all of the crazy sounds on the album. After the show, I went up to the band in the already-empty bar to thank them, and they were some of the nicest people I've met. They offered to get my friends and myself drinks, and we sat around for maybe half an hour, talking about the history of the band, they members' parents, which members were dating each other, and what I was up to. They offered to meet us in Cleveland the next day; they were going to a Malkmus show. I wish I would have gone; what better experience than seeing one of the most important musicians of the last decade with who may be some of those from this one?
- Mike

6. Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
I’m championing the cause that is Okkervil River. I could write a whole entry addressing the lyrics how they are the musical rendering of Gallow Kinnel's "The Book of Nightmares." How they tie together in come overarching theme concept and that once you understand the lines “If I could tear his throat/ spill his blood between my jaws” are a profound expression of true love.
Or I could write pages about how Will Sheff makes Conor sound like a whiny little bitch. How, like Ayn Rand’s “John Galt machine,” he absorbs all the sadness and heartache and insanity around him and sings as if his body is completely overwhelmed. Or how Sheff is not afraid to let his voice drop to a mere whisper as he tells the most heartbreaking story committed to tape this year.
I could go on and on about how the music sounds as if the band is playing behind chicken wire in a honky tonk bar in East Texas, trying not to get killed by proffering pounding basslines, but appeasing the gods of music by adding trumpets and accordions and falsetto. How they perfectly use dynamics, loud and soft, harsh and mild.
But really I just want to say that this album gets under my skin, invades my veins and ruins my heart.
- Austin

5. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
At first, this album came across as really silly and a lot of fun (see the first song, which sounds nothing like the rest of the album, though I don’t think it’s as bad as Pitchfork implied). I started playing the album every time I felt like being in an indie-pop sort of good mood, which was often since it was my first month in New York and I had no responsible plans for my life. Obviously, nobody has any idea what the lead singer is saying in any remote way, and that was perfect. So I started playing it in my empty apartment (no time and/or money for furniture) every morning and singing along in non-descript strings of vaguely english-sounding words. I picked out a few things “You look a bit like coffee, and you taste a bit like me” or “You look like David Bowie, have you nothing new to show me?”, which was basically fun nonsense. Oh, and “Who--Will get me to party? Who--do I have yet to meet?”--that, for me, was the essence of summer in New York: ending up at parties full of Spanish people and finding that I speak it fluently, wandering into apartments in Brooklyn which were hollowed-out storefronts and seeing a gentlemen in a bee costume sing pop melodies over homemade electronic beats..and finding out that there was a free Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show on a pier with $3 beer and $1 hot dogs with the sunset and the Brooklyn bridge in the background. I still don’t know what he sings about, but I really don’t want to know, and of what I’ve read it’s all pretty strange and oblique--it’s not the point. All of the songs on this album are so carefully put together, so subtly designed to grow with age, not immensely astounding at any particular point, but on the whole way above the fray, and so irresistibly sing-alongable despite the impossibility of discerning the lyrics. For me, it was all about the mood they set, and the importance of it being a nonsense-lyrics soundtrack to my life.
- Blake

4. Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
It's not something I'm bragging about, but most of my friends are fairly liberal. I'm not sure if something predisposed to people who like great music, who are generally nice, or those that are just poor, but most of my friends share my beliefs. The war was wrong. Bush is incompetent. I only know three people in the armed services, all of them did not have any experience in Iraq. Two of them I went to high school with, and the other is a friend of my girlfriend's. I haven't talked to any of them in a year. The only person I know to have died in Iraq was a guy that I played football with in elementary school before he moved away. His name was Eric Hillenburg and we were friends. Here is what the paper said:
Lance Corporal Eric Hillenburg, 21, Indianapolis. Shot to death two days before Christmas during the Fallujah campaign. Two other members of his unit were also killed. His father is pastor of Hope Baptist Church just north of Ben Davis High School.

This war does not affect me in the slightest bit outside the deep political debates I have with other like minded people over pints of beer. The thought that we are at war is almost absurd for me to comprehend as I walk to work in Manhattan where the largest terrorist attack in North America occurred just four years ago and where they expect horribly bad things to happen at any second.

Here is my rationale while in the subway: White people are not going to blow me up. Black people aren't going to blow me up. All people who speak Spanish are cool. If there is a baby in the carriage I am good. Large boxes are fine if a sweaty man who doesn't speak english is carrying it. All women are fine. Rants about Jesus are fine. All Jewish people are fine. People with backpacks and cameras are just tourists as long as they look lost. People with ipods obviously love life. That includes all game modules. That leaves about one person every couple of days that I see, which really isn't that bad. I'm usually too tired to care. Really, I am unaffected.

I never really listened to Bright Eyes until this album came out. It wasn't that I didn't like what they did, I just hadn't listened. So when Austin continued to play them over and over in his room and on his guitar, I decided to give it a shot. And I liked it. He sort of had that Ryan-Adams thing going on. Hell, he even had Emmylou Harris. But everything changed when I moved to New York. Suddenly all of the lyrics started to make sense. In "Train Under Water" I could visualize the L Train that goes from the village in Manhattan, under the East River, to Brooklyn. I've taken that train, it is a whole foot wider in the middle than the 6, which is what I'm stuck on most of the time.

Something makes sense in the village. It really does. I want to live there so badly because nothing matters in the outside world. You can survive there, read news about there, and live in a world outside the public conciousness. There are no wars in the village. Republicans sure as hell don't go there unless they are on tour buses. And that's what I want. I want to forget the war. I want to forget the economy. I want to forget about the Mid-west hicks of my youth, the obsession with money, the 2.5 kids in surburbia going to soccer games, and eating macdonalds. But I don't live there. While I share the same island, I am far away. But I can listen to this album and feel it.

The most profound line I've heard this year occurs 3:31 into "Landlocked Blues". "We made love on the living room floor/with noise in the background from a televised war." Nothing has so accurately described the repulsion to violence, the complete disconnection from reality, and the only way we have of coping. If there was an album that best described this year, it would have to be this one.
- Nick

3. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
Over Thanksgiving my brother and I were driving up to Louisville and he asked, “Hey can we listen to Spoon?”
“Of course,” I said. Now there’s something you must know about my brother, he likes good music like Spoon and Animal Collective and Bloc Party because I tell him to. I tell him “David this is really good you need to listen to this and like it” and he does—but I’ve never been able to figure out if he really likes the music or if it’s a younger brother trying to please the older brother type of deal.
Last semester Kyle would expound upon how Gimme Fiction was some sort of requiem to rock and roll and how the lyrics of every song all tied to one major theme. It sounded good but I never really understood and so often phased out what he was saying—sorry Kyle.
“I like how all these songs talk about Rock and Roll and how most people don’t really play it anymore,” my brother said gazing straight ahead unaware of the atomic phrase-bomb he had just uttered.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I think you really have to know my brother to really understand my awe but that fact that my brother got it, that he understood something about this album that I never paid attention to pushed this album into the top 5—along with the other reasons everyone else has mentioned.
- Austin

2. Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise
This appeared atop Austin's, Blake's, and Nick's list, but was nowhere in site in Mike's. Thanks to cruel basic math, that skewed the end results, leaving this much loved album at number 2. So the only reasonable thing to do is recap why it meant so much to the three that loved it so much.

I want to weep every time I listen to “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” I seize up when he hits the falsetto at the tail end of “They Are Night Zombies.” I simply stop everything and listen to “The Predatory Wasps of the Pallisades Are Out to Get Us!”
This album is a novel, the kind of novel that you read slowly because it’s a good friend that’s always waiting with a smile and a kind word every time you get home.
- Austin

This album’s gift is the way it builds and builds into a collective experience, as each member of the cast joins in, infusing stories and myths, spirituality and religion, death and celebration. Listening to this album, for once I feel some pride in that abstract idea of Americana...An album like this causes America to make sense. I think that’s what he’s trying to do. That’s meant a lot to me.
- Blake

This is such an understated triumph, such an easy album to completely forget about, that sometimes I just had to listen to it and remember why. Beacuse there is nothing quite like this album. Through the highways constructed by Stevens, I identified a part of myself I didn't fully understand and was searching for. Never has an album sounded so Mid-West, so humble yet expansive, so grounded and exultant at the same time.
- Nick

1. Wolf Parade
As the only high ranking album on all of our lists, it was only natural that this album would top the list. Contained below are all of the complete reviews.

When I first heard the name Wolf Parade I quietly thought to myself, “That’s maybe the worst band name I’ve heard, save for the one about clapping.” I kept thinking about this kid in middle school that always wore this black shirt with a wolf howling on it—he also wore tight levi’s, cowboy boots and would maliciously refer to me as “mexi,” the association was not a good one.
I downloaded the EPs over the summer just because I didn’t have a job and was bored, but I think I had them on my ipod for about two weeks before I listened to them. Now lately I’ve been kicked on my ass many times, by Latin, by Greek, by that fact that I have bills—I’ve grown accustomed to it and I’ve actually begun to enjoy it because I often get locked into my own set of individual opinions of the way things are and that’s no way to live life.
Well the EPs and the following album thoroughly kicked me on my ass. A band with the name Wolf Parade and a horrible association in my mind kicks ass! I get so fired up when I listen to this album that I want to find the guy that wore the wolf shirt, tell him that he doesn’t deserve to have ever worn that shirt and then kick him on his ass.
Okay so I didn’t talk about music much in this, suffice it to say that if the music was not loud, intelligent, and entirely too much fun I would not have it at number four.
- Austin

It didn’t take long for this album to floor me--actually, it was the first measure, when the drummer lays down a beat which claims for itself an expansive landscape the size of Montana, and never concedes an inch back. Instantly I was in a frozen tundra of ghosts and howling wolfs and open spaces, a place away from civilization, where I had to reach the end of myself by running, away, “farther than guns will go.” Away from the modern world and all of its complexities, where I am a hero in the daylight and a villain at night. What I’m trying to say is that this is an album of metaphors, harsh and potent ones, and it works marvelously, it transcends the world of metaphors, it feels intensely real. This album reminds me that society and the individual is not completely reconcilable, that in the end, it’s impossible to avoid rejecting it. It reminds me that God is distant. At the same time, the album forced me to examine what it is to love someone, to know that loving them means a desire to escape away into a lonely place, and that loving them means colliding with them in ways that seem strange and awful, going into ones darkest places and believing that there is a light to be found in the center of it, a light which comes from putting oneself aside long enough to care deeply for another person, as Tennessee Williams said it. And beyond all of it, my God, the music is incredible and anthemic and emotional. There’s nothing more to say.
- Blake

I didn't understand Wolf Parade until I saw them in concert. Blake and I had convinced ourselves that we had to see this band, because we liked the album and they were getting a lot of press and we hadn't really seen many bands this year. I was expecting a beer in hand, hanging out in the middle watching the kids have their fun. Then we walk in, see no one there, and walk straight to the front, realize we are very early, and stake out the best spot in the house. I had convinced myself that I was over rock n roll, being really for the young, and something to look back on fondly when I was still in college. After moshing to my third Strokes concert in as many years, meeting them backstage, shaking Julian's hand, and generally hanging out with them, I figured nothing was ever going to be the same. I had reached the pinnacle. But then I realized that Wolf Parade had two lead singers, that they were both good, and that they competed on stage, trying to out-do the other one. And it was stunning. Afterwards, I was able to hear that battle on and I fell in love with how on edge the entire album felt, how every moment was ready to spill over unto another song. Like CYHSY, this album is empty of filler, but unlike those smiling folks of Brooklyn, this beast has a dangerous edge. I am not dead to rock n roll any longer.
- Nick

Well no one else (Austin, Nick, Blake) has mentioned this album yet, so I assume it's in everyone's top 5. I would even go so far as to guess that it is someone's favorite album of the year. My prediction/hope is that this also wins Pitchfork album of the year, although they'll probably pick something a bite more under the radar (bitterness intended). Obviously, I love it too, which is a minor miracle; Wolf Parade had two strikes against this album, considering sooooo many people (myself included) had heard almost every song on the album on some EP or BBC session or something, and almost everyone prefers at least some EP track to the album track. Not to say that Brock's production isn't great; I got new things on a bunch of tracks that I hadn't pictured on the EPs. The favorite-track question of the year, I think, is not favorite Sifjan track or favorite Franz track, but favorite Wolf Parade track; THAT can say something about your personality (mine is "Hungry Ghosts," by the way). The hype-monster almost killed Wolf Parade before they could get going (think Yeah Yeah Yeahs); thankfully this miracle of an album fixed all that. Hands down the debut of the year, Wolf Parade is now the indie darling that everyone hopes can conquer the world. The Strokes came close, but, sigh, didn't quite make it; I'm doubtful about Arcade Fire. Wolf Parade, you're on deck.
- Mike