And that's that for 2005. All that's left is for us to close out the year with our favorite part of this gig-- chirping at you about our favorite music. The year wasn't dominated by many overarching trends, but rather, a smattering of smaller themes: mewling, post-Modest Mouse/Arcade Fire vocalists, classic rock-influenced indie, trap-hop, psych-tinged ketamine house, continued cultural and genre cross-pollination, and a lot of love for our hometown, Chicago.

Our list includes a pair of self-released records, two singles collections, a mixtape, a genre comp, a DJ mix, and an unreleased collection of mp3-only demos, reflecting that the biggest sea changes in contemporary music aren't the sounds but the ways tracks are compiled and distributed to audiences, as well as the ease in which artists-- even ones without corporate backing-- can engage directly with an listeners. The slow decentralization of the music industry-- radio and video increasingly being supplanted by ezines, band and label sites, blogs, and boards-- helped bands such as Sleater-Kinney, Spoon, the New Pornographers, and others sell crazy amounts of records on indie labels, and assisted a large number of people in finding new, exciting acts.

50: Orthrelm
OV
[Ipecac]

2005's most physically demanding record either impressed the shit out of you or put you to sleep. I say it was like a shot of cocaine in the arm of minimalism-- and fittingly, it came out the same year as Steve Reich's first new piece in years. Mick Barr and Josh Blair should probably be inducted into the Mad Chops Hall of Fame, and this record used as the entrance exam for Berklee School of Music. Yet, in spite of the inhuman riffs and patterns intricate enough to make even Georg Cantor proud, it's the hypnotic, Zen-calm of the thing that lingers longest. Over 45 minutes of dizzying runs, a million details begin to blur into just one. It's like catching a glimpse of every neuron in your brain at once, slipping into a coma and coming out of it able to see the rest of the world in slow motion. --Dominique Leone

49: Fiery Furnaces
EP
[Rough Trade]

It's funny that the Family Friedberger will end 2005 with the reputation of being a "difficult" band, considering that they rang in the year with their most accessible record yet. Since most of the songs on EP were recorded with the intention of fitting onto a single, the more adventurous side of the Furnaces was forced to cram itself into bite-sized packages, creating an enticing pop tension. Nevertheless, the band found ways to stretch the boundaries of indie pop; the opening three-song suite, comprising a roughly 11-minute epic of sentimentalism gained and lost that, fused together, would be the among the best songs of the year. Elsewhere, the band escorts the listener through travelogues, tongue-twisters, and tropical-icy-lands, with deceptively nursery-rhymeish melodies and whimsical calliope keyboards. And okay, so I don't really hate you if you don't like it, but if there's no room in your heart for rock music this giddily adventurous, I do have a little bit of pity. --Rob Mitchum

48: Okkervil River
Black Sheep Boy
[Jagjaguwar]

Without ever broaching the subject directly, Okkervil River's ragged third album may be the year's most accurate document of our Bushwhacked era. Calamitous and conflicted, Black Sheep Boy's lo-fi Americana-rock holds a sonic mirror up to the anger and confusion of a world muddied by the zealotry of terrorists, warmongers, and fools. More overtly, Black Sheep Boy is thematically built on a song of the same name by 1960s folkie Tim Hardin (and later covered by Scott Walker). Okkervil frontman Will Sheff's vocals embrace raw-throated anguish with the drunken abandon of Neil Young and the landlocked bluster of a wiser Bright Eyes, thirsting for real love, threatening throat-rending violence, and imagining what stones might dream. "Just pause and add your own intentions here," he screams midway through "All the Latest Toughs". It's a searing rocker about asking for proof, or else being led to the slaughter. --Marc Hogan

47: The Boy Least Likely To
The Best Party Ever
[Too Young to Die]

Childlike music saw a mini-boom this year as bands like Architecture in Helsinki, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Bearsuit reclaimed glockenspiels, recorders, and tinkling percussion for their own ramshackle ends. This ingénue aesthetic runs deepest for English duo The Boy Least Likely To, who on debut The Best Party Ever shed new light on monsters, tigers, spiders, and, oh my, adulthood. Many of the album's best songs beam with simple joy, but beneath the cartoonish playfulness lie deep-seated fears about the mortality of all things, from butterflies and cherry blossoms to the people we love the most. Amid shimmering synths and spring-day acoustic guitar, "Paper Cuts" brandishes a broken heart, while playground torch song "The Battle of the Boy Least Likely To" confesses a devastating loneliness. "I don't know when to hang on/ And when to let go," lyricist/singer Jof Owen half-whispers. Like the best children's authors, Owen and composer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Hobbs understand that kids feel as much hurt and sadness as grown-ups do. --Marc Hogan

46: Fiona Apple
Extraordinary Machine [Jon Brion Version]
[mp3]

This isn't about hipster cred: Fiona Apple's not actually cool; she's embarrassingly earnest. And we know it wasn't big bad Sony that kept this on the shelf: It was her prerogative. (Still wrong, though.) So there will be no Mike Elizondo smiting here; Dr. Jon Brion, he of the innumerable stringed weapons, simply coalesces with the Sad-Eyed Lady of the Slow Jams better than anyone else in the world. "Used to Love Him" was fine the way it was, all swishy bell tolls-- no drum machines. "O'Sailor" ought to be six-and-a-half minutes long. These songs, so stagy and irrepressible, need their languid drapery. All the heartquake in Apple's voice goes down better that way. --Sean Fennessey

45: M83
Before the Dawn Heals Us
[Mute]

Imagine M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzales explaining the album's devilish pulp cinema to his Tuesday night drinking buddies: " Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts was just baby steps. This time I'm blowing everything up, like Michael Bay did in Bad Boys 2. But, don't get me wrong, it'll be creepy-- like David Lynch being seduced by the twilight. And, of course, there'll be drama." Sounds audacious, eccentric, and even ridiculous, but it's Gonzales' conviction to the absurd that makes this hot purple dawn blaze so brightly. The meticulously grand instrumentation is shot into a super-melodramatic space rife with broken brains and disembodied voices. Unafraid to bring the bracing sounds and stories in his head into beatific being, Gonzales believes in his earth-on-fire visions so vividly that even the most outlandish charades gain an extraordinary credence. --Ryan Dombal

44: Vashti Bunyan
Lookaftering
[Fat Cat]

Apparently time stopped for Vashti Bunyan in her three-decade stretch between albums-- Lookaftering sounds like it could have been issued right after 1970's Just Another Diamond Day. But that's because both albums exist out of time, in a place without genre or era. Of course, there are twinges of Nick Drake in Bunyan's sound, but her fine ribbon of a voice unfurls across the bed of guitars, recorders, glockenspiels, and Joanna Newsom's harp, and the results aren't really like anything-- folk or otherwise. Sharing some similarities with Kate Bush, her sound is one that she owns outright, a homespun idyll that's captivating whether she's searching for peace or wishing on a memory. --Johnny Loftus

43: Spoon
Gimme Fiction
[Merge]

Ever since Spoon moved past flattering imitations of he who is Frank and Black, Britt Daniel has whittled away at his songs, trying to see how far he can get with as little as possible. With Gimme Fiction, he pushes aside the jeweler's tools and lets it all hang out. This "hanging out" is relative, of course-- changes and drop-ins (cf. the "Taxman" riffs on "The Beast and Dragon, Adored") still happen with the precision that comes with hours practicing addition by subtraction. But there's something else here, too-- a swagger, a swing, and in the case of "I Turn My Camera On", a strut. Where tracks like the clap-happy "Sister Jack", the string-swooning "Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine", and the pensive mellotronic "They Never Got You" would be obvious high points on previous albums, they're all vying for space on a record that's full of the stuff. --David Raposa

42: My Morning Jacket
Z
[RCA]

Evolution-infatuated careerists wise up: The re-defining statement is where it's at. A far cry from the Phishy populism some feared, Z welcomed us to the apotheosis of jam-rock, its once densely-reverbed square-dance squawk being purged in favor of compression and restraint. But that stripping down hardly left the band naked. Instead, Jim James' thrilling, echoing yowl pushes against the best dynamics of the year. Caravaggios of sound, "Gideon" and "Dondante" threw light off dark, soft off heavy, with equal doses of gusto and tenderness. Bouts of prismatic synths and haunted/haunting lyrics raised flags with veteran fans, but while Z seemed to mark a transformation of Mean Girls proportions, the ol' Louisville torch still flickered in the soaring "Anytime" and "What a Wonderful Man", which wailed on all fronts. So who said Southern Rock has to be bone-headed? The rag-headed dudes in MMJ may struggle with scissors, but they were the first 2005 band to make it to space. --Sam Ubl

41: Róisín Murphy
Ruby Blue
[Echo]

Matthew Herbert's dance records, composed under a prohibitively strict set of rules about sampling, sound vastly cooler than your standard 808s, 909s, and sampled bongos. But the focus on process obscures Herbert's real talent: showcasing the female vocal in a post-house context. Ruby Blue, a collaboration with Moloko singer Róisín Murphy, is Herbert's most complete statement to date, a string of dusky torch songs, slo-mo dance-floor grooves, and clattery glam pop. But it's Murphy who makes the album something of a mini-masterpiece. Leaving behind the mannerisms that sometimes marred Moloko, her jazz-tinged (but thankfully not "jazzy"), dark-chocolate-rich voice fully inhabits each of these songs in a way no sample ever could. Sublime. --Jess Harvell