The rest of the album may be totally irrelevant, but "Since U Been Gone" is undoubtedly the best breakup song of the year. Imagine yourself as Kelly in the video: you're looking hot while breaking shit.
2. The Clientele, Strange Geometry
This British band beams in their music from a perpetually foggy world where lovers mysteriously vanish and it rains every day. "(I can't seem to) Make you Mine" is as fine an homage to unattainable love as there ever was.
3. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans
Cozy up with indie rock's favorite sons and hope for the best. If honey-voiced Ben Gibbard is willing "to follow you into the dark," then perhaps there's someone out there for everyone.
4. Mariah Carey, The Emancipation of Mimi
Maybe you got fired, gained a little weight, and everyone spent a year making fun of you like it was their full-time job. But listen to this album, and you'll feel like now you're back and you've got the Louis Vuitton steamer trunk full of Grammys to prove it.
5. Feist, Let It Die
Feist
Just when you thought you were healed, along comes Feist to remind you just how sad it is to remember the good times, back when you were still getting cute emails from someone's work account. "The saddest part of a broken heart isn't the ending so much as the start" she sings, leaving you to desperately analyze exactly where things went wrong.
6. Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
Hopelessly romantic tunes like "The First Day of My Life" will alternately console and destroy you.
7. Stars, Set Yourself On Fire
Lovelorn anguish and wistful nostalgia are good for something: sweet, sweet indie pop.
8. Antony and the Johnsons, I Am a Bird Now
A beautiful soundtrack for the fetal position. "Hope there's someone to take care of me when I die," Antony sings, sounding pretty sure that there won't be.
9. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine
Epic Records shelved this album when Apple completed it in 2003. After fans campaigned relentlessly for its release, it ended up in stores this October. Scary smart and crazy popular, it's a reminder that being dumped sometimes has a happy ending.
10. Coldplay, X&Y
Chris Martin optimistically intones, "I will try and fix you." When only sensitive, stadium-ready alterna-rock can comfort you, Coldplay is the band for the job.
Bilge Ebiri
1. The New World— Terrence Malick's resplendent epic of discovery begins as a pastoral love fantasy between Pocahontas and John Smith, then becomes a haunting look at the nature of identity, salvation and myth. Also probably the most misunderstood film of the year.
2. Grizzly Man — 2005 belonged to Werner Herzog (this was one of three documentaries he released in the U.S. this year), and this look at the life of obsessive naturalist-showman Timothy Treadwell is one of the director's greatest films, a harrowing and (dare I say it?) hilarious glimpse into the abyss.
3. The Three Rooms of Melancholia — Did someone say "abyss"? Pirjo Honkasalo's expansive, grim portrait of Russian war orphans is equal parts social-problem documentary and impressionistic art film.
4. Millions — Danny Boyle takes his patented frantic Trainspotting aesthetic and applies it to this sweet-natured family film about friendship, faith, and a whole lot of cash.
5. Brokeback Mountain — Ignore the naysayers, be they from the Left or the Right, and luxuriate in the most old-fashioned movie of the year.
6. The Brothers Grimm — No, fuck you. Terry Gilliam's mad fairy tale deserved more love than it got, but as with his other films, time will have to correct that wrong.
2046
7. 2046 — Wong Kar-Wai's free-floating meditation on memory and lost love would actually make a perfect (if long) double feature with The New World .
8. Good Morning Night — Marco Bellocchio's drama about a real-life political crime in 1970s Italy is the kind of sober-minded, unflinchingly complex procedural Munich wants to be.
9. The Far Side of the Moon — French-Canadian writer-director-actor Robert Lepage's odd, gorgeous film about the lives of two very different brothers had the balls not only to pose the Big Questions, but to answer a couple of them.
10. TIE: Batman Begins and King Kong — How ironic that Hollywood's slump year also gave us two of the most refreshingly well-made action blockbusters in recent memory.
HONORABLE MENTION: Kings & Queen (Arnaud Desplechin) Thumbsucker (Mike Mills) Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas) The World (Jia Zhang-ke) Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (Peter Raymont).
1. Drunken sex: Black Mountain, Black Mountain
Ed Droste
When you're wasted, sometimes a thick bassline can propel you along. In that event, this album is your best friend. If you're inebriated enough, the co-ed group vocals could be misconstrued as cheering.
2. Sex for warmth:
Chad VanGaalen, Infiniheart
A ridiculously gorgeous, delicate voice. Mournful, catchy songs. All the elements for perfect sleeping-bag sex.
3. Goofy sex: Hot Chip, Coming on Strong
What's goofy sex? I'm not really sure. I guess it's awkward yet still enjoyable, like this album, which at first I couldn't get into but now love. The singer likes to lyricize about Stevie Wonder, and I'm pretty sure someone with a turntable is involved. Goofy, right? Maybe it's like trying to have sex in a really difficult position but playing it off like it's really comfortable and you actually enjoy giving it up on your elbows.
4. Sex with a European: Alan Braxe & Fred Falke, Alan Braxe & Friends: The Upper Cuts
This compilation is smooth and French and has the house beats to prove it. Yes, there's always Serge Gainsbourg, but that's for the tender and relentlessly cheesy European. This is for the high-energy sexfest you've been dreaming of that never happened in 1982.
Death Cab For Cutie
5. Make-up sex: Any Death Cab for Cutie album. Plans works.
Listen, the people at The O.C. aren't stupid. Ben Gibbard can tug on heartstrings like none other, and he's extremely sensitive, so sensitive that he will make you seem sensitive by association.
6. Mellow sex: Broadcast, Tender Buttons
Singer Trish Keenan's voice is only improving with age. Definitely their best album.
7. Sex on Viagra: Deerhoof, The Runners Four
Deerhoof is relentless, as is one's penis on Viagra. I've yet to try Viagra, but I'm pretty sure Deerhoof can help keep anyone hard for hours on end. Mostly, I think, because their drummer is insanely good.
8. Late-'90s, downtempo Wallpaper* lounge sex: Donna Regina, Slow Killer
Remember trip-hop? Remember all those semi-futuristic lounges and Nordic-looking people in Wallpaper* magazine? Remember Morcheeba? Yikes. Well, it wouldn't really be fair to clump Ms. Regina in with those folks: there are similar chill-out elements at play here, but they're executed far more effectively.
9. The missionary position: Spoon, Gimme Fiction
I like this band, but I think they write some pretty standard bar-room rock songs. I feel like this should be required in every jukebox in every local watering hole across this country. Plus, they're from Texas. So take home your girlfriend and have a great night of safe, yet enjoyable sex.
10. Disturbed sex: Mu, Out of Breach
If you know in advance that you're going to have an inexplicable encounter, this should be the soundtrack. It's Mu screaming, over and over, that she's coming to get you. And she's holding a knife on the cover. Depending on how you play it, that could be kind of hot.
Even when I was three feet tall, I knew I would be into group sex and sadomasochism and just everything, anything. And as soon as I was able to convince
other humans to join me, they did. We did. I was a swinger with my very first boyfriend, while still a teenager, and I've never been anything but. You'd think that after twenty years, I would have done everything, but 2005 was full of firsts. Here are my top ten:
1. Got fisted, which I always swore I would never do, because it just seems so sordid. Was sort of tricked into it. I mean, he already had three fingers up there and then he reached for the Astroglide, and I knew he does this, sticks his whole hand up women. Still, I didn't really know, and it was kind of dark and late, so of course I was confused. How did it feel? Odd, I guess. A human fist inside my vagina, fingers moving. I was freaking out over the mental image; I was tense and unyielding. Now I must do it again.
2. Got strangled. I love this!
promotion
3. Strangled someone.
4. Had anal sex more than the one-time-per-boyfriend favor — and came, which doesn't seem physically possible for women. Is it?
5. Got described as someone's girlfriend instead of as Lisa Carver or Lisa Suckdog. Twice, by two different people. Kind of liked it.
6. Cried so much from penis in the back of throat my cheeks were totally wet. Kind of liked that too — actually, really liked it. Apparently there is something wrong with me.
7. Made someone come so hard by blowing him that he shot snot out his nose.
8. Got rug burn on my forehead.
9. Got jealous of someone's sexual past instead of excited by it. Found it convenient to believe this person was a virgin and must have learned everything they knew about sex from watching videos. Came to the conclusion that group sex right now would probably result in some people crying. Stopped being a swinger.
10. Did it in a parked boat in the freezing cold and bashed my head on the cabin so hard I literally saw stars. Then pulled our pants up and went outside. The snow crunched under four boots, and I saw stars for real, everywhere, everywhere, in a wide-open field.
1. Steve Carell in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin
2. Miranda July in Me, You and Everyone We Know
3. George Clooney in Good Night, and Good Luck
4. Catherine Keener in Capote
5. Alan Rickman in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
6. Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line
7. Willem Dafoe in The Life Aquatic
8. Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith
9. Michelle Williams in Brokeback Mountain
10. Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers
John Darnielle
1. Imelda Marcos
Maybe you have one or two pairs of shoes. You like 'em fine, and you'd replace 'em if you had to, but you don't particularly care about shoes. Is that you? It was me, too. For years, I rocked two pairs of cowboy boots, one deep red & one blue-black. (Eventually I inadvertently left both of them in Germany or Holland on separate trips to the continent, but that is a different story.) At the beginning of our February touring, I bought a new pair of shoes in Chicago. It felt really, really good to get onstage in a brand-new pair of shoes. It felt so good, in fact, that my house is now ridiculous with shoes. Vans. Docs. The awesome Geox pair I bought in Melbourne. Osirus, which gets me noticed by teenage valets at the mall. If I could rap, I would, because those guys get hooked up with mad shoes. Excuse me, did I say "mad shoes "? I told you I was learning how to relate to Imelda.
2. Odysseus
Dude comes home and scares away all the suitors, right? Or maybe he kills them all. Doubtless, there are plenty of variant endings lost to history. Anyhow, the point is, Odysseus has been wandering all over God's green earth doing all kinds of ridiculous things and he finally gets to come home. He's been gone so long he's begun to wonder if he'll ever see it again. Once Zeus gives him the okay, he mows down anything that stands between him and his wife. By the end of this year, I'd been out on tour, like, six times or something. Odysseus had it much worse, but we all have our limits.
3. The Creature From the Black Lagoon
Creature
Where does the Creature from the Black Lagoon go when he needs some chill time? He goes to a cave. A cave under the inky black water. A cave where no motherfucker can find him. And should some enterprising motherfucker come and find him in his cave, he raises his big-ass claws and gets monstrous on that ass. I can dig it, Creature From the Black Lagoon.
4. Sai Baba
I don't care to impugn the credibility of anybody's guru, though there are some pretty icky rumors about Sathya Sai. Whether there's any truth to these rumors or not isn't really a concern of mine here, though. The main thing is that one of Sai Baba's tricks has always been materializing little objects from the air to give to his disciples. Mountain Goats people showed me and Peter so much love this year that I can't really describe how moved I was without sounding a little maudlinn about it. But I found myself wishing I could give more back. More shows, more records, more something. If I had a giant 'fro and an orange robe and knew some sleight-of-hand, I could at least give them all baubles or lingams or vibhuti like Sai Baba does. Also, I would have my own cook while touring, which wouldn't exactly kill me.
5. Regional boxers on the pro circuit
Young boxer named Chris Troupe whom I saw in Greensboro — he was getting his hat handed to him by a fighter named John Butler. Butler's got better speed and higher intensity, very much an all-action fighter in the modern style. Troupe, he's eating or blocking a lot of punches for four rounds or so, giving back scrappy little combos here and there, just staking out territory like a bird of prey. Butler gets a little tired and loses the fifth, and then in the sixth Troupe delivers a series of punches so beautiful it makes normal people want to start writing poetry. At the end of his barrage, he steps back, Ali-style, to let Butler fall to the mat. Troupe by TKO.
Now, the boxing matches in Greensboro are in a strip mall next to a furniture store; I went to use the bathroom a minute after the match had ended, and Troupe was in there, unwinding the tape from his hands. When I told him "nice work out there, " he said "thanks " with this really inspiring enthusiasm. I try to give people space after they're fresh off stage, but Troupe wanted to talk about how it had looked kinda rough, but he knew his conditioning would carry him into the middle rounds: he had real passion, the audible unmistakeable kind. You can't beat a guy who really loves his work. It was one of my favorite moments of the year.
John Darnielle is a member of The Mountain Goats. Their latest album is The Sunset Tree.
Juliana Luecking
Juliana's neighbor
1. Host a winter holiday party with attractive guests where everyone wears
clothes, mingles, eats snacks and laughs a lot.
2. Blow up an orange balloon very slowly, then let the air out. Sniff the
balloon and smile. Repeat at 11 p.m. every night.
3. On July 24th (his birthday?), fill his apartment with helium balloons,
then stand on a chair with the Boy Scout outfit on. Pop all the balloons
with a pin and a ladies' high-heeled shoe.
4. Run around his apartment in a Boy Scout uniform, smacking a blue balloon
up over his head, then jabbing it with a bowie knife.
5. Strip for himself, down to a tiny white T-shirt and
the Boy Scout kerchief.
6. Sit and stare at nothing, occasionally caressing his right shoulder,
wearing only a Boy Scout kerchief around his neck.
7. Hold a yellow balloon between his knees and squeeze-squeeze-squeeze it
until it almost pops. Then unsqueeze it. Then squeeze-squeeze-squeeze it
again, and unsqueeze. Repeat many, many times.
8. Smoke a jay, bake brownies, then eat the brownies from the pan with his
hands, naked, at the kitchen window.
9. Sit naked on the couch eating a hero, with a napkin draped over his
package.
10. Jog on a treadmill naked in his bay window on Sunday afternoons.
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