Drowned in Sound's Top 46 Albums of 2005

With 2005 already a distant memory, it's through tear-dribbled hazy eyes that we ask you to hold our hand and peruse politely through our top 46 albums of the year.

No one else has ever thought of this idea before, so we decided to take the lead and poll our staff to come up with our top fourty-six records of the year.

We've based these all on their UK release dates, so those wishing to make an issue about the Arcade Fire LP or anything else you may claim you had on import are hereby warned. We do of course welcome you to comment, debate and generally moan about our choices, as that's pretty much the point of DiS.

We'd like to extend a rather large thank you to Tom Edwards for painstakingly compiling this list from all of our staff's entries and to Raziq Rauf for sorting it out and listening to Trivium.

-- Colin Roberts, Editor

The List:

1. Arcade Fire Funeral

“One of the most impressive and confident debuts of the year… Encompassing chamber pop melodies, angular art rock, lavish orchestration and post-punk vocals, its sheer sonic size and ambition goes some way to justifying the amount of gushing praise that’s been heaped upon this album.”

2. Bright Eyes I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning

“It’s the closeness and the honesty which makes I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning a thing of awe. The compulsive, calculated attention to detail is in the Braille textured production, but it’s the lyrics where Conor shines through, with every sniff of journo-sensationalism shot down.”

3. Saul Williams Saul Williams

“Whatever I write will fall short; whatever praise I heap will topple before its completion. Saul Williams does this to you, be you critic, consumer, hip-hop head or beat freak.”

4. Bloc Party Silent Alarm

“All the angular pop pickings and fiery live shows in the world couldn’t have prepared us for this record… The singles are by no means the sole highlights from Silent Alarm. From the opener, it’s clear that the bar has been set high.”

5. My Morning Jacket Z

“This album soars effortlessly throughout its entirety, combining the majestic and haunting with the stark and sacherine and never losing its way. In essence this would have been the perfect late-summer record.”

6. Sufjan Stevens Illinois

“It is a record that marches to the drum of an inner devotion, one that represents the earnest and sober side of its creator… Stevens has a beautiful voice and a rare melodic instinct, but it is the passion with which he performs these songs that causes them to communicate so much, so well.”

7. The Decemberists Picaresque

“Picaresque is more than an indie-pop album, it's a collection of eleven lavishly arranged acts rife with the whiff of greasepaint and the roar of an adoring crowd, which you should be a part of.”

8. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Worlds Apart

“The album's practically bursting at the seams with additional instruments which expand on Trail Of Dead's punk assault.”

9. Million Dead Harmony No Harmony

“To say they’ll be missed is an understatement (and a whopping cliché), but fuck: they will, and are already.”

10. Art Brut Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll

“On one side there’s those saluting their scattergun tunes expressing pent-up modern suburbia and adolescent frustration, and on the other there’s those who think that they don’t mean it, that this is all some sort of joke… I’m not so much laughing as dancing like a monkey on fire.”

11. The Rakes Capture/Release

“As a record, it’s near faultless and the best album the London-based quartet could have possibly made. As a state of the nation diatribe, it’s spot on and bleakly wonderful.”

12. Patrick Wolf Wind In The Wires

“While he’s not enchanting maidens, Patrick’s in his lab putting digi-edges to dusty melodies, bringing a new and gentle surreallity from the typical troubadour record.”

13. Wives Erect The Youth Problem

“It's as addictive as the dirtiest of pop records being listened to in an entirely inebriated state. It's as brilliantly complete as a punk-rock record can be without spontaneously combusting within your CD player.”

14. The Chalets Check In

“It'll undoubtedly annoy as much as it does entrance, such is the violently bipolar nature of today's indie community, but to these ears Check In is as strong a pop record as 2005 will muster.”

15. The Cribs The New Fellas

“Short, sharp and definitely leaving you wanting more, The New Fellas could easily be the best "scene" album of the year. That is, unless the band start hating themselves for it.”

16. Sleater-Kinney The Woods

“Skull-crushingly heavy, but not without a heart, The Woods is definitely Sleater-Kinney’s finest (and loudest) hour to date.”

17. Lightning Bolt Hypermagic Mountain

“Zero subtlety, zero bullshit: Lightning Bolt have delivered what you knew they would, a record that both ups the ante and liquidises it, spreading its gooey goodness all over their sweaty faces.”

18. Death From Above 1979 You're A Woman, I'm A Machine

“Really, you won’t hear a more exhilarating, dizzying record for a long time to come. It’s so simple – just two dudes making a right ol’ racket – but it’s done with such spirit and delivered with such a purity that any disparaging criticism is simply blown away.”

19. Serena Maneesh Serena Maneesh

“With their self-titled debut album, Serena Maneesh draw from the greatest protagonists of both rock and post-rock to construct something that, while derivative, is also undoubtedly theirs.”

20. Annie Anniemal

“It seems that the majority of British record buyers will miss the boat on Annie’s brilliant, intoxicating debut album. That’s a real shame, because not since the heydays of Blondie has there been an album of pure pop music so sexy, sassy and shamelessly breezy as Anniemal.”

21. Rogue Wave Descended Like Vultures

“There’s plenty of distress, trepidation and steady reflection. It’s full of the minute anxieties of life that keep you awake in the early hours, but set to some of the most life-affirming sounds you’ll have heard for a long time.”

22. Brakes Give Blood

“It’s quite clear from the offset that Brakes are a band who like to shake things up.”

23. Chris T-T 9 Red Songs

“Considering the amount of singer/songwriters we see who are barely audible over nattering crowds, the attention paid by the T-T devotees in even the quietest, more serious moments is testament to the man’s talent.”

24. Bearsuit Team Ping Pong

“By rights, Bearsuit should be the biggest band in the world, not just Norwich.”

25. Stars Set Yourself On Fire

“Their coup is to pair artful understatement with a towering sense of immediacy and timelessness. It's a cohesive record, no one swaggering song treading its companions into insignifance. This could become your favourite record, and Stars should justifiably be many people's favourite band”

26. Stellastarr Harmonies For The Haunted

“New Yorkers, Stellastarr*, always had the potential to be more than that band who had one good song, once”

27. Opeth Ghost Reveries

“Opeth's technical capacity and orchestral dexterity mark them out from both their followers and their peers in one of the great metal albums of the year. This ought to be the epic soundtrack to the bleakest, most mysterious Fantasy Fiction they never made a film of.”

28. Bright Eyes Digital Ash In A Digital Urn

“Oberst should be immensely proud. He has successfully shown that he is capable of lending his talents to a myriad of styles, showcased over this album. He is one of the most naturally talented songwriters of our time”

29. The New Pornographers Twin Cinema

“The fourteen songs on Twin Cinema are packed full of hooks and harmonies, each one refusing to leave your head upon taking residence.”

30. Andrew Bird And The Mysterious Production Of Eggs

“This Chicago singer/songwriter has finally made good on all that promise. A huge jump forward and raising of the bar.”

31. Broken Family Band Welcome Home, Loser

“TBFB's dark new record is a bloody fantastic masterpiece… Welcome Home, Loser is a brooding, more menacing trip than any of their former work.”

32. Mew And The Glass-Handed Kites

“If you are looking for an album that you can put on for a couple minutes to fill time then you'd do better to look elsewhere, but if you want to be transported to an ethereal demi-world stuck between real life and dreams then ensure you purchase this.”

33. Ambulance Ltd Ambulance Ltd

“Brittle guitars hover around the edges, Marcus Congleton sings away in his fragile, whispery, slightly Elliott Smith fashion over carpets of backing vocals and their loose-limbed rhythm section.”

34. Sennen Windows

“Sennen's sound can be bewildering. Luckily it can also be enticing, invigorating and most importantly extremely enjoyable.”

35. M. Ward Transistor Radio

“Transistor Radio is another timeless record where smoke signals meet chimney stacks. This time around it's a static-touched background soundtrack played through the gramophones of eccentrics or the radios in beat up pick-ups.”

36. Editors The Back Room

“This is a record many people will be able to live inside for a very long time, and in all honesty, which bands don't have influences?”

37. Sigur Ros Takk

“If they didn’t make such glorious and saddening music, the desire to slap them really would be quite great... their music launches from the merely beguiling and bittersweet to a swoop of sheer euphoria.”

38. Adam Gnade Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender

“This record traces a journey of sorts – physical, psychological and incorporating all matters of the heart and soul – across tracks that rarely veer into wild musical abandonment, but forever retain a sense of tension and suspense.”

39. Four Volts Triple Your Workforce

“This record won’t save your life, but the point is that it doesn’t want to. No; pop-punk, post-punk, post-rock, whatever; this entertaining debut shows how it can still sound essential today.”

40. Deerhoof Runners Four

“If I wasn’t so pathetically sensible under these layers of alleged weird, I’d write this entire piece in capitals. It’s perhaps the only obvious way to translate via words on a page the deliriously insane cookie-crumb sweet experimental pop the ‘Hoof conjure.”

41. LCD Soundsystem LCD Soundsystem

“Most pleasingly of all, it’s a disparate yet cohesive collection of songs with nary a second rate ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ in sight.”

42. 65daysofstatic One Time For All Time

“The band entered the studio to record an EP and left with a nine-track full-length laced with life affirming noise-driven journies that challenges all to dive inside. If you've ever been even slightly intrigued by things you've read, now is the time to take the plunge and listen.”

43. Smoosh She Like Electric

“Those who demand their 16-year-olds are in bed by eight will gawp at the emotional depth of the lyrics, freak out at the injokes and hopefully toss out their Vanessa Carlton CDs for good.”

44. Maximo Park A Certain Trigger

“Every chorus as life-affirming as the last, every verse a singalong delight… A Certain Trigger puts Maximo Park firmly above their more obvious contemporaries and pushes the oft-limited boundaries of their sub-genre by creating a record that just feels natural to them.”

45. Blood On The Wall Awesomer

“Blood On The Wall play kick-ass, hyperactive indie rock music that updates the old Sonic Youth blueprint with a bucket load of snark and fun.”

46. Spoon Gimme Fiction

“Gimme Fiction is a nocturnal, introspective refinement of previous releases that still capitalises on Britt Daniel's classic pop song writing and sonic inventiveness.”