You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
When the new year rolls around most people are content to come up with a bunch of resolutions and reflect on the past year of their life. I, on the other hand, prefer to spend the weeks leading up to the new year figuring out my favorite 50 albums of the past 12 months. It's a serious undertaking that takes weeks of ranking, grading, listening, searching and other verbs that end in 'ing.' After all that inging it's finally time to unleash the list to the world. Each album on the list includes a link to the band/album's official website, as well as my own five word description and a legal/semi-legal MP3 when possible. If anyone's got MP3s to add to the list, please let me know. Also, for those interested, here is the link to the top 50 albums of 2004.
And now, without any further ado or introduction, my top 50 albums of 2005:
11 Deerhoof - The Runner's Four
12 Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
13 The Bravery - The Bravery
14 Architecture in Helsinki - In Case we Die
15 Archer Prewitt - Wilderness
16 The Decemberists - Picaresque
17 The Boy Least Likely To - The Best Party Ever
18 Animal Collective - Feels
19 Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
20 Death From Above 1979 - Romance Bloody Romance: Remixes and B-Sides
21 Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have Been So Much More
22 Aqueduct - I Sold Gold
23 Spoon - Gimmie Fiction
24 Beck - Guero
25 Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine
26 Prefuse 73 - Surrounded by Silence
27 Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
28 The Hold Steady - Seperation Sunday
29 Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
30 New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
31 The Fiery Furnaces - EP
32 Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
33 Fischerspooner - Odyssey
34 Ben Lee - Awake is the New Sleep
35 Brendan Benson - Alternative to Love
36 Sam Prekop - Who's Your New Professor
37 The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
38 The Doves - Some Cities
40 Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
41 LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
41 Coldplay - X & Y
42 Iron & Wine - Woman King
43 Ed Harcourt - Strangers
44 Dressy Bessy - Electrified
45 M. Ward - Transistor Radio
46 Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock n' Roll
47 Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams
48 Stellastarr - Harmonies for the Haunted
49 Mercury Rev - the Secret Migration
50 Bright Eyes - Digital Ash ina Digital Urn