mandatory end-of-year business

let's face it folks, 2k5 was a year of misery saved only by album-after-album of booty-shaking pumped religiously through decimated ipod earphones. so here we go, it's the cold cowboy's top ten albums of 2005, whose slogan in time immemorial shall inevitably be "well, at least we got some good songs out of it.":

10. caribou – the milk of human kindness

well-crafted but weird crap for the most part, which is reason enough for me. first line on first song ('yeti'): "his greasy fingers strung together and stretching cross the sky..." like some kind of modern day shakespeare!

9. calexico/iron & wine - in the reins

8. bright eyes – i’m wide awake it’s morning

in the past i mostly couldn't stand conor oberst's wimpy-but-clever ramblings but i hold no grudges. naturally it has its far-too-emo moments... but she's a keeper.

7. new pornographers - twin cinema

it still pales in comparison to front dude a.c. newman's solo album of last year (the slow wonder'), but with some notable exceptions (see 'bones of an idol') this is even better than their first album. i think neko case is the weak link but on the albums i hesitate to admit that i like the dude from 'destroyer', arguably one of the most terrible bands i've ever seen live.

6. stephen malkmus - face the truth

speaking of terrible shows: pavement's "last show ever" at bogart's in cincinnati ranks right up there. dudes were drunk and sloppy and the "second drummer" stopped playing towards the beginning of the set in order to scream out of key, submerging malkmus's equally slurred lyrics in a sea of poop-slop. i don't know what happened, but somehow malkmus put out an album that totally rules after several that royally blow.

5. sufjan stevens - illinois

4. clap your hands say yeah - s/t

some slightly irritating a-hole mimicks david byrne with sexy results. it'd be a lot more awesome if it didn't have all the hipster buzz. but it's still awesome. you have to dance.

3. go team! – thunder lightning strike

in a year of booty-shaking, this takes the big ass cake. how can you not groove to this shit? there are only two ways: 1. you are having a stroke, 2. you are 200 years old. even zombies have to party when this record starts playing in the graveyard.

2.wolf parade - apologies to the queen mary

as mayor of rockachussetts, i hereby declare this record to be... awesome.

1. animal collective – feels

can't. stop. listening.

"just pizza" pt. 1

we woke at dawn. no clothes, no beds. no streets. no house, no telephones. just the three of us screaming at the molten sky above where a burnt orange canopy had settled and through which pierced only sparse bellicose rays which dotted the sloppy, scarlet landscape below. the unspeakable heat parched our throats and bore through our tender eyelids. we cursed the heavens, damning whatever cruel creator stole us from our precious earth and led us to this snakebit place until there was naught to do but lift ourselves from the spongy ground and carry on.

the three of us: carlos de los gatos, nicorette lewis, and i, vigo van der lapp, rose to our feet and scooped the warm, red soil beneath us to cover such body parts as made us comfortable, for we were hardly friends. we had met the night before at that strange party at dave's house. something there had gone so horribly wrong, but what...?

i fashioned a toga from the soil and carlos adorned some crude, chunky briefs. nicorette crafted a makeshift bikini. the madness of this place and the heat so tortured our being that each of us cried out in pain as we trudged frantically towards what destination we knew not.

it was hot, so hot. jets of steam burst suddenly through unseen bedrock holes at random intervals, searing our already sun-charred flesh, clearly not intended for climates so treacherous. the yellow-orange ozone above us, while blocking out direct rays, seemed only to magnify the sun's heat. great, foreign crags of such radiant colors - emerald greens, deep browns, bright reds and dark mahoganies - towered above us like violent, twisted everests, jutting through the caustic atmosphere above.

only this: it smelled delicious.

[to be continued!]

January 2, Y2K.

it's Y2K and we're at the rondezvous point awaiting the sentinels who
bear the flask of the millennium from which all must drink the blood
of the oxen. Our clothes have vanished and been replaced by togas made of donkey-cloth. This truly is the apolcalypse.

Earlier tonight in this den of beasts a goat approached me and
declared himself sovereign ruler of my soul. I am afraid. The insane
jugglers have arrived, preaching their dark prophecies and spinning
looms of the deepest blue. I fear a long winter.

In the night, three pipers passed our wayside camp, piping solemn,
greasy melodies that chilled our skin and made us hungry for blood.
The eyes of my compatriots now scream for my flesh-- but I shall not
be the first to dance to the rhythm of the twilight monks who erect
their monoliths in cryptic patterns about our camp.