The Worst Albums of 2005

I like writing about music I like, but writing about music I don't like is so much fun that I can't really resist the chance to write about the very worst of 2005. Here we go:

Bright Eyes - Digital Ash in a Digital Urn - Here's what I wrote about this one back in February: "Digital Ash in a Digital Urn is probably the worst electro-pop album ever recorded. In fact, it is to that genre what Kenny G is to jazz, what Avril Lavigne is to rock. Kraftwerk probably heard this album and wanted to cry and/or kill themselves, asking themselves, 'This is what we worked so hard to accomplish? We paved the way for some emo hack to rape our legacy with the lamest synth-pop this side of the Postal Service album?'"

Pretty harsh, but I'm sticking with it.

Weezer - Make Believe - Writing about how bad Weezer have gotten is almost redundant at this point, but still, Make Believe is appallingly bad, even by their recent standards. "Beverly Hills" is the bizarro-world "El Scorcho," there are the mandatory and embarrassing retro synth-pop tracks, a whole bunch of mind-numbing generic power pop songs that Rivers Cuomo probably writes by accident while he sleeps, and for Christ's sake, there's a song called "We Are All on Drugs." Yikes.

CocoRosie - Noah's Ark - A brief (but by no means complete) list of things that are probably more pleasant to listen to for 50 minutes than Noah's Ark:

- A duet between Celine Dion and a guy scratching his nails across a chalkboard.
- Fighting cats (this happens pretty frequently between the neighborhood strays where I live, so I have to include it... I saw a cat the other day without a right eye).
- Britney Spears' childbirth.
- A lecture by Tom Cruise on the merits of Scientology.
- Lil Jon in the bathroom after an extra large bowl of chili.

What kind of music is this? It sounds like two 8 year old girls who found a cassette recorder in their parents' attic and decided to bang on some musical instruments they found and "sing" along with it.

The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute - Keep in mind that I'm not opposed to prog-rock by default. I enjoy me some Jethro Tull and the first King Crimson record and all that stuff. I even liked the first Mars Volta album, until I saw them play it live. But this isn't just bad because it's prog-rock. It's bad because it flies completely in the face of good taste, common sense, and human dignity. I'll even let artists get away with being unspeakably pretentious if they have the goods to back it up (Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, most Sigur Ros), but this is just ridiculous. This is getting toward Dream Theater territory, but at least Dream Theater had the chops to play all that wanky stuff. It's simply an hour of squealing noise and incomprehensible caterwauling (although I don't know why anybody would want to comprehend it anyway).

That's all I've got for this year. Hope you enjoyed it.