*insert obligatory bad Liars joke here, "the truth about Liars!" or something*

Now that I'm finally done writing about 2005 music stuff, time to move onward! First up: Liars! Liars (they would create far fewer grammatical oddities if they would simply use "the" in front of their name) impressed me greatly with their 2004 album They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, which was a concept album about witches in medieval Germany or something. It's possibly the only concept album about witches to ever be good, although I'm not saying it's the only concept album about witches ever made, because there's probably a Helloween or Mercyful Fate record I don't know about. Anyway, I liked it because it was challenging, creative, and uniquely unsettling. How anybody could create a recognizable riff out of murky and atonal electronic buzzing sounds or make a vocal hook out of three people chanting "WE ARE THE ARMY YOU SEE THROUGH THE RED HAZE OF BLOOD!" is beyond me, but they did it somehow. That album was the 2004 counterpart of the latest Fiery Furnaces album, another drastic style shift that alienated a lot of fans but that I loved.

Anyhoo, they're coming out on February 20 (according to their website) or March 21 (according to allmusic.com) with a new album, Drum's Not Dead, which was originally supposed to be released last October. Seeing as how there was such a dramatic shift in style between their first and second albums, I can't wait to hear what they've done for their third. If the advance single "It Fit When I Was a Kid" is any indication, they've kept the thumping tribal rhythms of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and added actual, recognizable melodies (the closest previous reference is probably "We Fenced Other Houses With the Bones of Our Own" from They Were Wrong, still one of my favorite song titles ever). Not that it's a pop song by any stretch of the imagination. It's still as impossibly creepy as anything on They Were Wrong, except here the eeriness comes from the droning organ that comes in halfway through the song and the deadpan vocal melody that creeps slowly along, like a children's song corrupted by a vaguely disturbing nightmare where you just know something is lurking in the shadows. If you're inspired to download the song, stick it out until about the halfway point, which is where the song starts to get really interesting.

Music aside, they've also chosen a cover for the new single that's rather, um... interesting. And originally they wanted to release it on edible paper. Just to give you an idea of how weird these guys can be.

Drum's Not Dead has already been leaked on the internet, but I've chosen to wait... for now. A look at the track listing reveals that this is probably another concept album, though: almost all of the tracks either use "Drum" as a name (apparently of a character who isn't dead) or reference a "Mt. Heart Attack" in some way. I have no idea what on Earth any of that could mean, but I can't wait to find out.

Tom's Best of 2005: #1

All right, my apologies for this being so ridiculously late. At least three people have been waiting for this for a little while, and possibly more. Next year, if I do this, I'll need to be more disciplined, or more realistic with my self-imposed time restraints. Anyway, without further adieu:

Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase - I can't really explain why I love this record any more than I can explain why a sunset is beautiful, or why we fall in love. It just is, and I just love it. I've already discussed once the intangible greatness of Boards of Canada, so I don't really feel the need to do so again. I'll simply let it be known that every time these guys put out a record, and it sounds at least a little like their previous work, it will be more or less a shoe-in for #1 on any of these lists I make. Their music exists on a different plane than other music. It is so inherently joyous and beautiful that it hardly matters whether or not it is an improvement over their last outing. A Boards of Canada album that is merely competent is more spectacular than anything most other bands can even imagine, and as long as Boards of Canada sound like Boards of Canada, I'll always have a special place for them.

Tom's Best of 2005: #2

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois - Let's get some things straight here: Sufjan Stevens in not some magical figure who can reach the innermost feelings of anybody and everybody. He's not making me feel a whole lot of sympathy for John Wayne Gacy. He's not doing an album for every state as an attempt to reach the heart and soul of every single American (in my eyes it's more of a system of organizing his ridiculously prolific songwriting), and quality control is still lacking just a tad (if you're releasing an album with 22 songs that's almost 80 minutes long, and your band is not the Beatles, you probably need to trim some fat somewhere). But for such a looooooong and winding album, there's a remarkable amount of fantastic material.

I'm not ready to call Stevens the premier songwriter of his generation, but as a polyphonic pop maestro, he has few, if any, rivals. Songs like "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" and "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!" are positively bursting with an ecstatic energy and unique way of winding divinely gorgeous melodies around irregular rhythms and dense backdrops. Same goes for "Jacksonville," "Chicago," and "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders." The first time I put on Illinois, I knew I was in for a treat as soon as I heard the second track, "The Black Hawk War" (I'm foregoing the song's subtitle, which takes about as long to write as the song does to listen to). What sort of indie rocker has the audacity to write an enormous fanfare, complete with blasting horns, to announce his own entrance? Only Sufjan Stevens.

Stevens has an amazing ability to combine huge, bombastic arrangements with ambitious, multi-part songs, often topping 6 minutes or more in length, and somehow keeping them completely grounded and unpretentious, and that might be his greatest strength. No matter how sprawling and epic, Stevens' songs glow with a warmth and humanity that often feels paradoxical and always feels like a triumph of the human spirit. Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe, but he deserves it. This would easily be #1 with a few less meandering piano interludes, and if his next album is as much an improvement over Illinois as Illinois is over Greetings From Michigan (a terrific record itself), that one will have no problem making #1, either, and maybe #1 of the decade, or more (there's some hyperbole for you).

Tom's Best of 2005: #3

The Fiery Furnaces - Rehearsing My Choir - If ever there was something that could be described as an acquired taste, this is it. This might be the only album on this list that I wouldn't recommend unconditionally. Nobody will ever put this on at a party, and nobody will ever roll down the street with this blasting out of their windows. You won't hear anything else like this in 2005, or possibly ever. It may seem impenetrably weird, but with a pair of headphones and some patience, it reveals itself to be a nuanced and complex and very well-made album.

I wrote earlier that Rehearsing My Choir occupies space somewhere between Philip Glass and Gilbert and Sullivan, but that really doesn't even begin to describe the sounds contained on this album. There's a disco breakbeat here, some swinging rock there, and even a bizarre salsa of sorts, all filtered through the Fiery Furnaces' weirdness. On first listen, the random shifts in tone, genre, melody, and everything else seem frustratingly arbitrary, but once you start getting familiar with the songs, the reveal themselves to be complex and suite-like. You start looking forward to repeating instrumental phrases that crop up now and again, and you even start paying attention to the lyrics.

The lyrics are a whole separate matter. Between this and Blueberry Boat, the Furnaces seem to be gearing up for a run at a Guinness world record for most words contained on a single album, and it can be especially hard to take in considering that the preferred form of delivery here is through the gruff voice of an 83-year-old woman, a voice which can either add a new level of depth with its world-weary tone or just be really creepy. At their core, however, the songs are standard fare, stories of loss, lust, and heartbreak. They just happen to be unusually specific in time and location. If people can't relate to them, it's not because they can't relate to feeling jealous of a former lover's current partner, it's because they can't relate to feeling jealous of a former lover's current partner in Chicago in the 1940s.

Add to this the Fiery Furnaces' usual habit of throwing every weird organ, tack piano, and synth tone they can find at you, and you're faced with this question: Is it an accomplishment worth noting to take tried and true subject matters and song styles and present them successfully in a manner that is completely unique? If your answer is yes, Rehearsing My Choir might be right up your alley.