Top 10s for 2005: Simon Tagestam
01. Antony & the Johnsons – I am a bird now (Secretly Canadian)
This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in my whole life, and it has totally ruled my year. I'm glad it got out to as many people as it did, people should hear this even though you can't really dance to it, nor does it feature a crazy frog.
02. Sibiria – Ljusdal (Hybris)
I still can't believe that this song isn't on Sibiria's debut album "Norrlands Inland". I love this song, it puts small small flowers in my brain and makes me feel like when you were a kid and you watched "Top Gun" and you saw Tom Cruise wearing those cool Ray Bans and you thought how you would feel wearing sun glasses like that – exactly that feeling that you imagined, that's how I feel when hear this song.
03. The Water Rats in London
There have been several excellent gigs at this venue this year, for example The Boy Least Likely To, Okkervil River, Saturday Looks Good to Me all played my pants of here. It's not the best of venues in regard to the actual venue itself etc., but if they keep on putting on bands like they've done this year, the bar staff better get used to the sight of me and my crazy eyes.
04. Dangerdoom – The Mouse and the Mask (Lex)
I haven't listened to a lot of hiphop this year, but this album is just pure whipped cream with crushed Swedish polka candy. The simple combination of Adult Swim cartoons (if Aqua Teen Hunger Force was a book, it would be my bible, and I would convert to the church of ATHF before you could say "Meatwad") and MF Doom (a.k.a. "The Rap God") is just too good to be true.
05. Rumble Strips live at The Borderline, London, 20th October
I haven't seen many bands before that I never heard a note of that has totally blown me away, but these guys did just that. They're a new English band that sound a lot like Dexy's Midnight Runners and since I'm a crazy fan of Dexy's this is like trumpets from heaven for my ears. I hope they'll be bigger than The Arctic Monkeys, but I seriously doubt it (although they might be more critically acclaimed in, say, ten years time).
06. Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
This is the second thing on my list affiliated with Danger Mouse (he also produced the Dangerdoom album), and it's a stunning song. I can listen to this song on repeat for hours without getting bored of Cee-Lo's singing. I'm sure it's going to be massive next year, so you might as well just wait for it.
07. Rough Bunnies at the Emmaboda Festival, Sweden
Rough Bunnies! Love ‘em or hate ‘em but please don't eat them. I hope they have great things in mind for themselves in the future, anything else would be insane.
08. Arcade Fire live at King's College, London, 8th March
This year I realised that in the future I'm not going to be bothered to see the same band more than once on the same tour. I sort of came to this conclusion after I've watched Arcade Fire three times. The first time (at King's College) was magnificent, but then it was more or less the same thing, and even though they put in great performances the two other times it couldn't compare to the first one.
09. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday
2005 have been the year when I've slowly come to love The Hold Steady. Earlier this year I listened a lot to their first album, but then quite recently I got deep into their last one, and now I adore their songs more than whiskey. There's something about that makes me want to get shamelessly drunk every time I hear them, and that can only be a sure sign of greatness. I'm also very curious to see them live, just to see how their singer looks like.
10. Chad VanGaalen - Blood machine
This song is bizarre, surreal, pretty, funny, scary, lush, and weird – all at the same time. The lyrics are about a bunch of people who live in an underground city where there's a machine that circulates their blood. They all want to escape from the machine (it's a bit like a nightmare version of "The Matrix"), and if the other songs on VanGaalen's nevertheless fine album "Infiniheart" was as good as this, it would easily have been my number one album of the year.
---------------------------
Simon Tagestam is a regular contributor to IAT and he doesn't really have any plans for 2006, except some vague ideas concerning a digital camera, a wall, T!T!T!, an eel, and badminton.