The No Ripcord Years: 2005-2006 (NR10)

As part of our tenth birthday celebrations, I asked the current crop of No Ripcord writers to contribute a few words on some of their favourite records of the last ten years. This is not intended to be a definitive look at the last decade; it’s just a space for all of us to remember some of the classic albums of the period and to promote a few overlooked efforts. Perhaps at some point down the line we’ll do a best of decade feature – this is not it. 

Please use the comments space to discuss some of the music you remember from 2005 and 2006. Reflections on overlooked gems and undisputed classics are equally welcome.

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2005

Queens of the Stone Age: Lullabies To Paralyze

Following the annihilating boom of Songs For The Deaf, Lullabies To Paralyze had a lot to live up to. Refusing to make the same album twice, Josh Homme, (Nick Oliveri no longer with the band and Mark Lanegan underutilized), took a risk and crafted an experimental gothic rock album that was much less accessible than its predecessor, but somehow better demonstrated stylistically what QOTSA were capable of, making Lullabies their best, most realized effort to date. History will recognize its worth. (Sean Caldwell)

The Hold Steady: Separation Sunday

The Hold Steady might be pegged as low-frill classic-rock revivalists, but their creative zenith is their most happily convoluted record. A concept album without a plot, Separation Sunday is a complex, mysterious, and multivalent patch work of texts overheard and re-imagined, texts sonic and linguistic, texts spiritual and secular. Hardly a case of nostalgic retread, Separation Sunday is "classic" rock unashamed, un-ironically communicative, and unwilling to concede expressive complexity to sensual pleasure, instead lending credence to both and illuminating their commonalities. Sunday epitomizes the Steady’s positive jam program, refracting the ever-youthful memory of Western pop through the older, wiser, but vigilantly gleeful eyes of the punk fallout, marrying joyous tribute with powerful insight, and reminding us all that punk’s sense of purpose and faith is stylistically neutral. (Tom Whalen)

Verbose and self-referential, but often brilliant, Hold Steady front man Craig Finn is like the kid in your freshman English class who did all the talking, intertwining his interpretations of “On the Road” and “City of Night” with tales of his drug-addicted teenage friends, and throwing in imagery from vampire novels and the Book of Revelation. All of it would be obnoxious if he didn’t throw in hilarious put-downs like, “I ain’t gonna do anything sexual with you. I’m kind of saving myself for the scene,” and images like that of a girl entering an Easter mass “with her hair done up in broken glass.” He may have toned it down, to some extent, on subsequent releases Boys and Girls in America and Stay Positive, but Separation Sunday – a quasi-concept album about a confused Catholic girl named Hallelujah (Holly, for short) – remains the definitive Hold Steady work. What holds it together is the hard rock backing band that contains Finn’s speak-singing like the ropes of a boxing ring. So what if the riff on Hornets! Hornets! sounds like it’s quoting Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy? The familiarity of those humbucker-heavy guitar parts gives the listener something to grab onto while trying to follow Finn’s raving mad narratives. As a whole, it’s tempting to dismiss Sunday as a “sketchy mess” but it may be remembered as an album that helped resurrect classic rock and roll. (Ryan Faughnder) 

The White Stripes: Get Behind Me Satan  

Elephant may have been their biggest album, but Get Behind Me Satan was their best.  Introducing a level of musical versatility unparalleled by any of their other albums, the Stripes officially shed their garage rock tag with this record, going heavy on piano and marimba while still writing some great country folk (Little Ghost, As Ugly As I Seem) and blues cuts (Instinct Blues).  (Andy Pareti) 

Bright Eyes: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning 

As far as I’m concerned, Conor Oberst is hit and miss. Letting Off the Happiness? Too emo. Fevers and Mirrors and Lifted? First rate. Digital Ash in a Digital Urn? A painfully worthless response to the Postal Service. But the simultaneous release of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning with Digital Ash softened the blow. In fact, the poppy alt-country work made Bright Eyes more famous than he’d ever been, and rightfully so. By pairing artfully cynical tracks like At the Bottom of Everything and We Are Nowhere and It’s Now with the more heartfelt, emotional songs like Lua and First Day of My Life, he avoids the whiny, angst-filled persona that plagued his debut album, allowing his poetic lyrics to take center stage. (Conor McKay) 

M83: Before The Dawn Heals Us