The 40 Best Albums of 2005

10. The Hold Steady, Separation Sunday (French Kiss)
Channeling the Boss, scenesters, hoodrats, Hüsker Dü, chaotic love, and catechism, these Brooklyn-ites bust out chapter two of indiedom's most incisive soap opera. Craig Finn's beyond-nasal whine is a love-it-or-hate-it instrument, but his stories unpack post-hardcore emotional verities, scene mythologies, and tragicomic punch lines. Who knows if Finn's characters can remember what happened last night, but they're glad they're still standing, even if the bar band riffs keep threatening to break into Billy Joel covers. J.G.

9. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine (Epic/Clean Slate)
Subtitled The Hard Drive That Leaked My MP3s While I Was Googling Inspirational Quotations. How apt that bloggers used this "shelved" bildungsroman to free Fiona from...well, Fiona. Because that's what these Brecht/Weill-style chin-up affirmations are all about: claiming responsibility for your own self-doubt. Showing Mom and your ex that you're grown up enough to use the word folderol correctly. Buying your own beautiful house knowing you're nobody's beautiful wife. Never having to ask yourself, "How did I get here?" M.E.M.

8. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty)
His A Coney Island of the Mind is a Chicago World's Fair of the ear -- a rebirth of wonder, discovery, and progress so exhaustive it could only be championed by a Wikipedia user who doesn't think a flugelhorn solo is a bit much. Stevens' chamber-pop musical feels like the dream that opened Fahrenheit 9/11 -- except instead of Gore, Lincoln's there, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and Superman, and things turn out a little differently. Jesus is somewhere in the prairie state too. Looking to find him, Stevens gets found. M.E.M.

7. The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema (Matador)
These Vancouver power poppers aren't quite what you'd call warm, but their keyboard-pumping anthems are definitely what you'd call smart. Getting positively wistful at points, they riff on distance and mortality while Carl Newman pastiches the best '70s melodic radio tricks. The hottest climaxes are left to siren Neko Case, whose clarion blare shoots codas skyward. But when Newman sighs, "Two sips from the cup of human kindness and I'm shit-faced," you'll want to buy his next three rounds. L.S.

6. Bloc Party, Silent Alarm (Vice)
Four art-school toffs wed de rigueur post-punk with jangly melancholy from the Cure playbook. On dance-floor staples "Banquet" and "She's Hearing Voices," frontman Kele Okereke -- propelled by thunder-drummer Matt Tong -- fuels heartbreak disco with visceral narratives about growing up and coming down. On "This Modern Love," he even ties his angst to the global economy -- his heart is heavier than the pound as he utters those four little words: "I'll pay for you." Rarely has romance sounded so expensively, and expansively, sad. A.G.

5. LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem (DFA/EMI)
No James Murphy rant will ever amass more laughs per minute than the undergroundier-than-thou "Losing My Edge." So the DFA producer includes that track with other early singles on a bonus disc, freeing him to construct a good old-fashioned dance-rock album. "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" and "Disco Infiltrator" abbreviate LCD's expansive wallop without sacrificing its intensity. And with his trippy, studio-pop mimicry of Lennon and Eno, the man who taught the indie kids to dance now tricks techno tots into humming along. K.H.

4. Gorillaz, Demon Days (Virgin)
While the maestros behind Gorillaz spend too much time acting like monkeys, the guise gives Damon Albarn and new addition Danger Mouse the leeway to produce a vivid, spastic concept album about the last primates to survive the apocalypse. From the glimmer funk of "DARE" to the power riff of "O Green World," Demon Days is a sinister, slinky folk-disco-hip-hop-Afro-pop-punk expedition through badly damaged terrain -- the kind of postapocalyptic landscape where you might wake up to discover the Statue of Liberty at your feet. C.G.

3. Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better (Domino/Epic)
Our foppish heroes return, dusting off the glitter, discovering that life inside a limousine can be as difficult as the struggle to get through the passenger door. No longer eyebrow-arching outsiders, Franz have been taken out, and now they want to be taken back home. Their second disc builds on the kraut-disco of their debut, but frontman Alex Kapranos' dubious sensitivity makes You Could Have It so much better than its predecessor. Is it a cold heart or just a cold that makes him watch his lover walk away while he trades cocaine for "organic fresh echinacea"? No matter: Whether he's winking or just mocking us, we'd probably follow him anywhere. Lucky, lucky. He's so lucky. A.G.

2. M.I.A., Arular (Interscope)
Whether she's actually a London art-student tourist or a rebel-child refugee is not irrelevant. What gets her homemade version of Missy Elliott's life-affirming, dance-floor-scattering sex-funk gibberish over is the conceit that it's a vision of the tribalized world where, say, Islamic fundamentalists hear one of her jams on the radio and decide to forget all this jihadist hoo-ha and get booty loose. What's remarkable is that her diaspora of beats and rhymes, referencing everywhere from Brazil to Baltimore to Bollywood, makes the case with such gleefully random chutzpah. She pushes Huey Newton (and George Clinton) out of that revolutionary wicker chair, grabs his spear, rifle, and bop gun, and shouts for her DJ to drop the bomb -- improvised, explosive, and for once, redemptive. C.A.

1. Kanye West, Late Registration (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam)
You can follow a landmark debut with a sure-selling version of the same, or you can use its success as license to Get Arty. Kanye being Kanye, he does both, hiring eccentric orchestral-pop producer Jon Brion -- an odd move for a dude who made his name as a production wizard -- while still cranking out the radio bangers. "Gold Digger" is the best kind of hip-hop hit: relentless, obnoxious, too smart and self-deprecating and laugh-out-loud funny to succumb to a misogynistic theme, with Jamie Foxx and an oddly-flipped Ray Charles sample blazing together musically as well as conceptually. "Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)" is a bling anthem with a guilty conscience magnified by a Jay-Z cameo that's apparently oblivious to such moral scruples. But the crowning moment may be "Crack Music," built on a dry snare beat and a few horn stabs that conjure a rockhead's clipped pleasure-loop. West Coaster trouble man the Game spits an impressively ugly hook while Kanye ticks off conspiracy theories, shining a shopworn metaphor to critique, and defend, thug-centric hip-hop while also embodying it. You can debate the song's logic, but not its power. Which is the point: Great rap should make you think and kick your ass. W.H.

Contributors:
Charles Aaron, Andrew Beaujon, Doug Brod, Jon D. Caramanica, Nick Catucci, Jeff Z. Chang, Jon Dolan, Caryn Ganz, Andy Greenwald, Joe Gross, Keith Harris, Will Hermes, Dave Itzkoff, Chris Ryan, Julianne Shepherd, Laura Sinagra, Melissa E. Maerz, Michaelangelo Matos, Mikael Wood