How Deep Is The Ocean?
The online portfolio & blog of Eric Ogburn

Maybe it’s because everyone else is doing it, maybe it’s because I’m fighting a cold and have Thera-Flu buzz, but I thought I would post my top 10 albums of 2005. I decided to grade them on how much I enjoyed listening to them, play rotation, and what they meant to me personally. I don’t care much for their value to their “genre” or their importance to anything but my satisfaction. So this is a purely subjective list. Here goes…

• Of Montreal • The Sunlandic Twins
  I’ve been a fan of Of Montreal, but never a big fan, not until this album. By far the most cohesive and interesting album to date.
• Bloc Party • Silent Alarm
  If all of the bands representing the so-called New Age Revival sounded like this, I might have more respect for the New Age Revival.
• The National • Alligator
  Sometimes a band creates harmonies within their songs that give you goose bumps.
• The New Pornographers • Twin Cinema
  Neko shines on this album.
• The Clientele • Strange Geometry
  Flowing, graceful melodies without being soft. I downloaded this album on a whim and it stayed in my rotation for two weeks straight.
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah • Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
  The production isn’t so hot, the singer sounds like David Byrne’s and Wayne Coyne’s lovechild, and yet this was the most exciting album I heard all year. This band will be around for a long time.
• Okkervil River • Black Sheep Boy
  A very loose concept album about loss and heartache, with some of the best songwriting I’ve heard in a while. The band, like the lyrics, always seem about to fall apart, creating a driving, jangly momentum. Great album.
• The Decemberists • Picaresque
  All hail the Decemberists. Their best album to date and that’s saying a lot.
• Spoon • Gimme Fiction
  What the Rolling Stones wish they still were.
• Sufjan Stevens • Illinoise
  Okay, so the album is great. But it was also the soundtrack to Beth’s and my Katrina evacuation and exile. We drove over half the southern United States a few times listening to this album the entire way. We have quite a few memories of Katrina, and this album seems to be playing in the background of all of them. Good thing we weren’t listening to Abba