Perfect Fit for the Machine:
The Best in Music 2005
by Flak Staff

Tracks 1-5

 Streaming Audio

1. "Synthesized" · The Epoxies · Stop the Future · Fat Wreck Chords · 2:48

"Everything is synthesized," the Epoxies' lead singer Roxy Epoxy cries in a sexy, throaty belt. That lyric, also the title of a song on the Epoxies' second album, expresses a theme that is hard-wired into the band's circuitry. The march of technological advance and humanity's changing place, or lack of place, in an increasingly inhuman world is a subject more familiar to sci-fi movies than rock songs, but the Epoxies have made this subject their own — and have rocked our socks off while doing it. "Synthesized," the sexiest song on their last album, is rooted squarely in '80s New Wave, but is amped up enough both in instrumentation and content to humble most contemporary pretenders to the New Wave throne.

After a driving, thumping introduction of drums and synthesizer, Roxy sings these lines: "See them on the TV screen, looking back with electric eyes / Razorblades and Vaseline; what I see is synthesized." This song, like many other tracks the Epoxies have laid down, is a first-person monologue somewhere between observation and exhortation. Roxy tells us that our world is not real; that technology and virtuality make our lives as synthetic as the circuitry we use; that the end may be near or may have already come without us noticing. Not happy stuff. But Roxy also makes it clear that the world we've built has been buffed out to an incredibly smooth sheen. We may feel alienated and disoriented, but we can't get enough of the slick, easy beauty of the monster we've created.

The Epoxies predict a shiny apocalypse, doling out heaping spoonfuls of savagely critical lyrics backed up by music that rocks so hard, you can and must swallow the whole pill. Their rhythms and melodies are so danceable and unforgettable that it is impossible not to hum or bob along with Roxy as she belts, "Nothing here is what it seems, nothing can be recognized / Perfect fit for the machine: everyone is synthesized." When you give yourself over to the driving rhythm, penetrating synth and unstoppable vocals of the Epoxies' "Synthesized," you get a sense of elation that only comes with truly great rock and roll. Even if it comes with a sense that, by giving in to the slick beauty of their music, you are very much a part of the synthetic society they describe. (— Aemilia Scott)

2. "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" · Clap Your Hands Say Yeah · Clap Your Hands Say Yeah · Self-released · 5:43

"The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" is in many ways the same type of song as LCD Soundsystem's "Tribulations," which cames later in this mix. Even though it uses guitars to accomplish what "Tribulations" does with synths, it's still a bouncy, fun, relatively long pop tune tethered to a slick, New Order-inspired bass groove.

It's also got hi-hats, chugging guitar jangle, the world's simplest dance beat and the distinctive, "like David Byrne but more tone-deaf" non-singing of Alec Ounsworth.

Whereas LCD's James Murphy appeals to everyone's inner disaffected, unable-to-carry-a-tune hipster by singing as flatly as possible, Ounsworth calls out to that guy living inside of us who just belts out the words — tunefulness be damned! — either because the family pet is the only one listening or life is just too damn short to care what other people think. (— Eric Wittmershaus)

3. "Feel Good Inc." · Gorillaz · Demon Days · Virgin · 3:41

It was this or "Dare," another great track from the second phase of the Damon Albarn Gorillaz project. I didn't choose this one because I was more pumped by the De La Soul cameo than Shaun Ryder, the bloodied but unbowed former leader of the Happy Mondays, but their contribution is a better fit with the streamlined funk production of Danger Mouse. He crafts a track of momentum (and hints of dread, a theme throughout this somber album) by hanging background snippets of maniacal laughter, a languorous lead guitar line, '80s-era bursts of synth, and other ornaments on a smooth, somewhat menacing bass track. I've no idea what the windmills in Albarn's lyrics are about, or who should fear De La Soul's "chocolate attack." But it works. (— Christopher Hickman)

4. "I'm Ready" · Th' Faith Healers · Peel Sessions · Ba Da Bing! · 5:45

It's not often that a band puts out its defining album more than a decade after splitting up. But that's what Th' Faith Healers did when enabler Ba Da Bing! snuck Peel Sessions into US record stores in November.

The band's fusion of repetitive grooves, blistering guitar and tuneless half-shouted nonsense sounds as fresh as any of this mix's year-2005 songs. "I'm Ready," one of several songs never released in any other form, hangs its hat on a rumbling, chugging bass line; a melodic, distorted guitar riff; and the steady, simple drumming of Joe Dilworth. (Dilworth, who photographed the album art for My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is a bit of an early '90s British-rock Kevin Bacon, having also served as the drummer on Stereolab's early recordings.) Sounding a little like refugees from a B-52s cover band, Roxanne Stephen and Tom Cullinan chant the song's title like an upbeat mantra, taking care of about 80 percent of the song's sparse lyrical content. Everything builds toward a concluding maelstrom of guitar that lends credence to the notion that 20 chain-saws spinning around in a tornado would be worth risking your life to record.

The song's bouncy opening departs slightly from Th' Healers' signature sound, bearing more of a resemblance to Cullinan's post-Healers work with Quickspace. But the album's 15 other tracks nicely showcase the music spectrum spanned by Th' Healers' distinctive blend of British punk, Jesus & Mary Chain/Sonic Youth guitar scree and Krautrock rhythms. (— Eric Wittmershaus)

5. "I'll Be on the Water" · Akron/Family · Akron/Family · Young God Records · 3:25

The oft-folkie and psychedelic-leaning Akron/Family made sweeping, sonic masterpieces on the band's debut (listen to "Running, Returning"), but "I'll Be on the Water" proves the quartet's got the chops to lay it bare. Ryan Vanderhoof's vocals are stripped to gasps and gulps, and a swaying guitar tune over muted bird chirps and people happily shouting to each other adds to the feel of isolation since the birds and people are only loud enough to be identifiable, not intelligible.

Every movement of the singer's mouth, though, can be heard as he sweetly coos to his lover:

"Thinking of you/ there's lightning bolts in my chest./ I know you know/ I think our love's the best."

At its album release show in New York City in March 2005, Akron/Family performed this track. There was incense burning onstage, the band members wore their shirts checkered and their beards unshorn (and it wouldn't surprise me if their feet were shoeless, but I can't honestly remember); it was all unabashedly hippie-ish. For some three-odd minutes, though, there wasn't a single cynic in the house. Admissions of love can be shouted from the tops of mountains, but they're no less powerful when revealed this tenderly. The proof was in the completely hushed crowd. (— Lavina Lee)