In no order:

• V/A – Run the Road
• White Stripes, The – Get Behind Me Satan
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
• Detroit Cobras – Baby
• Kills, The – No Wow
• Beck – Guero
• Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep
• One Self – Children of Possibility
• Kraftwerk – Minimum-Maximum

Notes:
This was a great year of music, especially compared to last year’s weakishness. Although my list of 2005’s top albums is rock and hip hop heavy, there was a lot of great electronica (e.g., Boards of Canada’s Campfire Headphase, The, the Welcome to Violence compilation, Mark One’s 3deck Set, Richie Hawtin’s DE9 Transitions, and Bossman’s Street Anthems mixes).

Other Lists:

• Pitchfork’s Top 10: Top 50 is worth looking through.
• NPR’s Ken Tucker top five albums with links to other NPR music people’s top albums: NPR continues its love affair with the urban hipsters.
• Amazon.com’s Customer’s Top 20 Albums: Um, yeah.
• Amazon.com’s Editors’ Top 20 Albums: Similar to Pitchforks. Ah, consistency.
• Fly Editors’ Top African Picks – African music is getting big, especially its hip-hop side. The music tends to not be that great, but there are some gems out there, especially when you consider the equipment and environment in which they work.
• Metacritic: Aggregated for your pleasure. They also list a bunch of other top ten lists.
• CMJ: CMJ’s top albums.

In no order:

• Lynn, Loretta – Van Lear Rose
• Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2
• Various Artists – No New York
• Kaskade – San Francisco Sessions (Volume 04?): Soundtrack to the Soul
• Diplo and MIA – Piracy Funds Terrorism, Volume 1

Notes: Listening to pre-2005 albums contributed to such a good music year for me. Outside of these five albums are a number of artists I either came across for the first time this year or became much more familiar with their work. They include: Fiery Furnaces, Rilo Kiley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Can, Nitin Sawhney, Charles Mingus, and Hang on the Box.