McQ's Best Of 2005 Recommended Mixes

Hey Rock n' Roll Fans,

2005 was, in my humble opinion, the best year of the decade in terms of the quality of its top offerings, especially on the indie rock side of things.  In addition to Sleater-Kinney's psychedelic juggernaut The Woods (my choice for best album of the decade), we were treated to Sufjan Steven's Illinois, My Morning Jacket's Z, Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy, Wolf Parade's Apologies To The Queen Mary, The Mountain Goat's devasting The Sunset Tree, The New Pornographer's buoyant Twin Cinema, The Eels touching Blinking Lights And Other Revelations, The Hold Steady's snarling Separation Sunday, and LCD Soundsystem's proper debut, amongst many more.

Not surprisingly, this is the year I decided expand the collection beyond a mere disk or two. It would be another year before the mix names started getting silly, but given the strength of the source material in 2005, this is easily one of the best collections I've ever had the honor of assembling.

As always, each mix is designed to fit on a single 70MB CD at 128 Kb sample rate.  Here goes.

Volume 1 - Classic-Styled Rock:
One of my all-time favorite mixes, this assortment of hard-hitting psychedelic and 60s flavored country rock tracks includes cuts by from Sleater-Kinney, My Morning Jacket, Okkervil River, Elbow, Low, The White Stripes, and one or two others.

Volume 2 - 80s-Styled Rock:
Went for a new wave feel on this one, includes 2005 tracks by Wolf Parade, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Killers, Franz Ferdinand and several more.

Volume 3 - Pop:
Some of the catchiest, (and in the case of Antony and the Johnsons some of the most unique) pop songs of the 2005 can be found here.  Includes 2005 tracks from The New Pornograhpers, The Eels, The Magic Numbers, Antony, The Decemberists, etc., etc.

Volume 4 - Folk:
More folk rock than true folk, this mix includes 2005 numbers by Sufjan Stevens, The Mountain Goats, Andrew Bird, Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, more from The Decemberists, and so on and so on.

Volume 5 - Whacked:
Selects form year's most esoteric, experimental and off-beat releases are found here.  In retrospect, don't understand why I didn't swap Antony in here and move the Go Team to the pop mix, but oh well, hindsight is 20-20.  Artists profiled include, amongst others, The Go Team, The Books, Sigur Ros, Brian Eno, and Deerhoof.