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Jan 01, 2006 Autolux By Under the Radar staff Photography by Dan Monick

Eugene Goreshter

Autolux

Top Ten Albums of 2005

1. Broadcast: Tender Buttons - Any reference to Gertrude Stein in pop music must not be overlooked.
2. Deerhoof: The Runners Four - These guys and girl create beautiful ballads for bipolar people.
3. Autechre: Untilted - If DMT had a sonic equivalent, this is it.
4. Bob Dylan: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack -The type of shit that makes you want to quit playing music.
5. Mu: Out of Breach - This is what a soundtrack for a headache tastes like.
6. M.I.A.: Arular - The muzak in a third world robot factory.
7. Danger Doom: The Mouse and the Mask - What Raymond Scott would be listening to if he was alive today.
8. Spoon: Gimme Fiction - Proof that making intelligent rock, for what its worth, is still possible today. Although it helps being from Texas.
9. M. Ward: Transistor Radio - This feller makes timeless sounds in a dated age.
10. Gorillaz: Demon Days - Damon Albarn proves once again that there is no such thing as a “side project.”

What was the highlight of 2005 for either you personally or for the band?

A year-long touring schedule that precluded us from actually having to be in Los Angeles.

What was the low point of 2005 for you?

Having to come home.

What are your hopes and plans for 2006?

Staying the course.

If you could drop a copy of one album in the mailbox of every American citizen, what album would it be?

Anthony Robbins: Personal Power 2: The Driving Force!- How To Shape Your Destiny Now

Will the iPod, and its ability to combine all genres and its emphasis on individual songs, render the album format irrelevant?

Why is everyone so bent on taking the fun out of collecting records?

With Kate Bush, Gang of Four, Ray Davies, Scott Walker, and others issuing new releases, what icon needs to return and make another album?

Charles Manson.

With the mainstream success of artists like Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, The White Stripes, and Franz Ferdinand, has the meaning of “indie rock” shifted? Has the term lost all meaning?

Even “indie rockers” deserve hot meals and a cot.

If you couldn’t be a musician, what other profession do you think that you’d enjoy and why?

Investigative reporting for the Weekly World News. Who wouldn’t want to meet and interview new and exciting species?

If you could travel through time, where and when would you go and why?

19th century England- so I could walk up to H.G. Wells and thumb my nose at him.

Do you feel more or less optimistic (about music, about your personal life, about the world in general) than you did a year ago?

I feel boxed in by this question by the simple absence of a comma after “more.”

Arcade Fire broke through in 2004. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Wolf Parade broke through in 2005. Who will be the “it-band” of 2006?

If I had any of the foresight, ingenuity, and market savvy requisite to making such judgments, I would gladly give up playing music and become an A&R person.

If you had/got to switch careers with another artist or band, who would it be and why?

Stina Nordenstam. So I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody ever again.

We are now over halfway through the ‘00 decade. What five albums stand out from the last five years as the best?

Radiohead: Kid A
Blur: 13
Blonde Redhead: Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
Bjork: Vespertine
Kool Keith: Diesel Truckers

What, in your opinion, is the most pressing problem that is affecting the world right now and if you had the power, what would you do to address that problem?

File sharing is slowly eroding the moral fabric of our great nation. Not since the threat of communism has there been such an insidious scourge in our midst. Illegal downloading must be punishable by death.

Do you have any other thoughts about the current state of the world or the state of the music industry?

The current exhibit at the Natural History Museum is called “COLLAPSE?” Its focus is on the adaptive capabilities, or lack thereof, of societies through the ages. It would behoove record companies to shuttle executives in by the busload for a glance.

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