Biggest Full-On Media Assault/Best Bangs
Bright Eyes
Seeing Conor Oberst’s unaffected and slightly creepy-eyed face staring out from under his perfectly cropped bangs on basically every magazine cover and music website in the months of January and February wasn’t really undeserved. He had, after all, just put out 1.5 fantastic albums — the all-around great I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and the ok-but-those-three-or-four-songs-are-fucking-amazing Digital Ash in a Digital Urn — so he had some credit coming. I just wish that in one or two of his hundreds of interviews he’d have let loose some secrets on how to keep those precisely slanted bangs.
Mike Dougherty

Best Song Based On A Cher Movie
Jens Lekman, ‘Jens Lekman’s Farewell Song To Rocky Dennis’
That scene in Mask where Rocky starts breaking dishes in the sink is just terrifying. Not to mention (spoiler alert!) when he dies in the end because he can’t get with Laura Dern. Poor kid. Jens Lekman’s heartfelt tribute to the lion-faced boy came out last year on his Rocky Dennis EP, but his painfully gorgeous new collection Oh You’re So Silent Jens replays the whole thing to remind us that if there were more Rocky Dennises around, the world would be a much better place.
MD

Hottest Backup Singers
Shara Worden and Katrina Kerns of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoisemakers
As if Sufjan wasn’t a good enough-looking guy, he had to go and surround himself with absolutely beautiful backup singers. Kerns (a Ford model) and Worden have everything a pathetic indie crush should. They’re cute. They sing beautifully. Most of the time, they’re dressed like cheerleaders. And hottest of all, they’re multi-instrumentalists! Fanatic Promotion has hi-res press photos for you to drool over if you’re as sad as me. www.fanaticpromotion.com
MD

Best Song on an Otherwise Shitty Record
Death Cab For Cutie ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’
Assuming you’re not a high school kid with a really tricked-out MySpace profile or the producer of a television show which targets high school kids with really tricked out MySpace profiles, you probably realize Death Cab’s major label debut, Plans, was a big fat disappointment. But assuming you’re not a heartless prick, you also probably realize how unbelievably good ‘I Will Follow You Into the Dark,’was.
Mike Conklin

Best Rockumentary Not About Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen
Lucero – Dreaming In America (Dir. Aaron Goldman)
Imagine if Wilco was still poor at the end of I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. In a strange way the subtle failure is even more endearing. Watch as Lucero drives back and forth across the country, happy to not be delivering pizzas, and content to rest on their drunken laurels while delivering their evolved country-punk to the ever-growing masses. This is further proof that musicians can actually be likeable.
Pete D’Angelo

Best Story About a Tasteless Comeback by a Totally Irrelevant 80s Band:
INXS
My mom had a funny way of pronouncing Rock Star: INXS, but she was so proud of herself for TiVo-ing her new favorite show that I didn’t bother correcting her. At first, we shared a bag of chips and giggled at the performers, but then I felt the need to unleash the morbid truth: “Mom, do you know why these people are auditioning for this band? It’s because their lead singer committed suicide.” Mom grew very pale and serious before she whispered, “I had no idea Justin Timberlake was dead.” Kara Zuaro

Most Inoffensive Hostile Takeover in American History
Arts & Crafts Records’ infiltration of the USA
Ok, that first Broken Social Scene album (the first important one, anyway) came out something like two years ago. But 2005 was when Canada finally got its shit together, joined forces under one label, and kicked American ass with Feist, Stars, Apostle of Hustle and Broken Social Scene (again). There’s no telling which is worse: whether we’ve been duped because they’re all just BSS side projects in disguise, or whether we’ve been humiliated because we can’t do better than any of these bands.
MD

Worst Thing Ever
Fiery Furnaces, Rehearsing My Choir
The Fiery Furnaces mostly got what was coming to them with this album, a collection of disjointed, terrible songs often narrated by the Friedberger siblings’ androgynous grandperson. Critics mostly hated it with an “I’m not mad, just disappointed” bent, except that in the most irritating manner possible, they all went back and talked about how much they still loved Blueberry Boat. This irked haters like myself because Rehearsing My Choir showed exactly what was wrong with the Furnaces from the start: that they suck, and that their ideas about “experimentation” are idiotic.
MD

Dance Move of the Century
Kanye West in his ‘Gold Digger’ video
With the possible exception of Angelina Jolie, this was Kanye West’s year. Like anyone on the forefront of fashion trends, he knows how to take the inherently uncool and make it cool. But there’s one thing in particular that he made cool this year that otherwise isn’t so smooth. And that was turning a “paranoid neck twitch/quick jerk back trying to avoid this fucking fly all up in my face” into the dopest of dance moves. I’ve tried, and with ten years of professional dancing under my belt, I still have no idea how he does it.
JH

Best Record That Was Actually Way Better Before It Was Remixed
Grizzly Bear — Horn of Plenty
I’ve got nothing but love for Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear, and all sorts of great shit seems to be on the horizon for them, but man, it’s starting to look like this remix idea was a mistake. For the most part, the songs got slower, quieter and weirder — which I never even thought was possible — eventually becoming merely “interesting” rather than “enjoyable.”
MC

Best Record That Was Actually Way Better After It Was Remixed
Beck — Guerolito
I first heard ‘Girl’ back before Guero was released, and I was convinced Beck was going to release his first great record since Odelay. Then it turned out to be kind of, I don’t know, meh. But with Guerolito, each song is reworked and given just the right amount of fucked-up character to bring the whole record up to snuff. It’s still no Odelay, but at the very least, it presents a glimmer of hope.
MC

Worst Magazine I Simply Cannot Stop Reading
Rolling Stone
Is it me, or did Rolling Stone sink to an entirely new low this year, once and for all sealing their fate as the single most out-of-touch magazine on newsstands? Let’s take a look at some of the artists who appeared on the cover this year: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Bono, Jimi Hendrix, Dave Matthews. And because their hunger for redundancy is insatiable, they even dedicated an entire issue to “The 100 Greatest Artists of All-Time.” Whoa, guys! This shit’s getting so cutting edge I have to be careful not to slice open my hand when I pick it up every two weeks.
MC