I had originally planned to skip writing about Sealed until after Guildpact, but then I played in two Sealed events this weekend and took notes. Sadly for me, this week gave the community a deluge of articles about Ravnica Limited, so you are probably wondering at this point, “Why should I read Knutson’s drivel?” I’ll tell you why. Two Sealed Deck card pools, two Top 8s, The Guest Spot featuring one Anton Jonsson, and my Top 25 Songs list of 2005. Think of it as an extra value meal for your brain.
Sealed is Skilltesting
Don’t believe the whiners, Sealed Deck is actually quite skill-intensive, especially in this format. Don’t believe me? Josh Ravitz has five Top 8s in a row in Magic Online Sealed premiere events. You can get back-to-back strong Sealed decks, but five of ’em? Highly unlikely. No, the reason Josh has racked up about a hundred packs worth of winnings on MTGO in the last couple of weeks is because he’s good at Limited, and people are terrible at evaluating Sealed card pools and building decks with Ravnica manabases. I guarantee that this will only become more apparent with the introduction of Guildpact, where your good stuff is suddenly spread across seven guilds instead of merely four. Today I’m going to walk through two of my own Sealed pools with you, show you how they played, and provide advice I’ve learned from both my recent success and failures in Ravnica Limited.
With regard to manabases, I tend to be more organic than some players in how I construct things, going as much by feel as by strict formula, but I still use some basic guidelines to help kick-start the process.
First count up the total of each mana symbol and write them down on a piece of paper in descending order, with the color containing the most symbols at the top (like this):
GGGGGGGGGGGG (12)
WWWWW (5)
BBBB (4)
U (1)
This gives you an idea of the ratio of each mana producer you’d like to be playing. If you wanted to do it percentage-wise, you’d get 60% Green, 25% White, 20% Black, and 5% Blue. Then take that an apply it to the number of lands you expect to be playing in your deck. Most players have found that sixteen lands (two of which are Karoos, or bouncelands) plus two more mana sources like Signets is about right, though obviously you have to take your mana curve, as well as things like how much card drawing your deck provides, into account. If you don’t have any extra producers (even off-color ones can help, especially in Sealed) or Karoos, then you’ll want to play seventeen or possibly eighteen lands. The set is well-designed, and I have yet to see a Sealed pool where you’ll wind up with no fixers or dual lands. I also prefer to play spells like Farseek, and particularly Civic Wayfinder, over Signets, but you do what you have to in order to make sure you can cast your spells.
Once you have your percentages, apply that to the number of lands you want to play while accounting for additional production from non-land sources. If we had zero extra mana sources, then you’d end up with something like nine Forests, four Plains, three Swamps, and one Island as your projected manabase, though unless I had a ton of double-Green spells to worry about, I’d consider cheating and maybe cut a Forest for the extra Swamp (casting removal spells when you need them is muy importante). Non-land sources or dual lands will help you cheat on some basics and should hopefully stabilize the manabase a little, making it more likely for you to be able to cast your spells whenever you draw them. Note that this is not a manabase that I would be comfortable running without helpers (you’re going to get screwed out of at least one of your colors multiple times over the course of the day), but it serves its purpose in terms of discussing manabase methodology.
Splashing in this set is incredibly easy, but you need to be careful of how deep your splash goes in order to keep a stable manabase. For the most part, you want to limit yourself to two strong colors and a small splash (or two if you have the mana fixers) if you want to win. People dislike losing to color screw almost as much as they hate mana screw, and the closer you get to wanting to play an even number of lands from each color in your deck, the closer you get to courting that concept. Remember kids, 666 is still the mark of the Devil. Check out my second Sealed pool today for a set of cards that allow as much splashing as you want to at very little cost to your manabase, but also understand that this was probably the best Sealed deck I’ve ever opened and it will be rare to receive this sort of gift.
Sealed in Action
Okay, embarrassing story time. For whatever reason, I decided I wanted to play a 2x Ravnica Sealed Premiere event on Magic Online last Saturday to get some practice before Sunday’s Grand Prix Trial in Roanoke. The card pool I opened was very solid and I started the day 5-0 before scooping to Ravitz in the swiss, drawing round 7, and then losing to Ravitz outright in the Draft portion of the event.
This sounds like a good thing, right? Well it was, except I screwed the pooch on the Sealed build and played a worse deck than I probably should have. I’ll post the pool, then my build, and then let Anton ridicule me in The Guest Spot, so you can see where I went wrong.
White
1 Benevolent Ancestor
1 Caregiver
1 Conclave Equenaut
1 Conclave Phalanx
1 Conclave’s Blessing
1 Courier Hawk
1 Devouring Light
1 Divebomber Griffin
1 Leave No Trace
1 Screeching Griffin
1 Wojek Siren
1 Pollenbright Wings
1 Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
Green
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Dryad’s Caress
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Golgari Brownscale
1 Greater Mossdog
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Perilous Forays
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Siege Wurm
1 Sundering Vitae
1 Transluminant
1 Trophy Hunter
1 Ursapine
1 Golgari Guildmage
1 Golgari Rotwurm
Black
1 Carrion Howler
1 Clinging Darkness
1 Dimir House Guard
1 Disembowel
1 Mortipede
1 Thoughtpicker Witch
1 Consult the Necrosages
1 Dimir Guildmage
1 Glimpse the Unthinkable
1 Perplex
Blue
1 Belltower Sphinx
1 Drake Familiar
1 Ethereal Usher
1 Flight of Fancy
1 Quickchange
1 Remand
1 Snapping Drake
1 Stasis Cell
1 Surveilling Sprite
1 Tattered Drake
1 Terraformer
1 Vedalken Entrancer
1 Zephyr Spirit
Red
1 Barbarian Riftcutter
1 Incite Hysteria
1 Dogpile
1 Fiery Conclusion
1 Goblin Fire Fiend
1 Molten Sentry
1 Ordruun Commando
1 Reroute
1 Sell-Sword Brute
1 Smash
1 War-Torch Goblin
1 Viashino Fangtail
1 Viashino Slasher
1 Boros Guildmage
1 Boros Recruit
Artifact
1 Boros Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Voyager Staff
Land
1 Boros Garrison
1 Temple Garden
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Sacred Foundry
…..
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..
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My build looked like this, and it’s clearly wrong (especially the part where I got greedy and tried to include a Fangtail). I sideboarded out the double Red cost all day in favor of Conclave Phalanx, but it never occurred to me to change into the Black configuration. When I looked at my card pool, there were so few Black spells that I dismissed it too early, and whiffed on the optimal deck build.
6 Forest
5 Plains
1 Boros Garrison
1 Temple Garden
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Mountain
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Boros Guildmage
1 Boros Signet
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Caregiver
1 Conclave Equenaut
1 Courier Hawk
1 Devouring Light
1 Divebomber Griffin
1 Dogpile
1 Fiery Conclusion
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Greater Mossdog
1 Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Pollenbright Wings
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Screeching Griffin
1 Siege Wurm
1 Sundering Vitae
1 Transluminant
1 Trophy Hunter
1 Ursapine
1 Viashino Fangtail
The Guest Spot, starring Anton Jonsson
Looking through this cardpool, one thing should become glaringly obvious, Green will be our main color. We have a whopping eleven playable Green cards, not counting the multicolored cards. Green also has the best card in our pool, Ursapine. In fact, I don’t think it is possible to build any sort of decent deck with this pool without using Green (feel free to prove me wrong).
The next step is to find a color, or colors, to fill out the rest of the deck. Both Blue and White are pretty deep and offer some decent cards, while Black is thin but offers a possible splash. Red has nothing exciting apart from one Viashino Fangtail that would screw up our mana far too much.
The synergy between the White cards and the Green cards, as well as some added multicolor cards, makes White a better choice than Blue for our second color. The White cards are just plain better, especially since some of the Blue cards advocate a milling strategy that won’t fit into our Green base.
Adding up the playable White and Green cards gives us:
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Golgari Brownscale
1 Greater Mossdog
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Siege Wurm
1 Transluminant
1 Trophy Hunter
1 Ursapine
1 Benevolent Ancestor
1 Caregiver
1 Conclave Equenaut
1 Conclave Phalanx
1 Courier Hawk
1 Devouring Light
1 Divebomber Griffin
1 Screeching Griffin
1 Wojek Siren
1 Boros Guildmage
1 Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
1 Pollenbright Wings
1 Golgari Guildmage
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Voyager Staff
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Temple Garden
This is actually enough cards for a complete deck. It does however contain a lot of weak cards. Cutting out Wojek Siren and Voyager makes it twenty-four cards and sixteen lands, which is probably what we will need. This still leaves us with an unexciting Golgari Brownscale as well as a Boros Guildmage that will be pretty hard on our mana. True, we have several other White spells that cost two White mana to cast, but most of them have Convoke. There is also a big difference between a spell that costs WW and one that costs 3WW.
The deck already has a Signet and two dual lands, so adding a splash shouldn’t unhinge our manabase. The obvious choice for a splash is Black, since we have a Golgari Guildmage that we want to activate and an Elves of Deep Shadow that gives Black mana. Black also offers the only “real” removal spell in our card pool, as well as another big creature, Golgari Rotwurm.
For me, this card pool was pretty easy to build up to this point. It took me less than ten minutes to realize that our deck would be Green and White with a small splash of Black. It does get a bit tricky here though. Exactly how far do we go with this splash? With three colors we will obviously have to cut the Boros Guildmage, replacing it with Disembowel. We could stop after that though, with two Swamps enough to consolidate this minimal splash. The other option is to add Golgari Rotwurm and maybe even Dimir House-Guard. In this case I would prefer to cut back on White and try and minimize the amount of double-White spells in the deck. In this build I chose to cut Caregiver (Golgari Brownscale is actually a weaker card but fits our curve better) and Divebomber Griffin. The fact that it requires a lot of White mana is not the only reason I chose to cut the Griffin. We also already have quite a few creatures that cost five, and we’re adding another one with Golgari Rotwurm. Sealed Deck might be a slower format, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore your mana curve. Remember, if you do “curve out” in Sealed, it is less likely your opponent can cope than it is in Draft.
It is important to note that once you get down to the final few cards in your deck, it is usually pretty hard to know which card will be better. Thankfully, which card you choose in these situations will usually not make a big difference. For example, you can build this deck with a small splash for the Disembowel, or with a bigger splash… both those builds will be very close to optimal. You could play a whole tournament without it ever making a difference, or the decision to choose one build might win you one game and lose you the other. The important thing is to get the core of the deck right. If you screw up a bit when choosing between cards of similar strength, it is not the End of the World.
Personally I chose the path with the bigger splash. It gives the deck one less card that doesn’t do much on its own — Caregiver — and it gives you a little more power while sacrificing some consistency. This is what I ended up with:
1 Dimir House Guard
1 Disembowel
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Golgari Brownscale
1 Greater Mossdog
1 Nullmage Shepherd
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Siege Wurm
1 Transluminant
1 Trophy Hunter
1 Ursapine
1 Benevolent Ancestor
1 Conclave Equenaut
1 Conclave Phalanx
1 Courier Hawk
1 Devouring Light
1 Screeching Griffin
1 Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
1 Pollenbright Wings
1 Golgari Guildmage
1 Golgari Rotwurm
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Temple Garden
3 Swamp
4 Plains
7 Forest
The deck needs three Swamps to support the splash reliably, which is still fine with the Signet, Temple and Sanctuary all giving both Green and White. Ideally, the deck needs one more White source, but you can’t get everything you want.
–AntonJ
Playing the Deck
Round 1 – pipsquek 1480
In game 1, he got turn 2 Selesnya Guildmage, and I got a slow hand. He stopped playing lands though, while I got Boros Guildmage, Fists of Ironwood, then Guardian online. Keening Banshee killed my Guildmage, but Pollenbright Wings is a winner in Sealed, almost regardless of how big the guy you manage to cast it on happens to be. I win the game with a Dogpile for ten because I want the style points.
Game 2, I keep an all Green mana hand with two non-Green spells. I’m at ten when I cast a non-Elf, which isn’t a good way to win.
My game 3 hand? Three lands, three colors, spells. It’s a keeper. I cast turn 5 Ursapine after he wastes a Brainspoil on my Mossdog, telling me he’s afraid of Wings. Whoops. Wings hits on turn 6 and it’s all over bar the shoutin’. He had a Trophy Hunter in play, but never enough Green mana to take down the Ursapine so I was able to keep crapping out plant tokens with maximum efficiency.
W 2-1
Round 2 – The Ineffable 1648
Game 1 I mulligan a one-lander into a hand with four lands and two creature type – griffin. Thankfully my opponent got stuck on three Swamps for a bit. This gives me time to cast Trophy Hunter, more fliers, and Ursapine (which merely draws a Brainspoil) and roll right on through. Drooling Groodion tried to make it close, but I was always one turn ahead.
My opener for game 2 is a hand with Dogpile, a Signet and 5 lands. Haaave to mull. He then plays a turn 2 Kudzu and I think I’m sunk. However, his follow-up to this is an impressive turn 3 Signet with no land. Woot! I have a chance. I stop a Moldervine Cloak on the Kudzu on turn 4 with Fiery Conclusion and think I might have a chance in this one in spite of the fact that his deck is really good. Then he plays Moroii. Dear God. Strands of Undeath on the Dimir vampire knocks Wings and Guardian out of my hand and that’s game. Too much good stuff in the right order there for me to keep up, though I ended the game with him at eight and me with Scatter and Dogpile in hand. It was close.
Game 3 sees us create a very complicated board where I’m way behind until I get a Siege Wurm with Wings on it. I get a free attack, but suddenly have to deal with a host of dudes on his side plus Drooling Groodion, and a Drift of Phantasms for blocking detail. I try to Dogpile his Drift out of the way, but he saw it and added a counter with his Shambling Shell. Thankfully, I still got four little plants out of the attack because his wall already had five damage on it and Siege Wurm tramples. He transmutes an Infiltrator for nothing, and I win in spite of Necroplasm, Groodion, and an incredibly busty draw from him. Wow, that was close.
W 2-1
Round 3 – 801016 1635
I am once again forced to mulligan another poor hand, but his grip is slow too. I build the board reasonably well until he plays Firemane Angel. Brain flatulence kicks in and I make a huge misplay. I had a Siege Wurm in play and cast Pollenbright Wings on it, immediately attacking into his Angel while he has mana open. If I just wait a turn to untap, I’ll have enough mana to use my Caregiver and avoid getting crushed by his Gather Courage. Instead I play like an impatient idiot and lose. Nice work, me.
I win game 2 when his Nullmage Shepherd is one creature short of activation and I Pollenbright my Guardian.
Game 3 he stalls on mana and I curve out. He gets Benevolent Ancestor online and then Evangel and I easily could have lost this game to Glare of Subdual if it weren’t for the fact that one of my creatures was a Nullmage Shepherd. This card is often merely okay in draft, but can be a house in Sealed.
W 2-1
Round 4 – Gerth 1786
He chose to draw – the first guy all day who did that. I keep a two-lander… I lose because I’m Green screwed with Brambles and the ‘Pine in hand. To be fair, my draw was rather slow… I needed to cast my five-drops on time.
Game 2 he kicks off with Elves of the Deep Shadow and a turn 2 Moldervine Cloak. Oof. I have removal for it, and he kindly stays mana screwed for the whole game, so I even the match.
He comes out fast again in game 2 with a turn 3 Scion of the Wild – I wonder if there’s a Scatter to come. I hit the Scion with Devouring Light after he plays a Fists on it and then things get complicated. He had Rotwurm, but I finally got a Siege Wurm and Guardian into play and my deck started delivering hits to along with all my lands. Boros Guildmage made combat problematic for a turn (though it met a Faith’s Fetter’s immediately) and then Fiery Conclusion got rid of his Rotwurm, taking me to 4-0.
W 2-1
Round 5 – IR2Way 1708
Game 1 I get a good curve and he plays stone nothing except Shambling Shell. Devouring Light removes a blocking Mossdog from him and my guys roll. I make what might be another sully Vitae choice, killing another Terrarion because it looked like he was color screwed. He plays Sunforger the turn after, but I have too much pressure and I pull out of it again. Nice to be lucky.
Of course, during game 2 he told me that he was White screwed, so maybe it was the right play…
Game 2 he starts out mana screwed and I have just enough damage to kill him before he can recover.
W 2-1
Round 6
[knutmodo] please do not let me get paired down again
[zr0e–] if you get paired down vs me
[zr0e–] scoop it up.
[knutmodo] yeah, obv
[zr0e–] 🙂
[knutmodo] it would be nice just to get a draw and in for once though
6:23 mixedknuts: Soooo lucky.
6:23 mixedknuts has conceded the match. Jravitz wins 2-0
Yep, I made the Top 8 (only to lose to Ravitz) in spite of playing the wrong splash color for an optimal deck. I mean, my deck performed well and I was even happy with how my splash played, but it could have been better. Keep this in mind when you sit down this weekend to battle with your Guildpact goodies.
A Note About Finishers
One thing that far too many players are ignoring right now is the need to include finishing cards in their Sealed decks. For the most part, Sealed decks will be slower than decks that you draft, and many of them will be playing the same color combinations and even many of the same creatures. This leads to extended stalemates, which means you need to include a number of cards designed to break stalemates if at all possible. (Unless you like draws, in which case, go on wit’ your bad self.) I’m planning on revisiting this topic post Guildpact with a more extensive discussion, but for now here’s a short list of the types of cards I am talking about:
- Evasion creatures. This includes fliers, unblockable guys (Dimir Infiltrator is a clock, even if he’s slow), and land walkers (Sewerdreg and Ivy Dancer are the two that come to mind).
- Bombs. Reusable token generators.
- Enhancement auras. These can be as impressive as Pollenbright Wings and Moldervine Cloak, or as simple as casting Strands of Undeath or Flight of Fancy on your fattie.
- Overrun or Falter effects. Selesnya Guildmage, Rally the Righteous, and Overwhelm are good examples of the former, Incite Hysteria and Bathe in Light are examples of the latter. (Be careful with the radiance spells though. Your opponent gets the benefits if they have creatures of the same color as you.)
- Win conditions that do not require combat. Pingers like Viashino Fangtail and Spectral Searchlight come to mind, and remember that Vedalken Entrancer makes a fine ground blocker while giving you the Millstone backup plan if you think your deck will have trouble winning and you can play him without any mana problems.
Card Pool Numbah Two
I registered a relatively mediocre pool at the Grand Prix Trial in Roanoke (some of us don’t play much sanctioned Magic in the real world and therefore have ratings that yield few byes), but the pool that I got back? Wowsers! My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree as I clapped my hands together, giddy at the gift I had just received. I’m not going to do a report on this one, but I will tell you that I started 3-0, drew into the Top 8, and then lost a meaningless match to Nathan Zimmerman on the back of four mulligans and a mana screw game. I then lost to carmate Jim Ferraiolo in the Top 4 of the draft, though Jim made me feel slightly better when he put away his finals opponent and received three byes for a hard day’s work. Without further ado, here’s one of the best sets of cards you can hope to open in this format.
White
Caregiver
Divebomber Griffin
Dromad Purebred
Faith’s Fetters
Nightguard Patrol
Twilight Drover
Votary of the Conclave
Selesnya Guildmage
Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
Green
Bramble Elemental
Civic Wayfinder
Dryad’s Caress
2 Farseek
Goliath Spider
Nullmage Shepherd
Perilous Forays
Recollect
Sundering Vitae
2 Transluminant
Ursapine
Gaze of the Gorgon
Shambling Shell
Woodwraith Strangler
Vulturous Zombie
Black
Brainspoil
Clinging Darkness
Dimir Machinations
Disembowel
Mortipede
Necromantic Thirst
Nightmare Void
Roofstalker Wight
Sadistic Augermage
Sewerdreg
2 Thoughtpicker Witch
Blue
Drake Familiar
Drift of Phantasms
Flight of Fancy
Grayscaled Gharial
2 Induce Paranoia
Mark of Eviction
Muddle the Mixture
Quickchange
Snapping Drake
Surveilling Sprite
Telling Time
Red
Cleansing Beam
Coalhauler Swine
Flash Conscription
Goblin Fire Fiend
Goblin Spelunkers
Ordruun Commando
Seismic Spike
Sell-Sword Brute
Stoneshaker Shaman
2 Torpid Moloch
Viashino Fangtail
Viashino Slasher
Rally the Righteous
Flame-Kin Zealot
Artifact
Bloodletter Quill
Golgari Signet
Selesnya Signet
Spectral Searchlight
Voyager Staff
2 Boros Garrison
Dimir Aqueduct
Overgrown Tomb
I count five playable rares in there if you are running those colors, plus a number of solid spells and mini-combos, plus two Farseeks, a Wayfinder, an on-color Karoo, and an on-color dual land. How do you put this together to maximize the strengths?
……
….
…
..
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Faith’s Fetters
Twilight Drover
Selesnya Guildmage
Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
Bramble Elemental
Civic Wayfinder
2 Farseek
Nullmage Shepherd
Recollect
2 Transluminant
Ursapine
Gaze of the Gorgon
Shambling Shell
Vulturous Zombie
Brainspoil
Clinging Darkness
Disembowel
Mortipede
Roofstalker Wight
Sewerdreg
Thoughtpicker Witch
7 Forest
4 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Island
Dimir Aqueduct
Overgrown Tomb
Once again, we’re obviously going Green here, and as I noted above, you have enough color fixers to play any set of colors. The bombs you absolutely have to include from this pool are Vulturous Zombie, Ursapine, Selesnya Guildmage, the removal set, and Twilight Drover.
Yes, Twilight Drover. I’m technically short on the normal token generators with this pool, but Guildmage plus the two Trannies plus an aura on Brambles gives me a good chance at kicking off the chain at some point in a long game. Once the chain gets started, you just attack/chump with the tokens and your chia pet grows and grows. It’s even sicker when you have a Thoughtpicker Witch in play, and start to use your little tokens as sacrificial lambs. I suggest not actually invoking this combo unless it’s either absolutely necessary or you want to see men cry.
The only question most people had was… why play Flight of Fancy? The truth is that I wanted a source of card drawing in the deck and Flight provides that. It also gives you yet another way to break stalemates, though this deck is already rife with those. Feel free to chime in with your own opinions on this one in the forums.
The Top 25 Songs of 2005
1) Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek
The name Imogen Heap may not be familiar to you, but you might have heard of Frou Frou, which features Imogen on lead vocals. Regardless of whether she’s new to you or whether you were just excited to see something new from her like I was, this song is ridiculous. Vocoder vocals are often cool when you first hear them, but get old quickly (think Cher and “Believe”). This song avoids that by being completely acapella outside of the vocoder harmonies and the result is breathtaking. Imogen’s entire album is quite good, but this song is one that will still be on best of lists at the end of the decade.
2) José González — Crosses
I get about half my music these days from a variety of music blogs that Jeff Holmes turned me on to, and this was just a random track that somebody highlighted in the middle of last year by some guy I’d never heard of. Turns out Jose Gonzalez is an excellent songwriter of the quiet guitar and vocals strain, and that Crosses is an exceptional song off of one of his EPs. I really enjoy the steady-but-driving guitar on this one and how the voice simply rides atop it, and the lyrics are pleasant as well. Jose even has his own MySpace area where you can hear his songs via streaming audio, so check it out and tell me what you think.
3) Gnarls Barkley — Crazy
I love a Cee Lo Green more than almost anybody, so when I heard that he was teaming up with Danger Mouse (the guy who made the Gray Album), I became excited. Crazy is the first cut off the as-yet-unreleased album, and it does a very good job of teasing the possible quality for the rest of the album. Cee Lo’s voice is an acquired taste, but the back beat and haunting harmonies of the chorus are not. Expect there to be numerous radio cuts from this LP that see airplay in ’06.
4) Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch
I heard this song on the local college station three times and forgot the name of the band and the track every time I heard it. I always thought it was pretty damned cool and probably belonged to some Japanese RPG soundtrack, but for whatever reason the name “Ladytron” just would not stick. Finally I managed to write down the name and haven’t stopped listening to the mp3 since. I’m not a huge dance/club music guy, but this song kicks enough ass that I can’t stop listening to it.
5) Antony & the Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone
I’m a vocals guy and I tend to like a lot of pretty music. This extends so far as enjoying musical theater, which has nothing to do with anything except to say this song is beautiful and sad, and Antony’s lilting tenor is ridiculously suited to carrying this tune. The piano beneath the vocal lines is understated, but exquisite in its simplicity; moving things along without interfering with the melody. I’m not a pro at this things, but the end of the song seems to signify some sort of ascension by the lead singer and still leaves me unsettled, though I’ve probably listened to this tune over a hundred times. It flirts with perfection.
6) Sufjan Stevens – 01 – Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, IL
After listening to the list in order, I realized I might just have a soft spot for pop songs with piano pieces (I like Tori Amos and Ben Folds too), but I challenge any one of you to hear this and not think it’s gorgeous. This song always makes me a little sad when I listen to it, but mostly just because I wish it were double the 2:09 minutes the track listing says it is. Sufjan Stevens is a musical genius.
7) ABBA – You Owe Me One
Remember that part two songs ago where I said I like musical theater? I mentioned it just to soften the blow that there’s an ABBA song lurking down here that just happens to be as catchy as anything they ever released. Apparently this song was a b-side or rarity from the olden days but was only discovered by the general public with the recent release of some monster ABBA box set. I can’t figure out if this is an annoying, Swedish version of It’s a Small Version After All, or more of the same from the ubiquitous favorite oldies band of gay men and teenage girls everywhere, but what I do know is that I can’t get it out of my head and I keep getting strange cravings to listen to it.
8) Dave Matthews Band — Dreamgirl
These days most sexy songs seem confined to R&B albums by people like John Legend (who released a great album in ’05), but DMB’s Dreamgirl is all about making yuppie/hippie love. I can’t drive past Sorority Row on a sunny day here in Charlottesville without thinking about following some beads of sweat down some coed spines. Thankfully my wife knows she’s still the one Dave’s singing about. My favorite DMB song in years.
9) Beatles vs. Ludacris & Black Eyed Peas – The Black Beatles
I don’t know the story behind this one, but it’s a mashup of Girl from Rubber Soul plus some Luda flow, with B.E.P. backup and their beat underneath it all. The result is something that feels very new and turned out to be a great dance tune, though the lyrics are a bit on the violent side.
10) Ted Leo – Since U Been Gone
The Kelly Clarkson version of this song made most people’s end of year lists and I’m just as captivated by that song as everyone else was, but Ted Leo’s version had more legs in terms of how much I listened to it in 2005. Plus, I now must work my ass off to reestablish my indie cred after including that ABBA tune. You wouldn’t see Tim Aten doing anything silly like that in his list, nossir.
11) Mike Doughty – Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well
The former frontman for Soul Coughing had one of my favorite albums in 2005. Looking at the World… was the first single released from this album (Busting Up A Starbucks was the second) and whatever airplay it received was probably a quarter of what it deserved. Doughty’s voice may leave something to be desired for certain listeners, but his ability to create melodic, hooky music with excellent lyrics is undeniable.
I’ve snossed and lost…
12) The New Pornographers – Use It
The two bands I listened to the most in 2005 were probably The Killers and a combination of A.C. Newman and The New Pornographers. I’ve stated before how “A Slow Descent Into Alcoholism” is an amazing theme song, but that’s off their release from two years earlier. Use It is nearly as brilliant and it’s actually from 2005, so it gets included here. If you like smart pop songs with complex instrumentation, bouncy melodies, tight harmonies, and adult lyrics, you need to be listening to this group. Neko Case is even droolworthy, so what are you waiting for?
13 and 14) Lady Sovereign – Random and 9-5
I didn’t listen to as much hip hop in ’05 as I normally would, but the big three new artists for me were Mike Jones, Powl Wowl (Paul Wall), and Lady Sovereign. Sov may be a 19 year-old Brit, but her flow is as tight as the Houston boys and her songs are downright funny. It’s a little early to make the comparison, but she might just be a slightly less controversial Eminem. Jay-Z signed her to Rockafella, so expect to hear from her on stateside radio in the next six months. If Sean Paul can make hit records here, I don’t think Sov’s thick accent will cause too many problems with her listeners.
(Yes, Still Tippin’ and pretty much anything Paul Wall was involved with last year were awesome, but I only have so much space. And double yes, Kanye West was by far the artist of the year last year, but I figure everyone else knows this, so why bother with the wasted space?)
15) The Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done
In spite of being released in ’04, this damn album never gets old. The kitschy chorus about soul and soljahs at the end of this one doesn’t make a ton of sense but it is a ton of fun.
16) Rihanna – Pon De Replay
Speaking of chicks that Jay-Z signed, he’s building quite the little stable of awesome female acts to fill in alongside Beyonce. The drum line and the backing vocals are what makes this song for me, and I’m pretty sure my neighbors hate the fact that my Logitech z-680s have a giant subwoofer, almost exclusively because of this song. Tribal drum lines turned into pop songs FTW.
17) Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine
I waited for years for this damned album and it almost never came out. I like the title cut the best, but at this point I’m more than willing to believe that anything by Fiona will be amazing.
18) Kings Of Leon – The Bucket
If you don’t know who the Kings are by now, you might be beyond my help in terms of musical taste, but they released another incredible album this year and are even better live than they are on their albums. The Bucket was the main single off of their second album and it delivers everything a great pop song should. It’s just not hip-hop or teeny pop, so nobody except snobby music folks like me seem to listen to them.
19) Caesars — Spirit
The Caesars album Paper Tigers was one of my wife’s favorite albums of the year and deserved a lot more accolades than it received. Check this one out of you are looking for a sample of some of their best.
20) Art Brut – Emily Kane
I don’t know anything about Art Brut aside from the fact that somebody in blogland liked him enough to include this song one day. This song is silly, sentimental, and strangely punk sounding. Like if one of the members of The Clash took uppers one day and then wrote about his high school girlfriend. Yet another reason to love the Brits.
21) Moneybrother – Blow Him Back Into My Arms
22) Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies)
23) LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk Is Playing at My House
24) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Born Secular
25) The Decemberists – Sixteen Military Wives
No time left here, but Jenny Lewis is the female singer for Rilo Kiley and her voice is downright dreamy when she wants it to be. In Born Secular, she definitely wants it to be and wow.
As for the LCD Soundsystem song, listen to it twice and then let me know if you wake up with parts of the chorus playing in your head.
I have to go teach women’s self-defense and then come home and edit Aaron Forsythe, who apparently has more in common with Mike Flores than I expected.
Adios muchachos,
Teddy Cardgame
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