2005: the year in "wtf."

WTF, I'm told, is interweb shorthand for "what the fuck?" Year-end crit lists always spawn a few of these, so here are a few of my picks for incomprehensible choices from the music media elite.

Deerhoof
The Runners Four

I recently heard this album over the PA at a show between bands and it was a close as I've ever come to walking up to the soundboard and setting it on fire. Admit it: you are only pretending to like this garbled noise shit because your fanatical indie purism demands it. Cliche, but true. And still sad. (see also: Animal Collective, Lightning Bolt)

New Pornographers
Twin Cinema
Always good for a few singles but far and away the most overhyped and overrated Canadian band of this young century. Not offensive so much as just...meh.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
s/t
Boy, from all the boner-popping this album elicited, you would think it would sound nothing like a bunch of dinks noodling on pots and pans fronted by another dink who "sings" like David Byrne getting ass-reamed with a 12-inch sandpaper dildo. You'd be wrong. (see also: Architecture in Helsinki)

Black Mountain
s/t
I have Led Zeppelin's II and that's enough for me.

Sufjan Stevens
Illinoise
I must confess to not hearing much of this critical darling, but what I did hear was about what I expected from a Jesus-loving, banjo-playing douche. Also, worst album cover of the year, if not ever.

Antony and the Johnsons
I'm a Bird Now
A big fat cross-dressing homo with a voice like a cow with a punctured udder puts out an album of showtuney dirges. And I should give a shit why?

Ergh.

Fucking Pitchfork, man. What kinda wanker comes up with bullshit like: "on their debut full-length, the band nods to the earliest recordings from the Fall or Television Personalities, bucking the frankly odd notion that smart yet cynical meta-pop is inherently ephemeral."

Yeah, I know I've spent many hours at the bar hammering the point that mart yet cynical meta-pop is inherently ephemeral. Fucking douches.

Is this, like, ironic or something?

Germany wants Iran out of World Cup

The head of world football's governing body says Iran will not be kicked out of next year's World Cup finals in Germany, despite recent inflammatory remarks by its president.

There have been calls from some German politicians for the team to be excluded as punishment for remarks made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust.

President Ahmadinejad provoked global outrage earlier this week when called the Holocaust a "myth" that Europeans used as a pretext for carving out a Jewish state in the heart of the Muslim world.

It's not so much about the remarks themselves as it is that Germans hate it when you bring up the "H-word".

The greatest call-out ever.

It has to be this:

"311, I am ready to fight."