Like Catherine, I worry that musical lameness is overtaking me. And, also like Catherine, I think that this is Catherine's fault. This whole move-to-Chicago business has wreaked havoc with my capacity for indie rock snobbery. For years now I've been relying on my lovely girlfriend for news of the Hot New Thing in music. In return I stood ready to update her on the most important developments in first person shooters, should she ask. It was a good arrangement.

But now I'm hopelessly behind the times. In fact, it was only yesterday that I started listening to Stylus's fifty best singles of 2005 (despite having already inflicted it on our party guests). To my surprise, a lot of it is surprisingly blah. Some of the tracks are embarassingly awful (that Juelz Santana track has a nice sample, but the rapping makes me think K-Fed's got a future). Some tracks (Helen Love) feel like placeholders, waiting for the arrival of the real subgenre smash that they represent. And I still don't understand the heaps of praise that LCD Soundsystem receives — it's all very proficient, but the hooks just don't hook me. It wasn't that great a year for singles, I guess (Since U Been Gone and Backstreet Boys' triumphantly melodramatic return notwithstanding).

But there are a few things on the list that are worth checking out that I hadn't heard before. All of which is my circuitous way of saying that Imogen Heap's Hide And Seek is pretty astounding, the first virtuoso vocoder performance that I've ever heard. You can listen to it here.