We live in an iTunes nation. It's easy to pull a track down to your pod for under a buck. Bostonist still longs for cover art, liner notes, and that masterwork that is a multi-track collection of songs we call an album. Listed here is our much discussed, unbiased by payola, top 25 albums of 2005. After the jump you'll find where some of us stand individually on the subject of the years best. (Apparently......

With 2005’s Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River’s Will Sheff has found his voice. Having already established his band’s American folkternative sound with Down the River of Golden Dreams, Sheff now celebrates the confidence and dexterity to sing his songs with a power already present in his writing. The instrumentation raises similarities to other contemporary artists while distinguishing the record from Okkervil’s previous releases. Compare the gentle strings and lonely narrator of “In A Radio Song”......

Early contender for the best album of the year? Austin’s Okkervil River create dreamy essays of humans and drama, best seen in this year’s Black Sheep Boy. They now number six and their songs are lovely. In a recent interview with the Austin Chronicle--featuring the insight "As Okkervil River has evolved as a band, Will Sheff has evolved as a man"--NH raised professors' son Will Sheff, Okkervil River's frontman, proves himself to be the......