am i first?.
no point in waiting any longer. i’m not going to get any new albums until after christmas, and there’s no time to give those albums (sloan!) adequate consideration before january. so here’s my tops for the year, music lovers:
8. final fantasy: he poos clouds
kate bush, joni mitchell and laurie anderson walk into a bar…
7. the decemberists: the crane wife
the sound of an precocious band maturing. the tain-like “island” and “crane wife” cycle are so gratifyingly epic, i just about bliss out every time i listen to them.
6. danielson: ships
my two year old son and four year old daughter know every word to “did i step on your trumpet.” playing the trumpet till it breaks like br. danielson in the video, then tossing it offstage, has become one of my sons favorite games. this is one rampant, vibrant, whacked-out album – i like it for some of the same reasons i liked the furnaces’ blueberry boat two years ago.
5. tv on the radio: return to cookie mountain
i like this one largely on the strength of its repetitive eighth-note approach and “wolf like me;” it’s menacing and dystopian and better than desperate youth, bloodthirsty babes. i usually need to listen to something hopeful afterwards just to balance out its onslaught, but what an onslaught! (terrible title, though)
4. half-handed cloud: halos & lassos
last year he went through his dark, desert period and he’s come out better for it, praising god and orchestrating a joyful noise with a casio-like backing rhythm. 19 songs in 29 minutes, so you don’t have to stress over hearing it in its entirety. there’s more than enough in there to keep you busy.
3. phoenix: it’s never been like that
2006s best pop album, full of a kind of bouncy-new-wave-fun-without-the-angst that one-ups the strokes. it helps that they’re french, so the lyrics (sung in english) are awkward partly by design and partly by translation: puzzling over which gets just how much blame makes this album a delicious obsession for me. “long distance call” is still jockeying for pole position in my song of the year list.
2. midlake: the trials of van occupanther
midlake put on the tightest live show i’ve seen in forever. this is probably my most-listened-to album of 2006; midlake’s musicianship makes it easy. plus i dig the conceit: pioneer-era, vaguely sci-fi. (sidenote: play this album back to back with ron sexsmith’s other songs and see if you can tell the difference between the singers. i can’t.)
1. destroyer: destroyer’s rubies
a revelation, deserving its pride of place for reasons impersonal (it’s inventive, logorrheathmic, self-referential, musically stunning) and personal (discovering this opened up a fort-knox-worth of stunning albums for me, including bejar’s entire back catalogue, the new pornographers’s electric version, a.c. newman’s the slow wonder). ends with the best desire-era dylan song dylan never wrote. this album destroyed me this year.
these are the best. but please don’t miss a couple other notable 2006 albums: the fiery furnaces’s bitter tea has some great twisted-pop moments; guillemots through the window pane‘s “trains to brazil,” “sao paulo” and “redwings” are great, sprawling pop anthems; golden smog’s another fine day rocks in style; and, especially, joanna newsom’s ys would almost certainly have made this list (and up there, too) if i’d had enough time with it to feel like i could do justice to a description of its complexities.
last note: josh garrels released a new album this year, over oceans. it’s a hit or miss affair (the hits are bullseyes), but i bring it up so that you’ll check him out in general. also, over the rhine have finally recorded the christmas song that zena so loves, “darlin’ (christmas is coming)” on their second christmastime album, snow angels, which will be out in december and almost certainly worth it.
Good show young man, good show. I am still formulating my top ten and have a working version. Midlake and Final Fantasy will make the list somewhere fo sho… You make nice arguments for some others. Stay tuned for my top ten.
Jim. November 20th. 2006. 7:42 pm.
I picked up Destroyer’s Rubies this weekend, largely on your recommendation. Thanks. It is indeed a wildly inventive album. I need to give it a few more listens, but I really like what I’ve heard, and I can see how it could easily make a year-end Best of 2006 list.
AndyWhitman. November 27th. 2006. 9:19 am.