2006, In Review: Music

"as always this year's celebrity judges are only
of the most incredible persuasion
charles bronson's angry and gay only daughter,
ice cube back from when he was hard
and a framed 8x10 of joe namath's kneecaps."

Top 5 Concerts:

5. Anima/Sigur Rós, Civic Opera House, 5/9/06
4. Subtle, Abbey Pub, 4/15/06
3. The Presets/Ladytron, The Metro, 4/21/06
CSS/Ladytron, The Depot, 10/10/06
2. Junior Boys, Doug Fir Lounge, 9/28/06
1. The Presets/The Rapture, Empire Ballroom, 11/17/06

Top 5 Reissues/Compilations/Whatever:

5. Goldfrapp - We Are Glitter


4. Pavement - Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition

3. My Morning Jacket - Okonokos


2. Aphex Twin - Chosen Lords


1. Tortoise - A Lazarus Taxon



Album Honorable Mentions:

Basement Jaxx - Crazy Itch Radio
Be Your Own Pet - Be Your Own Pet
Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Benoît Pioulard - Précis
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
CSS - Cansei De Ser Sexy
Herbert - Scale
Hot Chip - The Warning
Joanna Newsom - Ys
Jóhann Jóhannsson - IBM 1401, a User's Manual
Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye
The Roots - Game Theory
Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
Starlight Mints - Drowaton
Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet

Top 10 Albums:

10. Ellen Allien & Apparat - Orchestra of Bubbles


9. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love

The Rapture were in a no win situation with this album. Churn out Echoes redux and face critical backlash, deviate too far from their existing sound and risk having DFA get all of the credit for their past success. I think I may be the only person who loved this followup. Its one flaw: First Gear, a six minute dud of a track, where they needed another epic House of Jealous Lovers jam.

8. LCD Soundsystem - 45:33

Speaking of DFA, this is the biggest surprise of the year. This singular track, commissioned by Nike as a jogging mix, touches on all the important electronic albums in the alphabet: all the way from e2-e4 to Eno.

7. Band of Horses - Everything All The Time


6. Mission of Burma - The Obliterati

Best review I have seen on the web: "Motherfuckin’ '2wice.' That’s all you really need to know." True that.

5. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country

Easily the most crush worthy band of 2006. Tracyanne, I am ready to be heartbroken.

4. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

Listen haters, Summer Sun is not nearly as bad as you are making it out to be, so none of this "return to form" narrative that you have been tossing around. That being said, this album is ridiculously better than a band twenty odd years into their career should be creating. Better than I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One? I don't know. Does that one have a 10+ minute opener called "Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind"?

3. The Knife - Silent Shout

The first person I gave this album to turned it off a minute into the first song. Maybe it was the maddening arpeggio synth lines. Or maybe it was the hermaphroditic pitch-shifted vocals. Or maybe it is because I am the only person I know who likes dark, syncopated electronic music. Not exactly recommended, but intensely rewarding. The four singles (and their respective remixes) are massive.

2. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

The consensus album of the year (if you ignore all of the Britishers with their self-parodying love of the Arctic Monkeys -- these are the same presses that proclaimed The Strokes as the saviors of rock).

1. Subtle - for hero: for fool

I am not going to tell you this is the album of the year (it is), or that Doseone is the best performer currently working (he is), or that you have never heard lyrics this profoundly abstruse (you haven't). What I will tell you is that I haven't heard a record this dense and imaginative since Kish Kash -- and J.C. Chasez certainly never wrote anything like Middleclasskill.