[Bombs Away] 2006 - lists, looking back

First off, I know I'm a slacker, I'll put that out there. I'm also sick as a dog, which is why I'm on the internet on such a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

What follows is my attempt at doing the look back at last year list type thing. I've seriously had my head up my ass this year - I've been involved in my own things, or checking out my friends' bands, I haven't been listening to the radio or reading indie music sites or anything.

I'd like to get out to more shows this year. Way more shows.

Anyway, here we go:

Top Ten Songs 2006

I don't have ten. I've had my head up my ass. So here's five:

5. Beck - "Que Onda Guero" ... This one song is why I hate the rest of Guero. It's hot as all fuck. There's really no denying that his lyrical run on there verses of this track are among his most impressive in years. But really, it's all about the beat, and he knows it. I have no idea what that swirling sound is that makes that basic hip-hop beat such a struttin thing, but when he tries he's still got it. Rip this track and toss the rest of Guero in the dustbin.

4. Channels - "Little Empires" ... I can't remember the last time I heard such RIPPING guitar, such intense and artful bass and drum kit, when a band rocked me like this, spoke to the storms swirling in my head. Beginning with a seeming innoccuous verse, pleasantly singing about the cooling breeze and the coming freeze, a direct warning to the current Junta in the white house that "little empires rise and fall" and then RIIIIIIIIIIIIIP "UNDER THE WEIGHT!!!!!" One of the hottest and dizzying, hardest and mesmerizing, and fucking CATCHIEST choruses to ever come out of that DC / Dischord / Post-punk scene. Wow. I don't think J. Robbins has written anything this goddamn catchy since "Breathe" back in the days of Jawbox. Onward to the future!

3. NAS - "Hip-Hop Is Dead" ... This fucking DEADLY song is amazing. It's the very essence of hip-hop, using a classic rock hit like Iron Butterfly's "Inna Godda Davita" to drop a smashing rap tune. Sick. Perfect. Put's the rest of the trash the labels are pedaling at this point to shame, and that includes Rocafella and Def-Jam. Tris McCall nails it in this year's Pop Music Abstract (which is a hysterical and thorough read if you're into end-of-year lists and pop music).

2. Cansei de Ser Sexy - "Let's Make Love While Listening to Death From Above" ... You just have to hear it. You HAVE TO. This Brazilian group (fronted by a half Japanese half Brazilian woman) is just absolutely tearing: "Kiss me I'm drunk, don't worry it's true!" It's a rocking dancing sick tune with THERAMIN!!!! The band's name means "tired of being sexy" and I can't blame them, this is the sexiest song I've heard in a long damn time.

1. Belle and Sebastian - "Dress Up In You" ... This tune off their new record The Life Pursuit seems to come from the band's older sound and records, a beautiful and lilting ballad, a one-way dialogue that seems to be from a woman's point of view, I reckon it's Stuart Murdoch artfully putting himself in someone else's shoes (dressing up?) and it has a disarming sweetness, a beautiful melancholy when you get to the line "they are hypocrites, so fuck them, too!" sung so sweetly with a high harmony by Sarah and then that beautiful trumpet line follows... "I'd hate to see on the pile of nearly made its ... you're a star now, I am fixing people's nails, I'm knitting jumpers, I'm working after hours, I've got a boyfriend, I've got a feeling that he's seeing someone else, he always had a thing for you as well." It makes me hurt and it feels very good.

Top Ten Records 2006 (not numbered, slacker!)

Channels - Waiting For The Next End Of The World ... This is my favorite record of the year. Absolutely. It speaks to me, it touches me. I wrote a glowing review about it earlier in the year. "Little Empires" is one of the best songs that J. Robbins has put together. His new band, with his wife on bass, is fucking amazing. Not all DC punk rockers lose their edge when they get older. This treo has a depth that most five-person acts can't hope to pull off, beautiful and deadly.

Tokyo Police Club - A Lesson In Crime ... There's something so wonderful about this totally absurd electro rock outfit singing science fiction tunes that make me want to shake it and also practice my instrument more. It's a short EP, maybe not even 20 minutes long, and I'm completely enamored with their song writing, with how the garage-like drums and bass underpin such pretty keyboard parts, and then totally ripping guitar riffs and some beautifully sung stories from a harrowing future that sounds exactly like now. This record sounds like now.

Beirut - Gulag Orkestar ... Only just recently started really listening to this amazing record. it's so foreign sounding... i mean that with no irony... it's SO out there, I could listen to it all day long about the house.

The Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia... ... One of the best records I've heard all damn year long. And one of the best I'll hear for a while. Amanda Palmer and her trusty side-kick, drummer Brian Viglione have put together a massive sophomore effort that has totally stolen the limelight from their intense debut record (self-titled the Dresden Dolls). The stuff I'm really drawn to this year, the stuff that I've been exposed to that I loved so much seems to all involve song-writing that makes my hair stand on end, I find it difficult to comprehend.

Man Man - Six Demon Bag ... Holy SHIT this band is amazing. Go here and listen to their mp3s. Six Demon Bag is a WILD ride from Philadelphia that reminds me very strongly of Need New Body in that way that weird art rock bands from Philadelphia do.

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll ... wait, wasn't this on last year's list? Yeah, but only released in the U.S. in the beginning of 2006. It rocked me all year long. "I'VE SEEN HER NAKED! TWIIIIIICE!"

Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit ... what a sweet, beautiful, sassy and sad record. Stuart Murdoch and crew have reached a new height, I believe, as much as I like the old If You're Feeling Sinister. I'm not in school anymore, and neither is B&S.

Top Ten Old Things (again, not ten)

Adam, suspecting that neither of us had much to say about the (admittedly tons of amazing) music that came out this year, we should definitely write a little bit about stuff we discovered this year. I don't have ten of those either, but here we go:

Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E. ... Holy fucking shit, I didn't know that back in the day before Make Yourself that Incubus was a massively kick-ass band with a sound that must have just driven 311 crazy because they just couldn't pull it off like SCIENCE. I've never really been able to get into Incubus, but I love this record. Love it. Vitamin, New Skin, A Certain Shade of Green, fuck every goddamn track on this record is amazing and really broke new ground in mixing acid jazz with blistering metal, hip-hop beats and brain-damaging funk. I mean, just listen to Glass. Fuck this record is amazing. Quoth a sample: "Until the 20th century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the inital publication of the charged electromagnetic spectrum, humans learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear...is less than one millionth of reality."

Fela Kuti - "Expensive Shit" ... I cannot get enough of Fela and his determined building beats, his whacky horn and his thick accent as he recounts his harrowing tale of escaping a death sentence from a government determined to silence him; In short and to wit: they made him swallow drugs in jail, so that when he pooped them out they could arrest him for trafficking and kill him. So while in jail he swapped shit with another inmate. Few things have influenced my own band this year like Fela and his Afro-beat.

Okkervil River - "Black" ... What an amazing tune. I kinda turned my nose up at this band for a little while, and then slowly started warming up to Black Sheep Boy this year, and when I listened to "Black" on one long drive, I was heart-broken and totally hooked. "Ill call up some black men, I'd fuck up his new life, where they don't know what he did, tell his new wife and second kid," those are DEVASTATING lyrics, "you should wreck his life the way he wrecked yours!" Pop music can save your soul.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine ... Yeah, I'm a late comer to their Trip-Hop. I fucking love this stuff.

NoFX - Pump Up The Valuum ... Wow I love this fucking record. Exposed to it by my girlfriend on our cross-country road trip in December. It's real punk rock. Fast as they could make it, with guitar theatrics and songs about how much it sucks when your parents do more drugs than you do, and then start hanging out with your friends, and how you really need even more drugs.

McLusky - Mcluskyism: A Sides ... I realize this was released this year, but it's a compilation of their songs over some years. I didn't buy the three CD box set. But my sweet jesus was this band amazing. "whoyouknow", "Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues", "To Hell With Good Intentions"... those are just amazing songs. Noisey art rock with intense and infectious hooks that make me want to sit down and learn each of their songs.

LCD Soundsystem - self-titled ... James Murphy, you are my hero. There was nothing quite like driving up to Virginia from NC with Ben Jones while hollering along with "DAFT PUNK IS PLAYIN AT MAH HOUSE, MAH HOUSE-UHHHHH!"

Tom Waits - Mule Variations ... well I've really dug into his whole catalogue this year. The guy is just fucking amazing. Amazing. The old joke about how his songs are all brawlers or bawlers? Well he's in on it. I can't wait to hear the new box set. "Pony" is one of those songs that just punches you in the gut, and I didn't know it at all until Jo Stewart of Charlottesville, VA told me it was her favorite. Off of Bone Machine, "Who Are You" is another that makes me weepy nearly without fail. I can't get enough of the stark existential humour of Frank's Wild Years.

Talking Heads - Remain In Light ... This record is stellar and mind-blowing. I can't get over the amazing intertwined vocal parts of "The Great Curve", or the constant driving rhythms of "Crosseyed and Painless" that never get old because of the intense and constantly changing melodies and vocals hanging out on top. Ah, David Byrne, you and your tricks.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - "The High Party" ... This song totally rules. Ted doesn't suck. I already took it back a couple of weeks ago. I love this song.

Metric - Live It Out ... Though it's a record from last year, it's been constanly in my ears, all year long. I love this band, I love their songs. Touching stuff.

Total Disappointments

The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics ... I tried to like this record. I really did. I spent more than one hour long drive listening to the whole thing start to finish. It was so hard not to hit the SKIP button over and over again. It really just bored me to tears, painful repetition ad nauseum, lame hooks ... what happened to my Lips? Did that tour with Beck take the fight out of them? It really just seems like they aren't trying hard enough.

Beck - Guero ... Would the real Beck Hanson please stand up? Or was he just fooling us all the way up to Midnight Vultures? Dear lord is this record boring as all hell.

Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade ... I know, I know, it's not a new record, but I picked it up and gave it another shot for Jarrett D., and god damn, I still totally hate listening to Bob Mould's barking. Totally. I can't get past it even a little bit. On top of that, I find little in the music that really grabs my ear, allows me to look past it for things I never considered before, new sounds, etc. I reckon this was pretty new and intense back in 1985, but it really doesn't do anything for me.

Matisyahu - Youth ... I don't care what my drummer says, this yahoo is not a genius and his music makes me want to kill. I remember when Lloyd first played me a track in his car, he was so excited to show me, and it was pretty hot. But in the end all the tracks tend to blur together and sound the same to me and his philosophical (theosophical) observations grate on my nerves.

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere ... With the exception of the hit tune "Crazy," I find this record pretty damn boring. And I've definitely heard "Crazy" enough for this lifetime. I was really expecting a whole lot more from Cee-lo with such a strong single. Damn.

Total Trash

James Blunt - Back To Bedlam ... Okay, so most of you already knew better. But I could have sworn that recently someone recommended some pretty awesome white-boy funk to me, and there I was buying some records and saw this one and thought that's what I remembered. Nope, wrong artist altogether. Dear lord, this is total radio trash. Total. It's basically the same fucking song over and over and over with a really annoying Jason Mraz kinda voice being effected. I can't wait to go out into the street and smash this thing to pieces.

Oasis - Stop The Clocks ... would this band just go away already?

Biggest Hopes for 2007

- A second Screaming Females record, one that captures their live sound: the thick grooves and the vicious attack riding on top.
- The new Zelda Pinwheel - For Safekeeping Warm. The performances by this band of their material over the course of the year are foreshadowing an intense record, one that departs from their more ambient sound to something that is just drop-dead rocking in a way that only an ambient noise band can pull of. Their genre bending shows have me salivating.
- My label (Tank Crash!) has two releases scheduled, and I hope people dig 'em and pick them up. One is the spoken word/slam artist Twig, and the other is the ambient electronica outfit Theory Anesthetic.
- I should be putting out a demo with my band The Meltdowns very soon. We changed line-up in September of 2006, and we're getting back on our feet; we just brought on a new musician, and I'm looking forward to showing off our new sound and playing for you, my friends!

To a great new year! FORWARD!