[ Live Animals ] 2006 - The Year in Review

Top 10 Albums of 2006

10. 3-way tie:
Man Man - Six Demon Bag
Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Grizzly Bear - Yellow House

All three of these albums are great, but need me to listen to them more. Neko is the female voice of God.

9. Sereena Maneesh - s/t
Released in 2005 overseas, we had to wait until 2006 for this swirling, searing mess of an album. It seems like a thousand different people contributed to this album - the liner notes even contain a very difficult to follow map that links together all the human beings involved in the project. The result is a 21st Century My Bloody Valentine fronted by a Scandanavian T.Rex obsessive who is reaching for the Moon on every single song. Brilliant and bloodying.

8. Wilderness - Vessel States
Wilderness make my list for the second year in a row, and are best described as a towering, cerebral, Public Image Limited devotee group, but that of course is selling them short. Wilderness possess an even stronger melodic sense than on their self-titled debut. The first half is half-optimistic terror-rock, and the second reads like an elegy to the twentieth century. The stopping point for most is, of course, James Johnson's voice, which still hasn't gotten any more palatable. Fuck it, this band plays every note with abandon.

7. The Blow - Paper Television
Jona Bechtolt's dizzying production jumps from snare rattling Timbaland aping to butt shaking Motown to buzzing bass to sparse bubble gum pop. Meanwhile, Khaela Maricich's naked voice speaks rather frankly about the "Pot of Gold" girls sit on, how she "loves the shit out of" some lucky bachelor, and various activities that happen between the sheets between two consenting young adults. The highlight here is clearly "Parentheses", grammar-love about consoling a crying lover in a grocery store.

6. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Tracks 5-8 make up the massively ambitious centerpiece to this year's high-profile indie rock super group project. "All Fires" drowns half a village, "The Partisan" finds Carey Mercer spilling his weird all over Bejar and Krug, "The Freedom" spirals floating pitch shifted melodies around a narrative that may or may not be about the band members, and "Petersburg" closes the crescendo with Mercer grumbling and moaning. Beast Moans is layers upon layers of swirling madness with hardly any percussion. It's most brilliant moment is when the smoke clears long enough at the end of "The Partisan" to invite us into their house to listen in on Bejar flubbing the first few notes of "The Freedom".

5. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Beirut band leader Zach Condon once remarked how he liked his horns to sound warbly and drunk because he's not really a good trumpet player. Fooled me. Or, is it even relevant? No, of course it isn't. This album is beautiful, heartbreaking, exotic, exciting, and 90% of it was recorded in Condon's bedroom.

4. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
"What the hell is this album about?" was my major crutch in coming around to appreciate this gem. The truth is, it doesn't matter. These songs could be about clubbing baby seals and I think they would be just as infectious. Production egghead Dave Sitek makes Cookie the hugest sounding thing this side of Loveless. Check the hot duet with David Bowie on "Blues from Down Here", the clank-stomp fest of "Wolf Like Me" and the frenetic drumming of Jaleel Bunton throughout.

3. Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Drum and Mt. Heart Attack are friends. This is their story. Loose, slow, droning drum and guitar sound collages from the guys that first brought you Brooklyn dance-punk. Liars emerge from their Berlin cocoon sounding like acid-wrecked protozoic Newsun-era Boredoms. This album, more than any other this year, destroyed my notions of what music is "supposed" to sound like.

2. Xiu Xiu - The Air Force
Spanking, whipping, tight-ripping, "tucking", incest, lighting things on fire, and an entire track of koto and bird samples. Somehow, I'm still inclined to say that this is a Xiu Xiu album with most of its sharp edges rounded off, which in my book means it is their best. Deerhoof-er Greg Saunier produces and performs with regulars Jamie Stewart and Caralee McElroy to make a pastiche of negative-space anti-pop music. Highlights are the double bass work of Devin Hoff on the albums sinister second half, Caralee's vocal on "Welcome to Eau Claire", and the plaintive auto-harp rumination "PJ in the Streets". Throughout, The Air Force teeters from inspiring to devastating: "Loneliness isn't being alone/It's when someone loves you/And you don't have it in you to love them back"

1. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
The darker, slower, and more grandiose glam and noise-inflected sister to last year's Apologies to the Queen Mary. Although Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown share only one common member, making the comparison is instructive: when Spencer Krug is basically left to his own devices, he is a very different songwriter and still a very very good one. Shut Up is full of surprises: flickers of fast guitar arpeggios, accordions, xylophones, whistling, pitch shifted keyboards, and lyrics resembling fables punctuated with foul language. As Krug made my list twice this year and once last year, I can only expect more good things in 2007.

Top Songs of 2006

10. Grinderman - No Pussy Blues ( unreleased )
Nick Cave and three of the Bad Seeds formed Grinderman in late '06 to fill the void in his life left twenty years or more ago when he broke up The Birthday Party and started covering Elvis and "Stagger Lee". It's vicious, brutal, nasty, hairy, disgusting music. And I love it.

9. Oneida - Up With People ( from Happy New Year )
The minutes whiz by and the beat keeps going. The lyrics say something about getting up and doing it and doing your thing and you know what it makes you want to do your thing, what ever it is, and just keep on fucking doing it until you are done because the energy is crazy and the room is hot and sweaty and everyone is dancing. Up with people, sweat, tears, blood, joy, music, love. up up up.

8. Swan Lake - The Freedom ( from Beast Moans )
The pairing of Bejar, Krug, and Mercer on Swan Lake had a lot of potential and nowhere else on the album was that potential realized as it was with "The Freedom". Bejar takes the reins here, and the others are content to contribute: Mercer lays down perfectly serpentine guitar fuzz, and Krug lays off the fireworks for one track to provide a subtle key backing. The lyrics are downright beautiful in this contemplation on personal liberties: "confounded when the girl became grounded, and packed her bags, for the beaches, with contacts and breeches of contracts".

7. Prince - Black Sweat ( from 3121 )
"Working! Working up a black sweat! I'm hot, and I don't care who knows it. I got a job to do." Then later he does that amazing thing where he makes his crazy high pitched voice go unnaturally way way down in his register and it is so god damned sexy. This song is fucking amazing.

6. Band of Horses - The Funeral ( from Everything All of the Time )
I shouldn't like this song. It's over-dramatic, the singer has that reedy and high-pitched timbre that belongs on an album of your dad's favorite hits from the 1970s. Elsewhere on the album "they're playing country music", but Band of Horses take a sombre topic, twist it on its head with a triumphant and ageless melody, and cap it with a blazing coda. The end result sounds downright brilliant and inspiring.

5. Tokyo Police Club - Nature of the Experiment ( from the A Lesson in Crime EP )
The specter of post punk is strung out on methamphetamines, on a greasy Canadian street corner, holding a sign: "Will _____ For Money, Fill in the Blank." This is what youth sounds like filtered through fuzzy bass and compressed drums.

4. Smog - Rock Bottom Riser ( from the Rock Bottom Riser EP )
More gloom from Bill Callahan, but this time something is different. A lilting and dare I say cheerful nature bubbles beneath the surface on the entire Rock Bottom Riser EP, and its title track is a lovely, swaying little ditty. Callahan's next album will be his first under his given name. Let's hope this track is a proper preview.

3. Voxtrot - Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and Wives ( from the Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and Wives EP )
This amazing new band from Austin, TX opted to release two EPs this year in lieu of an album ( the other is Raised by Wolves ). This title track off the better EP of the two may or may not be a Belle & Sebastian/Smiths rip-off, but explodes with so much unbridled energy that it just doesn't matter. Ramesh Srivastava has a voice that girls across the country are currently swooning over. All men be jealous now. Britt Daniel, you are on notice.

2. Beirut - Elephant Gun ( from the Lon Gisland EP)
Zach Condon closed out 2006 with a short 4-song EP of songs recorded shortly after his move from Albuquerque to New York. This first track is everything great about Gulag Orkestar compressed into one song, with higher recording quality. Sublime.

1. Guillemots - Trains to Brazil ( from Through the Windowpane )
A song that may or may not have been about the London tube bombings nevertheless gained extra poignancy when set against the backdrop of one of the most anxious years in recent human history. "Trains" sets tragedy and realization atop a stomping Motown girl-group rhythm, blaring horns, and woozy sampling. Then it does what any great song should do: affirms life, with a lovingly placed kick in the ass.

Top Albums not from 2006

10. Les Savy Fav - Inches (2005)
The definitive statement from Les Savy Fav is, fittingly, a singles compilation. Therefore, Inches can be difficult to consume all at once. Use caution: I once read that Tim Harrington ran to an audience member and put himself in the audience members t-shirt... while the fan was still in it.

9. The Birthday Party - Hits (1992)
The ultimate post-mortem document of a fucked up group of individuals. Nick Cave of course went on to find Jesus, a storied solo career, and "Red Right Hand" appearing on the Shrek soundtrack. Roland Howard is probably one of the greatest guitar players to ever live, except he doesn't know it. Tracey Pew died too early, and the world mourns the loss of his sexually deviant slimy cowboy bass lines. Mick Harvey is that normal looking guy who is actually the most screwed up in the bunch, and he's still propping up Cave. These songs were too weird, even for punks.

8. The For Carnation - s/t (2000)
When Slint broke up, Brian McMahon tried his hand in various groups but kept coming back the same few songs. He finally got together a group of musicians in 2000 to lay them to tape, and much of it is not louder than a whisper. The musicians barely play their instruments, notes hang in the air for what seems like days.

7. Minor Threat - Complete Discography (1988)
Much love for Henry Rollins, but this is the definitive hardcore album. Nobody was as motivated, angry, and talented as Minor Threat. I was pretty stupid for not appreciating them earlier.

6. Smog - Red Apple Falls (1997)
Bill Callahan's most delicate album is also his most thematically complete. The red apple - the ripe one, that is - falls, and color, age, time, sexuality, humanity and love are all explored in the cryptic and sparse fashion now synonymous with Smog. My first and favorite Smog album.

5. The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree (2005)
This record feels strange, as if you are eavesdropping in on a personal conversation between John Darnielle and a close friend of his. Their stories remind you of parts of your life, and the closely miked music drifts, sways, stomps, and carries you there.

4. Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972)
At just over 25 minutes, Drake at the time claimed that this was all he had left. This, his last album, was also his finest. Recorded in two studio sessions with only the assistance of producer Joe Boyd, Pink Moon should be stark, but is illuminated by Drake's voice and elegant guitar playing.

3. Dr. Octagon - Dr. Octagonecologist (1996)
Rap music made on Jupiter. Kool Keith's deadly alter ego creates the entire acid rap genre in one fell swoop of his tentacle. Who could imagine that an album about an alien gynecologyst that pretends to be a woman in order to take advantage of his patients could be so good? Three words: "juicy brown booty".

2.Bauhaus - In The Flat Field [reissue] (1980/1998)
Rock music made on Mars. This album sounded so foreign to my ears in 2006 that it took me a month to come around to it. Imagine how much this shit freaked people out in 1980. Sure, the material is dark - sores, epileptics, boredom, violence, meaningless sex, screaming whores - but the fun part is the confidence of the delivery and the inherent sense of humor throughout. "Back in the good old days, when dancing meant exploding".

1. Mr. Lif - I Phantom (2002)
I speak absolutely no hyperbole when I say that I Phantom is probably the best hip-hop album since Ready To Die. I actually cannot think of anything released since 2002 that might even top this. Lif weaves an incredible meta-narrative about dreaming, being broke, trying to make it, giving up, raising a family, and eventually succumbing to nuclear holocaust. With El-P on the boards - breathing new life in to old school soul tracks - this album is a juggernaut of style and substance.