As resident music snob, I feel that you should listen to my opinions, since they are better than yours. 2006 was quite the good year for music. So many albums came out that fully excited my ears. Some of them even blew my ears away, if that is possible. And I’d like to think it is.
Top 50 Albums
1.The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
The first line of the greatest album of the year might be its most beautiful: ‘there are nights that I think Sal Paradise is right / boys and girls in America have such a sad time together’. It sets the theme and precedent for all to follow on the band’s third and most cohesive album yet. Rock and roll as it should be: heavy, honest, and meant to be taken with some quality beer. The first time I heard this album it floored me. Many listens later, nothing has changed.
2.Josh Ritter - The Animal Years
One of my favourite artists right now releases his beautifully crafted folk opus, a tribute to a canon on Americana. Poignant, poppy, and clever, this is essential listening for anyone who claims that good songwriting is dead.
3.The Thermals – The Body The Blood The Machine
I’m not sure what it is about this album that has made me return to it so regularly in the last little while. Its three-chord power-pop-punk sound is nothing new, and singer Hutch Harris sounds just like a falsetto-less Ted Leo. But maybe the poignant and engaging retelling of the biblical story of Noah’s Ark makes me want to hear what’s next. I still get chills when I hear the Harris yelp ‘I regret leaving at all / I forgot I needed god like a big brother’ in Returning to the Fold. One of my favourite musical moments of 2006.
4.Tom Waits – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
What I like best about this 3 disc set is that there’s so much left to discover. I’ve listen to it quite a few times – enough to know how important and amazing it is – but I know that I can come back to it and pop one of the discs in, depending on the mood, and find something new about it. Waits is one of the most important musicians still producing, and this is a testament to a fantastic career filled with interesting, challenging, yet always exciting work.
5.Decemberists – The Crane Wife
I was slightly underwhelmed with last year’s Picaresque, but that all subsided with the band’s major label debut. It sounds more cohesive, better structured and written, and I’ll be damned if The Crane Wife 1 and 2 isn’t the best 12 minute epic based on a Japanese folktale ever. Ever. An album that will hopefully stand out in the Decemberists’ already exciting body of music.
6.Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds
Toronto’s Owen Pallett is my hero. Dude is like 25, and has played with just about everyone on the local scene, not to mention putting together an incredibly arranged and moving song cycle in He Poos Clouds. A piece that needs to be listened to as an album.
7.Guillemots – Through the Window Pane
Catchy and extremely well written, this band has the right style and talent to become huge. While the upbeat songs are far better than the slower ones, they all compliment one another to create one of the more impressive debut albums I’ve heard this year. These guys are worth watching out for.
8.Teddy Thompson – Separate Ways
The son of Richard and Linda Thompson, Teddy possesses vocal talents to rival his parents. And he isn’t a half-bad songwriter either. Although I end up listening to so much singer/songwriter stuff, this album in particular stood out this year, and I have to give it credit, since I wanted to listen to it all year long.
9.Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
It’s funny. When I first heard this I was all like ‘Album of the year, for sure’! And now I’m thinking it’s still good, but not number one good. More number nine good. Which is still really good. Because she is.
10.Espers – II
Ah, Espers, one of my favourite of the new folk scene emerging. What I love about them is their ability to go from soft and haunting to loud and haunting, and then come back down for an awesome guitar feedback solo. This is music to overdose to.
11.Band of Horses – Everything All The Time
I don’t know why I took to this album so much, but I did. Probably because it’s damn catchy, and straightforward. A rock album a la My Morning Jacket or Red House Painters, that is, a little softer and indier, but no less enjoyable.
12.Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye
My favourite almost local electronic duo returns with this mellow, minimal record filled with all kinds of emotions, but you know, in that subtle, slightly tortured electro-pop way.
13.TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
This is going to be at the top of every critic’s best of list this year, and I don’t blame them. I like the album, some songs more than others, but I just don’t think it’s really the best album of the year.
14.Voxtrot – Voxtrot EP/ Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives EP
There were a good two weeks when I got these songs stuck in my head, and they were all I wanted to listen to. When that passed, I didn’t want to listen to them as much, mostly because I had over-listened to them. They get in your head and don’t go away. I can’t wait to hear a full-length from these guys.
15.Joanna Newsom – Ys
I was tempted to put this higher on my list, but I really didn’t know. I mean I love it, but then again, I have trouble listening to most of it more than a couple times. I mean, if I only have time to listen to 3 of the 16 minutes of Only Skin, do I go back to where I left off? A beautiful album, but it might leave you lost.
16.Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere
Oh Cee Lo. You my hee-ro. This was one of the summeriest albums ever. And yes, I did just invent summeriest.
17.The Essex Green- Cannibal Sea
I love the girl-guy split vocals. They sound like Stars, but slightly less saccharine. Still sweet through.
18.Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
I dare anyone to listen to Old Dan Tucker and not start dancing around like a beggar.
19.Malajube – Trompe-l’oeil
Who would’ve thought that I’d put a French-Canadian album in my top 20? I mean, they don’t even have the common sense to sing in English, and yet they’re still kickass. Makes you think.
20.Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like That
The first half of this album is top 10 worthy, but then it sputters out to more top 30ishness. Hence 20.
21.Sparklehorse – Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
22.Brightback Morning Light – S/T
23.Amy Millan – Honey From the Tombs
24.The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely
25.Destroyer – Destroyer’s Rubies
26.The Pipettes – We Are the Pipettes
27.Tokyo Police Club – A Lesson In Crime
28.Mojave 3 – Puzzles Like You
29.Fucked Up – Hidden World
30.Loose Fur – Born Again in the USA
31.I’m From Barcelona – Let Me Introduce My Friends
32.Alejandro Escovedo – The Boxing Mirror
33.The Feeling – Twelve Stops And Home
34.Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint – The River in Reverse
35.Califone – Roots and Crowns
36.Calexico – Garden Ruin
37.The Streets – Hardest Way To Make an Easy Living
38.Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – The Letting Go
39.The Album Leaf – Into The Blue Again
40.Max Richter- Songs From Before
41.Scott Walker – The Drift
42.Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope
43.Flaming Lips – At War with the Mystics
44.Plan B – Who Needs Action When You Got Words
45.Rhett Miller – The Believer
46.The Kooks – Inside In Inside Out
47.Islands – Return to the Sea
48.Beirut – Gulag Orkestar
49.Grizzly Bear- Yellow House
50.Eef Barzelay – Bitter Honey
Top Songs of 2006
1.Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
Anyone who didn’t get even a little funky to this one is just lying to themselves. This is 06’s Hey Ya, and even thought it has been so overplayed, it still reigns as this summer’s classic tune. In twenty years, they’ll look back at this as we do to Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Which generation comes out the wiser?
2.Final Fantasy – Many Lives -->49mp
I’m not sure what the 49mp is in the song, I think it has to do with Dungeons and Dragons (the whole album it’s off of is based on the game), but it makes for a kickass, intense track
3.Guillemots – Trains to Brazil
I just love this song. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the pulsating staccato piano, or the fact that when singer Fyfe Dangerfield (best name ever) says the school bells ring, a ringing sound occurs.
4.TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me
What really hooked me with this song was watching a Youtube taping of TVOTR on Letterman. They tore this song a new one in the best possible way.
5.Pipettes – Your Kisses are Wasted on Me
I’m in love with all three Pipettes. If polygamy were legal, they’d all be my wives.
6.Razorlight – Before I Fall to Pieces
One of many British rock songs on the list, most of them stemming from my trip to the UK earlier this summer. I guess they just have better taste there.
7.The Kooks – She Moves in her Own Way
This is one of those happy summer songs that makes me think that I really, truly wish I lived in Britain.
8.The Thermals – A Pillar of Salt
Good song with great intensity and passion.
9.The Feeling – Fill My Little World
Okay, another British song. The rest of this band’s album is sort of mediocre, but this song is totally catchy.
10.Nelly Furtado – Say It Right
Yeah, shut up. You love it too.
11.Josh Ritter – Girl in the War
12.I’m From Barcelona – We’re From Barcelona
13.Peter Bjorn and John – Young Folks
14.Clipse – Wamp Wamp
15.Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars
16.Destroyer – Your Blood
17.Voxtrot – The Start of Something
18.Petra Haden – God Only Knows
19.Neko Case – Star Witness
20.Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
21.CSS – Let’s Make Love and Listen To Death From Above
22.The Flaming Lips – The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
23.Lily Allen – Smile
24.The View – Wasted Little DJs
25.Teddy Thompson – Separate Ways |
