Best of 2006
I got very intoxicated very early last night and as a result made it back to bed by midnight. And I am happy to report that while I did spend much of the night kneeling at the alter of the porcelain god, I did not have communion with it. Never the less, I couldn't get much sleep, so now seemed like as good of a time as any to finish up my 2006 Best Of. Reviews behind the cut.
powered by frazy.com
Best of 2006
1. Boris - Pink
What's this? A metal album as my number one? Well any metal album that kicks off with a seven minute shoegaze dirge deserves some special attention. And shoegaze is just the beginning, over eleven tracks the Japanese trio pummel lucky listeners with trash metal, garage jams, Sabbath mud-core, doom metal, and even a plaintive quiet piece. And it's all wrapped up with 'Just Abandon My-Self', which goes from speed punk to 80s hardcore sing alongs, noise rock break downs and finally to feedback manipulations over an epic twenty minute span. Incredible disc.
2. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Dylan's latest comeback has now stretched to three albums and a kick ass single ('Things Have Changed', if you forgot), and for my money Modern Times is the best of the lot. Well don't get me wrong, I personally thought 'Love and Theft' was the work of a genius, but looking back on it, it’s the work of a genius who tried to prove too much. Every track was at least five minutes long consisting of dense unwieldy prose, in which every line only vaguely shared the same theme as the line which preceded it, and was nearly impenetrable to casual listeners. 'Modern Times' by contrast is a more measured affair, the slow paced songs outnumber the rockers which themselves don't so much rock as roll. But everything feels part of a whole. While the lyrics are still fairly disjointed, each song has its own theme and structure, and repeat listens strengthen the connection between each track. 'Nettie Moore' warns that "winter's gone/the river's on the rise", which is followed by biblical rain swell in 'The Levee's Gonna Break', which evokes Katrina with language plucked from the era of the Johnstown flood. 'Levee' might be the best song here, the music certainly owes much to New Orleans swing, performed at a fast tempo but almost entirely morose in any other regard, as if the character of culture demands music be boisterous even when playing a death march.
Modern Times is also a good place to see the spectacle of DYLAN, at the end of another career reinvention. He's always been the master silently forming a persona. Whether folk rock, rock poet, country rock, dinosaur rock, Dylan has been able to fluidly move through any genre and its associated social rules. The only other artist who can come close is probably Britney Spears. By cultivating a pencil moustache, appearing in a cowboy hat for press photos, and playing country fairs for five years of the endless tour, Dylan has effectively styled himself into the last traveling music man. He's dressing up as the legends of Charlie Patton and Woody Guthrie, combing the country, playing any dive that will put his name up on the marquee. It's great theatre, and a good bit cheaper than seeing any other vintage sixties performer, so what's the harm? Just don't call him out on it, lest in five years Dylan will be regularly seen wielding a Jazzmaster and dressing like Stephen Malkmus… it could happen…
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys (pronounced 'ease')
From what planet do albums like this come from? I cannot honestly say that this album is revolutionary per se. Harp driven music backed by tasteful orchestration might not look forward thinking in this day and age, and I can think of no technical reason why this album couldn't have been made in the late sixties or eighties or nineties and have sounded exactly the same. Indeed, emissaries from each period lend a hand here to great effect. Van Dyke Parks handled the orchestration (late 60s), Steve Albini bled out the human elements as the engineer (80s), and Jim O'Rourke tied it all together on production (90s). There are quite a few people who would look on those three names as something of a super group. If you happen to be among those you'll be happy to know Newsom's songs merit that caliber of collaborator. She fills every moment of every track with flowing verse. Her characters are plucked out of children's fantasy books and blue period paintings but are so rooted in reality that the songs never float into the ether…
4. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of this Country
2006 should be remembered for the crowning achievements in Scottish pop, Belle and Sebastian's 'Life Pursuit', the first American release of a Josef K album, two new records from Isobel Campbell, and the apogee of them all, Camera Obscura's 'Let's Get Out of this Country'. So Motown you'll smile and so earnest you might just feel compelled to call up your ex.
5. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Oh how they wanted to be your number one. You can hear it on every track, all the attention spent on those background effects and disjointed beats. This album is a Jay Dee production on so much LSD that it sounds like it escaped Peter Gabriel's scary era. But the beauty is everything works. Particularly on the opener 'I was a Lover', the purest song here, nothing else is as inventive or successful. That doesn't mean that there aren't other highlights though. 'Wolf Like Me' is a churning rocker and 'Blues From Down Here' gets swallowed by its own back beat in an impressive manner.
6. Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist
The Deftones have never been terribly comfortable in their own skin. They released their definitive album, 'White Pony' at the height of Nu Metal and Rap Rock. The disk showed their adeptness at integrating sound scapes, shifting dynamics, electro beats and metal into a nuanced and fascinating hybrid. They seemed the one band in their genre that would side step the eventual decline. The critics praised Pony immediately while fan interest swelled. So how did the Deftones react? Within a few months they took their record company's advise and re cut 'Pink Maggit', White Pony's seven minute solemn album closer, into a three minute Rap Rock joke and set it as the opening track of a re-released Pony. All the goodwill slipped into the ether, even if sales persisted. The band panicked and released 'Deftones', a return to pure Nu Metal in 2003 when the entire genre officially died. When you count a strangely unsatisfying B-side compilation, that's three straight misses from camp Deftones. Saturday Night Wrist is styled as the true successor to White Pony. The songs flirt with dynamics, retro hip hop effects, and every Radiohead sonic trick you could think of. But producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd's 'The Wall') juggles all these elements like a pro, and the Deftones have never sounded better. They even add a few great tracks to the back catalog, the best being 'KimDracula' an eighties metal anthem recast as post punk. Experimentation may be part of the territory, the post rockish 'U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,A,B,Select,Start' couldn't have come about under any other pretense, but the band is still playing it safe, and sometimes it costs them. The collaboration with the currently best selling System of a Down feels out of place as Serj Tankian's morose crooning nearly sinks 'Mein's' Prince-like pomp. 'Pink Cellphone', the track that owes the most to straight hip hop productions, feels tacked on and overlong. Otherwise this collection is perhaps the best the Deftones have assembled to date. Worth a listen, worth a look.
7. Ghostface - Fishscale
Kilo is a thousand grams…. Yeah it's over long and features a posthumous B.I.G. contribution for the final cut. Both are the kind of problems I don't let hip hop get away with any more. But isn't there something special about a late thirties MC, throwing every ounce of energy into every track, trying in vain to impress an audience that shrivels by the day? Well at least there're no sell out tracks to be found here, and the Wu Tang sound off even works! This might be the last time on record where you'll hear a genuine ODB highlight, so you know it's special.
8. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
Yellow House sounds like proto Beach Boys, like the kind of music that would've inspired Brian Wilson to craft a masterpiece. Not saying that this is a masterpiece itself. You probably wouldn't need more than the side of a napkin and a crayon to take down the lyrics to any song, and after multiple listens that works to the albums detriment. On second thought, maybe the vocals are too prominent in the mix, the real attraction here is listening as bedroom folk rock bleeds into slow burn rockers fit for a symphony hall. For majesty on a budget in 2006, you'll find no better album.
9. Homemade Knives - No One Doubts the Darkness
Woody Guthrie be damned, sometimes Americana accents don't need to be a badge of honor for surviving a national tragedy. Sometimes a singer can affect a Southern drawl, because that's the natural voice of the speaker. It's a matter of honesty, and Homemade Knives wants you to hear the truth. There are no surprises on this platter, each song maintains the same tempo and same minor keys. Guitars, banjos and other twanging remnants of traditional Appalachian music back songs of plaintive yearning. A few tracks sink under the weight of their own pathos, but that doesn't detract from the strength of the whole…
10. Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell - Ballad of the Broken Seas
The Scot Pop takeover continues full stride. Isobel Campbell helms motel room sonnets using raspy yank Lanegan as a muse, a role he plays well these days. Listen for 'Ramblin Man' the only non original here, and the best of the lot.
Honorable Mention
Josef K - Entomology
You won't find a more charming set of liner notes anywhere. Paul Morley, an on again off again Josef K obsessive, argues mightily that while the band might not rank very well among the greatest bands of all time, when you only look at groups which start with the letter 'J', their only real competition is Joy Division. It's probably meaningless to argue the point. Josef K only existed for an eighteen month span in the early eighties, and this best-of is only their first American release. The music starts off as a minor Joy Division knockoff, with Martin Hannett-lite production touches but without Hannett's genius. But over the span of twenty two tracks, Josef K quickly settles into an original sound. David Byrne's manic percussive guitar style in stereo with Television like interplay, over those Chic bass lines that were the secret passion of many post punkers, it's cited as the root of the Franz Ferdinands and their ilk, and while that turns out to be a stretch, the music is still damn exciting regardless. Plus, you won't find a better bit of album packaging from 2006. Check out 'The Missionary', 'Sorry for Laughing' and 'Revelation'.
Belle and Sebastian - Life Pursuit
Didn't the seventies just sound warm? Check out 'We are the Sleepyheads' which merges Abba and 'That Lady' from the Isley Brothers over a galloping beat.
Six Organs of Admittance - Sun Awakens
It's unfortunate that Ben Chasney is a willing participant in the Freak Folk movement, especially when his solo releases as Six Organs are quietly approaching cult classic status.
Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
You can't fault Sean Lennon for waiting eight years to release his second album. After all, for all the battles that father John waged over his lifetime, he never fought harder than to simply get a lifetime pass to New York hipster society. Sean has lived his fathers dream, a fixture at the social happenings and the go to bassist of choice for any group looking for a little cachet. On this album, whether an attempt to bolster his own hipness factor or to lament a friend who came to a tragic end, Lennon succeeds mightily. 'Friendly Fire' harkens back to Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' period, lush orchestration with a laptop artist's attention to sonic detail. Even if the lyrics can't match the production values, the album's still a winner.
Mojave 3 - Puzzles Like You
You can stop crying at Luna's tombstone, because Mojave 3 sounds more than prepared to take the mantle
Notable Mediocrity
Tom Verlaine - Songs and Other Things
Man this hurts to write. Tom Verlaine took a sixteen year sabbatical from the recording studio and returned with what? A collection of songs that he probably wrote in a week. No solos that match the peaks of his other albums, no new sonic territory probed, you have to wonder why he even bothered. If you really need a TV fix, you can check out 'Around', the companion album of instrumentals, which can boast a few more highlights than this platter.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
Critics were quick to note the similarities between Y.Y.Ys and the Pretenders, especially between each group's first full length album. Well if you were to take that analogy a step further, then the second album by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would be an underachiever, missed potential and lackluster songwriting all emanating from inter band tensions coming to a boil. Guess what. Well there are a few songs to recommend the album, the single 'Gold Lion' for instance. The real tragedy is that the added production values have a tendency to improve elements of the music-Karen O's vocals sound wonderful multitracked for instance-it’s a shame that the band couldn't find a way to fully exploit their new surroundings.
Dabrye - Two/Three
It's probably an off hand compliment when you can say something like: 'The production is better than the rapping'. I mean, Jay Dee's a great producer and he never worked with an MC who could best the music. Dabrye's a bit of a different story, a hip hop producer who integrates electronica and IDM needs a different kind of collaborator. He needs someone who understands nuance a little, maybe even dynamics. All of the rappers who appear on this album come from respected pockets of the 'underground', and are the kind of performers who a record store clerk would recommend as 'intelligent' and 'thought provoking'. Unfortunately they all take the same tact, shouting over every electronic blip and bleep like this was a deep south production. The instrumentals work well though, especially 'Jorgy', but they are too few and far between.
powered by frazy.com
Best of 2006
1. Boris - Pink
What's this? A metal album as my number one? Well any metal album that kicks off with a seven minute shoegaze dirge deserves some special attention. And shoegaze is just the beginning, over eleven tracks the Japanese trio pummel lucky listeners with trash metal, garage jams, Sabbath mud-core, doom metal, and even a plaintive quiet piece. And it's all wrapped up with 'Just Abandon My-Self', which goes from speed punk to 80s hardcore sing alongs, noise rock break downs and finally to feedback manipulations over an epic twenty minute span. Incredible disc.
2. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Dylan's latest comeback has now stretched to three albums and a kick ass single ('Things Have Changed', if you forgot), and for my money Modern Times is the best of the lot. Well don't get me wrong, I personally thought 'Love and Theft' was the work of a genius, but looking back on it, it’s the work of a genius who tried to prove too much. Every track was at least five minutes long consisting of dense unwieldy prose, in which every line only vaguely shared the same theme as the line which preceded it, and was nearly impenetrable to casual listeners. 'Modern Times' by contrast is a more measured affair, the slow paced songs outnumber the rockers which themselves don't so much rock as roll. But everything feels part of a whole. While the lyrics are still fairly disjointed, each song has its own theme and structure, and repeat listens strengthen the connection between each track. 'Nettie Moore' warns that "winter's gone/the river's on the rise", which is followed by biblical rain swell in 'The Levee's Gonna Break', which evokes Katrina with language plucked from the era of the Johnstown flood. 'Levee' might be the best song here, the music certainly owes much to New Orleans swing, performed at a fast tempo but almost entirely morose in any other regard, as if the character of culture demands music be boisterous even when playing a death march.
Modern Times is also a good place to see the spectacle of DYLAN, at the end of another career reinvention. He's always been the master silently forming a persona. Whether folk rock, rock poet, country rock, dinosaur rock, Dylan has been able to fluidly move through any genre and its associated social rules. The only other artist who can come close is probably Britney Spears. By cultivating a pencil moustache, appearing in a cowboy hat for press photos, and playing country fairs for five years of the endless tour, Dylan has effectively styled himself into the last traveling music man. He's dressing up as the legends of Charlie Patton and Woody Guthrie, combing the country, playing any dive that will put his name up on the marquee. It's great theatre, and a good bit cheaper than seeing any other vintage sixties performer, so what's the harm? Just don't call him out on it, lest in five years Dylan will be regularly seen wielding a Jazzmaster and dressing like Stephen Malkmus… it could happen…
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys (pronounced 'ease')
From what planet do albums like this come from? I cannot honestly say that this album is revolutionary per se. Harp driven music backed by tasteful orchestration might not look forward thinking in this day and age, and I can think of no technical reason why this album couldn't have been made in the late sixties or eighties or nineties and have sounded exactly the same. Indeed, emissaries from each period lend a hand here to great effect. Van Dyke Parks handled the orchestration (late 60s), Steve Albini bled out the human elements as the engineer (80s), and Jim O'Rourke tied it all together on production (90s). There are quite a few people who would look on those three names as something of a super group. If you happen to be among those you'll be happy to know Newsom's songs merit that caliber of collaborator. She fills every moment of every track with flowing verse. Her characters are plucked out of children's fantasy books and blue period paintings but are so rooted in reality that the songs never float into the ether…
4. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of this Country
2006 should be remembered for the crowning achievements in Scottish pop, Belle and Sebastian's 'Life Pursuit', the first American release of a Josef K album, two new records from Isobel Campbell, and the apogee of them all, Camera Obscura's 'Let's Get Out of this Country'. So Motown you'll smile and so earnest you might just feel compelled to call up your ex.
5. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Oh how they wanted to be your number one. You can hear it on every track, all the attention spent on those background effects and disjointed beats. This album is a Jay Dee production on so much LSD that it sounds like it escaped Peter Gabriel's scary era. But the beauty is everything works. Particularly on the opener 'I was a Lover', the purest song here, nothing else is as inventive or successful. That doesn't mean that there aren't other highlights though. 'Wolf Like Me' is a churning rocker and 'Blues From Down Here' gets swallowed by its own back beat in an impressive manner.
6. Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist
The Deftones have never been terribly comfortable in their own skin. They released their definitive album, 'White Pony' at the height of Nu Metal and Rap Rock. The disk showed their adeptness at integrating sound scapes, shifting dynamics, electro beats and metal into a nuanced and fascinating hybrid. They seemed the one band in their genre that would side step the eventual decline. The critics praised Pony immediately while fan interest swelled. So how did the Deftones react? Within a few months they took their record company's advise and re cut 'Pink Maggit', White Pony's seven minute solemn album closer, into a three minute Rap Rock joke and set it as the opening track of a re-released Pony. All the goodwill slipped into the ether, even if sales persisted. The band panicked and released 'Deftones', a return to pure Nu Metal in 2003 when the entire genre officially died. When you count a strangely unsatisfying B-side compilation, that's three straight misses from camp Deftones. Saturday Night Wrist is styled as the true successor to White Pony. The songs flirt with dynamics, retro hip hop effects, and every Radiohead sonic trick you could think of. But producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd's 'The Wall') juggles all these elements like a pro, and the Deftones have never sounded better. They even add a few great tracks to the back catalog, the best being 'KimDracula' an eighties metal anthem recast as post punk. Experimentation may be part of the territory, the post rockish 'U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,A,B,Select,Start' couldn't have come about under any other pretense, but the band is still playing it safe, and sometimes it costs them. The collaboration with the currently best selling System of a Down feels out of place as Serj Tankian's morose crooning nearly sinks 'Mein's' Prince-like pomp. 'Pink Cellphone', the track that owes the most to straight hip hop productions, feels tacked on and overlong. Otherwise this collection is perhaps the best the Deftones have assembled to date. Worth a listen, worth a look.
7. Ghostface - Fishscale
Kilo is a thousand grams…. Yeah it's over long and features a posthumous B.I.G. contribution for the final cut. Both are the kind of problems I don't let hip hop get away with any more. But isn't there something special about a late thirties MC, throwing every ounce of energy into every track, trying in vain to impress an audience that shrivels by the day? Well at least there're no sell out tracks to be found here, and the Wu Tang sound off even works! This might be the last time on record where you'll hear a genuine ODB highlight, so you know it's special.
8. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
Yellow House sounds like proto Beach Boys, like the kind of music that would've inspired Brian Wilson to craft a masterpiece. Not saying that this is a masterpiece itself. You probably wouldn't need more than the side of a napkin and a crayon to take down the lyrics to any song, and after multiple listens that works to the albums detriment. On second thought, maybe the vocals are too prominent in the mix, the real attraction here is listening as bedroom folk rock bleeds into slow burn rockers fit for a symphony hall. For majesty on a budget in 2006, you'll find no better album.
9. Homemade Knives - No One Doubts the Darkness
Woody Guthrie be damned, sometimes Americana accents don't need to be a badge of honor for surviving a national tragedy. Sometimes a singer can affect a Southern drawl, because that's the natural voice of the speaker. It's a matter of honesty, and Homemade Knives wants you to hear the truth. There are no surprises on this platter, each song maintains the same tempo and same minor keys. Guitars, banjos and other twanging remnants of traditional Appalachian music back songs of plaintive yearning. A few tracks sink under the weight of their own pathos, but that doesn't detract from the strength of the whole…
10. Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell - Ballad of the Broken Seas
The Scot Pop takeover continues full stride. Isobel Campbell helms motel room sonnets using raspy yank Lanegan as a muse, a role he plays well these days. Listen for 'Ramblin Man' the only non original here, and the best of the lot.
Honorable Mention
Josef K - Entomology
You won't find a more charming set of liner notes anywhere. Paul Morley, an on again off again Josef K obsessive, argues mightily that while the band might not rank very well among the greatest bands of all time, when you only look at groups which start with the letter 'J', their only real competition is Joy Division. It's probably meaningless to argue the point. Josef K only existed for an eighteen month span in the early eighties, and this best-of is only their first American release. The music starts off as a minor Joy Division knockoff, with Martin Hannett-lite production touches but without Hannett's genius. But over the span of twenty two tracks, Josef K quickly settles into an original sound. David Byrne's manic percussive guitar style in stereo with Television like interplay, over those Chic bass lines that were the secret passion of many post punkers, it's cited as the root of the Franz Ferdinands and their ilk, and while that turns out to be a stretch, the music is still damn exciting regardless. Plus, you won't find a better bit of album packaging from 2006. Check out 'The Missionary', 'Sorry for Laughing' and 'Revelation'.
Belle and Sebastian - Life Pursuit
Didn't the seventies just sound warm? Check out 'We are the Sleepyheads' which merges Abba and 'That Lady' from the Isley Brothers over a galloping beat.
Six Organs of Admittance - Sun Awakens
It's unfortunate that Ben Chasney is a willing participant in the Freak Folk movement, especially when his solo releases as Six Organs are quietly approaching cult classic status.
Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
You can't fault Sean Lennon for waiting eight years to release his second album. After all, for all the battles that father John waged over his lifetime, he never fought harder than to simply get a lifetime pass to New York hipster society. Sean has lived his fathers dream, a fixture at the social happenings and the go to bassist of choice for any group looking for a little cachet. On this album, whether an attempt to bolster his own hipness factor or to lament a friend who came to a tragic end, Lennon succeeds mightily. 'Friendly Fire' harkens back to Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' period, lush orchestration with a laptop artist's attention to sonic detail. Even if the lyrics can't match the production values, the album's still a winner.
Mojave 3 - Puzzles Like You
You can stop crying at Luna's tombstone, because Mojave 3 sounds more than prepared to take the mantle
Notable Mediocrity
Tom Verlaine - Songs and Other Things
Man this hurts to write. Tom Verlaine took a sixteen year sabbatical from the recording studio and returned with what? A collection of songs that he probably wrote in a week. No solos that match the peaks of his other albums, no new sonic territory probed, you have to wonder why he even bothered. If you really need a TV fix, you can check out 'Around', the companion album of instrumentals, which can boast a few more highlights than this platter.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
Critics were quick to note the similarities between Y.Y.Ys and the Pretenders, especially between each group's first full length album. Well if you were to take that analogy a step further, then the second album by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would be an underachiever, missed potential and lackluster songwriting all emanating from inter band tensions coming to a boil. Guess what. Well there are a few songs to recommend the album, the single 'Gold Lion' for instance. The real tragedy is that the added production values have a tendency to improve elements of the music-Karen O's vocals sound wonderful multitracked for instance-it’s a shame that the band couldn't find a way to fully exploit their new surroundings.
Dabrye - Two/Three
It's probably an off hand compliment when you can say something like: 'The production is better than the rapping'. I mean, Jay Dee's a great producer and he never worked with an MC who could best the music. Dabrye's a bit of a different story, a hip hop producer who integrates electronica and IDM needs a different kind of collaborator. He needs someone who understands nuance a little, maybe even dynamics. All of the rappers who appear on this album come from respected pockets of the 'underground', and are the kind of performers who a record store clerk would recommend as 'intelligent' and 'thought provoking'. Unfortunately they all take the same tact, shouting over every electronic blip and bleep like this was a deep south production. The instrumentals work well though, especially 'Jorgy', but they are too few and far between.