Top Albums You've Discovered in 2006
aspiring_fury posted a thread on the AL boards that I really enjoyed; The top albums that you found in 2006. I liked it because I get disappointed that a lot of the "Top Albums" articles around this time don't feature the stuff I'm most recently excited about because they weren't released that year. This is for posting the albums you heard/bought for the first time.
So of course, I sat down and wrote reams about it. Why not try and make it into a meme? I have it here for your reading pleasure, if you decide to trudge through it, perhaps write up a list of your own and post it in your journal?
Over the last year, my tastes have changed so much that this will be quite sweeping.
1. Stars, Set Yourself On Fire (2005): Lush instrumentals, heartfelt lyrics and the he-said she-said interplay of the whispery co-lead-singers made this my favorite band in 2006. I got this album for Valentines Day; that was highly appropriate. The songs are distinct and memorable, framed with the majestic "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" and speculative "Calendar Girl" that were really great. I don't think there's a single song on this album I don't love.
2. Gorillaz, Demon Days (2006): One of the problems with the early Gorillaz work was a reliance on beat loops and a lack of meaningful lyricism. This was before a lot of my shift in musical taste of 2006, but I was giddy as hell when this record came out, buying it on release day instead of going to French class. :V
3. The Best of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra (1961): I'm putting this here as a testament to the new horizons my record player helped me reach. In 2006, my music tastes were still varied as ever, and I discovered the awesomeness of jazz. Duke Ellington's work is really the essence of that, a selection or horns that just set you up with whichever groove you'd like. This album is great for just setting on the turn table and letting spin. =D
4. Broken Social Scene, Broken Social Scene (2006): If Stars express feeling concisely through lyrics, telling stories of love, lust, and loss, Broken Social Scene is the pure emotion of that process. I've always felt that BSS is whatever the hell it wants to be, and never so outwardly expressive as a medium to be experienced. BSS was also my gateway to the Toronto indie scene, which has infested my CD rack with its goodness. XD
5. Feist, Let It Die (2004): I couldn't let this list go by without this album. A selection of groovy tunes, this album is all about Leslie Feist being a songstress. Album composition is also good; the reason why this album is so important in my year is that the mellow-fast 1-2 combo of "Gatekeeper" and "Mushaboom" served as my mental alarm clock for many months. That's really exactly what this is: morning music.
6. Metric, Live It Out (2005): In the last month or so, I've gone up on Metric on the whole. Metric in my mind now ranks above Feist and BSS. Throughout 2006, however, which is what I'm measuring, it didn't really attach to me so much. The electropop in this album I found to be iconic and amazing in a lot of cases. "Too Little Too Late" was my mp3 player staple for a while. I never heard any Metric before I saw this album in an HMV for $10, just heard of; it was well worth the cost. As well as creating great atmosphere, it is great at being a sublime protest album; go listen to "Handshakes" and "Patriarch on a Vespa" and you'll see what I mean. I also have to ass that I've had a crushing tendency to switch the names of Live It Out and Let It Die, which has got me into trouble on some message boards. The names are similar!
7. Stars, Heart (2003): I have a musical crush on Stars. When I bought this album, originally, I wasn't so hot on it; after Set Yourself On Fire, the tracks sort of blended together. But it grew on me, and the mellow ruminations on romance shone after a while, and it's a cherished part of my collection. Having listened to the rest of the Stars catalog, I find that this album is a real bridge between their old stuff and their new stuff; still having a lot of that more base electric backing of Nightsongs while adding a foreshadow to the fuller music to come as well as the conversational turn the lyrics took between Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan. "Look Up" is amazing, and "Heart" is still an emotional experience for me because of relationship stuff over the summer.
8. The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers (2006): I got this album with others for my birthday in the summer on vinyl. I didn't realize until I started listening to it how appropriate that was. Broken Boy Soliders is nostalgia rock, a throwback to the vinyl era and the type of songs it had. I enjoy it wholeheartedly.
9. Van Morrison, Moondance (1970): This was another vinyl classic I got, and I put it here to reflect the real introspective quality I took this year. I learned the title track at someone else's behest, and JUST ABOUT won a musical contest with it. Good, solid grass-roots music.
10. Steely Dan, Greatest Hits 1972-1978 (1978): I liked The Doors obsessively in 2005, one reason of which was the organs. When I broke into this album, I found those same organs used for the mellow purposes that a lot of my other tastes of the year have been leaning, and I really dug it.
So of course, I sat down and wrote reams about it. Why not try and make it into a meme? I have it here for your reading pleasure, if you decide to trudge through it, perhaps write up a list of your own and post it in your journal?
Over the last year, my tastes have changed so much that this will be quite sweeping.
1. Stars, Set Yourself On Fire (2005): Lush instrumentals, heartfelt lyrics and the he-said she-said interplay of the whispery co-lead-singers made this my favorite band in 2006. I got this album for Valentines Day; that was highly appropriate. The songs are distinct and memorable, framed with the majestic "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" and speculative "Calendar Girl" that were really great. I don't think there's a single song on this album I don't love.
2. Gorillaz, Demon Days (2006): One of the problems with the early Gorillaz work was a reliance on beat loops and a lack of meaningful lyricism. This was before a lot of my shift in musical taste of 2006, but I was giddy as hell when this record came out, buying it on release day instead of going to French class. :V
3. The Best of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra (1961): I'm putting this here as a testament to the new horizons my record player helped me reach. In 2006, my music tastes were still varied as ever, and I discovered the awesomeness of jazz. Duke Ellington's work is really the essence of that, a selection or horns that just set you up with whichever groove you'd like. This album is great for just setting on the turn table and letting spin. =D
4. Broken Social Scene, Broken Social Scene (2006): If Stars express feeling concisely through lyrics, telling stories of love, lust, and loss, Broken Social Scene is the pure emotion of that process. I've always felt that BSS is whatever the hell it wants to be, and never so outwardly expressive as a medium to be experienced. BSS was also my gateway to the Toronto indie scene, which has infested my CD rack with its goodness. XD
5. Feist, Let It Die (2004): I couldn't let this list go by without this album. A selection of groovy tunes, this album is all about Leslie Feist being a songstress. Album composition is also good; the reason why this album is so important in my year is that the mellow-fast 1-2 combo of "Gatekeeper" and "Mushaboom" served as my mental alarm clock for many months. That's really exactly what this is: morning music.
6. Metric, Live It Out (2005): In the last month or so, I've gone up on Metric on the whole. Metric in my mind now ranks above Feist and BSS. Throughout 2006, however, which is what I'm measuring, it didn't really attach to me so much. The electropop in this album I found to be iconic and amazing in a lot of cases. "Too Little Too Late" was my mp3 player staple for a while. I never heard any Metric before I saw this album in an HMV for $10, just heard of; it was well worth the cost. As well as creating great atmosphere, it is great at being a sublime protest album; go listen to "Handshakes" and "Patriarch on a Vespa" and you'll see what I mean. I also have to ass that I've had a crushing tendency to switch the names of Live It Out and Let It Die, which has got me into trouble on some message boards. The names are similar!
7. Stars, Heart (2003): I have a musical crush on Stars. When I bought this album, originally, I wasn't so hot on it; after Set Yourself On Fire, the tracks sort of blended together. But it grew on me, and the mellow ruminations on romance shone after a while, and it's a cherished part of my collection. Having listened to the rest of the Stars catalog, I find that this album is a real bridge between their old stuff and their new stuff; still having a lot of that more base electric backing of Nightsongs while adding a foreshadow to the fuller music to come as well as the conversational turn the lyrics took between Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan. "Look Up" is amazing, and "Heart" is still an emotional experience for me because of relationship stuff over the summer.
8. The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers (2006): I got this album with others for my birthday in the summer on vinyl. I didn't realize until I started listening to it how appropriate that was. Broken Boy Soliders is nostalgia rock, a throwback to the vinyl era and the type of songs it had. I enjoy it wholeheartedly.
9. Van Morrison, Moondance (1970): This was another vinyl classic I got, and I put it here to reflect the real introspective quality I took this year. I learned the title track at someone else's behest, and JUST ABOUT won a musical contest with it. Good, solid grass-roots music.
10. Steely Dan, Greatest Hits 1972-1978 (1978): I liked The Doors obsessively in 2005, one reason of which was the organs. When I broke into this album, I found those same organs used for the mellow purposes that a lot of my other tastes of the year have been leaning, and I really dug it.