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Monday, December 18, 2006
| Top 10 Albums of 2006 |
I did a top-five list with blurbs for Scenestars.net last week (although it hasn't gone up on the site yet), and while I was at it, I figured I could fill in the rest of the ballot that I submitted to the Jackin' Pop poll. (Still torn about whether or not to contribute to Pazz and Jop this year. On one hand, there's the genuine thrill of inclusion the last couple of years: "Ma, I'm in the Village Voice!" On the other, we're talking about a paper that has fucked over Robert Christgau, Chuck Eddy, and Michaelangelo Matos, three of the best, most consistently interesting music critics in the world. I guess there's always Hinder.) And so here we are:
 10. Hot Chip, The Warning
An uneven record from a gang of pasty white British dudes that still contains some of the past year's most rewarding pop pleasures, from the energized, anthemic refrain of "Over and Over, " to the alluring blue-eyed croon and insistent twitch of "Boy from School."
 9. Herbert, Scale
On paper it sounds like disco: lavishly sweeping strings and anonymously fabulous singers both subservient to a dance beat -- but for Herbert, fine details matter more than grand statements, and so his Technicolor orchestra here is microscopic, wrapped in a warm blanket of mellow clicks and glitches, and no less captivating for all the tweaking that implies.
 8. Kaki King, ...Until We Felt Red
It's hard for me to dislike an album whose antecedents seem to be the kind of moonlit, back-porch post-rock I loved at the turn of the century: Tara Jane O'Neil's Peregrine and Papa M's Live in a Shark Cage, most obviously -- but the young guitar whiz also demonstrates her versatility by interspersing meditative, finger-picked instrumentals with eerily poignant vocal numbers like "Jessica," which borrows some of Jeff Buckley's compelling reverie.
 7. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
They've been said to resemble the softer side of Animal Collective, and this ensemble indeed copies the celebrated noise-folk outfit's wondrous harmonies and acoustic trance, but Yellow House is redolent less of the bounties of nature and more of the shadows of the past, with the hushed, creeping "Marla" seeming not so much a cover as a palimpsest, all the dusty, wine-stained markers of the attic where it was discovered still preserved and seeping through.
 6. Destroyer, Rubies
Dan Bejar is the only New Pornographer I've ever had any use for, and though I admired the bold romantic artifice of Your Blues, his previous record under the Destroyer moniker, it was the sprawling Rubies that really sold me on him: an organic tangle of ramshackle piano and bleeding guitar, overlaid with endless strings of words that Bejar clearly relishes, as they build upon his own mythology.
 5. Joanna Newsom, Ys
Girl's getting a lot of guff and p-word drops for her long song-suites, but pretentious only makes sense within the insular realm of indie rock: no one would dare diss Philip Glass, say, for ten minutes of hypnotic harp figures. Plus, the expansiveness only enhances the thorny beauty of these fairy tales: amid the colorful swaths of orchestration, it lets them linger and breathe.
 4. Junior Boys, So This is Goodbye
Two years ago I swooned for the tricky rhythms and gorgeously frozen sighs of the electro-pop duo's debut, Last Exit, and though this one's more streamlined, that may ultimately be to its advantage: the persistent beat and elastic laser synths on "In the Morning" prompt fantasies of dancing all night, eyes lifted to the darkened sky.
 3. Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds
Owen Pallett's palette consists of the polite tools of the trained composer: contrapuntal cello and ornate piano intricately darting past each other, for instance. But he's as likely to spiral into cries of anguish as he is to dwell on his own prettiness (just as the album title conflates the heavens with literal shit), and the appearance of the Charlie Brown children's chorus on "This Lamb Sells Condos" all but encapsulates the record's consuming melancholy.
 2. Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
Twenty-five years on, and these boho rock stars not only haven't lost the plot, they're making some of the best music of their career: here they condense the bright, dreamy jams of their last couple records into crisp, shimmering pop songs, albeit with plenty of detuned arpeggios and breathy art-school poetry that'll probably always serve as a signature, since it still sounds so good.
 1. Girl Talk, Night Ripper
In 2006 the gimmicky fun of the traditional mash-up gave way to a more transcendent pleasure: hearing dozens of my favorite radio hits stitched together, one snippet after another, for over 40 breathless minutes. Even when the name-that-tune factor lost its novelty, I was still left with a cavalcade of thrilling new contexts that unexpectedly stuck in my craw, and as the sort of dilettante who loves Ciara nearly as much as Sonic Youth, I couldn't help feeling like the mix was designed just for me.
Runners-up: The Knife, Silent Shout; Ellen Allien and Apparat, Orchestra of Bubbles; Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit; Phoenix, It's Never Been Like That; Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/LoveSounds; The Changes, Today is Tonight; Booka Shade, Movements; LCD Soundsystem, 45:33; The Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love; Luomo, Paper Tigers.
[cross-posted on Seaworthy Southeast Thesaurus]
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Posted by John C.
on
Monday, December 18, 2006 at 10:33 AM | Permalink
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The Warning uneven, and beaten by that colourless Herbert album? Man, it's a good thing I'm so appreciative of the Phoenix mention...
(just kidding, and I'll post my own version of this soonish)
Posted by
Ian |
12/18/2006 7:31 PM