2006’s Best (Lyric rihanna unfaithful) Music: Albums, etc. Part 1 of our discussion
2006’s Best Music: Albums, etc.
Part 1 of our discussion of the best of the year, wherein Dan and Jordan discuss their favourite albums, and Jordan also lists his favourite songs. Sean’s favourite songs of 2006 to follow tomorrow.
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The world’s population can be divided into two distinct groups: List People and The Others.
There was a movie made about The Others starring Nicole Kidman as (spoiler alert) one of them, and the philosopher and cultural critic Edward Said wrote a great deal about Others. Anyway, I am one of them. Lists bring me no pleasure. I remember as a little kid asking my dad who the greatest baseball player of all time was, and him treating this as a deeply misguided question, explaining to me that there were a great many great baseball players and what made each one great was a set of qualities so abstract that it couldn’t be meaningfully judged against another’s. This made sense to me (though I knew for a fact that Jesse Barfield was the greatest player of all time). So it is too with music, of course. What does it mean to say that Coltrane is better than Fahey, Charles Ives better than Marvin Gaye? Their respective greatnesses are, in mathematical terms, incommensurable. Which is not to say that no kind of judgment of relative merit in music is possible (otherwise we’d be out of a job) - we can surely distinguish between the great and the very good (Coltrane is better than Modest Mouse, right?), the merely good and the not so good - just that at a certain point, when dealing with music of comparable value (leaving aside what exactly “value” means here), such judgments start to break down.
So why a list at all? Well,
- I made some perfunctory Utilitarian calculations which demonstrated that the pleasure that List People derive from reading a list likely far outweighs the discomfort that an Other, such as myself, experiences compiling one.
- With a site such as StG, where we write only about music we really like, I imagine our constant praise can sometimes appear vacuous. Of course, though we may not always do a great job of showing it, we do not like everything we post equally. So this list is an attempt to give you some perspective on the hundreds of positive reviews we’ve written this year. Finally and most importantly,
- Sean made me.
Albums
1. Joanna Newsom - Ys
And in no particular order:
Destroyer - Destroyer’s Rubies
Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
The Red River Some Songs About a Flood
Nat Baldwin - Enter the Winter
Richard Buckner - Meadow
Horse Feathers Words are Dead
Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
Songs
In no particular order:
“Only Skin” is a song ostensibly about a bonectomy. As my grandmother used to say, “What could be bad?!”
These are three of the most surprising, ingenious, and powerful songs my little ears have ever had the pleasure of receiving. [Previously]
All of Carey Mercer’s songs remind me of “The Monster Mash,” and there’s nothing any of you can say to change that. The mechanism that causes this association is a subtle thing but has something to do with the union of the upbeat and the scary, the quick and the moribund. When I interviewed Swan Lake for Ukula, I asked Carey Mercer “Other than Bobby ‘Boris’ Picket, are there artists whose work you view as related to your own?” He responded, “I don’t know who Boris Picket is, I hope he’s not ‘Monster Mash…’” I assume he’s reacting against the frivolous nature of Picket’s masterpiece. Perhaps he views “Monster Mash” as a novelty. And so it is, but so too is “The Partisan” a novelty. The former like alphabet soup, the latter like Fischer’s against the King’s Gambit - deep and sublime. [Previously]
Neko Case - “That Teenage Feeling” [Previously]
The Red River “The Mighty Tide” [Previously]
Nat Baldwin “Within Walls” [Previously]
Horse Feathers “Finch on Saturday” [Previously]
Early Day Miners “Sans Revival” [Previously]
Beirut - “Postcards From Italy” [Sean previously on Beirut]
Cat Power “The Greatest” [Previously]
For my list, I feel sheepish about trying to present this to you. I feel like every one needs to be justified, as if in a sentence or two, I could represent to you the reason these artists are vibrant, present, alive. All I can say is that they are to me and I just want to share with you. So, in reverse order, here goes 2006:
12. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Brown paper songs that can tear and let loose a flood, a pink wind.
11. The Low Lows - Fire on the Bright Sky
Like flagless flagpoles that rattle their rings in the night breeze, and as you drive into an unknown town, the credits are always inching up behind you. (listen to “No Such Thing as Sara Jane”)
10. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Checking your pockets, what’s been jingling there all day, three coins, each ornate and priceless, one gold, one made of wrought-iron, one of good ol’ solid steel.
9. Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
Broken pianos, voices standing on their heads, and dance beats like heavy winter coats. A song from every genre, not a single one of which is a musical genre. (listen to “Oh Sweet Woods”)
8. Horse Feathers - Words are Dead
Eat this album like a sad yellow breakfast. Unrelenting and surprisingly eternal for an album so deathly, so final. (listen to “Blood on the Snow”)
7. Parenthetical Girls - Safe as Houses
Percussing and throbbing with treble and warble and writhing with angry-eyed love. (listen to “The Four Platitudes”)
6. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette
Like a Mike Leigh film, a book of Hemingway short stories, and a sleep on a stranger’s couch, all at once. Pure winter. (listen to “New Year’s Kiss”)
5. Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
If there were any woods left, any real woods, this would be a walk in that woods. (listen to “This Lamb Sells Condos”)
4. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up, I’m Dreaming
This is where it gets difficult. It really is harder to write about the things you like most. If this album could be charted like a map (which it ought to be) you’d have to use a pair of dice to navigate it, and you’d need to take a lot of weapons. (listen to the Daytrotter version of “They Took a Vote and Said No”)
3. Destroyer - Destroyer’s Rubies
Ever eat an omelette and think, halfway through, “why do I like omelettes?” but then when you’re finished, you just feel great? Yeah, me too.
2. The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth
Look at a row of books on a shelf. Think about how many words are between here and here. Art is so much fucking work. (listen to “Razorblade”)
1. Joanna Newsom - Ys
Without trying to be over-emphatic or sensational, one of the best albums I have ever heard in my life. Head and shoulders the best album of the year, and possibly the best album, as I understand an album to be defined, made by anyone ever.
You Need to Know Louis Mhlanga
dj earball
Rihanna - Unfaithful mp3
This song was released in 2005/2006
Kris Waaah
They Try To Keep Me Down But I Always Surprise ‘Em
No Frontin’
Rihanna - Unfaithful
Artist: Rihanna Song: Unfaithful Featurings: None Album: A Girl Like Me Ripped By: Unknown. Want this music video? Go to the forums…
Five Albums of 2006
Okay, so I wrote a top ten albums of 2006, but it looked just like any number of other top ten albums of 2006 (Joanna Newsom, The Knife, etc.). And believe me, no one needs that.
So I decided to do five albums from 2006 that I feel like championing. I’ve blogged on many of these artists and albums before, but putting them in a list of sorts feels somehow more definitive, no?
Mike Andrews - Hand On String
His solo debut was as high in quality as his film scoring and producing work.
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Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano - Mariana, Tus Ojos (To Dawn Upshaw) download amazon
Clint Mansell - Stay With Me download amazon itunes
The Guillemots - 06 Through the Windowpane download amazon itunes
The Fiery Furnaces - Police Sweater Blood Vow download amazon itunes
Rufus Thomas - “Little Sally Walker”
Little Sally Walker was the subject of a song sung at camps and as accompaniment to epic jump rope sessions. Sally was an innocent - a little girl who sat in a saucer, turning from side to side, wiping her crying eyes. That is, until Rufus Thomas got to her and thoroughly sullied her good name.
Rufus’s Southern dance-soul take on the theme is altogether more adult than the rhymes that preceded his song. His intentions for Little Sally are entirely unwholesome, and he makes no bones about this, making them plain with an ensnaring snare, base bass, horny horns, and a most lascivious larynx. [Buy]
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Pigmeat Terry - “Moaning the Blues”
My parents were going to name me Pigmeat until they learned of the towering blues great of the same name. They thought, How is this boneless pudge-sphere of a baby boy going to fill the shoes of the bluesman who could moan like a clarinet and sing like a plunger-muted trumpet? Deciding that I appeared to lack any blues talent whatsoever, but that I excelled in the dramatic arts, they instead named me after Jordana Brewster, then only one year old. [Buy]
I ain’t posting mp3s anymore, so I’m just gonna start bragging about shit…
Last week ruled. I saw Pete Townshend play at my friend Marko’s Hotel Cafe (some Billy dude from some Pumpkins band played too, someone said he was big in the 90s), saw The Who play The Hollwood Bowl from the…
The Major Stars - Pocket
An institution in their hometown of Boston, since they formed in the early 90s Major Stars have built a reputation as one of the heaviest psychedelic rock acts in the world. Balancing their extended guitar freakouts with pristine acid-folk jams, in the past they ve toured with the likes of Acid Mothers Temple and Mission Of Burma. This is their first-ever UK date, ahead of an appearance at the All Tomorrow s Parties festival. Think Blue Cheer, Cream or Iron Butterfly - and bring a set of earplugs They are playing this Friday at In the Pines. Poptones are going to be there—are you? For more details please click here.
