Best Albums of 2006

25. Margot and the Nuclear So and So's
I owe my discovery of this local Indianapolis band completely to RJ. As far as band names go, let’s be honest, their’s sucks—it’s trying to be too indie. For that reason alone I didn’t want to give them a chance, despite the desperate urging of RJ. It wasn’t until he visited and forced me to listen that I realized RJ’s enthusiasm was completely founded. Every track on this album sounds vaguely familiar, I know I’ve heard a particular melody or arrangement before, but I don’t mind. They seem to take the familiar and make it their own, pairing well constructed songs with thoughtful lyrics about life in the Midwest. Maybe I like them because they are from the middle of the country and I get homesick every once in awhile, but this is truly a great album and I would recommend it to anyone.
- Austin

24. Morrissey - Ringleader of the Tormentors
I’m probably going to be dismissed for putting this album so high, but isn’t everyone allowed an indulgence on their favorite album lists? One which they’ve enjoyed immensely despite the usual built-in suspicion that ought to be present towards albums put out by 50 year old, gray-haired men, who take themselves very seriously? Albums which, as Smiths devotees might complain, are so well-produced and lacking in Johnny Marr’s interesting guitar work as to sound scrubbed clean, corporate-sounding, and, in the end totally irrelevant? Okay, okay. All interesting points. But the fact is I listened to this album almost more than any other, found it interesting and emotionally complex, and, most importantly, it was my entry point into the fascinating cult personality of Steven Patrick Morrissey. His irony, artifice, his witticisms, leading me to reread Oscar Wilde and start listening to Elvis and read about James Dean. Could it be that my unhealthy love of all things Smiths/Morrissey this year (Thanks, Paul) is clouding my opinion of this album? I couldn’t say, really. But I do know I loved it--the self-satisfied, even smug, critiques of politics and religion, the admittedly maudlin songs about abusive stepfathers, the sentimental-leaning attempts at exploring love and sex and the divine. My english degree scolds me for liking this stuff, but I can’t help being affected emotionally, something I can’t dismiss easily. His more acclaimed and similar album, You Are the Quarry, doesn’t interest me that much, which probably means that my love of this album is incidental to its release date and what it led me to read and think about otherwise. But the fact that it consumed me so gave it a prominent place on this list.
- Blake

23. Thursday - A City by the Light Divided
Confession #2: I’ve always liked Thursday, since their first album. Their music is mostly indefinable, not exactly emo, not straight up rock, not new age. I think the reviewer for Pitchfork put it aptly when he described their music as shit. Call me scatological. However, as much as one may enjoy the smell of his own shit he still lights a match to clear out the room—I haven’t shared my adoration of Thursday with most people. But I never thought they could release album like this one. They haven’t changed their sound, they’ve simply perfected it. Relentless drums, flawless guitar blending, pulsing bass and copious amounts of screaming. Their tale-tell melodic singing to bloodcurdling screaming dynamic is taken to new levels on this album as they sing about religion, car crashes and the death of family members. I can’t help myself, I know they’re over dramatic; I shouldn’t like lines like This is all we’ve ever known of God/Fine with me let me touch you now—but I do. If you’ve never listened to them I wouldn’t recommend this album. You wont’ like it and then you will hate me.
- Austin

22. Herbert - Scales
As Jordan mentioned, Herbert has been around for so long and put out so much, but it took last year’s Roisin Murphy album for me to even learn about him. That’s a shame; I like the old albums of his I have listened to since then. I discovered him just in time, though; I don’t know what I would have done without Scales this year. Last year, I thought that Jamie Lidell had perfected the subtle art of white-boy soul meets glitchy electronica; I had no idea. The songs on Scale are perfect soulful dance gems; the melodies are catchy, the lyrics are interesting, the production is perfect. There have been several analyses of the political implications of Herbert’s songs on Scale; what I love most about this is how much work and thought a political interpretation requires, how subtle it is. I don’t want to go into that now, but look it up if you’re interested; here’s a starting point. What really keeps me coming back, though, is how catchy this album is without being overbearing. I have a feeling I will be grooving to this album for years to come.
- Michael

21. Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye
I never listened to Junior Boys' first album, so I came to this thing with fresh ears after reading a 9.0 Pitchfork review (which I think was a bit unwarranted, and the reviewer seemed to be rating it on very personal reactions to the album and not very objectively). That said, this album is so well crafted and compelling, and lives up to so many repetivive, abusive listening sessions, that I'm ecstatic over it. From the playful poetry of the lyrics ("you're high-staked /you're right-faked / floor creeps / and deep sleeps / you catch up / you young pup / you old dog / you bullfrog") to melodies and harmonies that clearly fell out of heaven (the chorus bit in "In the Morning" where they switch and go up on "too young") to the spick-and-span sound of the production, not a note out of place--it all adds up to smart, danceable album, which is a rare combination I'd say.
- Blake

20. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
"Gonna walk around and drink some more."Rock lyrics are often criticized about only talking about girls, sex and having a good time. The thinking is that the human condition is much more complex, and that this narrow focus doesn't quite capture the many other shades of life. But the only time you're ever going to listen to the Hold Steady is when you want to go out, meet girls, and have a good time. Not that the characters ever get what they want. "Boys and girls in America, have such a sad time together." And they do. None of the hookups work out, none of the drugs arrive on time, and there's this lonely girl walking around trying to find some more beer. What are all these boys and girls looking for? Sure they're looking for each other, but I think they're just looking for a better soundtrack. "We had some massive nights/ every song was right." There is one dud on this whole disc, but it's a short punky, raveup that you can't dance to. Every other song is either a rock anthem with a catchy chorus, or a weepy ballad about sad girls and boys where you'd have to get close with someone. And that's the way it should be. Rock needs to bring these sad groups together, even if it's just for one night where everything won't go to plan. But that won't stop them from wandering around trying to find the next person, that next experience, or even that last glass of beer. I liked Seperation Sunday, but nothing prepared me for this sad and joyous record, where failing sounds like the best soundtrack to wasted nights you could ever imagine.
- Nick

19. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I am Dreaming
I’ve been thinking for a solid two weeks how to explain why this album is at the top. It always was, from the moment Nick sent out the email ordering us to compose top 25 lists. Number one: Sunset Rubdown, everything else involved much more debate. I don’t think I can adequately explain why, but I’ll try anyways.This album is a novel. I don’t know what famous author would write a companion novel to this music; perhaps Borges (though he never wrote a novel) or Angela Carter. The novel would take place in a windowless, basement bar in some lost coastal town. In this sepia-toned setting various carnival-esque figures would gather every night to drink themselves closer to Hell. Each page would draw the reader deeper and deeper into this mystical setting of desperation where the small whore of the bar would proclaim If I ever hurt you it will be in self-defense. The climax would come at the most desperate point in the album when some character, his life falling down around him, would shout out amidst the low whisperings of the bar Fuck me and someone else would say okay. But then something glorious would happen, hinted at by the song “Q-chord.” That brief glimpse of hope would disappear with the line oceans never listen to us anyway until the 5:11 mark of the last song. Then, in an instant, the reader, the listener and every other character would be in a place where lovers have wings and men have faithful hands and would make good boyfriends.
- Austin

18. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
I don’t know how well you, the reader, know me, but I am a pretty rabid Yoof fan. This might seem contrary to my heavy emphasis on pop melodies and production, and I think it is; I’m not sure what made me start to love the masters of distortion, but I do, and they are a definite contender for the coveted all-time top 5 list. Anyway, on some level, I think that everything avant-garde and noise-y that I like stems from its similarities to Sonic Youth. Which is why this album, the band’s best work in years (like since 1000 leaves at least, maybe even [gasp] Washing Machine), is so ironic; this song is not avant-garde or distorted at all. It is a great rock record, full of melodies, singing, normal guitar solos—rock stuff. Not to say that there is no distortion on this record, but it is used as an addition to the song structure, as opposed to vice versa. Like Jordan (or someone) said, the guitars are really restrained. And Christ, songs like “Jams Run Free” and “Incinerate” are so catchy, anthemic, and beautiful. I’m pretty sure that the last two Youth releases have also made my Top 10 lists, and, as said before, this one outshines them; let’s just hope everyone’s favorite aging hipsters can keep this streak going.
- Michael

17. Girl Talk - Night Ripper
I'll try not to debate the merit of the art too much, for Michael's excellent post yesterday stands on about as solid ground as there is. Enjoyment for its own sake shouldn't be discounted as a means of understanding pop music, and in the case of Girl Talk the essential question comes down to whether you'd derive any pleasure out of this album if you didn't recognize the samples. It's an interesting question, because the lasting nature of the disc depends upon people discovering it and relating back to the music that it cuts up and rearranges.But I do know the samples. I know when "Scentless Apprentice" looped under "Tiny Dancer" and "Juicy". For most of my life I assumed that rap acts had the beat and rock acts had the melody. Think about how hard rock acts tried to incorporate beats into their sound so they could be hip. But here alternative bands lay down the beat, while rappers lay claim to anything that is put before them. It's fascinating that it works at all, let alone consistently over this disc. There is nothing particularly shocking about this collection. In fact, the best complement that be paid to this album is how fluid and listenable it is. Sure the styles are twisted, the beats run over, but the stitching is impeccable (Listen to how "Galang" ties together two tracks). Anything that brings this much enjoyment needs to be praised, because collections this engaging don't just happen all the time.
- Nick

16. The Liars - Drum's Not Dead
This is the kind of album--mysterious, awe-inspiring, emotionally draining, ambitious, elastic, tangled, beautiful--that makes me wish language was as abstract and flexible, as possible to reach for the infinite, as music. The kind of album that reminds me, forcefully, that music is perhaps the greatest, most universal, most capable of art forms. Which makes writing something like this futile, doomed to sound overexcited and overwrought. Description of the music, I think, would highlight only those qualities in this album which are conscious (as opposed to subconscious), like the conceptual backbone of the whole thing, a dialogue (or battle) between creativity and doubt, confidence and second-guessing. That’s all interesting, but it’s the subconscious effects of the music that has made me listen to it so obsessively since the first afternoon I put it on, at which point I had to stop all I was doing and listen to every epiphany-filled turn (the incredible falsetto at the start of “A Visit From Drum”), every texture and the shape of the music (The incredible buzzing, robotic, angry sound at the start of “It’s All Blooming Now Mt. Heart Attack”), every emotion, until, assaulted and exhausted and drained, yet strangely content, the final track took all that abrasiveness and exhaustion and noise and chaos and let it unfold into the most beautiful denouement I think I’ve ever heard. In it’s context especially, but even without, it’s the most affecting, emotional song I’ve heard all year. The Liars live, back to Brooklyn from Berlin, was the best show I saw in 2006, full of the most unrelenting energy and ambition. How is it that amidst all the mayhem there is a powerful emotional core? I couldn’t say, and I don’t want to, because these kinds of paradoxes are the territory of music.
- Blake

15. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
When I picked up this album I didn’t really know anything about it. I’d just skimmed through the “recommended” section of a couple of sites when I was desperate for new music. I didn’t know he was a 19-year-old American when I started listening I just knew the music was fantastic. I’ve always been intrigued by near- and middle-eastern music (can you call this music that?) and this fit my tastes perfectly. I love the horns, the accordion and I love, love his voice. Over the summer I went to a free concert in a dried out pool in Brooklyn to watch these guys play. That was the first time I realized I’d just been listening to a kid. But his voice was impeccable, as were the arrangements. I watched his tiny frame belt out that all-too-mature voice and reveled in it.
- Austin

14. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
After watching the Scorcese documentary, like many people, I began the long path of making my way back through Dylan's albums. It just happens that way, and you have no choice but listen to him an no one else. In the midst of that, this strange sort of shock hit me: Dylan's alive. He's somewhere standing around, possible spouting off Dadaist poetry about commissioning his clips and getting his bird bathed and burned. I started listening to his Theme Time Radio show and reveling in the weirdness of the way he talks and just becoming a intrigued by his personality. Then this album came out and, after loving it from the first listen, I've come to think that it potentially ranks up there with what he was putting out in the 60s. I think the songs are working on a number of levels, and I think it's very complex and quietly a masterpiece. And perhaps I'm saying this because I'm trying to convince myself just as much that this album is that good, to shed the nostalgia and forgive Dylan for his possible tendency to be derivative and to realize that he's got every right to be predictable, because he invented the things people are blaming him for sounding like. People like Pitchfork are suspicious that an aging world of music critics heapspraise on Dylan because he's Dylan, but I really think this is one of the best releases this year, by far. He's doing whatever he wants to do, and for as long as he'll do it, people who are objective or gushing fans forsaking their critical impluse, will listen. I'll be joining them.
- Blake

13. Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers
I don't have any use for Beth Orton the techno singer songwriter, who apparently blazed the trails with Will Oldham and created such interesting records in the 90's. She was not part of my life, and when I returned to her past record after becoming infatuated with this one, I realized how hard she was trying. I'm sure they have their place, and some people love them, but it's hard to go back when your point of reference is this gorgeous, warm record that feels like old love letters. Those don't sound like powerful adjectives, but they have their place, and for some reason this year I needed this record a lot. Whether it was the sunshine of "Conceived" or the easy breeze of "Countenance". It's made all the more divine thanks to Jim O'Rourke homey production and understated playing. The pleasures are infinite, even if they never reach too deep. Quite like that rainbow on the front cover.
-Nick

12. Asobi Seksu - Citrus
I think there are a few of us who have this album hiding, ready to emerge in our top ten lists, and we all think it's kind of our secret. I, for one, find it difficult to resist any kind of shoegazing tendencies. And when it's fronted by a female vocalist, it's doubly hard. Then when she sings "put your tongue up to my battery," I give in. To this gorgeous, well-crafted, highly-original, sweeping-yet-intricate album. It makes me so happy to listen to it. I love the way lush, distorting guitars absorb me. I love that she sings in Japanese, it's so charming. Sometimes listening to this entire album is like slipping into this foreign dream, where I've been shrunk and I'm being led by the hand through a forest of bonsai trees, with a big paper bag over my head. Other times, I'm in Brooklyn (where the band is from) at a house party in the summer, and everyone is smiling, and there are these big, swirling guitars like funnels of colorful light all over the place, and I'm hanging upside down by my knees from a rafter in the ceiling. Oh man is it beautiful.
-Blake

11. Tapes n' Tapes - The Loon
I’d admit, if pressed, that this is a flawed album. Maybe it’s because it came at a time in the year when, aglow with all the great releases of 2005, I was beginning to be sorely disappointed that something hadn’t come out which I was genuinely obsessed with, that hit more than one spot in my proverbial musical appetite. I’d kinda liked the Mylo album, The Knife was leaving me interested but confused, The Strokes album was depressing, and I was briefly enamored with Man Man until they started they began to annoy me. Where to turn? How about an album that collected a bunch of influences--Pavement, Pixies, Talking Heads--and wrapped them up in one amazing release of quick songs, interesting guitar playing, a dynamic vocalist, and raw energy? Weirdo lyrics that make sense to me--I always fall for that. Depressing content and with sprawling, possibly incoherent musicianship to counterweight: an effective combination. I knew I liked this album from the start, but it was also an album that grew on me more than any other--the incoherency began to gel into an emotionally complex picture, the loose-cannon musicianship became purposeful and controlled, the humor suddenly less ironic and more genuinely laughable.
- Blake

10. The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
I feel like I should be deeply ashamed about this, and I’m sort of cowering now as I think of placing this at number 1. But please let me explain.Austin's right. I do know all the names to the Pipettes (Becki, Rose, and Gwenno-they kicked Julia out about a year ago). I know the name of their backup band (the Cassettes), and where they are from (Brighton). There is, actually, not much I don't know about the Pipettes compared to most heterosexuals. I can't really explain why I've placed a pastiche girl band from England on the top of the list except that they make me really, unbelievably, uncontrollably happy every single day. There is not a single album that came remotely close to the giddy rush that this album gave me this year. I love the way they dress, the way they dance, and how bratty they are on television interviews, but mostly I'm just in love with the songs."Your Kisses are Wasted on Me" and "Pull Shapes" are the two most infectious singles released this year, and they are both on the same disc. "Your Kisses" mixes bratty Got Team energy with some heavenly chorus snatched out of some Diana Ross song. "Pull Shapes" was ripped straight from ABBA by way of "Hey Ya" except they break it down three times. And while the intoxicating heights of those two singles are never really topped, it's ridiculous to hide what would otherwise be a outrageous collection of perfect nostalgia, whether that's the cool sexiness of "Judy", "Dirty Mind", or "Tell Me What You Want."There were better crafted albums this year, ones with deeper themes, and better production and you'll never excuse any of these singers for Beyonce. With a clear head, I'd probably pick the Hold Steady or even Mylo, and who knows, when I post this and realize what I've done, I might knock it down. But when I think of the album that I cared about the most, listened to the most, and wanted to tell the most people about, there really was no contest.
- Nick

9. Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block
So I had the luck of hearing the new Peter, Bjorn and John album early. And I mean early; my friend brought back a ’45 from the record label he worked at back before the album was released in Europe, which was way before it was released in the US. It was “Young Folks,” and we had just seen the Concretes that week; we ate the single up. Pitchfork didn’t like it so much, though, giving it a 3 or something on their singles review. I got to see the group in Berlin a few weeks later, on a mis-scheduled tour; they didn’t have any releases in Germany at the time, and had to play to a crowd of almost no one in a restaurant that charged 1 euro cover. It was great for me, who got to see an engaging if short live performance sitting right in front of what most probably thought was a local band; the show was really enjoyable. The album was also stellar, and quickly became my late spring sound of choice; I loved the catchy pop melodies and elegant production; songs like “Paris 2004” and “Amsterdam” haunted me for days on end. Pitchfork did not like the album very much, though, giving it a 6.something, I think (this is going somewhere, I promise). Ok, flash forward to this fall, with the trio taking the blagosphere by storm; everyone loved “Young Folks,” everyone loved “Amsterdam,” etc. Which they should. How does pitchfork respond? They add “Young Folks” to their infinite mixtape, and re-review Writer’s Block, this time giving it recommended or best new music or something. Those fucking two-faced revisionists! I was outraged, I am outraged, and no one knows/cares. Of course, I shouldn’t care about that website any more, but they didn’t do justice to one of the best albums of the year, and then they try to act like they did once it becomes popular.
- Michael

8. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
This is the third album in my top 10 with an audacious first track close to 10 minutes long, which suggests a combination of arrogance and theatricality, and, when appropriate, genius. Austin and I had a couple email exchanges in which we discussed, with some degree of dismay and frustration, that the Destroyer album was once again coming ‘round the bend to completely ruin us and any chance for listening to anything else. All that had to happen was that first track, a little seduction which happened to stretch for enough time to leave you unable to do much but fold and submit to the textured, abrasive, idiosyncratic, familiar, distorted, weird literary world of Dan Bejar. The music is so strange and willfully queer that it’s remarkably interesting to more than a few people, both immediate and purposefully wearing its strangeness as a kind of distance from the listener. But it’s such a devoted, complete vision, a kind of shrine to one man’s outlandish bizarreness, that it’s endlessly engaging and satisfied repeated excavations into its interior. His voice is the perfect metaphor for this: nontraditional and making no effort to sound normal, but once you hear it enough times, as expressive as anything you’ve heard, malleable and creative and doing things many other voices wouldn’t dream of doing. Getting somewhere artistically means, at least at first, the method will seem too out-there, but this is merely the time where we’re readjusting to another way of seeing the world and we’ll be rewarded once we get there. At least in this case, we get nine minutes thirty-two seconds to come around.
- Blake

7. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
For me this is a cop-out position for the new Clipse album; 3 months from now, this album will either have risen to my top 5 or dropped out of my top 10, I’m sure. It’s just too unrelenting not too; the verses are demanding, the beats are violent, the production is in-your-face. Pusha T and Malice are much less lovable than they were on the first Clipse album. And this is why I love Hell Hath No Fury; it is unforgiving and dark while progressive and forward-thinking. Back in the day, I used to be all about “intelligent” rap music, you know the kind, Roots/Tribe/Talib, rapping about more abstract (no pun intended) subjects like politics and philosophy, groups that didn’t promote violence or drugs, instead opting for more “positive” lyrics. These days I think: fuck that. Intelligent rap music, intentionally or not, is the cultural appropriation of hip-hop culture by white people, who don’t want to deal with the unseemly aspects of the class struggle that permeate hip-hop culture. Well, as far as I can tell, it’s there, and it seems much more real to spit verses about slinging crack than to observing the problems from the outside like tamer hip-hop acts do. It’s the difference between talking about the culture and showing the culture by being a part of it. And of course I hate the term “intelligent rap;” it’s not only culturally classist, but also just wrong; Pusha T and Malice make some of the most clever and fresh wordplay that I have heard in rap music since, well, maybe forever.
- Michael

6. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love
I like Pieces of the People We Love more than Echoes.
- Michael
People don't dance no more? Last time out they were banging their gear as loud as they could to create the furious sound of a sweaty club. They've cleaned up their act somewhat, but instead of ditching their dancing shoes and loosing that akward falsetto, they've decided to push the beats further. Tics and blips come from every angle of the speaker, pushing each song in unexpected ways. The guitars don't pierce in the same way, instead adding a new counterpoint, which the bass finally falls behind. They may never surpass the manic energy of their debut, but they have just made one that I feel is better in almost every way.
- Nick

5. Yo La Tengo - I'm Not Afriad of You and Will Beat Your Ass
OK, so at this point just about everyone has had something to say about this album, and everyone has said something different. In fact, everything on this top 5 is somewhere else on someone’s list, but that’s beside the point. My experience with Yo La Tengo, at least is long but intermittent, following my entire experience with indie rock music in general. Back when I first got into bands like Pavement and early REM, during freshman year of high school, I totally got into Yo La’s I can hear the heart beating as one; a few months later, typical for high-school me, I pretty much started ignoring the album as well as the band and the genre of college rock in general, moving on to third-wave emo or something. A year and a half later, while I was digging Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, I absolutely adored And then nothing turned itself inside out, only to discard it in favor of neo-psych like the flaming lips and sparklehorse. When I go back through the band’s catalogue, then, I feel really nostalgic and sentimental; the sound reminds me, at the same time, of multiple and influential parts of my life that the band led me through. The new album, I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass, is the perfect album for this different-at-once sound, sampling all the best moments of the band’s career, including the old albums that I haven’t yet fully appreciated. It has long distortion-y epics like “Pass me the Hatchet” and “The Story of Yo La Tengo,” it has rocky pop gems like “Beanbag Chair,” it has lilting pop gems like “I Feel Like Going Home” and “Black Flowers.” Everything I want, and still unified-sounding, a complete album and vision (I disagree with you here, Austin). I wrote a review for The Depauw that said that this was one of the best albums Yo La Tengo has released; I stand by that. In a year that left me feeling absolutely disenfranchised with contemporary rock, a few veteran groups (Sonic Youth, Sparklehorse, Jarvis Cocker) reminded me that indie rock can still speak to me and be relevant, if not in its most current form (fuck you Decemberists!). Yo La Tengo did the best job of that for me.
- Michael

4. Hot Chip - The Warning
I think this is the only album on everyone’s list; am I right? I win, though, since I have it highest. Actually, from what I have read, I get the feeling that if all of you had had more time with this (and if Jordan would stop liking his brooding shit), it might be in everyone’s top 5 for the year. I have had the luck of getting this album right when it came out, back in Berlin; as you know from last year’s list, I was already in love with the group. I didn’t really take them seriously, though; it was hard to with all of the white-boy goofiness of Coming on Strong. I had no idea, therefore, of just how mature The Warning was going to be. Not that it isn’t goofy and fun; it certainly is that. As opposed to the last album, though, the new one has all kinds of songs, slow ones with sad ones, serious ones with goofy ones sometimes with elements of both in the same song (see the title track). Like the old effort, though, the band’s lyrics are clever and poignant. I never thought that an album could be at once dancey and profound; this album certainly does that.
-Michael

3. Mylo - Destroy Rock n Roll
Listen. Repeat. Listen. Repeat. That’s what this album was like when I first picked it up. I can seriously say I was addicted, in a bad/good/glorious way. If I went a couple days without listening to it my ears started to itch, I started sweating and an overall sense of depression swept over me. Eventually I weened myself off, but I still go back constantly like the smoker who’s convinced himself he’s quit and so allows himself the occasional cigarette. Slowly pulling the smoke into his lungs and exhaling it through his nose, watching tender curls play in the light, he decides it would be okay if he has one more. Listen. Repeat.
- Austin

1. tie Belle and Sebastian and Cat Power

Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
“Hey, is that the new Belle & Sebastian?” Yes, we used this joke a couple of times the moment Nick or I downloaded this album, and our third roommate Max, was home (not all that common). We all three listened to it together in our tiny Manhattan apartment and couldn’t help cracking a smile during almost every song--this was not at all the “sad bastard music” of High Fidelity fame. This was ebullient, happy, complex, catchy, literary, clever, emotional, imaginative collection of near-perfect pop songs. Why am I a sucker for this combination? For pop songs that tightrope-walk the wire-thin line between utter happiness and complete despair? That something so strange and personal, an emotional life so depressing in a literal sense, can be transformed into universal pop-inflected pleasure? Because I think it’s a matter of genius. Sometimes this attempt is cloying, sometimes depressing, sometimes fake-sounding and simplistic. Rarely can an album balance heavy lyric content without being weighed down, crafting pop lifeboats around it and improving the quality of life for people who listen everywhere. Twin Cinema, an album I began loving intensely shortly after we had all published our 2005 lists, did it last year. Murdoch and co. did it this year. I don’t have a good response to Austin’s complaints, but all I know is I think this album is totally wonderful and, save for a few songs from their very early career (check out “The State I Am In” and the rest of Push Barman to Open Old Wounds), is full of their best moments yet. -
Blake

Cat Power - The Greatest
How could I resist this album’s title? Seriously, though, I have considered this album my favorite of the year since April or so, and nothing has been able to topple it since then. For a couple weeks I though the Rapture might, but it didn’t have the lasting power that this album does. I don’t really have that much to say about it; everyone already knows it, everyone already likes it. Maybe I should start with why I love it, then. As you can see if you look through the archives, back in January or whenever, I reviewed this and gave it a measly 8.1. The haunting melodies, though, don’t just give up after a few weeks of listens; they bring you back, make you think about the songs in different ways. The best part of the album, though, is how Chan Marshall ends all the songs. Why does “Living proof” end there, couldn’t it keep going? I want to hear more of “Could We”! This album is a clinic in how to keep your melodies but cutting them off; too many indie artists like to play song structures out until they die. Of course, the fact that I’m talking about catchy melodies and not introspective lyrics is certainly offensive to lots of Cat Power fans; that’s why they love Moon Pix while I love this album. Not that The Greatest is shallow or empty; on the contrary, I think the lyrics are just as poignant as any other Cat Power album, which is saying a lot. The moods of the songs are more varied than those in other Cat Power albums, though, which is another reason I love this album. It takes you through highs and lows; this is probably what Jordan meant when he talked about the lack of sad songs on The Greatest. For me, though, The Greatest can be the saddest of all her whole catalogue, because of this very diversity; the highs of “Could We” and “Islands” make the drops of “Hate” and “Empty Shell” all the more dramatic. Anyway, I haven’t said anything about the warm Memphis sound, but you know all about that already. It’s my favorite album; there, I said it.
- Michael