By now you’re probably so inundated with top ten lists that any more would just be white noise. So I’ll skip a full-on list—to be honest, I just didn’t hear enough worthy albums to make a top five, let alone a top ten. Yet it wouldn’t be December without some sort of year in review, so here begins the first of a short series of year-end posts before I take off for the holidays.
If you’ve been a regular reader of pgwp, you know that I spent most of 2006 looking forward to new releases and subsequently being let down by nearly all of them. New albums from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Futureheads, Built to Spill, the Album Leaf, and the Pernice Brothers were all okay, but nothing special. I don’t think I spent more than a week with any of them. Lack of funds kept me from picking up the Flaming Lips, Walkmen, Sean Lennon, and a host of others I was eager to hear—but from all I’ve read and what few songs I’ve heard, none of those artists turned out career-toppers, either. For the most part it’s been a pretty ambivalent year for music, I’d say.
The highest profile disappointments of the year, for me, were Gnarls Barkley and TV on the Radio. I was floored by a couple Gnarls tracks I heard on the web right when the album released, so I jumped over to the record store right away and picked it up. But somewhere between the oversaturation of “Crazy,” the unforgivably irrelevant cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone,” and the increasingly grating second half of their album, St. Elsewhere quickly found itself ejected from my stereo and deleted from my hard drive. And TV on the Radio? I’m still trying to figure out what people are seeing in this album. There are some good songs here and there, but more often than not the album is a directionless muddle. I’m pleased to see it isn’t topping everyone’s end-of-year lists, though I’m still perplexed to see it showing up on lists at all.
Meanwhile, the band that deserved all the hype given to TVotR but was instead met with mildly negative reviews at every turn was the Secret Machines, whose album Ten Silver Drops would be number one if I were doing a ranked list. Again, I don’t know why I seem to be on a completely different page than everyone else. Even my brilliant wife thinks I’m crazy for liking this album so much. A few months ago I took a friend, unversed in the Secret Machines, to see them live, and he too came away only mildly impressed. So perhaps my tastes are maladjusted this year. At any rate, I stand firm that Ten Silver Drops is the record of the year…
…followed by Belle & Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit. This is the album that cemented my previously give-or-take relationship with the group. As I said in my review of the record, between this and Dear Catastrophe Waitress, B&S have proven that they are capable of evolving as a band and staying relevant, whereas everything previous to DCW sounded more like an attempt at doing If You’re Feeling Sinister over again, with varying degrees of failure.
And here you can see why a top ten list would become silly. Aside from these two albums, I didn’t hear anything else released this year that really deserved the kudos. Destroyer and Neko Case both put out pretty good albums, but if they were nos. three and four on my list, it would be misleading. If their albums came out in 2005, they’d be somewhere in the lower half of my top twenty. Meanwhile, I’ve only just picked up albums by Midlake and the Little Ones, both of which seem pretty wonderful based on a day’s worth of listening. But it’s unfair to call them the best of the year when I’ve had less than 48 hours to digest these compared to ten months for Destroyer. Otherwise, I still have records by Peter Bjorn & John, Grizzly Bear, and maybe a couple others to purchase, which won’t happen until sometime in the new year. So, my best-of list is all fucked up and askew.
At any rate, this sums up my own perspective on the indie rock of ’06. Coming up later this week, a post on musical blindspots filled in this year; my year in reading, and maybe a couple other things too, time permitting.
What were your highlights of the year? Email me or leave a comment below. I’m still convinced I’m missing something huge. I need your help!
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