^2006, music(-ality) – picks, licks, etc.

[Above: Au Revoir Simone @ other music in New York city (from udrivel.blogspot.com) - that picture is from a show I attended with 2 friends, and says to me: let 2007 be a show full of good times and wonderful surprises!]

Seasons Greetings, dear reader/friend/friend-reader/reader-friend. Yes, it is hard to believe but this year coming to and end. It’s been a good year for me and I hope it has for you. Hope next year goes better, yet – and hope that it’s a wonderful holiday season for all.

Pleasantries set aside, let’s get to what I really came here to do. Everyone here, in the music-blog world/industry, likes to throw off lists of their favorite albums from the year or rank the releases of the year and what not. I don’t think I can really come up with a year end list about ‘music’ in general. However, from what I’ve listened to (which is a pretty narrow stream, actually) I’d like to share a sort-of nod to best things I heard from this year’s releases.

Here goes…

My picks from 2006 releases(not ranked in any way): (band – album title, picture and summary below title)

The Hold Steady - Boys & Girls In America

The Hold Steady manage to write a glorious CD about the lives of teenagers et al partying it up in America and what goes wrong and what is so much fun. Sort of Blur’s ‘Boys and Girls’ from Parklife in a full-length form, which lends itself well to wonderful flourishes in the music. Beware of his voice, yet. I won’t write much because I haven’t spent much time with the album, recently, just I’ll say – it is zehr gut, and that it deserves a place in your record collection and as one of the finest discs to be released this year.

Tapes ‘n Tapes – The Loon

A solid indie-rock album. It is a gem of a debut. A lot of people hold it up and say that you can hear where it derives from – I won’t deny that a bit. That’s partially the beauty of this release. They love to mold their influences into a unique sound and come up with what are patenly Tapes ’n Tapes songs. The band puts out soft sounds and really harsh ones and melds them well enough to make a coherent and varied debut. Like the album that follows in this list (Band of Horses – Everything all the Time) I think this album is more about where this band can go from here than where it is at the time this CD was recorded and released.

Band of Horses - Everything All The Time

Seattle/Portland. The great northwest. Yes? I love it. Partially because it’s gorgeous and partially because it produces so much great music – I swear there is something in the water. Well, this band is inventive and interesting enough without becoming hard to understand. It is a full debut, with a really mellow sound at heart and full of wonderful moments of weight and heaviness in the sound and words, throughout. The songs are pretty linear and simple in structure, but this sound is full and really can go anywhere these guys want it to (as is shown well among songs throughout the CD). This CD, as I’ve said, really leaves these guys with a strong start for the band - I’m expecting a lot for their follow-up disc. 
On an aside almost, note that if you are a Coldplay fan who really hates what happenned to them, there are songs on this disc that could have been the future of Chris Martin’s band – though the band at hand is a lot bolder and fuller in sound than Coldplay ever really managed but pointed towards. If it was about the music and not the fame and the pop glory (and Chris Martin, alone), this CD could be the sound that ‘X&Y’ managed to kill forever and leave us without hope for.

The Blow – Paper Television

Electronica is not my thing. This isn’t electronica. Or is it? It involves laptops and samples and such. But it is really indie-pop. And, wait, even as Electronica isn’t my thing I should note that it doesn’t hurt once in a while, and what is there that’s good in Electronica (and seems accessible, enough), as with any genre, is really wonderful stuff. The Blow’s CD is driven on the voice of the singer, Khaela Maricich, and it goes all over the place in the supporting sounds/music. The CD is playful. Joyous. Interesting. Obviously well-loved in the production by its creators. It reminds me of ‘In Case We Die’ by Architecture In Helsinki (who rock and you should check out, as well) in that really this stands as the musical achievement of a whole career – as the title of the AiH cd said, that CD would suffice for (most, not me!) if they were no longer around (which would be sad and unfortunate as my life would become meaningless without AiH and Australia would cease to have a purpose). Maybe because other artists stop and don’t let themselves follow every thought that comes into their head through and see what happens (if you’re looking for more of that see: Sufjan Stevens) they never really hit that place that Sufjan, AiH, and the Blow hit. Definitely go and buy this. It is a beautiful CD with sounds to satisfy those of all sorts of musical affections. 

Camera Obscura – Lets Get Out of this Country

I would hate Scotland were it not for the music that comes out of there, I’ve had to suffer the unfortunate experience of living there for a while. Music does well there, though – somehow, especially in Glasgow, that wretched place. Teenage Fanclub, anyone? Sadly the fanclub hasn’t given us anything new in a bit but we do have others. Belle & Sebastien and such. This record comes from a band that was in the past seen as a sort of tag-along to the style of B&S. But they aren’t riding on the coat-tails of B&S as some would’ve liked to imagine. I never saw them as that. Because I always really loved them. And this full-length effort really sees the band coming its own as they say. If you have the chance to throw a dance party with a sort of retro theme (hell, even if it isn’t a retro theme), please, please, use this as a soundtrack. The sound is full of slightly out-of-tune instruments (in a good way) and the voices, especially Tracy Campbell’s lead, are enchanting. It is a beautiful disc full of enchanting songs. One is put into a more peaceful place. More than once, I’ve walked out of my dorm room with my headphones on shaking my shoulders sort-of while listening to ‘I Need All the Friends I Can Get’ and stopping myself and then finding myself stepping along in tune with ’Razzle Dazzle Rose’ a few minutes later while walking on Washington place or farther down Fifth ave. It’s a great CD – I wish I’d written a full review, but only so much time can I avail for this hobby – please, please go get it and listen. Listen to yourself fall in love with Tracy Campbell (and crew) by their song that is so effortless and beautiful.

Destroyer - Destroyer’s Rubies

So Dan Bejar is in the New Pornographers and he rocks. His past albums have been strange and interesting little rides through his thoughts. And in that sense this album is no differrent. The mixing is clearer and more transparent here. The songs are less focused on driving the listener to an off-center thought, they are actually rather focused on making strong, consistent points. This is a nice listen. The first song sort of dwarfs the rest. Yet, a wholly satisfying album that I love to hear come on my shuffle selection on my iPod or on iTunes. Get it, try and understand it. It is amazing and makes me sad that I haven’t been able to get my hands on the debut disc by Swan Lake, of which Bejar comprises a third.

Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton – Knives Don’t Have Your Back

The perfect woman? I’d say. I’ll leave that debate/discussion to another time. But Emily Haines(of Metric, Broken Social Scene, the great nation of Canada) really does things right every time. Just her voice makes me forget to listen to what she’s saying a lot of times. The songs are soothing and melodic – they are original enough to breath life into the singer-songwriter set she’s playing. The songs are looking up at Elliott Smith, in my mind, and you can hear his voice in a lot of the introversion that the lyricism takes on here and the way she styles her voice on a good part of the disc. If you’ve heard ‘Cut In Half and Also Double’ then you might be expecting something slightly differrent but this is a more pronounced set of songs; the sound is mellower and more mature. She shows less bravado in a sense and more in another, it seems she gets a lot of her noisier energy out with the band it seems. Mixed to a crisp, full sound when appropriate and a very empty, minimal sound when necessary, Haines’ abilities as a wordsmith and as a vocalist are shining through here. Seeing some of these songs, like ‘Reading in Bed,’ live in amongst a small-crowd might be the best thing to ever happen to a fan of live music, I think. She makes her voice seem effortless here even more so than any Metric songs show. Go get it. The packaging is awesome, too.

Smoosh – Free to Stay

Two, tall blonde girls (sisters in their early teens) from the great city of Seattle, Washington. On Barsuk Records now (the former label of Death Cab for Cutie, and the current label of Nada Surf and Travis Morrisson (who was the lead-singer to, now defunct, the Dismemberment Plan, among others). A not wholly differrent direction than their first outing, which was two years ago on Pattern 25 records, but the sound is more open. The recording has been done in a fashion as to place as little attention to the fact that the girls are in fact younger than most people are when they start imagining to play instruments and start pop bands. The writing is surprisingly mature if you want to pull it apart and set it as something to be judged in and of itself but this isn’t literate avant-garde pop by lanky 20-somethings. This is pretty music. And it has depth in some songs. Most of it is about a sense of playfulness that would be nice to have back in indie music; really we do get too bloody literate and world-weary sometimes, guys. 

Arizona - Welcome Back Dear Children
(i couldn’t find a suitable pic, sorry) 
A good part of why this CD is here on my list is because I’ve seen these guys live in a really small and intimate show in the great borough of Brooklyn. Mostly, though, it is simply because my faith in my indie-music adventure (as I like to think of my quest to seek out as much good music as possible) has been restored and well sort-of made up of such finds. These guys have a pretty varied pallette. I reviewed the CD in a long, winding review that you can see somewhere on this never-ending page of text. But really all I want to say about this CD is that 1) you should buy it and 2) it really shows how wonderful the rock-band set-up is and how familiar songs can be interesting and uniquely beautiful (see: Some Kind of Chill).

Sufjan Stevens - the Avalanche

‘Illinois’ by Sufjan Stevens was an astounding piece of American music. It showed the human imagination at its best. Stevens is not a 20-something with an electric guitar and an apt for guitar solos and without one for the art of song, nor is he so overly focused on being literate that some of the beauty of his work passes without grasp. Though, all great work comes in time. People say that inspiration comes as you’re doing work not before it, ‘The Avalanche’ is the process of building up ‘Illinois.’ Sufjan has 3 different versions of ‘Chicago,’ a central track on ‘Illinois’, as part of this collection of b-sides of sorts. This album is in many ways as spectacular as ‘Illinois’ though it not much of it reaches past the glory of that disc- obviously, since these are the tracks he chose not to put into the final cut. You can almost hear some of the tracks from ‘Illinois’ in the songs here (obvious with ‘Chicago’ and it’s differrent mixes). This is a whole new voice to take in, though. The thematic sensibility in the songs that were the a-sides is not lost on their unchosen counterparts but the collection here isn’t as wide in its range of soundscapes as ‘Illinois’ became with the final cut. One can see the genius at work – and it makes him human, now, to see that he fumbles and retraces his steps to find something more suiting. Though, Stevens really is a great composer and arranger of songs and I can only say that with seeing this collection of b-sides I can’t wait to see what great bounty of song the next state he decides to put into verse and melody will bring for us mere mortals.
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Looking forward to in 2007:

1) Chris Walla’s Solo Album
2) A new Wilco full-length
3) A new the Postal Service full-length
4) A new Death Cab for Cutie full-length (maybe end 2007, maybe early 2008)
5) A CD-R release from Mark & Collette and a CD from the Mark Rodger’s yet to be named band
6) A Noel Gallagher solo album (yes, rumors are there and everyone says they aren’t true, but blah I can hope)
7) Explosions in the Sky release of their new full-length on my birthday
8 ) Something or the other from Nada Surf
9) Response to Bloc Party’s Weekend in the City that I already reviewed
10) John Mayer possibly producing interesting, original music because Neon and a few other songs convince me that there is a possibily – even with Continuum really being a piece of crap with a Jimi Hendrix cover and all – or giving up and taking up investment banking or something equally money-minded and atrocious as his current musical output
11) If it is at all possible that the New Pornographer’s (said to be) Summer 2007 release can possibly be better than Twin Cinema (which was awesome, btw)
12) the follow-up LP to ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ by Wolf Parade
13) Another solid, uninteresting but fun to listen to album by Kings of Leon
14)  A new full-length of spectacular songs from Feist
15) last, but definitely not least (actually might even be the thing I’m looking forward to the most musically) A new full-length CD from the fabulous aussie musical group Architecture In Helsinki!

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note to Mr. Walla (genius, producer, guitarist, vocalist, and all-powerful-indie-rock-god, amongst other things): Mr. Walla, you say that his album will be called ‘It’s Unsustainable.’ Or people say that you say that, sir. But, sir, please - it must be sustainable. Or atleast we can sustain your genius, sir! Please, sir!
I shudder to think it might be all social-commentary, thought that can’t really be a bad thing with you, sir. I do crave more songs about Nada Surf as superheroes (see: the Rhone Occupation which is available on Mr. Walla’s site, here, under the ’songs’ tab) and drummers from bands you love, sir.
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With my insanity set aside. I hope that you’re having a great holiday season and break. Do rest. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a very, very happy new year. Enjoy, yea.

- Tanmay