I can't remember this far back.

I have a shit ton of 2006 releases that I really like. Based on this volume, this might be my year of the decade.



Some New Pornesque complete with a Neko-type singer.



Swedish girls do early 80s new wave. Greatest album cover of the year.



Probably a little too long, but still one of their better efforts. The Yoko Casionos opened for them on this tour.



I remember a lot of people being disappointed in this one in 2006. Still one of my favourites.



I still play this album quite a bit. Kind of surprising actually. I remember this band getting lumped in with the Interpol gaggle when their first album was released.



This jockeys for my favourite Lucero album with That Much Further West if only for the supremely awesome promise 'I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight' which still freaks me out everytime I heard it.



'God's Gonna Cut You Down'. You can hear the death rattle here, which probably deepens the impact.



This is easily Izzy's heaviest album to date. He's never cut anything this close to hard rock again.



"There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right." These might be my favourite opening lines to any album, period. Probably my favourite album of the entire decade.



Pretty fucking good for a double record. I have a soft spot for this album as I saw him in a small club in Saskatoon when he was touring behind it. His drummer asked me to tape the show for him. I'd also include Christmass, Snake Oil and One More for the Road on this list too.



Live at CBGB, her voice has lost nothing.



My favourite of his, not really a dud on this record. You can't not like stuff like 'Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty)'.



Would have been interesting to see what these guys would have given us.



Not my favourite of theirs, but fuck, 'Gravity's Gone' and 'World of Hurt' still get me.



There are many times when I haven't played this for awhile and go to delete it off the ipod. Then I decide to play it again to verify and it's never left. I like the Babyshambles a bit more (Blinding from 2006 is pretty decent) but this album is great.



'The View from the Afternoon' jockey's with 'Wolf Like Me' and 'Stuck Between Stations' for best album openers of the decade. Great record.



It took me awhile to warm up to this but it's up there with my favourites of the year.



Probably one of their more accessible latter day albums, one that would probably surprise fans who left the band after Day for Night.



I rate this fairly high in their discography.



This is another one that I often consider nuking off the ipod for lack of play and then I play it and on it stays. 'Blue Veins' is awesome.



This is still a little too goddamn long so I've created my own version. Mine is superior.



Still great after all these years.

I thought it was an exceptional year in music.

Sparklehorse - dreamt of light years in the belly of the mountain
Deadstring Brothers - starving winter report
Minus 5 - gun album
Neko Case - fox confessor brings the flood
Loose Fur - born again in the usa
Scott Biram - graveyard shift
Tim Easton - ammunition
Calexico - garden ruin
Robert Pollard - from a compound eye
Benoit Pioulard - precis

+ 1
DBT
Hold Steady

Shit, I missed this one for my list. This got massive play in '06.

I'll start with the ones that I don't think I had discovered yet or at least probably didn't like enough yet to pimp back then but which I really like now:



Willie Nile - Streets of New York

This would have been high on my year end list if I'd heard it in time. I somehow never heard Willie in his prime, and only bought this because I recognized his name and found it deep discounted at Tower Records' going out of business sale. What a great record though. Maybe this IS Willie in his prime.



Anjani - Blue Alert

Not sure if I ever pimped this album here or not but I doubt I was listening to it back in 2006. Anjani was or is (not sure if she still is) Leonard Cohen's girlfriend. She was going through his desk one day and found a bunch of songs he'd written that he'd never recorded. She asked him for permission to record them and he was reluctant to let her until he heard the arrangements she had in mind. It's very stripped down, simple piano and voice. She's got great pipes and the lyrics are Cohen's so they are great too. This probably would have been my favorite of the year if I'd heard it in time. It is one of my favorites of the decade.



Nikki Sudden - The Truth Doesn't Matter

I've never been a huge Swell Maps fan and I don't have much of his solo work. This was an emusic download on a whim when I needed to use my monthly credits sometime in 2007. It's really great though - very stonesy. As it turns out, it was unfortunately his last album.



Roddy Frame - Western Skies

This was either a fall release in 2006 or it was import only and I just didn't get around to buying it right away. I know I heard it late in 2006 and it's possible it made my year end list but almost assuredly not as high as it should have. It's the best thing he's done since Aztec Camera's Love album.

One of my favorites of his and, not coincidentally, one of his oddest. I just had this with me at work today and still love the shit out of it!


One of my favorite Yo La Tengo records.
I love the diversity of it:

If it's possible to "wear out" a digital file on an ipod, I wore the fuck out of that Willie Nile.

I haven't heard 'Asking Annie Out' in forever. Remedying.

The Format - Dog Problems
This one has more hooks than... insert clever fishing or Charlie Sheen reference here.
From beginning to end, this is one brilliant pop song after another. Never lets up.
Witness:




And that's just for starters.
There's another 9 or so songs that are just as good.

Oh yeah, I forgot that this was the year that Tower Records went under. I bought a ton of stuff around the end of the year. As far as new releases were concerned, a lot of it wasn't so great, but this one was a pleasant surprise:


Herbert - Scale
I had bought Herbert's Bodily Functions a few years prior to this and didn't like it all, so it wasn't until it was marked down to like 80% off and one of the last things left in the store that I finally picked it up, probably more for the packaging than anything else. I liked it on first listen, and that was surprising not just because I never liked Herbert but because it's almost a disco record. It's just so catchy and so rich, so layered and nuanced. It's obviously not just a bunch of looped samples but a bunch of meticulously composed and arranged pieces linked and layered together. On the surface, there are a whole lot of things about this record that I normally don't like at all, but it's all just moves so well that it's hard not to get caught up in it.

The song in this video seems a little Jamiroquai-ish out of context (and the poor sound quality doesn't help), but it sort of gives you an idea.

Anyone remember The Brother Kite?

Aussie cowpunks from the 80's, teamed up some twenty years later with Spencer P. Jones (of Johnnys, Beasts of Bourbon, Hell To Pay, Paul Kelly, solo fame).



America's dirtiest one-man band.



I don't think there's anyone else on the planet who can do justice to Procol Harum like JL.

I've been on him from the beginning. That's the peak. And one hell of a peak.

I do. And I like that album.

Some others not yet mentioned that I still listen to:

Belle & Sebastian---The Life Pursuit
Destroyer---Destroyer's Rubies
M. Ward---Post War
Midlake---Trials of Von Occupanther
Liars---Drums Not Dead
The Knife---Silent Shout
Band of Horses---Everything All The Time
Stone Jack Jones---Bluefolk
Asobi Seksu---Citrus
Camera Obscura---Let's Get Out Of This Country

Weird. I swear I did a top 20 for this year but can't find it. Maybe I didn't.

Great year.

I can't catalogue these albums by years like you smarties all do, nor keep them straight in my head. More like "old" before I cared about music and contemporary from starting to care. And I 've heard Nile's "Innocent Ones" but "Streets" is my favorite go to never dies kicks ass favorite, classic ranking. If I am missing something of his let me know. Am I wrong to think there is a DeVille nuance to his sound or is he a NY/contemporary ilk of Nile's?

yeah i listen to Hell Hath No Fury like every week. its probably my most listened to album, period.

when i made a top 10 list for all 00 years at the end of 2009, this is what i put for 2006:

1. clipse - hell hath no fury
2. the radio dept. - pet grief
3. brand new - the devil and god are raging inside me
4. junior boys - so this is goodbye
5. nicolas makelberge - dying in africa
6. band of horses - everything all the time
7. the format - dog problems
8. j dilla - donuts
9. spank rock - yoyoyoyoyo
10. asobi seksu - citrus

i don't know if i would make that a top 10 still, but i feel like i listen to these 10 albums more than 10 albums from any other 00's year, easily. a lot of it is due to 2006 being the year i transferred to college in northern california and spent a lot of time on the road, doing local road trips and back and forth between there and portland, so i listened to more music that year than probably any other year.

In retrospect, a very, very good year...

I think you're just repressing the trauma of coordinating the shmoo poll write-ups (great work, BtW).

+1 on Hold Steady, Willie Nile, DBT, TVotR, Raconteurs, Neko


Phenomenal production and arrangements on this one. Adam Jones' best guitar work to date. Still my favorite active band.


"Going Against Your Mind" is one of my favorite album openers of the latter 00s despite its length. A worthy entry in the Martsch catalog.


From what I've gathered, this seems to be one album that most Mastodon fans can agree upon even if it's not their personal favorite. File Under: Prog Thrash?


Hey, remember "Crazy?" Hailed as the single of the year, but it's not even the best track on the album. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo did some nice stuff here.

Another great one.

Wow, thanks. I actually had forgotten about that.

Several of my favorites have been mentioned already...
Califone (my #1 of the year now)
Liars (my #1 at the time)
Clipse
Clark (didn't hear until a few years ago)
TVOTR (their best record, I like it more now than I did at the time)
M. Ward (haven't listened in forever, might not be so into it now)
Mastodon (their last good album)
Yo La Tengo

A couple of others I know I talked about a lot at the time that are still favorites:


Man Man - Six Demon Bag
Their best record. Perfect balance of Mr. Bungle spazz and catchy, memorable songs. There's so much energy and passion on this album, and they were amazing on this tour.


NOMO - New Tones
Not just Afrobeat revival, NOMO creates a unique jazz-funk hybrid that sounds both modern and timeless. No, I didn't steal that from a press release, but there's probably one out there that reads a lot like that. They were also fantastic live when I've seen them. (Above is actually a clip from the show I attended at the EARL.) This and Ghost Rock from a few years later and both fantastic, and it's hard to pick a favorite although I tend to lean a little toward this one since it was my introduction to them.

I know, I know...
But this is a really good album. Nothing more or less than a really great rock band playing the hell out of the songs that inspired them to pick up instruments in the first place. That's it. It won't make any new fans out of folks who have already made up their mind that nothing Def Leppard will ever be worthwhile. But for those who ever liked them at all, this is a very welcome return to form. And, for anybody, the tracklisting is fairly impressive: covers of The Kinks, ELO, Badfinger, Faces, The Nerves...
Maybe surprising, at first, but not so much when you think about it.


Again: just great musicians playing great songs that they love.