The Best Albums of 2006: Kronski Weighs In
In between the glut of the holiday festivities, and reading the endless ‘best of lists’ that appear during this time of year, I thought it only fitting that I too throw my hat into the ring, after so many days of leisure and consumption.
The Best Albums of 2006
1. The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
A funny thing happened at the end of the year. My parents, en route to Christmas HQ, listened to Kerouac’s On the Road in audio book format. The subject got us talking about Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, and the whole time all I could hear was the snaggletooth riffs provided by The Hold Steady.
My Dad said at one point, “Kerouac uses the word ‘sad’ so often” which cued, in my mind the opening line to the greatest opening track of 2006, Stuck Between Stations.
“There are times when I think that Sal Paradise was right, Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together.”
Pitchfork called it similar to Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker in that we see the viewpoint of America from the downtrodden and the marginalized. Life through the dirt-encrusted lenses of lonely drug addicts yearning for the last fix to be as good as That First Night,(track four) might not make for the most uplifting of subject matter, but the passion and the intensity that Craig Finn frames the characters and the situations they find themselves in is just as heartbreaking as those who have appeared in the American Cannon of tragic figures, think all of Kerouac’s angelic angst, Holden Caulfield, even The Great Gatsby,and with it the rise of youth and how to cope has always been up for reconsideration. Thanks to Boys and Girls in America, The Hold Steady manages to revisit that sense in 2006.
2. Guillemots – Through the Window Pane
The best records don’t maintain a consistent form or shape. They morph and change considering our mood at the time. I can’t think of another act more capable of pulling off the sonic alchemy than Britain’s The Guillemots (which I believe is a type of bird) manage on their first full length. Their first single, Trains to Brazil, takes the listener back to the world of a stuffy British primary school, and takes the listener as far into the song, so that we are sitting at our desks, in front of a classroom, looking at the teachers as “Erroneous Fools” as the song describes them. We feel the need to appreciate our lives, and to maintain that jubilant sense of childhood everyday as adults.
“Can’t we live and be grateful we’re here, see it could be you, tomorrow next year.”
What follows is an amazing foray into Jazz that is displayed throughout the album. The group has a varied background, some from the UK, and some from Brazil.
Lead singer Fyfe Dangerfield displays an impressive range, often times channeling the ghost of Freddie Mercury at his mercurial best, other times sounding like Tim Booth on Helium. One of the most consistent releases of the year.
3. The Format – Dog Problems
Ah, the halcyon days of summer. Temperatures in Portland reached 103 one day. Walking back from eating at a French restaurant downtown, I ran my hand on the walls, and I could feel the heat from it, like a hot plate. And there was no greater soundtrack to the sound of heat, the guilty pleasures of lemonade on a hot day. The Format’s second record was largely ignored, despite it being on Saddle Creek Records, and containing some of the most heartfelt, cathartic songs of the year.
I always break out records by Jellyfish and Fountains of Wayne in the summer. Power pop works best during the months where free time is in abundance, and I can listen to songs that give me a powerful sugar rush. Songs like Oceans, Pick Me Up, Dead End Song, brought me back to years when I had less on my plate responsibility-wise.
These songs made me wish I was eighteen again. Power pop shot through with the experience of someone who’s known true heartbreak.
4.Band of Horses – Everything all the Time
The first time you hear this record, all you can do is make comparisons. “Hey that sounds like My Morning Jacket meets Supertramp.” You are stuck on the comparison treadmill, and yet you keep playing it anyway.
Eventually the songs dig into your brain so deep that you’re left wondering why someone didn’t stumble onto this formula earlier. Seattle’s Band of Horses create melodies that are instantly memorable while somehow remaining edgy and true to their cause.
A perfect example of how a well-produced record doesn’t have to be bland or generic.
5. Twilight Singers – Powder Burns
Or Greg Dulli kicks Cocaine while experiencing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while recording the album in New Orleans. Every song is an epic narrative of the steps he took away from Cocaine, with literal snorts appearing embedded within the songs. (see Forty Dollars) What’s amazing is how triumphant Dulli is after re-discovering his love for music. It seems that the Dulli is firing on all eight cylinders of his musical mind, as he effortlessly revisits the greatest chapters of his work with the Afghan Whigs and rediscovering his love for R & B all framed within a story arc that involves post-Katrina New Orleans.
The lyrics have to do with living on your own, without the aid of a master. No more so is this present than in one of the album’s better tracks, Bonnie Brae. Apparently about a realization while walking through New Orleans, he had a revelation on a street named Bonnie Brae.
“There was a rapture, so I can never see you anymore” In this lyric, he described not only the new life afforded to him post Cocaine, but the emotional landscape damaged by Katrina, both mentally and physically, two storms has changed this man’s outlook, and we are left the better for it.
6. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Never underestimate the power of the sleeper hit. Neko Case brings her haunting voice and accompanying songwriting to a level that makes it impossible to not get swept up in. How anyone can make music this dangerous and yet sound accessible is one of life’s small wonders.
7. Bob Dylan – Modern Times
2006 brought a varied collection of comebacks, with mostly disappointing results. Bob Dylan’s Modern Times is a record that paradoxically becomes more esoteric the more one attempt to understand it. The shifting narratives jar the listener a bit, but I can’t remember when Dylan sounded so comfortable while delivering one of his strangest records yet, and even with the distance that these narratives provide, we as listeners feel nevertheless drawn in, and in the end we see them for the distinct characters that they are.
8.The Decemberists – Crane Wife
This may feel like a safe bet on one of the strangest major-label debuts in recent memory. (Where exactly in the contract does it stipulate that they can have a twelve minute mini-opera on the second track, without any sort of a single?) Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists move into the new digs of a fully-realized sound, while eschewing the overwrought verbosity from previous releases and focusing instead on the melodies. In the process they try on every genre possible to them and emerge successful.
9. M. Ward – Post War
M. Ward always seems to have a place in my heart. Maybe it’s the voice of experience, the raspy old man voice from a man four years my senior. The melodies are instantly recognizable, as it seems that each song has already been created somewhere in the subconscious of the listener’s childhood and M. Ward reaches through the speakers tand exploits these feelings, and there’s something magical in the fleshed-out sound of Matt playing with a full band.
10.Early Day Miners – Offshore
The darkest of horses run through the night, taking up space in one’s mind while at rest, and each time I played this in my car, or at home, I felt like I was turning another side of myself over, surrendering to these night visions, apocalyptic triptychs that reflect on many of favorite acts of the past (see Spiritualized, Galaxie 500, Velvet Underground) while taking these conceits illustrated so well in the past and breathing new life into them. With its short length is almost more of an EP than a full length, but it wouldn’t be my best albums of the year list without it.
The Best Albums of 2006
1. The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
A funny thing happened at the end of the year. My parents, en route to Christmas HQ, listened to Kerouac’s On the Road in audio book format. The subject got us talking about Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, and the whole time all I could hear was the snaggletooth riffs provided by The Hold Steady.
My Dad said at one point, “Kerouac uses the word ‘sad’ so often” which cued, in my mind the opening line to the greatest opening track of 2006, Stuck Between Stations.
“There are times when I think that Sal Paradise was right, Boys and Girls in America have such a sad time together.”
Pitchfork called it similar to Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker in that we see the viewpoint of America from the downtrodden and the marginalized. Life through the dirt-encrusted lenses of lonely drug addicts yearning for the last fix to be as good as That First Night,(track four) might not make for the most uplifting of subject matter, but the passion and the intensity that Craig Finn frames the characters and the situations they find themselves in is just as heartbreaking as those who have appeared in the American Cannon of tragic figures, think all of Kerouac’s angelic angst, Holden Caulfield, even The Great Gatsby,and with it the rise of youth and how to cope has always been up for reconsideration. Thanks to Boys and Girls in America, The Hold Steady manages to revisit that sense in 2006.
2. Guillemots – Through the Window Pane
The best records don’t maintain a consistent form or shape. They morph and change considering our mood at the time. I can’t think of another act more capable of pulling off the sonic alchemy than Britain’s The Guillemots (which I believe is a type of bird) manage on their first full length. Their first single, Trains to Brazil, takes the listener back to the world of a stuffy British primary school, and takes the listener as far into the song, so that we are sitting at our desks, in front of a classroom, looking at the teachers as “Erroneous Fools” as the song describes them. We feel the need to appreciate our lives, and to maintain that jubilant sense of childhood everyday as adults.
“Can’t we live and be grateful we’re here, see it could be you, tomorrow next year.”
What follows is an amazing foray into Jazz that is displayed throughout the album. The group has a varied background, some from the UK, and some from Brazil.
Lead singer Fyfe Dangerfield displays an impressive range, often times channeling the ghost of Freddie Mercury at his mercurial best, other times sounding like Tim Booth on Helium. One of the most consistent releases of the year.
3. The Format – Dog Problems
Ah, the halcyon days of summer. Temperatures in Portland reached 103 one day. Walking back from eating at a French restaurant downtown, I ran my hand on the walls, and I could feel the heat from it, like a hot plate. And there was no greater soundtrack to the sound of heat, the guilty pleasures of lemonade on a hot day. The Format’s second record was largely ignored, despite it being on Saddle Creek Records, and containing some of the most heartfelt, cathartic songs of the year.
I always break out records by Jellyfish and Fountains of Wayne in the summer. Power pop works best during the months where free time is in abundance, and I can listen to songs that give me a powerful sugar rush. Songs like Oceans, Pick Me Up, Dead End Song, brought me back to years when I had less on my plate responsibility-wise.
These songs made me wish I was eighteen again. Power pop shot through with the experience of someone who’s known true heartbreak.
4.Band of Horses – Everything all the Time
The first time you hear this record, all you can do is make comparisons. “Hey that sounds like My Morning Jacket meets Supertramp.” You are stuck on the comparison treadmill, and yet you keep playing it anyway.
Eventually the songs dig into your brain so deep that you’re left wondering why someone didn’t stumble onto this formula earlier. Seattle’s Band of Horses create melodies that are instantly memorable while somehow remaining edgy and true to their cause.
A perfect example of how a well-produced record doesn’t have to be bland or generic.
5. Twilight Singers – Powder Burns
Or Greg Dulli kicks Cocaine while experiencing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while recording the album in New Orleans. Every song is an epic narrative of the steps he took away from Cocaine, with literal snorts appearing embedded within the songs. (see Forty Dollars) What’s amazing is how triumphant Dulli is after re-discovering his love for music. It seems that the Dulli is firing on all eight cylinders of his musical mind, as he effortlessly revisits the greatest chapters of his work with the Afghan Whigs and rediscovering his love for R & B all framed within a story arc that involves post-Katrina New Orleans.
The lyrics have to do with living on your own, without the aid of a master. No more so is this present than in one of the album’s better tracks, Bonnie Brae. Apparently about a realization while walking through New Orleans, he had a revelation on a street named Bonnie Brae.
“There was a rapture, so I can never see you anymore” In this lyric, he described not only the new life afforded to him post Cocaine, but the emotional landscape damaged by Katrina, both mentally and physically, two storms has changed this man’s outlook, and we are left the better for it.
6. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Never underestimate the power of the sleeper hit. Neko Case brings her haunting voice and accompanying songwriting to a level that makes it impossible to not get swept up in. How anyone can make music this dangerous and yet sound accessible is one of life’s small wonders.
7. Bob Dylan – Modern Times
2006 brought a varied collection of comebacks, with mostly disappointing results. Bob Dylan’s Modern Times is a record that paradoxically becomes more esoteric the more one attempt to understand it. The shifting narratives jar the listener a bit, but I can’t remember when Dylan sounded so comfortable while delivering one of his strangest records yet, and even with the distance that these narratives provide, we as listeners feel nevertheless drawn in, and in the end we see them for the distinct characters that they are.
8.The Decemberists – Crane Wife
This may feel like a safe bet on one of the strangest major-label debuts in recent memory. (Where exactly in the contract does it stipulate that they can have a twelve minute mini-opera on the second track, without any sort of a single?) Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists move into the new digs of a fully-realized sound, while eschewing the overwrought verbosity from previous releases and focusing instead on the melodies. In the process they try on every genre possible to them and emerge successful.
9. M. Ward – Post War
M. Ward always seems to have a place in my heart. Maybe it’s the voice of experience, the raspy old man voice from a man four years my senior. The melodies are instantly recognizable, as it seems that each song has already been created somewhere in the subconscious of the listener’s childhood and M. Ward reaches through the speakers tand exploits these feelings, and there’s something magical in the fleshed-out sound of Matt playing with a full band.
10.Early Day Miners – Offshore
The darkest of horses run through the night, taking up space in one’s mind while at rest, and each time I played this in my car, or at home, I felt like I was turning another side of myself over, surrendering to these night visions, apocalyptic triptychs that reflect on many of favorite acts of the past (see Spiritualized, Galaxie 500, Velvet Underground) while taking these conceits illustrated so well in the past and breathing new life into them. With its short length is almost more of an EP than a full length, but it wouldn’t be my best albums of the year list without it.
posted by Kronski | 7:46 AM
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