It's That Time of Year: My Favorite CDs of 2006
I'll fess up. I fell a little behind this year. Looking over the Top 10 lists starting to circulate, I realize that there's a lot I haven't heard. Tons of good R&B, rap, country, rock, and everything else is out there, still waiting to be discovered. It's just hard to keep up with everything these days -- one pass through the MP3 blogs is enough to show that a trip to the record stores every Tuesday just doesn't cut it anymore. Heck, a friend emailed me today raving about Placebo's cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", and that song was released in 2003! Yet he and I, who both love us some Kate Bush, and Kate Bush covers, had never heard of it.
So, with that said, here are my picks for the year, with the understanding that I didn't hear nearly everything I wanted to hear. But these are the ones that stuck with me throughout the year.
1Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Anti)
With Fox Confessor, the easy labels -- country chanteuse, front-porch torch
singer, noir siren -- fall from Case in useless tatters. She's simply transcended
anything we've called her before. Make no mistake, that voice still inflames the
twang-loving part of your brain, but it can finally claim Case's songwriting and
lyrics as equals. Throughout Fox Confessor, Case walks a twilit landscape
where grief bookends stolen moments of happiness, a man fights madness by singing
"nursery rhymes to paralyze the wolves that eddy out the corner of his eyes", and
realization dawns that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to just
go home alone. Case has trafficked in such themes before, but Fox Confessor
stands as her best record yet, one where the darkness is deeper and more textured
than mere noir trappings, and where the earthy roots of classic country are a mere
stepping-off point for something much more luminous.
Neko Case Official Web Site
Neko Case page on Anti Web Site
(with links to vids and MP3s)
2Yo La Tengo - I am Not Afraid Of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador)
Yo La Tengo's always been one of those bands that I've watched out of the corner
of my eye. I'd like what I'd heard, but I also kind of wrote them off as the indie
equivalent of a "musician's band," the type of band that's more interesting for
people who know enough about playing or music theory to appreciate the stuff going
on behind the notes. I don't know why I've always thought of them that way, since
I've never heard anything remotely music-snobbishness or math-obsessed about their
stuff, but there you go. But wow, I Am Not Afraid of You finds the band
just cutting loose, sounding like the second coming of the Beach Boys one minute,
sounding like a bunch of sixteen-year-olds locked in a garage with some instruments
the next. Thrilling stuff.
Yo La Tengo Official Web Site
MP3s from I Am Not Afraid of You
and other places
3Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred
Highways (Lost Highway)
As fans and listeners, we've been eulogizing Cash since his death in 2003, and while
the constant stream of Cash anthologies and reissues since then sometimes has the
stink of cold hard cash, there have also been some valuable releases, like the Legend
box set or the Personal Files collection. American V, though, is like hearing
his voice from beyond, uttering his final thoughts on this whole mortal coil business.
These are the recordings he was working on as his death approached, when Rick Rubin
kept a band on call for the increasingly rare moments when Cash felt well enough
to record. Religion and death intertwine, as they often have for Cash, throughout
this record. American V, though, finds Cash's mood ranging from accepting
("Like the 309", "Further On Up the Road", and "On the Evening Train") to apocalyptic
("God's Gonna Cut You Down" sounds like a marching song for the armies of judgment),
showing that Cash didn't lose his focus even in those final days.
Johnny Cash Official Web Site
Vids and music on Lost
Highway label's site
To these ears, The Letting Go is Will Oldham's best record since 1999's I
See a Darkness. Barring his recent dalliance with Nashville, Oldham has
mainly confined himself to tweaking his familiar template over the years, so if you know his work, you know what you're going to get: graceful arrangements, lyrics
that seem universal even as they look inward, and the roguish spirit of a man unafraid
to advertise his faults. What sets The Letting Go apart, though, are the
vocal contributions of Dawn McCarthy, which go far beyond backing vocals -- they're
an integral part of this record, responsible for much of its power. Bonnie Prince Billy Official Web Site
5Mission of Burma - Obliterati (Matador)
I came to the Mission of Burma party very late -- after their reunion, after they'd
made their mark, influenced other bands, and retired to become angry old men. Obliterati
shows that the angry part was right at least -- MOB still possess fire and indignation
that would put a bunch of twenty-year-olds to shame. And all the while, in the midst
of a pummeling track like "2wice," they still show a deft touch with a spry string
of "la la la's." I've since gone back and checked out MOB's early stuff, but I gotta
tell you, this may be their best yet.Mission of Burma Official Web Site
MOB Media page (video)
MOB page on Matador web site
MOB MP3s on Matador site
6Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint - The River in Reverse (Verve Forecast)
The spectre of Hurricane Katrina continues to scar the American consciousness, and
a lot of music from the area is starting to reflect not only anger, but also weariness,
mourning, and even some hope. For The River in Reverse, Costello teamed up
with one of New Orleans' living legends, Allen Toussaint. The album's a mixture
of vintage Toussaint compositions and new Costello works, and really feels like
a natural blend of Costello's angular wordiness and Toussaint's jazz-informed grace.
Fully half of the album deals directly with Katrina's aftermath, resurrecting Costello's
angry young man persona (albeit in age-tempered form) for what can only be considered
protest songs. Toussaint's ability to keep things nimble and smooth is exemplified
by "Ascension Day," which finds Costello singing disaster-wracked lyrics over Toussaint's
unmistakeable version of "Tipitina and Me".Elvis Costello Official Web Site
7Mountain Goats - Get Lonely (4AD)
Mountain Goats mastermind John Darnielle has an eye for the nuances of relationships,
especially when they're going bad. He's become known for dark, bitter, literate
dissections of breakdowns of every kind -- romances, relationships between lovers,
relationships within families, and narrators' relationships with themselves. Darnielle
long ago proved he could unleash the pain, but Get Lonely is something new from
Darnielle -- it's the calm and exhaustion of aftermath, when you just don't have
the energy to rage anymore. It's a sleepy album at time, which makes you underestimate
it. But then you hear this or that song in the right light, and it gets its hooks
in you just as deeply as Darnielle's more immediate stuff.Mountain Goats Official Web Site
Miscellaneous MP3s from Mountain Goats site
8The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls of America (Vagrant)
Coming across like the Replacements fronted by Springsteen on an especially verbose
day, the Hold Steady unleash another set of desperate slice-of-the-night-life vignettes.
Taking a Jack Kerouac line -- "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together"
-- as their cue, the Hold Steady compress Springsteen's romantic notions of escape
something grittier and more fatalistic, but no less necessary. Even if Hold Steady
characters like Holly and Charlemagne don't know what they're escaping from, what
they're escaping to, or even that that they're trying to escape, they instinctively
flail against the grind of their daily lives. In the Hold Steady songs populated
by such characters, drugs, booze, clubbing, and hook-ups are acceptable -- and sometimes
the only -- substitutes for big engines and the open road. Regret can't catch up
with you if you just keep moving fast enough through the night.Hold Steady Official Web Site
Miscellaneous Hold Steady MP3s from Hold Steady site
Album site on Vagrant Records site (one MP3 at the moment)
9Josh Ritter - The Animal Years (V2)
Ranging from delicate (the a capella "Idaho') to insistent (the rumbling, running
cadence of "Wolves"), The Animal Years finds Ritter growing out of his mellow
Nick Drake phase into a songwriter of surprising versatility and imagination. "Girl in
the War" finds the troubles of the world testing the patience of even the saints,
and the nine-minutes-plus "Thin Blue Flame" might strike some as overwrought, but
others will find it a thrilling lyrical triumph. Some of The Animal Years
flirts with preciousness, but it's a sign of Ritter's growth as an artist that he
embraces the challenge head-on and keeps himself from going over that precipice.Josh Ritter Official Web Site
MP3s on Ritter's site (plenty of them, and he's not skimping on the good ones, either)
Tons of streaming audio from Ritter and just about everyone else on V2 roster
10Rosanne Cash - Black Cadillac (Capitol)
Black Cadillac is about death, and the immediate impulse is to apply all
of its songs to the death of Rosanne Cash's father, Johnny Cash. But she also lost
her stepmother, June Carter Cash, as well as her mother, Vivian Liberto Cash, in
in the same short span of time. You expect Black Cadillac to be meticulously
crafted, and Cash doesn't disappoint. What comes as a bit of a shock is Cash's bluntness
throughout the disc, addressing not only the loss of loved ones, but what that loss
means for those like her, who are left behind. Black Cadillac is a triumph
from an artist who had nothing to prove, but who obviously felt she'd left some
things unsaid.Roseanne Cash Official Web Site
MP3? Cash's site has some streaming stuff. Capitol's site may have some, but good luck finding it.
Addendum
I guess because it's been right under my nose the entire year, and I kind of take it for granted at this point, I forgot to mention Niel Brooks' Nine Black Paintings. Niel's a friend of mine, so maybe I feel wary of the nepotism angle, but with NBP, he's put out his second strong album. I think some people may have been put off by some of the sonic experimentation on the new one (Niel's a big fan of found sounds, homemade instruments, and, in general mixing things up). I have to admit, some of it had to grow on me as well, accustomed as I was to the more traditional alt-country/folk fare on his Static Sessions disc. But it's a really strong disc, and has been getting a lot of well-deserved play on the local NPR site, as part of the ramp-up to the stations Top 100 countdown for the year. I expect Niel to place pretty highly in that one. So head over to his site and check it out. Then you can say you knew him before he got big and spent all of his fortune on obscure 18th Century Aeolian harps and water instrumetns.
Niel Brooks' Site