Are you on the list?

The blog Heart On A Stick undertook the massive task of aggregating year-end lists from 640 music sites and compiling them into a master consensus. TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain took the crown by a resounding margin (250 points,) which is hardly a surprise. While your humble drake missed the first round (12/21,) my list made the cut the second time around (with 640 sources, I'd be a bit depressed if it didn't ;)

Playlist: Best Albums from 2006 - Bloggregate

A lot of interesting data can be mined from the aggregate data. For instance, the album with the highest average ranking was one not many folks (including myself) have had the opportunity to hear, and that's The Veils' second release Nux Vomica, which is currently only available via import (on Rough Trade.) That's one that will definitely make next year's annual best of the year (not from the year) list.

For more useful data, head over to Heart on a Stick's Bloggregate.

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, tv on the radio, tvotr, the veils, rhapsody

Locals only

One week ago today, Seattle radio station KEXP wrapped up their year with their annual Top 90.3 of the year (as voted by the listeners,) running from 8AM all the way to 4:30PM. This year, folks voted close to home, with Band of Horses and The Decemberists taking the top spots, and even the next two had NW ties - Neko Case (Tacoma/Vancouver) and Silversun Pickups (who recorded their album in Seattle with local legend Steve Fisk.) After TV on the Radio (mine and plenty of others' number one pick) came two more with local ties: The Black Angels (on the best little basement run label in the Northwest - A Light in the Attic Records) and Built to Spill. And if we move a bit further out, geographically speaking, there's only two foreigners (Thom Yorke, Belle & Sebastian) in the whole top twenty.

Playlist: KEXP's Top 90.3 of 2006
Listen to the broadcast here

And while it hurt your chances on this list to be from elsewhere, if you were a hip-hop artist you were doomed. The Roots (#33,) Michael Franti & Spearhead (#45) barely made a splash, and Ghostface Killah came in as an afterthought (#90,) and let's be honest - Gnarls Barkley (#14) barely counts.

Where's the hip-hop love, KEXP listeners?

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, kexp, radio, tv on the radio, tvotr, band of horses, the decemberists, neko case, light in the attic, silversun pickups, black angels, rhapsody

Looking forward to 007

I don't know that I've ever experienced such a crazy messed-up few weeks. The worst weather, getting robbed multiple times, the home remodel from hell, broken finger... and expecting child once again.

Play: "Psychiatric Explorations Of The Fetus With Needles" - The Flaming Lips

That's right, another bundle of joy is on the way (scheduled release date is mid-July) and we're grooming Eli to be a big brother. So we look forward to 2007, and cast an disparaging glance at how much 2006 sucked at the end:

Oct 29 - Move into our basement while we remodel. Sleeping on a blow-up bed next to washer/dryer next to crib next to sofa next to TV, etc.
Oct 30 - Leave for Mexico so our roof can be torn off our house
Nov 8 - Back from Mexico but stormy weather has prevented any work from being done on our house
Nov 9 - Take home pregnancy test to confirm suspicions that we need another bedroom
Nov 10 - Lose a bedroom in remodel due to architect's mismeasurement
Nov 12 - Dishwasher dies horrible death (RIP fair Kenmore)
Nov 14 - Car is stolen from front of house while we sleep
Nov 24 - Thanksgiving. Nothing significant happens for some reason.
Nov 25 - Roof finally comes off house
Nov 26 - It rains buckets, leaking into the house... then it snows... then a windstorm hits as we try to sleep. Our house sounds like it's under attack all night as the roof-tarp is torn apart.
Nov 28 - Our car is apparently found!
Nov 30 - Pictures of our car show that it's been stripped of all the seats, save Eli's baby seat, which the thieves used to drive around with / car totalled (RIP fair Acura)
Dec 7 - Someone steals our contractor's compressor in the night / also steals my REI backpack from our storage shed
Dec 13 - Hurt my finger playing basketball / I assume to be only badly jammed /tape fingers together
Dec 14 - Drive through massive rain storm, through flood waters and stalled cars to meet 2-day old Julia Jasper Koch / come home to basement flooded / mopping and wringing out towels all night is quite painful on finger
Dec 15 - Over a million folks in the area without power (we're spared, miraculously)
Dec 16 - Spend whole day buying car at dealerships with no power (2006 Kia Sportage)
Dec 23-Dec 25 - Spend X-mas with parents, who are apparently sick with the flu / shovel lots of snow with taped finger
Dec 26 - Come back to another flooded basement / work nonstop from 11PM to 3:30AM to keep our sleep area somewhat dry / convinced now that crooked finger is broken
Dec 27 - Eli sick with whatever his grandparents had / cries and coughs all night through New Year
Dec 28 - Ultrasound of baby curiously reveals a much earlier due date then expected / X-ray of my crooked finger reveals broken bone / EMT wonders alound if I hate doctors

So let's welcome 007 to the fold... hope you're better then how your lame ass 006 predecessor went out.

Stick a 'fork in 2006

Pitchfork revealed their Top 50 albums yesterday, but I was too busy finishing my own list to take note.

Playlist: Pitchfork Top 50 Albums 2006

The surprise comes that it's not TVOTR or The Hold Steady or Joanna Newsom on top, all favorites of other lists. Sweden's The Knife tops the list with the twisted electro-pop album Silent Shout. For the record I loved it, but think that it will turn out much like P'Fork's pick from 2003, The Rapture's Echoes, which in retrospect was just a fine album, not a 'list topper.' To quote a shirt I once read: "Seemed like a good idea at the time"

Full listing here.

My top albums of 2006
A lot more year-end lists

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, tv on the radio, tvotr, the knife, hold steady, pitchfork, rhapsody

Best of 2006: 100+ Albums

Man... this took forever. So much jockeying and moving of albums up and down from my original placements. Many albums got overlooked in my trial run, and I had to get them inserted and then more jockeying of positions. Then there's the fact that many aren't in Rhapsody yet, and those had to be inserted as well (more jockeying, etc.) In the end, though, my top three never moved. TV On The Radio, The Hold Steady and Scott Walker kept their stranglehold, while most other albums jumped up or down a few slots seemingly every time the wind blew. I'll be updating with comments and links throughout the week.

Playlist: Top 100+ Albums of 2006

1. TV On the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
I think this is first major label album I've had at the top of one of my year-end lists ever. Interscope seemed like a strange partner, but you can't argue with the end product. Still wildly artistic and defiant of popular music's norms, Return to Cookie Mountain may have saved indie rock by leaving it behind.
(Album review 9/12/06, live review 10/05/06)

2. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
Craig Finn & Co. do it again... Springsteen-infused lyrics combined with AC/DC (or Thin Lizzy) riffs hit both the gut and the brain with equal force.
(Album review 10/03/06, live review 10/23/06)

3. Scott Walker - The Drift
Why would I rate an album so highly that gives me nightmares every time I listen to it? Art that hits a nerve like this is so rare, it's a dark murky gift that makes going down those dimly-lit, horror-movie stairs so tempting (and inevitable.)
(Album review 06/06/06)

4. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
Hip-hop album of the year. I'd say hands-down, but Clipse came in made it close... regardless, Fishscale held off the similarly Coke-themed challenger. Haven't grown tired of this album yet, and don't imagine I will. So many nooks and crannies throughout that reveal more and more.
(Album review 03/27/06)

5. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
To quote myself from back in February: Poetic couplets are tossed off with such swagger and confidence, it's hard not to fall in-step behind his every stacatto'd syllable.
(album review 02/21/2006)

6. Joanna Newsom - Ys
This one scores highest for degree of difficulty. The combination of Newsom's impish voice and harp with Steve Albini's bare bones engineering is a marriage of curiousity. Throw in Van Dyke Parks' arrangements and it's a full circle of oddity and beauty.

7. Scritti Politti - White Bread Black Beer
Pure pop bliss from someone we thought the 90's had swallowed whole. Green Gartside's "middle-age symphonies to the cat in the windowsill" are both a joy and a marvel to behold. (Review 07/25/06)

8. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
More cocaine rap... between Ghostface, Young Jeezy and this Virgina Beach duo, it's like Christmas day on the slopes of Sun Valley. The Neptunes ridiculously sinister production makes this more then that, though. (Review 10/28/2006)

9. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
Part of this year's best tour (w/ TV on the Radio,) they weren't much to look at, but sounded positively amazing (much like the album.)
(Live review 10/05/06)

10. The Knife - Silent Shout
I've never spent as much time with an electronica album as I did with this one this past fall/winter. Twisted and amazing.

11. Liars - Drums Not Dead
12. Howe Gelb - 'Sno Angel Like You
13. Califone - Roots and Crowns
14. Islands - Return to the Sea
15. M. Ward - Post-War
16. Mission of Burma - The Obliterati
17. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
18. Hot Chip - The Warning
19. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
20. Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye
21. Bob Dylan - Modern Times
22. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
23. Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
24. Loney, Dear - Sologne
25. The Coup - Pick a Bigger Weapon
26. The Black Angels - Passover
27. Band Of Horses - Everything All the Time
28. Danielson - Ships
29. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
30. Justin Timberlake - Futuresex/Lovesounds
31. Cat Power - The Greatest
32. Annuals - Be He Me
33. Pernice Brothers - Live a Little
34. Lambchop - Damaged
35. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of YOu and I Will Beat Your Ass
36. New Radiant Storm King - The Steady Hand
37. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
38. Viva Voce - Get Yr Blood Sucked Out
39. Robert Pollard - From a Compound Eye
40. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Ballad of the Broken Sea
41. Lupe Fiasco - Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor
42. Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That
43. Van Hunt - On the Jungle Floor
44. Comets On Fire - Avatar
45. Charalambides - A Vintage Burden
46. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
47. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
48. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
49. Sam Roberts - Chemical City
50. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
51. Ali Farka Toure - Savane
52. Rodrigo Y Gabriela - Rodrigo Y Gabriela
53. Joseph Arthur - Nuclear Daydream
54. Lindsey Buckingham - Under The Skin
55. Centro-Matic - Fort Recovery
56. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
57. Robyn Hitchcock - Ole! Tarantula
58. Isobel Campbell - Milk White Sheets
59. Asobi Seksu - Citrus
60. Beck - The Information
61. The Pink Mountaintops - Axis of Evol
62. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome
63. The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
64. Mastodon - Blood Mountain
65. Drive-By Truckers - A Blessing and a Curse
66. Espers - II
67. The Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control
68. Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
69. The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes
70. The Minus 5 - The Minus 5
71. Neil Young - Living With War
72. Wolfmother - Wolfmother
73. Spankrock - Yoyoyoyoyo
74. Built To Spill - You In Reverse
75. Mojave 3 - Puzzles Like You
76. Silversun Pickups - Carnavas
77. Shoplifting - Body Stories
78. Gito Gito Hustler - Love & Roll
79. Rocky Votolato - Makers
80. Vetiver - To Find Me Gone
81. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love
82. Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways
83. Robert Pollard - Normal Happiness
84. Wolf Eyes - Human Animal
85. Chin Up Chin Up - This Harness Can't Ride Anything
86. Oneida - Happy New Year
87. Adem - Love and Other Planets
88. The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
89. Nicolai Dunger - Here's My Song...
90. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
91. Murs - Murray's Revenge
92. El Perro Del Mar - El Perro Del Mar
93. Black Keys - Magic Potion
94. J Dilla - Donuts
95. Head Like A Kite - Random Portraits of the Home Movie
96. Gotan Project - Lunatico
97. Cut Chemist - The Audience's Listening
98. Calexico - Garden Ruin
99. Fujiya & Miyagi - Transparent Things
100. The Thermals - The Body, the Blood, the Machine

And there's even another 50 or so albums that I just can't seem to eliminate from a best of the year list.
A lot more year-end lists

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, tv on the radio, tvotr, scott walker, hold steady, ghostface killah, destroyer, rhapsody

70% of a good thing

You're favorite pretentious music force Pitchfork just released their annual singles year-end list, this year expanding the usual top 50 all the way to 100. #1 on the list is the particularly un-pretentious single "My Love" from Justin Timberlake, which for some reason has some blogga's panties in a bunch. Not sure why... Timbaland's synths n' beats combined with JT's killer falsetto is a homerun, and JT's SNL appearance this weekend further cemented him as the new "King of Pop."

Playlist: Pitchfork Top 100 Singles of 2006

Whenever I see that a list is increased like that, my eyes go directly to the first pick in the list that benefits from the expansion, and in this case it's Scott Walker's "A Lover Loves." That song's reason enough for me to double a list.

This means of course Pitchfork's Top albums list will be coming out tomorrow... I usually try and make sure my list comes out before PFork's does, if for no other reason then to ensure that it didn't influence my choices. (Damn!)

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, justin timberlake, scott walker, pitchfork, rhapsody

Best of 2006: Albums (That Were Really From 2005)

My year-end list is always a serious chore... one I both love and loath at the same time, in part because I have a hard time narrowing it down. Last year I had over 150 albums and this year I find myself in similar straits. One of my methods for narrowing the field down is to make sure the album was originally released this year. Many of the albums you'll see (or will see) on folks' year-end lists were released last year and fell under the radar because they were either a) released in another country or b) self-released. Almost all of these albums made plenty of lists last year (including mine.) It's become an annual event.

Playlist: Best Albums of 2006 That Were Really From 2005

1. Tom Ze - Estudando o Pagode
First on the list is the amazing Tom Ze, who's album Estudando o Pagode (translated, study of pagode) I profiled back in April. This album would be in my top ten this year if it weren't for it's release last year outside the US. The 70-year old Brazilian records his masterpiece as a rock opera that also revisits another of his amazing albums from the 1970s (Estudando O Samba.) An amazing album that should be at the top of folks' lists... I guess that's why I have this secondary list - 'cause now it's #1. You could call it a precursor to the Tropicalia comeback that happened this year.

Album: Tom Ze - Estudando o Pagode
Stream the album from Luaka Bop Recods and read the Luaka notes on the Pagode
Video: Crazy EPK for album

2. Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh
This album made it in my top 50 albums last year (coming in at #10) and it will probably make a lot of folks' lists this year, as it didn't get US distribution until this past spring. Shoegaze. Dream pop. Space rock. Indie pop. Drone pop. Noise pop. Whatever you call it... call it good.

Album: Serena Maneesh - Serena Maneesh
Download: "Un Duex"

3. Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
Happy, balls-out earnest rock that sounds tongue in cheek. Made last year's list at #20. "I've seen her naked... twice!" is still one of my favorite lines.

Album: Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll
Download: "Good Weekend"

4. Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon
This album was released late last year, but no one could find it, and people were looking given the internet-hype that Tapes n' Tapes was achieving. When it finally reached better distribution this past spring, it seemed like all the momentum behind the album was gone. Here's what I wrote about The Loon back in March: These Minneapolis indie rockers kneel at the altar of all that is precious: Pavement, Wire, Beach Boys, Pixies, The Feelies, Talking Heads, and Television. Instead of playing 'spot the influence' though, you'll just find yourself enjoying the blended smoothie, as it's both tasty and good for you.

Album: Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon
Download: "Insistor"

The rest:
5. Love is All - Nine Times That Same Song
Download: "Talk Talk Talk Talk"
6. I Am a Robot and Proud - The Electricity in Your House Wants to Sing
Stream the title track from the MySpace page
7. Goldfrapp - Supernature
Listen to "Ooh La La" at their MySpace page
8. Page France - Hello Dear Wind
Download: "Junkyard"
9. Elbow - Leaders of the Free World

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, tropicalila, tom ze, serena maneesh, art brut, tapes n tapes, rhapsody

Why break my back?

Normally, by this time of year I've compiled best of lists, and while I started the process, David over at Largeheartedboy has already done the work, so instead I'll just refer you to his list, as it has pretty much everything I was linking to (and more.)

While I'm almost ready to unleash my 100+ album list, I've also been compiling other year-end lists as playlist.

First one is from the post-punk pioneer label and record store - Rough Trade Records. Compiled by their employees, this has a lot of albums that haven't made it over here yet, so it's worth checking out. The playlist features those that have made it here (in some fasion.) And top of the list is Beirut's Gulag Orkestar.


Playlist: Rough Trade Records' Best Albums of 2006

Full list here

tags: playlist, music, best of 2006, year end list, indie rock, rough trade, beirut, rhapsody