Best of 2006

I know that I am no Pitchfork, but I still feel like doing my own List of the Best albums of 2006...What can I do? It's just a funny silly game we all want to play once in a while, and now is my turn.
So, these are the 15 album I have listened the most in these twelve months, there may be better ones, but these are the ones that have stayed in my head (and on my iPod and PC) the longest. If this list can make some people curious or someone else go back to something the y went past without noticing, then I'd be more than satiesfied.


1-Cat Power: The Greatest
I would just need the second voice that enters during the refrain to make this one of my fav
albums of the year. But also all the rest of it superb-quality songwriting.

2-Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings The Floor
Even better than Blacklisted. Which is tough.

3-The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
A complex LP that makes you whistle, laugh, sing, and want to to listen to it again.

4-Julie's Haircut: After Dark, My Sweet

A great italian indie band that sounds like Pink Floyd-Live At Pompeii-era. Best live act I have seen this year, really awesome.

5-M. Ward: Post-War
A great Americana record.

6-Paul Simon: Surprise

Brian Eno's production does him a lot of good. And there is also this line in it: "You cannot walk with the holy if you're just a halfway decent man".

7-Sebastien Tellier: Sessions
I have loved this from the first second:his best songs played plain and simple with acoustic guitars, drums, and piano.

8-The Magic Numbers: Those The Brokes
Best voices around. Listen to Slow Down when the female chorus comes in: doesn't it sound like Bacharach? When Indierock meets 60's vocal pop.

9-Belle & Sebastian: The Life Pursuit
I know they are not the same band of If you're feeling sinister, so what? Bands do have to change. And B & S could not stay the same naive pop band forever. And all these pastiches are good for the heart (The blues are still blue is a great T-Rex-like song, funny as they only can be).

10- Arab Strap: The Last Romance
Incredible that this is their final work, but it is so good to end at the top: this is their best compromise with both pop and rock, but still an Arab Strap thing.

11-Jarvis Cocker: Jarvis
Jarvis Cocker in best shape, almost as good as on Pulp's Different Class. And Black Magic sounds like The Who that play a Lou Reed riff (Sweet Jane basically).

12-Mojave 3: Puzzles Like You
AKA Neil Halstead goes back to pop-rock. Not exactly the stuff they were doing as Slowdive (no shoegazer guitars in here), but not even the classic rock/c & w oriented music they have been playing in these last years. And Breaking the ice should have sold as Gnarls Barkley's Crazy.

13-Sparklehorse: Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
Mark Linkous will probably neverwrite hapy songs...but there is something in here that gets close to...Well, anyway, I find it their best album.

14-Broken Social Scene: Broken Social Scene
It is hard not to put a BSC album in one of these lists. Mainly because they are one of the rare -and really- new things in rock music. We will see if and how relevant (and influential) they will get in the future years.

15-Grizzly Bear: Yellow House
One of those bands you must give some time. And then you will find yourself listenig to them everytime you go to bed. Out of seasons and time.

Feel free to tell me what you think about it...and why don't you write your own Top 15 in the comments? It would be great. Thanks to all those who have stopped by in this year.
Happy 2007, everyone.

You are wondering what the new song on streaming is? It's P.I.L.'s Public Image !

I have just re-uploaded the link.
Hope you like it.

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

Big time for re-posts: this time is Grizzly Bear's second album. The fact is that last time around the tenth and final track was missing, so now I have re-uploaded the whole album.

Yellow house

The Go-Betweeens: Botany Sessions

Many people asked me to re-post it, so here it comes: The Go-Betweens' so-called Botany Sessions, i.e. what could have been their 7th album, if they had not split (but fortunately only to come back in great shape 10 years later).
The album was to be an acoustic work, their "Blood on the tracks", and afterwards these songs finally made it to the MacLennan and Forster's solo LPs.

Info:
The Go-Betweens on wiki.
Articles and intervies with GB @ The GB Archive

And now another link for this link for this post...hopint that it won't be dead in a day. Merry X-mas, everyone.

Botany sessions(X-mas link)

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Howl EP Sessions

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club shocked plenty of people who used to listen to them with the release of their last LP, Howl, choosing to give up their usual Jesus and Mary Chain-feel to a recording deeply influenced by blues, stomp, and beat literature (hence the title: clearly an Allen Ginsberg reference).
And hard as it may seem for those who have not listened to Howl yet, they did make it: they do not sound like a band trying to dance to the Americana-Neo-contry-Post war folk(or whatever people may call all of this)-hype but like someone that has found their roots, and made the best out of it (everytime I get back to that album I always find myself pleased with it).
So what's next? Well, I personally hope they keep up the good work, but in the meantime (i.e. last february) they released (it was available to buy online or on their tour) six more songs from the same sessions -this beautiful Howl Sessions EP. A brief yet valuable download for all you BRMC fans (but not only: tracks such as the mesmerising Mercy or Feel it now are worth more than a try).


Howl EP (Media Fire Download)
Howl EP (Megaupload Download)

Jens Lekman: Oh You're So Silent Jens

Jens Lekman comes from Sweden, a land that has given us many brilliant pop artists (one of my favourites is Sondre Lerche, last album apart) and Lekman is definetely one of them: Oh You're So Silent Jens is not a proper LP but a collection of EPs instead and, maybe also because of this, OYRSSL is such a heterogenic and fascinating record, being so rich, having so many influences in it...but let's say that the names of people as Stephin Merrit's Magnetic Fields or Belle and Sebastian (but with a certain Burt Bacharach feel) often come to mind listening to him: soft balladry (with some almost-kitsch arrangements here and there) with great tunes.

INFO:
Jens Lekman on Wiki.

Oh you're so silent Jens