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

Grant McLennan: Solo

Grant McLennan was the founder and co-writer of the great Go-Betweens, the australian rock band that I am so fond of (if you've already been on this blog you possibly know this already...and I promise I am going to re-post soon the Botany Sessions too), he died last May and I am not yet able to consider him gone. I'll never hear anything from him or from his band (I may sound selfish, but, well, I don't mean it, I simply got in love with their songs in the couple of years prior his death... and probably many of you know how it feels when you get attached to a band and, after a while you realise it is not just one more band that you happen to listen to, but it is your band. And that's it: you're a fan. And you want to know more, you want to have more from them, and you look forward for the next single, the next CD... That's what happened to me with The Go-Betweens: they became my band, but I was too late: I've never had the chance to wait for their new album to come out. I will never feel that expectation and that's bad (and yeah, here I may be sounding really selfish, I know), too bad. But at least I got the chance to see them live once -about an year ago these days- and everytime my mind goes back to that concert (or when I watch their That stiped sunlight sound DVD) I get very sentimental about it, and about what they have meant to me (and maybe about music in general: one of the cons of this internet-era is that it gets harder and harder to be so involved in ONE band, or ONE artist, or whatever...or am I simply getting old? Dunno).
So forgive all of this fuss and let me just say that Grant McLennan also wrote 4 solo albums, and if you like the GB you should go try listen to some of his solo releases, maybe starting with this collection of songs I have picked. I don't know if this is his "Best of", it may as well be only my "best of" his work, but I still hope you find something in it something that can be of some use to you.
(If any of you is interested, I have took a selection of the songs he wrote in the Go-Betweens: nothing new, just something out of the curiosity of listening to his songs with GB without their counterpart -the Robert Forster's ones).

Grant McLennan Solo

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

Grizzly bear is the alias for Edward Droste, a Brooklyn-born guy, who wrote and recorded his first album last year on his own in his bedroom and is now back, but he is now back with a full band and with an outstanding LP, this Yellow House, that has had all the best production it deserves.
It is hard to describe this muisic because there are plenty of influences in there butI don't think I'd be mistaken if I say that The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds is one of them (though this is in no way a happy-go-lucky kind of LP, it is more a matter of complexity of both writing and arrangements), along with something from the so-called freak folk...except that this the music's feeling is more subtle, and in saying so I mean that all the extravaganzas you can find in it are not mere divertissements but something meaningful to the idea and the building of the LP (as it was for Pet sounds).
Anyway, you'll listen to arcs, soft acoustic guitar (and banjo) arpeggios, woodwinds, accordion, and choirs modulating tunes from outer space...and it is quite as good as it can get with all this this stuff altogether.

Want to know more about it?

See their myspace page
Or Yellow House's review (8.7, by the way) @ Pitchfork
Or Wiki.

Yellow House

Music on streaming

Noticed the music on streaming on the right?
Hope you appreciate it!

Michael Nyman: Gattaca OST

Today's post is Michale Nyman's beautiful soundtrack to Gattaca, the 1997 movie by Andrew Niccol performed by Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman: a collection of lyric minimalistic pieces of music from one of the greatest living composers. Many know him because of his work on Jane Campion's The Piano but I find this just as good, and anyway a very heartfelt composition.
I hope you give it a try (and maybe go buy the CD if you can).

Gattaca

XTC: Skyrlarking

Skyrlarking is probably XTC's most famous LP, mostly because of the odd hit Dear god, but this is one of the casef where fame (I'd go with fame, and not success because XTC have never had much of this..) and artistic accomplishment meet. Stranger is that XTC have never really made it: they are a hell of a pop band (there are plenty of new and old bands that wouldi die to be half as good in writing songs as Andy Partridge is), and got very influential over the years: my mind goes to first Blur, but also these last Belle and Sebastian (or not? I would say so).
Anyway, Skylarking may be considered by some as their finest work also because of an over the top production by...Todd Rundgren (yeah, it's him), although Partridge did not really get along with him (meaning they must have had more than a fight during the recording, and over the decision on the tracklist as well), but still the collaboration gave birth to this beatiful child. You just need to listen to it: best british pop after The Beatles? Or something like it.
One more thing: Dear God was originally not included on the LP, but after its success it became part of every Skylarking reissue. And how many atheist hits do you know? See:

Dear God,
hope you got the letter, and...
I pray you can make it better down here.
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer
but all the people that you made in your image, see
them starving on their feet 'cause they don't get
enough to eat from God, I can't believe in you

Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but... I feel that I should be heard
loud and clear. We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
and all the people that you made in your image, see them fighting
in the street 'cause they can't make opinions meet about God,
I can't believe in you

Did you make disease, and the diamond blue? Did you make
mankind after we made you? And the devil too!

Dear God, don't know if you noticed, but... your name is on
a lot of quotes in this book, and us crazy humans wrote it, you
should take a look, and all the people that you made in your
image still believing that junk is true. Well I know it ain't, and
so do you, dear God, I can't believe in I don't believe in

I won't believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no
devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You're always
letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you
drown. Those lost at sea and never found, and it's the same the
whole world 'round. The hurt I see helps to compound that
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is just somebody's unholy hoax,
and if you're up there you'd perceive that my heart's here upon
my sleeve. If there's one thing I don't believe in

it's you... Dear God.

For more:
XTC on Wiki
Fansite

Skylarking

Billy Bragg: Talking with the taxman about poetry

Today I am posting one of my fave albums ever: Billy Bragg's Talking with the taxman about poetry, an album I can't get off of my iPod, no matter how few space I have when I want to put new stuff in it..
Talking with...is Bragg's third effort, a more accomplished one after his first couple of LPs which were kind of raw, and it is so also (if not mostly) because of the splendid work on guitars by the five stars session man (and more importantly ex Smiths) Jonny Marr: listen to what he does in songs as Ideology or the opening track. I listen in awe every time (to me, he is one of the most underrated guitarists, and if he is so he probably is because he is not the typical guitar hero like, say, Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton; still he is by far one of the best rythm guitarist of the history of rock).
Anyway, on Talking with...Bragg gets the best out of his music tastes and inluences: The Clash on Help save the youth of america (it could be an outtake from Sandista!...but a very good one, indeed), and so with Bob Dylan on Ideology (doesn't the melody of the verse remind you of some Dylan songs? I can't remember which, but I am quite certain), but, all of these obvious references apart, what is important is the quality of the record:songs where both music and words are on the same level (and it was not so on his previous SO-much-agit prop songs), with beautiful lyrics full of wit and politics (though sometimes there is a little bit too much propaganda in it).
Moreover there are realy few people who are able to be as funny and at athe same time socially aware as Billy Bragg is on this LP. I haven't convinced you? Check this.

Greetings To The New Brunette (Shirley)

Shirley,
it's quite exciting to be sleeping here in this new room
Shirley,
you're my reason to get out of bed before noon
Shirley,
you know when we sat out on the fire escape talking
Shirley,
what did you say about running before we were walking
Sometimes when we're as close as this
It's like we're in a dream
How can you lie there and think of England
When you don't even know who's in the team
Shirley,
your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle
Shirley,
we are joined in the ideological cuddle
I'm celebrating my love for you
With a pint of beer and a new tattoo
And if you haven't noticed yet
I'm more impressionable when my cement is wet
Politics and pregnancy
Are debated as we empty our glasses
And how I love those evening classes
Shirley,
you really know how to make a young man angry
Shirley,
can we get through the night without mentioning family
The people from your church agree
It's not much of a career
Trying the handles of parked cars
Whoops, there goes another year
Whoops, there goes another pint of beer
Here we are in our summer years
Living on icecream and chocolate kisses
Would the leaves fall from the trees
If I was your old man and you were my missus
Shirley,
give my greetings to the new brunette.

Talking with the taxman about poetry (320k)

VA: Rainy Day

Here I am, back after a while, with a very rare 1983 record: Rainy Day, a brief compilation with cover versions of alternative classics (and not) played by members of the Paisley Underground like: The Bangles' Susanna Hoffs, Game Theory's Michael Quercio, Dream Syndicate's Kendra Smith, and Rain Parade's David Roback.
I invite all of you who love this rock scene to get it, also because this disc is really hard to find (I do not know if someone has edited it after Rough Trade did in 1984..but I have serious doubts about it), and because...well, take a loot at the tracklist:

1. I'll Keep It With Mine (Dylan)
2. John Riley (Gibson/Neff/Belamonte)
3. Flying On The Ground Is Wrong (Young)
4. Sloop John B. (traditional)
5. Soon Be Home (Townshend)
6. Holocaust (Chilton)
7. On The Way Home (Young)
8. I'll Be Your Mirror (Reed)
9. Rainy Day, Dream Away (Hendrix)

Rainy Day

Tom Verlaine: First solo album

Tom Verlaine became the indie myth with the first legendary LP of his Television, Marquee Moon. After their second LP the band split and he went on for a solo career started off with this homonymous album: nine songs that did not differ much from his previous band's material, yet they are a good promise for his solo career (as some people might have wondered if he had been able to be such a good songwriter without his past comrades at his side).
And for those who love The Velvet Underground I recommend to listen to Breakin' my heart (in here you will also find the Kingdom come covered by David Bowie on Scary monsters).

More about Tom Verlaine:
See The Wonder
and Oldielyrics

Tom Verlaine

Arab Strap: Acoustic Request Show

Arab Strap just split and this is a post to remind everyone what a great band they have been, also on stage: 11 acoustic tracks from their last tour (and mind the last one...there is a peculiar ghost track hidden in there).
I really hope their future solo careers will be at this level (and for those who have't: go and listen to Malcolm Middleton's last LP, which really is one of my favourite musical work of these years).

Acoustic request show

Danny & Dusty: The lost weekend

Danny & Dusty were much more than the names could lead you to think: it was (on writing "team") Dream Syndicate's Steve Wynn and Green on red's Dan Stuart, plus Stuart's colleague on GOR Chris Cacavas, Long Ryders' Sid Griffin and Tom Steffen, and at last DS's drummer Dennis Duck.
The lost weekend was a collaboration of a couple days only, when all of these people met only "for the fun of it", delivering good-rocking pub songs for drunks and old timers (including a more than enjoyable version of Knockin' on heaven's door).
Many consider this some kind of a lost masterpiece (lost given the fact that it has not been re-released for a long time), and I do not completely agree with that because I still think that the Paisley Underground (the californian scene that included all the three of these musicians' bands) produced better than this (Days of wine and roses and State of our union come to mind...), but still The lost weekend does not deserve to be left in the drawer of some label forever because it is a collection of songs that many Paisley underground Fans could truly appeciate, along with Neil Young fans (I think of Ragged glory) or Dylan's (specially if you like some of his slack material).

The lost weekend

Cha VanGaalen: Skelliconnection

Chad VanGaalen is a young and talented canadian artist, involved both in painting and musicmaking. He has just released this Album -Skelliconnection- on which he played all the instruments and where he shows the many sides of his music: soft-baladeering, folk-pop (the opening Sing me to sleep), lots of 60's references (the beautiful, stunning, and yet with simple chord sequence Graveyard that reminds me of Harvest/After the gold rush-era Neil young and first Belle & Sebastian, though the lyrics are more reminiscent of Smog), indie-rock, and more (like the electronic folk of Red hot drops).
On the whole Skelliconnection is an album with a lot of naiveté (in a good way) and one that is also able to surprise you quite often with its music shifts. There are not so many out there (and this is how I have decided to uploaded, while I usually do not post brand new stuff).
...and check out the Surprise link all you West Wing fans (if there are any in here).

For more info about him:
See his Myspace page (if you want to have a taste of his songs)
or Newmusiccanada
or the Eye Weekly (there's a nice article with his bio)

Skelliconnection

Track 11

Here is track 11 for those who could not extract it

Track 11

Robert Wyatt: EPs

I'm not a great Robert Wyatt fan, but this collection of EPs just takes my breath away: specially the first three EPs (songs 1-14), which are loaded with wonderful cover versions, one of which is Elvis Costello's magnificent Shipbuilding, playedeven better by Wyatt, but also with a is-this-really-it?-version of Neil Diamond's I'm a believer, and then Peter Gabriel's Biko among others. The fourth EP is a whole different matter, with the eerie sounds from The Animals Film, and the fifth is a series of remixes of songs from Wyatt's Shleep album.

(And check out the surprise link because it is big fun, trust me!)

INFO:
See Robert Wyatt on Wiki.
Look in here if you are looking for his solo discography.


This is big, so it's split two parts.

Part 1
Part 2