2006

The closer I get to the present, the harder it is for me to parse out a clear storyline to focus on.  Part of this is just the relative thinness of my collection; I've had fewer years to discover albums I'd want to hear, to find a way to get them used or otherwise cheaply, etc.  Part of this is that the 'important' bands and albums aren't quite so clear.  I mean, at the time, people genuinely thought that footnote-band Ned's Atomic Dustbin were the future of British rock.  So there are no doubt some important bands/albums I'm overlooking and not even noticing, a problem I don't have for, say, 1973, to anywhere near the same degree.  All of which is to say that 1) I'd appreciate any suggestions from readers over bands & albums I've overlooked or should make sure not to overlook (and here I give thanks to the 60% of my readership/3 people who gave me music I needed to not miss).  And 2) (and more immediately relevant) 2006 is kind of a mess where there's a fair bit going on resisting any kind of overarching narrative(s).

                Over in the UK, the Brit-pop revival is continuing apace.  There are a clutch of new bands seeking to blend the musical template of Blur with the laddish swagger of Oasis, in the mode of the late lamented Libertines.  Franz Ferdinand fit here, along with a clutch of other new acts, but by far the best are Arctic Monkeys, who stand out both with their superior lyrics (intelligent critique of young life, shades of The Streets) and a bubblegum-punk rush they borrow from Supergrass.  Derivative, but among the most promising debuts in a while.

                The revival is also fueled by some of the older leading lights as well.  Last year, Oasis had a mini-return to form, and this year members of the other two of 90s Brit-pop's Big Three also return.  Graham Coxon's new record is very much in the vein of his last one.  It's a bit more rocking, playing up the Who influences a bit more and sounding slightly less like Blur, but that's a change in proportions rather than ingredients.  Jarvis Cocker, on the other hand, fairly radically overhauls his approach, abandoning the synthy glam of Pulp for a far more classicist approach recalling solo John Lennon, both in the piano-driven big production sound and the acerbic lyrics.  It’s a good fit for the man, a way for him to age into a Randy Newman-type role as an acerbic master craftsman.

                Primal Scream, who never really went away, also have a new record this year, once again overhauling their sound.  Sounding almost like they're inspired by last year's B.R.M.C., the Scream join a wave of rootsier rockers this year.  For Primal Scream, this means that their Stones fetish resurfaces, mixed with more than a little 13th Floor Elevators-style psych, both of which, of course, are old favorites of the Scream.  Also looking back to classic rocking sounds are the Eagles of Death Metal, the grimy, glammy side project of Queens of the Stone Age.  They're Americans, but so arch and winking in their rocking that it'd be easy to mistake them for Brits.  Not nearly as rootsy as Primal Scream, but they fit well together out of a shared love of Stones-style dangerous-style rock & roll.  Another side project, Jack White's Raconteurs are roots-rocking like Primal Scream, but sound a bit less derivative.  White also sounds positively liberated from the increasingly tight constraints of the White Stripes, able to play up a more rambunctious pop-rock side.

                Although while we're on the subject of looking back to the classic rock days, metal has been starting to catch my attention again of late as bands regain interest in the genre's more 70s virtues, as opposed to the focus on juvenile 'brutality' of death metal.  Some of these bands, like Wolfmother, are pretty much just revivalism, though I can't hate a band that loves Mountain and Sabbath this much.  More interesting, though, are the band who have become probably the biggest metal band of their era, Atlanta's Mastodon.  They were already sounding decidedly hard-prog last time out, but this time they play up their more contemporary metal influences.  I don't love those death-metal influences, but it does make them sound like more than just revivalism.

Turning to the much less hard-rocking world of folk and folk-rock, this is the first year I have stuff from Boston-based singer songwriter Andrew Mitchell.  Like the early Mountain Goats, it's 4-track mostly solo guitar stuff, but with an impressive amount of sonic playfulness and light psychedelia that Darinelle lacks.  But among artists I'm not related to, the Avett Brothers continue on their fairly traditional bluegrass-based sounds, while Band of Horses carry the flag for more electric guitar-based roots indie.  They sound a lot like My Morning Jacket did, just before they set sail for more experimental waters, with a dash of Neil Young-style guitar crunch.

The Decemberists, meanwhile, make a big step forward with their full-on embrace of a sound that owes a lot to Jethro Tull circa Thick As A Brick.  Like that album, The Crane Wife doesn't quite tell a coherent story, but hangs together well in a progressive folk-pop sound.  And as I mentioned before, I'm just thrilled to have a Tull-influenced band out there.  Various New Pornographers are also moving away from folk-pop, continuing their last group album's move into more art-rock territory.  Dan Bejar has always been the New Pornographer bringing the art-glam elements, so it's hardly surprising that this year's Destroyer album is in the same Bowie-Roxy territory, though not as catchy as either of his idols.  More surprising is Neko Case, who made her name pre-New Pornos as an alt-country crooner.  It seems that Bejar's rubbed off on her, as she's considerably less rootsy on her return to her solo career.  Not glammy at all, though.  Case is more like post-folk Joni Mitchell, or maybe Aimee Mann, all carefully-considered lyrics and moody piano-driven sophisticated soft rock.

Among the folk-rock vets, Tom Petty hasn't sounded this rootsy perhaps ever in his career.  On the one hand, it makes him sound even more like the 60s survivor he's always wanted to be, but on the other hand, it also makes him sound sympatico to indie-rock's own increasing interest in roots sounds.  Actual 60s survivor Dylan, on the other hand, sounds a lot more lively than Petty.  Dylan's comeback is really pretty remarkable.  He's not churning out albums at the fastest clip, but the Time Out of Mind through Modern Times run is his best since at least the one ending with Street Legal, but probably even earlier.  Modern Times sounds a lot like Love & Theft, but Dylan’s starting to drift back into long-form song construction, which of course is a thrill to hear.

Neil Young is also quite lively this year, his anti-Bush ire driving him to the most energetic he's been since his mid-90s grunge period.  It also keeps with the trend of the 00s being a milder version of his eccentric 80s, this time grafting a children's choir onto his classic Crazy Horse sound.  None of these records are among Young's finest, but Living With War is probably the best, the anti-war anger making him at times preachy, but also fantastically engaged.

Young in interviews would lament that so few of the younger bands were engaging in politics and anti-war protests.  It's not surprising, though, that Young disciples and sometime backing band Pearl Jam are among the political ones.  Much like Oasis's album last year, Pearl Jam's new album feels like a comeback.  The anti-war songs are a damn sight better than the limp "Bushleaguer" on their last one, driven not by sloganeering but by trying to express the anger, fear, and loss of losing loved ones to the war.  It's bot a lot more subtle and more impressive.  Musically, they're a lot more aggressive and punk/hardcore-influenced than they'd ever been, even if their early experimental streak remains dormant.  On the other hand, Vedder's singing has improved dramatically since those early days.  His voice itself has always been pretty great, but he's learned enough restraint to credibly sing soul, and I don't have a higher compliment for a singer than that.  "Come Back" may be a rewrite of "I've Been Loving You," but it's a great rewrite.

Other returning 90s acts are, much like last year, struggling with the limits of their signature sounds.  Built to Spill try the same approach Daft Punk did, roughing up a previously meticulously calculated sound in an effort to inject some sponenaity.  That they succeed where Daft Punk stumble probably says something about their respective genres; grungy rock is a better fit for off-the-cuff improvisation than house music.  The Flaming Lips similarly struggle with how to move forward from a meticulously orchestrated sound with more mixed results.  Tracks like "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion" and "Mr. Ambulance Driver" continue the "Pet Sounds with a lyrical focus on the precious and fragile nature of life" approach, but it's beginning to sound like formula.  Sub-Prince synth-funk doesn't offer a great way forward, but much better are some of the side two tracks, where they remember how they used to be  sloppy noisy garage psych prog band.  It wasn't obvious at the time, but probably should have been that this was the Lips' way forward.

Yo La Tengo, are a band probably one that I should have said more about in this project, as at the time in the late 90s they were considered one of the Big Two of indie-rock, and they certainly played their share in shaping the turn-of-the-millennium indie-soft-rock sound.  But they’re just so consistent that it’s hard to say too much.  This year, however, they’re worth noting insofar as they manage to avoid the trap of consistency that a lot of other bands have, adding and retweaking their sound just enough to sound fresh surprisingly late in their career.  Basically they’re adding more 70s AM gold to their folk-rock/drone approach, which both makes them sound more Belle & Sebastian-like (so more like their followers) and fresher than a 20 year old band would normally be.  Sonic Youth, on the other hand, are of similar vintage and are showing their age.  Much like the Stones at a similar point in their career, they’re just so comfortable with their signature sound that they can churn it out somewhat effortlessly; they’re very good at it, but it’s just not as exciting as it used to be.  This year’s Rather Ripped was acclaimed as a return to form after years of messing around, but it’s their All That You Can’t Leave Behind or Voodoo Lounge: a less-than-forward-looking return to a classic sound without the spark of the classic records.

Good stuff among the newer bands this year, though.  The Hold Steady and TV on the Radio both surpass their earlier stuff.  For the Hold Steady, this might just be the peak of their Springsteen-Hüskers-Thin Lizzy mixture.  The earlier records didn’t have the same immediacy, and the later ones star start to sound like formula.  TV on the Radio won’t have that problem for at least a couple more albums, and have their big breakthrough this year.  It’s not really surprising that Bowie guests, as they really sound like heirs to the progressive-techno-soul sound of Bowie’s Berlin period here, moving past the more contemporary Radiohead comparisons I tagged them with last time.  But both they and Radiohead certainly overlap a lot in their love of Bowie’s Berlin period.

                Somewhat surprisingly, I don’t hear a lot of Bowie in LCD Soundsystem, a band otherwise very interested in mechanical danceable sounds from the late 70s and early 80s.  This year, we’ve got a gap-filling odds & sods/remix collection from them, but that and a new !!! album are about all we have from dance-punk, a genre that’s just about over now (LCD Soundsystem’s later records excepted).  In its place is a more organic fusion of house/dance rhythms and rock music, exemplified by Phoenix.  Last time we heard from them, their Daft Punk-indie-soft rock fusion was pretty clumsy, but this year they’ve stripped out the more yacht-rocky elements, and more seamlessly integrated the dance beats with a punk-pop approach that actually sounds a lot like Graham Coxon’s solo stuff.  So they’ve basically gotten their breakthrough sound down here, an album prior to their actual breakthrough.  (Also, in a true sign that this is a sound of the moment, NYC hype-babies/trend chasers the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are also moving in that direction).

                Here’s probably a good point to mention Beck’s much better second comeback record.  Apparently Guero was a relative cast-off, started after work began on The Information and released before The Information was completed.  And it shows in comparing the records.  Guero could sound a bit formula, but The Information sounds like a record that real care was put into, retaining both the hip-hop elements of Beck’s earlier sound and a bit of the lessons learned from his singer-songwriter interregnum.  His best since Mutations, and probably The Information most recalls a more upbeat version of that record.

                Among the hip-hoppers, it’s a year dominated by producer records, at least in the underground.  DJ Shadow is back, although he remains in the long shadow cast by Endtroducing…  I used to talk about the Beck/Shadow sound, but here Shadow sounds more indebted to Beck than the other way around.  Another producer of similar vintage, Dan the Automator returns from a long (by producer standards) absence with a just-ok mixtape.  I really don’t know what happened to Automator, but he faded quickly.

                Much better are some of the newer kids.  Sadly, Donuts is the last new release from J. Dilla (who completed it on his deathbed), but it’s pretty astonishing.  A classic almost-entirely-vocal-free beats record, but one that’s fantastically inventive, blending old Motown sounds with the space-rap of the late 90s and the more hazy contemporary sounds of his peers like Madlib and Doom.  It’s no surprise that rappers will borrow these songs as their backing tracks for years to come.  Also among the newer producers, Dangermouse continues to show his way with hip-hop’s prominent eccentrics.  There’s a forgettable Dangerdoom follow-up EP, but more importantly (both artistically and commercially) is Dangermouse’s collaborative project with Cee-Lo, Gnarls Barkley.  It’s nice to see Cee-Lo get some mainstream exposure (and “Crazy” probably was summer jam ’06), and he continues his steady move away from rapping to focus primarily on singing.  This is a surprisingly rock album, though, covering the Violent Femmes and generally sounding less beat-heavy than either Cee-Lo or Dangermouse’s earlier work.

                The rapper-driven projects are somewhat less successful this year.  Talib Kweli is among the best, but that’s largely because he’s collaborating with a single hot producer (Madlib).  But it’s the best we’ve heard form Kweli since at least his first post-Black Star album, with interesting & engaging beats that don’t sound quite so chart-hungry.  It’s nice to hear Kweli back in the underground, with a beatmaker taking things seriously.  Sadly, the same cannot be said for his old Black Star partner, Mos Def, whose album this year just sounds cast-off.  The New Danger was a bit of a mess, but to the degree it was a failure, it was a failure of ambition.  True Magic couldn’t even be bothered to have a cover (it was released in a clear, liner-free CD case).  The music sounds similarly cast-off.  A few keepers, but a lot of this just sounds like Def is eager to get back to acting.  Outkast are similarly disappointing, limping to the finish line with the almost-unheard soundtrack to their almost-unseen Idlewild film.  All I’ve heard is the single, and it hasn’t driven me to seek out more.  The Coup are better, but not groundbreaking or anything.  It’s more of the same from them, which is surprising in an environment where you’d think the political atmosphere would be far more conducive to agit-prop than the relatively benign Clinton years.

                On the other hand, there are a couple of keepers among the non-producer-driven records.  Ghostface Killah makes the first Wu-Tang project worth getting excited about in years, but even more impressive are the Roots.  They probably come with an asterisk on the non-producer-driven bit, as, by virtue of being a proper band, their producers have the more backseat role of rock producers, as opposed to hip-hop producers, who are not only producer & recording engineer, but also bandleader & composer of music.  Regardless, this is probably the Roots’ masterpiece, hitting hard and showing off their experimental side, with the ambition and sense of serious heft of Phrenology, but with a much better album flow.

                Finally worth mentioning is the debut of K’Naan.  In a sense, an artist like K’Naan was inevitable.  Hip-hop, like rock & roll or funk, originated in the US, was picked up globally, and started getting refracted back in new, mutated forms.  It’s probably not surprising that this started, in hip-hop as in rock & roll, in the UK, given the two states’ historical links and similar issues of large underclasses.  But it was just as inevitable that someone like K’Naan in a place like Somalia would take a musical form that emerged out of dealing with hard times and adapt it to their own hard times.  It’s probably also inevitable that such an artist would have a bit of a chip on his shoulder comparing the street life of US cities to the even worse experience of Mogadishu.  But inevitability aside, K’Naan is fantastic, a clever humanistic rapper with a decidedly unique perspective, both in his subject matter and his approach to the core techniques of rapping & flow.

Song of the Year:  Jarvis Cocker – “Running the World”  A vicious (and far too obscene for radio) excoriation of neoliberalism that harnesses all the bile Cocker can bring (which is, of course, a lot).  An order of magnitude better than any other song this year.  Calling it a protest song seems a bit limiting, as its scope is a condemnation of an entire morally (and increasingly literally) bankrupt variety of capitalism, but it's the best protest song I've heaed in awhile.  Fitting, then, that it's the closing credits song of the greatest sciencie fiction film since Blade Runner (the stunning Children of Men).

Album of the Year:  The Roots – Game Theory.  Ok, so this one slipped my mind when I said Ambush was my favorite hip-hop release since 2004.  But this is the Roots’ greatest album, not only as innovative as Phrenology (though subtler), but flowing into a single magnificent song-suite. 

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Mastodon.  Blood Mountain has long been my least favorite of their albums, but it might just be poorly-sequenced.  Certainly there are a bunch of excellent metallic rockers here. 

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation: Carbon/Silicon.  I remember being very excited about Mick Jones’ comeback at the time.  It was more Clash-affiliated material, it had a playfully inventive streak that updated the old Big Audio Dynamite template, and Mick Jones was among the first major artists to experiment with releasing his albums free on the internet.  But time has not been kind.  Jones’ melodic sense remains intact, but his voice is shot, and apart from “The News” and “Really The Blues,” the experimentation sounds ever so slightly pro-forma.  Still, it’s nice to have an  active Clash-man (and since Jones’ retreat from the spotlight coincided with Strummer’s stepping forward, it seems there can be only one at a time

Album List

Andrew Mitchell - Guitar 8/2006

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Arctic Monkeys - Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?/Leave Before The Lights Come On

Automator - Dan The Automator Presents 2K7 (The Tracks)

B.R.M.C. - Misc.

Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

Beck - The Information

Belle & Sebastian - Misc.

Black Uhuru - Black Sounds of Freedom (Bonus Tracks)

Bob Dylan - Modern Times

Bob Dylan - Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs

Built To Spill - You In Reverse

Carbon/Silicon - Misc.

Carbon/Silicon - The Last Post

Cracker - Greatest Hits Redux

Dangerdoom - Occult Hymn

Del McCoury - Songwriting Sampler

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies

DJ Shadow - The Outsider

Eagles Of Death Metal - Death By Sexy...

Eels - Misc.

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere

Graham Coxon - Love Travels At Illegal Speeds

Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis

Jay Dee aka J Dilla - Donuts

John Legend - Once Again

K'naan - The Dusty Foot Philosopher

LCD Soundsystem - 1.89791666666667

LCD Soundsystem - Introns

Lyres - Happy Now…

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

Merle Haggard - HAG: The Best Of Merle Haggard

Mission Of Burma - The Obliterati

Mos Def - True Magic

Neil Young - Living With War

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

Outkast - Misc.

Pearl Jam - A Pearl Jam Christmas

Pearl Jam - Christmas Singles

Pearl Jam - Live At Easy Street

Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam

Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That

Primal Scream - Riot City Blues

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Rodrigo y Gabriela

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped

Talib Kweli - Liberation

The Avett Brothers - The Gleam

The Coup - Pick A Bigger Weapon

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics

The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls In America

The Lyres - Turban Renewal - A Tribute To Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs

The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers

The Roots - Game Theory

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Highway Companion

TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain

Willie Colón - Lo Mato

Wolfmother - Wolfmother

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass