Decade postmortem: 2006

My original list:

1. Cat Power, The Greatest
2. Joanna Newsom, Ys
3. Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
4. Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
5. Ali Farka Touré, Savane
6. Camille, Le Fil
7. Beyoncé, B’Day
8. Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope
9. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
10. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain

There wasn’t a huge amount to choose from in 2006, at least if you were looking in the usual places. The top sellers were High School Musical, Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood, Nickelback, Justin Timerlake and James Blunt. The Pazz and Jop winners were Dylan, TV on the Radio, Ghostface Killah, the Hold Steady and Gnarls Barkley, followed by Arctic Monkeys, Clipse, Neko Case, Joanna Newsom and a Tom Waits miscellany.

I liked some of those, but not all, and looking back I’m not overwhelmed with feeling for the music of 2006. I stand by The Greatest; never been a huge Cat Power fan but this one really got under my skin, and despite my initial ambivalence it remains very powerful. Beyond that there are a lot of decent records but not many killers. Joanna Newsom only came alive for me in concert, and anyway The Milk-Eyed Mender is more convincing. So I’m moving that down. Arctic Monkeys feels like a blip now, and aside from “Crazy,” Gnarls Barkley is more silly than great.

Other than The Greatest, the ones that hold up the best, in my view, are Camille, Ali Farka Touré and Grizzly Bear, so they’re all getting bumped up. I’m adding Justin Timberlake, which I’m not sure why I omitted three years ago, since I liked it then, too; it’s still dazzling, and while it doesn’t take itself seriously enough to really be called “visionary,” it certainly is futuristic. The other addition is Beirut, which now looks like a harbinger of the kitchen-sink multi-culti direction that indie rock was starting to go in, and Gulag Orkestar sums up the aesthetic with grace.

More comments: Camille’s Le Fil is an unrecognized masterpiece, a set of amazingly inventive vocal variations, Savane is spellbinding as Ali Farke Touré’s swan song (he died in early 2006), and Regina Spektor sounds pretty darn near perfection; Beyoncé is less strong but still fun enough to include.

Interesting that my original top 5 didn’t fare as well as the bottom 5. Why? No idea. Theories/challenges/rebuttals welcome.

So, here’s 2006 revised:

1. Cat Power, The Greatest
2. Camille, Le Fil
3. Ali Farka Touré, Savane
4. Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/LoveSounds
5. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
6. Beirut, Gulag Orkestar
7. Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope
8. Joanna Newsom, Ys
9. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
10. Beyoncé, B’Day

Buncha ladies. That’s good.

❧

My postmortems of 2007 and 2008 are coming next. I expect there will be less revision there since they’re more recent, but who knows. You can see my previous entries below, or, for those who are really lazy, here: 2000 and 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 and 2005.

(And 2009 is on its way, eventually.)

Decade postmortem: 2003

My original list:

1. Sparks, Lil’ Beethoven
2. Tall Dwarfs, The Sky Above, the Mud Below
3. Shins, Chutes Too Narrow
4. Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
5. Kings of Leon, Youth & Young Manhood
6. Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It in People
7. Outkast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
8. Warren Zanes, Memory Girls
9. The High Strung, These Are Good Times
10. Grandaddy, Sumday

The big releases in 2003 were Outkast, Norah Jones, 50 Cent, Beyoncé, Linkin Park and Evanescence. The ones that turned up on the most critics’ lists were Outkast, the White Stripes (Elephant), Fountains of Wayne, Radiohead (Hail to the Thief), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Shins.

2003 was a pretty great year for pop singles. There was “Hey Ya!” and “In da Club,” perhaps the two greatest hip-hop/pop songs ever. (And I mean pop: Not talking about “Straight Outta Compton” here.) It was also the year of “Crazy in Love,” the greatest of whatever that is. And “Seven Nation Army,” the White Stripes’ peak, the last moment before they began obsessively dismantling the formula they had created.

So with all of those wonderful pop hits, why did I pick Sparks and Tall Dwarfs? I don’t really know. To some degree I think it’s the contrary instinct: you know everybody else is going to pick the White Stripes and Outkast, so you go for a personal favorite and try to grab some cool points with something obscure. It’s kind of ridiculous, but everybody does it. Another reason is simply that you’re rating full albums, not singles.

And goddammit, Lil’ Beethoven really was the most entertaining album of the year for me. It’s full of bile and wit and stacked harmonies, with “classical” arrangements and the Sparks’ trademark opera-rock vocals (they did it before Queen), and the Mael brothers just ridicule everything they see: ostentatiously angry rock bands, the island of Ibiza, automatic phone hold-bots, “Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls.” There’s no real point to it, no major relevance. But neither was there any huge point to The Importance of Being Earnest, and you damn well better believe that that would have topped my list in 1895.

❧

Judging by some of my other choices, it seems that my mood in December 2003 was, “Fuck it, I feel like choosing these 10 albums right now, and I’m tired of thinking about it.” Call it PMS: pre makingalist syndrome. So Tall Dwarfs is good, but probably not No. 2 good. Warren Zanes and the High Strung, nah. Fountains of Wayne album has some nuggets but it’s no Utopia Parkway.

As for the other biggies, yes on 50 Cent and Beyoncé, both of which are so fantastic I really can’t account for their omission. Elephant also belongs here, bottom half. But I stand by my meh of Hail to the Thief, and while I think the Strokes’ second album is underrated, it’s not as great as, say, Grandaddy’s still-amazing Sumday. I don’t remember why I put Kings of Leon here, but I’m leaving it because I don’t have a good reason to take it off.

Revised:

1. Sparks, Lil’ Beethoven
2. 50 Cent, Get Rich or Die Tryin’
3. Grandaddy, Sumday
4. Shins, Chutes Too Narrow
5. Beyoncé, Dangerously in Love
6. Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It in People
7. White Stripes, Elephant
8. Outkast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
9. Tall Dwarfs, The Sky Above, the Mud Below
10. Kings of Leon, Youth & Young Manhood

I think that’s a pretty good list.

❧

Next ... 2004!!!

Best of 2006

ALBUMS

1. Cat Power, The Greatest
2. Joanna Newsom, Ys
3. Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
4. Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
5. Ali Farka Touré, Savane
6. Camille, Le Fil
7. Beyoncé, B’Day
8. Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope
9. Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
10. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain

THE NEXT 10

Johnny Cash, Personal File
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
Brand New, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
Tom Zé, Estudando o Pagode
Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar
M. Ward, Post-War
Psychic Ills, Early Violence
Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
Smokey Robinson, Timeless Love
Wolf Eyes, Human Animal

ALSO RECOMMENDED

The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
The Grates, Gravity Won’t Get You High
Beirut, Gulag Orkestar
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas
Karen Dalton, In My Own Time
Nellie McKay, Pretty Little Head
Liars, Drum’s Not Dead
Howe Gelb, ’Sno Angel Like You
Josh Ritter, The Animal Years
Man Man, Six Demon Bag
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones
Comets on Fire, Avatar
Camera Obscura, Let’s Get Out of This Country
Toumani Diabaté’s Symmetric Orchestra, Boulevard de l’Indépendance
Jolie Holland, Springtime Can Kill You
Beth Orton, Comfort of Strangers
Band of Horses, Everything All the Time
Little Willies, s/t
Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, The River in Reverse
Juana Molina, Son
Corinne Bailey Rae, s/t
Faun Fables, The Transit Rider
Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
Oxford Collapse, Remember the Night Parties
Susana Baca, Travesias
Bob Dylan, Modern Times
Bert Jansch, The Black Swan
Television Personalities, My Dark Places
Bound Stems, Appreciation Night
Hot Chip, The Warning
Maritime, We, the Vehicles
Candi Staton, His Hands
Jenny Lewis, Rabbit Fur Coat
Mono, You Are There
Tool, 10,000 Days
Destroyer, Destroyer’s Rubies
Oakley Hall, Gypsum Strings

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Watts Passage, The Magnetic Demonstration

SONGS/SINGLES

Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”
Nelly Furtado, “Promiscuous”
Rihanna, “SOS”
Beyoncé, “Irreplaceable”
Justin Timberlake, “My Love”
AFI, “Miss Murder”
Smokey Robinson, “I Love Your Face”
M. Ward, “Requiem”
Cat Power, “The Greatest”
Hot Chip, “And I Was a Boy From School”
Oxford Collapse, “Loser City”
Gwen Stefani, “Wind It Up”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Way Out”
Raconteurs, “Steady, As She Goes”
Corinne Bailey Rae, “Put Your Records On”

YES BUT 2005

Art Brut
Boris
Death Vessel
Dengue Fever
José González
Panic! at the Disco

YES BUT NO LP, ONLY EPs

Voxtrot

BEST LIVE ACT

Joanna Newsom

KIND OF DULL RECORD BUT GREAT LIVE

Figurines

MISUNDERESTIMATED

Ray LaMontagne
Keane

DISAPPOINTMENTS/MERELY OK

Sunn 0)))
Thom Yorke
Neko Case
Ray Davies
Grandaddy
John Legend

DON’T CARE

Christina Aguilera
Brazilian Girls
Scissor Sisters
Drive-By Truckers
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Umphrey’s McGee
CSS

WORST ALBUM OF 2006

Sergio Mendes, Timeless