Music of '06

Since everyone is making their "top 10 albums of 2006" lists, I thought I'd join in. The only problem is, I only got eleven albums from this year and two of them were local bands that didn't so much as publish their music as burn CDs and give them to people. That being said, I'll make a nice list of albums I like without conforming to any silly predetermined set of numbers!

1. "The Crane Wife" by The Decemberists. Three movement songs based on Japanese poems? Twelve minute long epics about kidnapping and murder on a mysterious island? Civil War songs with wordplay on Stonewall Jackson? Yes on all accounts! The Decemberists hop around genres more than they usually do in this album with usually good results. The best part about them is that they're almost the only band that has me rushing to the dictionary while listening to songs.

2. "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood" By Neko Case. This entire album is carried by Neko Case's voice. It's kind of alternative countryish and it isn't something that I would ever see myself liking a lot, but her voice is one of the best out there. She's an incredible singer and a pretty good songwriter. The instruments kind of sit in the background and provide atmosphere and beat, but the album does not need any catchy hooks or verse/chorus/verse structure. Everything seems to work even though it abandons a lot of the general song format.

3. "Return To The Sea" by Islands. Fun, quirky pop. Lots of catchy music with fun yet semi-morbid lyrics. Its all fun and games with Islands, even when they're singing about the end of humanity.

4. "IBM 1401 a User's Manual" by Johann Johannsson. A modern classical album? I'm not really sure what the exact genre for this kind of stuff is, but it has lots of strings and no backbeat. The album opens with a really mournful phrase that was recorded way back in the sixties or seventies on one of the earliest IBM computers (hence the title). The phrase continues throughout the first song while an orchestra build up the music around it. The songs here are really great and emotional, but the album is plagued by the composers need to have a minute or two before and after almost all the songs were the music slowly gets louder and then slowly fades away. Even if you don't listen to the album you really ought to check out "The Sun's Gone Dim And The Sky's Turned Black" which is a really moving piece of music.

That is it! My recommended music from the year 2006. There were a couple other albums that I liked from this year, but they weren't really all that great. 2007 looks like it will be a fun year, with new Deerhoof, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, the inevitable Fiery Furnaces, the probable Decemberists and the likely Animal Collective, the pretty likely Feist and the Explosions in the Sky albums! Plus new bands I've never heard of!