Girlpants’ Egregious Declarations of the Top Things of 2006: Niina!!!!!!!!!!1

I know life’s tough for you greasep­a­ntsters. I know I’d be dev­as­tated if I were forced to wander the infernal waste­lands of var­ious pop­mu­sics with no calming, Virgil-like guide such as us here at Gary­Bar­low­pants. But you know, things are tough for us too — I’m sure you read all about our little banana-shaped problem in the pre­vious post. (If you read this, banana, I flip­ping need my copy of The Sound and the Fury back.)

Sen­tient fruit aside, 2006 was a weird year. There was nothing that stood out in the way that 2005’s TMG release The Sunset Tree, my ex-post-facto guilty plea­sure Patrick Wolf’s Wind in the Wires, or even Roisin Murphy’s Ruby Blue stood out. Instead, in com­piling the list of my per­sonal most-played of the year, I encoun­tered many strange musical par­al­lels. So I’m gonna refrain from ordering this list. Instead, I’m going to do write-ups of some albums I think are notable, and then align them with their musical par­al­lels, also notable. This list is by no means all-encompassing of 2006 releases – it’s just that I can’t be the bearer of that kind of respon­si­bility. So… take that, con­ven­tion. Catch you on the flip side.

Cibelle, The Shine of Dried Elec­tric Leaves
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “Mad Man Song” feat. Spleen
Ok, so I talked the track “London, London” up back in the summer, but the rest of this album also sparkles. “Mad Man Song,” which sounds like a col­lage of found sounds, and the mar­velously catchy “Minha Neguinha” and its buildup of ele­ments (dis­tant, heard-across-the-plain guitar riffs; what sounds like train whis­tles) are also total plat­inum high­lights for me (ahaha). Where 2005 was an excel­lent year for var­ious hip-hop goodies, 2006 in turn was a good year for pre­cisely Cibelle’s kind of under­stated Trop­i­calia (non-)pop. This won­derful timing, com­bined with the album’s fan­tastic pro­duc­tion and the gamut of under­stated guest stars, drove Shine right into my favorites. Also worth noting are tracks like “Train Sta­tion” which is decid­edly un-samba, and when Cibelle threatens to let it rip along with the guitar riff, the song even verges on rockish for a moment. All in all the first half of the album is more dancey, more playful, and more Bellini-on-a-sunny-morning-in-Barcelona… but the second half of the album is way more darkly atmos­pheric. And hey, in 2006 there cer­tainly were times for both.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Juana Molina, Son, via melodic, loopy Latin Amer­ican influ­ence. It was a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to write about Cibelle, since this album is so com­plex and beau­tiful. Notable track: “Malherido”.)

Lily Allen, Alright, Still
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “Knock ‘Em Out”
I so did not want to like this album – c’mon, the lady’s younger than I am and already an erst­while internet phenom AND a pop­star in Britain. But there is no denying that this is a pop gem. Granted, “Knock ‘Em Out” with its snarky Brit-talk verses and clunky four-four beat bears an uncanny resem­blance to catchier Streets mate­rial (uh, it’s basi­cally the girly answer to “Fit But You Know It”), but as we all know, the Streets didn’t rule lately, so someone had to do it. Then just as you finish being annoyed/amused by this com­par­ison, you play the rest of the album and you find that songs like “Not Big” and “LDN” have irre­sistible sing-along cho­ruses! Yes! And “Friday Night,” even though it’s totally in minor key, is totally upbeat and fun. Pretty much this is a per­fect album for get­ting ready to go out… which is some­thing I did a lot in 2006.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Robbie Williams, Rudebox, via snarky Britpop. God, how I rocked this album. Also a good Friday night album with a sense of humor. Notable track: “Rudebox.”)

The Knife, Silent Shout
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “One Hit”
Sure I was late on the Knife train, but I fell in love with Karen Dreijer Andersson’s voice in 2005 on the Röyk­sopp track “What Else Is There” (from the mar­velous The Under­standing). Silent Shout, with her brother Olaf, is a gor­geous album, and nei­ther her voice nor the music ever really break free of the con­stant, melodic ten­sion – it refuses to go over the top and per­haps it’s just this that appeals about it. Silent Shout’s mood is darkish and odd, both musi­cally and lyri­cally. Its lyrics often com­ple­ment this unset­tling mood already estab­lished with sprawling synth lines (see “Forest Fam­i­lies,” where Karen sings “we had a com­mu­nist in the family / I had to wear a mask”). But the album isn’t without a sense of whimsy – the track “One Hit,” for instance, boasts a repeating chorus line of vocoder-manipulated Karens saying “how how how how”, which, at least in Finnish, is close to a dog-barking noise (“hau”). But really, I’ve already talked too long – this album has more than received its props on the blo­gos­phere so I’ll leave the rest to the better writers.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Plan­ning­torock, Have It All, via bizarro art-rock. PTR keeps the masks and weird­ness of The Knife, but turns the whimsy factor way up. Notable track: “Bolton Wanderer.”)

Guille­mots, From the Cliffs EP
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “Trains to Brazil”
Merely the smooth tran­si­tion from the schmaltzy 39-second opener “Sake” to the mon­ster won­derful “Trains to Brazil” merits this EP’s inclu­sion in my favorites of 2006. And even though Fyfe Dan­ger­field seems to love to channel sev­en­ties rockers in his vocals on this album (whoa 3 min­utes into “Over the Stairs,” Robert Plant much?), I can’t fault him – the excel­lent musi­cians behind him make it more than pos­sible. Thanks to Dangerfield’s soaring vocals and to Greig Stewart, MC Lord Magrão, and oh the double bass of the gor­geous Aris­taz­abal Hawkes, this EP has the range of an album. From the vaguely reggae beats of “Go Away” to the solemn piano line of “My Chosen One,” the EP delivers the beau­tiful side of all moods. “So bring me mon­sters,” he sings later in “Over the Stairs,” the EP’s longest track, “and I will slay them.” Hey dude, with the fairy­tale fan­tastic way this EP plays out, I believe you.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 EP: The Moun­tain Goats, Babylon Springs, via estab­lished, inter­esting musical density/unity in a short release. This EP took a moment to grow on me, but when it did, it stuck. Notable track: “Alibi.” Holy crap.)

Destroyer, Destroyer’s Rubies
[site][label][myspace]
This, too, was a strange one for me. I dug on Destroyer’s pre­vious work okay thanks to Ben, but this album kind of caught me off guard. I have to say that the thing that appeals to me the most is that beyond every­thing he’s just such a great song­writer, and he high­lights it with these moments in the songs where every­thing else quiets down. It’s the song equiv­a­lent of the emphatic Shake­spearean cou­plet: dis­tilling every­thing to that one piv­otal sequence in the piece that sin­gu­larly draws the audience’s atten­tion to a few lines of poetry. (Yeah, I just made that com­par­ison. But you get it, right Grokpants, you’re smart.) Anyhow, this is a hott disc (ahahah), and I spun it many a time in 2006 (and by that I mean I played it on my com­puter, because I am not in fact a jockey of discs).
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, The Let­ting Go, via melodic singer-songwriter stuff [bonus points for my favorite Faun Fables member Dawn on incon­gruous but somehow still lovely backup vocals]. Notable track: “Wai”.)

Grizzly Bear, Yellow House
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “Lul­labye”
Easily one of the most musi­cally com­plex and inter­esting albums of 2006, and also (I sus­pect) one of the most enduring of my list. Grizzly Bear don’t suffer from no sopho­more slump here. Instead, they seize the salmon from the River of Music and they pro­ceed to eat the heck out of it while playing through ten unique, fine-tuned tracks of pure har­monic good­ness. There’s the req­ui­site (read: trendy in 2006) 60’s pop throw­back (“Knife”); there’s the sub­dued apoc­a­lypse of “Lul­labye” and the lamenting folk gui­tars and wistful back­ground whistling of “Plans”. Basi­cally, none of the tracks on the album go wrong, and they all fit together beau­ti­fully.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Tunng, Com­ments of the Inner Chorus, via melodic, under­stated, at times haunting, at times lus­cious music. Notable track… yeah, see Ben’s review.)

Final Fan­tasy, He Poos Clouds
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “This Lamb Sells Condos“
Ok, the title aside, this is a cool and inno­v­a­tive album. Owen Pallett’s just so endear­ingly strange, and he’s got a really earnest voice – most of the time there is no pre­ten­tious Xiu Xiu war­bling or falsetto (not that I dis­like Xiu Xiu war­bling — when Xiu Xiu does it). He just sings. And that’s prob­ably what keeps this album from falling apart – aside from his voice, it’s got a whole mess of things going on, as Pal­lett is a multi-instrumentalist of the finest order. This much is evi­dent on He Poos Clouds (though I still hate the name): the strings on the album soar above every­thing while the piano plinks away, irrev­erent, and some­times it seems both are doing dif­ferent things — but then the voice unites them… some­times with some rather bizarre things. (Just listen to the words of “This Lamb Sells Condos,” with its chil­drens’ chorus and twin­kling piano line.) Also, my room­mate just screamed at me for lis­tening to the title track. (“WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?” “Final Fan­tasy. I’m reviewing 2006 music. Leave me alone.” “ANYONE WHO CALLS HIMSELF FINAL FANTASY SHOULD BE [cen­sored for fear of law­suit]!”) So basi­cally it deserves to be on this list.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Joanna Newsom, Ys, via wacky uses of clas­sical instru­ments, and for pos­sible theme-albumdom. But it is an album that requires a top-to-bottom listen, so I refuse to point to a track.)

Man Man, Six Demon Bag
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “Van Helsing Boombox”
Speaking of 2006 albums that annoyed room­mates, one of the ear­liest albums I lis­tened to repet­i­tively last year, to the cha­grin of insom­niac and my then-roommate Lauren, was Man Man’s Six Demon Bag. I can’t help it. I love the accor­dion. It’s in my blood. Sorry for waxing anec­dotal, but my mother once almost learned the accor­dion, until my grand­fa­ther traded the instru­ment away in a card game or some­thing. They were circus people, I think. Anyway, most of the songs on this album have such a drunk and bois­terous vibe that they just belong in a pirate ship. In fact, some of them have the sort of inherent musical back-and-forth motion that when lis­tening, one is reminded of a ship bob­bing along on the waves (“Spider Cider”). And although some of the album is unde­ni­ably gim­micky (“Eng­wish Bwudd”), other songs like “Van Helsing Boombox” tone it down and show off the band’s musi­cian­ship.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: Beirut, Gulag Orkestar, via Eastern-European string-things and other sun­dries. This album is at its best when played straight through because there is a dis­tinct mood throughout — some of the tracks might get a bit lost by them­selves. Notable track: the beau­tiful “Post­cards From Italy”, which totally shines by itself.)

Belle and Sebas­tian, The Life Pur­suit
[site][label][myspace]
Try: “Sukie in the Grave­yard” from Ben’s post
Well, the B-Keeper’s already got this one, so read his blurb. But I thought I’d stick it in here. It was a great album, full of head-nod moments (the unde­ni­ably CCR-esque “Sukie in the Grave­yard”), and smile-hard-because-you-recognize-something moments, and rock-out-at-the-dance-club moments (“White Collar Boy” and “We Are the Sleepy­heads”). And only B&S could have pulled it off.
[buy]
(* Par­allel also-top-shelf 2006 album: TV On The Radio, Return To Cookie Moun­tain, via some­what uni­ver­sally revered 2006 releases that keep get­ting more inter­esting the more I play them [although the appeal of this one took a tad longer for me to realize]. Notable track, per­son­ally: “Hours.”)

In addi­tion, to make a nice easily gras­pable divisible-by-three number, a couple of albums with no musical par­al­lels but that I still rocked from time to time:

• CSS, CSS (youthful, dance­able, unapolo­getic, and fun. Had I liked the Pipettes album more, I would have par­al­leled these two, but CSS is far supe­rior in atti­tude and charm).

• Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped (dirty good rock music. I wasn’t ever even a huge Sonic Youth fan but this is a great album.)

• Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope (I guess this is her most “acces­sible” album, but it’s full enough with piano kook that it should keep even the 11:11 and Soviet Kitsch fans happy.)

So that’s that! Mike and Joel, let ‘er rip.