girlpants’ stuff you should maybe listen to from the last year or so: mike!!!(!!!)

So I’m just going to pre­tend that my patho­log­ical inability to meet girl­pants dead­lines has a cer­tain charm to it, that I’m the blog­ging equiv­a­lent of fash­ion­ably late. I’m pretty sure Ben wants to fire me but that cor­po­rate fat-cat is gonna have to go through the union first. Haha yea take that you cor­po­rate fat-cat!

Um, here are my top ten records of 06. Nothing too shocking, but I’m def­i­nitely of the belief that it’s always a good year for music and this one was no excep­tion. I feel like fucking Alfred Russel Wal­lace here, but I too decided to do a par­allel list, inde­pen­dently of our flaxen-haired, Robbie Williams-loving poetess. But whereas Niina did other albums, I did–yup–anthropologists. Anthro­pology and music are my two great loves (and broads, I love the broads), and some­times they don’t seem all that dif­ferent to me. So here you go, enjoy.

Anouar Brahem — Le Voyage de Sahar
try: “Nuba“
Ele­gant, con­tem­pla­tive back­ground music, almost organ­i­cally com­plex when you listen closely, Le Voyage de Sahar is basi­cally an ambient record in dis­guise. With an array of gui­tars and his oud, Brahem flaw­lessly mixes middle eastern and clas­sical styles, coming up with a dis­tinct and uni­fied sound. Less an album of songs and more an elon­gated com­po­si­tion, Le Voyage is the most fully real­ized work I heard this year, hands down.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Claude Levi-Strauss. Both mas­ter­fully present a com­plex, inter­locking system that always refers back to a few basic prin­ci­ples. Plus, uh, both title their works in French.
[buy]

Helios — Eingya
try: “Paper Tiger“
Helios takes some poppy guitar fig­ures and simple drum beats, slips them a couple seda­tives and dresses them up in soft ambient swirls. This was a per­fect morning album, sleepy without being inert, radiant but not too bright.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Jose Limon. Dude effort­lessly inter­weaves the emo­tional and the­o­ret­ical in his ethno­graphic writ­ings, and in a sim­i­lair way Helios has crafted an album that dis­tinc­tively mixes con­ven­tional pop and sound­scape, cap­turing the imme­diacy of the former and the sub­tlety of the latter.
[buy]

Joanna Newsom — Ys
try: “Monkey & Bear“
With a more dis­ci­plined vocal delivery, winding song struc­tures and baroque orches­tra­tion cour­tesy of Van Dyke Parks, Newsom brought it, You Got Served style, to those who found her debut too spartan or abra­sive. But what really pushes Ys into top ten ter­ri­tory is the knotty, tex­tured lyri­cism, which sprawls across the songs in puns, vivid images and pecuiliar cou­plets, but never quite man­aging to lose the meter or mea­sure.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Lila Abu-Lughod. Female-centric in an under­stated sort of way, sit­u­ated within a folk nar­ra­tive tra­di­tion but intel­lec­tu­ally accom­plished and embroi­dered with pro­fes­sional sophis­ti­ca­tion (“do you know what this is, son? This is the panop­ticon”).
[buy]

Destroyer — Destroyer’s Rubies
try: “Rubies“
“The sketchy crowd shows me draw­ings, they’re alright.
An alter­nately dim and frightful waste.
Now come on honey let’s go out­side.
You dis­rupt the world’s dis­order just by virtue of your grace”

Best lyric of 2006? Quite pos­sibly, just edging out the sub­lime “my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.” I’m not the biggest fan of Bejar’s odd­ball song­writing or spastic vocals, but I found myself coming back to this again and again over the year. For me, the mark of a great album is always finding some­thing new, and on repeated lis­ten­ings Destroyer’s Rubies quite appro­pri­ately yields some real gems (eh? eh?).
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: James Clif­ford. Hyper-refelxive, icon­o­clastic, pre­oc­cu­pied with words and embodying a pos­sibly overblown sense of exper­i­men­talism.
[buy]

Phoenix — It’s Never Been Like That
try: “Long Dis­tance Call“
Another mark of a great album is that you can put it on in the car and feel cool enough to roll your window down and pick up chicks at a stop­light. At their best, Phoenix emit pre­cisely this kind of rakish charm. They are the prover­bial boys back in town, for­mal­ists with a preter­nat­u­rally light touch, not unlike the Exploding Hearts or even, dis­tantly, the Mag­netic Fields. Stu­pidly fun and catchy. Who knew they were french?
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Mar­shall Sahlins. A con­sum­mate faker who, besides the orig­i­nals, did it better than anyone else.
[buy]

The Twi­light Sad — Twi­light Sad EP
try: “That summer, at home I had become the invis­ible boy“
Ben just recently turned me on to this band, and sim­i­lairly, they were forceful enough to rocket half-way up this list with about 2 weeks left in ’06. So I’m not going to try and com­pete with his write-up; the shoegazer + crisper pro­duc­tion is right on the mark. The only thing I would add is that the singer’s thick Scot­tish accent lends an exoti­cism to an oth­er­whise painfully earnest vocal delivery. That might sound like a back-handed com­pli­ment, but the effect can be really moving. “That Summer, At Home…” gives me chills. And I haven’t gotten chills since like 2003.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Annelise Riles, who man­ages to make some gen­uinely anthro­po­log­ical insights on jet-setting cos­mopoli­tans (the last unex­plored tribe); in the same way The Twi­light Sad achieve a weird sort of authen­ticity in spite–or pos­sibly because of–their slick Max Richter sheen. Both make a virtue of the sat­u­rated milieu they’ve inher­ited, and in doing so come up with some­thing sub­stan­tively orig­inal.
[buy]

Belle and Sebas­tian — The Life Pur­suit
try: “White Collar Boy“
I didn’t think this would make my top ten, as it never really hung together as an album for me, but then I real­ized it mer­ited inclu­sion given the sheer bril­liance of the indi­vidual songs: the irre­sistible funk of “Sukie in the Grave­yard” (sorry Niina, but the bass gets too hyper­ac­tive to make it a CCR shuffle), the Rick­en­backer stroll of “Another Sunny Day,” and the elab­o­rately staged “White Collar Boy”-Meets-Girl set piece.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Karl Marx. Ok, not an anthro­pol­o­gist per se but B&S aren’t your average indie rock band either. Both are ven­er­ated mas­ters, con­stantly ref­er­enced and aped, and critics are for­ever trying to dif­fer­en­tiate their ear­lier stuff from their more “mature” work.
[buy]

TV on the Radio — Return to Cookie Moun­tain
try: “Hours“
These guys are unlike anyone else, no doubt about it, but ini­tially the whole “indie rock meets soulful bar­ber­shop quartet” thing was a little too gim­micky for me. I’m still not com­pletely sold on their sound, but when the abysmally titled Return to Cookie Moun­tain does get it right it momen­tarily redeems the glut of Brooklyn art-rock fag­gery, which is impor­tant I think. The Turn on the Bright Lights of 2006, and for good reason.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Michel Rolph-Trouillot. Both have voices (autho­rial, singing) that are deep, dark and rich, and both pro­duce work that has nothing and absolutely every­thing to do with race.
[buy]

Boards of Canada — Trans-Canada Highway
try: “Sky­liner“
It’s Boards of Canada, and Boards of Canada are still awe­some.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Arjun Appadurai. If you were to take the global ethnoscapes and flows that Appadurai so per­cep­tively describes and melt them down into one homoege­nous sub­stance the result would sound like “Sky­liner.” Both evoke a world that swirls, spills and splashes, but never suf­fo­cates the under­lying sense of order and move­ment.
[buy]

Par­en­thet­ical Girls — Safe as Houses
try: “One Father Another“
With Buzzing key­boards, oblig­a­tory avant-garde flour­ishes, and Zak Pennington’s manic vocals this is the album for those of us who didn’t feel enough pain in 2006 to really love Xiu Xiu. The #10 spot could have gone to any number of bands (how’s that for crit­ical zeal?), but Par­en­thet­ical Girls gets it because I’m a sucker for a nicely lay­ered motif, and Safe as Houses is all bodily fluids and a dis­tinctly sin­ister ado­les­cent sex­u­ality, like some deranged manga come to life.
Most like anthro­pol­o­gist: Renato Ros­aldo. Whether it’s the blood­lust of a head­hunter or a mother’s bitter resent­ment of her child, both men com­mune with a grief and rage not nor­mally in their realm of expe­ri­ence. It’s an uncanny, almost dis­turbing sort of empathy, and it makes for a great record and great anthro­pology.
[buy]