Girlpants’ Top Tens of 2006: Ben!!

Maaaybe you’ve been won­dering where we’ve been. Here’s the short answer: GPHQ got put under some kind of shady CDC quar­an­tine because Joel left a half-eaten banana sit­ting on his desk and it achieved a degree of low-level sen­tience. They just bar­ri­caded us in the office with the thing and told us to call them when it was dead. Turns out it was some kind of banjo savant, and Mike con­sid­ered starting an all-banjo trav­eling band with it until he real­ized that a) he couldn’t travel, b) it had no oppos­able thumbs, and c) “Banjo Ban­dana” was a ter­rible band name. After that he just locked him­self in his office and didn’t come out for weeks. Not even to pee. Joel and Niina and I played Scrabble until we ran out of “e“s–I think Niina was covertly slip­ping them into her pants, but I have no proof. When the hunger really started to get to us we talked about making plans for drawing straws to see who would be eaten first, but we never got that far; Joel remem­bered the banana (who’d been slowly re-sorting our stack of 2006 promos alpha­bet­i­cally by bass player’s name–problematic when a large number of the bands lack bass players) and shoved it in his face. Need­less to say, we were all eating Taco Bell by eight that evening (except Niina, ’cause she don’t go near that shit).

When we’d recov­ered our wits and digested the masses of faux-Mexican food, nat­u­rally our thoughts turned to our dear readers. We knew what we had to do: half­heart­edly start assem­bling year-end lists. It was an arduous and ennui-filled process, but here we are. There’s not really any uni­fying theme to my list this year–it wasn’t par­tic­u­larly the year of any one genre, and there weren’t any trends that I really aggres­sively fol­lowed. Plus, the banana mis­placed at least half of my CDs. It was a good year for music from all over the map, though, and hope­fully this list reflects that. So hey, let’s go:

01. Helios — Eingya
Try: “Halving the Com­pass“
[site][label][myspace]
For a number one, this is a pretty laid back album, but really it’s that very placidity that’s made it my go-to record this year. It works both as active and pas­sive listening–one man band Keith Kenniff’s music is com­plex and lay­ered enough to stand up to close scrutiny, and calm and soothing enough to fade into the back­ground if you want it to. Some might crit­i­cise its melodies for a cer­tain wistful emo­tional trans­parency, but for me this works to trans­form the album into an exer­cise in careful opti­mism amidst a genre that often wal­lows in bleak­ness and melan­choly. For a record with no spoken words, it man­ages to speak vol­umes. [buy]

02. Belle & Sebas­tian — The Life Pur­suit
Try: “Sukie in the Grave­yard“
[site][label]
I can’t help but think that if this album had been released, oh, six months later in the year, it might have placed quite a lot higher on many of the big critics’ year-end lists. When I first heard it in November of 2005 I knew for sure it would make the next year’s top 10, but I had no idea it would stick around for the top 2. This is a record that doesn’t age, at least in the rel­a­tively ephemeral terms of pop music. It’s a risky thing to call an album that’s only a year old “time­less”, but if the band’s early work qual­i­fies, this one does too. Fur­ther­more, it’s a warning that Belle & Sebas­tian haven’t yet hit their apex, or per­haps that they’re about to hit another one. [buy]

03. Junior Boys — So This Is Goodbye
Try: “In the Morning“
[site][label][myspace]
When Last Exit came out I heard and liked “High Come Down”, lis­tened to the album once, and never lis­tened to it again. I’ll admit that I still haven’t, despite placing So This Is Goodbye at #3 on this year’s list. Why? Because I can’t stop lis­tening to “In the Morning”. It’s really that simple–for me, no other song released this year comes close to its pop per­fec­tion. That’s not to say that there aren’t other great songs here (“The Equal­izer”, “Double Shadow”, “FM”), and it’s not to say that the album as a whole isn’t won­derful and con­sis­tent (it is). But Jesus, what a song. [buy]

04. Burial — Burial
Try: “Broken Homes“
[site][label][myspace]
It’s not sur­prising that Burial is the best dub­step album of the year–it’s pretty much the only dub­step album of the year. As is the case with hip-hop, it’s tra­di­tion­ally a sin­gles genre, and the release of any full-length of con­sis­tent quality is a cause for cel­e­bra­tion. What is sur­prising is that Burial’s record is one of the best records of the year, flat out. It’s a writhing, pul­sating mass of dark­ness and blood and chrome, the likes of which hasn’t made a dent in the music-conscious land­scape since Tricky’s early days. There was no better music for a rainy night’s drive released this year. [buy]

05. Tunng — Com­ments of the Inner Chorus
Try: “Jenny Again“
[site][label][myspace]
Tunng’s sto­ry­time lyrics tend to come off as some­thing like Grimm’s fairy­tales told by an Eng­lish balladeer–Nick Cave wan­dering around the woods on ecstasy. Their musical approach is that of a slightly less patch­work, slightly pop­pier Books (whether “The Wind Up Bird“‘s one-off vocal sample “the books have nothing to say!” is a dig at Tunng’s com­pe­ti­tion is left open to ques­tion). The result is a lovely col­lec­tion of songs about girls turning into rab­bits and murder vic­tims talking to their mur­derers and you get the idea. It’s all very won­der­fully weird. [buy]

06. Ellen Allien & Apparat — Orchestra of Bub­bles / Apparat — Berlin, Mon­tréal, Tel Aviv
Try: “Jet“
[site][label]
I’m folding these two in on one another because they are, con­cep­tu­ally and son­cially speaking, very sim­ilar, and also because I love them equally. I heard Apparat’s three-song EP first and it was one of my favorite things from the first half of the year. Talking about it with some friends, I was strongly encour­aged to check out his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ellen Allien; need­less to say it was a good rec­om­men­da­tion. What we have here is a subtle com­bi­na­tion of Apparat’s mas­terful IDM song­writing with Allien’s elec­tropop instincts. Together they’re really some­thing to behold: dance­able, com­plex, and with a huge range, it’s by far the best elec­tronic record of the year. [buy]

07. Vetiver — To Find Me Gone
Try: “Mau­reen“
[site][label][myspace]
NorCal hippie folk to its very core (in the very best of ways), this is an hour-long excuse to lie out in the lawn and watch the sun set. It’s the kind of album that over­flows with simple but breath­taking melodies, com­pli­mented at every turn by band­leader Andy Cabic’s smooth, sum­mery vocals. Though it can and should be played quite loudly, at its loudest it still retains a sense of warm inti­macy, like a blanket thrown over the room. At only one point does it really rock out, and that one point hints at the fact that Vetiver have a lot of range left to explore. I for one am looking for­ward to hearing what comes next. [buy]

08. The Twi­light Sad — The Twi­light Sad EP
Try: “That Summer, At Home I Had Become the Invis­ible Boy“
[site][label][myspace]
I had quite the internal debate over listing this EP. Aside from the Apparat EP I slipped in above, it’s the only short-form record I paid any atten­tion to this year. On top of that, I’ve only had it for about a month now. And, finally, their name is crazy ridicu­lous. God­damn, though, what a impact it’s made in these short few weeks. These guys are gar­nering lots of com­par­isons to The Walkmen, but the influ­ence I hear most is the core shoegaze bands of the early 90s. Every song starts out slowly, plain­tively, and even­tu­ally launches into a mul­ti­lay­ered hydra of gui­tars and accor­dion and found sound. Singer James Graham’s voice is easily the most Scot­tish I’ve heard since that guy from The Pro­claimers, but it’s oh so true. Max Richter’s sur­pris­ingly glossy pro­duc­tion man­ages to subtly con­ceal a lot of the minis­cule touches that are thrown into the mix, but they’re there for the dis­cerning, headphone-strapped ear. [buy]

09. Magenta Sky­code — IIIII
Try: “Go Out­side Again“
[site][label][myspace]
Magenta Sky­code are, for me, one of those out-from-nowhere bands–they’re from Fin­land and com­pletely unas­so­ci­ated with the few bands I’ve fol­lowed from that country’s scene. They don’t sound par­tic­u­larly Finnish–all Eng­lish lyrics, sung with a sort of anony­mously pan-Euro accent–and in fact have a lot more in common with the last fif­teen years or so of British pop than with any­thing Scan­di­na­vian. That said, their mono­chrome cover art and sim­i­larly mono­chrome sonic spaces def­i­nitely mark them as snow­bound. The sound is a pas­tiche of tons of dif­ferent influ­ences (latter-day New Order, The Cure, Doves, etc.), all of them emo­tional in a reserved, semi-detached kind of way. It’s a dark record for sure, but also one that’s full up with points of light. [buy or buy]

10. Wolves in the Throne Room — Diadem of 12 Stars
Try: Sample from “Faces in a Night Time Mirror, Pt. 1″
[site][label][myspace]
You’re prob­ably going to think I threw Diadem of 12 Stars in here to fill my Japanese butt-rock quota or some­thing (note: Wolves in the Throne Room qualify as nei­ther Japanese nor butt-rock), but the truth is that it’s simply the best metal album I’ve heard since Mastodon’s Leviathan, albeit a com­pletely dif­ferent type of metal. And yes, that means I think it’s better than Blood Moun­tain. This is a four-song, one-hour mono­lith that seam­lessly melds Scan­di­na­vian black metal’s bleak and brutal sonic assaults with the com­pa­rably reserved volume of post-rock-leaning metal bands like Isis and Pel­ican. Opener “Queen of the Bor­rowed Light” is the standout here, but the album is (per­haps not so remark­ably, since it’s basi­cally one long song) very con­sis­tent throughout. The cover art tells you pretty much all you need to know about the album’s tone. [buy]

The Rest:
11. Irene — Apple Bay
12. Tenhi — Maaaet
13. Bit­crush — In Dis­tance
14. Comets on Fire — Avatar
15. Andrew W.K. — Close Calls With Brick Walls
16. Mastodon — Blood Moun­tain
17. Espers — Espers II
18. Destroyer — Rubies
19. Matmos — The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast
20. Shogun Kuni­toki — Tasankokaiku
21. Phoenix — It’s Never Been Like That
22. Drudkh — Blood in Our Wells
23. Coil — The Ape of Naples
24. Booka Shade — Move­ments
25. Xin­lisupreme — Nein­fu­turer

Expect the others’ lists soon. Mike’s still recov­ering from scurvy, but I heard he has some clever gim­mick for his list, so stay tuned.