Better late than never

It’s about a month into 2007 and I’ve already decided that this year is going to kill 2006 in terms of new music. January has already delivered brilliant new albums by Busdriver, Hella, The Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Rob Crow, Holy Molar and The Good, the Bad and the Queen. February’s got amazing new releases by BARR, The Eternals and Marnie Stern. March has the Arcade Fire, !!!, Modest Mouse, Big Business and The Locust. Nine Inch Nails and Chinese Stars have albums coming out in April and Battles, Les Savy Fav, Tender Buttons, Akrobatik, Mr. Lif, Bjork, Silver Daggers and Business Lady all have planned releases at various times in between.

2006 was rather, shall we say, blah. I’m having trouble coming up with more than 15 albums or so to even contend—there are 25 bands listed above—and I’ve already heard at least a third of them. So, really, without any ado whatsoever, my dreadfully predictable top 10 list for 2006:

10) Rose For Bohdan
Then Everybody Hugged, ‘Racism is God.’
Deathbomb Arc

From the opening track, “Friends Forever,” Rose for Bohdan embody the tragic state of racial politics in the current age of “enlightenment.” Then Everybody Hugged sounds as though it could fall apart at any time, and when vocalist/guitarist Brian Miller channels Joy Division (“Love, love will tear us apart,”) you’re not sure what’s going to tear you apart, but something’s on its way. Rose for Bohdan have created an album that will certainly fall by the wayside, but those of us fortunate enough to have it will treasure its brash documentation of Los Angeles.

9) mewithoutYou
Brother, Sister
Tooth & Nail

Few bands can completely reinvent their sound and without making the transformation sound completely contrived. Brother, Sister finds mewithoutYou veering toward ...Trail of Dead land, rather than continuing down the path toward the post-hardcore of Quicksand or that first Chevelle record that didn't suck. Going more epic and less punk almost never works because few punk bands have the chops to pull it off, but vocalist Aaron Weiss keeps everything grounded because of his everpresent impassioned struggle with his God. That alone makes mewithoutYou completely and utterly compelling.

8) Sunset Rubdown
Shut Up I am Dreaming
Absolutely Kosher

How often, exactly, does a guy's sideproject outshine his actual band? Spencer Krug's Wolf Parade is OK, despite the fact they totally rip off Modest Mouse. On the other hand, Sunset Rubdown appear to reveal the man's dreamscapes. How often do you get to dig around inside the mind of a weirdo like him? Experimental, absurd and fun, Shut Up I am Dreaming sounds like the album Spencer's Wolf-mates won't let him make. Commercially they've made a smart choice, but artistically...

7) Subtitle
Terrain To Roam
Alpha Pup

While not quite the masterpiece of 2004's Young Dangerous Heart, Terrain To Roam still clocks in as my second favorite hip-hop album of 2006. Its creator, Giovanni Marks, seems to be going through that quarter-life crisis (he recently relocated to Montreal, wants to drop his nickname, decided to stop rapping about science and Ray Bradbury, etc.), but his nerdy flow remains hypnotizing. I blame his life uncertainty for the album's uneven feel--especially his anti-pill diatribe "Pill Pop,"--but that doesn't mean I want to stop listening to it.

6) Swan Lake
Beast Moans
Jagjaguwar

To answer the question posed in number four, twice. At least to this point. Members of Frog Eyes, Wolf Parade and New Pornographers join to make the second best Canadian record of the year (more on this later). Moody, ethereal, and like Sunset Rubdown, oddly fun, Beast Moans finds more fun things to do with Spencer Krug's drunken vocals. Maybe it's just the album artwork, but when I listen to this album, I can't help but envision some absurdist revival by mountain dwellers cool enough for The Animal Collective, but to cool for Man Man.

5) Liars
Drum's Not Dead
Mute

Speaking of absurdist revivals, Liars crafted the perfect urban revival hymn book with Drum's Not Dead. I can always tell when an album needs to be listed in some kind of top something when I don't like a band at all and they come out with an album I can't stop listening to. Then again, I don't really know what I'm talking about because I can't think of a band that's happened with. By the way, "It Fit When I Was a Kid" gets my vote for song of the year, hands down.

4) Xiu Xiu
The Air Force
5rc

Until Jamie Stewart pioneers a bad album, they'll remain in every top whatever list I'm making up.

3) Mr. Lif
Mo' Mega
Definitive Jux

My current soundtrack for my nine-minute drive to work in the morning. Lif gets a little frisky on Mo' Mega, almost pornographic, and despite the mental images I get the point. Lif, like Subtitle, is growing up and talking about real-life issues. He wants to settle down. He wants a career. What's he going to do? Make Mo' Mega and rip past and present presidents. Duh.

2) Daughters
Hell Songs
Hydra Head

This might be cheating, since I'm combining the album with the band's stellar Los Angeles show I was fortunate enough to catch where vocalist Lex Marshall almost got arrested for indecent exposure. On its own, Hell Songs churns like the best Arab on Radar, Angel Hair and the VSS ever offered and sounds like an electric interpretation of a disembowelment. No, really, that's a good thing.

1) *TIE*

Islands
Return to the Sea
Equator

TV on the Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain
Interscope

Go ahead. Call me a cheater. Islands soundtracked my first half of the year and TV on the Radio the second, so how can I differentiate between the two. Both feature stellar guest appearances (Subtitle, Busdriver, Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire for Islands; David Bowie, Katrina Ford and Kazu Makino for TV on the Radio). Both albums instantly put a smile on my face. I've listened to each album 20-30 times this year. Both are masterpieces following up masterpieces and anticipate more good things to come.

And to get sappy, it's rare that an album can enter my heart (or, in a less gay way, an album I can listen to at any time and feel the same chill I got when i first heard it). Maybe one a year, tops. But this year, both albums became part of the lexicon of Jeremiah, sitting along the shelf with Arcade Fire's Funeral, Tool's Aenima, Nirvana's Nevermind and MTV Unplugged, Stone Temple Pilot's Purple, Beck's Mellow Gold, Portishead's Dummy, TV on the Radio's Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, NIN's The Downward Spiral, ...Trail of Dead's Source Tags and Codes, Tom Waits' Alice, Radiohead's The Bends, Arab on Radar's Queen Hygiene II/Rough Day at the Orifice, At the Drive-in's Relationship of Command, The Mars Volta's, Bjork's Vespertine, Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, Subtitle's Young Dangerous Heart, Busdriver's Fear of a Black Tangent, Far's Water and Solutions, Feist's Let it Die, Fugazi's The Argument, Green Day's Dookie, Hum's You'd Prefer an Astronaut, Jeff Buckley's Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, Les Savy Fav's Go Forth and The Cat and the Cobra, mewithoutYou's A to B: Life, Murder City Devils' In Name and Blood, Cursive's The Ugly Organ, Pearl Jam's Ten, anything by The Pixies, Pulp's This is Hardcore, Q and Not U's Different Damage, Quicksand's Manic Compression, Rage Against the Machine's Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary, These Arms Are Snakes' Oxeneers, or the Lion Sleeps When its Antelope go Home, Tricky's Maxinquaye, Weezer's Blue Album and Pinkerton, Nation of Ulysses' Plays Pretty for Baby and almost everything by Xiu Xiu.

There. Now You've got my canon. Are you happy?

Oh. Here are the 2006 runners-up, in absolutely no order whatsoever: Gram Rabbit's Cultivation, Mason Proper's There is a Moth in Your Chest, The Evens Get Evens, Beck's The Information, Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere, The Blood Brothers' Young Machete, ...Trail of Dead's So Divided, Make Believe's Shock of Being, Cadence Weapon's Breaking Kayfabe, Cex's Actual Fucking, Deftones' Saturday Night Wrist, Red Sparowes, Every Red Heart Shines Under the Red Sun, Man Man's Six Demon Bag, Dmonstrations' Night Trrors Shock, First Nation's First Nation, Tool's 10,000 Days, Thavius Beck's Thru, These Arms Are Snakes' Easter, Yeah Yeah Yeah's Show Your Bones, Yo La Tengo's I am Not Afraid of You and I will Beat Your Ass, Uzeda's Stella, Abe Vigoda's Kid City and Tapes 'n' Tapes The Loon.

Ok. So 2006 wasn't that bad. But I still think 2007 will be better.