TWO THOUSAND AND FUCKING SIX

So, end of the year again, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. They’re just flying by aren’t they…? Hurtling toward the end of these ‘00s or whatever, and we haven’t even got our head around what to call them, let alone got the hang of living in them. Just think, if this was the ‘60s, we’d now be up to ’67; culturally, politically, musically, shit would be well and truly on the move. Ho hum.

It’s strange to note that just about all the weblog/forum/magazine end-of-year music retrospectives I’ve read thus far (and I’ve been bored, so I’ve been reading a few) have made a point of either noting that the writer in question felt disconnected from the main ebb and flow of music this year, or stating flat-out that it’s been a dull or disappointing year for album releases or pop hits or whatever.

Now the idea of a “bad year for music” is a ludicrous conceit, and not one I would wish to propagate when there is still guaranteed to be at least one bunch of good people kicking out some jams somewhere along every street in the goddamn world, but nonetheless I’m afraid I’m gonna have to add my voice to the belated choir, and say that, for various reasons, the vast majority of music I’ve been listening to this year has been old stuff.

Despite my critical approval of the records I’m about to list below, it’s safe to say that only the first three or four have really managed to touch my soul to any degree; the rest made a pleasant distraction in rare moments when I felt like doing some relaxed, impersonal music listening, rather than needing a hit of the REAL stuff to get me through the day/night.

Back in December 2005 I took a short visit to Glasgow and bought Skip Spence’s “Oar” and Big Star’s “Third / SisterLovers” from the absurdly well-appointed second hand rack at Mono, an event which in retrospect is so loaded with dread synchronicity it boggles the mind. I was feeling quite cheery round then, and so swiftly filed both away for appreciation at a later date, that date arriving half-way through the year, when the near infinite beauty of both discs have taken them to the top of my list of soul-savers. But enough of that.

I began the year safely in thrall to the sounds and aesthetic of the sprawling new international drone/noise/psyche/weirdness underground, but recent seismic shifts in my music taste have left me increasingly disillusioned with that whole kinda scene, as the initial mysterioso appeal of elusive CD-Rs hand-decorated by covens of improbable weirdos creating pure transformative sound and reclaiming the appearance of a genuine subterranean counter-culture has worn off as the groups involved have started to break cover and revealed themselves more often than not to be obnoxious, self-satisfied camp-followers gooning it up behind their distortion pedals at arts council sponsored hoedowns for the jaded and desensitized. Were any of these guys with me when I needed to turn to music for solace and reassurance? Were they fuck. Some switch has flicked in my head and I can’t help but see this genre or scene or whatever heading far too quickly toward the same kind of bankrupt state that the mainstream of hippy-rock was approaching circa ‘69/’70: terminally infected by the ugly sneer of the Eternal Hipster, networking, plotting, judging and formalising. I can see it drifting toward becoming the latest and purest manifestation of an unfortunate musical tendency which over the past few decades can be traced through the less gifted exponents of prog, metal, electronica and (ugh) post-rock: that of boys too scared to show their true feelings hiding behind their machines, blaring out senselessly negative sonic abstraction because it makes them feel big or important. Well more often than not, it is tedious, inhuman and hurting – fuck that shit, I don’t need it.

Here comes a raging spell of hypocrisy though, because this rather severe view is of course far more of an amorphous personal feeling than a diss against particular artists, and I retain my respect for all of those who got me into this stuff in the first place. Charalambides have grown to be one of my favourite groups in the world, Magik Markers remain an inspiring reclamation of the punk spirit, and Birchville Cat Motel, Pelt, Double Leopards, Mirror, Fursaxa, Matthew Bower and Richard Youngs are all still producing an incredibly effective/affecting sound which I love. So, yes, it’s a fine line, but new pretenders be aware: from now on I’m taking things on a case by case basis, and if I feel like it I’m gonna be calling time on all this Emperor’s New Clothes nonsense currently clambering over the fence. No personal animosity intended, but if I’m not feeling it, I’m not gonna waste my time.

Same applies to most of the unfeasibly weak, whiny, preening crap that's been passed off as critically acclaimed indie-rock/pop this year too (no names mentioned).

So despite the fact that they don’t make an appearance in my 2006 albums list, I would above all else like to dedicate this year’s weblogging to Neil, Jonathan, Skip and Roky, to Chilton, Westerburg, Van Zandt, Mould & Hart, Mingus, Shepp, Thompson, Childish, Lewis and Fahey, to Iggy, to Bert, to Karen and Chan, to the VU, to Ray & Dave, to Mr and Mrs Coltrane, to Loren Connors, PJH, R.L. Burnside and Mississippi John Hurt, and to everybody else whose music has come from the heart and seen me through the year.

And, lest I forget, R.I.P. to Syd, Arthur, Nikki Sudden and Grant McLennan; we’ve lost some good ones this year.

Now, without further preamble, my traditional Top 10 of new records of 2006:

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Comet Gain – City Fallen Leaves (Track & Field)

The best albums are always the ones that are hardest to write about. Some may sneer at Comet Gain, with their occasional clumsy, stumbling, too-close-to-the-bone lyrics, their obvious, thunderous chords and botched attempts at harmonies, their indie hipster battle chants and their unashamed devotion to the gospel of the TV Personalities and the Go-Betweens. Most probably don’t even know they exist, given their complete absence from any kind of media.

But, unlike the po-mo shit clogging up a lot of end-of-year lists, the point is, Comet Gain make an impression. And what they do essentially amounts to soundtracking and romanticising the triumphs and failures of my own life, to the extent that it’s often unnerving, although not entirely unwelcome. So if you’re a disgruntled indie diehard with a taste for ‘60s Godard, cultural authenticity, red wine, record shopping and the wreckage of riot grrl, a similar effect is guaranteed. Tribalism is a disgraceful contagion, but fuck it, Comet Gain are My People. Their last album, ‘Realistes’ was a masterwork of statement-of-intent, power of music, optimism, but this one’s altogether bleaker; it’s kinda bitter, heartbroken, skirting despair. But not quite, because whatever they’ve lost between records, they’ve still got passion, intelligence, poetry, beautiful guitars, punk rock fury and voices that weren’t made to sing trying for all they’re worth and daring you to believe. In good times or bad, their spirit and their songs mean a lot to me. So Album of the Year by a mile.

The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely (4AD)

As you may recall if you read my review earlier this year, this one didn’t immediately win me over. Then I got lonely. So, I may not have been a teenage runaway in 2004, or trapped in a self-destructive marriage in 2003, but this year The Mountain Goats made an album especially for me.

Charalambides – A Vintage Burden (Kranky)

The two Charalambides live performances I have been lucky enough to witness this year have got me convinced that Christina and Tom Carter are drinking from a well of heavenly yet human beauty, resulting in some of the most moving and inspired music currently being produced.

But although they’ve all been thoroughly satisfying in different ways, none of the duo’s studio albums have so far revealed a definitive statement of aforementioned beauty. As such, the conventional Low-ish acoustica of some of the tracks on ‘A Vintage Burden’ is initially underwhelming, but repeated listens reveal aforementioned beauty quietly burning through, and ‘Two Birds’ in particular is one of the finest expressions of the group’s existential cosmic blues to date.

The Thermals – The Body, The Blood, The Machine (Sub-Pop)

Third album in from the most invigorating punk rock band of the modern era. This time round though, they’ve lost their kick-ass drummer, and as befits a punk band that’s made it through three albums, they’ve given way to worrying developments such as shiny production, keyboard and lead guitar bits and songs that are actually, like, 4 or 5 minutes long and mid-tempo. It’s also kind of a concept album about fighting against, and escaping from, a fundamentalist totalitarian regime, with a few love songs thrown in for good measure.

So is it any good…?

“I carry my baby,
I carry my baby,
Her eyes can barely see,
Her mouth can barely breathe

I can see she’s afraid,
That’s why we’re escaping,
So we don’t have to die, we don’t have to deny,
Our dirty god, our dirty bodies!”

Of course it’s fucking good.

Metallic Falcons - Desert Doughnuts (Voodoo-Eros)

Bought involuntarily from their merch stand long before I had any idea this was tagged as a Coco-Rosie side-project, all that matters is that Metallic Falcons = immersive, timeless psychedelic music of the best possible kind. It has moments that on other records would be somewhat affected and irritating, but who cares when it all flows so sweetly.

Remember that time you were driving through Death Valley in a 1970 Dodge Challenger, and you broke down, and these two weird Manson girls arose from the sand and took you back to their shack and danced in the twilight to ancient, bizarre gramophone records, before they fed you that strange broth from an Indian prayer bowl, and then that zeppelin turned up and you all took a ride..? – well this is the soundtrack.

Silver Jews – Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City)

For expansion, look up my previous weblog post on this album’s opening track, ‘Punks in the Beerlight’. I loved that song straight away, but was underwehlmed with the rest. By now though, the other songs on ‘Tanglewood Numbers’ have proceeded to win me over one by one with their peculiar grace and zen-like wit and trashed suburban romanticism. Silver Jews creep up on you sideways like a crab.

Comets on Fire – Avatar (Sub-Pop)

By far the most structured / accessible Comets outing to date, this is like a master-class in how to make a really kick-ass cosmic rock album the old fashioned way. It’s like, I dunno, Blue Oyster Cult on the best drugs in the world, getting wild on Mars. In a very profound sense, this is ROCK, the way you always hoped it would be.

Pelt – Skullfuck / Bestio Tergum Dergero (VHF)

The first half of this disc is an absolutely jaw-dropping extended drone-raga reworking of Jack Rose’s ‘Calais to Dover’ – the most intense devotional psyche workout I’ve heard this year, and enough to give all the delay pedal abusing potheads stumbling onto this scene’s bandwagon the aneurysm/orgasm they deserve, as Rose drives his faster-than-the-human-eye string picking thing toward the edges of the known universe, backed by a veritable galaxy of unearthly scrape and skree. Second half is a bit of a comedown, with a suite of Double Leopards / David Lynch style menacing, low-level hum that in itself is plenty good.

Blood on the Wall – Awesomer (FatCat)

Perhaps the first recorded example of a pure ‘90s retro band, these happy young NYC folks are unashamed of their obvious debt to the Pixies, Breeders, Sonic Youth, Royal Trux, Superchunk et al, and revitalise the best bits of their influences with snappy, ramshackle charm, chaos, energy, admirably few notes and the kind of hooks that’ll see them frying up a big, juicy haddock every night through the long winter months. It’s kind of a rough n’ ready album, and some tracks are pretty forgettable, but ‘Heat from the Day’ is a stonecold classic 90 second blast with the coolest one note guitar line ever, ‘Mary Susan’ is the best song Black Francis ever forgot to write down, and ‘I Want To Take You Out Tonight’ is the purest soothing, heartbroken fuzz guitar bliss-out I’ve heard in many a moon. It’s only indie-rock, but I like it.

Oneida – Happy New Year (Jagjaguar / Rough Trade)

For one reason or another, this one hasn’t grabbed me as much as Oneida records usually do. Whilst it’s a touch dense and forbidding though, I can still recognise it as a fine, fine album, heavy on Oneida’s brooding, evocative techno-medievalism rather than their acid-fucked future-pop. It has a certain spirit of resigned defiance, and makes me think of the Knights of the Holy Orders marching forth on another doomed, bloody crusade to the far ends of the earth as the chronicler sprawls out in the woods in an opium haze, mind on higher things.

Sticking out like a sore thumb though is ‘Up With People’, a hyper-positivist floorfiller that would be an era-defining 12” club hit in a any decent world; it’s the full realisation of Oneida’s long held ambition to play euphoric dance music on live instruments, twisting drum kit, organ and guitars out of their usual orbits to create a perfect facsimile of some kinda totally awesome early ‘80s New York disco / proto-house dancefloor smash: you got to get up to get free!

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So that’s that – have a happy xmas and new year readers, and stay tuned for more self-absorbed, vindictive ranting in 2007!