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where "dork you are" rhymes with "superstar": 2006's best songsFeb 20 '07 (Updated Mar 20 '09) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line (My favorite songs of 2006 can be yours free, and are worth every penny.)
So. Last year, as a moderately busy and active music reviewer, I compiled a double-CD mix of some of my favorite songs of 2005. I wrote about the mix here and here, offering free copies to anyone who requested them. Perhaps suspicious that there was a catch (“Would I have to, like, _listen_ to them?”), only nine people asked for them, but at any rate eight of them sent very nice feedback afterwards, the consensus favorite track – and therefore, we deduce, the finest song of the year – being Fitzgerald’s sweetly-sung “Bloody Stumps”. Mix requester number nine, Shelly, may not have liked the mixes. But maybe she was just distracted by first the late stages of pregnancy and then by her new son Zack. That, at least, is roughly what’s kept me away from the computer so much of late. (Except I’ve been distracted by Cindy’s pregnancy, not Shelly’s. Or mine. And by Cindy’s-and-my own son, Donovan, though Zack’s pics are very cute.) Thus we reach the stage where, although I’ve been listening as avidly as ever, to as wide and tantalizing a variety of new music as ever, 2006 is over and I've forgotten how to write a music review. This, then, introduces my three-disc best-of-2006 mix, also available for free, to share the music I haven’t gotten around to writing about ... and to commit me to writing at least three Epinions, as practice. Three friends have sent me preorders already for the entire 3-disc set – I think I can get out to Radio Shack for supplies today, guys – but you may ask for just one or two if you’re cautious. The mixes can be helpfully distinguished: * Disc three has the widest stylistic range and probably, to me, a slightly higher per-song awesomeness measure than the others. * Disc two has the most rock energy, the most emotional drama, and the densest arrangements. * Disc one, the one I’m making time to write about, stays closest to the music I grew up on: vocal-centered and therefore easy to sing. There are a lot of pleasures to having a baby around the house – maybe even enough to compensate for spending less time writing nonsense on the Internet – and one of them is that babies can’t tell good singing from bad singing. I’ve never felt this free to memorize my favorite tunes and let my voice carry them, stumbling into walls, where they end up feeling bruised but loved. And since my sense of pitch is actually improving with the practice … well, maybe these songs will be good for you too. *********** Robyn Hitchcock, “Belltown Ramble” I start and end this mix with what may be Donovan’s two favorite songs of his young life, though it’s hard to know how much of his enthusiasm is just happiness at _my_ enthusiasm. “Belltown Ramble” is the one song on Hitchcock’s sprightly Ole Tarantula that Robyn’s never been heard to play in concert, but perhaps he doesn’t feel comfortable playing – for I.D.-checked crowds full of alcohol and the life experience alcohol tries to cure – a song written for a wide-eyed child who “want[s] to know what is/ and also what is not” and feels no unworthiness at “you want to see your eyes reflected in the world”. For while I’d enjoy this song simply for the interplay between the tinkly piano, acoustic guitar, loud bongos, and Robyn’s skewed, conversational, slightly roughened British singing, what I love it for is the words. The Seven Deadly Sins, for example, were always too reductive and us-vs-them as compared to Robyn’s “seven sets of appetites [that] have got to be appeased”, and he’s absolutely right that “ignorance” and “fundamental faith” _are_ appetites, ones we fend off many good things trying to feed. He’s right, too, to teach the world’s children that “right now I’m in my element” rhymes with “past the pink rotating elephant” ; that cities are places to take long walks and meet colorful strangers; that even Uzbek warlords have to brush their teeth now and then; that “How’s it going?” can always be greeted with some random-dork answer like “It’s going north, to Canada”. That some advice (“You can walk an oblong, or even just walk straight”) is worth listening to because you can use it in the next ten minutes. But the world also has advice that you might not need for decades (“You’ll think you did the job wrong, but you did great”) … so you should memorize it in a melody, and pull it out when it’s important. Camille, “Ta Douleur” Right now, for example, you might not be able to understand a word the French people are saying, although similar obstacles have never kept me from listening to Eddie Vedder or Thom Yorke. But if Google Translator tells us that “ta douleur” means “your pain”, which seems kind of a bummer, we’ll sing along phonetically instead. Let the beatbox, funky bass, horn blurts, cheerful backing vox, and Camille’s sultry own voice lead us into remembering that since 9/11 we have to call them “freedom people”, and that Camille sounds like she’d be good at freedom kissing. They have paid maternity and paternity leave over there, and their free health care visits cost the government less than us Americans’ expensively out-of-pocket care does; plus, the cheese is supposed to taste amazing there. No wonder they can’t sound miserable. Katerine, “Etrais Humains” "Etrais Humains" means “human beings”, as sung about, with blankly chanted enthusiasm, by what sound like curious French robots, while their fellow tinkertoys whirr, whoop, whistle, and play woodwind samples. Just so we’re clear, 54 of the 58 songs on these mixes are in English; but it can’t hurt for my child to have no idea what I’m singing yet in _two_ languages. Persephone’s Bees, “City of Love” It’s still nice when girls born in the old Soviet Union come to the U.S. and learn to write enchanting classic girl-group songs in English. True, my superpower has been showing no more ability to win Middle East wars, and no more need to actually charge its citizens with crimes before jailing and torturing them for years, than hers ever did. But mine is where the Crystals and the Ronettes helped show the Beatles how to harmonize; mine is where a girl could easily start wondering how those women would’ve sounded fronting a New Wave pop band; and mine is a great place to find a guitarist who only learned good taste _after_ he’d mastered every high-speed maneuver in Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption”, and still sometimes needs a burst of that old flash. the Hold Steady, “Stuck between Stations” The gleam of those ‘ 80s metal records still has majesty, after all, and their tremolos and echoes can shine a luminescent glow on young people's courtship and expectations. “A really cool kisser and not all that strict of a Christian” would be a great personal-ad headline for a girl who’d never need to use one, but if you’re dressing and holding conversations for the romantic ideal in your head, not the actual person across from you, her being “a damn good dancer” might not bring happiness. Apparently, in bed at date’s end, a guy can “like the warm feeling but [be] tired of the dehydration” ; I don’t know. But I do now know that a gruff singing voice, a good story, and the right piano sound are enough to imagine any solid bar band as the finest re-incarnation of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, even if Bruce and the gang themselves are still alive to take that honor in theory. Bang Camaro, “Push Push, Lady Lightning” Mind you, those ‘ 80s metal guitars can also give off sparks to the stomp and the cocky vocal harmonies of classic hair-metal. It was always a vapid genre, which is why I forgot to miss it when it died; but it was also a celebratory one, so by 2006 I’m delighted to watch it hop out of its grave, headbang a couple of nurses on the way back to its deathbed, plug its IV needles back in, and perform some vigorous drum fills on the feeding tube. the Sounds, “Painted by Numbers” The fast rigid one-note-at-a-time basslines, the clean guitar chords, the bright synthetic treble of the synthesizer, and the strong but bratty vocals – even the ominous rumbling piano lines of the bridge – sound like they came straight from 1983’s pop charts, a fact which has done nothing to hurt the Sounds’ sales as young Europeans (though they don’t get much play in America). It’s only this, my first of the three mixes, that’s so heavy with throwbacks; I think that’s because, starting around the ascent of Pearl Jam, catchy vocal lines started to go a little out of fashion. Do people throw back their heads and sing, carefree, to Alice in Chains’s trudging heroin-rock, Tool’s creepy ellipticism, and Underoath’s fierce throat-clearings? I suppose they must – in fact, I imagine some of _you_ do, and please enjoy, and remember to teach me how if we ever meet. I am old, and learned different singing voices that are also fun. Margot and the Nuclear So-and-So’s, “Quiet as a Mouse” Good-old-days rant aside, Cindy’s response to this song choice of mine was “They sound like Coldplay”, and I take her point. Of course there remains a place for pure choirboy vocals, shimmering backgrounds, guitar chords that surge on cue, and well-orchestrated string quartets (plus trumpet) to complement the crashing drums. Some songs have always been anxious, and words of gentle encouragement have often implied “before it’s too late”. Bishop Allen, “the Same Fire” I actually believe, strongly, that more good music is being created now than ever before – many kinds of inventive music, and also more good retro music than the actual old days ever had. One reason for this is because technology has made it so easy for any random shlub to record and distribute his own music, without doing a lick of market research first. Some of those shlubs – people who’d be awful rock stars, probably – write good melodies, sing them just fine, play stripped-down but intricate little guitar parts, think xylophones are just as cool as I do, and know how to move their microphone around to make a song go from polished to geekily urgent at just the right time. Bishop Allen is one of them, deciding on a whim to make twelve four-song EP’s in a single year (one a month). I don’t know if anyone bought all 48 songs; I haven’t. But from the ones I’ve tried, it sure wouldn’t be a terrible investment. Danielson, “Time, That Bald Sexton” Some of those random shlubs sing in horrendous bleats, and orchestrate their musings to utterly eccentric (though in Danielson’s case clearly intentional) rhythms. But while I can keep a firm 4/4 tempo as needed, my own preferred rhythms are odd too. There’s also a lot of fun and confidence to be had in singing along to tunes that came pre-mutilated, and these melodies drag, in their wake, a thin but fascinating assortment of musical instruments. Besides, “The second hand slaps me so silly and insults my character … I must seize all my time, by grabbing The Clock Setter by his grey forelock” is what I’m telling myself at every 10 p.m. these days. By 11 p.m., unfortunately, I’m too tired to remember what it was I wanted to do. But maybe I’ll make this weird diurnal routine conform to me, a little, instead of only vice versa. the Ark, “This Piece of Poetry is Meant to Do Harm” That still won’t let me go out at night to watch handsome rock stars in androgynous makeup as they play churn out classic-style glam-rock with a lean, processed, hooky brilliance more like the Cars’ Greatest Hits. But I can put on their music at home, where the clever, flamboyant lyrics are easier to hear. Belle and Sebastian, “the Blues are Still Blue” And hey: ten years ago, Belle and Sebastian took the rock-critics’ world by storm – or by evocative twilit drizzle – sitting at home and strumming to quasi-literary songs about feelings. By now they’re out in the world, dressed up and electrified, observing a wide range of people with a writerly distance, and clearly having a blast. Sometimes “the world” just means the laundromat, and by the time you’re done “the blacks will be white and the whites will be black”. That’s where bright colors come in. the Coup, “We are the Ones” Or people of color, in this case – I didn’t plan that transition, I promise, and oy vey – rapping with a gleeful sing-song lilt that they’ll “seal your fate, tear down your state”. 2006 was full of popular _and_ critically-acclaimed rap songs about drug dealing, and whatever; it’s not my scene, any more than songs about dealing Avon products, Girl Scout cookies, or used cars. But Boots Riley, as a self-educated Marxist with an obvious zest for subversion, can reminisce about “the one university, I knew the deal/ so I cooked it, bagged it, put it on sale/ Now philosophically, you’d be opposed/ to inhaling coke by the mouth or the nose/ but economically, I would propose/ that you go eat a dick as employment froze”, and I’m as happy not to seek any possible flaws in the logic as I am to enjoy the simple thumping electro-beats. “We like free speech, but we love free cable” is his diagnosis, not his prescription, after all. And if I’ll have to teach Donovan that “smash up the place, it’s just polite” is not actually how we behave here in Carolina, at least someday he can reach voting age and decide if it’s me or Boots he agrees with. CSS, “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” These squiggly electro-beats set off a half-song half-jumprope-chant about how music is probably the greatest thing in the world. That, I hope, we can all agree on. Tilly and the Wall, “Bad Education” Without music, what would Tilly and the Wall’s percussionist be tap-dancing to? Would the band have to speak its lyrics earnestly, taking turns, instead of the group thrusting the words from note to note with syncopated vigor? Would the mariachi horn player be filling out his address in triplicate in the office of a temp agency instead? Probably. We wouldn’t want that. Jeffrey Lewis, “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” Without music, Jeffrey Lewis would have to talk real fast in a monotone, instead of occasionally acknowledging a second or third note, and that would be a small difference. But he wouldn’t have the Stones, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, or even the weird hipster-admired folkie Will Oldham to be jealous of, and so this song, one of the funniest insecure self-analytical semi-hallucinatory rants in any art form, would have no cause to exist. Nor could it be ranted over distracted acoustic guitar strums and a befogged amateur violin line, so really, I think the case for music is sealed. Eagles of Death Metal, “the Ballad of Queen Bee and Baby Duck” In five years, Donovan will be the perfect target audience for this squawking, dissonant-but-jolly little rock song / animal story. Ideally, like me, he’ll only move beyond that level of maturity because he wants to, not because he always has to. Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse, “Vicki is a Pro” Also ideally, he won’t ask me “she’s a pro _what_?” until he’s old enough to figure it out himself. Ideally, he’ll groove along to the boppy singing, the New Wave riffs, the shiny synth, the clap-along percussion. Then again, maybe I’d rather he ask, rather than assume. “Vicki is a pro, she’s never sleepy/ Vicki is a pro, she’s never mean/ No matter what she feels inside/ Vicki always claims she's satisfied./ Vicki doesn’t care if you’ve got bad hair/ She won’t make fun of your underwear/ Anywhere you pick is the perfect place to go./ If your breath stinks, she won’t tell you so: the perfect girl for a guy like you to know”. The song is not an ad for a new improved battery-powered Mommy, and even if it was, I wouldn’t buy him one. Anton Barbeau, “When I was 46 in the Year 13”. This song is not an ad for a new improved 1967 with new improved analog synthesizers, pianos, hallucinogens, and battery-powered Beatles. Or maybe it is. That’s fine. Regina Spektor, “On the Radio” This is how it works: you’re young and foolish now. You’re old and foolish next; you’ll learn and then re-learn. You love until you don’t, you try until you can’t; but then go have some lunch, so you can try again. You learn to play piano, maybe not that well, but well enough to sing, and then you make some friends – they’ll play some strings and drums, you’ll tell them how to help. Ten frogs with teflon wings will juggle purple kelp. You take the truths you’ve learned, and fit them to the beats, and stick them into some/ someone else’s brain; and some will end up wrong, or end up obselete, but you can change your mind, and maybe cause no pain. Your listeners sing back, and shell out fifteen bucks, and learn to love your voice, and you can like them too. You do the best you can, and needing breath or luck, you sing a “whoa, HUH, ho”, and gasp a little tune. On the radio, they’re playing Right Said Fred; the jokes have gotten dull, so play some mix instead. And when its words run out, its rhythm switches a bit; ba, ba, ba, ba-de-dum. Sing it: ba, ba, ba-de-dum, ba-de-dum, wahaha-aa ba, da, ba-dum-be-dum. The mix ends. Keep singing.  |
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