NERDLIST 2006: name your top 5 albums!

Stitch on 8/12/2006 at 18:18

Yeah, you guys know what's up. Nobody cares but we assemble 'em anyway, although I'm going to go THE EXTRA MILE and write up a little blurb for most of these.

EDIT FOR GEEBUMS: TOP FIVE OF 2006 HELLO WELL YOU DIDN'T EXPLICITLY SAY THAT DID YOU? FUCK I'M DUMB

My Top 5:

* Muse, Black Holes and Revelations - While not quite their OK Computer as some gushing critics would have us believe, Black Holes... still packs in eleven grand slams while deepening Muse's conspiracy-theories-in-space mythology. A steller album but let's bring back the huge guitars next time, lads.

* Beck, The Information - Returning to form after last year's good-but-not-great Guero, Beck's latest is pitched somewhere in the loneliest regions of outer space, a Dark Side of the Moon for the the indie set. Each song builds upon the cosmic space of the previous until the album floats off into the dark ether with the epic stoner closer track.

* The Mars Volta, Amputechture - First impression: impenetrable masturbatory crap. Final verdict: the best manifestation of the fearless Mars Volta indie-prog aesthetic to date.

* Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones - As much as I loved their old sound, it turns out this band is phenomenal when they stop being the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and instead record a Pixies album.

* Wolfmother, Wolfmother - Utterly ridiculous and rightfully so :cool:

Honorable Mention:

* Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
* Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
* ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, So Divided - Mostly killer but I could have done with less hot-indie-band aping and more utter destruction.
* Thom Yorke, The Eraser

Great Once You Cut Out the Filler:

* Justin Timberlake, Future Sex/ Love Sounds
* Lady Sovereign, Public Warning

Disappointments:

* The Strokes, First Impressions of Earth - "See I'm stuck in a city/But I belong in a field." No you fucking don't.
* TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain - Sacrilege, I know, but at least their previous disc had some actual songs.
* Outkast, Idlewild - Clearly it's time to take Andre 3000 behind the woodshed and set Big Boi free.
* The Decemberists, The Crane Wife - As steller as most of this is, I'm afraid "The Perfect Crime #2," "When the War Came," and the first two thirds of "The Island" are simply unforgivable. And where are the heart-breakers?
* The Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics - My god it kills me to say anything remotely negative about this twelve-year favorite, but goddamn they've forgotten how to write a song.

Single of the Year:

* Justin Timberlake, "Sexyback" - A four minute vacuum-packed electro-funk classic complete with a spoken guided tour. Utterly brilliant.

Not a bad year, although there were some colossal disappointments (I'm looking your way, Mr. Coyne.). Next year is already shaping up nicely, with new Radiohead, Arcade Fire, and PJ Harvey on the horizon.

Roll on 2007.

The Alchemist on 8/12/2006 at 18:23

Quote Posted by Stitch

Single of the Year:

* Justin Timberlake, "Sexyback" - A four minute vacuum-packed electro-funk classic complete with a spoken guided tour. Utterly brilliant.

Holy fuck I hate that song.

Kalit on 8/12/2006 at 18:24

Rally the Fray - To Never Live in Denial
Set Your Goals - Mutiny!
Ambitions - Question EP
In the Face of War - We Make Our Own Luck
Live For Today - Taking It Back

Something along those lines... not exact order, but yea.

Spitter on 8/12/2006 at 19:00

Muse - Black Holes & Revelations

Album of the fucking year. Rock, spacious, poppy, epic, fun and sometimes just outrageous. Their most approachable and best effort yet, but I'm also hoping they'll get their big guitar works on again next time.

Mono - You Are There

Hey those Japanese can make post rock!!! I haven't heard their previous stuff but apparently this album is a notch down from it - which is great because I'm all over this shit already.

Thom Yorke - The Eraser

More like Erased From My Playlist. Decent concepts ruined by horrible, horrible electronics. For comparison, the (http://youtube.com/watch?v=4L-xPDgDZA8) acoustic version of The Clock is far superior to anything on the album but uuurgh gotta ruin the record with shitty lazy electronix!!! I have no idea how Skip Divided was able to get past any quality checks.

All in all this was a year of four letter band names. I was too busy getting off to slightly older post rock albums, hence the short list. I've catched a few other albums from this year but they haven't really left me any impression yet.

redface on 8/12/2006 at 19:29

In no particular order:

Midlake - The Trials Of Van Occupanther
The Killers - Sam's Town
Razorlight - Razorlight
Snow Patrol - Eyes Open
Muse - Black Holes & Revelations

Paz on 8/12/2006 at 19:49

Everyone please, please, please at least try to do some kind of mini-blurbs or observations or cock jokes with the list, otherwise this exercise is utterly futile (you're excused if the album was already mentioned several hundred times before). We (or at least I) want to know why you like things! I guess it's ok if you're busy or whatever but I'll just cry about it :(

Anyway, HERE ARE FIVE RECORDS THAT ARE QUITE GOOD:

Pet Shop Boys - Fundamental
Getting back with Trevor Horn was a Good Thing™ You've got pulsy electro-pop, orchestral sweepers, mid-tempo sob-fests tinged with politics and pretty much everything you'd expect from a Pet Shop Boys album, except you'd really have no right to expect that in 2006 because my god how old are they now. Still brilliant though, apparently. Great lyrics too: "in the crowded court of your love / I became a supplicant" haha, nice. IT'S THEIR BEST RECORD SINCE THE LAST RECORD OF THEIRS YOU LIKED.

Asobi Seksu - Citrus
Remember when Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine and (.. uh) Ride ruled the waves? If you thought that was a GREAT time to be alive and secretly desire to hear more delay effects let loose upon the general public, Asobi Seksu may find your favour. Cunningly, they've adopted the gimmick of an attractive Japanese lady who sometimes sings in Japanese and some POP HOOKS, but they've also got a guitarist who has Kevin Shields posters all over his walls, so every now and again you get WOOSHING SPACE NOISE FEEDBACK ZOOOOOOOOM sections. Which is fun.

Espers - II
Weirdo electric-folk stuff that sounds like it might belong in ye olde renaissance faire, full of lyrics about dead kings and queens and THE MOON and god knows what else. It's what Joanna Newsom wishes she could be, if only she wasn't so shit and terrible at singing and busy being a horrific blight upon the planet. Anyway, if you've ever felt the need to put flowers in your hair and hang around castles but lamented the fact that you were missing a soundtrack, this is your lucky day.

Hello Saferide - Would You Let Me Play This EP 10 Times A Day?
Swedish pop lady who sings about OCD and stalking people and various other slightly odd things. It's breezy and lively and many people will find it annoying as fuck, but I love it dearly. She also did a full-length album last year which is equally as solid (but I didn't know about her at that stage).

Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
I don't really know what's going on here. It's "psychedelic" - but in a way which actually carries some kind of genuine weight. Multi-instrumental, floaty at times ... but also heavy when it needs to get that way. No lo-fi stuff like their first album, this is all clean as a whistle (except when it's being intentionally murky - but you already guessed that). It's expansive, it's also intimate, it's a whole lot of paradoxes that inevitably turn music journalists into dribbling idiots.

Honourable mentions:

Luke Haines - still a grumpy sod singing about rapists and serial killers and how shit England is.

The Knife - wacky Swedish electro-dudes with steel pan drum loops.

Monkey Swallows the Universe - acoustic twee-ness from Sheffield.

Siouxsie & the Banshees - full BBC Peel Sessions finally released (same goes for The House of Love and various others).

Sparklehorse - more psychedelic-ish stuff.

Single of the year was probably "Pull Shapes" by The Pipettes, I'm afraid.

Tonamel on 8/12/2006 at 20:04

1) Elbow - Leaders of the Free World
Not much to say here, it's just an amazing rock album, that you should go listen to right now.

2) Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
Seriously awesome album, and will no doubt be a repeat title in this thread.

3) Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche, Islands - Return to the Sea
Avalanche is a collection of rejects from Illinois that manages to me more awesome than most other musicians' full releases. Very cool.

Tied with it is Islands, which was down in Honorable Mentions, because I hadn't listened to it in a few months, but after a quick re-listen, I had to move it up here. Such a good album, by a band that used to be The Unicorns. As The Unicorns, they were a bit too lo-fi for me (and I like lo-fi), but this is just perfect. A total mishmash of styles, some songs sound like Radiohead's "Climbing up the Walls", others sound like Polyphonic Spree's "Hold Me Now", some hip-hop is thrown in for good measure, and it all just works.

4) Joanna Newsom - Ys
[edit: haha, take that, Paz! Also, I have the Espers' self-titled album, and I don't really get a Newsom vibe from it. Is that one closer?] Newsom's one of those artists where either you love her or you don't. Her voice, with its somewhat Bjorkish caterwauling, definitely takes some getting used to, but if you can get that far, you'll find that the music on this album is lush, beautiful, and absolutely worth listening to.

5) Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
I'm sure this wouldn't make many other people's Top 5, even if they had heard of it before. But this kind of violin-pop just agrees with me for some reason. It's a lot more graceful than the word 'poo' would have you think.

Honorable Mention

Akron/Family - Meek Warrior
"Gone Beyond" is reason enough to get this album. Freakfolk ahoy.

Albums I know are good, but I don't own them, so couldn't rightly include them on this list.

Beck - The Information
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
Cat Power - The Greatest
Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards

frozenman on 8/12/2006 at 20:19

Quote Posted by Tonamel

1)
4) Joanna Newsom - Ys

fuckyes!

Amputechture did stick to me as well as Frances the Mute did, though there are definitely some really sick moments in it.

Blood Brothers - Young Machetes - I can't possibly say why but I was playing this album constantly for about 2 months

Entrance - Prayer of Death - for fans of Black Keys and/or 60s psyche-rock. I've followed this guy through all his albums but this one was a suprise, ditching the free-folk non-sense of 2 years ago and getting a real drummer, oh and the bass on this album is played by the chick from A Perfect Circle, if that gets any boner-points. An incredibly powerful voice for such a young guy.

Squarepusher - Hello Everything - so many gran turismo replay songs.

Liars - Drums not Dead gets honorable mention toooo

Vivian on 8/12/2006 at 20:49

Quote Posted by Tonamel

5) Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
I'm sure this wouldn't make many other people's Top 5, even if they had heard of it before. But this kind of violin-pop just agrees with me for some reason. It's a lot more graceful than the word 'poo' would have you think.

Ha! I am completely with you. I was lucky enough to see Own live this year, he's a lovely man. Plays with his shoes off so he can fiddle with nobs (tee-hee) with his feet. I make this number one in my list.

Um... let see:

The Rakes - Capture/Release. Ok, some of its a bit duff. But Work, Work, Work (Pub Club Sleep) is some kind of brilliant bastard child of Ian Drury and Ricky Gervais, and who didn't love 22 Grand Job? Plus, I know this shouldn't really count, but the singer has some amazing dance moves, and they can persaude almost everyone in a four story theatre to dance.

Mastodon - Blood Mountain. Songs about abominable cyclops-snowmen that sound like if Rush were in Machine Head. Yeehah! This entire album reminds me of beer and shouting and festivals.

Yeah Yeah Yeah's - Show Your Bones. KAREN O MY GOD. This album is near perfect.

Dresden Dolls - Yes Virginia. The world needs of more of this sort of saucy vaudeville wonkery. Made Ben Folds Five look like pussies (I guess thats not hard) and Backstabber was one of the best examples of snarling revenge-pop ever made. Even my dad likes it. AND Amanda drops a piano on that little git from Panic! at the Disco.

Various - Release the Bats. This is just a covers album of old Birthday Party songs, but its so great it makes me cry. If you ever see a copy just grab it. Its by turns extremely threatening, hilarious, raucous, drunken, sexy and odd (The Melt Banana version of 'Faint Heart' sounds exactly like angry mice playing hardcore).

Honorable Mentions got to Gogol Bordello (astounding live, but the records somehow just not the same), Melvins (I havent had the album long enough to tell how good it is yet), The Young Knives, Lambchop, Celtic Frost (would have been in the five but I dont like his hat), Hatesphere and I suppose Morrisey can have one.

Horrible mentions go to Regina Spektor for really dissapointing me, and P Diddy because he's a cunt. Oh yeah, and Wolfmother, because the early seventies has already happened once and it was bad enough the first time round.

Gingerbread Man on 8/12/2006 at 20:52

i swear the internet used to be easier :(