Bryan's top ten

Bryan's tops of 2006

 

I have one lame caveat to my top 10.  There was one album in particular that I really wanted to get, Destroyer's Rubies. I put it on my Christmas wish list, dropped hints to family members and ta-da, it never came.  I also looked for it repeatedly at the downtown B&N so that I could purchase with a gift card I had.  Clearly, I expect too much from B&N because it was never stocked. I am certain that this album would have made my top 10 based upon the one song that received radio play.  However, since I never heard the album in its entirety it holds a question mark spot on my list.

 

1. The Strokes – First Impression of Earth

            Song of the year easily goes to “you only live once”

2. Built to Spill - You in Reverse

 

3. French Kicks - Two Thousand

 

4. Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam

 

5. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped

 

6. Joanna Newsom - Ys

            The first song alone is enough to place it on the list

7. Basement Jaxx - Crazy Itch Radio

 

8. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country

 

9. The Rapture – Pieces of the People We Love

 

?. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies

 

Most Embarrasing moment in music 06. 

Grant might remember me complaining about how, “so many bands sound like Blink 182 these days.”  Well, two of those bands, +44 and Angels and Airwaves, turned out to be members of Blink 182 who formed new bands separately after Blink broke up.  Boy is my face red!

 

Other albums I should have listened to but never got around to it.

Sufjan Stevens – the Avalanche

The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America

Badly Drawn Boy – Born in the UK

TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain

Cat Power – The greatest

 

Overrated

Tapes n Tapes – The Loon. If I put this on my top ten I would only be doing so because its local and I thought I would be more relevant by doing so.  Don’t get me wrong, I like this album, but I do think that it is overrated.

 

89.3 the Current – I stopped listening to this station very early in the year.  Maybe its different now, but it just seemed to lengthen my workday and give me headaches at the same time.  I’m pretty sure it made me less productive too.

 

Dave Dahl – Does this guy ever get the weather correct? I think we’re cutting him WAY too much slack.  And he does it all with such a smirk on his face.

 

Dust-off

Somewhere in the middle of 2006 I got really, really sick of contemplative, paranoid, crybaby, wallow in my misery music (see Thom York’s “Eraser”).  Green Day seemed to be an excellent solution to my ailments.  I especially found their easily accessible, almost adult-contemporary albums (Warning and Insomniac esp.) to be the most fun to listen to.  I think this phenomenon might be defined in the music dictionary as “losing one’s edge” but I don’t really care.

 

Skoro Sighting

After Mason Jenning’s concert at the Orpheum I bumped into Skoro who was swimming upstream the crowd going out the door.  He was wearing camouflage and blaze orange at the same time.  Is he doing alright?

 

Most disappointing

Beck’s “the information”.  It held so much promise--white boy rapper is my favorite type of Beck.  Sadly this album ended up being unfocused and uninspired.  Overall it is just plain forgettable.  Also disappointing was the double album by the red hot chili peppers.  With so much material you might think there would be at least a FEW gems…okay, well, more than just a FEW gems…

 

That’s it!  Thank you to everyone for sharing their tops!