Jeff’s Favourite Songs of 2006
June 16th, 2007Yeah, it’s a little late in the year for me to be posting what I loved so much about last year’s music, but I couldn’t finish anything new in time for today and this seemed like a good bet. These are my ten favourite songs of 2006, presented to you in no particular order and with plenty of pretentious snobbery. Enjoy!
Way Out
Ellen Allien & Apparat
Orchestra Of Bubbles
Bpitch Control, 2006
If I could name only one album this year that disappointed me more than anything else, it would be Orchestra of Bubbles. Pitchfork slobbered all over it as something “fuller” and “more complex” than anything Ellen Allien OR Apparat had done in the past, but on the whole the album was a massive disappointment. Except for this track, the only one not mentioned in Pitchfork’s review. Although it lacks the brute force behind its beats found in “Brain is Lost” off of Allien’s excellent 2005 album “Thrills,” Way Out is far catchier, and vastly more atmospheric than Allien’s previous pop-leaning efforts.
****
Pink
Boris
Pink
Southern Lord, 2006
Pink was arguably one of the best albums released this year, and easily one of the most impressive guitar albums of the past quite a while. The album’s title track is an incredible example of this. With testicle-crushing guitar solos and pulse-pounding drum beats, the whole damn thing reeks of awesome. I bought Pink for about 10 people this year by virtue of this single alone, and nobody has complained yet. Do yourself a favour and buy this sheezy.
****
Vache
Venetian Snares
Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms
Planet µ, 2006
Venetian Snares is all over the place. At his best, (Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett, Meathole, Winter in the Belly of a Snake) he really is unmatched in the sheer level of awesome (and noise) he brings to the table in the “stagnating” breakcore genre. At his worst, (Just about anything he’s released on Sublight Records, printf(shiver in eternal darkness), Nymphomatriarch), he’s uneven and boring, releasing unpolished, ridiculous stuff that could only be more obnoxious if he were as pretentious about making obtuse shit as Autechre are. Vache is a true monster, with its furious breakbeats and damn fine atmospherics (a VSnares specialty), and it brings to the table a really new jumping-off point for Aaron Funk’s ever-evolving sound. First-rate stuff, this is, even if the rest of Cavalcade was a little uneven.
****
Bounce That
Girl Talk
Night Ripper
Illegal Art, 2006
If you haven’t listened to Girl Talk before, you are missing out. Night Ripper single-handedly revitalized the mash-up as a style, and Bounce That stands out among his extremely impressive 2006 release. There’s a level of depth to his tracks that you can almost never find in mash-ups these days, eschewing the usual, two-or-three-song mash-up format in favour of 5, 10, sometimes 20 different songs in each track. See if you can pick out all of the samples in this one!
****
When You Wasn’t Famous
The Streets
The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living
Vice/Atlantic, 2006
While Original Pirate Material will likely always be Mike Skinner’s best album, When You Wasn’t Famous is definitely one of his standout tracks. With its unique beat and Skinner’s usual lyrical prowess, you’ll be hard pressed to keep this track out of your head.
****
Nefi+Girly
Asobi Seksu
Citrus
Friendly Fire, 2006
Nefi+Girly does not, at the track’s outset, seem like the kind of single that would be up for single of the year. It starts with a plain old guitar riff, and then the strings come in. Typical shoegaze bullshit, right? Wrong. Asobi Seksu have created a track with absolutely phenomenal atmosphere, wooing you with hushed vocals and a subdued beat before it builds into something much greater, much more impressive. At around 3 and a half minutes in, everything drops out except for a drum beat and Yuki’s gorgeous vocals– and then it all begins to come back in, a wave growing steadily in size and magnitude until the incredible, ghostly last refrains of the song carry you away.
****
First Date
Danko Jones
Sleep is the Enemy
Razor & Tie, 2006
I bought Sleep is the Enemy for $1 the day Tower Records closed. There were easily 10 copies of it left on the shelves and nobody seemed interested. I had heard good things about them from Sam Logan (www.samandfuzzy.com) a long time back, and decided to buy the album. “At worst,” I thought, “I would be out a buck.” To be honest, I have no idea why any copies were left at all. Danko Jones rock harder than Mt. Everest, and First Date is without question the crucible of rock-outery on their latest album. If Danko Jones keep releasing albums like this, I may just be able to get over Mclusky breaking up.
****
Grim Heart/Black Rose
Converge
No Heroes
Epitaph, 2006
Oh, Converge, how I love you so. No Heroes was by far the best thing to come from Converge in a long time, and Grim Heart/Black Rose is the album’s nine-and-half-minute epic. It’s impossible to stress how much Converge have improved at creating a dense sonic atmosphere in their tracks since 2001’s vicious Jane Doe, and this improvement evinces itself incredibly in the sheer build-up this song provides, before its epic release at around the nine-minute mark. Jacob Bannon’s bark is as bloody as ever, and this track is absolutely fuckin’ awesome.
****
Sheena Is A Parasite
The Horrors
The Horrors [EP]
Polydor/Stolen Transmission, 2006
It’s hard to pass the Horrors off as a gimmick band when they make tracks that are this tight. It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s got a video directed by Chris Cunningham—do I even need to give you any more reason?
****
Gold Lion [Diplo Remix]
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gold Lion [Single]
Interscope, 2006
Let it be said right now that I hated Gold Lion in its original form, and especially as the “big single” coming off of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s blisteringly lacklustre Show Your Bones. That being said, Diplo turned this track into something energetic, deep, and fun, a quality that seems to constantly elude the entire Yeah Yeah Yeah’s back-catalogue. It’s not often that I like a remix more than the track itself, but this is one of those cases where the remix is just so damned good that it’s impossible to deny.