IRT Magazine

EDITORS NOTE: Just to show you where we were at in 2006, here’s a reminder courtesy of IRT senior editor Tom Whalen’s previously unpublished Best of list from that fine, fine year. Please stay tuned for our new list in the coming weeks from the magazine that is cooler than the one you drool on every month, regardless of what you may or may not think. Thank you. -Ed.

THE TOP TWENTY FIVE ALBUMS OF LAST YEAR

By Tom Whalen

25 – belong – october language (carpark)
— While carving out some murky and ethereal guitar textures. Turk Dietrich cuts some corners off of the increasingly stale post-rock tension play and lays some welcome fresh ground on a record that displays depth and movement without sacrificing sheer mass.
24 - oxford collapse - remember the night parties (sub pop)
— Inking man’s drindie rock that’s fleshy and earnest, energizing and buzz-sustaining.
23 - tv on the radio - return to cookie mountain (interscope)
— Fresh-fuzz-faced barber-shop-hyper-rock upstarts turn the ship around after ‘04’s lack-luster release. Sure to be one of the few high-prof slices set to everyone’s list and actually deserves it.
22 - akron/family - meek warrior (young god)
— What an insane, seven-headed dragon-puppy of a record. A seismic across sprint the wobbly wire between folk, rock, free-jazz, noise, and god knows what else.
21 – sonic youth – rather ripped (geffen)
— Another solid set of glorious, mind-muscular cacophony from the noise-pop establishment. Stunning highlight: “Do You Believe in Rapture?”
20 – indian jewelry – invasive exotics (monitor)
— A dirty dungeon of twisted, nihilistic psych from this
intentionally faceless and placeless collective. They’ve got a lot of other shit out under a slew of names and personas; this one, as far as I know, is the easiest to get a hold of and well worth the hunt.
19 – grizzly bear – yellow house (warp)
— Ed Droste rides contradiction like a rusty trampoline: lush v.
hush; sweet v. salty; mighty v. mouse; chicken soup v. chicken coup.
18 - girl talk - night ripper (illegal art)
— Monster mash makes the hipsterpotomous dance. One more adventurous dude with a lot of music made by other people and the will to suspend pop music into the glorious realm of magnet poetry leads to a cut-n-paste epic and a few
more sets of arms unfolding.
17 – om – conference of the birds (holy mountain)
— Like a pair of mighty wings: the first track hurls a mean low-end tornado, the second swoops in like a sledgehammer. Mesmerizing and merciless.
16 - the no-neck blues band and embryo - embryonnck (staubgold)
— NNCK, as limber as ever, welcome some german space-rock vets for some playtime in their weird bag of drum sticks, parched throats, and sweaty serpents. Freaky deeky.
15 - ladyhawk - s/t (jagjaguwar)
— Solid rock that’s all meat, potatoes, and absinthe. This batch got hot wired to my craw real fast. Jagjag knocks um cold.
14 - drones - gala mill (ATP)
— I once read a review in which someone likened the drones to “neil young getting beaten up by the birthday party in a dark alley.” I don’t feel as if I can top that.
13 - wooden wand and the vanishing voice - gipsy freedom (5RC)
— Daniel Carter spreads the WWVV murk out into some new, baron zones while Toth and company continues to flash their bloody chops with some serious graveyard-shift folk and an incessant will to plunge harder and further.
12 - clogs - lantern (brassland)
— Some gorgeous stuff that I dread dubbing with any dash-classical. Truly captivating and unclassifiable.
11 - beach house - s/t (carpark)
— Could such a small record feel any bigger? I want to live in this album for a couple of weeks. It might do my back some good.
10 - comets on fire - avatar (sub pop)
— Amazingly, the comets’ music gets more palpable as it gets more fast and insatiable. Though smoke clears occasionally, letting some sweet, startling melody crack a smile and wipe the dirt off its boots.
09 - destroyer - destroyer’s rubies (merge)
— I’ve never owned a Destroyer album before I bought Rubies and though I adore this one, I haven’t bought any others since. The record is an absolute scream but I feel as if I’ve got more than enough of Bejar’s unruly wisdom bouncing around my skull as is.
08 - parts and labor - stay afraid (jagjaguwar)
— Another jagjag homerun. Big league, high-octave hooks slathered over a slaughterhouse of nuclear feedback, as if Lightning Bolt swallowed Lifetime.
07 - band of horses - everything all the time (sub pop)
— Lose the grouchy pants: the My Morning Jacket comparisons seem about as irrelevant and superficial as the Interpol/Joy Division swaps and could easily be discredited by listening to the two bands in one sitting. A great rock record is a great record and this is a god damned great rock record.
06 - boris - pink (southern lord)
— Technically came out late last year, but I’ll stand by the
stateside release on Southern Lord so I can give this bunch a shout. Boris, the outer-space rock monster, a being legendary for its boundless, shape-shifting, logic-defying presence, hunkers down and cracks its mighty tale with a record
that’s as “by-the-books” as any you can imagine them producing. Of course, the conventions begin and end with the albums pace and sequencing and this slab is the red-hot sonic meteor the bands expanding cult have come to cherish.
05 - neko case - fox confessor brings the flood (anti)
— The first half of the year saw an influx of cowgirl pastiche from relative lightweights like Cat Power and Jenny Lewis. Case, as she is prone to do, positively slays the upstarts with bullet proof pipes and enough hooks to hand a hundred sets of Watson Twins.
04 - bonnie ‘prince’ billy - the letting go (drag city)
— Top shelf across the board for the prince. Oldham’s voice is
sweet and dynamic, snaking off and around Dawn McCarthy’s pristine call and illuminating the graceful deviance of his yarns. Fittingly, this was recorded in Iceland, which is, as you probably know, actually a very, very green place.
03 - wooden wand and the sky high band - second attention (kill rock stars)
— Wand writes, sings and plays with arresting clarity, unweaving every song you swear you’ve heard somewhere else, somewhere far away from wherever you were the moment before you pressed the play button. Positively breathtaking.
02 - liars - drum’s not dead (mute)
— Proto-dance punks gone wild and bloodthirsty, Liars make due on the promise of their brilliant, misread second LP with this meticulously crafted and defiantly haunted avant-torpedo. The witchcraft, hardly smoke and mirrors, turns to gold in the form of warped percussive incantations, gutted melodies, and a rabid attention to detail. “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack,” the last drop of sweet molten nectar, is so gorgeous that it
almost stands on its own, like a mirror for the band’s uncanny beauty.
01 - the hold steady - boys and girls in american (vagrant)
Craig Finn will be the first to tell you that his band is not out to
make a masterpiece every time they step up to the plate. Barely a year and half away from the bruised gem that was Separation Sunday, the Steady pass on the one-two punch, beefing up their already potent sound, once lean and brittle under Finn’s infectious rattle, and working, for the first time, as a team.
The bloodshot focus of the musical performances is reflected in
Finn’s increasingly vigorous youth-narrative shakedown, cleverly chiseling each of his swilly stage-plays to sweet perfection while the band gives each tune a unique and unshakable flavor. Finn is a myth-maker of the highest
order, obsessed with detail and yet seemingly unconcerned with keeping his facts straight, and always, above all, ready and willing to revel in the act of love and creation that gives rock-n-roll its promise. I can’t think of another band
that has “meant it” as much as these guys seem to mean it.

Last Modified : November 16th, 2007
Filed under : THE RECORD BIN
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