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Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Jim Connelly's
Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Monday, January 15, 2007
Jesse Steichen's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Friday, January 12, 2007
Bill Bentley's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Tom Ridge's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Lee Templeton's Favorite Recordings Of 2006
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Anthony Carew's 13 Fave Albums Of 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
SXSW 2006: Finding Some Hope In Austin
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Letter From New Orleans
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Jennifer Przybylski's Fave Albums of 2005
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Music For Dwindling Days: Max Schaefer's Fave Recordings Of 2005
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Sean Fennessey's 'Best-Of' 2005
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Lori Miller Barrett's Fave Albums Of 2005
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Lee Templeton's Favorite Recordings of 2005
Thursday, January 5, 2006
Michael Lach - Old Soul Songs For A New World Order
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Found In Translation — Emme Stone's Year In Music 2005
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Dave Allen's 'Best-Of' 2005
Monday, January 2, 2006
Steve Gozdecki's Favorite Albums Of 2005
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Johnny Walker Black's Top 10 Of 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
Neal Block's Favorite Recordings Of 2005
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Jenny Tatone's Year In Review
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Dave Renard's Fave Recordings Of 2005
Monday, December 12, 2005
Jennifer Kelly's Fave Recordings Of 2005
Thursday, December 8, 2005
Tom Ridge's Favorite Recordings Of 2005
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Ben Gook's Beloved Albums Of 2005
Monday, December 5, 2005
Anthony Carew's Fave Albums Of 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Prince, Spoon And The Magic Of The Dead Stop
Monday, September 12, 2005
The Truth About America
Monday, September 5, 2005
Tryin' To Wash Us Away
Monday, August 1, 2005
A Psyche-Folk Heat Wave In Western Massachusetts
Monday, July 18, 2005
Soggy But Happy At Glastonbury 2005
Monday, April 4, 2005
The SXSW Experience, Part 3: All Together Now
Friday, April 1, 2005
The SXSW Experience, Part 2: Dr. Dog's Happy Chords
Thursday, March 31, 2005
The SXSW Experience, Part 1: Waiting, Waiting And More Waiting
Friday, March 25, 2005
Final Day At SXSW's Charnel House
Monday, March 21, 2005
Day Three At SXSW
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Day Two In SXSW's Hall Of Mirrors
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Report #1: SXSW 2005 And Its Hall Of Mirrors
Monday, February 14, 2005
Matt Landry's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Wednesday, February 2, 2005
David Howie's 'Moments' From The Year 2004
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Lori Miller Barrett's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Noah Bonaparte's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Kevin John's Fave Albums Of 2004
Friday, January 14, 2005
Music For Those Nights: Max Schaefer's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Dave Renard's Fave Recordings Of 2004
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Neal Block's Top Ten Of 2004
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Jenny Tatone's Fave Albums Of 2004
Monday, January 10, 2005
Wayne Robins' Top Ten Of 2004
Friday, January 7, 2005
Brian Orloff's Fave Albums Of 2004
Thursday, January 6, 2005
Johnny Walker (Black)'s Top 10 Of 2004
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Jennifer Przybylski's Fave Albums (And Book) Of 2004
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
Mark Mordue's Fave Albums Of 2004
Monday, January 3, 2005
Lee Templeton's Fave Recordings Of 2004
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Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Anthony Carew's 13 Fave Albums of 2006
Neumu's Michael Goldberg writes: In case you're wondering why things
slowed down to a crawl at Neumu last year, the answer, in a word (and in a web
site), is MOG (www.mog.com).
I've been spending most of my time working on MOG, the awesome music-focused
social
networking site,
and Neumu has suffered (and if you haven't been there yet, check out my MOG:
www.mog.com/Michael_Goldberg ).
Still, with 2006 over, I asked Neumu contributors to share some of the albums
that rocked their world. Today,
I present longtime Neumu contributor Anthony Carew.
Dear Humans of the Internet: In previous seasons, I've scrawled up at
least 20 discs a year for the discs-o'-th'-year bit, b'cause, let's be honest,
the top 10 is an entirely inadequate way to r'call the hundreds upon hundreds
of
records heard over a past year.
Yet, in this past year, I discovered stealing music. Meaning: instead of hearing merely hundreds, I heard thousands upon thousands. Meaning: things soon b'came quite the overload, and stolen things oft sat, neglect'd, never listen'd to once they'd crawl'd down my internerd wires. It seems that having literally too much music to listen to made me concentrate on certain specific things. Specifically: the most unlucky 13 on this hott countdown:
1. Joanna Newsom, Ys (Drag City): With a harp and a halo she roams
the great
prairie, the warbling songbird caroling her zeugmatic wordplay and
vocabulary-stretching lyricism in twittering tones intoned in shifting
metres, whilst she plucks her Lyon & Healy-style 15 harp with the dexterous
fingers of a gonzo virtuoso. And the second time around, she does it so
fearlessly: letting loose that screech, rambling on for 10 minutes at a
stretch, stretching her bloody wings and taking wing on fanciful flights of
artistic freedom. It feels nice to be alive at the same time as Newsom, it
truly does.
2. Jenny Wilson, Love and Youth (Rabid): Letting her shoes lead her forward, the Swedish songstress pirouettes her way through tales of bleak adolescent angst set to softly-stepping disco beats; her sugary melodicism and salty lyricism make for the sweetest of sweet/sour dishes.
3. El Perro del Mar, El Perro del Mar (Memphis Industries): Sarah Assbring's sad, sweet sound sounds like Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift for You buried
under six feet of Swedish snow, the one-woman-girl-group's icy
walls of sound building a Brill building out of shed tears and exhaled
breaths.
4. Montt Mardié, Drama (Hybris): Whilst it's, on cursory listen, p'rhaps the
gayest, twee-est, Swede-est album ever made, subsequent spins (and spins and
spins) r'veal David Pagmar's Montt Mardié bit to be a work of substantial
cultural genius in which he regurgitates three decades' worth of bad American
AM radio in falsetto-sung songs so warp'd he's like a more-tuneful twin to
Ariel Pink.
5. Destroyer, Destroyer's Rubies (Merge): After six albums of fighting for his right to make ridiculous records sung in over-the-top, anthemic,
voice-of-a-generation Bowie-isms, Daniel Bejar finally made the record on
which it all made sense. This definitive Destroyer disc (with all its
familiar literary lyrics, hysterical falsetto-ing, camp piano, and soaring
guitar-solos) is his most glittering compact-digital jewel yet.
6. Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I Am Dreaming (Global Symphonic): After writing
all of the good songs on that Wolf Parade gear, Spencer Krug turns his
Sunset Rubdown bit-on-the-side into a grandstanding glory, fashioning
towering monuments of strident, strangely symphonic out-rock angst sung in a
cathartic caterwaul that delivers blood in every note.
7. The Blood Brothers, Young Machetes (V2): In which twin bansheeist
vocalists Johnny Whitney and Jordan Blilie hold the lyrical blades of their
Young Machetes to Uncle Sam's throat. Surrealist texts with
dreamscape imagery, depicting the belligerent nation as dystopian nightmare
made manifest.
8. Beirut, Gulag Orkestar (Ba-Da-Bing!): Zach Condon's one-man-gypsy-band
rumpus took the indie-kid out of the bedroom and into the Balkans; Beirut's
rapturously romantic record, at once boyish and brassy, essentially casts Jens Lekman amidst an Emir
Kusturica film.
9. Phoenix, It's Never Been Like That (Virgin): For a band born as somewhat the joke — mixing unerring Steely Dan knock-offs with French house production — Phoenix's evolution into band-teetering-on-the-brink-of-pop-perfection has been quite the unexpected sight for sore eyes. Their third set sets hearts aflutter as it amps up the killer and reins in the filler.
10. Be Your Own Pet, Be Your Own Pet (XL): Undoubtedly the greatest album
ever authored by a troupe of Tennesseean teenagers ripping off Yeah Yeah
Yeahs, Be Your Own Pet's first-ever longplayer was the surprise set of the
ought-six, the searing two-note guitar-riff on the 83-second "Wildcat!" an
explosion of youthful musical enthusiasm that still burns bright nine months
after this gear was released.
11. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl): This
actually comes out in 2007, but given I spent so much of 2006 listening to
it, it'd seem out of place in the future. Built around the
Bataille-referencing 11-minute-epic "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" — the
best big-production number from Of Montreal since "Nickee Coco and the
Invisible Tree" — Kevin Barnes's latest kaleidoscopic pop jamboree is oft
kept to a kraut-rock beat that keeps the knees-up knocking.
12. Gepe, Gepinto (Quemasucabeza): The comparison is easy/obvious/offensive,
but ever so spot-on: Imagine if José González was actually musically Latino,
and not boring. Twenty-four-year-old Chilean Daniel Riveros may've sold several
million fewer records than Mr. Sony this year, but his debut album is a
quietly thrilling racket of tinkling hand-percussion and charm'd acoustic
croonery.
13. Javiera Mena, Esquemas Juveniles (Indice Virgen): Befitting
the modern times Dylan isn't moaning about, I came to love this Chilean songsmith
less
by dint of her debut disc (as it is), than by the five preceding years of
demos in circulation, the bewilderingly uneventful no-budget video for
its
title track, and an amazing live-in-2004 recording of her duet with Gepe,
"Sol de Invierno," which, the first time I heard it, made me cry and cry.
The InsiderOne Daily Report appears on occasion.
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