I’m going to take the rest of 2006 off, and let the ass-grooves on my desk chair start to disappear. I should be back on 1/4, if not sooner due to an inspired moment of drunken revelation.
Happy/Safe/You and Yours/Thanks For Everything/The Kids Look Great, etc.

One day after Christmas, and one final 2006 list perfect for post-holiday recovery. Hannah’s list consists of eleven songs that have moved her in one way or another over the past year. As you’ll quickly notice, none of them were released during 2006, but the list’s scope—blues, soul, funk, folk, and even a [...]

Okay, two more lists, from two people who posted here more than anyone else than me. First, itinerant marathonpackser Hannah (here, here, here, and elsewhere), and then Jason from Magnolia Electric Co. (of the tour diary on the sidebar). Thanks so much to both of them. Quickly though, I’d like to point [...]

So let’s just let these four stand in for my 2006 song list. I had to smush all of them down to 128k so as to not completely break the Internet, but they still sound pretty good. So here’s what they are: they’re mixes—tracks transition into one another to varying degrees of [...]

After last Friday, I’m about spent with this list-making thing. But some bloggish pals (and two schoolchums) of mine aren’t, and they were generous enough to calibrate their tastes for our edification. Most aren’t ranked, one isn’t albums, a few aren’t ten, and a couple inclusions aren’t 2006. Irascible! On the tomorrow tip, and for [...]

I’ll admit it up top—I love making lists, especially when I get to try and arbitrarily quantify things that should never be directly compared with one another. This list is pretty idiosyncratic and subjective, and I’ll try and explain my rationale a bit for why things are where they are. Longevity is key—sometimes [...]

These two bands fit together as well as a two-necked guitar in the hands of a noseless, three-eyed nun, if you know what I’m getting at. Both Black Moth Super Rainbow and The Octopus Project work within generic boundaries only really defined by how far its practioners push them, and The House of [...]

For a newish band like Mahogany with no discernible extramusical reference points (aside from the random Diana Ross or Kurt Weill mentions), the presence in the studio of ex-Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie is pretty important. For the most part the band sounds a lot like the Cocteau Twins, if they were fifteen when they [...]

During the second song of Jandek’s performance in Indianapolis Saturday night, I scribbled down a couplet he’d just bellowed into the microphone: “It’s a gamble for me, but I’m rolling sevens. So I might just take the chance.” Considering the current trajectory of his artistic career, it’s a very fitting sentiment. [...]