Marathonpacks’ Top 19 of 2006

10. OOIOO Taiga (Thrill Jockey)
This is marathonpacks’ token “world music” record on this list, right? This year’s Amadou and Mariam? Sure, why not? I have no idea what OOIOO is attempting here—song cycle? Operetta? Operetta as song-cycle? ethnomusicological survey of global musics?—who knows? Ex-Boredom Yoshimi P-We is the mastermind behind this project, but OOIOO moves far beyond her work with that band, aiming, and largely hitting, a mark equally as intellectually stimulating and occasionally alienating as her prior project, but much more organic and colorfully realized. There’s a lot to wade through here, which probably alienated a lot of listeners, but I got a great hand a couple months ago, thanks to a smart commenter and the always-amazing WFMU blog. He/she noticed a link between one of my favorite songs this year, the insane, parallel-universe double-dutch anthem “UMO,” and this song (both re-upped) from a seemingly forgotten Italian rock opera featuring some sort of youth chorus. These sort of connections are the best thing about running a music blog, you know? Learning and shit. But it’s completely possible to enjoy Taiga on a purely visceral level, too, and it works as a great party record (okay, maybe only for grad students, but whatever). “UMO” is a full-bodied, visceral cover version, but on Taiga, it’s also a reprise of the record’s first song, “UMA,” a more nuanced take on the same song. They aren’t quite bookends, though, because after “UMO” is “IOA,” a sunny, gorgeous Afrobeat pastiche that sounds like a long-lost Malcolm McLaren field recording. But the second track, the 9-minute “KMS,” perhaps best sums up OOIOO’s approach. It begins as a slow-building, proggy ziggurat of guitar scales and bongo rhythm before lapsing into jazz quartet territory for a minute or two. Yoshimi’s voice soon emerges, along with a four-note guitar phrase, and both lead the way toward an all-out jam, wonderful and nearly disastrous. Taiga is an incredibly ambitious album, and that it succeeds in blending so many of its obvious influences toward an approachable and danceable end is just remarkable.

9. Cansei de Ser Sexy Cansei de Ser Sexy (Brazilian Version) (US Version: Sub Pop)
I can’t lie dudes. I had an instant aversion to CSS’ song titles—they seemed to be dropping in the sex/gender curse words as window-dressing to match their name (“I’m Tired of Being Sexy”) and suffered from the dreaded Peaches Effect as a result. Once I, uhhhh I dunno like sat and dug into the record though, I realized that the songs were thoughtful and clear and actually pretty sweet at times. This was a banner year for emotionally savvy and musically talented women to claim some indie-agency for themselves (Karen and Karin are the others), and (ahem) Lovefoxxx, a brattier-and-less-NPR-friendly Sabina Scuibba and brasher Karen O, is right there with them. She’s bold and confrontational and blatantly sexual, but not just in order to make some boring political statement. CSS isn’t punk, and they’re not fucking Peaches, either. They’re more on some Sleater-Kinney/Cibo Matto shit than anything.

The first track (the one with the word “fuck” in the title) is affirming and well, sorta inspirational—someone may have given you the coldest of shoulders, but you’ve still got a ton going for you—hey, lemme just tell you how much right quick. And after you hear that 5-note descending electro-squawk that comes in after the first verse for the first time, you start hearing it in other songs, because it would work so well in so many different contexts. And “Let’s Make Love” (mp3) might have the name of the abandoned dance project of a couple of douchebags in its complete title, but it’s the sound of distanced yearning. The woman’s beau is some sort of muckety muck in town for a short time (“Came by plane all alone/Spend the afternoon making a speech”), but in order to get some “mad love,” he’s gotta play by her rules. It’s a coy hipster power grab and yo—oh that beat is effing fire. Is that Nile Rodgers on guitar? Then there’s the cocky punk banger (“Alala”), the EuroTeen pop jam (“Bezzi”), the pop-punk song with the phone as metaphor for interpersonal communication (“Off the Hook”), and the song that sounds like a Yeah Yeah Yeah’s song but might actually be about a member of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (“Art Bitch”—with the opening line of the year: “My art is called egocentric soft porno//Or maybe it’s just narcissism My one and only subject goes from/something like anything but me-ism”). Starting at this moment, they are this year’s most prominent recipient of gradually increased appreciation.

8. Centro-Matic Fort Recovery (Misra)
The best record that Will Johnson has ever released, under any name, ever in the history of time. Fort Recovery is crunchy, weary, and vulnerable, but never even remotely depressing. Not even close, really, thanks to Johnson’s minor wonder of a voice, an instrument capable of transmitting exhaustion and undying hope in equal measures, and often simultaneously. The best song on this record, and maybe my favorite Centro-Matic song, is “Calling Thermatico” (mp3), a séance for a mysterious legend of dubious ethical makeup. I think. He might be an old-timey railroad baron, or some sort of chemical alchemist. But Johnson eulogizes him over guitars that are scorching, just fucking overdriven and growling, and it doesn’t matter that he’s speaking in abstract, technical-sounding phrases like “he may have options/within the sequence/to which we abide.” Whoever Thermatico is, he’s being channeled for inspiration, and inspiration comes when Johnson realizes he’s never really left, which might be good or bad. Which means that Johnson’s chilling, sustained howl at the song’s close might be one of relief, or an ominous baying for future events. I could be way off here (I am quite often when I try to interpret lyrics), but I’m pretty sure that Johnson dedicated “Patience for the Ride” to fellow Texans and Certified Evil Mother Fuckers™ Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. Evidence: “You lied to the lonely hearts on your desperate fall. And false was your figure from within, and gone are your golden ones to their desolate pens. We’re gathering the witness for the stand; battening the hatches, yeah and we hope you brought your patience for the ride.”

7. Birdman & Lil’ Wayne Like Father Like Son (Cash Money)
Okay, okay, forget the unintentionally hilarious cover photo for a minute, which, when paired with an unfortunate candid picture, played into rap fans’ and critics’ apparently inherent tendency toward humor-tinged homophobia (at the worst, there are worse fates than being rap’s Omar Little, right?). Try to think, instead, of a rap album more consistently fulfilling and solid from beginning to end, and with stronger lyrics and delivery, than Like Father, Like Son. I’ll give you a hint. There’s exactly one, and it’s number one on my list (no peeking). Lil’ Wayne probably isn’t the best rapper alive today, and I don’t know how that sort of thing is quantified anyway, but for me, this record cements his standing as one of the most imaginative lyricists and impeccable phrasers in rap today. That these rhymes come over brilliantly cinematic synthesized backdrops fit for T.I., though, solidifies LFLS as the second-best rap record of the year. The highlight, and one of the best songs released this year, is “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy” (mp3) which has a killer bridge and gaudy, royal chorus, sure. But my favorite part comes at the very end, during Weezy’s last verse. He challenges: “show me my opponent,” then pauses, wads up a piece of paper and puts it in his mouth, and restates the line, which now sounds more like “shjummamahuhponnun.” It’s cocky, but it’s also funny and smart-assed, and that’s what I like so much about Wayne. He takes to calling someone a coward by referring to them as “yellow, like Sesame Street Bert faces,” and goes into some detail on “You Ain’t Know” about his favored footwear: “And understand the rap game is my court/So I shall walk and come forth like a Rockport/Or some sort of…matchin’ slippers or yacht shoes/See I don’t cruise control I control the cruise.” He connects metaphors of basketball to boating through fucking shoes. C’mon now. I wrote about how much I like “1st Key” here, and I’ll take this opportunity to go on about a few other songs: the regal synthesized horn charts and T-Pain-sung chorus (“take a picture: click click”) of “Know What I’m Doin’,” and the Requisite Slow Jam, “Don’t Die.” Its chorus is a funny, yet specious claim: “Gangsta’s don’t die, they get chubby and move to Miami,” but it also contains the record’s only mention of the hurricane that totaled the city a year ago: “and don’t think about the past; a little water came, now we floatin’ on e’erything.” It’s a casual dismissal of the nation’s worst-ever natural disaster, and it’s also a slightly unnerving and distinctly Southern testimony to the superceding need to get shit accomplished.

6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs Show Your Bones (Interscope)
Of course the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were going to suffer from the “you didn’t make an album that sounded like your first one, and the first one was really good” complaint. Yeah, well, Show Your Bones is much better than (the still good) Fever to Tell. Bones is relaxed, mature, and caring where its predecessor was brash, bratty and knotty. It’s also infinitely more melodic, and much more complex, emotionally and musically. There is rarely any sort of structural concert between drums, guitar(s) and vocals, done to greatest effect on “Way Out,” where Zinner and Chase weave around and through each other like a defensive-driving course, and Karen O. stands in the middle, implacable and defiant, cawing to an invisible lover that his “face ain’t making what the mouth needs.” The second verse is the monster, though, and maybe the greatest moment on the record. She plays call-and response with herself, and the pace gets more and more frantic as she keeps repeating, and only repeats, the phrase, “It’s around me so tight, uh-oh.” It’s as claustrophobic and terse a moment as I heard on a record this year. Her varied sources for musical inspiration throughout the record are its central talking point, though. A few songs (“Fancy” and “Mysteries”) are raving leftovers from Fever, and “Phenomena” is interpolated Bronx hip-hop, but “Dudley” and the vaguely Sendakian “Gold Lion” seem to plumb children’s literature as a primary source. The romantic resignation of “Dudley” is especially affecting, sung to a lullaby melody and flecked with Zinner’s chiming guitar tone. In terms of scope and range, Show Your Bones seems like a transitional record—the band’s trying to see what fits, what could lead toward something new on the third record—but it’s also tight and restrained enough to know its limits. It’s soft and cutting, familiar and unpredictable, and just completely solid from start to finish.

5. Danielson Ships (Secretly Canadian)
There’s a really great scene in the surprisingly also great Danielson documentary that came out this year, when Daniel Smith and his wife sit down in the living room for a quiet evening with a film, and throw on the Maysles’ Brothers’ Salesman. It’s probably one of the single saddest films I’ve ever seen, but also one of the most poignant. For Smith, though, it’s fodder for a cute art project—you see, for Smith, Salesmen are bland, quintessentially American, archetypical Christian commercialists of the highest order, too. But not in a bad way, necessarily. Smith is no simpleton (he just plays one on record); he knows he’s been selling his own version of Christianity—an infinitely entertaining and often-great version—for a long time now, and he’s not above finding new arty ways to poke fun at it.

But Ships is different from the homemade swag Smith shills in the documentary—I’ll probably get thrown in Danielson Fan Jail for this, but Ships is his best album yet. It’s also his most highly produced, and the one most in line with the indie rock zeitgeist that surrounds it, typically the moment when fans of any consistently prolific outsider artist call bullshit. But it’s got the best songs you see. The best of the best are the single and fun political parable “Did I Step On Your Trumpet” (mp3) and the folk/swing/sing-along (with clarinet) “Cast it at the Setting Sail,” both of which have perfectly executed verse-chorus transitions that turn them into unlikely anthems. The thing that sucked about Illinoise (besides the fact that its popularity earned its creator an extended montage in the above-mentioned documentary) was that, for all of his innocent, construction-paper pretensions, I still got the feeling that Sufjan just wanted to fuck my girlfriend. It’s that sort of faux-coy boyishness that turns me off of Will Sheff and Conor Oberst, too. Smith taught Stevens everything he knows about presentation, but Smith does it with verve and authenticity.

4. The Knife Silent Shout (Mute)
The Knife creates so much distance—emotionally, artistically, and intellectually—between themselves and those who listen to their music, to the point of probably turning a lot of people off to the group. Those who stick around and pick and parse and examine what’s in front of them, though, are rewarded immensely (I wrote a lot more about them here). The music is presented with a crisp, frosty stare, but the breadth of emotion below the surface is stunning. The holy-shit-banger-of-all-bangers is the record’s best song, though: “We Share Our Mother’s Health” (mp3) is the best song released this year, and one of the top five songs of this decade so far. It’s the “Immigrant Song” for the Pitchfork Generation—an origin tale of the highest dramatic and visceral potency. Where Zeppelin cranked a swashbuckling conquest fable though, the Knife is sick and desperate for food and rest. And frightened of its fate. Karin sings: “you know what I fear/the end is always near.”

And Silent Shout is, at its core, about the body. Thematically, it’s the most thorough and stunning examination of human corporeal fragility since Radiohead’s The Bends; best expressed in “From Off to On”: “we want control of our bodies.” Elsewhere, a woman reluctantly gyrates for pay in “Neverland,” and “One Hit” has the frightening sequence: “Sons and daughters you will breed/As long as you breastfeed/Yeah being a man is bliss/One hit one kiss.” The opener “Silent Shout,” however, has the most affecting subject of all—frozen emotions. It’s heartbreaking to hear Karin sing, “Wish I could speak in just one sweep/What you are and what you mean to me.” I’ve never heard anything like it; the icy sound of stifled love portrayed as overwhelming dread, the sort that makes you dream your teeth are falling out. Seriously guys, this song is just stunning, and the spiraling, overlapping whirls of electronic steel drums behind the lyrics only magnifies, to eerie effect, its potency of feeling. The only reason Silent Shout wasn’t ranked higher is because it came out in a year when two of my all-time favorite musicians released amazing records and a third, whom I merely just liked before, released the best record of his career.

3. Destroyer Destroyer’s Rubies (Merge)
There probably hasn’t been a more lyrically pored-over artist since Dylan. I mean shit; Dan Bejar has an entire wiki site devoted to his insular, self-and-elsewhere-references, and a drinking game to boot. Destroyer’s Rubies is many things, not least of which being Bejar’s greatest record to date, surpassing Streethawk: A Seduction by a hell of a lot after its fourth or fifth pass through my speakers and headphones. It is also a sampler of sorts of some of the most revered Canadian singer/songwriters of the rock era: Neil Young (“Sick Priest Learns to Last Forever”), The Band (“Your Blood”), Leonard Cohen (the lyrics, not the delivery, of “Painter in Your Pocket”), Dan Bejar (“Painter in Your Pocket”). The opener is a stunner—an alternately seismic and pensive statement of purpose that sets the scene for my favorite narrative undercurrent of the record: Bejar’s positioning of the “precious American underground,” which is “born of wealth, with not a writer in the lot.” There are so many threads to pull from this album, and many others have done it much better that I could hope to here, but Bejar’s understanding of the Indie Rock Elitist Class is something that goes all-too-often ignored in public discourses. The term “independent” is rife with contradictions and laden with falsely assumed cultural capital—independent from what? It’s just a word, sure, but it has bled into the reception of an oddly (and malleably) selected slice of rock music over the past 25 years, to detrimental effect. And Bejar kicks its teeth in on Rubies—sort of a Magnificent Ambersons or Le Regle du Jeu of pseudo-intellectual indie posturing, while at the same time performing music that would easily fit into its restrictive canon. So, yeah. Also, “3000 Flowers” is amazing on headphones.

2. Belle & Sebastian The Life Pursuit (Matador)
Okay, this is rather easy to me, but it still, understandably I guess, has caused me many arguments over the past six months. The Life Pursuit is, by a significant margin, the best record that Belle and Sebastian have yet released. Come on, stop rolling your eyes and being a dick, and let me explain myself. Prior to this record, Belle and Sebastian’s best record was 1998’s If You’re Feeling Sinister, a front-to-back-triumph of fey anti-dynamism, skillful wordplay, and melodies you could build a life around. But, as the group went on, starting with the dud-ass follow-up The Boy With the Arab Strap, it became evident that Stuart Murdoch, Stevie Jackson, &c were looking to transcend the narrow constraints of twee-folk, and become the perfect pop band. Well, the only good song on Arab Strap was its title track, an effervescent Motown-crib that still stands as one of their best songs. But on their next two records and often great interstitial EPs, they flirted with brilliance more than a few times (Fold Your Hands’ “Women’s Realm” and “I Fought in A War,” Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ title track and “Piazza, New York Catcher,” and “Dog on Wheels,” the re-recorded “The State I’m In,” and even “Jonathan David” from the EPs. It was on the, well, sorta catastrophic Catastrophe that the band got in over their heads finally, handing over the reins to the traditionally unrestrained Trevor Horn, and getting a whole lot of cheekiness in return. Anyone who has seen their Fans Only DVD, with the most insider/friends-having-fun aesthetic outside of Slow Century, knows that the band can balance levity with sincerity and sharp wit when they want to, and they’ve finally, wonderfully accomplished that on record.

The Life Pursuit is an apt name for a record that stands as the realization of an aesthetic promise consistently hinted at, but never fully achieved. The opening song, “Act of the Apostle,” shows the band’s newfound gift for balance: a rubbery major-keyed piano opens the song, but only as a point of entry; it soon gives way to a hazy, nearly bossa shuffle under Murdoch’s perfect tenor—the British indie Art Garfunkel, and that’s a really great thing in terms of timbre. The chorus is similarly restrained; it’s a perfectly managed switch from the verse, a chugging organ is the only nod to happiness, and even it comes out through a fog. The surrounding vocals that emerge—the Murdoch Tabernacle Choir—are the elevating force. Next, on “Another Sunny Day,” the 12 string comes out, and the band does its best impression of American country rock—a Scottish, twee Chris Hillman. “White Collar Boy” and “The Blues are Still Blue” are a great 3-4 punch, and the record’s trajectory is in full throttle, or something. But the latter is the clear winner—a mind-meld of T. Rex swagger, Ric Ocasek synth-cool, and, well, the uniquely Murdochian melodic sensibility that allows a line like “I’m a singer, a swinger I’m a layabout but laying on the…” to quickly rise, like off the top of a ramp, and then gracefully fall back to earth with the phrase completion “The dock in the lazy sun, will never quite relegate me to a bum.” Seriously, get the record, and read the liner notes. It’s even broken up when written like it comes across sung.

“Dress Up In You” is comparatively slight, but an oasis of calm after the first four songs. It leads to another song that they would have no doubt screwed up on Catastrophe, first single “Sukie in the Graveyard.” Here, though, the dynamic shifts are tempered with prolonged organ notes (fun fact: the organ is one of the best things on this record) and Murdoch’s uninterrupted stream of words. Jackson wails for a minute on a guitar solo, and so forth. It segues perfectly into the album’s sole lark—which is nevertheless irresistible. “We Are the Sleepyheads” is a shout back in time to the Legal Man EP, with the jittery title track and its similarly sunny B-side “Judy is a Dick Slap.” I’m going to defer to Matthew for comment on his personal favorite “Song for Sunshine,” because he nails it. I’d like to wail for a moment, though, on the band’s most perfect pop song to date, the completely irresistible “Funny Little Frog.” It’s the closest thing the band could have to a radio hit, down to the O. Henry-gotcha-ending, and narrative of passion for a 2-dimensional representation of a woman (see also: “Pictures of Lily,” “She’s A Beauty,” “Centerfold”). It’s got the album’s most unstoppable bassline, an elegant piano arrangement that still swings like crazy, and a chorus that I managed to lose my voice yelling at my steering wheel on numerous occasions, slapping my dashboard to match the 1-2-3 “wrapped in pearls” and “life a-gain” parts. Jackson’s great song “To Be Myself Completely” is the perfect follow-up, and then the reprised “Apostle” and the album flits away after that, the band’s first complete success since Sinister, and their most fully realized effort to date. By a significant margin.

1. Ghostface Killah Fishscale (Interscope)
Ghostface is the most charismatic, intelligent, and prolific American pop star currently making music. He’s also an encyclopedia of contradictions: he’s menacing and completely loveable; a catchphrase-shouting party rapper/premier hip-hop ethnographer/sensitive soul singer; a proud father/gleeful sex fiend/unrepentant cocaine dealer. In other words, he’s never going to be as famous as he really should be. But the scope of his personality—the intricacy of his observations, and his limitless charm and sensitivity, his site-specific and narrowly motivated violent outbursts—is, regardless of restraints, that of a superstar. He’s proving that hip-hop can not only age gracefully without getting lame, but keep getting continuously better. Jay-Z is his nearest competitor, and while Kingdom Come isn’t as totally shitty as a lot of people have made it out to be, it’s still the far inferior product compared to Fishscale.

Fishscale is even for me right now with Supreme Clientele, but I imagine it will surpass its predecessor eventually. This year alone, it’s steadily and gradually shown me new things on each listen; subtle nuances and turns-of-phrase that kept moving it northward re: my appreciation. I liked it immediately—because everyone likes every Ghostface album immediately, that’s why—but it wasn’t until I was driving home from Chicago after Thanksgiving that it really hit me. There’s just not a dull second on Fishscale; not even the alternating Mickey Goldmill/authoritative comic book narrator interstitials got on my nerves. The songs themselves perfectly represent Ghost’s musical strengths—the breathlessly detailed, stream-of-consciousness recollections; the fire-spitting club bangers; and the emotional, sometimes tender, R&B joints are all present. The bangers are in full force: “Kilo” is a Schoolhouse Rock introduction to drug math, and I’m also proud to know what “you’ll never see the kid going hand-to-hand” means, thanks to The Wire. “9 Milli Bros.” is the latest insane Wu posse track, and “Be Easy,” with Trife from the Theodore crew, is the cousin to The W’s unstoppable “Thang Thang.” The sensitive soul songs are strong as well, and they predictably drew the most critical and popular notice. “Whip You With A Strap” because of its completely irregular subject matter, and “Back Like That” because it was the solid R&B single of the album, taking inspiration from both Willie Hutch and Jigga (“Song Cry”) in the process.

What separates Ghostface from his peers, though, is his ability to describe in intricate detail, within a single song, events that take place over a matter of minutes; then patching them together to create not so much a story as a slide presentation. “Shakey Dog” is the exemplar on Fishscale. It opens with Ghost in a cab, shuttling between locations. He devotes his first nine bars or so to a sensory explanation of his surroundings: “Yo, making moves back and forth uptown/60 dollars plus toll is the cab fee/Wintertime bubble goose, goose, clouds of smoke/Music blastin’ and the Arab V blunted/Whip smelling like fish from 125th/Throwin’ ketchup on my fries, hitting baseball spliffs/Back seat with my leg all stiff/Push the fuckin’ seat up, tartar sauce on my S Dot kicks/Rocks is lit while I’m poppin’ the clips.” Later, he’s on the run, but makes a point to note “that lady with the shopping cart,” because “She keep a shottie cocked in the hallway.” But wait, there’s backstory: “Damn she look pretty old Ghost, she work for Kevin, she ‘bout seventy seven. She paid her dues when she smoked his brother in law at his bosses’ wedding.” And it goes on. I highly recommend you grab the song (mp3), go over to the lyrics, and play along at home. It’s rap’s “Run Lola Run”—a stylized narrative (the horns are part superhero, part Edwin Starr) with a furious path and clear goal, but also one that diverts frequently and quickly into the lives of passersby. It’s polysemic, intelligent, and a stunning display of condensed storytelling. Okay, now that I’ve typed all of this, I’ll go ahead and slide Fishscale ahead of Clientele. Thanks for reading this far, to get to that conclusion.