MarathonProxys: Two More Top Tens

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 my digital wand of illumination toward some other year-end summations that are worth checking out:

Sean at Said the Gramophone lists his 55 favorite songs, with mp3s and typically engaging conversation to boot.

Skatterbrain’s year-end albums list vacillates between Hawaii (twee indie pop) and Maine (post-rock). Or is it Smarties (indie twee pop) and an undergraduate physics lecture (post-rock)? I forget. But he’s got The Knife and Belle & Sebastian in his top 5.

Motel de Moka welcomes its December guests with a refreshingly unique list. Mp3s aplenty, but you have to pay for the mini-bar.

And some more pals of mine have posted their annotated lists: you’ll have to read around the formatting on 9 Godless Brats, but it’s worth the stretch; on Michael Reid’s, you’ll have to either read backwards, or scroll down quickly with your eyes closed to maintain the tension; and the well-titled Nerd Report’s follows the same scrolling rules, but with equal reward. Um, sorry for the work.

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Hannah:

10. Kamikaze Hearts Oneida Road (Collar City)
The Hearts are tough to place on any list of my Favorite Anythings. I’ve known them for a few years now and from the first time I heard them have been one of my all-time dearest bands, ever. They’re also inextricably tied to my life in college, to my progression as a music listener and, now, to my working in music. The result is I care so much for them that I can’t listen with anything that remotely resembles an objective ear. I can say that I hold them to an impossibly high standard, and by that measure Oneida Road is as eloquent, comforting, (yes, comforting) and true-to-form as I could possibly have hoped. With any luck they’ll soon be famous billionaires, and I will sit back smiling, thinking “toldjaso.”
9. Spank Rock Yoyoyoyoyoyo (Big Dada)
Damn. I mean, you know? Like, DAMN.

8. TV On The Radio Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope)

7. Murs Murray’s Revenge (Record Collection)

6. Psapp The Only Thing I Ever Wanted (Domino)
You can see the pattern developing by now, I’m sure. The records I love most tend to be those that combine electronic and organic, taking the best of both approaches and abandon the self-indulgence of the singer-songwriter and/or needlessly abrasive electro-noodling and/or post-ironic rocknroll swagger, etc. Instead, they bring the best emotive hints to the forefront, and in these cases do it so well that it seems easy without ever seeming simple. Bands and artists sounding nothing alike—Psapp and Talkdemonic and TV on the Radio and Beirut—are unified by, a) their ability to make something genuinely new, and b) in doing so, changing the way emotion gets through a song. That sounds bold, I know, but it’s true. Anyway, Psapp do this in so many different ways it’s startling. You think you have a blip-pop band, then you see them live and there are world music elements, glitchy bits, a seemingly Mary-Poppins-esque bag of tricks all laid out in front of you. Amazing.

5. Beirut Gulag Orkestar (Badabing!)
The only album I bought straight off the listening booth.

4. Horse Feathers Words are Dead (Lucky Madison)

3. The Gossip Standing in the Way of Control (KRS)
85% of people who keep this off their top 10 will eventually see it make their top 100 of this decade, I promise you. They simply haven’t heard it yet, silly fools.

2. Talkdemonic Beat Romantic (Arena Rock)
A close call for my #1 spot, and probably the record (and band) I listened to most this year. The structure of this band is deceptively simple – live drums, live viola, and a laptop. But like the Books or the Mountain Goats, the simplicity belies something incredibly complex, gorgeous, genuinely emotive without spelling every damn thing out for you, and without any cleverness or irony weighing it down.

1. J Dilla Donuts (Stones Throw)
I can admit that before we started promoting this record, (and before Dilla’s death that same week,) I had only the vaguest knowledge of his music, mostly through his work with Slum Village. That said, I’ve been listening to this album consistently since February. I know I tend to think a lot about the where-and-when of music, but when I read the fan memoir from Ghostly International owner Sam Valenti, I found words for how completely I was (and am) loving J Dilla and Donuts: “Genius moves stealthily…like Dilla himself, the music’s laid-back genius is that it does not command respect, it quietly takes it…” All of what he says is true. That is, that there is an understated brilliance to Donuts, that it takes hold of your attention before you realize quite when or how, and that it is a through-and-through dope record, the one that set the since-unmatched bar for everything else I heard this year.

Other Fine Distinctions:

Close but No Cigar: Built To Spill, Juana Molina, Jason Molina, Justin Timberlake, Crystal Skulls, Girl Talk (biggest impact on first listen, but shortest shelf-life, no?), Ghostface, Chad VanGaalen

Still Haven’t Heard (but why?!): Joanna Newsom, Tom Waits

EP of the year:

TIE: Tacks, The Boy Disaster Oh, Beatrice (Howard Records)
Stands among my top 5 releases of the whole year, but as an EP I felt like I had to separate it. This is incredibly silly, as Tacks… are probably the best new band this year, but there you have it. If anyone reading takes anything from having read my list, go find this band and buy this record. Imagine Soft Bulletin, Oh Inverted World, and Air in a blender and you’re basically on the right track.)

Talkdemonic KPSU instudio
Not really an EP anyone else owns or got released, per se, more like a half hour of music I listened to incessantly for the last six months.

Best of 2007: Menomena Friend and Foe (Barsuk)
(Just you wait. SRSLY.)

[Once again, for full disclosure, I promoted about half these records. But my top 10 is what it is. It’s not a promotional tool or some conflict of interest bonanza, just the ten records this music lover loved most (and most often!) this year.]

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Jason:

Note: I hate to admit it but, as obsessed as I am with music, I have been derelict in actually purchasing and absorbing new music for the last couple of years. This is offset by the amount of touring I do and the massive amount of live music I ingest every year, but it makes me a little sad. I read the publications, I am able to guess when I hear something new on the radio what it might be based on what I’ve read, and I talk endlessly about the new records I want to buy, but I usually end up buying old vinyl and seeing these new bands live. So, in place of my Top 10 Albums of 2006, I would like to present my 10 Or So Favorite Things That Happened in 2006 That Have Something to do with Music or Are Albums

1. (Album) Neko Case Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.
I predicted in this blog earlier this year that this would be my favorite album of 2006, and, to be fair, it doesn’t have that much competition, but it also pushed away competition by keeping me listening to it, constantly, all year. My favorite thing about this record? How noisy it is. Listen to it, loudly, in headphones, and you can hear the engineer un-muting Neko’s vocals and then re-muting them when she finishes a phrase. The heroic use of reverb doesn’t just add distance, it adds another band member, and it creates in me the same feeling that a classic wall-of-noise record like Loveless has created for years. Her record makes me feel like a kid hearing that kind of music for the first time again, but is framed in strange song-segments that resemble country and odd instrumentation that is actually quite classic. I love it.

2. (Album) Destroyer Destroyer’s Rubies.
I had the incredible fortune to tour with this band right after this album came out. I didn’t actually hear the record itself until about ten or eleven days into the tour, and at that point I felt like I had skipped class for half of a semester only to find out that the professor brought in beer every day and gave you extra credit for showing up. The guys in Destroyer were all such sweethearts, but it doesn’t make the record any less mysterious to me. And the clincher? The Soft Parade reference. Look for it.

3. (Karaoke Moment) Howie Day Sings His Own Song at the Bluebird on a Monday night at 1:30am For Maybe 30 People and No One Likes It
This really happened, I really hosted it, and I can still feel the unbearable humiliation in the air when people started leaving during it.

4. (Van Cleaning Episode) I Find a Fish in the Chassis that was Put There by Shearwater
Shearwater is a great band that I had the good fortune to tour with this year, too. After a series of prank war events (van-vegetable fight, glitter, washable paint on the van, etc.) they got us in a big way by hiding a fish in the front axle of the van before we got to 110 degree heat in Arizona. I wish I had a picture of the guys at the oil change place who found it, or of the guy at the car wash place who almost vomitted when he opened the hood.

5. (Album) Sonic Youth Rather Ripped
What can I say? This has been a nostalgic year for me, because a lot of my musical heroes have done themselves well with new rock records. My wife and I listened to this three or four times in a row driving to Lawrence, KS at night, and it’s the first time I’ve done that in a long time.

6. (Show) Robert Pollard at the Bluebird
Pollard put out two pretty good records on Merge this past year, and seeing him with 100 other people at the Bluebird made me feel as if I were seeing Guided By Voices for the first time again. I don’t like all of the new songs, and there’s nothing as majestic as Alien Lanes happening from him, but the shit is solid and his band is amazing. Seeing “No Sky” live made my adrenaline almost shoot out of my ears.

7. (Reissue) Os Mutantes Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado (buy)
My long lost friend Jim Tesmer dropped by my house in 1999 to let me borrow this record. Then he disappeared and I had it for a long time, but didn’t fully appreciate it until he called me a year later to tell me he wanted it and his other Os Mutantes records back. He got them and I haven’t heard from him since. I remember playing some of this for Paul Mahern and all he said was “A lot of Pet Sounds damage on this,” and I think he meant it in a good way. Amazing, amazing album that I haven’t been able to get enough of.

8. Neil Young and Crazy Horse Live at the Fillmore East
It’s too short, Billy Talbot is out of tune on most of “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and there were a lot more songs performed over however many nights this retrospective comes from, but it’s still great and a fine reminder of why we all love Neil so much.

9. Drakkar Sauna Jabraham Lincoln (Marriage Records)
These guys are, by far, my favorite underappreciated band in the world. I can go further and say they’re my favorite band in the world. I feel weird including this record, a little, because I play on it, but not enough (I think) to legally disqualify me from talking about it. (ed: you’re safe) Besides, the two songs I play on existed long before they had the notion of getting me to drive to Kansas to play on them. What’s to say other than every record they’ve made — Rover, Drakkansasauna, and now this one contain moments of utter bliss for me, hair-raising bliss. Who else could make the lines “I can’t digest certain types of drugs/but I won’t give up” or “the stones are full of entrails/bravo, bravo” sound so goddamned beautiful?

10. (Record Store) The Opening of Landlocked Music in Bloomington, IN
Not only are these guys my friends, but they’ve unleashed a beast of a store with great prices and a nice play to see a gig. They’ve provided me with other fantastic musical moments, too — the Big Star Third reissue, the Chris Bell I am the Cosmos reissue, and the excitement that good things still happen in the town I live in and love.