2 posts tagged “albums”
I tend to make a gigantic list of all of my favorite albums and then work from there. This is not an easy process, as I'm a genuine music junkie (ask any of my friends and they'll confirm my sickness) and so I inevitably spend hours poring through my list, listening to entire albums, numbering and re-ordering the albums until I should be sick of it but I'm not because I love the process. My year-end Top Twenty Albums listing is something constant, one of the few habits I still carry along from my pre-Army days.
This post will be my working list of my favorite albums of 2006. They are in no particular order, and an album being placed higher on the list than another should not indicate that I enjoy it more. I'm just adding the albums to this list as I think of them, and I'll be ordering them starting around the middle of November or so.
This list might get a bit unwieldy, so I apologize if it causes the rest of my voxlog to load slower than usual.
The Working List
Bob Dylan -- Modern Times
Quickly Now -- Come And Listen
The Feeling -- Twelve Stops And Home
The Decemberists -- The Crane Wife
Sereenah Maneesh -- Sereenah Maneesh
Arctic Monkeys -- Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
The Roots -- Game Theory
Lupe Fiasco -- Food & Liquor
The Hold Steady -- Boys And Girls In America
Andrew Osenga -- The Morning
TV On The Radio -- Return To Cookie Mountain
Dashboard Confessional -- Dusk And Summer
Beck -- The Information
Blue October -- Foiled
Comets On Fire -- Avatar
Cursive -- Happy Hollow
Ben Kweller -- Ben Kweller
John Mayer -- Continuum
Justin Timberlake -- FutureSex/LoveSounds
My Morning Jacket -- Okonokos
Outkast -- Idlewild
Yo La Tengo -- I'm Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Keane -- Under The Iron Sea
Snow Patrol -- Eyes Open
I'll be reviewing all of these for Inside Pulse in the next few weeks.
I never really liked Dashboard Confessional. Chris Carraba was emo before emo was cool, back when it was an actual music genre instead of a lifestyle. I never liked emo all that much, either. I love it when a band driven by acoustic guitar makes it big, but Chris always whined too much for me to ever enjoy it. It's funny, then, that I started liking the band more and more when they ditched the acoustic sound for a pop rock onslaught with "Vindicated". With Dusk and Summer, Chris completes the trade-in of his old sound for a rock sound that, while not altogether groundbreaking, is still fresh enough to score huge at radio. Daniel Lanois (the famed U2 producer and collaborator) produced the band for this album, and you know what? THIS ALBUM FREAKING RULES. Seriously. It's going to end up in my Top Five for the year, and it's a big contender for #1. Carraba has absolutely gorgeous vocal melodies and harmonies on here, and the overwrought lyrical nonsense of his past work has been pared down to the absolute nessecities. This is the hallmark album for the career of Chris Carraba, and I find it hard to believe he'll ever top it. Stick with Lanois, Chris -- he's done you right
I saw Muse last year at Austic City Limits, and they were freaking incredible. They're surely an aquired taste, but I love the roaming soundscapes they created on previous albums. The newest one, Black Holes & Revelations, is much more of the same stuff I love while expanding those soundscapes I mentioned to an even larger degree. It's an album that you can't just pick songs from; you have to listen to the entire album, almost like a great symphonic score or opera.
I've gotta be honest: I absolutely HATED the first Futureheads album. The vocals annoyed me to no end, and while they did have a few cool loops and neat production, it just seemed like an album that hadn't reached maturity. Luckily, The Futureheads have improved in leaps and bounds since the first record came out, and this album is a huge step forward. I can't say that I'm thrilled with it, but it's definitely an album that makes a statement. Fans of the first record won't be happy, because it's a huge shift in the sound of the band, but it's definitely a lot more mature as a whole.
