THE BEST OF 2006 (Part Four)
So this is how the end of the year is going to go down at the Marble Stature blog: I’ve painstakingly spent the last week digging through my records and CD’s, downloads and tapes in order to cull what I believe to be “The Top 25” of 2006. There’s gonna be some bitchin’ because I’m close friends with a lot of bands, and I feel a little weird listing something that I’ve had my hands in, but I think that the end result is as fair as it gets. Next year it’ll be a little easier as I am stranded out East for keepers (not really, but for the time being). These aren’t in any order because it’s hard to say that one thing that you like a lot is necessarily better than something else that you like a lot, but they will be presented to you as five groups of five albums. Here’s the fourth group:
Clockcleaner Nevermind (Reptillian, 2006)
Did this come out at the end of 2005 or the beginning of 2006? Oh, who cares anyway- this is an amazing album. One of those truly impressive new indie bands that seems to be cutting their own cloth while still keeping their influences close (
Big Black,
Jesus Lizard,
Flipper). Heavy, periodically tuneful, and just weird enough to keep things interesting;
Nevermind has all the trappings of a fist-pumping sweaty t-shirt breakthrough record. What year is it? This group's got some balls to call this
Nevermind, but
hey I give as much of a shit about
Nirvana as
the Replacements did about
the Beatles. Yeah, I was sad to hear
Mclusky call it quits a couple years back, but i'll tell ya Clockcleaner do good filling the void. I hear that they’ve got a deal with
Matador in the works which should be a good deal for all. Maybe we'll even get to see this one on vinyl?
Pink Reason self-titled 7” (Savage Quality, 2006)
This debut 7” from what I presume to be
Green Bay’s greatest one-man band was nothing short of monumental when it hit this past spring, as the whole of the pressing, a mere 300 copies, were devoured as sucked up as a quick as a snooter. It’s a taste of hippie psych rock performed as a clear-the-datebook bedroom acid-trip confessional; there's not much else I can say that hasn’t been said already… the debut full-length comes out at the beginning of next month on
Siltbreeze, and the songs that I’ve heard off it are pretty good, so… yeah. Oh and what I wouldn't give to see a show off of their upcoming midwest tour- don't forget about
the Ocean State.
Pere Ubu Why I Hate Women (Smog Veil, 2006)
This was the first album that I bought when I moved up to Rhode Island this past September, and immediately whipped up a glowing review of it- posted
here as
1.15|. After giving this some serious listening for a few weeks after writing the review, I completely forgot about it until about a month ago when I started thinking about this “Top 25” list. While definitely not at the top of the pile any more, the reanimated Ubu of today is still good enough to hang in there among this year's clouds of dust and dogs. Here's an excerpt from 1.15|: "(David)
Thomas’ voice takes on a unique tone for each song and his performances on
Why I Hate Women are as electric as anything he did in the 70’s, but without the escapist excitement fueling the Cuyahoga. Here he is tired, frustrated and direct. It’s hard to find anything to criticize about this album, because it has a quality about it that is so deliberate and constructed, without ever sounding difficult or laborious. Every time I listen to
Why I Hate Women, its dense layers reveal a new level of complexity and sophistication which is rarely seen in music these days, and when you do see it, is usually a product of ignorance rather than intelligence."
Blues Control Riverboat Styx (Fuck It Tapes, 2006)
I listened to this a bunch over Christmas break thanks to a recommendation by former
Vertical Slum writer
Doug Elliott; with traces of old-timey piano, harmonica, and other non-grating instruments of noise, this cassette is dreamy, hypnotic, and softly melodic. Can’t say that I know much of the back story, but rumor has it that
Holy Mountain (
Six Organs of Admittance,
Lichens,
Residual Echoes,
Om, et al) is going to be dishing out Blues Control for us uninformed sometime in the near-future, but until then find time to track down one of the best releases that I have yet to hear from
Fuck It Tapes while there’s still a few copies hanging around their distributor's warehouses.
Burnt Hills To Your Head (Flipped Out, 2006)
Holy moly! I went to Albany, New York once, about five years ago, packed in a Dodge Neon with a couple of fellow summer-camp counselors looking to get away from the Berkshires of western Mass in an attempt to find some semblance of the trashy college life that we had been missing. Albany is a fucked-up town, and you know it from the first glance… at night, the city looks like an old set from ‘Blade Runner’ and the nine-piece (five guitarists, three drummers, and a lone bassist holding down the fort) Burnt Hills calls the wasteland “home.” Sheer volume and geography puts gets them comparisons to the almighty
Vermonster, but these guys have gone even further in the direction of that sweet new free shit (
Lambsbread fans/collectors take note), and just wait until you get to the final five minutes of the record: an outer-body experience… “if only this record was long enough!?”
