This is a week for reflection about the year almost ended. Thus, my 2006 round-up, mightily constrained by my budget, listening patterns and mood… It’ll be a few songs a day, no particular order, other than starting today with music I discovered through other blogs. Thanks for reading, and enjoy…

“Trains To Brazil” | Guillemots | From the Cliffs EP | Verve/Fantastic Plastic | 3/14/06 | 4:03 | buy disc/mp3s
The backlash may’ve already overcome folks’ affection for this U.K.-based outfit, who swing from some fairly tiresome experimentation to total maximum pop bliss.

As you might’ve guessed, this one comes from the pop side of the Guillemots spectrum, wonderfully recalling that sweet spot where Dexy’s and the Cure overlap. As peppy a song of mourning as you’re likely to find, it’s buoyed by soaring vocals, insistent rhythm work and some red hot horn action.

“Trains To Brazil” served me regularly as a nice counterbalance to my morose existential dread issues. What I’m sayin’: “Can’t you live and be thankful yr here/see, it could be you tomorrow or next year.”

“On A Freezing Chicago Street” | Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s | The Dust of Retreat | Artemis | 3/28/06 | 3:02 | buy disc/mp3s
Boston’s Indy’s own Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s make a throwback style of indie pop that’s both wistful and gritty. Holding aside the egregiously long, Wes Anderson-referencing band name and occasional mean-spirited moment, their music feels pretty comforting to me. They sometimes bring to mind the best moments of Buffalo Tom’s fragile side–Buffalo Tom were awesome, watch this space for evidence later on–but with prettier arrangements.

To continue our theme of death (etc.), the part of this song that particularly connects for me is the borderline accusation, “And Sarah screams, ‘Yr every breath is a gift./If you weren’t so selfish then you might want to live.’ ”

It’s funny to find an affirmation in a lowlife character study, but I takes what I can where I gets it. That’s the way it shakes down sometimes.

“Oregon Girl” | Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin | Broom | Polyvinyl | 10/24/06 | 2:25 | buy disc/mp3s
So yeah, about egregiously long band names… All is forgiven, though, because “Oregon Girl” is a propulsive, sugary piece of pop/rock. Shy-guy vocals go anthemic and emotive (but not emo) in the service of a naive little song of devotion to a long-distance love.

Basically, this is the kind of thing Rivers Cuomo would’ve written before he was abducted by aliens around 1998, so I’m gonna guess it’d go over in a big way on Tralfamadore too.

“Corazon” | Bishop Allen | January EP | self-release | c. 1/31/06 | 4:43 | buy disc/mp3s
I repped for this one before, but “Corazon” stuck with me all year, standing up to obsessive “repeat button” play, so it belongs on this list.

Bishop Allen saved the best for first in their “EP of the month” 06 project, setting a love song to a piano against some strolling moderate rock that goes big in the right parts.

Anybody who can so intensely sympathize with objects facing obsolescence–and indeed, in various corners the music industry, the compact disc as a medium and even the rock band as a format have been eulogized lately; but hey, we all expire eventually, right?–well, they’re alright by me.