My favorite songs of 2006, part the last, plus invisible apologia after the jump.

“A Pillar Of Salt” | The Thermals | The Body, The Blood, The Machine | Sub Pop | 8/22/06 | 2:57 | buy disc/mp3s
It was hard to choose one top track off the Thermals’ monster concept record. I’ve gone with “Pillar,” which embellishes blitzkrieg boppin’ guitar and drums with some furiously fun New Wave synth.

There’s a little doominess in here, but it’s more of a tweaked, toe-tapping spin on Lot’s flight amidst the divine firebombing of Sodom & Gomorrah. It’s a safe bet that body-shame, a panicked getaway and the wrath of a vengeful G-d never sounded so danceable.

“Woke Up New” | The Mountain Goats | Get Lonely | 4AD | 8/22/06 | 2:56 | buy disc/mp3s
When tracks from Get Lonely started leaking to the Interweb over the summer, either Mountain Goats mainman John Darnielle or bassist Peter Hughes warned that folks too eager to hear the new record were actually inviting a bummer into their summer.

What we got come August: a concept album, subdued and softly-sung, about someone so messed up by the dissolution of a relationship that he can no longer function. The minutiae of daily life is amplified, almost unbearable; he can’t relate to people; he’s seeing things.

Yeah, a bit dark. I’ve loved each song on this record in party shuffle mode. But I’ve only listened to it top to bottom as an album a handful of times. All together as intended, it accumulated a kind, or intensity, of sadness that I just couldn’t let into my life this year.

“Woke Up New” is the moment in this cycle where a little optimism creeps in, although not quite as much as the title would suggest. The catchy chorus, “oh, what do I do/without you?” stuck with me, but what’s bounced around my head even more is the strange, sorry image of a man making coffee for two, then drinking it all to abide by a rule set by someone who’s no longer there. Its pathos is almost eerie.

There’s no happy ending in “Woke Up New,” but the last couple lines in the verse–the world beginning to bud, the hint of a future worth looking forward to–let in a little light.

(highlight and drag, if you must)

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YEAR OF THE DOG FAQ: AN APOLOGIA

What’s with the song roundup?
I used to feel like the last holdout, an album listener in an mp3 world. I more or less came over to the other side, by happenstance, this year. Most of my music listening is on one computer or another, and simple convenience laziness–lugging around a bunch of CDs vs. arriving at a well-stocked hard drive–led me to the party shuffle. And I found that kind of listening, variety being the spice of life, to be more pleasurable.

In the car, I don’t listen to music as much as I used to. My guilty pleasure is right-wing talk radio. Don’t ask.

Why…
Really, don’t ask.

I’d hazard to say that the resurgence of the concept album, something that admittedly was happening independently of any shift in listening habits, has come to be, in part, a reaction to the mp3 world of infinite singles. The idea being that you get a value-added from the album as experience if the songs gain momentum, and meaning, as a whole. Then again, the song:album::chapter:novel comparison feels natural. Or: “singles remind me of kisses/albums remind me of plans.”

With all the above said, I still have a very strong philosophical allegiance to the endeavor of an artist or group crafting a full record. That probably won’t go away. And I still lug around CDs half the time.

What’s with “roundup” and “favorite” all the time? You mean “Best of 2006,” right?
Everything’s like, relative, man.

Also, for me to declare something the “best of ____” implies that I heard all the rest. Some years I’ve come closer to that goal, but this year it’d be a laugher.

[Awesome song] isn’t on your list. You have bad taste.
Yeah. To be honest, laziness sorta led to purity this year.

Usually, when I’m prepping a year-end thing, I do a bunch of homework, try to mine awesome tracks from good albums that I’d neglected, etc. It’s sort of a nice thing for me, because I make discoveries.

I didn’t do homework this year. And in a way, that makes this more of an honest list. These songs were the soundtrack to my year, the ones that affected me the most, the ones I loved the best.

Other great stuff this year, since yr asking…

I wasn’t asking.
Shut up. Here is an alphabetical but non-exhaustive list of 2006 releases I enjoyed-liked-loved, but which I never got to know well enough for a single song to clobber me:

Eef Barzelay’s Bitter Honey, Boris’ Pink, Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, the Cold War Kids’ Up In Rags, Destroyer’s Rubies, Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale, Girl Talk’s Night Ripper, Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere, Jenny Lewis’ Rabbit Fur Coat, Loose Fur’s Born Again in the USA, Joana Newsom’s Ys, Beth Orton’s Comfort of Strangers, The Pernice Brothers’ Live a Little, Grant-Lee Phillips’ Nineteeneightees, Phoenix’ It’s Never Been Like That, Sparklehorse’s Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, the Strokes’ First Impressions of Earth and Yo La Tengo’s I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.

On top of all that, I want to note that Outkast made a much-maligned mess of an album that actually had a handful of great songs on it. I like the one that sounded like it was sampling Johnny Cash’s cover of “Personal Jesus,” but not enough to make the list above.

It didn’t seem to actually fit, but everyone should check out Matthew’s Celebrity Pixies Tribute (semi-explanatory name, yeah?), ’cause it’s fun and pretty amazing.

Worth yr attention as well: the Jam box set finally saw official release in the U.S. this year, and a wonderful odd-and-sods collection from the Exploding Hearts came out on Dirtnap Records. But I don’t want to turn into Reissues Guy.

I totally missed buying records by Band of Horses, Beck, Belle & Sebastian, East River Pipe and Quasi, so I can’t talk to those discs at all. I’ll probably pick ‘em up at a more felicitous point in the future.
Also, two songs that would’ve made my roundup for 2006, “Konichiwa Bitches” by Robyn and José González’ cover of “Heartbeats,” actually came out in 2005.
Still there?

Yeah. That was kind of a mouthful, man.
Fair enough. Anything else?

Dude, yr boring.
I find it helps if you read this stuff in like a Frasier Crane as Sideshow Bob voice.

Now I get it. So, tell me a joke.
It’s not so much a joke, it’s like the germ of a joke: something about bloggers losing their jobs because bactivists are protesting the endangerment of the spotted b’owl.

No.
How about a blogger going, “Actually, we prefer ‘blumberjack’”?

Are you done?
Yeah.

Happy New Year.
Yeah, best wishes for 2007.

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