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.

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The Thermals “Here’s Your Future”
Hutch & Kathy “Infinite Loop”

The Body, The Blood, The Machine, this year’s release from Portland punks the Thermals, is easily one of my favorite records of 2006, maybe the best the band has produced. While this is something like the billionth blog to big up these guys, I guess I’ll go ahead and share the opener off that disc, part one in a prolonged paranoid nightmare about America as a theocracy.

(That’ll never happen now, right?)

“Here’s Your Future” takes a couple Bible stories, Noah building the ark and Jesus headed to the cross, and remixes them–humanizing and somehow modernizing the characters. As doubts and fears spin out, we’re presented the typical biblical scene, G-d addresses folks directly and asks them to do crazy things, and confronted with its implications in today’s world.

(What happens when an influential voting bloc thinks it has a direct line to the higher power? When our leaders do?)

The vocals’ insistent rant, the fury of the three-piece rock delivery, they amplify the weary, questioning spirit of this tune.

(I wasn’t surprised to discover that the Thermals, like me, are disenchanted products of a Catholic education.)

I wanted to go somewhere else with this, though. Or maybe back to an earlier point–the fleshing out of these mythic personae. Singer/guitarist Hutch Harris imbues cowed Noah, tortured Jesus, with real feelings, mixed feelings, the stuff of humanity.

I’ve posited before the importance of The Moment in pop songs. There are certain galvanizing parts in certain songs where everything comes together. These are usually dramatic shifts or points of extreme release, like a sonic analog to the sun bursting through clouds.

(This might tip my hand as a singer-songwriter-loving fuddy-duddy, but the examples that most readily come to mind are the part in Neil Young’s “Old Man” when James Taylor’s banjo playing ambles through the mix, and the onslaught of the reverbed Drumz of God against the swirling mellotron in “Everything Means Nothing To Me” by Elliott Smith.)

Which is the long way of getting to the spot around 1:40 into “Here’s Your Future” where Harris gives voice to a reluctant Messiah answering his dad’s call: “I will, but Dad, I’m afraid!” The extreme empathy in this line, intersecting with a rhythm section drop-out and some flaying guitar work… I call that The Moment.

(This is the part where the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for a fraction of a second every time I listen to the song. Heavy stuff, no?)

To either accentuate, or give you a break from, the heavitude of theme and performance in Thermals 06, I thought it’d be nice to also share a snapshot of cuter days from the band’s principals. “Infinite Loop” is a shining example of indie pop, off the 2002 self-titled record from Harris’ and Thermals bassist Kathy Foster’s earlier team incarnation (…wait for it…), Hutch & Kathy.

The song’s a cupid arrow connecting with my music geek heart. You’ve got strummy acoustics and boy-gurl vox risking hyperbole in praise of love. Here the road of a relationship is like the highways to a touring band, and being together is a sweet labor of love that requires practice, like the song you play over and over.

The line about “yr spine showing through yr sweater” always pops out, both for the wink at an old school indie rock signifier and as a treat for those of us who worship at the Church of the Small But Telling Detail. Then the writing of the song is referenced in the song, a po-mo wrecking ball through the fourth wall.

(Not bad for an unassuming little pop ditty.)

TBTBTM at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)
H&K at Newbury Comics.

The Mae Shi “Miss Philistine” (Live on KXLU)

For balance, another retelling of the Samson-Delilah affair by the Mae Shi. (Disclosure: dudes are friends of mine.)

This comes from their set at KXLU a couple years back and used to be available free on their Web site. “Miss Philistine” rides a nicked classic-rock verse riff through an account of Samson, lion-slayer and horny teenager. It’s one of my favorite songs by these guys, and it’s too bad this never jelled enough as a recording to make it to official release. “Philly girls ain’t got no sense of pride,” indeed.

I have a distinct memory of hearing this whole set live over the radio. Their KXLU appearance fell on the day of California’s recall election. I was parked outside my polling place with the radio blasting.

An Austrian muscleman actor most famous for catch phrases and his movie’s high bodycounts was on his way to being elected governor. Some wiseguy had requested the DJ play “California Uber Alles.” It felt like another seal of the apocalypse was about to be opened.

The Mae Shi make perfect party music for the endtimes. If the subcompact Japanese automobile’s a-rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.

And I voted for the porn star, for what it’s worth.

Heartbeeps at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)

Regina Spektor “Samson”

I didn’t trust Regina Spektor at first. The first I’d heard of her was singing on a Strokes single, and while I actually like the Strokes’ music, I don’t trust them. Does that make any sense? And then everything I heard about her was comparisons to Tori Amos. We can all agree, right, love ‘er or hate ‘er, that we don’t need a copy of the woman? Right?

Once I opened my sometimes-jaded ears this year to her smart and bouncy ace pop tunes “On The Radio” (swear I got this one from Stereogum, but can’t find the post) and “Fidelity” (from My Old Kentucky Blog), I was pretty much converted.

So this was going to be a really emo post where I admit to first being disappointed by Begin to Hope because it was ballad-heavy, then being hit out of nowhere by “Samson” and finding myself driving and crying.

In the song–yes, a piano ballad–a woman casts herself and her lover as an alternate universe Samson and Delilah, she the devoted lover and he sometimes distant.

The first thing that struck me about “Samson” was the Wonder Bread/bed rhyme, which made me think of nothing so much as a songwriter lazy, or desperate, to make a rhyme. It’s funny how a song can take you entirely out of its context one moment, and then totally fucking slay you the next.

Somewhere between the sadness in “the history books forgot about us/the Bible didn’t mention us” and the falsetto, yearning “I loved you first,” she got me. I hope she gets you too.

Regina Spektor played the Palace Avalon Hollywood on Nov. 2.
Begin to Hope at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)