My 5 Favourite Songs of 2006

These are in no particular order, except an order that sounds good if you listen to them in a row, like a little mini-mix-album. Note: I don't pretend to be like an arbiter of taste or anything. I just listen to music and I feel like talking about music.

Neko Case - Star Witness: (from the album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood) This is the first 2006 song that made me think wow, what a great song. I also think it's my favourite Neko Case song. She can be a little unwieldy sometimes, but this heart-broke epic "my baby done got himself killed" type of song is weird and ambiguous in a good way.

The Minus 5 - With A Gun: (from the album The Minus 5, AKA the Gun Album)Hope said this is her favourite song of the year. Apparently Wilco plays the backing music for it. The Minus 5 put out an untitled album earlier this year about guns, drinking, being sad, and other stuff. It's a really good album. This song is about... I don't know. But I like it.

The Fiery Furnaces - Benton Harbour Blues (Single Edit): (from the album Bitter Tea) There were a few really amazing songs on this album, but this is the one that grabbed me right from the start. A sort of sweet sad nostalgic song about biking in the snow and things. It has a great keyboard loop thing and a nice little beat and everything about it feels right. (The album version is long and chopped up - still good, but not such easy-listenin').

The Divine Comedy - Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont: (from the album Victory For the Comic Muse) Here is a strange, lovely, otherwordly and ethereal song about, uh, hot-air ballooning, I think. Neil Hannon and the Divine Comedy are two of my favourite things. I listened to this song over and over this past summer. What a weird song! Where does it come from? Who is Count Grassi??

Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks (Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Remix): You may have heard the original version of this song, which is one of the best songs this year (the album, Writer's Block, is pretty good too), but you may not have heard this ridiculous, silly, shivery-wicked-cool Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve remix. Takes the original thing and pushes it just a smidge, into a new dimension you could never have imagined! You can find it on iTunes.

5 Hon. Mentions

Belle And Sebastian - Dress Up In You: Hope's other favourite song. This is from The Life Pursuit, the first Belle & Sebastian album that I ever liked. I like many of the songs on it quite a bit, but this is the best one because it's the saddest. Apparently we like sad songs.

The Decemberists - Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then): (from The Crane Wife) I vacillate between enjoying the Decemberists and being super-annoyed and hating them. This is probably my favourite song of theirs. It's a duet with Laura Veirs, who seems to help make Mr. Decemberist less annoying. It's also a great ballad about the South during the Civil War and that's nice. Plus it sounds great.

The Blow - Pile of Gold: (from Paper Television) I'm still undecided whether I really like the Blow, but when I first heard this song I felt my mind getting messed up in a special way. It's like this chilly little indie dance thing and I can't resist it.

Phoenix - Long Distance Call: (from It's Never Been Like That) We listened to this album a lot in the past few months and this is my favourite track off it. It's kind of like the Strokes meets a wall of synth pads, which I'm sure has been said a million times. They are also French, and the dude says "huh!" a lot in that rock-star way.

Cracker - Something You Ain't Got: (from Greenland) I also want to put this here because we've been listening to a ton of Cracker lately. They put out great album this year, their best one in years or possibly ever, and one of the best alt-countryish things I've heard in a while. It has a few duds (mostly when they rock out), and it could have been trimmed a bit, but overall it's a gorgeous, tired, rambling thing and I enjoy it very much. I know they're probably seen as a cheesy 90s band now but they're sooooooooooo not!

PS the quote in the header is from Cracker, the song "Darling We're Out Of Time".