There are music fans and then there are music fanatics.  To both of these people, I simply say "pshaw." Just spend five minutes with Concert Chris and you'll know what it means to be incurably possessed by music. And for anyone needing further proof, just check the odometer of his car -- "Have ticket, will travel" is one of CC's many mantras -- or his meticulously maintained spreadsheets that would make an accountant whistle in appreciation. While some might call all this maniacally OCD, we at Patchchord prefer to simply stand in awe. -- John Kreicbergs

My Top Twenty Favorite Albums of 2006 and Other Awards

Somewhere, early in 2006, I was chatting with local newspaper music critic Tim Finn. I wanted to try and get a feel for just how much music a person who actually gets paid to do this listens to in a year. After our conversation, I committed myself to pulling off what at the time didn’t sound all that ridiculous: two albums a day, every day for a year. When you add up all the time spent in a car, traveling to and fro and time spent at your office, you should be able to plow through two a day. Let me just say this -- it’s certainly not impossible, as I pulled it off, but it's not much fun. And those last 30 albums, well, let’s hope there were no “someday classics” in there.

Of course there is a bright side to the pain and suffering.  You are sure to stumble across some amazing stuff along the way. My study guides for the year were the websites Pitchfork and Metacritic; Paste and Harp magazines; weekly music updates from online music storefronts, Insound and Waterloo Records in Austin. Going about this task without some study guide material would be impossible.

The project began in mid-January and finished in mid-December with me keeping a log so tight that Lewis and Clark would have been blown away. So here it goes: I present, the hardest thing I’ve ever done, my Top Twenty Favorite Albums of 2006.

20. Anathallo – The Floating World [Favorite track: “A Great Wind, More Ash”]

Everything about these guys is a weird. And to follow suit, I discovered them in a weird way. I was en route to Tulsa to see Beck, listening to Paste magazines audio blog in the middle of nowhere and my phone rang. It was the company I’d booked my hotel through. Apparently my hotel was hit by a tornado. In the background I heard organized clapping and talk of using the popping of balloons to form rhythm for a song. Thus my love for Anathallo began.

Their most notable comparison is to Sigur Ros, but they’re from Michigan, not Iceland and they speak English. So maybe that’s not too notable of a reference. Their swooping musical trail is very much indie, but filled with atmospheric goodness lined with a lot of off-beat percussion and hand clapping. It’s a very easy album to turn on and moments later be completely lost in its spiraling ways.

19. Nina Natasia - On Leaving [Favorite track: “Counting Up Your Bones”]

This was one of later albums I plucked through this year, near the 700 mark. Suprisingly, Natasia has some noticable similarties to Regina Spektor, whom we’ll read about later. Her lyrics say the things everyone wants to say, but can’t figure how to get the words out. It’s all done over minimal and sparse instrumentation, when put together with her thoughtful lyrics forms a great sort of chamber pop, singer-songwriter piece.

18. Two Gallants - What The Toll Tells [Favorite Track: Long Summer Day]    

Let’s go with electric folk blues. I listened to this album in January and it’s hung on all year. The  White Stripe’s album Get Behind Me Satan was one of my top picks in 2005 and this album shares some classic blues rock ties with it. It feels like an early and lost Led Zeppelin B-side.

These indie rockers are signed to Saddle Creek and had a great year touring in support of this album. Late in the year though, they had the most unfortunate of circumstances of being attacked and tasered during one of their concerts in Houston, TX, for no apparent reason to anyone. Some of the band and crew spent the night in the clink, others on the run housed by local fans in Houston. I’m not sure how the entire thing will play out for them, but it goes without saying, I really need to see these guys live.

17. B. Fleischmann - The Humbucking Coil [Favorite track: “Composure”]

I’ve never been to a shrink. I probably should have gone at times, but instead I spend time on the couch with musicians like Brian Eno, Richard James and new to me this year, Bernard Fleischmann. The third track on the disc, “Composure” and was the most listened to track on my computer this year. It was at this point when listening to this album for the first time that I was already hunting down all of his other albums and contributions. So while "Composure" is my favorite track of the year, I wish more folks (especially in the music critic world) would have found there way to this disc.

16. The Album Leaf - Into The Blue Again [Favorite track “Shine”]

Back in July of 2004, I was one of the fortunate few that caught the Album Leaf at the Jackpot in Lawrence. I was unfamiliar with their music at the time, but knew they had roots linking them to my Icelandic heroes, Sigur Ros. It took little convincing to get me there. Much like The Humbucking Coil albums like this keep me sane. The song “Shine” is my second favorite track of the year. It takes you on a soaring journey perhaps over a land where everything seems to be in the right place, free of traffic jams and construction, bad client meetings, spam and lost cell phone signals.

15. Electric President - Electric President [Favorite track: “Ten Thousand Lines”]

As much as I’d like to think that Electric President is a “real” band and will someday release another album, I’m not getting my hopes up. And that of course means, they’ll never play a live show. Electric President seemingly was a couple guys that wanted to put an album out and they were content with letting it end there.  All this is kind of like the Postal Service’s modus operandi. “Ten Thousand Lines” has some similar characteristics to “Give Up” but minus all the notoriety built into the cast of performers. If you do check this album out, you’ll hear that  they pipe out an electro ambient pop good enough to have you scouring the web for more of their albums. Bad news though: this album is all there is...but it’s a great listen.

14. Eef Barzelay - Bitter Honey    [Favorite track: “Ballad of Bitter Honey”]    

Before this year I had never heard of Clem Snide or Eef Barzelay. Barzelay is an active member of Clem Snide and took the year to pursue his solo effort Bitter Honey. The album has the charm and wit of Rufus Wainwright but done in dry, nasally voice similar to the Mountain Goats, John Darnielle.

In the fall I was fortunate to catch Barzelay at Mojo’s in Columbia. Judging by the size of the crowd -- lack of, really -- this album was missed by most critics and audiences alike. Too bad for them.

13. Rainer Maria - Catastrophe Keeps Us Together [Favorite track: “Burn”]   

If you’re a music freak long enough, it will happen to you too. You’ll find a new band you want to invest time and dollars into, you start with one album, get them all and begin inundating yourself with useless info about the group.  And just after all that is said and done, they break up. That’s what happened with me and Rainer Maria. They called it quits a few days before Christmas, ending a more than 10 year run with arguably their best album, Catastrophe Keeps Us Together. Caithlin De Marrais provides the vocal work for a great “chick rock” album. Every year, I find woman-fronted bands or woman solo artists that make me really wish Lillith Fair was still around to help promote them. Not that Rainer Maria is hippie folk music -- it’s music that rocks -- but a few trips down the Lillith path might have done wonders for this band.

12. Plumb - Chaotic Resolve [Favorite track: “Cut”]  

Keeping in line with Lillith and love, Plumb could have shared one of the side stages with Rainer Maria. Plumb is really Tiffany Arbuckle Lee and her swoopy pop music is filled with insightful lyrics filled with thoughtful messages relating to the ups and downs of life. Ten years ago she could be found opening for Christian bands like Jars of Clay. These days her music has turned secular by genre, but good vibes still fill her songbook. For fans of harder pop music with a little bit of an edge, this is a great listen and probably one of my better finds of 2006.

11. Flyleaf – Flyleaf [Favorite track: “Cassie”]

I love Evanescence. Back in 2003, “Fallen” was in my Top Ten. This year, their “Open Door” album really blows. Minus the single, I’m not sure what they were thinking. That being said, this year I met Flyleaf. Similar arrangement: angry music led by female vocals. However where most angry music wallows in its sadness, Flyleaf builds on a positive angle and they sometimes do it in screamo fashion. Lacey Mosley heads up the band and her range is from Sarah McLachlan to Amy Lee to white-knuckled -clinching-a-mic-and-screaming-everything-you-got.

The most powerful song on the album that earned them some crossover into the Christian world is “Cassie.” It tells the story of Cassie Bernall, the student from the Columbine who famously said “Yes!” to believing in God knowing that if she did her life would be taken. It’s a deep song that really rocks. Cassie’s story lives on the way any teenager would want to be remembered -- in a rock and roll song.

10. Cat Power - The Greatest [Favorite track: “Lived in Bars”]  

Chan Marshall is one weird cat. For years she was known that way.  Now in 2006, she appears to have her life in order and has shaken the addictions and stagefright.  As a result she’s selling more albums, being interviewed all over the place and selling out some concerts. I’ve been a fan of Beth Orton for a long time, and until she gets everything together and puts out another great album, I’m looking to Cat Power to fill my Orton-void.

9. The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls In America [Favorite track: “Stuck Between Stations"] 

This was another album I picked up late in the year. The Hold Steady will always be a favorite among music critics. This album is on tons of Top Tens and rightfully so. Craig Finn heads up this Brooklyn-based band. His stage antics and Charles Bukowski sex and drug riddled lyrics will keep you entertained until the lights go down. For the same reason people watch a movie as a release from their normal life and to catch a glimpse into a crazy life, in this case, the crazy life of Finn and his bandmates, Boys and Girls in America tells 11 great stories that I’ll never get to experience in my life. It’s a great trip.

8. William Elliot Whitmore - Song Of The Blackbird [Favorite track: “Dry”]   

There’s really no way around this: I love this guy. If you’re a normal reader of this site, I gush about him at every chance I get. The greatest compliment I have about this album, Whitmore’s third release, comes from a quote of one of my buddies. I gave him the disc to check out and he said, “It pisses me off I’m only just now finding out about him.” Amen. That sums it up beautifully. Whitmore has a voice that comes from a place almost alien to me. He hits notes that sound like they were mangled in a combine at harvest time. It’s dark and gritty and from another era.

7. Alexi Murdoch - Time Without Consequence [Favorite track: “Orange Sky”]   

With very few albums can I say I was counting down the days to its release. Well, this is one of those few albums. Murdoch got a lucky break a few years back with Nic Harcourt of KCRW and “The Morning Becomes Eclectic.” He got a hold of a four song EP of Murdoch’s that would soon have major labels in a bidding war for him. Instead, this displaced Brit said “no” to everyone and went about his career like Ani DiFranco. Everything would be independent and self-released. From 2003 to June 2006 Murdoch worked feverishly to release this album. His song “Orange Sky” that broke his career on the four song EP, cleverly titled “Four Songs” was sold to a dozen or so movies and TV programs. He used all that money to fund this album Time Without Consequence. And it’s only fitting that “Orange Sky” would get a reworking and be the final track on this album.

6. Damien Rice – 9 [Favorite track: “9 Crimes”]  

We all have those conversations, “What’s your favoite album of all time?” I have a hard time rattling off my #1, but in my top five is Damien Rice’s O. I know the thought of that probably makes the skin crawl of some music freaks that are older than me, but I can’t help it. It’s because of musicians like Damien Rice that I listen to music. All that being said, I looked forward to the release of this album the same was a five year old looks forward to Christmas. He could have read the J-K section of a phone book and it would still be in my Top Twenty list. I know this album was met with some criticism on the interweb and in some publications, but I’ll stand by the fact that most musicians will spend a lifetime trying to capture what Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan put together in the first song on the album, “9 Crimes.”

5. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings The Flood [Favorite track: “John Saw That Number”]   

Neko Case has a voice that deserves a spot in the Smithsonian. It’s this beautiful haunting thing with a few hunded layers to it. I would have loved to have been there early in her singing career, in church or junior high music class to hear her belting out these notes to make her instructor or the family in the pew in front of her fall to their knees because of the beautiful sounds they were hearing.

4. This Will Destroy You - Young Mountain [Favorite track: “I Believe in Your Victory”]  

I’m going to call this a Patchchord Exclusive. Unfortunately, outside of Austin this band is relatively unknown. I haven’t seen their names on any other best of lists and whenever I talk about them, I get a funny look. The music is an electro ambient that has some traces of the Appleseed Cast in its guitar work and some ties to Brian Eno in the structuring. Basically, when I get to the pearly gates, this is what I’m hoping to hear. It’s a driving ambient score that will have you looking around within your normal life for the camera crew. This album has played the soundtrack to my life for the better part of this year.

3. The Appleseed Cast – Peregrine [Favorite track: “Sunlit Ascending”]    

Like Damien Rice, some people can do no wrong and I am indebted to them forever. Earlier this year, while perusing the music magazine rack, I found DIW magazine. In a section of the pub  called “Shelf Life” about albums that came out earlier this year that they are still listening to, Peregrine was on the short list. Along with it, perhaps the greatest quote ever written about this Lawrence-based band: “Someday people will understand how damn good the Appleseed Cast is; unfortunately it’ll probably be by the time the Kansas group breaks up.”

It was such a good quote about one of my favorite bands I tore it out of the magazine in the aisle at Border’s.

2. Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope [Favorite track: “Better”]  

The album starts out with a spoken “Shake it up” spoken by our seemingly shy, small-framed, curly-topped, Russian, but now in Brooklyn songstress. The Rolling Stones should be able to pull off a spoken “shake it up” intro, but not this 26 year old; she shouldn’t be able to get away with it. The entire album works that same way. I’m a firm believer that if you act like you know what you’re doing you can fool those around you long enough to get what you need. But Spektor -- who positions herself in front of atypical song formation, chopping of inter-syllables, totally off-color lyrics about things no one is supposed talk about -- walks in the room and acts like she built the place...and that’s why I love her.

1. Josh Ritter - The Animal Years [Favorite track: “Good Man”]    

Perhaps it’s fitting after wandering all over the music spectrum, my Top Twenty ends back where it all started with an acoustic singer-songwriter. If Josh Ritter would have roamed the earth 50 years ago when people turned to the radio to find new music, he would have already secured himself a spot in the Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He would have numerous repackaged albums like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and everyone would have owned his albums at one point or another, probably during their college years.

It didn’t work out that way though. Ritter, who just entered his 30’s was named by Paste magazine as one of the Top 100 Living Songwriters, a list that included Van Morrison in the #20 hole and with Bob Dylan leading pack in the #1 spot.

His songs tell stories the same way music did in the 60’s. He uses intelligent words and paints beautiful pictures for you to take in as you go on living your life and letting him supply the background music. In addition to putting out one of the best albums of the year, he’s been on tour all over the US and Europe this entire year, but he did manage to sneak away for a couple days and run the Boston marathon.

As the years go by and as time adds validation to this album, The Animal Years will likely one day work its way in my Top Ten Albums of All Time.


My Top Ten Live Shows of 2006
10. 3/13/06 -  Charlotte Martin at the Grand Emporium
9. 11/1/06 -  Anathallo at The Jackpot
8. 2/18/06 - NIN at Kemper
7. 1/29/06 - Aimee Mann at Liberty Hall
6. 12/6/06 - The Hold Steady at The Bottleneck
5. 8/28/06 - William Eliot Whitmore at The Jackpot
4. 11/13/06 - Regina Spektor at The Madrid
3. 5/22/06 - Imogen Heap & Zoe Keating at The Bottleneck
2. 10/3/06 - Mew at The Bottleneck
1. 2/22/06 - Sigur Ros at The Uptown


Other Random 2006 Awards
• The “Best Musical Cinematic Moment Of The Year” Award goes to Rosario Dawson and the cast of Clerks II for the rooftop dance sequence to The Jackson 5’s “ABC.”
• The “Song That Makes Me Want To Cry” Award goes to Plumb for her track “Cut.”
• The “But We’re Right Here In The Midwest And You Have To Drive Or Fly Over Us Anyway” Award goes to Mark Kozelek (repeat winner).
• The “Most Disappointing Thing Of 2006 Musically” Award goes to the bad vibes following Wakarusa.
• The “Lamest Thing I’ve Ever Seen On A Stage” Award goes to “Blast,” that was held at the Music Hall. (A close second was the waste of space, time and money, “Cirque De Soleil: Delirium.”)
• The “Most Disappointing Followup To A Great Album” Award goes to Evanescence for The Open Door.
• The “Proof That The Old Guy’s Still Got It” Award goes to Bo Diddley for his silver lining performance at the otherwise terrible Blues and Jazz Festival with a runner up nod to Bob Seger for his 2006 album, Face the Promise.
• The “Best Song On A Reality TV Show Hosted By A Supermodel” Award goes to Barefoot Music for their song, “Doggie Fun” featured during Uli’s final collection during "Project Runway"
• The “Coolest Thing I Saw On Stage That Wasn’t Technically Music” Award goes to Saul Williams for his reading at KU on 02/07.
• The “Sad To See It Come To An End” Award goes to Doris Henson. I’ll miss your tunes.
• The "Best Song In A Commercial" Award goes to “Half Acre” by Hem.
• “The “Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Seen Involving An Eight Foot Long ‘Fire Bar’” Award goes to The Mutaytor for their 2-4 a.m. performance at Wakarusa on 6/10.
• The “Best Song Lyric Turned Into A Movie Title” Award goes to the Dixie Chicks for Shut Up & Sing. Go see this movie!

-- Concert Chris (email)