The Year in Review :: Part One: Vilification

Patrick's disappointing albums of 2006.

(in no particular order)














The Hold Steady — Boys and Girls in America
Honestly, I tried. I really did. But Boys and Girls in America is really nothing more than a fourth-rate Let it Be. Looks, kids in Minnesota no more fucked up than anywhere else — I should know, I spent some formative years in the suburban Midwest — and I really think that any well-read sixteen-year-old with a worn copy of On the Road, a shit-ton of Thin Lizzy records and a basic knowledge of barre chords could make Boys and Girls. I think The Hold Steady is kind of a clusterfuck — first-rate lyrics and mind-numbingly stupid music — but, ironically, that's the exact representative of "the boys and girls in America."













DJ Shadow — The Outsider
File this one under "They Can't All Be Winners." Josh Davis is easily the white boy who single-handedly saved (experimental) hip-hop, but The Outsider falls flat. The cavalcade of of guest stars — Kasabian, Keak da Sneak, David Banner — is nothing new for Shadow, as his James Lavell U.N.K.L.E. collabo, which produced Psyence Fiction, one of my all-time favorites, featured everyone from Thom Yorke to Richard Ashcroft to Kool G Rap to Jason Newstead and Mike D. So if The Outsider doesn't suffer from a lack of starpower, what does it suffer from? It's too scattershot, its crunk-rap beats too crunk-rap and it's ultimately an unexpected commercial venture for Shadow. I'm not holding out for Entroducing II: Re-Entroducing, but anything coming close to the underrated The Private Press is gold at this point.














Mastodon — Blood Mountain
I do these kind of lists every year, and I always feel the need to clarify: Just because I was disappointed by an album doesn't mean I didn't think it was good or that I didn't care for it. On the contrary with Blood Mountain — while I don't believe it holds up to Leviathan or even Remission, it's a damn brutal record. But for all its forays into psych-prog territory, it never quite settles into any sort of groove. Que cera, cera.













The Arctic Monkeys — Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Don't believe the (blog) hype.














Tapes 'n Tapes — The Loon
See The Arctic Monkeys.














Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Show Your Bones
Bonus points to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for daring to go beyond the garage-punk freakout that was Fever to Tell. Minus points for doing a really piss-poor Siouxsie and the Banshees impersonation. I spun this in my cd player once, and was unimpressed enough to not play it again.














The Decemberists — The Crane Wife
Blah blah blah The Decemberists blah blah blah hyper-literate indie prog blah blah blah Death Cab for Cutie blah blah blah another boring, bland Northwestern band blah blah blah. Once again, don't believe the (blog) hype. I honestly don't understand what people see in The Decemberists. Colin Meloy looks, dresses, sings and writes songs like Ben Gibbard's retarded younger brother.














...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead — So Divided
So Divided is everything this album is not, as far as critics are concerned. Universally panned, So Divided fails oh-so-spectacularly to save face from 2005's embarrassing Worlds Apart. New Year's Resolution for Conrad Keely: Give up.














Danielson — Ships
Another critical darling I can't wrap my head around. In fairness, I couldn't get into the Danielson Familie either. And that misspelling always bugged me.













Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs — Under the Covers, Vol. 1