six from '06

Part the first: records

weirdly, considering that a couple of my all-time favourite bands released albums this year, neither of them make my top six. this is also an unusally female-vocalist heavy list, last year it was all blokes.

• begin to hope - regina spektor is a record that i honestly didn't think i would enjoy, because i've always found her voice just a tiny bit too strange. but i kept hearing 'on the radio', um, on the radio, and i fell in love with it. and, oh god, it's an amazing record. it's very quickly become a total desert island disk.


• let's get out of this country - camera obscura. if, last year, you'd said that b&s and camera obscura were both releasing albums in the same year and that i'd prefer camera obscura's, i would have been pretty damn surprised, but you'd have been right. because bloody hell let's get out of this country is terrific. i mean i've been sort of a fan of theirs for a while (in fact this blog was named for one of their lyrics), but i never thought they'd actually release a song better than eighties fan. and they did.


• rabbit fur coat - jenny lewis and the watson twins. jenny lewis' voice is gorgeous - low and sweet, which just enough of a country twang. gospel-tinged country-blues plus a fantastic cover of the travelling wilburys' 'handle with care', featuring conor, ben and m ward


• jarvis - jarvis cocker, was really a no-brainer for this list - i mean it's jarvis, who has been my hero for the last ten or so years. he could have put out a record of him reading the phone book and i'd have loved it (actually he has been putting out podcasts on his myspace page of him reading short stories, and they're fantastic, i do so love his voice). fortunately jarvis is also a great album, it's nice to see that time and settling haven't mellowed him at all.


• wolves - my latest novel. this album absolutely soundtracked the beginning of the year for me. they're one of those bands for whom the live sound can never quite capture how great they are on record, but i did find the glockenspiel playing quite inspiring! i'm listening to 'the job mr kurtz done', and it's just reminded me of pulp's 'david's last summer', so definitely a good thing!


• omnibus - tarkio, was really a compilation of old stuff by colin "the decemberists" meloy, but it had some great tracks on it, and i do love colin's voice.

(and the also rans - belle and sebastian's life pursuit just didn't grab me though there were some good tunes on it, the decemberists' crane wife hasn't really been listened to enough for me to pass judgement on it - i feel like i need to put some time into it, and the same goes for joanna newsom's ys, the pipettes record didn't really capture how much fun they are live and sounded strangely thin to me, i did enjoy the tragic treasury, but it's not a 'classic' album, and sufjan stevens' the avalanche which is fantastic but i think sufjan gets enough adulation from bloggers without us also praising his cast-offs!)

edited 20:55 to fix links because amazon is annoying