Essential Listening 2006: The Ten Best Albums

10. Cracker Greenland
Driving down a burning highway
Underworlds and gold dead grasses
Vineyards laid in opulence and curves
Vineyards laid with labyrinths
There stalks the minotaur
Come to take our youth with age and time

Nobody writes dry, witty lyrics, best delivered in a rambling, half-hearted vocal over mid-tempo alternative rock, like David Lowery, but that is not his only trick. If you dismiss Cracker out of hand because of their early 90's hit "Low," or assume that one song represents their entire sound and/or their songwriting peak, you might be pleasantly suprised and happy to learn that nothing on Greenland, their best album in many years, has a chance in hell of becoming a radio or MTV hit. Instead, Greenland is the musical equivalent of On The Road for Generation Blog. The album is the fascinating read of a novel about a down-on-his luck, aging hipster stumbling his way across the United States and Europe while coming to terms with the fact that love, success, and even good friendship have eluded his grasp, perhaps forever. You aren't likely to identify with the narrator, but the songs are simply too honest to feign universal sentiment. Then, near the album's end, epiphanies and minor miracles prevail, punctuated by musical moments sounding all at once familiar and yet decidely new.

09. The Twilight Singers Powder Burns
There was a rapture, so I can never see you anymore
Nightmares believable, walking into sweet oblivion

Dark, dark, dark, dark, dark. Recorded before and after Katrina in New Orleans, this is one man's descent into the deadly depths of addiction. Supported by Ani DiFranco and a talented band, the former Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli creates a stylish drug culture thriller, rated R for adult themes and subject matter, awash in churning guitar and haunting effects. The album is fully realized only when paired with A Stitch In Time, a companion EP featuring part-time Twilight Singer Mark Lanegan on a stunning cover of Massive Attack's "Live With Me" and a handful of originals that should have been on the album proper.


08. Gov't Mule High & Mighty
Unring the bell, it's time, it's time
Take back what we had, it's yours and mine
New Jim Crow, different shades of brown
Blood spills red on ancient hallowed ground

Some might say I'm partial to anything graced by the pen, guitar, and vocals of Mr. Warren Haynes, but in point of fact the last two Gov't Mule studio albums have not registered in my Ten Best Albums lists. High & Mighty is not only a return to form, but is in some ways their best studio album ever, and also serves as a reminder that Southern rock, blues, and soul are as relevant and exciting to popular music as they were three decades ago. And what the Mule has done this time around, which perhaps has never come together for them so perfectly before, is infuse their natural talent for jamming with tight melodies, innovative songwriting, soulful singing, and timely lyrics. Bad album cover aside, this is one album that could sit proudly next to works by Duane-era Allman Brothers Band and Derek and the Dominoes, as well as Curtis Mayfield or Jimi Hendrix. And who would have thought that Warren would deconstruct old friends Chris Robinson and Dickey Betts on the same album, in addition to adding reggae to his band's vast repetoire?

07. Centro-Matic Fort Recovery
And it's hard to believe the mess you're creating
With your triggers and your trash heaps
Hidden and waiting for their prey

The words "snarling intensity" rarely seem so appropriate as they do to describe Will Johnson, apparently a best kept secret of the rock n' roll underground, and his band Centro-Matic's Southern dirge epic Fort Recovery. This is the sound of Drive-By Truckers as played by Bright Eyes possessed by the ghost of William Faulkner and accompanied by My Morning Jacket on the only day they ever woke up angry. There is an intelligence to the sonic and lyrical quality that undermines the alt. Southern-rock song structure on display here. The cryptic lyrics hint at powerful social critiques transmitted and obscured by superfuzzed guitars. The anthemic closer "Take A Rake" brings the album to a furious end, sprinkled with disconcerting sounds that beg the question of how many broken fragments of dark poetry and distorted notes remain hidden throughout the album for future discovery.

06. Destroyer Destroyer's Rubies
Quiet, Ruby, someone's coming.
Approach with stealth.
Oh, it's just your precious American Underground
and it is born of wealth.
With not a writer in the lot.
Sapphires vie for your attention
Cheap dancers, they mean well in their way.

Listening to Destroyer's Rubies is like reading a good book. When you finish it, you feel like you've learned something important but you can't quite pinpoint exactly what that is. Many of the lyrics critique contemporary art and music through thinly disguised conversations between modern-day versions of doomed Shakespearean lovers. The lyrics are also filled with curious references to rock n' roll history, including fragments of famous songs and oblique references such as, "Those who love Zeppelin will soon betray Floyd." Musically, the album conjures up Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, many of the songs rolling along like endless Midwestern highways. What makes the album so incredible, though, is that every song contains a musical surprise- an ethereal chorus here, a squall of unexpected guitars there, exploding the core of each song before it comes back to its original melody. If I had discovered this album before year's end, it may have ranked even higher. I suspect it will soon enter the "modern classics" section of the music library in my mind.

05. Michael Franti & Spearhead Yell Fire!
From the banks of the river to the banks of the greedy
All the riches taken back by the needy
We come from the country and we come from the city
You can play us on the record, you can play us on the CD
All the shit you've given us is fertilizer
The seeds that we planted, you can never brutalize them
Tell the corporations they can never globalize it
Like Peter Tosh said, 'Legalize it!'
Yell Fire! is a call-to-arms for anyone dissatisfied with the direction this country is headed in, regardless of political persuasion. Michael Franti spent several months travelling with U.S. soldiers on tour in the Middle East and Afghanistan before penning this revolutionary roots/rock/reggae album. Musically, Spearhead are funk-soul contemporaries of the Dave Matthews Band, yet they punctuate their fighting spirit with loud electric guitars. Lyrically, Franti applies a hip hop calculus to the bitterness and conceit of the War on errorism and political/corporate greed. Yell Fire! is the best of a suite of 2006 albums, including Neil Young's Living With War and Pearl Jam's Pearl Jam, that channel political frustration through guitars, drums, and loudspeakers.

04. Thom Yorke The Eraser
No more going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes
No more falling down a wormhole that I have to pull you out
The wriggling, squiggling worm inside
Devours from the inside out
No more talk about the old days
It's time for something great
I want you to get out
And make it work

The Eraser is a brilliant extrapolation of Radiohead's Kid A that takes that album's experiment in deep electronica to its logical conclusion. The complexity of the music is beyond my ken but may be of keen interest to those with a working knowledge of music theory. The album's centerpiece, "Harrowdown Hill" is a musing on the place in England where the body of Dr. David Kelly, a high ranking British official who claimed to have evidence that Saddam did not have any WMDs, was found in 2003, the victim of an "apparent suicide." The Eraser is an Orwellian journey through the feelings of despair, rage and paranoia of one who has studied the political facts well enough, and honestly enough, to know that the government isn't quite telling us the truth yet exerts enough power and control over society to make sure its' lies will out.

03. Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins Rabbit Fur Coat
Cause institution's like a big bright lie
And it blinds you into fear and consuming and fight
And you've been in the desert underneath the charging sky
It's just you and God
But what if God's not there?
But his name is on your dollar bill
Which just became cab fare
For the Evangelist, the Communist, the Lefts and the Rights
And the hypocrites and the Jesuits and the blacks and the whites
It's in the belly of the beast
In the Atlanta streets
Or up in Laurel Canyon
The verge of Middle East

In 2005, Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) invited Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley to make a solo album for his new label, Team Love. The resulting masterpiece Rabbit Fur Coat is likely much more than he was hoping for. An initial listen reveals soaring, ethereal harmonies from Lewis and the Watson Twins, singing spiritual, confessional songs over acoustic slide guitar and a country snare drum. I fear that upon first listen, many people only hear the gospel choruses and dimiss the album as a pop hymnal. In truth, Rabbit Fur Coat is rife with intrigue- just what the hell is going on here? Under the veneer of "white soul," Lewis crafts one of the few rock n' roll albums that explores sprituality from an agnostic viewpoint, spiced with snippets of existential angst and channeling the subdued anger of us 30-somethings coming to realize the world does not always bend to the will of idealism, even when presented with proof of its own wrongdoing (see: Bright Eyes, M. Ward, and Death Cab For Cutie; friends of Lewis' who all contribute to this record). But even if you tune out the dry, playful wit of these lyrics and simply open your ears to the gorgeous sounds of the vocals and well-played pop melodies, you will be rewarded by the simple pleasures that this brief work has to offer. If you listen more carefully, your mind will be rewarded a thousandfold.

02. Bob Dylan Modern Times
Feel like my soul is beginning to expand
Look into my heart and you will sort of understand
You brought me here, now you're trying to run me away
The writing on the wall, come read it, come see what it say
Thunder on the mountain, rollin' like a drum
Gonna sleep over there, that's where the music coming from
I don't need any guide, I already know the way
Remember this, I'm your servant both night and day


Modern Times is a brief history of Western Civilization told in ten brief chapters. Modern Times is very, very old and yet couldn't have come any sooner than now. And Modern Times is Bob Dylan's best album since 1976's Desire. Could it be an accident that exactly thirty years have passed since Bob Dylan's last masterpiece? It matters not to anyone who would simply want to hear the blues dusted off and polished up like no one has since Led Zeppelin. The album is of its time, and not just because Dylan mentions Alicia Keys. "The Levee's Gonna Break" could not be any more relevant to 2006. Yet, it is clearly of older times, and I believe the obvious interpretation- that Dylan is reaching back into the songbook that first inspired him to pick up a guitar and play- is only one layer of meaning. What he is really reaching back for is the time when his albums were powerful documents of their own times, albums like Highway 61 Revisited, The Times They Are A Changin', and Blood On The Tracks. Yes, he's still got it. And even if an alien landed on Earth tomorrow, and heard Bob Dylan for the first time on Modern Times tracks like "Thunder On The Mountain," "Rollin' and Tumblin'," and "Workingman's Blues #2," it would still consider this one of the best sound recordings of the year. Dylan and his band create an electricity that crawls up the back of your neck, especially on the album's five fast blues, that can't help but make you grin as you listen. Road music? Yes. Music to study the history of rock n' roll by? Check. Background music at a dinner party? Sure. It's all here, from love songs to road songs to protest music to a funereal dirge. It's Modern Times.

01. The Hiders Valentine
I should have given you the chance to lift me up
I should have known that I would leave you out of luck
I should paint the town a brighter shade of red
I should have listened to the voices in your head

The Hiders are the future and the past of rock and roll music. In 2006, they clashed with the gods - Dylan, Gilmour, Young, Vedder, Yorke- and emerged victorious. And it is only because Valentine is a perfect album, not because there is anything particularly new, or different, or avant garde about it. Lead guitarist Bill Alletzhauser describes his band's sound better than I could: Gillian Welch meets Black Sabbath. But the magic of Valentine is that this is one of those albums you would want to listen to when you're having any sort of defining moment in your life- good or bad. It shelters from the pain, it raises up the joy to celebration (and sounds wonderful after a couple of beers). It could have been recorded in 1968 or 2030. It may be the last thing The Hiders ever release. It doesn't matter. It should be in heavy rotation for anyone who loves/d CSN, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The Band, The Byrds, The Dead, Ryan Adams, Son Volt, Mark Lanegan, Iron & Wine, Lucinda Williams, Gram Parsons or Joe Henry. Because its a timeless recording. Most of you have heard it. If you haven't, you can't buy it or preview it anywhere but here: cdbaby.com/cd/thehiders. And you should.