Good Weather For Airstrikes

So I’ve been straight up slaving over my Top 50 Tracks of ‘06 list over the last few weeks now and it’s shaping up nicely, but a few tracks have presented themselves as downright unrankable. Whether it’s because their epic scale and scope prevented them from being able to be viewed on the same plane as the rest of ’06’s finest tracks or just because of some technically disqualifying factor, these songs could find no place on my Top Tracks list, but are still wholly deserving of your love and attention (all very highly recommended; that goes without saying).

MP3: “Take Me Into Your Skin” - Trentemoller

Jesus, how did I manage to go an entire six months without posting this song. One of the single most remarkable accomplishment in the recent history of electronic music, “Take Me Into Your Skin” is an absolute monster of massive beats and ridiculous textures. The song stands as evidence of Trentemoller’s near-limitless potential, and if “Take Me Into Your Skin” is anything to go on, he may very well revolutionize electronic music as we know it in the not-too-distant future. Seriously, the sonic textures he creates on this song are absolutely mind-blowing. Synths drift in and out of consciousness, fuzzy textures jostle for position in the mix, a spastic click track underlies the rhythm, ethereal voices moan in the distance and that pulsating bassline just builds and builds and builds until the 2:26 mark hits and everything just DROPS. And then he builds it up again, and again, creating an even more mind-blowing effect with each climax. Just when you thought you couldn’t take anymore, God himself brings his fist down from the heavens and rocks the earth to its core (I mean seriously, it feels like that) at the 6:26 mark and you get reborn a little. All of a sudden it’s over and you’re left alone in the barren Danish wilderness trying to figure out what the fuck just happened and how you can do it again. I might outright name it the song of the year (or at least the musical accomplishment of 2006) if it were just a song, but it’s not - it’s an experience.

MP3: “Thin Blue Flame” - Josh Ritter

I know I haven’t posted on Josh Ritter at all this year, but his album, The Animal Years, is a great record and is definitely worth checking out. It’s solid throughout, but the unquestionable highlight is this 9-minute opus, which is one of the most compelling and awe-inspiring songs to come out in this or any other year. Bursting at the seams with symbolic imagery and deeper meaning ripe for the mining, “Thin Blue Flame” is Ritter’s crowning achievement as a song writer and perhaps one of the finest songwriting accomplishments of our time. Ritter examines the hypocrisy of religion and the uncertainty of Heaven using Shakespeare references, poker imagery and constant allusions to war and religion, weaving countless themes together while somehow maintaining a clear focus and coherent narrative throughout. Former Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine knob-twiddler Brian Deck provides the perfect production, giving the song a spacious, dusty feel befitting of the dark, storytime-in-the-attic feel of the song. Ritter alternates between a languorous introspective guitar riff and a pounding, bombastic piano to backdrop his message, until it builds to a remarkable climax as the song enters it’s final quarter over booming drums and explosive cymbal crashes. In the end, the “thin blue line” Ritter describes in the songs opening line proves to be the thin line between Heaven and Hell and life on Earth and life in death, with the ultimate message being one of optimism despite the seemingly rampant negativity in the song. Ritter urges the listener to embrace life and what happiness they can find on Earth, rather than constantly looking to the sky for answers and meaning, an inspiring and much-needed message in an age of such day-to-day uncertainty and all-consuming insecurity.

MP3: “Sao Paolo” - Guillemots

Wow. As if Guillemots didn’t push the boundaries of pop music enough on their awe-inspiring and ambitious-as-shit debut LP, Through The Windowpane, they had to go and make the last track the most bombastic, over-the-top pop music behemoth to ever walk the Earth. Like the first two songs here, “Sao Paolo” is more of an incredible artistic accomplishment than merely a good song, so it’s hard to place this among other, more conventional tracks on these year-end song lists. Thus it ends up here, with the rest of these epic unrankables. As a whole, Through The Windowpane is an extremely cinematic experience, but it’s “Sao Paolo” that takes this cinematic aspect and maximizes it to an exponential degree. The whole thing feels like it could be the perfectly-scripted soundtrack to a classic movie from the 1950’s, somewhere between a Broadway musical, the spiraling, frantic woodwinds of Hitchcock’s classic films and the grandeur of Orson Welles finest work. The song opens on a empty city street at nightfall, as a lonely saxophone wails into the Brazilian moonlight. The camera explores the alleyways and dark corners of this deserted Sao Paolo favela, before we reach a hotel just beyond the edge of the slums and a classically-beautiful American woman in a stunning red dress steps out of a limousine and walks the red carpet into a bustling gala, as the piano enters the mix and gets the song on its way. I won’t script the whole thing (because, y’know, that would be the lamest thing I’ve ever done), but it’s easy enough to envision your own story for yourself as the song unfolds. Furthermore, “Sao Paolo” is a shining example of Fyfe Dangerfield’s FUCKING SUPERHUMAN vocal abilities. Seriously, I didn’t even know pipes like that existed. That “Thrown across water” chorus (I guess it’s the chorus?) is one of my favorite moments in music this year, as Fyfe belts out the lyrics over that Hollywood-as-shit strings arrangement and soaring brass. That impromptu latin jam session, which nods to the songs title and guitarist Lord Mangrao’s Brazilian heritage, can’t hurt it either, and the whole song is just a masterpiece of musical ingenuity and avant-garde pop experimentalism.

MP3: “Majesty Snowbird” - Sufjan Stevens

This last one is a bit of an epic as well, but it’s mainly cut from the Top Tracks list due to the slight issue that it hasn’t formally been released yet and has only been available as a live recording to this point. But there’s no way I can not mention it as one of the year’s finest songwriting achievements, as Sufjan worked audiences into a frenzy performing this song on his most recent tour, which was described nearly-unanimously by those who saw it as absolutely life-changing. Almost rivaling “Sao Paolo” in it’s cinematic scope and unadultered grandeur, “Majesty Snowbird” is perhaps Sufjan’s greatest achievement to date, and it’s an incredibly beautiful work of art. The strings soar like they’ve never soared before, ditto for the brass, and Suf’s ethereal wail sounds flawless, despite the non-studio live recording of the song. And when that guitar solo roars out of nowhere? I mean, fuckkkk. If you somehow missed this when it took over the blogs a month or two ago be sure to get on it now (this is also the best recording I’ve heard of it yet, if you’ve got an frustratingly lower-quality version and are looking to upgrade), as it may well prove to be the best song of 2007 when it’s presumably released next year.

Look out for my Top 25 (or maybe it’ll just be 15) Remixes of 2006 list in the next few days and then my behemoth Top Tracks list in the first week of January. I’m aware that everyone else got their year-end lists out there long ago, so I feel a bit behind-the-ball at times, but is it really so wrong to wait until the year has ended before you declare its best tracks? Hopefully you can bear with me and will enjoy the fruits of my labor when they come to light in the first week or so of January. For now, just stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Year-End Best of Lists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.