Slow Thrills

2006 round-up part 1: It starts with the familiar people...
I was putting together highlights from the year in the approximate order I heard them, and it turns out that January and February saw a lot of familiar acts releasing albums.

MOGWAI: Mr Beast
CATPOWER: The Greatest
TORTOISE AND BONNIE PRINCE BILLY: The Brave and the Bold
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN: The Life Pursuit
THE FLAMING LIPS: At War with the Mystics

In fact, due to the internet and pre-release chatter I had acquired a copy of 'Mr Beast' late last year. I was excited by the comments of Alan McGee who had described it as being as good as Loveless by MBV, if not better, and also buoyed by my last live encounter with the band - at the Slint ATP - which had won me back around again.
When 'Mr Beast' saw the light of day in March this year, they had bored me again with a lacklustre show in Belfast and despite its lovely artwork and limited edition packaging (a 'making of' DVD no less!) it languished at the back of the pile for a long time before I filed it away.
I've just revisited it this month and I'm glad I did. It's no 'Loveless' of course, such a comparison is daft, but for me it sits well as a companion piece to Kevin Shields' 'Lost In Translation' soundtrack. Maybe I thought that because of the presence of Tetsuya Fukagawa (of the Japanese hardcore band Envy) on 'I Chose Horses', which is the most upfront vocal on the album even though it's in Japanese. Presumably the rest of the vocals are in English, though Mogwai always tend to bury their own lyrics, I don't know why they're still so reticent to have them heard.
'The Greatest' was neither a Cat Power best of, nor her greatest album ('Moon Pix' and 'You Are Free' get my vote), instead it was a collection of new Chan Marshall songs arranged in a Memphis soul style. Again, I wasn't impressed with this at first listen, but it has stayed with me all year and some of the songs are pretty great. If you ever had an urge to hear Chan deliver something more mainstream than her previous lo-fi efforts, this will impress you.
'The Brave and the Bold' was almost dismissed as an internet rumour before anyone heard it. Tortoise and Will Oldham collaborating on a selection of covers ranging from the Minutemen to Elton John? Surely not! However, it saw the light of day in early 2006 and as suspected it was a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. Milton Nascimento's 'Cravo E Canela' works surprisingly well, and Melanie's 'Some Say I Got Devil' is my favourite track here. An attempt at Bruce's 'Thunder Road' makes you realise why they called the album the braveand the bold, but I think it works and I like those synths!
'The Life Pursuit' was the first album to really impress me this year, but ten months later it hasn't stayed with me. I love B&S so I'm sure I'll return to it at some point, and 'Another Sunny Day' and 'Dress up in you' are two of my fave tunes of the year. I did laugh at some of the newspaper reviews of this at the time, which suggested this was the album were B&S got rude and started swearing and writing about sex. They've always done that since the start, if only the papers had been paying attention!
'At War with the Mystics' is a difficult one. Once again it didn't impress on first listen, but I'm still listening to it, it's still on my iPod and I think it's a far better album than 'Yoshimi'. Given that the Lips can pretty much do whatever they like nowadays, this is the record where they do just that! Hints of Krautrock and 70s Californian rock mix with their usual left-field songwriting to create something interesting. Not the most immediate record of the year, but I didn't hear anything else like in 2006.