What we're listening to these days

With the spate of Best of 2006 Albums available these last few weeks, we at The Daily Wenzel have taken the opportunity to catch up on some music that we didn't get a chance to listen to during our hectic regular year-round listening schedule. But you imagine trying to cram twenty albums of so of listening into a ten day period. Regardless, here are some of our more notable:


The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street, granted this doesn't actually belong here on the strength of not being released in 2006, but the Time Top 100 Albums list got us talking and it turns out that none of us had ever listened to the actual album start to finish. Widely considered to be the best Stones album, it is rumoured that the Stones opted not to release any "singles" from it (perhaps to encourage airplay on the emerging non-singles oriented FM dial - Wikipedia disagrees though) and so its' songs are rarely heard on radio.

Snow Patrol's Eyes Open - this record got a lot of people gushing this year. It sounds to us a bit like a cross between James Blunt and Sebadoh. Maybe you had to be there, or perhaps it needs to sit in the record player a little longer.

Beulah's The Coast Is Never Clear, was a direct hit right out of the gate. At times reminescent of the Beach Boys and Wilco, a more Americanized version of Belle & Sebastian's pop sensibilities. We decided we could listen to this one all day long - if only there wasn't so much else to hear (and this really came out in 2001)!

Joanna Newsom - Ys, a critic's darling with some wierd folk overtones. We were a little taken aback at the number of songs surpassing the seven minute mark. Newsom's voice is one of a kind, kind of like Dan Bejar or Danielson on helium - Macy Gray sung folk, but even that doesn't quite capture it. Riveting. We were tempted to turn it off after the first minute, but hung around for the whole album.

Beirut - Gulag Orkestar. Neutral Milk Hotel's 1997 release In the aeroplane over the sea has been one of our favourite albums as it seemed to promise a new direction in sound that their follow-up, On Avery Island, couldn't quite match, and with the band's subsequent break-up we felt was gone for good. However, Jeremy Barnes from Neutral Milk Hotel, is here as a session player on Zach Condon's debut album and making all the same promises. Lon Gislan an EP released a few weeks ago only adds to our expectations.

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and Will Beat Your Ass. Really, this is perhaps the best album title release in a long while. This is the sort of thing normally used as a working title an then the band gets cold feet or some studio exec puts a kybosh on it. No such second thoughts with Yo La Tengo and this adventuresome, muscular outing melding sixties soul with guitar fuzz.

We Are Scientists - Live Sessions EP. We Are Nerds. We have a high school science teacher on staff. We Are Suckers for their sophisticated pop sensibilites, stripped down here. Some of the songs, like "Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt" are slowed down, heightening the emotional tension.

Cat Power - The Greatest. We loved "Nude as the News" back in the day, and her cover of the Stones' "(Can't Get No) Satisfaction" made her heart-ache and yearning speak to us in a way that Mick never could. It seems like a lot of people are having that exprience with this album and "Lived in Bars" in particular. Smoky, sultry . . .

Alright, so not necessarily twenty but the stacks of incoming records is starting to get high again.