1. The View From the Afternoon - Arctic Monkeys
2. Wolf Like Me - TV on the Radio
3. I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight - Lucero
4. Closest I Ever Been to Memphis - Diamond Dogs
5. Tearstained Letters (feat. Joan Jett) - The Heart Attacks
6. Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty) - Butch Walker and the Let's Go Out Tonites
7. Deadwood - Dirty Pretty Things
8. Dance Like a Monkey - The New York Dolls
9. Girl from the Ghetto - Ronnie Spector
10. The Funeral - Band of Horses
11. Gravity's Gone - Drive By Truckers
12. Evening Gown - Jerry Lee Lewis
13. Bubbles in My Beer - Willie Nelson
14. I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink - George Jones with Merle Haggard
15. God's Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash
16. Gold Lion - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
17. I'm Not Dead (I'm in Pittsburg) - Frank Black)
18. Massive Nights - The Hold Steady19. Oceans - The Format
20. In View - The Tragically Hip
21. Kelly - Van She
22. Get Myself Into It - The Rapture
23. The Perfect Crime 2 - The Decemberists
24. Steady, As She Goes - The Raconteurs
25. Fear of Sleep - The Strokes
1. One of my favourite opening tracks of the 00's is 'The View from the Afternoon', from the Arctic Monkey's debut Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not. Awesome energy, love the lyrics, 'Anticipation has a habit to set you up/for disappointment in evening entertainment but/Tonight there’ll be some love/Tonight there'll be a ruckus yeah, regardless of what's gone before'. Bear that in mind tonight.
2. I've grown into a big fan of TV on the Radio and I don't even know how. It was actually the last album Dear Science that got me slightly addicted and I've come around on this one from 2006, the unfortunately titled Return from Cookie Mountain (unfortunate because it's stupid). The song 'Wolf Like Me' is imperative, the beat, the vocal delivery, lyrics like 'We could jet in a stolen car but I bet we wouldn't get too far before the transformation takes and bloodlust tanks and crave gets slaked'. I'm nearly always in jeopardy of a speeding ticket when I hear this.
3. I really friggin' love Lucero's 'I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight' from Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers. The delivery is spot on, emotionally resonant like the best songs about escape, you feel like you've just tuned into a movie already in progress with the first lines 'Jenny lights her cigarette/wonders how she got in this mess/Saturday night/Wrong side of town.' And you've got a protagonist who's gonna save the day. 'Don't look back don't hesitate/Car's outside and we can't wait/Sunday morning is coming down...'
4. A little more Swedish garage for you courtesy of Diamond Dogs, a nice Mott the Hooplish track called 'The Closest I Ever Been to Memphis' from Up the Rock. They make this sound so effortless you wonder why anyone else can't do it. Swedish efficiency in action.
5. The Heart Attacks are an Atlanta garage/glam band who pull off a brilliant duet with Joan Jett herself, 'Tearstained Letters' from Heartless and Hellbound. Man, she sounds great here like she hasn't aged at all.
6. If you don't feel even slightly better in terms of mood after hearing Butch Walker's 'Bethamphetamine (Pretty Pretty), I don't know what to tell you. I suggest a bit of transcranial magnetic stimulation over the left prefrontal because that's all I can prescribe to cheer you up. From his The Rise And Fall Of Butch Walker And The Let's-Go-Out-Tonites!.
7. After the dissolution of the Libertines, we got Pete Doherty's Babyshambles and then Caral Barat's Dirty Pretty Things. The latter might be a tinge closer in sound and perhaps spirit to the former band, so you know it's pretty goddamn great Clashy rock and roll. This is 'Deadwood' from Waterloo to Anywhere
8. As all music fanatics probably know, the New York Dolls were a Very Important Band and unfortunately, they didn't last very long. Two albums of brilliant music, but an indifferent audience mixed with lots of booze, drugs and a communist conversion (sort of, Malcolm McLaren could fuck up a cup of coffee) kind of shut them down, understandably too. Sometimes the world isn't ready for this kind of thing. Two original members of the remaining New York Dolls reconvened in 2006 for a lackluster album One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This that didn't besmirch the legacy because the whole are greater than the sum of the remaining parts and dead men can't be held accountable for bad decisions. But, these New New York Doll's did release a fun single called 'Dance Like a Monkey'.
9. Ronnie Spector's 'Girl from the Ghetto' from her barely released and appropriately titled Last of the Rock Stars is a remake of sorts, a one-hit originally titled 'Girl from the Gutter' from an artist named Kina. Knowing Ronnie's history, it's not too puzzling who she's likely seeing about, particularly the stinging and somewhat gleeful 'I hope your cell is full of magazines and every page you'll see a big picture of me, and under every picture the caption will read 'not bad for a girl from the ghetto like me'. I read someone say they though this was a spiteful and mean spirited song, to which I say the person who said that probably wasn't a woman married to a psychopath like Phil. So it's probably not mean spirited enough actually. It always makes me happy to hear, probably because I'm spiteful and mean-spirited. Plus she sang 'Be My Baby' so she probably could get a pass for almost anything.
10. I wanted to like Band of Horses more than I actually do, but I find the songs never deliver the payload for me. Except 'The Funeral' from Everything All the Time. If could pull out more songs like this, I'd be in love.
11. 'Gravity's Gone' from Drive-By Truckers' A Blessing and A Curse is yet another appearance by one of my favourite bands (and still one more to go), and this is up there with the best of them, lyrically probably at the top for this alone, '...So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one/They always told me when you hit it you'll know it/But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floatin''
12. It seemed that 2006 was a year for the old guys to come back for another kick at the can. One of my favourites is Jerry Lee Lewis' Last Man Standing, and his duet with Mick Jagger on 'Evening Gown'. Just a dynamite song from two monsters. This song sounds immeasurably better when you've had approximately just enough to just maybe a bit too much. Also, this is for the 4th wind at around 230am.
13. As does this song from Willie Nelson, his album of covers You Don't Know Me: The Songs Of Cindy Walker, a nod to the old-timey Texas swing era. This, 'Bubbles in My Beer' is a great saloon song with incredibly gloomy lyrics paired with upbeat rhythm (e.g. "I know that my life is a failure and I've lost everything that made life dear/And the dreams I once dreamed are empty/ As empty as the bubbles in my beer.")
14. George Jones and Merle Haggard got together for another album of duets Kickin' Out The Footlights...Again where they share a couple of songs and cover each other's tunes. Here's is George singing Merle 'I think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink'. This album is a must for alcoholics and addicts of all kinds.
15. Posthumous release by the late JR Cash, the spare and slightly scary 'God's Gonna Cut You Down' from American V:A Hundred Highways. It's scary because when you hear the voice sing those words, you kind of believe it.
17. I saw Frank Black touring behind and it ranks up there with my favourite live shows. Small club, he played well, hit everything you'd want to hear, plus the new music he was touring behind, from FastMan/RaiderMan, was a double-album that for my money was all great and still counts up there with my favourite Frank Black records. Love this tune, 'I'm Not Dead (I'm in Pittsburg)'.
16. 'Gold Lion' from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Show Your Bones. I don't know what the hell this song is about but I love Karen O and her high pitched 'ooo ooo's' here over a great beat.
18. This is one of my favourite songs of 2006, from what is likely my favourite album of the decade or at the least I'd wager it's the most played, The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America. Again, I could have picked ANY song from this record, but went for the always fun 'Massive Nights'.
The guys are feeling good about their liquor run
The girls are kinda flirting with the setting sun
We all kind of fumbled through the jitter bug
We were all powered up on some new upper drug
and everything was partying
Everyone was pretty
and everyone was coming towards the center of the city
The dancefloor was crowded, the bathrooms were worse
We kissed in your car and we drank from your purse
I had my mouth on her nose when the chaperon said we were dancing too close
We had some massive nights
We got the songs just right
And all I want is time
19. The Format's Dog Problems has got some pretty great pop songs, my favourite 'Ocean' kind of soars. Nothing to this, sounds great when it's sunny and warm, and it's even got some Sha-la-la-las in it.
20. The Tragically Hip's 'In View' is their most poppy tune in my opinion, and it's done just right. The video is awesome to boot. Gord running for his life after stealing someone's cell phone to call his girl. One of those tracks that always cheer me up. I saw them live on the World Container tour, this was great live as well.
21. A bit more pop here, from a band I know nothing about, Van She and their self-titled EP. Evidently they're an 'electropop' band from Australia but I can't for the life of me remember how I got their EP but I do love this completely accurate 80s throwback. It reminds me of Boys Brigade's 'Melody' at times. Make me feel like I'm watching some terrible yet very literal video from that time period. I'm watching it on Edmonton's ITV and eating Old Dutch potato chips on a lime-green sofa. Good times.
22. I shouldn't like this but I do. The Rapture were one of those early '00 bands (see also Interpol, The Stills) that were aping the post-punk sounds of the early 80s. The Rapture's first album was largely forgettable, but their second Pieces of the People We Love had some insinuating songs especially 'Get Myself Into It'. I hate it but I can't stop putting it on mixes alongside the Happy Mondays.
23. Here's another band I really don't like very much: The Decemberists. I largely find them incredibly boring but I heard this 'The Perfect Crime #2' (I've never heard #1) somewhere along the way and it always sneaks in a mix from time to time. From The Crane Wife.
24. Jack White's 2nd of three bands this decade is The Raconteurs released their debut album Broken Boy Soldiers in 2006. Great stuff from Jack et al., 60s guitar pop done the White way, with a bit more smoothed out edges compared to the White Stripes.
25. We all wanted a new Strokes album by 2006 and we got one but it came with baggage. First Impressions of Earth is one of those overly long albums that I complain about. It's practically the same length as their first two albums put together. When we want long 60 min albums we can find them, when we want short, punchy rock and roll we want some Strokes doing it in 30 min or less. Still, it had some great songs like 'Fear of Sleep'.
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