Year end list

I like year end lists, because it gives me reason to find lots of new things to listen to that I may have overlooked during the year. That said, I don't like how the December 31 date creates some line in the sand, with which to cast aside all from 2005 to only hear the stuff from 2006. It can't work that way, especially when the best jazz release of the year is a recording from 1957 - the dates are arbitrary. Sure, it's good to quantify those good items from that year, but it's sad when it's just put in a box called 'best of' or 'worst of'. Blah blah blah, here are a few of my favorite things, not the best (how the hell would I know?), but my favorite:

- Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs - Weird and wonderful, but not warm and fuzzy
- Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise - Weird and wonderful, but incredibly warm and fuzzy.
- Bob Dylan - No Direction Home - The broadest collection of outstanding and surprising outtakes of any artist going.
- Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane - Live at Carnegie Hall - The best jazz album of the last five years, recorded in 1957.
- Shakira - Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 - Great pop, great voice, proves she's more than a one-hit wonder. Favorite cd cover of the year.
- Portastatic - Bright Ideas - powerful in its understated grace. It sucked me in by being so quiet.
- The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan - They mix it up each time out, this time with piano. And they still rock the wildest.
- Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation in the Backyard - Maybe his sternest album. Like a whole album of Eleanor Rigbys.
- Common - Be - Concise should become the new trend in hip-hop if it produces records that flow as well as this.
- Neil Diamond - 12 Songs - Comeback of the year. It's serious and thoughtful, and better than that damn Antony and the Johnsons record that's getting all the praise for sounding half as good.
- The Hold Steady - Doesn't sound like Springsteen the way Marah does, but hits the right notes and places and swagger - it's a great story song collection.
- Sarah Evans - A Real Fine Place To Start (Single) - typical Nashville, but I love the bright shiny tone, and her voice is like velvet. Plus she's tre hot in the video.
- M.I.A. - Arulular - The new genre mixing dance/pop/worldbeat/hi-hop vixen. I hope she's not the new Nelly Furtado.
- Bettye LaVette - I've Got More Hell To Raise - The reintroduction of a voice that never should have disappeared. Awesome.
- Dean Gray - American Edit - A mashup up Green Day's American Idiot, is as much fun as the original. The juxtoposition of "Wake Me Up When September Ends" with the Eagles "Crying Eyes" is so good I can't remember how either song sounded like by itself.