Best Albums of 2006

So here it is – my list of great stuff from 2006. It’s a little different coming up with a best-of list as a regular Joe than a critic for Rolling Stone or whoever. Music fans don’t get boxes of free CDs to review all the time. If we’re not P2P lovers, we’re buying the music we listen to, and I know I don’t get to listen to as many artists as I’d like for the simple fact that I can’t afford to buy that many discs! And is anyone else out there like me in that one of the biggest music-buying-sprees-of-the-whole-year is between Christmas and New Year’s, when you get a bunch of music store gift cards and you rush out to buy a bunch of stuff you’ve been eying all year??

The division lines of a best-of list aren’t perfect, either. Imogen’s album came out in November 2005. No one around here had even heard of her until this year. It’s the best disc I heard all year. Do I leave it off my list because it technically came out in Canada less than two months before 2006 started? Hell no. I think it’s a shame it’s not on mainstream critics’ best-of lists for that reason.

Anyway, enough of that. Here’s my list. If you have a best-of list for 2006 please post them in the comments below. Happy new year!

Top 10 Albums of 2006

1. Imogen Heap – Speak for Yourself
2. Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye
3. Beck – The Information
4. John Mayer – Continuum
5. Tom Petty – Highway Companion
6. Keane – Under the Iron Sea
7. Dan the Automator – 2K7
8. Pet Shop Boys – Fundamental/Fundamentalism
9. Goldfrapp - Supernature
10. DJ Shadow – The Outsider

• Other favourites: Thom Yorke – The Eraser, BT – This Binary Universe, k-os – Atlantis-Hymns for Disco, The Killers – Sam’s Town, Snow Patrol – Eyes Open, Camouflage – Motif Sky EP, Tiga - Sexor, John Legend – Once Again, Erasure – Union Street
• Best box set: Ohama – Retrospective (10 disc set)
• Best live album: Thomas Dolby - The Sole Inhabitant
  
• Favourite 12” single: Transparent Sound – Hell Bent
• Best live show: Nine Inch Nails @ Rexall Place
• Guilty pleasure: Nelly Furtado - Loose
• Most disappointing trend: My Chemical Romance is the best band on the planet? Really?? Um, I mean… really??

Anyway, got comments, feedback or "top 10" list of your own - post 'em in the comments below.

Happy New Year everyone...

cn

Happy holidays from Caffeine Sunday

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, season's greetings, yoi otoshiwo, and all the best in 2007...

Remember to sharpen your pencils and start hacking out your year-end lists - next week on synth.pop, my top 10 albums of 2006 - remember, I'd love to read your Top 10 lists etc too.

Until then, best of the season to you all.

cn

Blogger 2.0 and synth.pop: the view so far

Not long after I made the switch from the "old" Blogger to the new "Blogger Beta", they took the beta label off and made the new Blogger the official version.

While it's a major improvement from the old system, it feels mostly like a catch-up update rather than a "wow" forward-looking update. Who am I to complain - it's free and it works, right?

Well for what it's worth, here's the verdict so far:

Thumb's Up: Added blog subscription buttons to the sidebar, plus a pic and "about us" blurb, which are handy for new visitors, labels will be handy for sorting things down the road, RSS feed added to Atom feed, better layout options, live posting, started a blog roll, and there's the option of adding more modules in the future. All these features should make things easier for visitors (yay)!

Thumb's Down: Editing the layout on a Mac is brutal. I've noticed before with Google's personal homepage that overall functionality of many of the modules is limited on a Mac, compared to Windows. It's the web - why the hell should it matter? Anyway, trying to drag and drop modules on the template page to change the layout in Safari or Firefox is useless. Plus shortcuts don't work, features in the post creation form are missing, etc. Not great for something that just had the "beta" taken off its name. Also, though they've added RSS (arguably the web standard) you can sure tell they've done it with much shagrin. It's hidden away as best as they can in all of the documentation. Swallow some pride, Googledudes.

If you have any opinions on our new-look blog, or about the new version of Blogger, just post us a comment...

cn

March of the beta pigs

Like guinea pigs, but more unstable...

Yes Google is finally updating Blogger with new features (RSS feed? what a great idea!) in beta version, and tonight I moved our Caffeine Sunday blog over from the old version to the new beta version.

Here's hoping the new features will make this and other Blogger blogs better, and here's hoping I don't break anything in the move!

cn

Of pianos

There's an interesting conversation going on over at my friend Gayleen Froese's blog about pianos - specifically how valuable and sentimentally-important these instruments can be to some people (like me) especially the "pianos you grew up with". Worth a read whenever you have some time to kill, or if you also have/had a piano in your life...

cn

Tags:

• Music

Dec. 5 - be a ninja!

I'm half Japanese -- so I guess I may have some ancestral ninja blood flowing through me (in theory). For the rest of you nonjas, Dec. 5 is the day you've been waiting for...

cn

Hypocracy at the head of a major music label - colour me shocked!

This story about Warner music's CEO came over the wires today.

You can't get sued for "file-sharing" music in Canada...yet... and neither Ryan nor I are crazy about "file-sharing" per se, but this story shows how ridiculous the major label approach to dealing with the problem in the U.S. has been.

cn