Favourite Music Of 2006: 5-2

5. Robbie Williams, Rudebox

The big track: Lovelight
Hg’s choice: Never Touch That Switch
As we hit the final five, we begin our encounter with the albums that I played incessantly for huge chunks of the year. Indeed, according to last.fm, Robbie Williams has been my most popular artist since I set up my account in October, as a direct result of this album. That doesn’t include the number of times it graced the car CD player either.
This is his “bonkers” album. What that means in practice is electronica, larking around, less emphasis on “classic” songs and – at last – the frequent abandoning of that awful cod-American accent for the vernacular. At times you suspect he’d quite like to be Mike Skinner (Streets). It’s bold, messy, calculating and unhinged, but most of all, fun.
In general, it’s bleepy like Moloko or Basement Jaxx and quite out of step with the guitar-driven mainstream. Loads of cover versions: Manu Chao’s Bongo Bong, Stephen Duffy’s Kiss Me (which still sounds like Dead Or Alive lite), the Human League’s Louise, Lewis Taylor’s Lovelight and most interestingly My Robot Friend’s We’re The Pet Shop Boys (with Neil Tennant).
Though the cleverness of the latter song’s lyrics can’t be attributed to him, when he intones the list of PSB song titles and manages to make it sound like his own autobiography, I think that’s a pretty neat trick.

“Rent. Shopping. Being Boring. It’s alright. It’s a sin. I’m not scared. In denial. I want a dog. I want a lover. Can you forgive her? Do I have to? What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?”

The Pet Shop Boys sound appears elsewhere, such as on the superb She’s Madonna and the glacial The Actor, both continuing Williams’ preoccupation with the highs and lows of fame.
From the wonky sci-fi of Never Touch That Switch (one of my favourite lyrics of the year: “There’s a schism in the time mechanism”), via the wistful Burslem Normals and the effortlessly gliding Summertime to the autobiographical pairing of The 80s and The 90s, this album revealed greater depth to an artist who has sometimes seemed to be all surface.
If some of the tracks were fun but ultimately disposable (Rudebox, Good Doctor, Keep On, Dickhead), that only adds to the overall feel of a collection that seemed determined to shatter preconceptions of where Robbie Williams’ musical career is heading. Time will tell whether this is the start of a change of direction or merely an interesting but temporary diversion.
4. The Killers, Sam’s Town

The big track: When You Were Young
Hg’s choice: For Reasons Unknown
This is the album that I missed the most over a music-free Christmas fortnight. For that reason alone, I was tempted to give it the top spot, but that wouldn’t do justice to three other albums that I listened to earlier in the year. Nevertheless, I’m still enjoying it as much as ever in the new year.
Brandon Flowers talks about the influence of Bruce Springsteen on this album, but as someone who would probably only recognise Born To Run and Philadelphia amongst Springsteen’s oeuvre it’s difficult for me to comment. Flowers might like to emphasise the album’s Americana aspects, but to me its more critical shift is further towards European melodrama.
In places this album reminds me of Sparks, Associates and Queen. Also, when it calms down and becomes a bit more measured and stately, U2. Flowers has called it one of the most important albums of the past twenty years, which sounds grandiose, but there’s no doubting the band’s ambition. I suspect it will have greater sticking power than most.
In any case, histrionic and over-wrought vocals are Good With A Capital G, as far as Hydragenic is concerned. In the opening strains of Bling (Confession Of A King), Flowers sounds like Billy Mackenzie or Russell Mael. Elsewhere, Read My Mind is purposeful and tender (“I don’t mind if you don’t mind, ‘cos I don’t shine if you don’t shine”) and is the most overtly U2-like track.
When You Were Young, the album’s first single, was given incessant radio play and is easily its strongest and most recognisable song. Second single Bones is a little less straightforward – though still essentially glorious pop – and its “in the ocean we’ll hold hands” reminds me of Bowie crooning “we’ll jump in a river holding hands” in Candidate.
My favourite track is For Reasons Unknown, which articulates superbly the failing of a relationship:

“Well my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to and my eyes, they don’t see you no more. And my lips, they don’t kiss, they don’t kiss the way they used to and my eyes don’t recognize you no more”

Typically ambivalent, Flowers seems unsure whether he’s troubled or gleeful at this turn of events.
A similarly restless theme permeates the rest of the album in Read My Mind (“Never gave up on getting out of this two-star town”), Uncle Johnny (“My appetite ain’t got no heart”), This River Is Wild (“Sometimes I hate the line I walk”) and Why Do I Keep Counting? (“If I only knew the answer, I wouldn’t be bothering you”).
I saw a Killers TV documentary a couple of months ago. They seemed to be operating on a completely different plane to peers such as Razorlight, using rock music as a means, rather than an end in itself. This is always much more interesting; medium is all very well, but ultimately message is what keeps me coming back to an artist.
3. Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family, Show Me How The Spectres Dance

The big track: The Mourners Of St Paul’s
Hg’s choice: Is This Love?
Hmm. Is this a better album than Rudebox? Definitely. But better than Sam’s Town? It’s a very close call. In the end I’ve given Liam Frost the third position on the basis that this is an astonishing debut. It’s mature in so many ways, even as it wallows in the characteristic self-doubt of the introverted, early twenties, sensitive young man.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but this strikes me as a very Mancunian album. There’s the accent of course, robust and definite, but also a more general sensibility that appears to be positioned at the centre of a musical and emotional triangle involving Oasis’ pragmatic romanticism, The Smiths’ arch misery and Joy Division’s bleak despair.
Death (specifically, those of his father and brother) is a theme running through the album, overtly on The Mourners Of St Paul’s (“another year has gone, I still sing the same sad song”), Roadsigns And Red Lights (“I never want your flowers on my grave”) and Is This Love?, but also obliquely on This Is Love (“All the people we’ve lost, all the things I’ve forgot”).
But this isn’t a completely depressing offering. Elsewhere, it’s tender (Shall We Dance’s “it should come as no surprise I need your love”, or Try Try Try’s “Oh just come sit here by me baby, let the smoke clear all around”) and exuberant (The City Is At A Standstill’s exhortation to “black out all the city lights and drink till we both grow numb”).
Were this simply a “Liam Frost” album, I think he’d be filed alongside the current crop of singer-songwriters. However, the “& The Slowdown Family” makes him a different proposition – more of a troubadour fronting a band who remind me occasionally of The Band Of Holy Joy, occasionally James and sometimes even The Pogues.
I hope that Frost has more than one album in him. However, if not, Show Me How The Spectres Dance would be a magnificent standalone achievement.
2. Joan As Police Woman, Real Life

The big track: Eternal Flame
Hg’s choice: Flushed Chest
One of the purest releases of the year. I suspect it will also be one of the most enduring. I rashly told several people throughout the course of the autumn that I fully expect to still be listening to this album in twenty years’ time. In this respect, as in several others, it reminds me of Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America.
I think one of the main reasons for this is that musically it’s not in the slightest bit fashionable. You presumably know all about Joan Wasser’s background by now, so you can confidently place her amongst out-of-time peers such as Rufus Wainwright and Anthony & The Johnstons.
Her impressionistic lyrics suggest much while defining little and it’s tempting to read all kinds of things into them. For example, Eternal Flame’s “I can’t be the lighter of your eternal flame” as a posthumous address to Jeff Buckley and an explanation of why her Black Beetle collaboration with his former bandmates was short-lived?
Musically the album is frequently sublime, with seemingly perfect chord progressions and languid, ecstatic bass lines that swoop and sigh. If you’re going to throw caution to the wind and buy any of these favourite albums of mine when you wouldn’t have otherwise, this is the one that I’d recommend.
If you’re a regular reader, this isn’t news. I first mentioned this album back in July and reviewed a gig of hers in detail in October. On that basis, I don’t feel the need to say quite as much about it in this end of year listing. I’m simply going to conclude by drawing your attention once more to this superb Amsterdam Paradiso footage, which has given me as much pleasure as the album itself.

Favourite Music Of 2006 permalinks:
Intro, 30-26, 25-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-2, No. 1