Part 1 of our discussion of the best of the year, wherein Dan and Jordan discuss their favourite albums, and Jordan also lists his favourite songs. Sean's favourite songs of 2006 to follow tomorrow.

The world's population can be divided into two distinct groups: List People and The Others.

There was a movie made about The Others starring Nicole Kidman as (spoiler alert) one of them, and the philosopher and cultural critic Edward Said wrote a great deal about Others. Anyway, I am one of them. Lists bring me no pleasure. I remember as a little kid asking my dad who the greatest baseball player of all time was, and him treating this as a deeply misguided question, explaining to me that there were a great many great baseball players and what made each one great was a set of qualities so abstract that it couldn't be meaningfully judged against another's. This made sense to me (though I knew for a fact that Jesse Barfield was the greatest player of all time). So it is too with music, of course. What does it mean to say that Coltrane is better than Fahey, Charles Ives better than Marvin Gaye? Their respective greatnesses are, in mathematical terms, incommensurable. Which is not to say that no kind of judgment of relative merit in music is possible (otherwise we'd be out of a job) - we can surely distinguish between the great and the very good (Coltrane is better than Modest Mouse, right?), the merely good and the not so good - just that at a certain point, when dealing with music of comparable value (leaving aside what exactly "value" means here), such judgments start to break down.

So why a list at all? Well,

1. I made some perfunctory Utilitarian calculations which demonstrated that the pleasure that List People derive from reading a list likely far outweighs the discomfort that an Other, such as myself, experiences compiling one.
2. With a site such as StG, where we write only about music we really like, I imagine our constant praise can sometimes appear vacuous. Of course, though we may not always do a great job of showing it, we do not like everything we post equally. So this list is an attempt to give you some perspective on the hundreds of positive reviews we've written this year. Finally and most importantly,
3. Sean made me.

Albums

1. Joanna Newsom - Ys

And in no particular order:

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
The Red River – Some Songs About a Flood
Nat Baldwin - Enter the Winter
Richard Buckner - Meadow
Horse Feathers – Words are Dead
Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds

Songs

In no particular order:

Neko Case - "That Teenage Feeling" [Previously]
The Red River – "The Mighty Tide" [Previously]
Nat Baldwin – "Within Walls" [Previously]
Horse Feathers – "Finch on Saturday" [Previously]
Early Day Miners – "Sans Revival" [Previously]
Beirut - "Postcards From Italy" [Sean previously on Beirut]
Cat Power – "The Greatest" [Previously]

For my list, I feel sheepish about trying to present this to you. I feel like every one needs to be justified, as if in a sentence or two, I could represent to you the reason these artists are vibrant, present, alive. All I can say is that they are to me and I just want to share with you. So, in reverse order, here goes 2006:

12. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Brown paper songs that can tear and let loose a flood, a pink wind.

11. The Low Lows - Fire on the Bright Sky
Like flagless flagpoles that rattle their rings in the night breeze, and as you drive into an unknown town, the credits are always inching up behind you. (listen to "No Such Thing as Sara Jane")

10. Swan Lake - Beast Moans
Checking your pockets, what's been jingling there all day, three coins, each ornate and priceless, one gold, one made of wrought-iron, one of good ol' solid steel.

9. Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
Broken pianos, voices standing on their heads, and dance beats like heavy winter coats. A song from every genre, not a single one of which is a musical genre. (listen to "Oh Sweet Woods")

8. Horse Feathers - Words are Dead
Eat this album like a sad yellow breakfast. Unrelenting and surprisingly eternal for an album so deathly, so final. (listen to "Blood on the Snow")

7. Parenthetical Girls - Safe as Houses
Percussing and throbbing with treble and warble and writhing with angry-eyed love. (listen to "The Four Platitudes")

6. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette
Like a Mike Leigh film, a book of Hemingway short stories, and a sleep on a stranger's couch, all at once. Pure winter. (listen to "New Year's Kiss")

5. Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
If there were any woods left, any real woods, this would be a walk in that woods. (listen to "This Lamb Sells Condos")

4. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up, I'm Dreaming
This is where it gets difficult. It really is harder to write about the things you like most. If this album could be charted like a map (which it ought to be) you'd have to use a pair of dice to navigate it, and you'd need to take a lot of weapons. (listen to the Daytrotter version of "They Took a Vote and Said No")

3. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
Ever eat an omelette and think, halfway through, "why do I like omelettes?" but then when you're finished, you just feel great? Yeah, me too.

2. The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth
Look at a row of books on a shelf. Think about how many words are between here and here. Art is so much fucking work. (listen to "Razorblade")

1. Joanna Newsom - Ys
Without trying to be over-emphatic or sensational, one of the best albums I have ever heard in my life. Head and shoulders the best album of the year, and possibly the best album, as I understand an album to be defined, made by anyone ever.