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BY PETER BAKER

In print | December 7, 2006

Every year since I had my braces removed, I’ve spent November and December fussing over my Top Albums of the Year list. I have fond memories of these annual list-makings, which consisted of shuffling album titles between the “definite,” “contender,” “not good enough” and “need to listen to” columns of a computer spreadsheet. This shuffling focused my listening habits, motivated me to give previously neglected albums an honest chance and (most importantly) prodded me to develop a coherent account of what I liked and why. So, even though hardly anyone read my lists, I felt that they were valuable.

Now I’m 22 and more in love with pop music than I’ve ever been. I still make my lists, but I’m also trying to branch out a little bit. The popularity of Best Album lists makes it seem like music is all about albums. And it’s not. Albums are, of course, fantastic, but sometimes what I want to talk about has nothing to do with albums or conceptual wholeness. Sometimes I just want to obsess over particular moments or individual sounds, the mysterious bits and pieces that woo people into listening to whole albums and obsessively ranking them in the first place.

As a monument to this desire, my Top 20 Musical Moments of 2006:

Best handclaps: The Rapture – “Don Gon Do It” (from the “Pieces of the People We Love” LP).

Best repetitive use of the word “baby”: El Perro Del Mar – “I Can’t Talk About It” (from the “El Perro Del Mar” LP).

Best swelling string part: Camera Obscura – “Country Mile” (from the “Let’s Get Out Of This Country” LP).

Best gang vocals: Swan Lake – “All Fires” (from the “Beast Moans” LP).

Best pre-chorus “uh”: Phoenix – “Long Distance Call” (from the “It’s Never Been Like That” LP).

Best whistling: Peter Bjorn and John – “Young Folks” (from the “Writer’s Block” LP).

Best lyrical subversion of a cliché: They say “that the cream cannot but always rise up to the top / well I say, shit floats,” says Jarvis Cocker in “Cunts Are Still Running The World” (the hidden track on the Jarvis LP).

Best non-shredding guitar solo: Sonic Youth – “Incinerate” (from the “Rather Ripped” LP).

Best shredding guitar solo: Belle and Sebastian – "We Are The Sleepyheads (from the “Life Pursuit” LP).

Best instance of profanity: “When I’m at war I insist on slaughter / and getting it on with the hangman’s daughter / she needs release, she needs to feel at peace / with her father, the fucking maniac” (begin ripping guitar solo). Destroyer – “European Oils” (from the “Destroyer’s Rubies” LP).

Best “da da da da da” part: Spoon – “The Book I Write” (from the “Music From The Motion Picture Stranger than Fiction” LP).

Best soft-to-loud transition: Annuals – “Brother” (from the “Be He Me” LP).

Best (worst?) rap breakdown in a non-rap song: Islands – “Where There’s A Will There’s a Whalebone” (from the “Return to the Sea” LP).

Best cheap synth riff: The Thermals – “Pillar of Salt” (from the “The Blood, the Body, the Machine” LP).

Best rhyme: People “want me dead but they scared to step to me / Rip they guts out like a hysterectomy.” So says Ghostface Killah in “The Champ” (from the “Fischscale” LP).

Best (oddest) lyrical pop-culture reference: “I was thinkin’ ‘bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from cryin’.” Bob Dylan – “Thunder On the Mountain” (from the “Modern Times” LP).

Best non-lyrical pop-culture reference: The entire “Night Ripper” LP by Greg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk. The whole CD is a continuous mash-up of Top 40 hits past and present.

Best incongruous end-of-song space-disco breakdown: Sunset Rubdown – “Shut Up I Am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings” (from the “Shut Up I Am Dreaming” LP).

Best intertwining of male and female vocals: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – “Love Comes To Me” (from the “The Letting Go” LP).

I wager that at least one of these superlatives piqued your interest (in the “hey, I love incongruous end-of-song space-disco breakdowns” kind of way). If so, track it down. It’s not hard, and it’s never too late to make additions to your Best of the Year spreadsheet.

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