The end of the year also brings a recall of which albums have been purchased and been spun so many times they are now beginning to look like 7″ Records. It’s been another good year for music and rock seems to be making a bigger impact on pop culture with the top selling album of the year being Snow Patrol’s Hands Open and the Arctic Monkeys closely following their rears, no pun intended! NME have done their up most to insure coolness and style stays as the most important part of the music industry and with image bands such as The Automatic, Gnarls Barkley and Panic at The Disco (I saw them first) keeping the pages turning.
So if you haven’t read hundreds of these already, here’s my opinion on the …huh..hum.. Rock music of 2006.
A most definitely different list not bounded by Indie Snobbery or Personal Credibility…
#X
Ok Go – Oh No
Having not scored the media attention in the UK, Oh No is a superb album which has enough raw exuberance to worthy its place in the top ten. Great riffs and catchy lyrics are the strong points of the album within tracks such as “A Million Ways”, “Television, Television” and “It’s a Disaster”. Top single is the cracking “Here It Goes Again” whose riff nods firmly towards nirvana, married with a catchy chorus and a superb video (Treadmills) makes for one of the best tracks of the year.
Top Track: Here It Goes Again
#IX
Trivium – The Crusade
Metal?? Ahh!! That said the second album from Trivium is rather awesome! A change in vocal style from screaming indecipherably to actual singing has helped immensely and with more classic rock influences it’s hard for me not the love this album. Sure somewhere in there is a lot of showing off and tracks with solo’s brinking on prog length and structure, but that’s what makes the album great. Top track pick is most definitely “Anthem (We Are The Fire)” which pulls a riff right out of Van Halen’s Gun Closet and a solo from Satriani county. The guitar work is so good on this album, you wonder why they even try to sing?
Top Track: Anthem (We Are The Fire)
#IIX
Graham Coxon – Love Travels At Illegal Speeds
Follow up album to the great Happiness in Magazines is Coxons finest solo material to date. He brings the life and kind of childish fun back into punk influenced pop/rock. As we know Coxon is a guitarist, most notably with blur, not a singer. Now not being the worlds most gifted vocalist hasn’t stopped him at all as he has found a style which suits perfectly and his quirky vocals brightens up each track. Vocals aside he can still write some awesome riffs, evident on “Gimme Some Love”, “I Don’t Wanna Go Out” and “Don’t Let Your Man Know”. Yet its the upbeat adrenaline fuelled melodies and catchy chorus’s which steal the show, especially on lead single “Standing On My Own Again”. This is actually a concept album about Love, you wouldn’t even have guessed that though, given that this album is as far from depressing power balladry as humanly possibly.
Top Track: Standing On My Own Again
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