jeffvrabel.com

My year-end top 10 list, as part of the Billboard 2006 Year In Music package (and the same, over at PopMatters).

1. The Hold Steady, “Boys and Girls in America” (Vagrant). Much has been rightly made of the Hold Steady’s resemblance/homage to the ideals of Bruce Springsteen: the disoriented adolescences, the insane trials of teenage love, the wackiness of Catholicism, the hard-edged but loving portrayals of often anonymous mid-sized American cities.

But while Bruce paints his pictures with sweeping masterstrokes, Craig Finn tends to focus with wonderful precision on specifics: liquor runs, backseats, chillout tents, and those accidentally massive single nights, available only to teenagers, that start out as nothing and end up as magic (or, for that matter, horror). The marvelously executed and 100% American Boys and Girls in America—the title is lifted from On the Road, for God’s sake—finds holy truths in these random people even when, as is often the case, they’re lost, drunk, faking it, or all three.

Tad Kubler’s guitar here is more insistent and Replacements-y then ever, and the idea of operating under something approaching a concept has crystallized Finn’s writing. His man Bruce’s youthful operas found redemption in open highways and pragmatic optimism; Finn’s find it in the daily operation of enviably restless teens and their props: prom dates and bowling alleys and empty bongs and burned-out malls that don’t seem like anything when you’re living them and everything when they’re gone. Jeff Vrabel

2. The Decemberists, “The Crane Wife” (Capitol). White and nerdy

3. Bruce Springsteen, “We Shall Overcome — The Seeger Sessions” (Columbia). Loose and drinky; Bruce’s 150-year-old folkie jams bring more racket than today’s kids do.

4. TV On The Radio, “Return to Cookie Mountain” (Interscope). Winner: Noxious, Self-Destructive Online Hype Machine Nails It Award, ‘06 Edition.

5. Bob Dylan, “Modern Times” (Columbia). Karmically evens out crappy musical.

6. Pearl Jam, “Pearl Jam” (J). For all his scrupulous intentions and inarguable punch, Eddie Vedder’s aggressive earnestness is what has probably turned a lot of people off to grunge’s sole survivors over the past few years; additionally, though Pearl Jam’s live shows have remained thrilling, its last two records were the spottiest of its 15-year career. That makes Pearl Jam one of the most welcome comebacks of 2006, a roaring monster that finds Vedder’s righteous rage focused on those most worthy of targets: a messy war, a garish president, and the vulgar abuses of power unleashed on honest men by both.

Vedder and his enduring company swear up and down that Pearl Jam isn’t a concept disc, but it’s tough to think the carpe-diem meteor “Life Wasted” (and its brief reprise), the majestically melodic “Marker in the Sand”, the fireball sucker-punch to the administration “World Wide Suicide” (”Tell you to pray while the devil’s on their shoulder”), and the heartbreaking “Come Back” don’t star the same cast. But Pearl Jam‘s power is not just Vedder: Mike McCready and Stone Gossard have relocated the bite sometimes missing from Riot Act and Binaural, and Matt Cameron’s all but perfected his thrash. War is good for nothing, but there’s great worth in responses as thoughtful and driving as this.

7. Lindsey Buckingham, “Under the Skin” (Reprise). Pump up the treble.

8. Neko Case, “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” (Anti-).

9. Lupe Fiasco, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor” (Atlantic).

10. Drive-By Truckers, “A Blessing and a Curse” (New West).