Side A
Artist	Song
The Brunettes	The Record Store
Death Cab for Cutie	I Will Follow You into the Dark
Jens Lekman	A Sweet Summer's Night on Hammer Hill
The Magnetic Fields	The Book of Love
Ben Lee	Into the Dark
The Boy Least Likely to	I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon to Your Star
ELO	Telephone Line
James	Sometimes
Guitar Wolf	Time Machine of Tears
The Cottars	The Briar and the Rose
Belle and Sebastian	Sukie in the Graveyard
Syreeta	Harmour Love
The Incredible Moses Leroy	She Can't Get Any Sleep
The Misfits	Last Caress
The Jesus and Mary Chain	Almost Gold
Against Me!	Baby, I'm an Anarchist
Live	The River
The Research	The Way You Used to Smile
Washington Social Club	Breaking the Dawn
Irving	A Very Frivolous Distribution of Sundries
Louis Armstrong	High Society Calypso
Steve Winwood	The Finer Things
Ladybug Transistor	A Burial at Sea
Jack Johnson	Upside Down
Mates of State	Fraud in the '80s
Neko Case	Star Witness
The Who	The Seeker
Old 97's	Nineteen
Lanterna	Samo jedna Dalmacija ima
I'm from Barcelona	We're from Barcelona
Side B
Artist	Song	Buy
Get Set Go	Sleep
Johnny Boy	Fifteen Minutes
Japeth	Be Prepared
The New Cars featuring Todd Rundgren	Not Tonight
The Flaming Lips	The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
The Weepies	The World Spins Madly on
Neko Case	The Virginian
Todd Rundgren	Lysistrata
Manfred Mann	Hi Lili Hi Lo
Neko Case	High on Cruel
Great Lake Swimmers	See You on the Moon!
MC Lars	Download This Song
Neutral Milk Hotel	The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt.One
Tsar	I Don't Wanna Break Up
Neko Case	Karoline
Bedouin SoundClash	When the Night Feels My Song
Wolfmother	Joker & the Thief
The Sounds	24 Hours
Age of Electric	Remote Control
Tilly and the Wall	Bad Education
Neko Case	Duchess
Buckwheat Zydeco	Jambalaya
Graham Coxon	Gimme Some Love
Edguy	Lavatory Love Machine
Jonas Brothers	Mandy
Edguy	Land of a Miracle
Billy Joel	The Entertainer
Lordi	Hard Rock Hallelujah
Sandi Thom	I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)
Mojave 3	Puzzles Like You

Comment:

Well, here we are again. For my own take on the Best of 2006, I went the same route as last year, by ignoring the boundaries of 2006 releases and going for a kaleidoscopic view of all the signature music I listened to from January 1st to right now. The most memorable moments, most enduring songs, that really defined 2006 for me. Since I've been heavily involved for the last several years in discovering any and everything worth hearing, my audio experiences tend to range beyond what's just come out.

A lot of the stuff on here comes from songs I heard on the radio, old or new (ELO, Live, Steve Winwood, The New Cars, Flaming Lips, Bedouin), ones I thought looked interesting on music sites (biggest thanks go to PopMatters, allmusic.com, Pitchfork, Stylus Magazine, the FTOTZ mix club, and of course this indescribably cool AOTM playground), movies (songs on this volume alone appear courtesy of me having watched "Junebug", "High Society", "The Limey", "Hoodwinked", and "Lili"), friends' recommendations (Billy Joel), old favorites with new albums (The Sounds, Tilly), musicians I knew I liked but finally got around to really exploring this year (James, Belle and Sebastian, Neko Case, Mates of State), spontaneous moments where a song just caught fire in my soul (the first 6 tracks, "Nineteen", "King of Carrot Flowers", "See You on the Moon", "Remote Control", "Gimme Some Love", "Land of a Miracle"), a song whose identity I'd been hunting down for years and finally unearthed (the Moses Leroy song, a hidden track on one of his albums which was played on the radio a few times many many years ago, to my delight and long-running frustration), and also my unabashed love for indie pop and just plain any song that entertains me. Live, MC Lars, The New Cars, Jack Johnson, Jonas Brothers - this isn't the "coolest" cross-section of music, but that's me, and I while I can't help acknowledging it every time as a form of apology, I won't, in the end, deny my love for such things.

I'll post the 2nd volume in just a minute (I tried my best to truncate this compendium down to 120 tracks, which in total fit on about 5 mixes)

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