I’m with this guy. I guess com­par­ing the Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in Amer­i­ca to Count­ing Crows ca. This Desert Life is too embar­rass­ing a propo­si­tion for most crit­ics, since they’d have to admit that they’d heard it in the first place.

Just a few notes before get­ting into the year end heavy hitters:

1. 2nd & 3rd gen­er­a­tion Mp3 blogs — Sure, they’ve been hat­ed on and torn apart over ethics and style in the past year, but there’s no sur­er con­denser of inter­net efflu­via than a trust­wor­thy, or short of that, well-traf­ficked mp3 blog. The emer­gence of sites like Des­ti­na­tion: OUT [a jazz blog that’s not for dip­shits, and per­fect­ly under­stand­able to the unini­ti­at­ed!] and Prog not Frog, [see links] as well as slight return of sites like Lemon-Red more than makes up for the dis­ap­pear­ance of oth­er wor­thies over the course of 2006. Addi­tion­al­ly, the afore­men­tioned are like a breath of fresh air: none of the world-weari­ness that has tires so many of their pre­de­ces­sors with a crit­i­cal malaise, and none [or less] of the inces­sant big-upping [oops!] “friends” to cre­ate a cli­mate of inside-base­ball clannishness.
2. Pod­casts — Too busy to both­er with tor­rent of mp3 mania? Sub­scribe to pod­casts! Now that iTunes got off its ass and made it an easy one stop hub to sub­scribe to every­thing from The Econ­o­mist to Excepter’s show, there’s real­ly no excuse to tune in to com­mer­cial-rid­den radio. And you should seri­ous­ly check out WFMU’s pod­casts. The old-timey stuff and gospel shows are a treat.
3. Film blogs — If you got the meme about how hor­ri­ble Hol­ly­wood is these days, it’s due in no small part to the folks writ­ing about it and cheer­ing on pic­tures that are hope­less­ly bloat­ed, or gut­less­ly re-writ­ten to achieve the broad­est appeal. 2006 marked the return of Scors­ese, but not until he’d deposit­ed two stink­ing Oscar-wor­thy turds on our doorstep. If it weren’t for sites like Cin­e­marati and Film­brain, or inde­pen­dent crit sites like DVD­Beaver and DVDTalk, it would an unnav­i­ga­ble flux of syn­di­cat­ed silliness.
4. Youtube — Well, at least until a cou­ple months ago. What was once a haven for com­plete­ly worth­less ephemera, Youtube’s rab­bit­hole was back­filled by cor­po­rate greed and dubi­ous pro­pri­etary claims. Who would pay for age old clips of old news fol­lies? Is the Amer­i­ca’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos crowd that pow­er­ful? Before it became a con­duit for well-designed viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, it was a bot­tom­less trea­sure trove of PSAs, Dai­ly Show clips and old music videos. Now instead of laugh­ing at the trail­er for You Got Served!, you may actu­al­ly get served.
5. MySpace — Unlike YouTube, cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca is hav­ing a hard time killing off this ugly, strict­ly util­i­tar­i­an beast [I’ve seen some next gen­er­a­tion social net­work­ing sites that are more user friend­ly and pret­ti­er.] The com­bi­na­tion of viral mar­ket­ing capac­i­ty on top of a patent­ly old-school com­mer­cial inun­da­tion makes it too appeal­ing to big mon­ey inter­ests hop­ing to tap into cool. Which is great until they real­ize that any­one can get an adblocker!
6. Del.icio.us — Post-it notes for the inter­net. In the ADD world of well, work, furtive pur­suits online can be [and are] heav­i­ly mon­i­tored. Why both­er trawl­ing the inter­net when you can vis­it one page and min­i­mize your online foot­print? More than that, it’s eas­i­er than flip­ping page after page on oth­er sub­scrip­tion services.
7. Woe­bot — Come back soon. Your epic posts [and the minor prose too] are fre­quent­ly revelatory.
8. Philadel­phia bands — If we’re final­ly in the post-Big­ger Lovers era, I hap­pi­ly wel­come our new over­lords. Philadel­phia now boasts a more diverse assort­ment of bands than just your typ­i­cal indie rock fare [although that’s what the city has been export­ing pret­ty heav­i­ly in the past few years.] But now for every Mazarin, Dr. Dog and Capi­tol Years, there’s some­thing, well, worth men­tion­ing too! From Plas­tic Lit­tle to Pony Pants to Pan­da Riot [Philly still rules nu gaze with Drag­on City, some­time-locals Mahogany and Relay just to name a few] there are plen­ty of things to go out and hear [if you don’t believe me, check out Jon Solomon’s Local Sup­port pod­cast]…and even more places to see them. Which brings us to:
9. House par­ties — So we lost Plain Parade, but we gained some real pio­neers in the bat­shit amaz­ing West Philadel­phia house par­ty cir­cuit! With names like Dan­ger Dan­ger and Clap it Off, there’s a ton of free music to be seen at safe, all ages venues. Spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en Mark Christ­man’s Ars Nova series, which also calls West Philly home.
10. John­ny Bren­da’s — One of the Fish­town gen­tri­fi­ca­tion hot­points, this is a wel­come alter­na­tive to all those nights spent chok­ing on smoke at the Khy­ber, or a night’s sweat in the First Uni­tar­i­an Church base­ment. Now Philadel­phia has a minia­ture ver­sion of Bow­ery Ball­room in my new back­yard. [Yep, as of Jan­u­ary, Black­mail Is My Life will move to a new home in the upper reach­es of Fishtown.]

My first review for Paper Thin Walls is up.

Two words: free down­loads. Today’s are all met­al, like­ly the last such post of the year. You should go there now and down­load Mon­day’s Rivulets track too if you can.

Seri­ous­ly, it’s like Pitch­fork, except the parts you read — just news, sin­gles reviews and the mp3s to go along with them.

Heard this on the radio a few nights ago and it blew my mind all over again. Dit­to for the video, direct­ed by Spike Lee, which skew­ers all the cocaine “in-jokes” you’ve ever heard. Drip­ping with irony, it’s also the best repack­ag­ing of Liq­uid Liq­uid ever.

Down­load: Geisha — Acci­dents [Cru­cial Blast Records]

Since I don’t usu­al­ly start threads on ILM, Scott start­ed one for me [Con­fi­den­tial to Scott: please save some of your spas­tic prose for your blog!] This one is about nu-pig­fuck bands like Clock­clean­er, Pissed Jeans…and prac­ti­cal­ly the entire Cru­cial Blast ros­ter. Nu-pig­fuck has been an emer­gent trend, but since Pissed Jeans signed to Sub Pop, the post Touch & Go arms race was on! Hint, hint…

Is this an attempt by labels to hedge bets and get the sound­track rights for pop­u­lar dis­sent, or just some­thing that hap­pens any­time some­one named Bush is Pres­i­dent? If not, then it’s the music that’ll help kill any debate about pop­ulism popism.

[That’s not meant as an endorse­ment of either side — I per­son­al­ly think that if the ear­ly nineties are any indi­ca­tion, the time is right for this sort of thing. That’s also part of what makes me sad about it.]