TIG's best of 2006

For reasons that I cannot quite determine, if you go to the calendar links over at Three Imaginary Girls, you get their list of the best of 2006. This is odd, because the front page says their still tabulating.

I'm tempted to cut and paste the list here. Since I think it might be an accident, I'm going to refrain from doing so. But, I will say that the bands on my own ballot for their list did pretty well (assuming the list I'm seeing over there now is correct!):

The Doll Test - didn't make the list
Racetrack - comes in at #13
Central Services - comes in at #27
Jon Auer - didn't make the list
The Long Winters - comes in at #3

(blogger's follow up: The results are now officially posted over at TIG)

The Doll Test in Top 10 ep's list

Steve at Absolute Powerpop has posted his Top 10 ep's for 2006, and The Doll Test landed at number 10. Congrats guys. If I had my own list of ep's of the year, you'd be even higher.


The Doll Test

A fruitless exercise in list making

As all publications, big and small, do their 2006 lists and wrap ups, I'm prompted to think about what an appropriate equivalent would be here on the blog. In fact, this blog is only a half a year old. The first post was on June 22, 2006 at precisely 2:08 pm.

Therefore, it feels a little weird trying to do any kind of typical year-in-review. I decided instead to do a list of another sort -- namely, a list of Seattle powerpop bands. If this blog has done nothing else for me, it's made me even more cognizant of how many great bands are in the area.

The question, as always with a list of this nature, is how do you define who goes on it.. At the heart of that question is determining the definition of "powerpop," and since I've always avoided doing that for the blog, I'm hesitant to start now. This list, and certainly the blog as a whole, gets fuzzy around the edges.

The following randomly-ordered list represents currently functioning bands (for the most part...) in the gretaer Seattle area that I think fit pretty neatly into the powerpop genre. Of course, I have and will continue to talk about bands outside of this list.

I'm confident there are bands missing from the list that should be included. There there were a number of bands that I felt were "on the fence" of fitting my vaguely-defined parameters. Ultimately, some went in (Dept. of Energy) and others didn't (Speaker Speaker). I'd love to argue about the list, so feel free add anyone I missed via the comments link below and give me the "what for" for leaving them off.

With all those disclaimers, hold on to your hat....

The Posies
The Long Winters
The Doll Test
Model Photographer
The Lashes
The Neons
Young Sportsmen
Ghosts & Liars
Tiny Volcano
Vanilla
Brides of Obscurity
The Pranks
99 Men
Dept. of Energy
The Pop Machine
The Action Suits
Henry Boy
The Tripwires
Andy Werth
The Scheme
The Small Change
Boss Martians
The Capillaries
Shake Some Action
Sgt. Major
The Universe
The Pale Pacific
New West Motels
Slender Means
The Riffbrokers
Don't Tell Sophie
The Reluctants
Central Services
Young Fresh Fellows
Jim McIver
The Color Bars
The Lund Bros.
Once For Kicks
Llama
The Sterling Loons
Pris

TIG's best of 2006

Everyone's friends over at Three Imaginary Girls are doing a poll of their readers on the best Northwest releases of 2006. You can head over there to vote. You've got until xmas to get your vote in,

Here's my ballot (in no particular order), submitted moments ago:

The Doll Test - Gasoline and Banks
Racetrack - Go Ahead and Say It (which I still plan to review soon!)
Central Services - We're All Smarter Now
Jon Auer - Songs From the Year of Our Demise
The Long Winters - Putting The Days to Bed