I’m a full week late with this, but here we are. I spent most of last week listening to my best albumts of 2006, as my Last.FM charts would indicate. Good times. The top six are all in my car right now, which has made for some great driving this week. [In another example of weaving things together, I emailed Eric about the best-of list, and he then proceeded to ask me about M. Ward, as I am merely one in a number of people recommending Portland's troubadour to him. Hee.]

Anyhow, to the new music:

• 24 May 1999 [West Hollywood, CA, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco. I’m trying to work down the backlog.
• 24 Feb 2005 [Washington, DC, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco.
• 30 Seconds to Mars’s A Beaufitul Lie.
  

The week prior was just flat-out awesome. It’s probably the best week of the year:

• Over the Rhine’s Snow Angels. Merely calling this a Christmas album does it a disservice. It captures the spirit of the holidays but seeks to place them in a larger context, which is, I feel, quite important. The record is simply enjoyable from beginning to end. Four stars.
  
• Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open. For as much as I babbled about the M. Ward, well … I really enjoyed this album as well. I can see why SP has a lot of fans, to be sure. I think that it sometimes can be a bit self-referential towards the indie rock scene—really, did “Hands Open” have to name-drop Sufjan Stevens?—but then I like a lot of that scene, so I should shut up, eh? Three-and-a-half stars, and a disc that I’m sure that I’ll come to enjoy even more this year.
  
• Five for Fighting’s Two Lights. I really like John Ondrasik’s voice. His messages sometimes fall a bit flat with me; I feel like he’s trying to channel John Cougar Mellencamp’s I-love-America missives while staying away from any of Bruce Springsteen’s life-in-middle-America-is-hard-as-crap sensibilities. Put another way, it sometimes veers into the same category that some country music aspires to without any of the musical themes that country seems to require. I don’t know if he’s continuing to play on the success of “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” as a new American anthem or if he really feels this way. But I like the voice. Three stars.
  
• M. Ward’s Transfiguration of Vincent. I’m not sure that I can say anything about the album that I haven’t already said. Five stars.
  
• The Fray’s How to Save a Life. Jeff calls this one of the best albums he got in 2006. I think there’s a lot to like thematically and musically here, but it hasn’t really grabbed me. [And no, I don't listen to terrestrial radio, so I haven't hear the title track being played into the ground. Thanks for asking.] Three stars.
  
• Jeff Buckley’s Grace. I hesitate to disappoint Noah, but this just didn’t grab me at all. I don’t know if it’s dated production values, not being given much breathing room in amongst the great discs in the rest of the week’s collection, or if I just don’t connect with Buckley, but … it never grabbed me at all. Two-and-a-half stars, and the half-star goes to “Hallelujah”, which is what this album is known for—with good reason.