Stephen Mejias

This isn't exactly the way I submitted it to Tris, but if I created this list again tomorrow, it would again be different. So. My Top 10 of 2006 looked something like this:

1. TV On The Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain
2. Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped
3. The Dears: Gang of Losers
4. Belle & Sebastian: The Life Pursuit
5. M. Ward: Post War
6. Silversun Pickups: Carnavas
7. Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afriad of You, And I Will Beat Your Ass
8. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegon: Ballad of the Broken Seas
9. Arab Strap: The Last Romance
10. The Killers: Sam's Town

If 10 had more numbers, Gnarls Barkley would also be invited, and so would Raconteurs, and maybe even Tom Brosseau, and certainly OutKast, and, of course, Bruce Springsteen.

***

Return to Cookie Mountain was one of my 2007 "Records to Die For." The other was Editors' The Back Room.

***

I just asked music editor Robert Baird to secure a review copy of Joanna Newsom's Ys. We'll have it in the office soon. In the meantime, several of our music writers are interested in reviewing a certain KISS box set. John Atkinson, however, reminds us that it is against Primedia policy to review anything created by KISS.

"It's one of their better policies," I nod.