Generally speaking these days I'm clear across the spectrum from my subject-line here: give me slow, long, grandly pulsating songs over pretty much anything else right now. But I couldn't find the Om record I wanted to write about this morning, so I decided to play the new Cretin album Freakery instead. I'd like to share my innermost feelings with you about this record, only I don't have any innermost feelings about it. I just have a gut reaction, and that reaction is "holy fuck."

The best album of the year so far is Conference of the Birds by Om, on the Holy Mountain label. I may get around to writing about it at some point, but then again I may not, because every time I listen to it I go into this a state of waking catatonia. It's like that dream Lionel Richie had in "Say You, Say Me," which wasn't just a dream, but an awesome dream: it's a trance, but a trance from which one periodically emerges to say "fuck me, this music is righteous." You won't hear a cleaner bass tone anywhere this year, I'd wager. Or next year. Or the year after that.

Bought Ariel Pink's House Arrest the other day; I am enjoying it, as I enjoy the other two Ariel Pink albums I own. I remain mystified by the virulent reaction he tends to evoke, as for example from our esteemed friends over at Pitchfork, who seem to have it in for Mr. Pink. I never thought I'd say this to anyone, or even suggest it, but people here are perhaps thinking too much. More accurately, perahps they are thinking too early. There's a rush to analysis in the response to these records, which is especially odd in the present age, which usually defers analysis until after every other critical mode has been attempted. Ariel Pink writes frankly stunning pop melodies and finds textures that are rather more lush than they first appear to be; he records them on the cheap and sets occasionally stupid (and occasionally stunning) lyrics to them. As the records have no liner notes, sport unremarkable cover images, and can hardly be accused of commercial ambition, it's difficult to understand the level of animosity they inspire. The tone taken by his detractors suggests an eagerness to preemptively disrobe the emperor. But there is no emperor, nor aspirant; these phantoms are conjured by the same writers who seek to exorcise them a sentence later. There is no windmill at which to tilt. It's weird.

In my experience, an artist doesn't get under writers' skins like this unless he's really onto something. One can imagine one's father accusing Ariel Pink of trying to "cash in," maybe - one can imagine oneself deciding against trying to explain to Dad that Ariel Pink isn't likely to make any money, since he has released four albums whose sound quality is so appalling that the worldwide audience for them could by no means exceed more than a few thousand. But the present situation is rather different. There is something to unpack in it. I don't suspect anyone will be up to the task, though I nominate Simon Reynolds, if he has the time for it, which I'm fairly sure he doesn't. Until he does, though, the question will hang naggingly in the air for me: why do nice people hate Ariel Pink?

Everybody on the whole goddamn planet weighin' in on what Stephin said at EMP, and what people said about what he said, 'n' all that. I care, but I don't care, because the issues in play are so much richer than any of the discussion's participants can process: not because they're not plenty smart, 'cause they are, but because the complexities do not lend themselves to easy discourse. Y'all can call me a hippie if you want but I really think that a dance studio is the most appropriate venue for exploring the issues that explode at the intersection of race and music in America. Blogs, or music conferences, necessarily lack the vocabulary to really get at the heart of the issues here. Language lacks the vocabulary. Sometimes things just work out like that. It drives writers nuts. Still, I was briefly tempted to weigh in with something more substantial than my usual two cents' worth, a schtick which if you haven't heard it before involves wondering why predominantly white male critics are hungry as fuck to seek and destroy white-on-black racism when and where it occurs — and good for 'em, racism is foul — but are comparatively silent on the subject of misogyny, which is certainly no smaller a source of hurt in our pained world, and is omnipresent in pop music; history lets pockets of resistance emerge every so often, but for the most part, things are brutal. The song which I would have leaned on for succour and support, in case somebody wants to do my work for me, would have been "Be Real Black For Me" by Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, which by the way is a freaking spectacular song whose opening piano figure serves as the bedrock for Scarface's "On My Block," which is one of the most cogent expression of community and its complexities in the whole history of pop music. You should hear "Be Real Black For Me." It comes from a time when a few men and women were fighting to break new ground. We lost, but we're a little better for the effort, I guess & hope. The couplet that leads into the song's how-does-this-follow-from-that chorus is a fragmentary koan for our sad age. Here it is, and then I'm going to bed to wonder what might have been and what might be:

you don't have to wear false charms
'cause when I wrap you in my hungry arms

...or "why I still have all these albums, most of which will probably never get listened to again, reason #n in an open sequence": this morning, having listened to and enjoyed Robert Forster's Warm Nights, while dutifully returning the case to the F section of the only organized CD rack in the house, I glanced at Fugazi's End Hits and thought to myself, Now there's an album I haven't heard in quite some time, and was subsequently blown to bits by how solid and intriguing and flat-out enjoyable it is. Lessons like these are bad news for pack rats, whose disease will eventually consume us/them, but are quite pleasant all the same.

Christ but that guitar breakdown in "Floating Boy" is sweet.

The earth's crust may dry and crack in the summer heat and God may smite us all with heretofore unheard-of plagues but these are the best damn records of 2006 so far:

Om, Conference of the Birds
Boris, Pink*
Metallic Falcons, Desert Doughnuts
Ghostface, Fishscale
Mission of Burma, The Obliterati
Kaito, Hundred Million Light Years
Krisiun, AssassiNation
Barbara Morgenstern, The Grass Is Always Greener
Jesu, Silver
*was released last year in Japan. Newsflash: saying things like "technically a 2005 release" is your ticket to a dateless future.

Some years I'm pro-list, some years I'm anti. This year I am putting all my favorite records into an extemely bloody tournament from which only one winner will emerge, blood streaming from his eyes, the hair of his victims clutched in his vein-poppin' fist! There will also be cartoons.