Fluffy holiday greetings, Losers! Guess fucking what? Just like the bajillion other critics and industry peeps who sometimes mistakenly believe their opinions on The Year 2006 are of vital interest to you, we’ve all made Top Ten Lists. By “we all”, I mean most of the Sub Pop Staff. Now, you can get a smoother picture of our innermost preferences! It’ll be almost like we’re REALLY FRIENDS IN REAL LIFE, instead of just virtually! Hope your year was as full of it as ours!

JOAN H.
My top 13 full-lengths in order, excluding Sub Pop releases which all tie for #1:
Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat (Team Love)
Jolie Holland, Springtime Can Kill You (Anti)
Frida Hyvonen, Until Death Comes (Secretly Canadian)
Beyoncé “B’Day” (Sony Urban Music/Columbia)
Viva Voce, Get Yr Blood Sucked Out (Barsuk)
Thom Yorke, The Eraser (XL)
Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (Re-up/Zomba)
Joanna Newsom, Ys (Drag City)
F.S. Blumm, Summer Kling (Morr Music)
Electric President, S/T (Morr Music)
Justin Timberlake “FutureSex/LoveSounds” (Jive)
The Mountain Goats “Get Lonely” (4AD)
Cat Power, The Greatest (Matador)

LACEY S.:
Wooden Shjips “Shrinking Moon For You”
King Khan and BBQ Show ‘What’s For Dinner’
Liars “Drums Not Dead”
Gnarls Barkley “St Elsewhere”
Old Haunts “Fuel on Fire”
Comets on Fire “Avatar”
Black Garfield Comp
Unnatural Helpers “S/T”
2006 was too lame on a personal level for me to finish this Top 10 List so I am deducting two entries.

S. FLETCHER:
1. Chris Brokaw "Incredible Love"
2. Scratch Acid @ the Showbox in Seattle
3. HiM "Peoples" (on the label Bubblecore)
4. Excite Truck on the Nintendo Wii (redefining video games for the 21st century)
5. Mice Parade "Bem-Vinda Vontade" (Bubblecore also)
6. My patented ZZ Top mix (2 CDs worth, from the first 6 LPs)
7. Dave Douglas "Meaning and Mystery" ("jazz")
8. Deerhoof "The Runners Four" (though I'm almost positive it came out in 2005)
9. Jeff Parker "The Relatives" (& by association Marvin Gaye's "Here, My Dear")
10. comedy, up to & including Longmont Potion Castle and Scharpling & Wurster ("The Best Show on WFMU")

GABE C.
Tom Verlaine “Around”
Yo La Tengo “I’m Not Afraid of You And I will Beat Your Ass”
Pharaoh Overlord “#4”
Juana Molina “Son”
Califone “Roots and Crowns”
Flaming Lips “At War With the Mystics”
What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves (1967-1977)
Tom Waits Orphans
Tortoise A Lazarus Taxon
Comets On Fire ”Avatar”

DEEN GULLBERRY:
TOP 10 7”s (In No Order)
Homostupids “The Glow” EP (My Minds Eye Records)
Sex Vid EP (Kill Test)
Pissed Jeans “Don’t Need Smoke To Make Myself Disappear” (Sub Pop)
Nothing People EP (SS Records)
Home Blitz EP (Self Released?)
Wooden Shjips “Dance California” (Sick Thirst Records)
The Go “Invisible Friends” (Cass Records)
Spider & The Webs EP (K Records)
Tall Birds “Internalize” (Sub Pop)
Cause Co-Motion “Which Way Is Up” (What’s Your Rupture)

TONY K (excluding anything that came out on Sub Pop):
Vetiver-To Find Me Gone
Karen Dalton-In My Own Time
Spank Rock-Yoyoyo
Pop Levi-Blue Honey EP
Cat Power- The Greatest
Love is All-Nine Times That Same Song
Beirut – Gulag Orkestar
Grizzly Bear-Yellow House
Flying canyon-Flying Canyon
Wooden Shjips-Shrinking Moon for You

S. SAWYER’S ten most favorite records of the year:
Tyde – Three’s Co.
Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped
Band Of Horsies – Everything All The Time
Coments of Fire – Avatar
YLT – Beat your ass
Ghostface – Fish Scale
Camera Obscura – Let’s Get Outttta this Cuntry
Thermals – Body Blood Machine
Tapes AND Tapes – The Loon
Barb Dylan – Modern Times

DUSTY S’s movies of ‘06:
Harsh Times
Half Nelson
The Departed
Babel
Devil's Miner
Rocky Balboa
Beerfest
LIttle Miss Sunshine
Inside Man
District B13

ANDY K:
10. Emerging technologies—Observe…
Freewave!
PS—you can skip the Sting part.
9. Om—Conference of the Birds
Fantastic second record. It’s weird--the whole record reminds me of “Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun” on Percocet or something.
8. Various '70s Country/Folk Rock
For some reason the records that I went back to over and over this year were by Chris Smither, Doug Sahm & Bobby Charles. Thanks to Other Music for unearthing a bunch of cut-outs of Smither’s Don’t It Drag On and I’m A Stranger Too. Bobby Charles’ “I Must Be In A Good Place Now” is an all-time stunner and a beautiful love song. When Vetiver played it live, my jaw almost hit the floor. Bringing me to…
7. Vetiver live
You’d be hard pressed to find a better songwriter than Andy Cabic these days and his band is a bunch of ringers. Go See ‘em!
6. Wine Picks
I took a lot of shit from co-workers for taking a wine class this year, but the joke is on those knuckle-draggers. For my money the best red I had this year was Mollydooker’s “The Boxer” Shiraz. Shalit would call it a “knock-out” (hiyo!) And now that it’s made Wine Expectorator’s Top 100, it might be a little tough to find. I shoulda bought a case. For whites, the best I had was Caves De Saumur’s “Lieu Dit Les Pouches”. 100% Chenin Blanc from the Loire. At 8 bucks a pop, you can’t afford NOT to drink it by the truckload!
5. Ba Da Bing Records—Man, did they ever put out great records this year. Colossal Yes, Beirut, Th’ Faithealers Peel Sessions and that amazing Dead C double disc? Waytago gang!
4. Scratch Acid live--
A very rare, life-affirming reunion show. Couldn’t have asked for anything more. Rey Washam still destroys.
3. Comets on Fire and their related projects, which may or may not also be on fire—
Avatar is hands down the album of the year. Howlin’ Rain, Six Organs, Colossal Yes and NVH also put out amazing work in their own right. Best band in the galaxy. ‘Nuff said.
2a. You Tube will surely receive no shortage of year-end press and here I am jumpin’ on the bandwagon, but gimme a break. Forget Edison, Ford and that Dyson vacuum guy. The guy who invented You Tube is the smartest genius of all. Come on…
Stay with Me
and Sky
and Evolucion Reggae
and Silver Machine
and Baby Come Back
and Roxette
and Seasick
2b. Michigan Football—Yeah, I’m getting pretty sick of them losing to Ohio State and yeah, I’m disappointed that we don’t get another pop at those guys, but if the Rose Bowl is the booby prize, I’m not losing any sleep over it. We’ll miss you Bo! The Tigers getting to the World Series was pretty great too, despite their performance in said series.
1. Baby fever ’07! Catch it!

CHRIS J (w/o any of the fine records released this year under the Sub Pop guarantee of moderate quality):
Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador)
Beirut – Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing!)
Cat Power – The Greatest (Matador)
The Gossip – Standing in the Way of Control (KRS)
Eric Bachmann – To the Races (Saddle Creek)
The Lights – Diamonds and Dirt (Wantage USA)
The Black Angels – Passover (Light in the Attic)
Mission of Burma – The Obliterati (Matador)
Califone – Roots and Crowns (Thrill Jockey)
Howlin’ Rain – Howlin’ Rain (Birdman)
Other people have already mentioned it here, but that Scratch Acid show in Sept. at the Showbox was far and away the best show I saw this year.

HARRY HUDSON:
1. Photo Booth on my new MacBook. This is seriously the best shit ever.
2. Nintendo Wii. Maybe this should be number 1.
3. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Maybe this is what I meant in number 2. The rest are in no particular order.
The Black Garfield Comp (on Haunted Horse Records).
Summer. (Remember how rad that was?)
Sangria + Bocce Ball in the aforementioned season.
Scratch Acid at the Showbox.
New Super Mario Brothers.
Crawl Space Gallery.
Tiny Vipers.

SUE B.’s:
Vetiver-To Find Me Gone
Beach House-S/T
Oxford Collapse-Remember the Night Parties
Camera Obscura-Let’s Get Out of This Country
Comets on Fire-Avatar
Black Angels-Passover
Love Is All-Nine Times That Same Song
Neko Case-Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Peter, Bjorn & John-Writers Block
Band of Horses-Everything All the Time

SEAN K.
Touch & Go 25th Anniversary
Rediscovering Spacemen 3
Hometown San Diego Chargers- 11-2 as we speak
Henry Darger exhibit
Orcas Island snowball fight
Black Angels
Skateboarding again- till I broke my arm
Tapes n' Tapes
Melvins w/Jared and Coady
Bourbon (making it's 25th straight appearance in the top 10)

ANDREW S:
top 10 things that existed in a world this year:
The radikiller taco carts of Mexicali mexico
Belize, in general
The Black Lips
24/7 tapes records
the dude from Thunderbirds Are Now! trying to fight me at CMJ
Shi Shi Beach
Sccreen printing, jamming, partying, sippin’ on hyphy, eatin waffles in the mornings and hot link sandwiches at night at the Ghosttown Gallery in Oakland, CA
Quintron live at the sunset tavern
Trashed Kickball Association of Seattle
Migas from Tamale house #3 in Austin, TX

By their nature, “company retreats” are generally the major bummers of the vacation family; they hold limp-dicked promises of petty conversation, fruitless, laborious meetings and, if you’re lucky, trust falls. Fortunately, Sub Pop isn’t a normal workplace, so our yearly retreats are kind of the opposite deal (I only say “kind of” because there are laborious meetings, but they’re far from fruitless.) We are extremely fortunate at the World HQ in that we are all actually, in real life, buddies. Which means that at these things, we end up drinking a lot and saying what we mean in discussions in order to better ourselves as a label. Novel concept, eh?

This year, the whole World HQ piled into four vehicles and made an extremely slippery, icy drive to Orcas Island, in the gorgeous San Juans. It’s a few hours to the north and west of Seattle, and the place is nuts—think a cross between the set of 1974’s “Land of the Lost” and, like, the Scottish coast at dusk. Since our region had just seen a massive winter storm, everything was ice and snow-covered, totally shithouse insane. We all talked on the way up about what would happen if the entire staff got stuck and froze to death (would Pavitt take over? He met us on the island and got to our hotel via snowshoe, no joke.) We got there safe, but some injuries did end up occurring on the first night as a result of the wickedest snowball fight evs—I broke my arm, Sam got a bloody ear and Andrew acquired a busted mouth. It’s cool, though. We drank it off. GM Megan Jasper even rang The Bell at the bar we all trudged into, signaling that a round of drinks for all the poor locals in there was on us. It was the least we could do for fully taking over their neighborhood.

The rest of the retreat was super fun and fruitful, and although we ain’t pretty, we’re sharing photos with you. We hope you have a super sweet holiday time, friends!

It's admittedly still early days, but we at Sub Pop are very encouraged by the early "buzz" that Pissed Jeans have been generating. We don't want to go overboard here (that sort of exaggeration is just not our style), but we've seen some recent photos from some Pissed Jeans shows and "the kids" are really responding in a significant way. Just take a look at the irrefutable photographic evidence below! The crowd is freaking out, some were even so moved as to make out with one another! We're predicting that, one day, an awful lot of people will claim to have been at this show...

CSS are coming to America this summer to bring the party with their new album Cansei De Ser Sexy and apparently they are excited as shit to be working with Sub Pop and to come dance across the states; check out this wonderfully shitty letter that they sent us at Sub Pop HQ:

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We are so so so excited, it's been hard to sleep. Yeah, but to illustrate it better for you, read this short story:

Eduardo he's our international manager and huge friend, he introduced us a Wolf Eyes's slang "Shit a Brick". So every time he'd shout us an exciting news he'd say "I SHITTED A BRICK" or "You'll shit a brick", then since things started to grow he'd say "That person will shit a stadium". Then we couldn't get enough, news got bigger and bigger, so as our poop.

Here are some stuff we shitted during this special period of our lives of signing with Sub Pop and throwing a summer tour...

Check it out:

"I shitted an one meter subway sandwich with my brother's ex-wife and my two cats"

"I shitted Copacabana beach with the 2 million people watching the free Rolling Stones gig"

"I shitted A LOCA club when it's Placebo give away cd's @ the Grind night!"

"I shitted one stadium in a salmon temaki shape without mayonnaise that fits five million good lookin' people"

"I shitted the pink dolphin and XUXA (you should google her!)"

"I shitted the Coliseum"

"I shitted the world when it was only one continent."

So... as you can see... we are very excited

While we’re sure that you’ve already read & heard about ninety billion accounts of this year’s hail-peppered Sasquatch! Festival at The Gorge in the best-named small town of our state (George, Washington), you totally haven’t yet heard ours! We’ll keep it short and sweet, as photos speak a billion paragraphs or whatevs. Below, you will enjoy several photos taken by the effervescent Sarah Moody, Internet Weblicist, of several of the wonderous bands we’re so lucky to work with. Perhaps you will note that The Shins & Iron and Wine look nice and dry! Perhaps you will also note that The Constantines do not! That’s because, as you may have heard, the apocalyptic heavens opened up and rain-hailed a shitstorm the likes of which I haven’t seen since my days experiencing the aftermath of Hurricane Alicia in 1983 in Katy, Texas. In fact, this hailstorm was worse, and not just because upwards of 20,000 kids were trapped outside in it…it lasted for like half an hour. Then stopped for ten. Then re-started up for fifteen. The only thing in the world that could kick the storm’s ass was, indeed, The Constantines. And they did! And the entire attendant staff of Sub Pop Records became drenched and freezing! Enjoy the photos!

Sometimes, the wonderful bands we’re so lucky to work with are themselves lucky enough to tour that crazy continent over the briny seas, EUROPE! Recently, both Mudhoney and Jennifer Gentle played a show together at the Rainbow Club in Milan, Italy. Mudhoney was on tour, but Jennifer Gentle was not! Because they LIVE IN ITALY! We here at the World HQ weren’t there to throw pasta at the ceiling to see if it would stick, nor were we there for the show unfortunately. Fortunately, foxy Italian photographer Gianni Versace (buddy, if you’re related to ol’ Donatella, ship us some GOODS so we can hawk that shit!) took some lovely shots of both bands. Enjoy! Or, as the Italians would say, Enjoy-o!

Goodness, GARDEness!! On the afternoon of May 8th, 2006, nearly 100 enemies and fans of Eugene Mirman (including Eugene himself) proved at least one thing by gathering with signs and loudspeakers in NYC’s Union Square: America is nothing if not protesty. Whether or not protesters viewed the May 9th release of EN GARDE, SOCIETY! (Eugene’s second full-length solo comedy album with DVD supplement and his first for Sub Pop) as an affront to freedom as we know it, it was clear that they were there to fight the good fight forgainst Eugene.

If you live in our nation’s capital, Washington, DC, you’re probably no stranger to using your voice to promote both liberty and to act out against things that are comedy-larious. On May 14th, you’ll have your chance to speak out and Protest Eugene Mirman Yourself! Anti-Eugene protesters and Eugene himself will be meeting and organizing at 5 PM at the Renwick Art Gallery on the corner of 17th & Pennsylvania, by the glorious and giant painting of "American Gothic." The assembled will then be marching on the White House! Contact andrews@subpop.com for more D.C. protest info.

Later that night, Eugene will be performing live at the Black Cat with Michael Showalter and Leo Allen. Check out some ideas for protest signs here: http://www.subpop.com/features/images/eugeneprotestposters.jpg

ALSO! Just to spite and praise Eugene simultaneously, we here at Sub Pop World HQ are also teaming up with America's Finest News Source, The Onion, to present a number of screenings of the En Garde, Society! DVD. What's more, to sweeten the deal, we'll also be screening our new DVD video comp. Acquired Taste!

May 09 - The Knockout , San Francisco, CA (En Garde, Society! + Acquired Taste screening/party 7-9pm)

May 09 - The Sunset Tavern, Seattle, WA (En Garde, Society! + Acquired Taste screening/party 7PM- 9PM)

May 10 - Subterranean, Chicago, IL (En Garde, Society! + Acquired Taste screening/party @ 9pm)

May 11 - The Hi Hat Garage, Milwaukee, WI (En Garde, Society! + Acquired Taste screening/party at 8PM)

May 11 - The Oriental Theater, Denver, CO (En Garde, Society! + Acquired Taste screening/party @ 7pm)

May 18 - The Dubliner, Minneapolis, MN (En Garde, Society! + Acquired Taste screening/party 7-9pm)

Together, we are fomenting important societal change and also hopefully encouraging the sale of CDs here, people! And, while the journalistic establishment may be ignoring the revolution, the blogoverse is exploding all over itself with anti/pro Eugene blather:

On Comedy Central’s site, about the NY protest:
http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2006/05/eugene_mirman_p_1.html

More photos here (Tu No Puedes, Eugene!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/remydwd/

Which side are YOU EN?”

Thanks to all of the people with the semi-humorous Horse jokes who made the guy in the bear suit laugh during our Band of Horses ticket giveaway. For all of those who didn't get to be there, we have video and pictures that you can see by clicking on the respective thingies below. Sometimes we are maybe funnier than not funny people... maybe. You decide.

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SWEET BAND OF HORSES PHOTOS!

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SLEATER-KINNEY KILL IT AT VEGOOSE

Photos By: Larry Hulst