Here it is, my favourite album of 2006, a veritable masterpiece by one of New York’s coolest band. I love the Strokes, always have done ever since I heard Last Nite. I’ve been waiting to write this for a long time but thought it’d be best saved until the very end, 30th December is the closest I can get without being in danger of it being the first post of 2007. Anyway, on with the show.

‘First Impressions of Earth’ only just made it into this list, being released on the 2nd of January, but boy am I glad it did. I listened to it to the extent that whenever I hear a song off that album, I am immediately reminded of the last Christmas holidays, sat in my bedroom listening to the Strokes for hours on end. It really is as close to genius as any album has come this year, in my opinion. I listed Juicebox, a fantastic single as one of my top singles of the year and it could be argued that it is solely for the reason that it built up so much hype for album #3. ‘Is This It’ was brilliant, there’s no denying it, but ‘Room On Fire’ seemed to follow so closely in its predecessor’s footprints that one could be mistaken for thinking it was the same album. ‘Room on Fire’, though, had its highlights, The End has no End and 12:51 being prime examples of this. I listened to 12:51 for quite some time too, when I eventually got around to buying it.

Mind, there was no doubt I’d be missing the release of this ‘First Impressions…’ The amount of time I’d waited for it sounded like an eternity and when it was finally posted through the door that morning, I wasted no time in getting to know each and every track. My personal favourite has to be Heart in a Cage, with an intro that can send any crowd wild and lyrics to match. A close second will probably be Electricityscape, a work of greatness that really should have been huge. From there onwards, it is very difficult to separate one from the next as they all merge with ease into one big jumble of guitar and lyrical brilliance. Also, it would be worth saying at this point that until I restarted my iTunes library back in the summer, Razorblade remained at the top of the pile for almost 6 months, with little interference.

I described what was so awesome about Juicebox in my previous chart entry here, but other tracks that signaled the sudden change in direction were You Only Live Once. One of the lyrics may be “Oh, men don’t notice what they got” but I can tell you now, I certainly noticed what this song’s got. It has the ability of sounding totally out of reach, miles away from their previous albums with added vigor and energy that was lacking in ‘Is This It’, whilst retaining all of their previous fans. I can’t imagine anyone who really loved albums 1 & 2 saying they disliked You Only Live Once. The change in direction, mentioned all-too-often in this post is evermore present in track 3, Heart in a Cage. A good choice of single, I feel, but one that managed to slip beneath the radar, avoiding a large amount of public attention.

I saw the Strokes live last summer, supporting the Foo Fighters at Lancashire County Cricket Club. This was at the point in the afternoon where I’d still managed to hang on to my front-of-the-crowd spot against the railings, providing an unbeatable atmosphere that really made my day. Given that by the Foo Fighters came on I’d had to retreat further back, the Strokes were probably my favourite act of the day. I’d love to see them live again some time, but the sheer power of opening song, Heart in a Cage, in a stadium is unbeatable. I probably won’t get to see that again in my life, but who knows.

Anyway, that’s the end of ‘2006 - according to the Blanathema’, my end-of-year series that has taken almost a month to finish, complete with 13 exhaustive posts, each rambling on about a different song, album or artist. Before I move on from my Christmas lists, I shall leave you with one final video, Juicebox, the first single from ‘First Impressions of Earth’, released over a year ago and still going strong.

B.