More Best of 2006: Jewschool

Mobius, of OrthodoxAnarchist and Jewschool, weighs in with "Jewschool's Best of 2006." His best of list includes more than just music (Stephen Colbert wins for 'best TV show'), but his choices for music are interesting:

"Music — Amy Winehouse (SL: “She’s smoking.”)
Runners-up: Regina Spektor, Golem (JA: “We had a Chanukah hora going for like a half hour in Boston.”), Y-Love, Rav Shmuel, Sway Machinery, Vulgar Bulgars, The Moshav Band, C Lanzbom & Noah Solomon, Hadag Nachash (DR: “Gets some points for writing a song in which they sexually proposition California.”)"

The lists includes not-particularly Jewish (Amy Winehouse) pop, not-particularly Jewish (Regina Spektor) and particularly Jewish (Rav Shmuel) indie singer-songwriters, both straight-up (Vulgur Bulgars) and punk (Golem) klezmer, cantorial art rock w/horns (Sway Machinery), folky jewish campfire guitar (C Lanzbom), chassidic hip-hop (Y-Love) and Israeli funk (Hadag Nachash). Quite a mix of styles and degrees of "Jewishness" of their music.

A couple of specific notes:

I hadn't heard of Amy Winehouse before seeing her on the Jewschool list. I did a quick check and according to her website and wikipedia entry, she's a well regarded British jazz and soul singer with a couple of albums to her credit. Her website and myspace page both have audio clips if you want to check her out. I did and, while she clearly has a good voice, the tracks are way to pop for me.

The first runner up Regina Spektor, on the other hand, is pretty cool. She reminds of me of a slightly less dramatic Tori Amos (or more dramatic Norah Jones?). Nothing about her music is particularly Jewish to me, but I thank Mobius for brining her to my attention.

And I'm thrilled that they noticed The Vulgar Bulgars. The VBs are a pretty straight up Klezmer band. No Jazz. No punk. Nothing fusion or radical about it. Just darn good. I had commented in my previous post that the center of energy in Jewish Music seemd to have moved away from the Klezmer revival. While I still think that's true, and the rest of
there are lots of excellent klezmer bands out there. It's great to see one recognized.