Aside from a curiously formed preference for Dan Marino over Joe Montana, I didn't start following football with any rooting interest until I went to college in Illinois. My roommate Rick made sure that he had more than enough time to watch the Bears game every weekend, and since the Colts were the regional AFC team, I ended up watching both teams most weeks as well. One solid defense, one solid offense. The Bears also played in Champaign during my time in school, but given my complete inability to purchase tickets for live sporting events in advance, I missed out on that opportunity.

I suppose the Marino over Montana bias lingered, since I have always preferred Manning's big numbers and play-clock theatrics over Tom Brady's winning ways. My dislike for the Patriots started after they won their first Super Bowl. Beating the Rams (I may have lived in the Midwest, but I have no affinity for any St. Louis team) and Kurt Warner was one thing, but after they beat ther Colts to make it to Super Bowl XXXVI and subsequently defeat the Carolina Panthers (a hard team to root for, I assure you), the talk of their "dynasty" and Tom Brady's place in history began. I couldn't believe that two championships in three years equated to a dynasty, even in an age of parity. When they came back the next season and defeated the Colts in the opening round on their way to beat the Eagles, I couldn't begrudge their claim to such language, but that particular game brought the realization of my primary reason for disliking the Patriots: how arrogant they'd become from this success.

So much of the national hype and love for the Patriots has involved how they "do the right thing" and set a positive model for a "true team." I remember hearing constant talk about how they were above poor forms of sportsmanship, but nevertheless, they routinely stepped down to T.O.'s level in that Super Bowl to mock his celebrations. I started noticing just how much they celebrated after every play, every down. L.T.'s post-game tirade last week was overblown, but got at the core of my issue with the Pats. Acting like you've been there before isn't the most exciting form of celebration, but it's not nearly as off-putting, either.

Meanwhile, I enjoyed watching the Colts. Peyton Manning was the opposite of the caretaker quarterback; he took chances, tried to make plays, brought excitement to the game. He wasn't coming up huge in the playoffs, but I remember watching the Red Wings have to claw their way up the playoff ladder before they finally broke through to the finals and to the Cup two years later. Every response to Manning's shortcomings, to the Colts' failures, seemed overblown, unaware of this progression. Tom Brady stepped into a situation and won a Super Bowl, but certainly didn't win it on his own, which was what analysts expected Manning to do.

Last year's push for an undefeated season was great, but even if Nick Harper's shoestrings hadn't betrayed a sure touchdown, the fact that the Broncos, not the Colts, had dethroned the Patriots made a potential Colts championship seem underwhelming. The Colts didn't manage to get homefield throughout the playoffs this year, but beat the Patriots to get homefield against them. I couldn't bring myself to actually root for the Patriots against the Jets or Chargers, but I knew the Colts had to beat them in order to truly get over the hump.

Manning's first two playoff games were different from playoffs past. Despite the interception totals, he wasn't risking his team's chance to win. It's hard not to think of Yzerman's shift from offensive juggernaut to two-way threat under Scotty Bowman. Yzerman's statistics went down, but they had to for the good of the team. The Colts defense also finally looked impressive, particularly Bob Sanders, who I enjoy thinking of as a human missile.

The AFC Championship delivered almost every poetic turn I could imagine. The Colts were down big early on the strength of another baffling display of the Patriots' combination of grit and luck (the fumble for TD) and a poor decision on Manning's part, but the last drive of the first half helped them regain their composure. I was watching the game with a few Patriots fans and enjoyed pointing out how the Colts could easily score a TD with the opening possession of the second half and bring the game within one score. Once Manning wore down the Patriots' defense with his newfound patience, he could finally play his game. The Colts scored on a two-minute drill with Manning's seemingly injured thumb and a nearly catastropic Reggie Wayne reception (the sort of play that would have gone the other way almost any other game), but won the game with the Brady interception. The Wings not only needed to beat the Avalanche in order to have another shot at the Stanley Cup, but had to adjust their game in order to beat the Avalanche. The Colts adjusted.

Throughout the season I had hoped that the stars would align in the playoffs and I would be granted a Bears v. Colts Super Bowl. With a few rare exceptions, I'm typically underwhelmed by the teams that make the Super Bowl, but this match-up is great on paper and for my rooting interests. As you might have guessed from the comparative emphasis in this post, I'm rooting for the Colts, but it's great to have a championship game in which I'll be happy with either outcome.

Now all I need is a Detroit Red Wings v. Buffalo Sabres Stanley Cup final.

One of the biggest hurdles for my top twenty of 2006 and the subsequent 2CD mixes (which are done, by the way—I’ll post track listings and pictures soon) was the leak of the new Eluvium record, Copia. I’d never listened to Eluvium, but since this particular record leaked at the same time as the new Explosions in the Sky (All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone), I grabbed it and found that it far surpassed the EITS album. Consequently I tracked down all of the other Eluvium releases and found myself drawn to those records more than many of my candidates for year-end honors.

Eluvium, a one-man project from Matthew Cooper, started out closer to the ambient branch of post-rock—muted instrumentation gliding into carefully crafted waves (listen to from 2003’s Lambent Material and “New Animals from Air” from 2005’s Talk Amongst the Trees) and occasionally swelling into feedback. But Eluvium’s 2004 release An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death chose a much different course, opting for a solo performance of neoclassical piano suites instead of layers of studio trickery. These songs, particularly the title track and “The Well-Meaning Professor,” do an excellent job of being playful with recurring themes, heightening the tension when necessary, and letting the compositions breathe. I typically don’t listen to much classical music, but when I do it’s quite minimal (Arvo Pärt’s Alina, for example), so An Accidental Memory is actually a bit busier than usual. After Talk Among the Trees and a solid, if unspectacular 2006 EP, When I Live by the Garden and the Sea (highlighted by “I Will Not Forget that I Have Forgotten”), Copia fulfills the promise of An Accidental Memory’s neoclassical designs with fuller arrangements, populated by traditionally classical instrumentation (strings, brass), not the occasional shoegaze-derived guitar marking earlier releases. When the absolute grace of the brass opener “Amreik” leads into the intertwined layers of the album’s epic, “Indoor Swimming at the Space Station,” it’s hard not to imagine spending the full hour with Copia. “Prelude for Time Feelers” encapsulates the album’s modes and strengths—piano figures lead into gradually accumulating layers of instrumentation, building subtle crescendos and then whisking such drama away. The literal fireworks punctuating “Repose in Blue” close the album, contrasting with the serene framework set below.

Copia has even seeped into times and situations I traditionally devote for up-tempo rock music, namely walking and driving around Boston. “Indoor Swimming at the Space Station” could play continuously underneath my daily activities with no resistance.

Copia officially comes out February 20, but Temporary Residence has hinted about a forthcoming vinyl release, so I’m going to put off pre-ordering or purchasing the CD. It seems less likely that the other Eluvium albums will be released on vinyl anytime soon, so I figure I’m safe getting those on CD. Right?

I’ve finished my top twenty records list for 2006. Yes, everyone in the blogosphere beat me to it, but I actually enjoy determining the records, writing about them, and designing the layout. Granted, the layout may look like an Old Navy advertisement, but I still prefer it to the eyesore I chose for 2005’s list. Between that design decision and the possibility that my top pick may have actually been released in 2005, I probably shouldn’t be self-promoting too heavily, but I like my now-standard fifty word descriptions and I do recommend every album on the list, even though it feels like a down year overall.

The artwork for my accompanying year-end 2CD mix isn’t finished yet, but if you’d like to hear selections from these records and other candidates, send me an e-mail (sebastian at newartillery dot com) with your mailing address. Thirty-five songs carefully whittled down for flow and fit in some handmade LP style packaging could be in your mail box shortly if you e-mail me or if I already have your address.

Those discs will likely reveal some of the runners-up for this list, but Maps and Atlases’ Trees, Swallows, Houses EP, The Radio Dept.’s Pet Grief, Elanors’ Movements, The Timeout Drawer’s Alone EP, and Cursive’s Happy Hollow are other noteworthy 2006 releases. Why didn’t they make it? Respectively: too busy for its own good, single-oriented, short life span in the listening pile, better release last year, and weak as individual parts.

Please bookmark junodoc.com if you're at all interested in the project. If you have anything to contribute (footage, pictures, stories, etc.), e-mail jon at junodoc.com rather than any of my e-mail addresses.

I am now contributing to Gerard Cosloy's sports blog Can't Stop the Bleeding. I would imagine that most hockey and sports content will be posted there, so if you come to New Artillery for my sporadic insight on the Red Wings' goaltending situation, bookmark CTSB.

The trip to Seattle for the two Juno reunion shows for the KEXP Winter Benefit was absolutely exhausting, but I can confirm that those plans to record the shows blossomed into what might be called film-ish or documentary-esque. Three camera shoots of both nights? Check. Sixteen-track audio of both shows? Check. Hours of interview footage with band members past and present? Check. Immediately available product? Well, no, but...

We should have a website devoted to this project in the very near future, so if you're reading this and have footage, photos or posters of Juno you'd like to contribute, e-mail me (sebastian at newartillery.com) to get the ball rolling.

I'd like to thank Arlie Carstens, Gabe Carter, Jason Guyer, Greg Ferguson, and Jason Lajuenesse for the entire weekend.

A selection of my pictures can be seen here.

The Juno reunion is in a week and a half. Plans are afoot to do a professional filming of this event, so if you live in Outer Mongolia and cannot make it, you may be able to catch it in a few months (years, decades, etc.).

I'm still planning on doing a year-end 2CD set, but this process has been slowed considerably by the impending doom of final papers, grading, flying to Seattle, etc., so those may have to wait until the proper perspective of 2007.

I saw Borat, The Prestige, The Fountain, and Casino Royale in theaters over the last month. Borat is ridiculously funny, but if you're already overwhelmed with catchphrases spawning from the film, it may be best to wait until that dies down. I knew I was in a race against time when someone was spouting out every line from the movie on my T ride to the theater. The Prestige (magician movie with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, not Edward Norton) exceeded my expectations. It suffers from a bit too much late recap of the plot, but on the whole succeeds in developing compelling themes and letting the viewer ruminate over them after the film ended. If it hadn't been for The Illusionist, I think the hype over this movie would be more about the means vs. the ends of obsession rather than, you know, magic. The Fountain was Aronofsky's attempt to incorporate the philosophical ruminations of Kubrick's 2001 into a movie lasting barely more than ninety minutes. As expected, it was a decidedly mixed bag. There are some beautiful shots that add to the movie, some beautiful shots that seem completely unnecessary, and some beautiful shots that you'll see over and over, but the cinematography wasn't my primary issue. The primary themes seemed somewhat transparent in retrospect, leaving me with little to chew on after the credits. If the more subtle aspects of the film (repetition of symbols, etc.) add layers to this theme (the primacy of death to the human condition), so be it, but subtlety is not Aronofsky's foremost strength as a filmmaker, so relegating the success of his film to the background elements seems self-defeating. It's a mess that I'm more than willing to sit through again, a mess that I'm glad was made, but a mess nevertheless.

Casino Royale (or Casino Roy as my ticket stub calls it) lived up to the hype as one of the best, if not the best James Bond film. It's obviously a different type of film than its predecessors in how the wink-wink, nudge-nudge style of the gadgets, sexual encounters, and action sequences is almost eliminated in favor of grit and story, but you can relive those elements on Spike TV whenever you like.

As much as I herald purchasing physical copies of music*, grabbing Pinebender's new album Working Nine to Wolf on its official day of release without having heard any of the songs in advance (studio versions, at least) was a trip back to my high school purchasing habits. I've typically been fortunate to "find" such albums and know whether they're worth picking up long before the release date. Adding to this nostalgia, I even pulled my Discman out of a bin so I could listen to the CD on my drive over to campus.

Thankfully for my sanity, but unfortunately for Pinebender, the drive from Harvard Square to Boston College doesn't take a full hour, so I still haven't been able to hear the album in its entirety. This situation doesn't mean I'm incapable of recommending the disc, however, as "Parade of Horribles" joins the list of stunning Pinebender openers, possibly even surpassing reigning champion "There's a Bag of Weights in the Back of My Car" from Things Are About to Get Weird. "Parade" infuses Pinebender's stock of monolithic riffs and glacial drumming ("drudge") with a blues-informed sense of heaviness, both in sonics and in lyrical content. It was hard not to think of the title and "Relive this / Every November" in a political context after voting, but the overwhelming, palpable sense of dread certainly isn't limited to my voting district. Between these fourteen minutes and the twelve minutes of Tungsten74's "Waltz," space may become precious on my year-end discs.

* This practice usually occurs as follows: Enjoy album, see if vinyl is forthcoming, wait for vinyl release if possible, purchase in store if available, wait for large order from Parasol if it's not. I almost picked up Nina Nastasia's On Leaving LP in addition to the Pinebender CD, but decided to wait until I also grab both Norfolk and Western releases from this year on vinyl, Paik's Magnesium Fire DVD, Chin Up Chin Up's This Harness Can't Ride Anything, and the new Isis full-length LP. Sounds like it will be an expensive post-Christmas order.

Ahem. I have an announcement to make.

Juno will reunite to headline the annual KEXP Yule Benefit show at Neumos in Seattle on December 9 and 10 of 2006.

Tickets are now on sale. Go to TicketsWest and search "Juno." The Saturday show with the Junior Boys, the Annuals, and unnamed opening act starts at 8pm and appears to be 21+, while the Sunday show with Ted Leo, the Junior Boys, and the Cold War Kids starts at 7pm and is all ages. Tickets are $20, plus surcharges.

For those familiar with Juno, this news came directly from Arlie Carstens. “It’s gonna be deeply weird, but likely a very nice time. And loud.” Rehearsals are approaching, so if you’re already in Seattle, you might soon be able to hear the thunderous, life-affirming roar of “Covered with Hair” seeping out from a long dormant practice space. Jason Lajeunesse will assume bass duties for this event, much like he did for their 2001 tour.

If you’re unfamiliar with Juno, their two astounding full-length releases, 1999’s This Is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes and 2001’s A Future Lived in Past Tense await your undivided attention for the next two months. If you need a sample, “When I Was in _____” happens to be my favorite song ever. If you’d prefer a more thought-out summation of their brilliance, I direct you to the top spot on New Artillery’s Top 40 of the 2000s.

Yes, I will be there. With goddamn bells on.

After almost two years of frequently infuriating service, I finally quit on my Creative Zen Touch 40gb mp3 player. Both the hardware and software aspects of the player had become torturous in recent months.

The Zen Touch worked fairly well for its first year of existence, exhibiting only a few oddities—freezing, splicing bits of other songs into the current selection—that could be fixed by inserting a paper clip to hit the reset button. After an unfortunate drop last winter, such instances increased tenfold, while the booting up / shutting down process became treacherous. Slightly bent paper clips litter my apartment, car, bags, office, etc. I could tell the hard drive was on its way out, and I had ample evidence for this prognostication.

I had picked up a 5gb Creative Zen Micro for my wife a few months after I picked up my Zen Touch, and that player lasted even less time, first succumbing to a fairly common faulty headphone jack, a problem I was able to fix, and then capitulating to a dead hard drive. We hadn’t even dropped this one, but of course, the Zen Touch had the extended warranty and the Zen Micro’s warranty had just ran out.

Adding insult to injury, the Zen Touch had major issues with my old laptop (foremost: refusing to connect to it), so I made a huge mistake by updating the firmware to the PlaysForSure standard. This move caused issues with Notmad Manager, the excellent third-party software that I purchased to replace Creative’s wretched bundled software, thereby forcing me to sync new songs with, God forbid, Windows Media Player. I blame my wonky player, not Notmad in this case.

In the interest of conceivable longevity, I decided to give up on hard drive–based mp3 players for the time being and switch over to the highest capacity flash-based player, the new 8gb iPod Nano. My contentious relationship with the Zen Touch aside, I would greatly prefer to have a large capacity player, but I just couldn’t stomach the idea of owning another clicking brick in thirteen months.

I’ve heard my share of iPod-related grumbling, but I secretly hoped to avoid unwieldy hardware problems and frowning images of doom. Well. It took all of one day before I had to exchange said Nano at Best Buy. A high-pitched whine threatened to drive me slowly insane or, at the very least, give me a consistent headache. The exchange process was easy enough and I suppose I’d rather deal with this sort of issue now rather than in thirteen months.

The player itself—the new, quiet one—is admittedly a fairly astonishing piece of machinery. You’ve seen them. They’re tiny. Mine’s black. It has solitaire on it.

I had never installed iTunes before, hating the idea of a resource-hogging library system, but I succumbed to its wily charms in order to get music onto said player. Sorry Winamp. (If anyone has any experience with Anapod, Red Chair Software’s iPod equivalent of Notmad, please comment.) I enjoy the album artwork and the album-sorted view, but only 50% of the albums automatically downloaded the covers and two of the albums split their tracks into multiple album entries.

As for the actual music making it onto the player, cutting back on 24 gigs of music was a tricky task. I still have a few hundred megs to fill, but the primary casualty so far has been having multiple albums from a single artists. I already have a tendency to create best-of compilations for my favorite artists (so far: Mogwai, Archers of Loaf, Polvo, Silkworm, Pavement), so this situation could easily get out of hand.