YAY! Couldn't agree with you more!

I don't want to throw around "best album of the year" (still has stiff competition in my head from LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver) just yet but dang, Icky Thump is pretty remarkable.

Haven't heard it yet, but hard-pressed to believe it will be better than Menomena.

Need to get it. Does the Elliott Smith posthumous count as best of the year?

You are all wrong, violently wrong, I might add.

Toby Keith-Big Dog Daddy

Anybody who disagrees hates freedom, and should probably go back to Sweden. Hippie.

Call me a fanboy, but I'm still hoping for the new Tegan and Sara to take home that title.
But yes, Icky Thump rocks harder than gravel.

I'm pretty excited for the new Tegan and Sara as well.

Hmm. Maybe I should move any comment on Tegan & Sara to the overrated thread (sorry)...

And there is always a nay-sayer. The Village Voice review of Icky Thump:

"The affecting style that made them the most imaginative revivalists of their generation has been replaced by half-assed and half-hearted prog rock."

I'm with Riippi, that Menomena album is really good. The latest rumor is that the new Radiohead album will come out in November, so I'm holding any talk of best album of the year until that is finally released (which also means I have yet to declare a best ablum for 2004, 2005, & 2006).

the new BOAT record and tullycraft's record in the fall will be the best albums out this year, better than all the led zeppelin fetish exercises that jack white could ever hack...

Radiohead. I could imagine that being better than Menomena.

Can't imagine Tegan and Sara being better than Menomena.

As for the Cavalarieri from the VOICE ragging the WS...the "cool" opinion is to rag on the new White Stripes because they're now a band that sells out Madison Square Garden. And the VOICE is in desperate need of "cool" (even though they're better served to just report on NY local news...no one's better at it since the NYTimes is busy in Baghdad and the Post runs nothing but Yankees scores and Paris Hilton wherabouts...anyways....) the VOICE wants to seem "cool" again after their last "cool" experiment--Nick Sylvester, the meta-loving, mega-Pitchforker (who was never as good as Brent DiCrescenzio, by the way) and who half-assed a VOICE cover story and got caught lying. He used anecdote instead of journalism as his sources. Then he and the editor in chief got canned. So sad...

In any case, the "cool" thing to do is not like the White Stripes and like some remix of Grizzly Bear the mailman made in his basement in Bushwick. Hmmmm....I should put on Grizzly Bear....good record....

I haven't heard Icky Thump yet, and long-time readers will know I'm far from a WS super fan. I have heard the single "Conquest" (at least, I think that's the name) on KEXP several times.

That song kinda scares the crap outta me.

i'm not a huge stones fan, but let me know when the white stripes get anywhere near the run of flowers-> exile.

i doubt you meant it as

rock:white stripes :: blues:rolling stones

but that's a little closer to the truth than your hyperbole. it's just revivalized garage rock; fun but i don't understand why they're held in such esteem.