Newsflash – Chromewaves readers have similar tastes to Chromewaves. The mind boggles. As part of sorting out the winners of my promo giveaway contest (congratulations to Doug, Daniel, Patrick, Chris, Erin, Vince, Blair, Eric, Travis, Kenn, Sean, Sam, Carly, Daniel, Jason, Jeremy, Amanda, James, Zoë, Karen, Thierry and Canada Post who were the big winners in this little exercise), I also tabulated the results of my reader’s poll. If you recall, I asked people to submit a list, in order, of their top five albums of 2006. Each record was assigned a score inverse to their position (so #1s were given 5 points, #5s given 1 point) and the totals tabulated. In total, 244 albums (give or take) were submitted by 120 readers, revealing a pretty wide range of tastes amongst the lot of you. Good on you. But as with all polls, the cream (or the populist) rises to the top and the ten most favoured records of 2006 as selected by you were as follows:

1. The Decemberists / The Crane Wife (Capitol) (77 pts)
1. TV On The Radio / Return To Cookie Mountain (Interscope) (77 pts)
3. The Hold Steady / Boys And Girls In America (Vagrant) (63 pts)
4. Belle & Sebastian / The Life Pursuit (Matador) (49 pts)
5. Cat Power / The Greatest (Matador) (48 pts)
6. Destroyer / Destroyer’s Rubies (Merge) (47 pts)
7. Neko Case / Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (Mint) (41 pts)
8. Band Of Horses / Everything All The Time (SubPop) (40 pts)
8. Joanna Newsom / Ys (Drag City) (40 pts)
10. Beirut / Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing) (33 pts)

The Decemberists appeared on more lists (25 vs 17) but TV On The Radio was consistently ranked at or near the top of the lists they appeared on. What’s it mean? I dunno – as far as I’m concerned, they’re tied for first. Four of the top ten made my own list and that number would have likely doubled if I’d gone with a top 20. Otherwise… yeah. Not a whole lot of analysis to be done on these results. If I’d gone with a more objective approach to my list this year, then it’d may well have looked a lot more like this one. Anyone, thanks to everyone again for their lists, they’ve encouraged me to either check out some records and revisit some others.

M Ward returns to town for a solo show at the Mod Club on January 27, one of only five dates on this solo tour. As good as Ward’s full-band shows are, I’d argue that on his own and presumably acoustic, he’s even better so if you’ve never seen him play before – and even if you have – you should check this out.

Reissue announcements are a dime a dozen these days and I rarely pay attention when folks try to entice me to re-buy an album that I’ve already bought at least once before, but the news that Leonard Cohen’s back catalog is getting the archival treatment is something to take notice of. The reissue series will begin with Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Songs From A Room and Songs Of Love And Hate on March 27 and feature not only the remastered album but fresh liner notes and bonus tracks. And if that’s not news enough, Cohen has also dusted off the old Casio keyboard and is recording a new studio album for release sometime mid-Summer. Info via MusicTap.

eye talks to Evan Dando about his recent, less-than-triumphant Toronto shows but he promises that Tuesday’s Lemonheads show at Lee’s will “be a joyous rock ‘n’ roll experience!”. He also talks to The Cleveland Plains Dealer and The Salt Lake Tribune. Update: Radio Free Canuckistan has posted the whole text of the Dando interview that yielded the eye article. Go check it out.

Chris Olley of Six By Seven, who supposedly broke up last year but continue to have a rather active afterlife, talks about how he unintentionally yet deliberately ripped off The Church’s “Under The Milky Way” for his own band’s “IOU Love”. Recounted in IM-ese, no less.

Robert Smith of The Cure tells Billboard that he’s got writer’s block. But, even without words, the new material has “got a rock edge again” thanks to the return (again) of guitarist Porl Thompson.

Why did no one tell me that Twitch City was out on DVD? You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Best CBC show of the past… ever.