My recommendations 2006:Tears of a Clone by Icy Demons

Icy Demons: Tears of a Clone
Eastern Developments 10/31/2006

Available at Emusic

If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed that I have a strong affinity for outsider music, freak folk and weirdo pop. The last three years have been incredibly fruitful for artists such as Man Man, Xiu Xiu and Antony who combine musical ecclecticism and theatricality to create the most vivid and visceral experience possible. Icy Demons certainly inhabit this space as well. What Icy Demons manage to accomplish (and what most of their contemporaries have not) is to make their habitat seem habitable for oxygen-breathing creatures. The cover of Tears of a Clone demonstrates this quality - the surreal illustration could not be any more over-the-top, yet bright pink tears over the spilt white blood of what appears to be a Wookie anchor the visual fable in raw human emotion. Icy Demons weave together the strange elements of outsider music with thread spun from pure pop, at moments evoking the ska punk of early XTC, the restrained cacophony of Boredoms, or the sugar-and-caffeine-fueled hyperemotionality of Polysics. While the strange worlds of Icy Demons are inhabited by weeping albinos and dying furries, their denizens seem more approachable than one's own parents.