Ten Best (Pop / Rock) Albums of 2006

I'll get back to the more serious musings soon enough. In the meantime, did you hear these albums this year?

I'd say 2006 was an average year for music. Sometimes I have a hard time getting the list down to 25. This year, ten was pretty easy.


Here they are, counting down from ten to one. I'm also a newcomer to blogging so I'm trying out embedding MP3s for the first time. Let me know what you think, either about the content or the interface.

My number one selection, Bob Dylan's "Modern Times."

10. Gomez, HOW WE OPERATE
Probably the second-most under-rated album of the year (see #2 for the most under-rated album of the year), judging from the gazillions of critics end-of-year Best-Of lists that ignored it (while lauding it at the time of its release in early '06). This scrappy, shape-shifting British quintet released the best work of their career, steeped in the sounds of Americana, like this country-inflected gem, the happiest-sounding track I heard all year, "See the World":


9. Josh Ritter, THE ANIMAL YEARS
I've been following Josh Ritter for about six years now, and his work has been consistently mature, thoughtful, and honest - combining the best of Dylan, Nick Drake, and a unique voice that, in this most recent album, does not shy away from the political and the spiritual. The two seem to be intertwined in the epic, phantasmagoric "Thin Blue Flame". Look online to see if you can find his live, solo acoustic performance of this on WFUV the evening just after he completed the New York Marathon. That would make it a marathon on top of a marathon.


8. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, RABBIT FUR COAT
It's the voice you notice first, but the songwriting is consistently great on this album. The Rilo Kiley frontwoman (Elvis Costello is a big fan) got everything right on her first solo outing. The so-retro-they're-post-modern Watson Twins fill out the songs in perfect tandem with Jenny. This is "Rise Up With Fists!!":


7. Midlake, THE TRIALS OF VAN OCCUPANTHER
An out-of-left-field selection that I picked up in the last week of 2006 on recommendations from online users who have heaped praise upon this album. It's sort of like, What if the Eagles actually started recording good, brand new songs? But without the suffocating pall of nostalgia? You'd get a song like "Roscoe," the lead track on this enigmatic album that from first play greets you like a long-lost friend:


6. Joanna Newsom, YS
Easily the strangest, most confounding, possibly annoying, and brilliant album of the year. Just five songs, as you may have heard, and almost an hour long, the lead track "Emily" may be the album's highlight. The wordplay comes as close to poetry in pop music as you will ever hear, and despite the idiosyncracies of Joanna's voice, once the album ends, I want to hit play again. "Emily":


5. TV on the Radio, RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN
This one made just about every critic's end-of-year list, so I won't add much here. Together with Joanna Newsom's "Ys" (#6), the other album on the list that sounds like nothing else in your collection - it obliterates most points of reference. I'm still not convinced it's the best album of the year (which by consensus it would appear to be) - some of it is forbidding and opaque. And the album title, sorry folks, is just idiotic. But my complaints are few; the text and textures are riveting. This is my favorite track from the album, "Hours":


4. The Decemberists, THE CRANE WIFE
What else! A prog-rock, British sea-shanty-derived loose song cycle about, in part, a Japanese folk tale involving.... well, you pick it up and figure it out. This is the album's closer. I don't know what it's supposed to be about, but what a way to go out. "Sons and Daughters":


3. Neko Case, FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD
I think the coolest thing about Neko Case is her dual identity; she's equally magnificent, and completely different in this than she was in last year's "Twin Cinema" by the New Pornographers (My #2 from 2005). Neko brings her haunting best to "Hold On, Hold On" in an album that's consistently this good:


2. Destroyer, RUBIES
The critics fell over themselves to praise this album when it came out in early February but seem to have forgotten about it by year's end. I gave the #1 spot to a living legend, but the honor could just as well have been to Dan Bejar, the man behind Vancouver, CA's Destroyer. Get past the voice (like we do with Dylan) and you'll find the 21st century's riposte and kissing cousin to "Blonde on Blonde." Every song devolves into some kind of deranged, mystical, singalong anthem complete with nonsense syllables ... as in this track, "Painter in Your Pocket" (wait for the instrumental break when the full band enters, shimmering and shining):


1. Bob Dylan, MODERN TIMES
I saw him in early November at the Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey. Lots of people who don't get "the voice" need to understand that the experience is not just about seeing (or hearing) the man - it's the band, too. They're tight as his band has ever been. As for his vocals: live, he's completely unintelligible. He sounds like he's been sucking on an exhaust pipe. But on this record, everything comes together beautifully, and his voice is weathered but perfectly expressive for the idiom: this album called "Modern" is in fact steeped in blues and 19th-century Americana. Bob brings it all back home - especially in the lead-off track, "Thunder on the Mountain" (Where in the world is Alicia Keys?):