"The ETs" - Top 10 Albums of 2006

As is traditional, I've compiled my top 10 albums of the last year. These are my top ten discoveries, not necessarily albums which came out in 2006. After reviewing the list, I've concluded that this was the year of the 'the', as bands seem to have run out of normal names and are now resorting to obscure nouns and adjectives. Here goes:

10. The Long Blondes - Someone to Drive You Home
This album is ridiculously catchy, especially the first three songs. Great post-punk-pop (I love that label) that gets stuck in your head yet avoids merely being catchy drivel. I felt like they tried to hard to make every song on this album worthy of being a single, however, and at points ended up sounding rather forced and calculated.

9. The Knife - Silent Shout
I don't usually like electronic music, but this album left me wowed. Its simple, dissonant and surreal, and the vocals are amazing in their varied bizarre twists. Neverland is by far my favorite song from the album, and would be my favorite electronic song of the year, except that...

8. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
While he's been around forever, I finally got introduced (perhaps 'endtroduced') to DJ Shadow. Wonderful electronic/hip-hop with brilliant sampling and fascinating experimentation. This should be old news to many of you, but 'Building Steam With a Grain of Salt...' may well be one of the hip-hop songs ever.

7. The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes
In some ways, this CD struck me as silly. I rolled my eyes at the way they reveled in cliches and shamelessly ripped off the girl-band cliche. Yet it's really, really fun and I couldn't stop listening to it. While I hesitate to recommend it on artistic merit, this is one CD which is guaranteed to make me smile.

6. The Streets - A Grand Don't Come for Free
Another piece of old news I didn't discover until the beginning of this year was Mike Skinner. If the Pipettes made me smile, this British rap pioneer made me laugh out loud. There's something incredibly endearing about his stuttered rhythm and simple, blue collar lyrics.

5. The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee
John Darnielle and his songs were probably my greatest find of the summer, and I was completely obsessed for several months. While this year's Get Lonely was quality and All Hail West Texas and the Sunset Tree were great albums, Tallahassee, with its album-long yarn of marital disfunction and conflict was by far my favorite. Nobody that I've yet heard nails narrative songwriting as well as Johnny.

4. The Weepies - Say I Am You
If bands were girls, the Weepies would be the naive, soft-spoken, doe-eyed beauty that every guy secretly swoons over. "World Spins Madly On" and "Gotta Have You" are both great songs, and the whole album is solid. I nominate this one "rainy day album of the year."

3. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
Proof that the Decemberists didn't sell out. This album is perhaps less monumental that Picaresque, but it still brought me hours of enjoyment and hopefully heralded more fruitful experimentation to come.

2. Danielson - Ships
Daniel Smith is crazy. And I love him. That's all I'm going to say.

aaaaand finally...

1. Josh Ritter - The Animal Years
Wow. This album just will not let me go. I know it got mixed reviews, but I have never in my life felt so impacted by a singer-songwriter. The songs are almost all really strong (with one too-long preachy exception near the end of the album), the music is really good, and as a whole the album just flows.

And that's all for this year.