My favorite 20 albums of 2006



1. Ghostface Killah — “Fishscale”

This is the one Christmas gift you could give that is guaranteed not to let up. All year long the Ghost will ring out loud, relentless in his ability to entertain. The specificity of detail and breadth of subject matter of Ghostface’s lyrics surpasses superlatives; he’s a complete original. And the music? Club bangers, Wu-Tang dirtiness, smooth R&B;, Adult Swim silliness and pristine Soul samples seamlessly stitched together with shoelaces. First-time favorite moment occurred in the second track, “Shaky Dog,” when Ghostface’s rap rushes to a climactic scene of a drug deal going south and the incredulity in Ghost’s voice when he delivers the line: “And I’m on the floor like holy s---!” Since then, this album has probably given me a few dozen favorite moments. No matter how many times I listen, it’s never short of riveting. “Fishscale” — the hardest working album in 2006.

2. The Clipse — “Hell Hath No Fury”

Aspiring hip-hop producers should study the near-perfection of every spare black beat The Neptunes created for this album. Aspiring MCs should avoid listening to Malice and Pusha T at all costs or risk utter disheartenment in the presence of such massive skills.

3. TV on the Radio — “Return to Cookie Mountain”

Saw these guys a couple years ago open for The Faint. The Faint were fun, but hopelessly outclassed by TV on the Radio. Yet, most of the crowd seemed to prefer The Faint. Like someone for whom everything is effortless, TV on the Radio is a band easy to admire and difficult to love. They lack the scrappy geniality of your favorite band. They’re too polished. They’re friends with Bowie. They’re on a major label. So why bother trying to love them? Because they made the most forward-thinking yet surprisingly conventional (and I mean that in the best way) rock-and-roll album of the year.

4. Joanna Newsom — “Ys”

Yes, the songs are long, her voice is unwieldy, there is an orchestra present and the lyrics are probably around a 12th-grade reading level, but Newsom also has an undeniable gift for melody and storytelling.

5. Sonic Youth — “Rather Ripped”

They already have an album preserved in the Library of Congress‚ National Recording Registry. Now they’re just running up the score. “Incinerate” and “Do You Believe in Rapture?” may be the two best back-to-back songs of the year.

6. The Knife — “Silent Shout”

I’m going to risk looking like a major dork for the sake of making a point. In the (acclaimed, seriously) sci-fi series “Battlestar Galactica” there are Cylons. Cylons are robots. They’re manufactured, but they look human, they bleed, they have organs and, most disturbing of all, they demonstrate emotion. This is the crux of The Knife’s appeal. The music is wholly electronic, distant and inhuman from the slightly altered voice of Karin Dreijer Andersson to the instrumentation, but beneath the polished metallic sheen the songs bleed. Angst. Doubt. Humanity.

7. Justin Timberlake — “FutureSex/LoveSounds”

Lennon and McCartney. Timberlake and Timbaland. Both duos made the commercial pop music of their times better than it has any right to be.

8. Lindsey Buckingham — “Under the Skin”

I love the Buck. (Does anyone else call him the Buck?) I wish there were more moments like “Show You How,” with its syncopated handclaps, on the album. Instead, Buckingham turns in a set of introspective and understated yet immaculately produced acoustic tracks that prove he is indeed a “visionary,” even if he spends most of the album grappling with that heavy title.

9. CSS — “Cansei De Der Sexy”

The most fun live show I witnessed this year, and the album almost does it justice as this nearly all-girl band from Brazil careen through and fuse all permutations of punk music: dance punk, pop punk, art punk and ... well, I guess that’s it. But the band does it with such verve and glee I can almost feel the sweat from lead singer Lovefoxxx’s long black mane.

10. Man Man — “Six Demon Bag”

If Borat heard these guys play he would demand to see their “treasures” and seize their tears for luck. This Philadelphia group sounds like a ragtag band of traveling gypsies. There is something about their tin-pan instrumentation and penchant for flirting with the shanty that is anachronistic, but the energy of their music — from screaming to multi-tracked vocals to throttling their instruments — is incredibly immediate. Live, they’re unhinged and enthralling. “Black Mission Goggles” and “Van Helsing Boombox” were two of my favorite songs of 2006.

And the rest ...

11. Solomon Burke — “Nashville”

12. Junior Boys — “So This Is Goodbye”

13. Cat Power — “The Greatest”

14. Mission of Burma — “The Obliterati”

15. The Pipettes — “We Are the Pipettes”

16. Beyonce — “B’day”

17. Girl Talk — “Night Ripper”

18. The Fiery Furnaces — “Bitter Tea”

19. VA — “Congotronics 2: Buzz ‘n’ Rumble from the Urb ‘n’ Jungle”

20. Belle and Sebastian — “The Life Pursuit”