I'm way late, but here are my top albums of 2006. If I didn't REALLY listen to the album much I didn't give it a number, hence there are only eight.

ALBUMS:

8. Junior Boys / So This is Goodbye
I've always thought they were critically overrated--really, their music is way too repetitive and sparse to get so much cred, especially their debut album--but this is the real deal. The first five tracks are great, and they've got some nice foot-stompers in there as well. Very fun live band too.

Key track: "Double Shadow"
My first fave song off the album, though a few others took that title at various points. There's not a ton going on in this song, but that's JB in a nutshell. It's got a slick, Depeche Mode-type bass line--I love that echo-ish effect--and lead singer Jeremy Greenspan has the sort of ice cold vocals that go perfectly with their style of music.

7. Islands / Return to the Sea

This is the kind of quirky, dinky indie pop that I usually don't go for, but Islands do dinky pop better than anyone else, so in this case I most definitely went for it. Opening track "Swans (Life After Death" was already a fave late in 2005 when it leaked, and while it's a marathon at nine minutes in length, it never feels that long, which is saying a lot because I usually don't have much patience for long songs. The album varies a fair amount and even features an odd, super-fast (think the Micro Machines guy) rap on "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone." I definitely didn't listen to this album much at all by the latter part of the year, but still a keeper. Whenever I listen to Islands I picture a band of muppets playing on little muppet instruments...fuck, muppets are awesome.

Key track: "Volcanoes" (left click)
"Swans" is better but I love the way this song builds to its climactic ending.

6. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness / Fear is On Our Side

Interpolish but with smoother vocals. Individually the songs aren't fantastic, but track-to-track it's consistent and never gets old. It's the perfect album to put on and not pay much attention to, if that makes any sense. Pitchfork referred to their genre of music as "serious rock music" (I think that was the term) and that's pretty accurate. It's not for dancing but it's also not juvenile lovey-dovey crap either. This is music to do your tax returns to...alright, that came out wrong.

Key track: "Lights" (left click)
This song has no discernible hook to it, but it just has this continuous, optimistic urgency to it that I really like.

5. Ratatat / Classics

This was easily better than their debut LP, but I guess their schtick--crunching guitars and bass over beats with zero vocals--didn't have the same appeal with the critics that loved the freshness of Ratatat. That's not to say they didn't add more depth to their sound this time out. "Gettysburg" sounds like it could have been an old Blur song, and they sprinkled in acoustic guitar parts as well. I'm listening to the album a little bit as I write it, and I'm remembering how much I like it. Because it leaked relatively slowly, I listened to most of the songs one at a time before the album came out, so I definitely didn't listen to the album as a whole as much as it probably deserved. What I loved about the first album was that despite the lack of vocals they could still build to these really climactic, even emotive parts, and this album does that even more.

They've carved out a nice niche for themselves (I missed out on tickets entirely the last time they were in Boston), and I'm curious to see what they do from here on out. So much of their stuff you could put rap vocals over, so their rap remix album was a no-brainer, and hopefully they'll do more of that. Easily one of my fave live bands as well.

Key track: "Nostrand" (left click)
The opening couple minutes are very chill, the bass part is just as head-bobbable as you could hope for, and then they spice it up with the guitar part (with just enough sustain), which then leads into the crunching climax two minutes in. And that's how Ratatat makes glorious music.

4. Husky Rescue / Country Falls

Ok, this album came out in 2005, but it's too good for me to ignore altogether. Their style of music is a perfect combination--retro, cool, effortless, soundtrack-ish, and oh yeah, they've got a hot lead singer. It's music you can fall asleep to, or music to crank while driving around in the car, which is a pretty rare combination. I'm now loving their new album Ghost is Not Real, which has already locked up a spot on my best of 2007 list.

Key track: "Summertime Cowboy" (left click)
There are about five other great songs on the album, but most are softer and lack the simple, poppy infectiousness of this song, which was the breakout song on the album.

3. The Rapture / Pieces of the People We Love

They're my fave live band and at this point are probably my favorite band period. Echoes has stood the test of time, so coming up with a satisfying follow-up was going to be tough. Rather than refurbish the raw dance-punk of Echoes, they went with a bouncier, far more polished approach and it really paid off. The first six tracks off this album are amazing, but the quality seriously dips in the latter half, which is a little more psych-rock and doesn't have the same fun dance feel of the front end. This album was in constant car rotation for me; even "W.A.Y.U.H." has become a song I really like.

Key track: "Don Gon Do It" (left click)

2. The Sunshine Underground / Raise the Alarm

Pretty much every song on this album is really good. Not the most inventive sound in the world--a modern rock interpretation of the Clash, lots of hooks and cowbell--but they've got a good thing going and keep doing it over and over with enough variation that I never get sick of it. Sadly, this was never released stateside and they haven't made a huge splash in England either, so who knows if they'll ever make it to America period. Of all the albums I bought in 2006, this probably had the heaviest rotation in the last couple months. Note the track below isn't the best on the album, but it's a hidden track so I figured I'd upload that since it's a pain in the ass to get by itself.

Key track: "Climbing Up the Walls" (left click)

1. Sound Team / Movie Monster

I was pretty much a one-man Sound Team promo machine this year, pimping them shamelessly to everyone who would listen, so this probably isn't much surprise. They never really caught on that much though (at least I got Dave and Jon to bite), and the totally misguided Pitchfork review probably played a large role in them not even being reviewed by most outlets. Which is interesting, because they had some positive buzz and had even been signed by Capitol (perhaps a kiss of death to their cred) in the run-up to their album coming out in June.

So why was Movie Monster my fave album of the year? The album varies a fair amount from song-to-song, blending mostly indie pop and fuzzy krautrock influences, lots of organ and synth thrown in to further muddle things, though positively so.Best of all, it manages to sound cohesive without being repetitive. And it's that last part which generally separate good music from great music. It's got my favorite song of the year in "Born to Please," which combines an (almost cheesy) '80s pop urgency with a great modern rock song. And the album ends with another of the year's best, the blipping, stopping and starting "Handful of Billions." I also came to really like their lyrics, in the sense that they tend to be very non-linear (read: they don't make sense) but mostly are just interesting phrases that tend to be delivered in a passionate way. Often times they're a little too randomly literate for their own good ("Do you remember the one who took Place in the Sun from you?" and "Kafka on the shore!") but whatever, it's better than the same old bitching about girls you love who don't love you.

Key track: "Born to Please" (left click)
This was my favorite song of the year and I knew it would be within a day of hearing it this spring. Even so, I don't know anyone else who likes this song even remotely as much as I do.

Honorable mention--good albums I didn't quite get into as much, for one reason or another:

Director / We Thrive on Big Cities
Emily Haines / Knives Don't Have Your Back
French Kicks / Two Thousand
Flaming Lips / At War With The Mystics
Gnarls Barkley / St. Elsewhere
Peter Bjorn and John / Writer's Block
Presets / Beams
The Sleepy Jackson / Personality: One Was a Spider, One Was a Bird
Sparklehorse / Dreamt for a Light Year in the Belly of a Mountain
The Strokes / First Impressions of Earth
TV on the Radio / Return to Cookie Mountain
Villeneuve / First Date
Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Show Your Bones