2006: I'm the decider

This (long overdue [and possibly trite]) list of my favorite '06 albums was supposed to be a lot more ambitious. Oh well! Let's just do this already.

15. Thom Yorke | The Eraser (XL)

Captures the (paranoid, helpless, angry) sound of (NSA wiretapping, post-Katrina, Iraq-in-shambles) 2006.

2006 movie equivalent: A Scanner Darkly

mp3: And It Rained All Night

14. Arctic Monkeys | Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Domino)

It seems like this album came out years ago, and in some ways it sounds like it, too. In a good way. Does the idea of a hyper-Briterate Strokes appeal to you? I thought so.

2006 movie equivalent: The History Boys

mp3: Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But ...

13. Girl Talk | Night Ripper (Illegal Art)

iPod Shuffle too slow? Wish it would shuffle, like, between, like three-second snippets? This mash-up album samples pretty much every song ever recorded. Ideal at parties for friends who are so over traditional definitions of authorship.

2006 movie equivalent: Babel

mp3: Hold Up

12. Bruce Springsteen | We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Sony)

Yes, this is a cover album of songs that are at least decades old. Yes, the Boss is old enough to be negotiating his golden parachute. But the sounds of New Orleans brass, hell-raiser folk and old-fashioned orneriness combine for a left-field (and left-wing) pleasure. Ideal at parties for friends who are Moving On -- and Drinking Liberally -- dot org.

2006 movie equivalent: Bubble

mp3: O Mary Don't You Weep

11. Yo La Tengo | I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador)

Move past the best-slash-worst album title of the year, and you have an oddly moving and motley collection of YLT tunes -- epic feedback frenzies, rollicking Charlie Brown numbers, the sad song that Georgia sings. Nothing new here -- but there's nothing wrong with consistent excellence.

2006 movie equivalent: The Good Shepherd

mp3: Mr. Tough

10. The Hold Steady | Boys and Girls in America (Vagrant)

The best Springsteen impression of the year (sorry, Mr. Flowers), but that's beside the point. Craig Finn might be the most ordinary frontman in rock today, and that is an extraordinary thing -- when he reminisces about drinking from his prom date's purse, you can see smell the booze.

2006 movie equivalent: Mutual Appreciation

mp3: Massive Nights

9. Beck | The Information (Interscope)

Everybody's favorite Scientologist (sorry, Giovanni Ribisi!) is back. The Information echoes the approach of last year's Guero but with better success: The album is seamlessly integrated, with hip-hop-lite singles like "Elevator Music" meshing with Stones-y groovers like "Strange Apparition." If anyone should be putting out an album a year, it's Mr. Hansen.

2006 movie equivalent: Volver

mp3: Strange Apparition

8. Johnny Cash | American V: A Hundred Highways (Lost Highway)

The Man in Black wasn't fucking around. This album is so soaked in death it's almost unbearable, even when Cash is (maybe) joking about being put in a box and hauled away on the train. Inspiring in its dignity.

2006 movie equivalent: A Prairie Home Companion

mp3: Like the 309

7. Gnarls Barkley | St. Elsewhere (Downtown)

Beneath all the jokey costumes and loopy interviews lies a pretty unsettling record. Subjects include nightmares, suicide and, um, Transformers. So it's not all freaky, and it's not brilliant, but the best moments were truly awesome, as on the so-old-it's-new soul mover, "Smiley Faces."

2006 movie equivalent: Inside Man

mp3: Smiley Faces

6. Beirut | The Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing)

An everythinghappensatoncewhatthefuck kind of album, it pretty much finds the key of Balkan funeral and stays there. The sweet horn breakdown in "Postcards From Italy" is the key moment -- it typifies the album's unapologetic prettiness. Hard to believe this is the work of a 19-year-old.

2006 movie equivalent: Borat

mp3: Postcards From Italy

5. Cat Power | The Greatest (Matador)

So apparently Chan Marshall spent days locked up by herself, getting drunk, listening to Miles Davis and wishing she were dead. (Hard to believe, what with Cobain cribbing lyrics like "I hate myself and I want to die," right?) Anyway, she sobered up, thank god, and went on a real! life! tour! with actual musicians -- but this album's surprising hints of joy suggested a turnaround was in store. Sure, it tails off toward the end, but the early melancholy moments sound like the work of a (hypothetical) white niece of Al Green, maybe because his backing band provided the laid-back vibe. Long live Chan.

2006 movie equivalent: Old Joy

mp3: Lived in Bars

4. Ghostface Killah | Fishscale (Def Jam)

"This is real shit," GFK tells us on the opening track, and that ain't no foolin'. From his thoughts on how to discipline children (belt straps, of course) to dreaming of an underwater land (the mermaids have "Halle Berry haircuts") to how he wants his hair cut ("don't touch the sides"), he doesn't hold back. Of course, there's also the street wisdom of a former (?) drug-dealer, worthy of the first season of "The Wire." The rare combination of a man who writes and spits rhymes with equal versatility. A classic.

2006 movie equivalent: Miami Vice

mp3: Underwater

3. Bob Dylan | Modern Times (Columbia)

A stylistic sequel to 2001's "Love and Theft," but a little more sinister. We get that Bob can't go back to paradise because he "killed a man back there"; we see people escaping a flood, "walking on a bridge, carrying everything that they own,"; and he's raising an army of "tough sons of bitches ... from the orphanages." This is Biblical shit, underscored by a final track where he's silently mowing down his enemies, a vigilante descendant of The Man With No Name. The music grooves, too, moving from Tin Pan Alley pop to Chuck Berry rave-ups. There's a sweet side, strangely enough, prompting Slate to call it (bizarrely) the "makeout album of the year." These songs are uneasy, though, and it feels like Harry and Sally left the New Year's Eve party only to get stopped by Charles Bronson from Death Wish. Which actually would make a pretty good movie.

2006 movie equivalent: The Departed

mp3: Ain't Talkin'

2. TV on the Radio | Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope)

OK, this isn't a very good album title either, but that's pretty much the only flaw. (Well, that and the four bonus tracks, which are the 21st century equivalent of the jams that made up the third LP of "All Things Must Pass." But I digress.) There's a post-fatalistic thing going on here, as if the band decided, Emma Goldman-style, that there must be dancing at the revolution. The album is impeccably produced, from the woozy horns of the opening "I Was a Lover" (with its cryptic opening lines, "I was a lover / before this war") to the whistling "Row Your Boat" style round "A Method." But "Wolf Like Me" justifiably gets the most attention -- you get a fuzzy-funky bass, harmonies on the breakdown, and a whole lyric about the totally relateable troubles of being a werewolf. Awesome.

2006 movie equivalent: Children of Men

mp3: Wolf Like Me

1. Joanna Newsom | Ys (Drag City)

Sometimes it takes a record as out of time as this one to sum up a year. Five songs, the shortest one seven minutes long, about bears marrying monkeys, the true nature of meteors, and the like. Newsom's squeaky-strong voice is more than an affectation -- it's an instrument capable of beautiful things. And "Ys" is borderline Socratic -- Newsom's voice and harp ask the questions, and Van Dyke Parks' kooky string arrangements provide the answers (or are they more questions?). It's all summed up in the year's best lyric, from "Emily":

The meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see.
And the meteroid is a stone that's devoid
of the fire that propelled it to thee.

I'm not much of a lyrics guy, but for some reason that one hooks me. (Maybe it's the useful scientific knowledge?) Anyway, I'm tempted to say that you get it or you don't, but in actuality you get it or you're missing out. And I'm sorry for you if it's the latter.

2006 movie equivalent: Pan's Labyrinth

mp3: Sawdust and Diamonds

*With special thanks to Rick for hosting the mp3s. And with apologies to The Knife and Clipse, whose records I still haven't bought but could very well hold their own against anyone on this list.