2006 Albums: 6-10

10. Cat Power - The Greatest
I think a lot of people were waiting for this album. It's always been clear that Chan Marshall knows how to write great songs, but on previous albums they've seemed unrealized, almost-there but held back by something. Finally, the production and arrangements are really working for her, bigger but not obtrusive, giving the album a kind of roominess, which you can tell Chan's thankful for. But at the same time, the songs, as always, are humble--at some moments to a fault, when they're sad and forlorn and there's a bit of self-pity that creeps in. But they remain small and personal and intimate, and that Cat Power keeps that quality while also growing larger I think is a feat. Musically, it allows her to channel and develop more of the elements in her music, the gospel and the soul. The songs are all still sad and heartbroken, but I can keep listening to this record without feeling emotionally assaulted and depressed. So I guess that's what I was looking for: a Cat Power record that let me do this.


9. Islands - Return to the Sea
I tend to fall for shambly, ebullient albums that are goofy and poppy. I liked the Unicorns a lot, though at times they frustrated me with their free-form attitude, when things became more sloppy than interesting. Once they fractured and reformed with members of Arcade Fire as Islands, out came this decidedly more polished work. All the odd, awkward, at times gross humor is still here--" total void tells me stories / sometimes they make me sorry / but i need another / i need another / sugar dumpling muffin baby / this world is going crazy,"or incomprehensible white-boy rap freakout halfway through "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone"--but the more organic music allows the coolness to become something closer to beautiful, the idiosincratic becoming cultivated eclectisism. In short, a band growing up and creating a more unified sense of focus or vision. This is all not to say how varied and ambitious the styles that are jammed into this 11 song collection--hip hop, country, etc.--or how well it all integrates into a pop artiface without sounding glued together. And of course, major points for the Friedrich album cover.

8. Asobi Seksu - Citrus
I think there are a few of us who have this album hiding, ready to emerge in our top ten lists, and we all think it's kind of our secret. I, for one, find it difficult to resist any kind of shoegazing tendencies. And when it's fronted by a female vocalist, it's doubly hard. Then when she sings "put your tongue up to my battery," I give in. To this gorgeous, well-crafted, highly-original, sweeping-yet-intricate album. It makes me so happy to listen to it. I love the way lush, distorting guitars absorb me. I love that she sings in Japanese, it's so charming. Sometimes listening to this entire album is like slipping into this foreign dream, where I've been shrunk and I'm being led by the hand through a forest of bonsai trees, with a big paper bag over my head. Other times, I'm in Brooklyn (where the band is from) at a house party in the summer, and everyone is smiling, and there are these big, swirling guitars like funnels of colorful light all over the place, and I'm hanging upside down by my knees from a rafter in the ceiling. Oh man is it beautiful.

7. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Speaking of Brooklyn in the summer: Nick stole my story. Which isn't fair, because I'm placing this album higher. But anyway: we're outside, cold white wine being passed around as thousands wait for the sun to set behind a giant projection screen, which is going to play dusty, scratched-up underwater documentaries that some French guy made decades ago. We see sea horses making love; prehistoric sea anenomes bend and waffle in the curents; a jellyfish turns itself inside out. Thousands of people are sitting there, absolutely rapt. Can you imagine a better visual image for this band's music? There isn't one. But what I love about this album is that they begin with the ten-minute epic, then spend most of the album working on very tight pop songs, by turns hypnotic and bouncy, with the usual core of geniune, accessible emotion. The disembodied, epic style of Yo La Tengo never sacrifices that sophisticated core, which is why their albums are rewarding. And, thankfully, the last track absolutely obliterates me and is a glorious return to fuzzy form, which is when they remind you that, indeed, they're not afraid.

6. Bob Dyan - Modern Times
After watching the Scorcese documentary, like many people, I began the long path of making my way back through Dylan's albums. It just happens that way, and you have no choice but listen to him an no one else. In the midst of that, this strange sort of shock hit me: Dylan's alive. He's somewhere standing around, possible spouting off Dadaist poetry about commissioning his clips and getting his bird bathed and burned. I started listening to his Theme Time Radio show and reveling in the weirdness of the way he talks and just becoming a intrigued by his personality. Then this album came out and, after loving it from the first listen, I've come to think that it potentially ranks up there with what he was putting out in the 60s. I think the songs are working on a number of levels, and I think it's very complex and quietly a masterpiece. And perhaps I'm saying this because I'm trying to convince myself just as much that this album is that good, to shed the nostalgia and forgive Dylan for his possible tendency to be derivative and to realize that he's got every right to be predictable, because he invented the things people are blaming him for sounding like. People like Pitchfork are suspicious that an aging world of music critics heapspraise on Dylan because he's Dylan, but I really think this is one of the best releases this year, by far. He's doing whatever he wants to do, and for as long as he'll do it, people who are objective or gushing fans forsaking their critical impluse, will listen. I'll be joining them.