Top Albums of 2006

#5

The Avalanche, Sufjan Stevens

The best album of "b-sides" ever, I'm convinced. I liked this one better than Illinois believe it or not (the record of "a-sides"). Lots of really good songs on here, although 3 covers of "Chicago" was a little excessive for me. My favorite is either "Adlai Stevenson" or "No Man's Land". www.sufjan.com

#4

Bring Me the Workhorse, My Brightest Diamond

If you haven't heard about her, this is all you need to know: Shara Worden is a trained-opera-singing, electric-guitar-slinging, wurlitzer-ringing, string-quartet-bringing wonder babe. I wanted to marry her until to my great displeasure I found out she is already married. The only reason this isn't ranked higher as an album is the fact that I tend to only listen to 3 songs incessently, not because the others aren't good, but because these 3 overshadow the others. I won't tell you the 3 so that you can listen to the whole album yourself and enjoy it. www.myspace.com/mybrightestdiamond

#3

Begin to Hope, Regina Spektor

I have www.relevantmagazine.com to thank for finding out about Regina this year. Imagine this: a Russian-born-classicly-trained pianist with a pretty voice. If that wasn't cool enough, she sings really weird sometimes (choking noises, etc). I got her record Soviet Kitch early in the year and I really liked about half of the songs (especially "Us"), but the others were kind of duds by comparison. Begin to Hope has a noticibly different style with more pop sounds and guitar and programming, but it's still uniquely Regina Spektor. My favorites are "Fidelity" and "On the Radio". Make sure to buy the version with 7 bonus songs, every single one is worth buying (that makes 19 songs!).

www.myspace.com/reginaspektor

#2

Good Monsters, Jars of Clay

I've already written way more about this album than anybody wants to read.

www.myspace.com/jarsofclay

#1

The Morning, Andrew Osenga

There is just no way to do this album justice. It's an independant record that sounds like is was made with U2 money. It's basically what a singer-songwriter would do with a full band and more talent than angst. Someday I'll write a full review of this record, but for now I'll just say that Osenga is the musical Steinbeck. Please check out his website.

www.andrewosenga.com

www.myspace.com/andrewosenga

Note: I just got Switchfoot's new album, Oh! Gravity. so I'm not including them on this list even though it is still 2006. Top Songs of 2006 coming soon.