The best albums of 2006

PELTED Joanna Newsom was hit by more of our critics’ accolades than any other artist this year

Photograph: Amy Cobden

Cristina Black, music writer

1. Joanna Newsom Ys (Drag City). She’s a nymph, an elf, a faerie, a faun.… Or maybe she’s just a harp virtuoso and an uncommon singer who’s composed a precious polyrhythmic suite for the ages. Review

2. The Raconteurs Broken Boy Soldiers (V2). Jack White’s supergroup breathes new life into ’70s-style rock with wild guitar antics, organ spook and hooks galore. Feature: "Contrary notion"

3. Regina Spektor Begin to Hope (Sire). In Spektor’s quirky world, a Chopinesque piano ballad can live happily beside a ditty about drug misadventure. Review

4. Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere (Downtown). Two oddballs find hipster-pop cachet in a bizarre swirl of psychedelic soul. Feature: "The Outsiders"

5. Mastodon Blood Mountain (Reprise). Like Reign in Blood or Master of Puppets, this album is a metal-excess mammoth.

6. Christina Aguilera Back to Basics (RCA). The former tween-pop queen sheds her skankier skin and proves she’s a soul singer with staying power. Review

7. Noah Georgeson Find Shelter (Plain Recordings). While producing albums for innovators like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, the Kanye West of freak folk concocts a curious masterpiece of his own. Review

8. Clearlake Amber (Domino). An underappreciated Brighton, England, quintet creates an intricate rock & roll representation of staying out until dawn, complete with angst, excitement and animal instinct. Review

9. Deadboy and the Elephantmen We Are Night Sky (Fat Possum). This bluesy guy-girl guitar-and-drums duo’s debut rivals White Blood Cells in rawness and brilliance. Feature: "Mr. misery"

10. Jolie Holland Springtime Can Kill You (Anti-). Imaginative off-kilter ballads of heartbreak and moonshine laze around Holland’s queer cuckoo-bird voice. Review

Jay Ruttenberg, music writer

1. Bob Dylan Modern Times (Columbia). The last boomer standing unleashes his third great album since returning from artistic purgatory. Who said America lacked for tall-tale heroes? Review

2. Art Brut Bang Bang Rock & Roll (Downtown). Art Brut is one of the only young bands with an all-encompassing philosophy driving its songs. (Just ignore the fact that it’s cribbed from Jonathan Richman.) Top live show

3. Regina Spektor Begin to Hope (Sire). The local piano-pop wunderkind—yes, the other one—releases a career-defining album that a year ago seemed beyond her grasp. Review

4. Ghostface Killah Fishscale (Def Jam). This expertly mucky record unfurls like a Scorsese epic for the ears. Ol’ Dirty would be proud. Review

5. Todd Snider The Devil You Know (New Door/Universal). The sharpest-eyed troubadour in Nashville cracks wise about bad bosses, kindly hookers and a frat-house jerk who grows up to conquer Washington. Review

6. Jeffrey and Jack Lewis City & Eastern Songs (Rough Trade). Two New York brothers spit out a meditative jumble of ramshackle folk and punk songs. Feature: "Lower East aside"

7. The Streets The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (Vice/Atlantic). Mike Skinner tackles an appalling cliché—fame and its trappings—with characteristic working-class profundity.

8. Tilly and the Wall Bottoms of Barrels (Team Love). The second burst of joy from the tap-dance–fueled combo proves as alive as its debut. Feature: "Happy feat"

9. Clipse Hell Hath No Fury (Re-Up Gang/Jive). Like Ghostface, Clipse raps about the cocaine trade with an oddly poignant, cinematic soulfulness. Review

10. Noonday Underground On the Freedom Flotilla (Setanta; U.K.). This obscure London duo should be scoring Bond movies; the least it deserves is a stateside release.

Hank Shteamer, music assistant

1. Baby Dayliner Critics Pass Away (Brassland). My most-spun new release of the year by a landslide, Baby Dayliner’s latest inspires dancing, dreaming and head-scratching in equal measures. Feature: "Schtick up"

2. Ocrilim Anoint (I and Ear). Somehow, the music of guitarist Mick Barr—the undisputed king of avant-shred—is growing simultaneously more advanced and more listenable. Review

3. Xiu Xiu The Air Force (5RC). In a year that saw the first Scott Walker disc in more than a decade, it’s hard to imagine another artist stealing his gothic-art-song thunder. But Jamie Stewart did just that on this perverse collection.

4. This Heat Out of Cold Storage (ReR). These postpunk experimenters, whose revolutionary aesthetic did their politics proud, still sound like the vanguard a quarter century on. Review

5. Melvins (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac). The world’s foremost heavy band, now operating in a crushing double-drum incarnation, follows up several uneven collaborations with this utterly fillerless disc. Feature: "Add men"

6. Ornette Coleman Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar). Ornette kills it here, but you probably figured as much; what’s revelatory is hearing his latest working band coming into its own. Feature: "Language lessons"

7. The Lemonheads The Lemonheads (Vagrant). Even if it’s a little spotty, this punky comeback reaffirms that Evan Dando has few rivals in crafting charmingly offhanded pop. Review

8. The Raconteurs Broken Boy Soldiers (V2). Jack White’s new band does right by retro, nailing the cocksure pose and golden hooks of the ’60s and ’70s on an awesome debut. Feature: "Contrary notion"

9. Nels Cline New Monastery (Cryptogramophone). The polymath axman stages a risky yet reverent tribute to jazz pianist Andrew Hill, a composer often namechecked but too rarely interpreted. Review

10. Joanna Newsom Ys (Drag City). Newsom’s latest is a real handful, but for your trouble you get indelible melodies, poetic fantasias and arrangements like sonic dioramas. Review

Steve Smith, associate music editor

1. Joanna Newsom Ys (Drag City). While the singer-harpist is clearly dancing in her head, the sweeping elegance of Van Dyke Parks’s arrangements invites everyone inside. Review

2. Ornette Coleman Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar). The wily alto icon serves up endless melody and wit, and his crack current band offers solid support. Feature: "Language lessons"

3. Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere(Downtown). Slinky grooves by Danger Mouse and unfettered soul from Cee-Lo Green make this more than simply the album that went “Crazy.” Feature: "The Outsiders"

4. Cursive Happy Hollow (Saddle Creek). Swing and sway to the sounds of small-town ennui and repression, courtesy of this ambitious set of “hymns for the heathen” by Tim Kasher & Co. Review

5. My Chemical Romance The Black Parade (Reprise). Gerard Way’s anthems of adolescent angst attain epic proportions in a Technicolor production worthy of Queen.

6. Tengir-Too Mountain Music of Kyrgyzstan (Smithsonian Folkways). Flickering Jew’s harps and the high lonesome wail of singer Zainidin Imanaliev are just two highlights of a disc rich in nearly lost treasures.

7. Album Microbricolages (Delhotel; Mexico). This young quartet from Monterrey converts a bewildering range of pop appropriations into a compelling set of miniatures that burst with style and humor. Review

8. Corey Dargel Less Famous than You (Use Your Teeth). A promising young “artsongwriter” stakes out his turf with a set of poignant vignettes, set to pleasantly tricky electronic compositions.

9. Celtic Frost Monotheist (Century Media). On its first new record since 1989, the seminal Swiss metal band sounds heavier and more unholy than ever. Feature: "Cold warriors"

10. Joseph Holbrooke Trio The Moat Recordings (Tzadik). A long-delayed session by the late avant-guitarist Derek Bailey finds him striking a simpatico chord with old friends Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley. Review

K. Leander Williams, music writer

1. Billy Hart Quartet (HighNote). The veteran drummer gets top billing, but the album is about how his collective (Ethan Iverson and Mark Turner star) makes jazz abstraction sound like the new mainstream. Review

2. Ornette Coleman Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar). Some ten years between recordings, the free-jazz icon’s live date suggests that being off the radar isn’t the same as being inactive. Feature: "Language lessons"

3. Todd Snider The Devil You Know (New Door). The Nashville folkie parses hard (and often enough, comic) truths about the nature of survival in Bush’s America. Review

4. Ghostface Killah Fishscale (Def Jam). Substitute the above Nashville folkie with Wu-Tang homie, then add the kind of ambition that gives epic dimension to life as it’s lived on the block. Review

5. Prince 3121 (NPG). To quote the rejuvenated superstar, this is “where the party be.” Review

6. Kékélé Kinavana (Stern’s). The Congolese-rumba vets send a love letter to Cuba, while showing off what Kinshasa added to Afro-Cuban son. Review

7. John McNeil East Coast Cool (OmniTone). An unlikely Chet Baker, this trumpeter and his deft reworking of Gerry Mulligan’s oeuvre puts jazz’s East versus West feud even further behind us. Review

8. Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars Carnival Conspiracy: In the Marketplace All Is Subterfuge (Piranha; Germany). The Klezmatic trumpeter’s globe-trotting is apparent in a vision of Jewish music that embraces Bahian-parade style and more.

9. Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell Streaming (Pi). When electroacoustic improv has the blues at its core, the results are glorious. Review

10. Various artists Think Global: Bellydance (World Music Network). The title certifies that this Middle Eastern survey is suitable for gyrating; its scope assures a compelling listen.

Mike Wolf, music editor

1. Young People All at Once (Too Pure/Beggars Group). A poetic backdrop of shadows and mystery supports spare, strikingly luminous songs—all in less than 28 minutes! Feature: "Youth of today"

2. Major Stars Syntoptikon (Twisted Village/Important). Raw freedom, total power: These psych explorers added two members and became one with the rock godhead. Top live show

3. Burial Burial (Hyperdub; U.K.). Beats both stuttering and shuddering map out this paradoxically barren and alluring view of nocturnal London. Review

4. Wasteland All Versus All (Transparent). Bias alert: This was recorded by friends. But a rhythmic sound exploration so meticulous, deep and heavy commands attention. Review

5. Nas Hip Hop Is Dead (Def Jam). The best writer in rap separates himself from the pack. Review

6. The Cardigans Super Extra Gravity (Nettwerk). More than a decade on from their hit single, the Cardigans churn out pop that’s no less catchy but way more sophisticated. Feature: "Tightly knit"

7. Oakley Hall Gypsum Strings (Brah/Jagjaguwar). This local country-rock band is informed by the excesses of Doug Sahm and contemporary psychedelia, but driven by its own brilliant talent. Feature: "The outsiders"

8. Hot Chip The Warning (Astralwerks). Even standing behind synths, these London guys look like pretty unlikely pop stars—but they bring some heavy electronic ruckus. Top live show

9. Om Conference of the Birds (Holy Mountain). After they updated the Sabbath-metal template in the ’90s as part of Sleep, this duo’s second album takes the sound to an even higher meditative level. Feature: "Wide awake"

10. Joanna Newsom Ys (Drag City). If only more artists were this ambitious. Review