Runner's Up: Before moving on, there are a couple of things to mention.  I set the cut-off date for making this list at the last day of 2006, for no other reason than to force me to do it.  Unfortunately, this means albums like Islands' Return to the Sea were heard too late to be included and the album now sitting at #16, Nathan Fake's Drowning in the Sea of Love, would now be sitting at least five or six spots higher after many more listens.  I realize I could technically make the changes, but the graphics are a pain in the arse so just deal with it since this is meant as nothing other than a snapshot of what I consider an incredible year in music.  Not only did I listen to many more albums than I have in any other given year (~65), but had my musical tastes both tested and expanded.  I know two people who will be disappointed at the complete lack of British rock, but they'll have to accept the fact that the Brit's electronica is far better than their rock.  On to the list...

Experimental electronic music that's as cold as it is inaccessible, Hecker seeks to expand the listener horizons through a calculated combination of white noise, distortion and ambience.  It's not exactly an album to pop on before company arrives, but throw on a pair of headphones on a lazy Sunday afternoon and the possibilities are limitless.  Even Chimeras, the smoothest, simplest and most listenable track has multiple layers of sound reaching through its rhythmic drone.   The rest of the album isn't nearly as inviting, but after a few minutes, it becomes difficult to discern where one track ends and the next begins and the soundscapes transform into a thing of beauty.

Stand-out Tracks: Chimeras, Dungeoneering, Whitecaps of White Noise I & II

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Asobi Seksu-Citrus

As a lover of almost all things dreampop or shoegaze, how could I not fall for one of the few albums to successfully bridge the two seamlessly?  Asobi Seksu (which loosely translates into "playful sex", not the name of the lead singer) is wonderous combination of a voice whose high-pitched dreaminess is reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser and guitars which smoothly transition between pop and noise rock in nearly every song.  It's an album that is playful and unpredictable, finding beauty in its catchy rhythms as well as its incredible transitions within songs.

Multi-instrumentalists automatically draw my attention faster than most and the twosome which forms Talkdemonic validates that bias for me.  A spellbinding blend of violins, drums, banjo, guitar and the occassional synth, Beat Romantic plays out in a series of vignettes which form a fractured listening experience that is nonetheless cohesive in the long run.  Honestly, I'd rather Talkdemonic stretch out their songs more on their next album (say eight 5-minute songs instead of sixteen 2-3 minute songs), but as it stands, this is still a fascinating listen.  It goes against the preconception that instrumental rock must consist of expansive, cinematic tracks that spiral outward, instead remaining tight, concise and intensely focused.  In fact, forget what I said before.  Talkdemonic should just keep doing what their doing and forget about what genre standards demand of them.

I don't know what to say since I honestly can't explain why I like Sparklehorse as much as I do.  I have an inkling it has something to do with the fact that most artists won't have songs on the same album as vastly different as the mellowed-out Shade and Honey, the rough, guitar-driven Ghost in the Sky and It's Not So Hard and the 10-minute ambient title track.  A subtle, deceptively simple album, Dreamt for Light Years... not only has something for nearly every mood, it's a mood unto itself.

Stand-out Tracks: Don't Take My Sunshine Away, Knives of Summertime, Shade and Honey

Daniel Smith takes what could otherwise be camp songs and transforms them into hopelessly upbeat, quirky and complex tunes that are impossible to resist and even tougher to forget.  It's easy to hear why Sufjan Stevens idolizes the guy and while I don't like Ships quite as much as Illinois, Danielson's album is a little more adventurous, willing to alienate his audience at times in the name of a more complex and interesting sound.  His voice is over-the-top, to say the least, but his conviction makes it so easy to buy into.  And speaking of conviction, it's worth mentioning that Smith is making Christian music, but don't make that a deal-breaker for checking out this album since honestly its indetectable at first.  To ease your pain, I'll explain simply why Danielson is better than pretty much all other Christian music combined - he doesn't sing at you and expresses his faith as something personal rather than something to be forced on others.  He's one of the few Christian musicians who actually does what Jesus would do, assuming that JC has good taste in music and doesn't need name dropping to know someone cares.

My Top 10 Albums of the year:

I liked this album when I first heard it, but aside from a few songs, I assumed I wouldn't come back to it that often.  Until, obviously, I kept coming back to it.  I don't really know how to describe Beirut to anyone who hasn't listened to him since, amateur that I am, I'd mention the accordian without softening the blow and likely scare most people off.  But honestly, Beirut isn't half as scary as any superficial description makes him sound  A friend described it as "psychedelic Balkan folk pop" which suits me just fine, although had I heard that description before I had the album, I assure you it would have been much lower on my must-listen list.  That said, the 19-year old phenom has somehow created music that's full of nostalgia for things he's never seen or experienced.  I could get away with calling the album mature if I ignore it's occasionally sophomoric lyrics, but I'm content with it being one of the years most unique, fun listens.

Califone's Roots and Crowns - nostalghic, blues-tinged rock with a hint of sorrow and regret in nearly every word Tim Rutili writes and sings - was one of the year's biggest surprises for me.  Like my #4 choice, their greatest strength is their ability to seamlessly blend seemingly infinite influences and sounds into a singular, cohesive expression.  The album is layered with subtle percussion that highlights the meloncholy guitar and vocals, allowing even the simplistic songs to carry an emotional weight that could not be pulled off by lesser musicians.  The best song, A Chinese Actor, begins with several seconds of distortion before the deliberate beat of bongos and timed claps drive the song into a nearly ritualistic chant.  Following the autumnal Sunday Noises and The Eye You Lost in the Crusades, its harshness is unsettling, almost distracting, at first but its intensity and focus brings forth an energy that carries the album to its conclusion.  A beautiful mix of touching acoustic pieces and harsher ones that bring the electric guitar to the forefront, Roots & Crowns is one of those albums that I have a hard time describing to people yet no reservations in highly recommending it.

In a year of great electronica, Daniel Herbert's Scale stands out as the most accomplished and, perhaps, successful of the bunch.  As someone who before this year would probably not have given a chance to anyone whose name was even associated with house, I can only plead ignorance for not knowing music attached to the genre could be this great.  To be fair, house is merely one of the sounds Herbert plays amongst a healthy influence of R&B, hip-hop and dance.  As you can probably tell from the list, I find none of these sounds particularly appealing on their own terms, but Herbert blends them together into a deliriously addicting and varied series of songs that one can't help but be impressed.  I should also note that this album sounds better than probably any other album - it's so clean and smooth that I wonder if they recorded it in some type of vacuum.  For doing more than any other album this year to help expand my musical taste, Herbert automatically garnered a mention here, but the music alone justifies a spot in the top 10.

Built to Spill's 1997 masterpiece, Perfect from Now On, took the 6+-minute rock song and made it seem 4 minutes long.  You in Reverse, for better and for worse (rhyme not intended), does just the opposite by making its 5-minute songs feel like 8 minutes.  Their brand of rock is the rock that's not afraid to rock, and not afraid to do so until their damn well good and ready to stop rocking.  The best song on the album, the opener Goin' Against Your Mind, could easily fit into 4 minutes, but then it'd only be a decent song by a band not called Built to Spill.  These guys take the rhythm and run and their jamming, not to confused with the freeform style usually associated with the word, has a distinct purpose - to keep going until a song exhausts itself.  Their brilliance is that they always manage to stop just before any song outstays its welcome.  As a fan of guitar-driven rock, these guys are just naturally suited to my tastes and where many might bitch about their tendency to be grandiose, I regard it as one of the band's strengths.

Reason #1 psychotropic drugs should be legal: The Fiery Furnaces.  Ok, so maybe it's not always good like when Eleanor Friedburger fascinates herself by repeating the phone number of the Vietnamese Ministry in the, uh, aptly named The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry, but musically The Fiery Furnaces create a brand of acid-fried rock that I simply haven't found anywhere else.  Sure, Blueberry Boat was a more consistent and grounded album, but Bitter Tea goes for broke and ends up with empty pockets with holes in them.  The crunchy guitars and tinny piano are the Furnaces one constant here, but there's a seemingly infinite array of sounds (that screeching guitar at the end of Whistle Rhapsody, come on!) to be heard throughout this album, that it's impossible to believe this band is only a duo.  Even their most user friendly song, Benton Harbor Blues, breaks free from it's intensely catchy keyboard tune and veers off into what I can only describe as a weird and beautiful musical acid flashback for about a minute before picking up right where it left off.  The song epitomizes the album's refusal to become conventional and entirely accessible, yet stands as proof that the Friedburger siblings could quite easily craft a radio-friendly single if they wanted break into the mainstream.  Thankfully for us, they're focused only on growing as musicians and while Bitter Tea contains some of those growing pains, it still barely misses a beat.

Stand-out Tracks: Benton Harbor Blues, Waiting to Know You, Whistle Rhapsody

Some albums take a while to grow on me, others I dismiss immediately only to return later and see the error of my ways, and others like Yellow House just smack me across the face capturing my attention from what seems like the very first note.  In a year without an Animal Collective release, I was looking for some fascinating new sound to fill the void and Grizzly Bear offered me that and more.  You can hear a little bit of AC in their sound, along with The Beach Boys, but while hundreds have bands have likely found inspiration in Pet Sounds over the years, few have done so in a way that leaves a hint of its influence yet develops into something so fresh and exciting that calling it derivative would be flat-out laughable (almost like calling it, say, "wildly over-produced").  The album title refers to Ed Droste's grandmother's house where they recorded it.  The rustic old house is in part responsible for the gorgeous sound, helping to form a sonic world that feels lived-in yet natural and untampered after the fact.  But really, the genius of this album rests not only its original sound, but the adventurousness of the music and refusal to repeat themselves.  The harmonious vocals are the bands most immediately noticeable calling card, but the unpredictability of nearly every song comes from their commitment to take each one in as many directions as possible without meandering.  Take Lullabye, for example, which starts of as a slow and sweet, well, lullabye, with light, high-pitched guitars literally lulling you to sleep until nearly 2-minutes in an off-key strum of an electric guitar announces the arrival of something much darker.  It builds for another minute before kicking the drums into full gear and continuing further down the rabbit hole.  If this song stands out, it's because its main tonal shift is impossible to miss, but the spirit of this style is evident in all ten tracks.  Most of the songs are nearly as great and while their magic is buried a little deeper that only gives you more reason to dig into the best album of the year.