Top 50 Albums Of 2006!

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20/ Wolfmother – 'Wolfmother' (Island)
Forget the endless labelling of Wolfmother as just another Led Zeppelin tribute band. Yes, they may overplay the big riffs and big muffs occasionally but when it boils down to it their debut effort is all about letting your hair down and rocking out with your air guitar. And who doesn’t like to do that every now and again?!
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19/ Hot Club de Paris – 'Drop It Till It Pops' (Moshi Moshi) 
We couldn't get enough of the Moshi Moshi trio this year. Their debut is the perfect mixture of intricate guitar and three part harmony vocals plus the best songtitles around ('Your Face Looks All Wrong' still makes us chuckle even after the 2000th time). Expect them to go from strength to strength next year.
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18/ ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead – 'So Divided' (Interscope)
Conrad Keely may have won the award for 2006’s most pissed-off frontman (the music business sucks was the essence of his rant), but the latest Trail Of Dead album cared not for industry point-scoring, occupying itself instead with attempting to make every other record this year sound like it’d had been recorded in a baked beans tin by comparison. Operatic, medieval-tinged and surprisingly camp, it was rock as rock should be: messy, loud and quite clearly insane.
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17/ The Young Knives – 'Voices Of Animals And Men' (Transgressive)
Containing some of the catchiest singles heard all year the Oxford trio’s debut is a wonderful slice of eccentric indie-pop. Much more than the chopping guitars of the signature tracks the album contains some brilliantly poignant slower numbers that provides a meaty filling to the pop crust.
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16/ Two Gallants – ''What The Toll Tells' (Saddle Creek)
Ramshackle and raw yet atmospheric and expansive, 'What The Toll Tells' had it all. The San Franciscan duo had already whetted our appetites with their debut 'The Throes' and here they gave us a masterclass in deepthinking Americana. Great on record, completely mesmerising live in Gigwise's esteemed view.
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15/ Love Is All – 'Nine Times That Same Song' (Parlophone)                                                       
Would any year in  music be the same with out a brilliant slice of indie-pop from Scandanavia? We think not! 2006's standout offering was the Swedes eleven track blast of perky hooks, screeching sax and breathless vocals. Some albums are just instantly likeable - with 'Nine Times That Same Song' it was love on first listen.                                                               
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14/ Joanna Newsom – 'Ys' (Drag City)
Divided opinions are what Joanna Newsom does best and ‘Ys’ has love/hate written all over it. If “cosmic avant folk” is your thing then the second offering from the Californian harpist is definitely for you. Only five songs, some twenty minutes long, make up a record so expansive it nearly stupefied our reviewer into stunned silence for life. It may be hard work to start with but its definitely worth ploughing through.
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13/ Kasabian – 'Empire' (Columbia)
A band member down and a conscious decision to ditch the electronic-tinged sound of their debut, things looks a tad ominous for Kasabian before the release of ‘Empire.’ Fortunately, armed with their newly-found retrogressive sound the Leicester lads created yet another confident, gutsy work that propelled them to arena-filling status. You could almost forgive Tom Meighan for his egotistical rants.
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12/ Yeah Yeah Yeahs – 'Show Your Bones' (Polydor)
Surpassing their impressive debut ‘Fever To Tell’ was always going to be a damn tough call – fortunately though with ‘Show Your Bones’ Yeah Yeah Yeahs excelled themselves. Sexy, sassy and at times brimming with attitude, filth and an almost punk ethos, Karen O and her cohorts created a more cohesive work that is surely going to stand the test of time.
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11/ Thom Yorke – 'The Eraser' (XL)
Thom Yorke’s debut solo effort was such a personal foray into the Radiohead frontman’s unhinged psyche, it almost made you feel guilty for intruding. Played entirely by the man himself, ‘The Eraser’ is intensely minimal work that subtly draws you in. Coupled with the paranoid observations and pertinent wordplay and it soon became clear that this was an album to parallel the work of Radiohead themselves.
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