Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2006

Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2006

50.

Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That
May 15, 2006
Critic Score
70
24 reviews
It’s Never Been Like That is stylishly morose noir pop -- lighter than light, cooler than cool.

48.

Lady Sovereign - Public Warning
October 31, 2006
Critic Score
66
25 reviews

45.

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
March 7, 2006
Critic Score
84
21 reviews

From her luscious, aching croon, and her ensemble's solemn high-mesa twang and groove ... you'd never guess she wasn't covering Patsy Cline standards.

44.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
March 28, 2006
Critic Score
76
26 reviews

This album is, above all, a textural triumph, a quantum bounce from the brittle jitter and insect-chatter fuzz of the band's 2001 Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP and 2003's full-length Fever to Tell. It's as if the Velvet Underground had gone from the black-crusted minimalism of their first album right to the pop bloom of their fourth, Loaded.

43.

Various Artists - Tropicália: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound
February 13, 2006
Critic Score
89
5 reviews

42.

Lindsey Buckingham - Under the Skin
October 3, 2006
Critic Score
71
11 reviews

With its skewed pop melodies, home-brewed sonic trickery and blazing fingerpicking, Under the Skin is a mesmerizing return to the side of Buckingham that birthed the proto-indie-pop strangeness of 1979's Tusk.

41.

Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
October 3, 2006
Critic Score
64
12 reviews

40.

Thunderbirds Are Now! - Make History
October 3, 2006
Critic Score
71
6 reviews

38.

TOOL - 10,000 Days
May 2, 2006
Critic Score
73
17 reviews
Singer Maynard Keenan’s operatic vocals, alternately simmering and shrill, are more personal and less pretentious here than ever before.

36.

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
September 12, 2006
Critic Score
81
26 reviews
Twenty years after their debut, Yo La Tengo are in full command.

35.

John Legend - Once Again
October 24, 2006
Critic Score
73
18 reviews
A bigger, better follow-up.

34.

Thom Yorke - The Eraser
July 10, 2006
Critic Score
75
25 reviews
The Eraser is full of moments when you wait for the band to kick in, and it doesn't happen.

32.

Goldfrapp - Supernature
August 17, 2005
Critic Score
75
19 reviews

Toxic and delicious, Supernature will make you do bad things -- and like it.

30.

Cold War Kids - Robbers & Cowards
October 10, 2006
Critic Score
72
14 reviews

29.

Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
April 25, 2006
Critic Score
76
16 reviews

His most jubilant disc since Born in the U.S.A. and more fun than a tribute to Pete Seeger has any right to be.

28.

The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
May 16, 2006
Critic Score
74
23 reviews

If you have a favorite Foghat album or if you can name a single member of Deep Purple, you will love Broken Boy Soldiers; fortunately, it doesn't end there.

26.

Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds
September 8, 2006
Critic Score
70
21 reviews

On his skilled but sometimes labored follow-up ... the liberated ‘NSync frontman bears the weight of experience that drags down so many maturing lovermen.

25.

Rhymefest - Blue Collar
July 11, 2006
Critic Score
80
13 reviews

24.

Beck - The Information
October 3, 2006
Critic Score
73
22 reviews
One of the best albums Beck has ever made.

23.

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
October 3, 2006
Critic Score
79
23 reviews

Supposedly inspired by the Japanese tale of the same name, The Crane Wife makes no concessions to its major label, unless engineering counts.

22.

Girl Talk - Night Ripper
May 9, 2006
Critic Score
70
12 reviews

21.

Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
June 13, 2006
Critic Score
75
24 reviews

Less miserable than Fiona Apple, less wacky than Nellie McKay and less hippieish than Tori Amos, Spektor shows off her gorgeous, fluttery voice, her burgeoning writer chops and her God-given quirks on her second disc, Begin to Hope.

20.

My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
October 23, 2006
Critic Score
74
19 reviews

The Black Parade, the New Jersey group’s third studio album, is the best mid-Seventies record of 2006, a rabid, ingenious paraphrasing of echoes and kitsch from rock’s golden age of bombast.

18.

The Roots - Game Theory
August 29, 2006
Critic Score
80
21 reviews

For every head-nodding beat, Game Theory has a head-turning treat.

17.

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
January 23, 2006
Critic Score
83
26 reviews
A start-to-finish rush of invigorating riffs and pointed narratives that heightens with repeated exposure.

16.

Lupe Fiasco - Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor
September 19, 2006
Critic Score
84
20 reviews
It's full of surprising, creative moments that recall Nas and Kanye West.

15.

Wolfmother - Wolfmother
October 31, 2005
Critic Score
73
19 reviews
An intriguing garage-rock thread runs through Wolfmother's songs, broadening their sound.

14.

Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways
July 4, 2006
Critic Score
84
23 reviews
It's a hard record to bear, but it's a deep one.

13.

Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam
May 2, 2006
Critic Score
71
21 reviews

12.

New York Dolls - One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This
July 25, 2006
Critic Score
70
17 reviews

He, Sylvain and their new Dolls have honed the legendary mania of the early records into a tightened combustion that is part "Personality Crisis" but also packs the matured anxiety and tattered-Sixties classicism of Johansen's 1978 solo debut.

11.

John Mayer - Continuum
September 12, 2006
Critic Score
70
12 reviews
A smart, breezy album that deftly fuses his love for old-school blues and R&B with his natural gift for sharp melodies and well-constructed songs.

9.

Mastodon - Blood Mountain
September 12, 2006
Critic Score
80
21 reviews
Yes, sometimes more is better.

8.

The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
October 3, 2006
Critic Score
84
27 reviews
Fist-pumpable rock with brains, heart and words worth coming back to.

7.

Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
November 28, 2006
Critic Score
85
24 reviews
Pusha and Malice complement the Neptunes, and each other, perfectly. The similarity of the duo's voices gives the music a subtle push and pull -- the brothers pick up on the other one's verses like they were harmonizing.

6.

Cat Power - The Greatest
January 24, 2006
Critic Score
80
26 reviews
What's remarkable about The Greatest is how much Marshall accomplishes without ever straining.

5.

Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
March 28, 2006
Critic Score
83
17 reviews
Ghostface's emotionally charged stream-of-consciousness flow is as off-the-wall and amazing as it's ever been.

4.

TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
September 12, 2006
Critic Score
87
27 reviews

Evoking Fear of Music Talking Heads, Station to Station David Bowie and Sign ‘O’ the Times Prince, the resulting disc might be the most oddly beautiful, psychedelic and ambitious of the year.

3.

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
June 13, 2006
Critic Score
76
23 reviews

Rather Ripped is an excellent record, one of the strongest to emerge from Sonic Youth's amazing late period.

1.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times
August 29, 2006
Critic Score
86
25 reviews

This music is relaxed; it has nothing to prove. It is music of accumulated knowledge, it knows every move, anticipates every step before you take it.

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