Best Albums of 00 | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09
Alright guys, we’ve made it to 2006. You know the drill by now. Because we’re approaching the not too distant past, it’s becoming harder and harder to make these top 10 lists. I feel like most of these albums are fresh in my mind (in fact, I still listen to most of them today). As always, there will be some omissions you will probably not like at all, like Bloc Party’s absence in 2005 — pretty good album, but hardly came close to Top 10-dom. This year’s omissions feel extra painful because I love the albums left out almost as much as I love the Top 10 itself. Albums left out include works by Sunset Rubdown, Band of Horses, Neko Case, Liars, Beirut, Bob Dylan, The Thermals, among others. But let’s focus on the albums that “made the cut”.
A. The Knife – Silent Shout
B. TV on the Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain
C. The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
D. Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury
E. Ghostface Killah – Fishscale
F. Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere
G. Joanna Newsom – Ys
H. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not
I. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
J. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
Good luck finding your favorite, because we’re having the toughest time.
Artwork by the talented and generous 
This is the seventh track on Young’s 2006 studio album Living with War. It starts off with a trumpet playing the first six notes of Taps, then having a chorus sing about various reasons to impeach the current president of the United States George W. Bush. The song is sung to the tune of Steve Goodman’s song “The City of New Orleans,†probably a reference to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, another area of critical views. The “Godfather of Grundge†makes clear that he has no love for President Bush.
Tom Waits covered increasingly political subject matter since the advent of the Iraq war, with “The Day After Tomorrowâ€. In this song Waits adopts the persona of a soldier writing home that he is disillusioned with war and is thankful to be leaving. The song does not mention the Iraq war specifically, and, as Tom Moon writes, “it could be the voice of a Civil War soldier singing a lonesome late-night dirge.†Waits himself does describe the song as something of an “elliptical†protest song about the Iraqi invasion, however. Thom Jurek describes “The Day After Tomorrow†as “one of the most insightful and understated anti-war songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation.†Waits’ recent output has not only addressed the Iraqi war, as his Road To Peace deals explicitly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East in general.
This soft and mellow ballad sounds sweet and calming for the average listener. However, if you stop and listen closely to the lyrics, you’ll here the resignation of a sincere and kindhearted war protester. Banhart sings “that the war ended today/ but everyone knows it’s goin’ still†This is a reference to George W. Bush’s premature declaration of victory in Iraq on June 5, 2003. Since then, more U.S. troops died than during the official “war.†Banhart succinctly sums up his message: “oh, it’s simple/ we don’t want to kill.â€
