[Top 100 Albums Of 2006] Results!

[busybeeburns]

good job so far

[Cirrus Minor]

Yeah good job ! Can't wait for the rest.

[Ondes Martenot]

25. John Mayer - Continuum



1600 points
6 votes
highest ranks from babo (1) and maiu (3)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 67/100
PopMatters: 7/10
Stylus Magazine: C

Quotes:

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Originally Posted by AllMusicGuide
Continuum is a gorgeously produced, brilliantly stripped-to-basics album that incorporates blues, soft-funk, R&B, folk and pop in a sound that is totally owned by Mayer. It's no stretch when trying to describe the sound of Continuum to color it in the light of work by such legends as Sting, Eric Clapton, Sade, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Steve Winwood.

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Originally Posted by PopMatters
While Continuum doesn’t necessarily contain a sure-thing pop hit, it’s one of the few mainstream pop/rock albums that’s satisfying from the beginning to the end.

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Originally Posted by Stylus Magazine
He calmly circles the same career themes with the same warmed-over, palatable guitar weavings: girls are scary, girls are sad, getting older is weird, home is nice.

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[Ondes Martenot]

24. Kasabian - Empire



1610 points
8 votes
highest rank from RTButt18 (4) and stermot1978 (7)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 65/100
Q: 8/10
Rolling Stone: 1/5
PopMatters: 6/10
NME: 9/10
Playlouder: 0/5

Quotes:

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Originally Posted by Uncut
Empire arrives with the same frazzled mien as Oasis' What's The Story (Morning Glory); alive with paranoia, delivered with an unshakeable self-belief. It's relentless stuff.

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Originally Posted by Rolling Stone
The second album... is miles worse than their shallow but tasty first, its big-budget production only making its shortcomings more apparent.

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Originally Posted by Q
Naysayers may write this off as a derivative mash up of early-'90s indie moves, but on Empire Kasabian have become bigger than the sum of their record collections.

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Originally Posted by Playlouder
What we're offered here is pretty much a second take on the discordant beeps, Mani-ripped basslines and lazy hip hop breaks of their first album, with the addition of some hideously nipped and tucked string samples padding out their attempted lyrical bravado.

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[Ondes Martenot]

23. The Zutons - Tired Of Hanging Around



1705 points
7 votes
highest rank from .sally. (1), Dave S (6) and staring elf (8)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 68/100
Pop Matters: 8/10
NME: 7/10
Playlouder: 3/5
Q: 4/10

Quotes:

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Originally Posted by Playlouder
Experimental it ain't, but this summer in a shiny flat box it is.

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Originally Posted by Mojo
You have to go back to Costello, The Beat or Smiths to find a catalogue simultaneously as hummable and as disturbing as McCabe's.

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Originally Posted by NME
'Tired Of Hanging Around' is one seriously pissed-off, paranoid, twitchy record.

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Originally Posted by Dot Music
There just aren't enough ideas or songs to make up for the overwhelmingly mean perspective.

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[Plug_in_coldplaying]

go,go,go

[Ondes Martenot]

22. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere



1750 points
8 votes
highest rank from anna111 (4), frostbitepanda (6) and maxie1p (6)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 81/100
Rolling Stone: 3.5/5
Stylus Magazine: B+
NME: 8/10
Pop Matters: 8/10
Pitchfork: 7.7/10
cokemachineglow: 84%


Quotes:

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Originally Posted by PopMatters
The collaboration between sound technician Danger Mouse and astral soul brother #1 Cee-Lo Green is scatterbrained and compulsive, a collective of voices in varying degrees of twitchy, restless (in)sanity competing for one mind.

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Originally Posted by Pitchfork
As scattershot and weirdly limp as parts of this are-- two guys just knocking things together, seeing what happens-- well, it feels better to hear someone trying.

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Originally Posted by RapReviews.com
A strange and unique album that is more rock and pop than anything most rap fans are used to.

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Originally Posted by cokemachineglow
It is often silly, occasionally ridiculous, always catchy as hell, and as loose as an album with this kind of production credit can be. What more could we ask from a pop record?

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Originally Posted by Slant Magazine
As we approach the halfway point of 2006, it's unlikely that a more vivid or arresting debut will drop this year, marking St. Elsewhere as not only an audacious accomplishment, but one of the year's best.

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[Ondes Martenot]

21. Beck - The Information



1810 points
7 votes
highest rank from tams (2), Lera (4), i heart chris martin (7) and Zeoir (7)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 73/100
NME: 8/10
PopMatters: 8/10
Pitchfork: 6.9/10
cokemachineglow: 56%
Playlouder: 3/5
Rolling Stone: 4/5
Stylus Magazine: B-

Quotes:

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Originally Posted by Rolling Stone
One of the best albums Beck has ever made.

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Originally Posted by The Onion (A.V. Club)
There's nothing here that Beck hasn't done before, but it sounds unexpected once again.

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Originally Posted by Pitchfork
Although The Information contains some of his most aware, intriguing lyrical head-scratchers yet, the familiar musical settings are something of a letdown from an artist famous for complete reinvention.

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Originally Posted by Village Voice
Information ultimately suffers from the same hollowness that weakened Guero, but it's bolder at its best and less derivative of previous victories.

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Originally Posted by Alternative Press
Overall, this collision of dirty loops and polished pop is Information you need.

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[Ondes Martenot]

20. The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics




1930 points
6 votes
highest rank from tams (1), frostbitepanda (3) and whiteshadows (3)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 76/100
Playlouder: 4.5/5
Pitchfork: 6.7/10
NME: 8/10
Rolling Stone: 3/5
Q: 8/10
cokemachineglow: 51%

Quotes:

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Originally Posted by Pitchfork
While the band has always played around with a variety of sounds, when you get down to the nuts and bolts of songwriting, most of Mystics doesn't measure up.

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Originally Posted by Under The Radar
The wondrous beauty of Yoshimi hasn't been abandoned entirely... but the fighting spirit throughout At War With The Mystics is what truly sustains it.

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Originally Posted by Playlouder
While Wayne Coyne has been carving out and presenting to the world the manifestations of his crazy mind for an age now, the possibilities have so often been superior to the finished article. That is certainly not the case here.

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Originally Posted by Stylus Magazine
This is a band that, rightfully, just sounds tired.

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Originally Posted by AllMusicGuide
The way that Mystics bounces back and forth between its ethereal and zany moments gives it a disjointed, uneven feel that makes the album a shade less satisfying than either Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin.

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[Ondes Martenot]

19. Guillemots - Through The Windowpane




2105 points
6 votes
highest rank from Black Shadows (2), Dave S (2), linnea (2), Erin (4) and Ondes Martenot (4)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 81/100
Stylus Magazine: A
Pitchfork: 8.3/10
NME: 8/10
Drowned In Sound: 9/10
cokemachineglow: 67%


Quotes:

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Originally Posted by MusicOMH
There isn't a duff track to be seen, and you get the feeling the whole thing's been meticulously planned and orchestrated, with a mindset of giving us a record to cherish, something to put on when the chips are down, and that rare thing, one that will almost certainly be loved in equal measure many years down the line.

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Originally Posted by Stylus Magazine
Guillemots are constructing their own universe and inviting interested parties to join them within it. I can’t remember the last time a band did that so effectively and so invitingly.

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Originally Posted by Pitchfork
Through the Windowpane is at times a last-dance hallelujah, at other times an open wound, but it's never meager, and hardly ever mundane.

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Originally Posted by All Music Guide
There's still a kind of inconsistency in the development of Through the Windowpane, an inconsistency that can't quite work itself out in sweeping strings and vaguely dissonant chords, and unfortunately, this diminishes the power of what the album really could be.

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[Gitta Rensolo]

wow great work Nik........I didn't take part in it....but it is interesting to read anyways.....

[Ondes Martenot]

18. David Gilmour - On An Island



2150 points
7 votes
highest rank from VERVE (1), Cirrus Minor (2), linnea (3) and maiu (5)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 67/100
Q: 8/10
Rolling Stone: 2/5
PopMatters: 6/10
MusicOMH: 7/10


Quotes:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AllMusicGuide
The set ends on a gentle note in "Where We Start" -- so much so that it may make some scratch their heads and wonder where the cranky, diffident Gilmour has wandered off to, but others will be drawn into this seductive, romantic new place where musical subtlety, spacious textures, and quietly lyrical optimism hold sway.

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Originally Posted by Entertainment Weekly
Enhanced with pretentious orchestration and filled with aimlessly pleasant acoustic ruminations, it attempts, and roundly fails, to replicate the magic of the Floyd in "Comfortably Numb" mode.

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Originally Posted by Uncut
It's probably the most personal project of Gilmour's career.

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Originally Posted by MusicOMH
Could be the soundtrack to a blissed-out tropical holiday.

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[Ondes Martenot]

17. Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche



2205 points
9 votes
highest rank from TLo (3), Flying Sparks (5) and Lera (5)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 76/100
Pitchfork: 7.2/10
PopMatters: 8/10
Rolling Stone: 3/5
Stylus Magazine: B-
cokemachineglow: 69%

Quotes:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stylus Magazine
Anyone expecting a pared down, contented Sufjan can bugger off. If anything, The Avalanche chases his caprice and whimsy further down the rabbit hole.

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Originally Posted by Prefix Magazine
There's a difference between a damn fine song and the brilliance that made up Stevens's previous two releases, Illinois and Seven Swans. Unfortunately, The Avalanche clunks through track after track of damn fine songs while only rarely hitting these moments that make your body tingle in euphoria.

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Originally Posted by Drowned In Sound
The Avalanche is a great record, but one that may have benefited from its creator learning to be a little more detached from his compositions.

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Originally Posted by AllMusicGuide
Although not as flat-out amazing as its parent album, this new record shows us that even Stevens’s warmed-up leftovers are more creative, engaging, sophisticated, beautiful, and simply better than what most other musical acts have to offer with their A-list material.

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Originally Posted by Pitchfork
It's hard not to compare the two albums and find this one wanting; even the best songs, which are quite good, wouldn't bump anything off of Illinois.

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[dajrekshn]

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Originally Posted by Ondes Martenot
i'll add it to the international list

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[Ondes Martenot]

16. The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers



2480 points
11 votes
highest rank from markos (3), fudge (3), maiu (7) and Rev (7)

Reviews:

Metacritic overall: 75/100
Pitchfork: 7.3/10
Stylus Magazine: C-
Playlouder: 4/5
NME: 6/10
Drowned In Sound: 8/10
Paste Magazine: 9/10
PopMatters: 6/10

Quotes:

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Originally Posted by The Onion (A.V. Club)
Within its own little garage, the album succeeds completely, but in the big picture, Broken Boy Soldiers never feels especially important.

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Originally Posted by Mojo
An album that sounds effortless, but at times almost dissyingly diverse--imagine The White Album, but made by happy people.

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Originally Posted by Pitchfork
Tie on the celebrity blindfold, and Broken Boy Soldiers no longer seems like that much of an achievement-- just another case of men recreating their favorite vinyl deep cuts, if a bit more skillfully than most FM scrapbookers.

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Originally Posted by Filter
Just like with White Stripes albums, the music rattles your brain like no other and gets better with age.

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Originally Posted by Stylus Magazine
Instead of consolidating their respective strengths, Broken Boy Soldiers is White and Benson compromising them in favor of finding an agreeable but ultimately dull and colorless middle ground.

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