Reviewing the year in song

Finally, the end is in sight. While you may not remember most of the school year, the most important music is probably still readily accessible on your hard drive. Here are the ten albums that made a difference this school year—the critical faves, the bombastic kings of the Billboard 200, the much-vaunted debuts, the dispatches from bizarro pop, and the vanilla dad jams.

Kanye West
Late Registration
[Roc-a-Fella]

the people’s champ
If Kanye’s infamous remark on national TV was vociferous, Late Registration wasn’t. For every club-thumper, there was a contemplative track; even celebratory “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” couldn’t escape without trademark self-deprecation. Jon Brion’s pop productions added to the enigma, but the album could be picked apart or devoured whole with the same satisfaction, and therein is its power. —Mike Newmark, Assistant Arts Editor

Fiona Apple
Extraordinary Machine
[Sony]

teen-set chanteuse
Her first in six years, Apple returned with vocal histrionics and piano pounding—exactly what her fans love most. Extraordinary Machine doesn’t reach the great heights of her previous work, but the songstress was rewarded with record sales and cover hype in NYLON’s November 2005 issue. —Marcella Veneziale, Staff Writer

Silver Jews
Tanglewood Numbers
[Drag City]

dead poets society
In a perfect world, “Punks in the Beerlight” would be all the bros’ favorite 2 a.m. beer jam. But we must be content in our car with an ex-über-addict singing about airport bars, paper puke bags, and depressed ponies, always making an argument with history. —Freddy Deknatel, Staff Writer

Death Cab For Cutie
Plans
[Atlantic/WEA]

indie sellouts
Death Cab produced more of their same brand of indie-pop, which fans met with mixed reactions. And while they achieved a wider fan base with their first major-label album, die-hard listeners were disappointed. But with an appearance on The O.C., wasn’t this inevitable? —M.V.

Arctic Monkeys
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
[Domino]

infuriatingly young
Well oh, they might ape classic Brit rock / with cockney pub talk / and NME in their back pock’t / But all of that’s what the gripe is not / the gripe’s that the critics jerk wildly around that. —F.D.

Devendra Banhart
Cripple Crow
[XL]

hiccup folk
Is he trying to be John Lennon, Cat Stevens, or a San Franciscan Seu Jorge? Either way, the mishmash worked, as DB’s hippie kitsch landed him a fellow freak-folk lame (Siera Casady of CocoRosie) and a backing band called Hairy Fairy, a bunch of like-bearded dudes wishing they were Strawberry Alarm Clock. When I saw them in Boston last fall, all the yuppies sang along with glee. —F.D.

Ghostface Killah
Fishscale
[Def Jam]

backpackers beware
All my friends want to know who this Ghostface guy is now that he got a 9.0 on Pitchfork. And what am I supposed to do when hip-hop heads tell me that album highlight “Jellyfish” sounds like The Beatles? I tell them he’s another New Yorker singing about girls and blow. —Sam Bloch, Arts Editor

Animal Collective
Feels
[Fat Cat]

buddy follies
Devendra Banhart may have ushered in the revival of the so-called New Weird America movement, but these guys are way better, if only because they never border on “Kumbayah.” Feels is the band at their poppiest and most structured, sure, but still tops our list of albums best listened to—and probably created—under the influence of psychedelics. —M.V

T.I.
King
[Atlantic]

velvet crunk
Tip Harris, no longer content to be an Urban Legend, becomes ATL’s own Roc-a-Fella on this album. So what do we get? A chart-topping swagger with a shoegazer-lite radio hit, and producer Just Blaze repping the South. And some down-low rumors to boot! —S.B.

Sunno 0)))
Black One
[Southern Lord]

next stop: hell
This, by some margin, is the greatest approximation of the impending apocalypse since GY!BE’s F#A#(Infinity). The duo stripped death metal down to droning guitars, tortured screams, and a brilliant use of negative space. It’s both sonically and methodologically upsetting (“Bathory Erzsebet” uses the actual screams of someone placed inside a coffin), and while it may make you feel suicidal, it’s a bleak, twisted work of extraordinary art. —M.N.