HickoryWind.org's Top 10 Albums of 2006

(Total points/No. of Votes received)
1. Bob Dylan, "Modern Times" (25.5/3)
2. Old Crow Medicine Show, "Big Iron World" (24.5/4)
3. Drive-By Truckers, "A Blessing and a Curse" (20/4)
4. The Avett Brothers, "Four Thieves Gone" (17/2)
5. Josh Ritter, "The Animal Years" (16/3)
6. Neko Case, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" (16/2)
7. Solomon Burke, "Nashville" (12/2)
8. Tim Easton, "Ammunition" (11/2)
9. The Kamikaze Hearts, "Oneida Road" (9.5/2)
10. Gob Iron, Death Songs for the Living (8.5/2)

How we did it: HickoryWind contributors were asked to submit ballots listing their top 10 albums released in 2006, though shorter ballots were accepted. Albums were awarded 10 points for a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote and so on. For complete ballots that did not rank the discs, each album was awarded an equal number of points. Voters had the option of nominating three honorable-mention selections.

Also receiving votes: Dave Alvin, "West of the West"; The Avett Brothers, "The Gleam"; JJ Baron, "Brand New Stranger"*; Be Good Tanyas, "Hello Love"; Dan Bern, "Breathe"; Bonnie "Prince" Billy, "The Letting Go"; BR549, "Dog Days"; Richard Buckner, "Meadow"; T-Bone Burnett, "The True False Identity"; Johnny Cash, "American V: A Hundred Highways"; Johnny Cash, "Personal File"; Cat Power, "The Greatest"; Centro-Matic, "Fort Recovery"; Kasey Chambers, "Carnival"; Chatham County Line, "Speed of the Whippoorwill"; Chuck Cheesman, "Campfire"; Guy Clark, "Workbench Songs"; Slaid Cleaves, "Unsung"; Crooked Still, "Shaken by a Low Sound"; Deadstring Brothers, "Starving Winter Report"*; Dion, "Bronx in Blue"*; Tanya Donelly, "This Hungry Life"; Casey Driessen, "3D"; Mark Elliott, "Pickin' Blackberries"; Alejandro Escovedo, "The Boxing Mirror"; Bernard Fanning, "Tea & Sympathy"*; Howe Gelb, "'Sno Angel Like You"; Jon Dee Graham, "Full"; Hacienda Brothers, "What's Wrong With Right"; James Hand, "The Truth Will Set You Free"; The Handsome Family, "Last Days of Wonder"; Sarah Harmer, "I'm a Mountain"; Jamie Hartford, "Part of Your History: The Songs of John Hartford"*; PJ Harvey, "The Peel Sessions 1991-2004"; Hem, "Funnel Cloud"; Horse Feathers, "Words are Dead"; James Hunter, "People Gonna Talk"; Dave Insley, "Here With You Tonight"; Bill Isles, "The Shores of My Hometown"; Waylon Jennings, "Nashville Rebel" (boxed set); Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch & Fats Kaplin, "Lost John Dean"; Cast King, "Saw Mill Man"*; Lambchop, "Damaged"; Jim Lauderdale, "Country Super Hits, Vol. 1"; Los Lobos, "The Town and the City"; Janiva Magness, "Do I Move You?"; Matt d. and the Profane Saints, "Small Town Burning"; James McMurtry, "Childish Things"*; Scott Miller, "Citation"; Nina Nastasia, "On Leaving"; Willie Nelson, "Songbird"; Oakley Hall, "Gypsum Strings"; Oakley Hall, "Second Guessing"; Michael O'Neill, "Who's Bad Now?"; Grant-Lee Phillips, "nineteeneighties"; Robert Pollard, "From a Compound Eye"; The Sadies, "In Concert, Volume One"; Chris Smither, "Leave the Light On"; Solas, "Reunion: A Decade of Solas"; Sonic Youth, "Rather Ripped"; Rick Spreitzer, "From the Bottom"; Sally Spring, "Mockingbird"; Bruce Springsteen, "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions"; Mike Therieau, "Living From a Suitcase"; Chris Thile, "How to Grow a Woman From the Ground"; KT Tunstall, "Eye to the Telescope"; TV on the Radio, "Return to Cookie Mountain"; Various Artists, "A Case for Case: A Tribute to the Songs of Peter Case"; Various Artists, "Friends of Old Time Music: The Folk Arrival" (boxed set); Tom Waits, "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards"; Jack Williams, "Laughing in the Face of the Blues"; Wives & Servants, "Plans for Love"; Halden Wofford & the Hi-Beams, "Midnight Rodeo"; Wolfmother, "Wolfmother".
*-Album's first release, though perhaps not widespread, was in 2005

Honorable mention: Beck, "The Information"; Cyndi Boste, "Foothill Dandy"; Ray Davies, "Other People's Lives"; Jeffrey Foucault, "Ghost Repeater"; Shawn Mullins, "9th Ward Pickin' Parlor"; Damien Rice, "9".

Dylan's "Modern Times" Tops First HickoryWind Album poll
By Sean Moores
HickoryWind.org
So much for the death of the album. While digital downloads continued to overtake CDs in the marketplace – and no sign in 2006 was more telling than the closure of Tower Records – it seems that consumers still are interested in purchasing artists' cohesive statements, be it online or in brick-and-mortar stores.

"Obviously, iTunes and the like are having some impact, but I'm not sure what, and I'm not sure where in the process the presence will be felt. It seems like iTunes will place more emphasis on the single, but it depends on the user," HickoryWind.org's Stacy Chandler said. "Sure, I cherry-pick songs from iTunes – in fact, I never, ever buy albums from it. But that's because the singles I buy are mostly dumb stuff – the rare radio song that catches my ear, or something I heard on a movie soundtrack otherwise filled with crap. Any artist I'm serious about, I go for the album, from a real music store, preferably independent."

If the contributors to HickoryWind accurately represent average Americana music fans, then the album as an art form was alive and well in the past year. Our critics compiled our first official Top 10 Albums list, and the ballots indicated that there were plenty of good albums to go around. Each writer was asked to vote for their 10 favorites from 2006. Eighty-three discs received votes from the panel. No album appeared on half of the ballots, and Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" topped the list despite getting only three votes, though two of them were for first-place.

Needless to say, if a ballot or two had read differently it might have changed the complexion of the final poll. It almost seems fitting, though, that Dylan, an artist who helped the album take off as an art form in the 1960s, headed up our list. Dylan has been on a late-career hot streak since the release of his Grammy-winning disc "Time Out of Mind" in 1997 and carrying through the 2001 release of "Love and Theft." "Modern Times" received 25.5 points in the voting, just enough to edge Old Crow Medicine Show's "Big Iron World," which appeared on four ballots but received only one first-place vote and finished with 24.5 points.

The Best of 'Times'
Dylan's disc got plenty of buzz in media outlets early on because its opening track, "Thunder on the Mountain," made reference to Alicia Keys. Was Dylan (not so) secretly lusting after the much younger Keys? Only Bob Knows for sure. But "Thunder on the Mountain," with its borrowed Chuck Berry riff, was much more than a wishful May-December romance, as I detailed in my review of the disc on Sept. 7.

"'Thunder" rolls like "Highway 61 Revisited," presumably away from a vengeful God, down off the mountain, through a post-apocalyptic Washington from which all the ladies are heading for the hills and finally up north, where Dylan can reside as a gentleman farmer."

"Modern Times" was Dylan's first No. 1 album in 30 years, and he celebrated his relevance by appearing in an ad for iTunes, cast as a slightly silhouetted shadow and playing "Someday Baby" from the album. Being comfortable shilling for digital music might have been simply a case of taking an easy paycheck. Or Dylan might have done it because his appropriation of old folk, blues and rock-and-roll tunes have him feeling more comfortable than ever in his own skin. Again, from the Sept. 7 review:

"Forty-four years after baby-faced Dylan peered out from the cover of his debut album, he's grown into that old blues singer he was trying to be. Now he's at the top of the charts, and on the cover of the Rolling Stone, his skin wrinkled but his blue eyes still piercing. His thin moustache makes him look at once debonair and a tad diabolical; part Ray Price, part Vincent Price. He's not scary, though, except in the most excellent, Howlin' Wolf kind of way."

Dylan's an old dog who is masterful at employing his old tricks, but he was pushed hard by the young pups of Old Crow Medicine Show, who our Brendan McKennedy called "the best country string band out there." "Old Crow Medicine Show put out a much more 'mature' effort this year. I hate that word, though, because it implies their previous work was 'immature,' and that's absolutely not true," HW's Larry Karnowski added. "This album is just, well, more subtle and textured than their earlier studio and live albums."

Drive-By Truckers, who seem to be getting better with each album, tied Old Crow Medicine Show for the most votes by appearing on four ballots. "A Blessing and a Curse" finished in third place with 20 points. In his list of the Top 40 American Artists Working Today, posted on Dec. 6, HW's Justin Gage said of the Truckers, "These guys own the true Rock Show, southern or otherwise." It might well be only a matter of time before the band is topping year-end polls consistently.

Another band showing remarkable growth from album to album is the Avett Brothers, who checked in at No. 4 with "Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions," which received one first-place vote and 17 points. "'Four Thieves Gone' pushed them into new areas, including putting some electric guitar and more produced songs on their albums," Larry said. "These techniques might sound new on an Avett album, but they're not. The Avetts are experts with electric music from their earlier punk and rock 'n' roll bands. I highly recommend both this and their second album of 2006, the acoustic and more grave 'The Gleam'."

Rounding out the top five was Josh Ritter's "The Animal Years." Ritter's star has steadily been rising, no easy feat in the world of singer-songwriters. Many guys with guitars have been crushed under the weight of being dubbed "New Dylans." Ritter, who finished with the same number of points as Neko Case but edged her three votes to two, seems to be holding up despite lofty expectations. "One thing I would pick out which appeals particularly to me is his conviction of delivery, that Dylanesque weighing out of every word, even in the ballady love songs," HickoryWind's Amanda Rose said. "'Thin Blue Flame' is a pretty amazing song, a Nick Cave-Richard-Thompson-Leonard Cohen hybrid and whatever it is that means he can combine those three and pull it off is probably what sets him apart. I've been listening to that song all day. I think if I did the list today, I'd put 'Animal Years higher."

Too much of a good thing
With so many great albums from which to choose, narrowing the field to 10 was a difficult task for our critics. The embarrassment of riches complicated the selection process, which Stacy described as "extremely, teeth-gnashingly, hand-wringingly difficult." "One factor I struggled with was whether to give more weight to an album with several amazingly good songs but some throwaways, or to an album that's strong and steady all the way through, but maybe not … amazing," she said. "I don't know that I ever came up with a solid answer, though looking back on the list I think I may have subconsciously given the edge to amazing. The final cuts were based mostly on gut."

HickoryWind's Jim Pipkin, who is an Arizona-based singer-songwriter, took a different tack. As a result, none of his selections made the top 10. "It was very difficult to narrow down – a lot of the new music I've heard this year is very strong," he said. "Deciding factors were originality, theme and obscurity. Just my ego, but I feel having the chance to steer folks toward strong artists they've most likely never heard of far outweighs pointing them towards acts already firmly entrenched in the retail channel." If you're interested in learning more about Jim's picks, be sure to check back on Jan. 11, when he will elaborate on his selections.

Best of the rest
The final five selections were: Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood," Solomon Burke's "Nashville," Tim Easton's "Ammunition," Kamikaze Hearts' "Oneida Road" and "Death Songs For the Living" from the Jay Farrar/Anders Parker side project Gob Iron.

Neko Case is no stranger to readers of this Web site or the Americana community at large. In 2006, she released an effort that many called her best yet. She certainly crafted an ambitious, challenging album whether or not she someday tops it. And then there's that voice. "Neko Case can goddamn sing. And while she's at it, she can write some lyrics that cut to the bone," Stacy said. "Anyone can crank out a song about love, but Neko can find an unexplored cranny of the subject and bring it to achingly real life. And, all the while, she rocks, in her distinct, spine-tingling style that no one else can touch."

Some would say Solomon Burke's voice has a similar effect. Certainly if we chose an Americana Event of the Year, the release of the Buddy Miller-produced "Nashville" would have to be it. Way back in April, five month's before the disc was released, Amanda all but assured us that this disc, featuring guest shots from Miller, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch and Patty Griffin, would be the album of the year. The King of Rock & Soul fell short of the top spot in this contest, but it would be fair to say that "Nashville" lived up to the hype. "It's absolutely lived up," she said. "It's pretty perfect, but because I expected it to be perfect when it came, and it was, it didn't have the impact of something that hits you side-on."

Easton's disc was somewhat of a departure, in that the songs were less about love and heartache and more about the world around him. Specifically, Easton was taking aim at U.S. foreign and domestic policy. "'Ammunition came about because I live in a military town [the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center is next door to Easton's Joshua Tree home, in Twentynine Palms, Calif.]. And they are often testing ammunition, and I can hear it," Easton said in an interview with HickoryWind on June 22. "And I thought of these songs as my ammunition. As gentle as they may be, they're my form of ammunition. Whether it be regarding love or civil disobedience, songs are ammunition." Easton's effort hit the mark for two of our critics. Brendan called "Ammunition" "the most consistent and self-assured record from one of our most under-recognized troubadours."

Many of the artists on this list are names you'd expect to find. But one that might turn heads is the Albany, N.Y.-based quartet The Kamikaze Hearts. They certainly impressed one of our two voters to select the Hearts' "Oneida Road" as top-10 worthy. "The Kamikaze Hearts were a surprise to me this year. Although not a new band, I had never heard of them before. A random submission to our site, I couldn't put this album down after a sample listen," said Larry, who described their blend of Americana and indie rock as "sometimes sounding like Uncle Tupelo or Son Volt, and sometimes sounding like Death Cab (for Cutie) or Bright Eyes." If you're interested in learning more about Kamikaze Hearts, you can find them on Episode 6 of our podcast.

Last but not least on our poll was Gob Iron. Presumably a one-off collaboration between Farrar and Parker, "Death Songs for the Living" features primarily traditional folk songs with brief musical interludes between the songs. There certainly is a darkness about this album and the songs on it, including "Death's Black Train," "Hard Times" and "Silicosis Blues," but that's what ties it all together. It's been that kind of year. "'Death Songs' is just plain cool," Stacy said. "We can debate whether the album is a dying concept, but this proves it ain't dead yet."