News-Letter

Joanna Newsom

Ys

It's no mean feat to conjure an entire world with words alone,
but Joanna Newsom succeeds in doing just that. She describes it,
meticulously, with staggering eloquence and splendor. Her voice is
either an anachronism or a premonition, but in any case, it doesn't
belong in the present. Nevertheless, hers is the best album of 2006 and
deservedly so; its grandeur and originality are unmatched by anything
else released this year.

Beirut

Gulag Orkestar

Gulag Orkestar sounds like nothing you've heard before.
The trumpets blare. The drums pound in your ears. The strumming of a
lonely ukulele elicits more emotion than any screaming emo song in the
history of screaming emo songs.

The voice of Zach Condon -- just 20 years old and a bona fide
authority on the finer points of Balkan folk music -- is a mournful
lament whose intimacy is perfectly matched against the vastness of
accordion and brass.

Belle & Sebastian

The Life Pursuit

Until recently, Belle & Sebastian were generally regarded as
sad sacks. After all, they hail from Scotland, a place where seasonal
affective disorder is less a disorder and more a way of life. Their
early albums were depressing and gloomy but nonetheless well-made.
Perhaps they took an extended vacation to Barbados, but the group's
newest release, The Life Pursuit, oozes good humor. Sharp
lyrics, funky beats, a wee bit of vestigial melancholy: everything an
indie-lover with the dancing bug could ask for.

Gnarls Barkley

St. Elsewhere

At the intersection of rock, rap and R&B lives Gnarls Barkley. St. Elsewhere was this year's equivalent to last year's Kanye West megahit Late Registration in
that both albums incorporate a sufficiently varied suite of influences
to avoid scaring off and, in fact, to attract unlikely listeners (read:
white people). "Crazy" hit No. 1 in the United Kingdom and stayed there
for approximately 34,000 weeks, so it wasn't surprising when Gnarls
encountered a similar windfall stateside. For once, though, all the
hype was deserved: St. Elsewhere is an upbeat, catchy and well-produced gem.

Various Artists

Tropic·lia: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound

OK, so this is a compilation. Big deal. As the first time most
people ever heard Tropic·lia was in 2006, let's just ignore the
technicality. Plus, it's a nearly perfect compilation; the album's
selections flawlessly highlight the giddy experimentation that
Tropicalismo was all about. Artists whose renown, until recently,
extended no further than the water's edge in Rio de Janiero -- Os
Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Tom ZÈ, Jorge Ben and Gal Costa, to name a
few -- have sounds, unique to a bygone time and an exotic place, that
saturate this album like the heavy air in the rainforests of their
homeland.

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