10. Wired All Wrong - Break Out The Battle Tapes

What else is there to say other than the fact that this is the closest I will get to a new Self album in the near future. Matt Mahaffey teamed up with the dude from God Lives Underwater and made a super catchy rock album. I could listen to Matt sing on any track nevermind the fact that he writes hits left and right.

9. The Matches - Decomposer

I gave this an album a single listen when it was first given to me by the dudes in The Matches. I was still on tour and it was never a good time to listen to music until I was in my bunk, and at that point you want to hear music you know well to put you to sleep. So my first real time listening to this was a few weeks ago as it is one of the few CDs I have here in Randolph. It hasn’t left the CD player in my mom’s Saturn since.

8. Saves The Day - Sound The Alarm

This is the album that I wanted Saves The Day to write this time around. It’s the perfect blend of all of their previous efforts. I personally enjoy all of their releases (including In Reverie) so it’s nice that they have another amazing album under their belt. Johnny Minardi and I went to see them right before the album dropped and they played the most amazing set I’ve seen them play. It was a perfect blend of old and new. Johnny and I both agreed that they were back in a big way. Upon hearing the album after that it was apparently very true.

7. Forgive Durden - Wonderland

I heard this album go from demos to full fruition rather quickly. This was one of those bands that I heard we were signing out of nowhere. It was Johnny’s first band he worked with closely and it was awesome to be a part of the process. All the artwork we were getting in for the album was awesome and getting all the promo stuff made perfectly was a road that I loved cruising down. They wrote an extremely unique and perfect record. Touring with them just helped push this album onto this list as they are some of the nicest guys in the world.

6. Matisyahu - Youth

I don’t even know what kind of a crowd listens to Matisyahu, but I do know he has a rather large following. I feel as though I’m only supposed to like this if I were some college-bound pseudo-hippie, but it’s wonderful regardless. He’s always singing about things I could care less about but he has an amazing voice and writes amazingly catchy songs.

5. Head Automatica - Popaganda

Rough tracks of this album were leaked extremely far in advance as with the last Head Automatica album, and it had me extremely worried. These songs just don’t translate well before post-production. Fortunately they picked the best songs out of the rather large batch and polished them into the best pop-rock I heard all year. You get Daryl’s amazing voice killing it with fantastic melodies on top of what I believe to be the perfect kind of guitar sound.

4. Gatsbys American Dream - Gatsbys American Dream

I had this album extremely far in advance. Nic had given it to me when the Gatsbys guys stayed at my house whilst on tour. We stayed up all night talking about music with Johnny Minardi and did some iPod trading. The album wasn’t even mastered yet and it sounded damn near perfect already. The final version came out and had a different track listing, but it did sound a tiny bit better. The entire album is about their hatred for Fearless Records, which makes for an extremely short but sweet album that details just how fed-up they were with them.

3. Gym Class Heroes - As Cruel As School Children

This album means the most to me out of all the albums to me on this list. Not only is it the best hip hop album that came out this year but it’s something that I spent many, many, many hours working on. Between the time it took to find an artist, then actually putting together the layout, and the millions of phonecalls to Travis about each step, it’s safe to say that this was the most important thing I did at Fueled By Ramen. At the end of all the stress though I got my name put in the liner notes with a layout credit and a thanks from the guys. It was extremely fulfilling.

2. Damone - Out Here All Night

Damone was the soundtrack to my summer a few years back, and they did it again this year. This is another album that I had for a LONG time before it actually dropped. Easily an entire year early, and I’ve been listening to it non-stop since. It’s filled with some of the most face melting solos ever and as an added bonus you get one of the best vocalists around. If you consider the fact they are a Boston band then you have even more reason to love this album.

1. The Format - Dog Problems

Dog Problems is the kind of album that you will one day show to your kids in order to demonstrate how great music was when you were growing up. The Format made an album that goes above and beyond being timeless. Every song has an insane amount of instrumentation and they worked with some great songwriters. I was lucky enough to see them play some of these songs with Anathallo joining them on stage. It allowed for all the orchestrated parts to come to life before my eyes and it was one of the only times I was left with my jaw on the floor at a show. This is hands down the most amazing album that I have heard all year for all of ther reasons above and probably for more that I haven’t even discovered yet.

Summary

2006 was a strange year for music, at least for me. There were a lot of albums that I was looking forward to that didn’t live up to my expectations (My Chemical Romance being one of the largest offenders there) and I spent most of the year listening to 90’s rock, stuff from last year, and extremely early Michael Jackson material.