Feighan's top five albums of 2006

By Jim Feighan
Senior Staff Writer
January 24, 2007

5) Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55 – An incredibly easy album to pick up and listen to, 5:55 is an impressive effort from the French actress and daughter of avant-garde legend, Serge Gainsbourg.

4) Thom Yorke’s The Eraser – The Radiohead frontman surprised the music world in the summer with a personal assortment of tracks that mix Yorke’s love for vocal harmonies and scatterbrained electronic drum beats.

3) The Beatles’ Love – Even The Beatles aren’t safe from music’s emerging novelty genre: mash-up music. Love contains 26 renowned and overlooked favorites remixed with various tracks from the Fab Four’s catalog.

2) Tom Waits’ Orphans – Tom Waits’ wife couldn’t be more right when categorizing his songs as either grand weepers or grim reapers. Spanning three discs, Orphans is an intimate collection of lo-fi love ballads, bedtime stories and southern bar-fight music.

1) Joanna Newsom’s Ys – Five tracks lasting just under an hour, Newsom wonderfully depicts tales of her loved ones, personified animals and her misguided self. She attempts to mix pop melodies with renaissance chamber music and succeeds magnificently.

feighanj1@lasalle.edu