It was the year that I began my constant search for music. I am always on the prowl, but this year especially, my tastes have adapted and changed more ever. I began 2006 with Bright Eyes, Broken Social Scene, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, Cursive, Damien Rice and now I have a whole new taste, or flavor thereof.

I find I am enjoying instrumentals much more than earlier in the year. Things like Ratatat, The Album Leaf, Explosions in the Sky, Architecture in Helsinki, have found their way onto my iPod. I still enjoy much of what I began the year with, but it seems these new artists simply have added themselves to an ever growing list.

As the year closes, so many of us tend to reflect on the past year. I have been no different. As I reflect, I have been reading and hearing so much about Artist of the Year and Album of the Year. However, many of the buzz artists surrounding Album of the Year talk are nowhere in my top musicians of 2006.

Cat Power, for example, nowhere. I enjoy her, but I have had a great trouble listening to her for very long. Maybe somewhere around # 65 or 70.

The Holdsteady, nowhere on my list. I don’t believe I listened to their album all the way through.

Joanna Newsome, nowhere. I will admit after essentially having it forced into my ears, I am beginning to enjoy it more, but she is not one of my artists of the year. I actually, think Newsome has made better music before this. Maybe around # 30 or 32.

All in all, these indie-popular artists are somehow eluding me, I don’t know if it was my hiatus of 6 months or not, but I simply don’t enjoy these artists as much as so many others.

So I am listening to NPR’s All Songs Considered - Best of 2006. Listeners voted M. Ward as the #1 of the year, and I realize I have never listened to M. Ward. Not one song. Nada. I check my iPod; 30 some songs. Uh oh.

I then realized I couldn’t have the audacity to make such a list. So what can I do? I’ll give you this: the music I enjoyed most from the music I found and listened to*.

*I missed a lot. It’s not comprehensive.

Hip-hopness:
Lady Sovereign

Indieness:
Thom Yorke
Regina Spektor
Of Montreal
The Album Leaf
Imogen Heap
Sia
Sufjan Stevens
TV on the Radio
Bishop Allen
Decemberists
Andrew Bird

Liveness:
Fiest and Bright Eyes

Regretfulness:
Missing Of Montreal and Broken Social Scene live

Overall newness:
Fionn Regan (“Put a penny in the slot”)

Surprises:
The Early November
I expected it to be borderline terrible, but I actually really enjoyed their three disk album.

I keep hearing talk about the old timers getting things together, people to the likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Beck (is 36 really that old?), Tom Petty and others, but I must just automatically ignore such music because I had no idea these old timers hadn’t bought the farm just yet. I admit Bob Dylan’s album wasn’t bad. It was, in fact, the only from much of this old timer talk I had heard and enjoyed.

Oldtimieness:
Bob Dylan