I am chagrined that I spent much of 2006 in a musical cocoon, devoting more time to albums I’ve had for years than to new releases from artists I had yet to experience. I only really looked up when a band I already liked released something new, or when a friend gave me something I’d never heard of. Consequently, with three exceptions my top ten list seems extraordinarily limited, as if it were written by someone who buys “days of the week” underwear and avoids Tabasco sauce at all costs. In a year that was, by all accounts, fabulous for music, I feel like I missed so much. Fortunately, what I did hear included 10 albums good enough to sustain me if 2007 lacks both quantity and quality. (My New Year’s resolution, meanwhile, is to try some Tabasco now and then.)

10. The Blow, Paper Television — Frontwoman Khaela Maricich opened for an Architecture In Helsinki show I attended early this fall, and by the time she walked offstage I was struggling to reconcile my artistic indignation with the fact that I had just had my mind blown by a girl singing over a backing track. The ten peppy-yet-cynical songs on Paper Television are good enough to make a believer out of anyone.

9. Derek Webb, Mockingbird — Webb, formerly of contemporary Christian group Caedmon’s Call, takes his faith seriously enough to ask difficult questions. The answers make up Mockingbird, a collection of some of the best protest songs of the last quarter century. Webb’s raw voice floats over chiming guitars and subdued accompaniment, the gentle folk sound belying the urgent and challenging message.

8. Syd Matters, Syd Matters — Cirque Du Soleil, or perhaps an adaptation of The Little Prince, could benefit from the inclusion of these meandering, surreal songs on their soundtracks. Discordant synth backgrounds fill in sparse acoustic riffs, and the woozy lyrics may as well be part of the instrumentation. Standouts include the luminescent “Obstacles” and “Black & White Eyes” and eerie “Bones.”

7. Brand New, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me — Emo is a glaring and rather derogatory misnomer when applied to these tightly compressed, finely crafted tracks. Sure, most of them are about breakups and how utterly devastated frontman Jesse Lacey was by his last failed relationship, but there’s an undercurrent of religious metaphor in these songs rivaled only by U2’s stronger lyrics — as if the title of one song, “Jesus Christ,” wasn’t hint enough.

6. Murder By Death, In Bocca Al Lupo — Whiskey-swigging, music stand-playing (watch an acoustic performance on YouTube sometime), anachronistic outfit Murder By Death generally don’t try to play the blues, but I can’t help but picture many of the songs on Bocca being performed by Robert Johnson. Did the band have to sell their souls to get this good? Maybe not, but they sound like they’ve spent some time at the crossroads nonetheless.

5. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Broom — Okay, so I’ve actually had this album since February of 2005 when it was first released in the band’s hometown. But the remastered Polyvinyl edition is different enough to warrant its appearance on this list, not to mention the fact that the twenty-nine minutes of audio on the CD is a little bit of timelessness. SSLYBY make some of the most endearing indie music around, and by God, they’re just good enough to be in my top 10 two years running.

4. Midlake, The Trials of Van Occupanther — The unmistakable childlike wonder in Midlake’s songs mingles with a keenness for the past in the delightfully old-fashioned Van Occupanther. As if the dichotomy of youth and history weren’t enough, songs about stonecutters and bandits are sung over instrumentation taken straight from Blue Oyster Cult and Fleetwood Mac. It’s the kind of veg-out music destined to achieve a Flaming Lips kind of infamy.

3. The Envy Corps, I Will Write You Love Letters If You Tell Me To — The scant seven songs on this EP hold enough splendor and poetry that you might come away thinking you just listened to an entire album. How a sound like this can come from a place like Iowa I will never understand. The aural topography of these tracks includes dizzying summits and unfathomable valleys that insure that The Envy Corps will not experience a flash-in-the-pan popularity only to fade away shortly thereafter.

2. Cat Power, The Greatest — The release of The Greatest was an auspicious beginning to the year for Chan Marshall. She proceeded to get sober and tour with the same Memphis Rhythm Blues Band, who helped her record the unaccountably joyous, unabashedly romantic songs that made The Greatest live up to its moniker. “Hate” is the closest Marshall comes to her old sound. The other 11 tracks conjure images of Motown artists, Van Morrison, and jukeboxes. Her voice has never been smoother, her songs have never been sweeter, and she’s never sounded like she’s having this much fun.

1. Thom Yorke, The Eraser — Yorke’s paranoia has heretofore found an outlet in Radiohead songs, but here producer Nigel Godrich forced him to strip down his ideas to the bare essentials. The nine minimalist songs on The Eraser range from sublime to chilling; all the while Yorke swerves between hope and despair.