NY Times 2006: Lots of TV and Yorke; No Ubu, BtS, Lewis, YYY's

The NY Times' Christmas Eve Sunday edition offered its always-interesting year-end lists, with picks from Pareles, Sanneh, and Ratliff. No huge surprises or violent disagreements here, but plenty of puzzlers akin to Academy Award nomination snubs. There's a lot of agreement on TV on the Radio and Thom Yorke, and I'd probably concur (though not quite as high on the list). Cat Power, Neko Case, and Destroyer got mentions, though not as many as I'd offer. But where are the excellent 2006 albums by Built to Spill (currently vying for my Number 1 slot), Jenny Lewis, Tom Waits, Pere Ubu, Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Why no mention of special collections like the posthumous Dave Carter/Tracy Grammer release? Part of the problem is that ten slots are simply not enough to acknowledge great stuff, and there's also a real struggle when an artist like Waits or Vince Gill comes out with a multi-disc studio release. Anyway, I'll have a longer list ready for the end of the year, though it's interesting to note that the demise of the album format means that this is the first list in many years where there are less than 100 studio albums of merit in the calendar year.