Pick of '06

There's a new Observer Music Monthly magazine out today, with glowing reviews of new albums by Tom Waits (the 3-CD 'Orphans' set, described by the man himself as 'a dead-end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear...'); Jay-Z (who on the title track, 'Kingdom Come' raps: 'Just when you thought the world would fall apart/ Take off the blazer, loosen up the tie, step inside the booth, Superman is alive!'); and the Beatles (well, it's the 'Love' lp, on which George Martin and his son have remixed and remodelled the canon for a Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas). The question is, will any of them make it into OMM's Top 20 albums of 2006, which will be revealed in next month's issue. Of course, the process involved in drawing up such a list is highly rigorous, and might even mean listening to that Mastodon album for a third time. Right now, the runners and riders include records by: Amy Winehouse; Arctic Monkeys; Ali Farka Toure; Jarvis; Lambchop; and Burial; but not the Killers or Thom Yorke. Still, nothing's been fixed quite yet... Do let us know what records YOU'VE most enjoyed this year.