i like cmg throughout the year because they do reviews and have balls sometimes. then their list comes and is the most obvious bullshit ever.

so far the stylus list looks a bit better though.

is it obvious bullshit just because it's full of albums that their readership liked a lot?

pitchfork, popmatters, cmg, stylus...........

its all CRAP if you don't agree with it. Its all GREAT if you do.

Who gives a fuck.

I like this one... a few I haven't heard sneak in around the 30 mark.

6 of their top 10 made my top 10.

It's a good list until the top 10.

At least they noted the TTC album, which was critically overlooked!

This is a good call... I should seek it out.

I like how the review of the #5 album, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, says of the #13 album by the National, "Alligator is the better record."

they kinda say something like that regarding sufjan's album vs wolf parade

my point is that throughout the year with the albums they review and the scores they give it makes me think that cmg is gonna be interesting at the year-end list, but it isn't. and it kind of sucks.

I think that's just the opinion of the person writing the blurb. It is funny, though.

also, the popmatters lists are pretty good.

Don't think I've ever visited CMG before now.

Their 1 and 2 are my 58 and 66.

I thought the list was good. Kind of makes me sad that i didn't here more of the records that people claim to being really good or excellent this year, as I feel like it's been slow. Maybe i just didn't listen to the right records...

That's pretty much the way I feel. I still read 'em though. I actually like CMG the best because it's named after a Gord Downie album.

Cripes, short of living at a college radio station or being a full-time reviewer I don't see how it's possible to hear everything released. I think I spend more time listening to new music than just about anyone I come in contact with and still don't know a bunch of those releases.

The TTC record is very cool, but can you put it on and listen to all of it in its entirety? I think this is what I thought Prefuse's One Word was going to sound like after I heard the first three tracks.

It's a pretty good list. A little shy on the Americana, and little nodding off for the drift rockers though.

I think the Sufjan Stevens review gets it right. No other record has such a distinctive voice... and the supercilious irony being the enabling condition for serious comment (and it's connection to Dylan's similar method) confirms my thought: Stevens is the 00's Dylan... even though of course he is nothing like Him.

yeah, i feel the same way. i at least used to have access to a college radio station library, but even so, i think this year i listened to more new releases than the last couple of years (probably 60 or 70)... even after all that, i feel like i probably missed at least half of the good ones.

No surprises here. Any of the top ten could have been #1 without much head-turning. A nice listing of some of the best records of the year, without a doubt.

You need to stay away from them mushroom old man.

Sufjan is fine, not great IMHO---that's not the point though. Saying someone is the _____ Dylan is the biggest copout in rock history is the point----its like trying to say something without really saying anything. Empty.

Haven't had 'shrooms since you've been alive ya little whippersnapper... why, got any? (Actually I too wound up a friend of Bill W... decade plus of clean and sober time... most of us are given of lifetime quota of getting loaded and I used up my quota early).

It's been long enough now that most of the world doesn't even know or care about the slippery slope of "the next Dylan" approbation. In fact, the sense of "rock history" is probably foreign or useless to most people under about 35. In the post-post-modern word we've invented now, there are no prophets, nor poets of the people... Saviors are terribly unfashionable.

I meant the comment in the clinical and descriptive sense: SS uses irony to trick the mind and heart into receiving serious comment on the human condition.... a Dylan hallmark. He does this very, very well. SS also is a pastiche of pop influences in a culture of too much information, spaghetti-like references, and cool affect. The nerdy persona as the wise response to the world's impending destruction... very post www... hence the 00's. John Gacy is the Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.

Whooosh... what was that... damn traces won't go away.