1. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
2. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
3. Caribou - Swim
4. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
5. The Soft Pack - The Soft Pack
6. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot The Son Of Chico Dusty
7. The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
8. The Walkmen - Lisbon
9. Manic Street Preachers - Postcards from a Young Man
10. Pulled Apart By Horses - Pulled Apart By Horses
11. Shad - TSOL
12. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
13. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
14. Menomena - Mines
15. Autolux - Transit Transit
16. Beach House - Teen Dream
17. Neil Young - Le Noise
18. Jamie Lidell - Compass
19. Hurts - Happiness
20. Colour Revolt - The Cradle

i really wanted to like Jamie Lidell but I guess I just lost the point of it. I turned out being disappointed by Besnard Lakes too.

I don't even know anything about The Soft Pack, Hurts and Colour Revolt though.

Glad to see someone else enjoyed that album as much as me. It was my #1 for most of the year, before being passed by a couple of others. Still, it made my Top 5, just like yours. Well done!

I like that Besnard Lakes album, too.

And yeah, The Walkmen.

Shit, I still need to listen to the Walkmen. I knew I was forgetting something. We've only got two in common in our top 20, though (Tame Impala, Beach House).

Apparently, you missed my posts on it when it came out. Love it too, Bob.

tanner, i remember you saying that if you were in a band, you'd want it to sound like this - or something to that effect

i totally agree!

Yeah, I really loved it in early in the year. Some things have passed it up and it probably suffered from just coming out a little earlier in the year and I'm not as excited about it anymore.

Another member of the "whatever happened to" list comes home (Last post: January 2009)

I love Shmoopole season at Obner, seeing old faces.

But these lists are much, much too soon.

I am surprised at the love for Tame Impala. I thought is was a psychedelic delight that I had stumbled upon... I listen to it as much as any other album this year (other than the ambient crap I am addicted to that I will let play for 10 hours straight on replay).

you get surprised a lot around here, huh?

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier

I really liked the "Postcards Of A Young Man" single from the Manic Street Preachers this year.

So much so that I went back through their entire catalog and put together my own "best of" consisting of 20 or so essential to me tracks that I still have been spinning in my car months later.

I think that album is borderline terrible. There is something not authentic about it that I can't get over. And I generally like music like that. So it's a little weird.

I really like it... but "not authentic" is a good description. It may be one reason I like it... it's like a Croatian band trying to play country... it is hungry to be something it can't quite be. Straight on neo-psychedelia that isn't a little off or mixed with some other genre (eg. drone or world music) doesn't interest me as much as the misses. But I can understand someone hearing it as garbage.

I think with music like this that is more or less derivative (ok, that's most music) you either have to have some authenticity (or originality) or barring that, some good fucking songs. Tame Impala has neither, but I did hear enough there to listen to the album several times trying to get it. I'd be willing to bet they make an album I do like a lot down the road.

It does have good songs, though... some really solid melodies and hooks.

But I totally get being bothered by that lack of authenticity, the sort of artificial nature of it. It's some Aussie approximation of '60s psyche rock, all slicked up and updated to blast from your car speakers in 2010.

Still, I can't help liking it. After a certain number of listens, there are at least a handful of tracks that will worm their way into my head and stayed there. And not in any kind of irritating way. When the chorus of "Lucidity" pops into my head, it makes me want to hear the album.

It's a pretty solid feel-good record even if there might not be much below the surface.

i raved about it quite a bit early in the year. excellent record.

if they looked like MMJ and not some rugged hipsters, you'd be all over it.

Although I guess they are early 20's now I had/have in my mind these 17 year old aussies with a Blue Cheer vinyl from some dead uncle in a garage "deriving" something quite grand. I like the "not quite there" of some bands... a version of the snobby indie commonplace "I liked their last album so much more." On one level I liked 12 x 5 more than Aftermath.

It's a fine line isn't it between trying to make something grand and failing gloriously, and just being amatuerish? I agree with you mostly Harry. I have a soft spot for albums "in between." In between the band they were and the band they'll become. I've always loved Beatles for Sale for that reason. Uncle Tupelo's Still Feel Gone resonated with me for that reason too.

Yeah, I don't really think it's a matter of being "snobby indie" or whatever, either. But that's the perception, that once people have started to catch on you want to distance yourself and move on the next soon-to-be-big thing.

The reality is that those "almost there" records contain that excitement of exploration and potential. They're often bursting with possibilities, and they feel alive and fertile. Whereas the later works, where artists begin to become a little more comfortable in their own skins and to settle into a working formula, while generally more technically accomplished and sophisticated, have often lost that vibrant energy of the earlier work, the excitement of potential. They may be more complete, but they're also more finite.

Anyway, that's all neither here nor there regarding Tame Impala as far as I'm concerned. It's a good record, but I don't really hear anything exciting there for future possibilities. Rather it seems like an approach that could wear thin fairly quickly.

Ha, I couldn't tell you what any of them look like. (ok, Jim James) Frankly, you should be happy that I gave the album as much time as I did based on your rec. instead of dismissing it out of hand (like I normally do with things you love)