crystal castles – The life and times of a Flashflooder

It’s again time to reflect on my favorite musical releases from the past year. Now that 2012 is fully over and done with I’ve now had a few moments to digest all of the enjoyable things I listened to last year and put them in some sort of loosely ordered list (the list has been changing almost every day so don’t pay too much importance to order).

Unlike most other blogs and publications, I like to wait until the following year to consider and consume all the sounds that the prior year had to offer (in this case there were plenty of good ones). In addition this gives my brain some breathing room from catching up on listening to lots of albums in December that I slept on when they were released earlier in the year. I know I’m always going to miss a fair amount of good releases per year (no one can really listen to and be expected to enjoy everything) but I think this year especially I gave it a pretty valiant effort across a wide array of genres and styles. Hopefully you discover a couple new artists and albums that you enjoy or at least find intriguing as a result of this list.

On that note, I’ll never forget the moments of reading about Manitoba’s (now known as Caribou) Up In Flames as being some random guy on the internet’s #1 album of the year in 2003 (on his geocities page or something) or reading about (and then listening to the weird sounds of) Animal Collective’s critically acclaimed Sung Tongs in 2004 and having both literally change my life in terms of the way I listened to and perceived music. I realized a long while back that the discovery of new music was the best part of reading these year end lists and so I started making my own, mainly for the personal fun of making those decisions but also in hopes that someone else might read this and discover something that becomes their new favorite; because to me, there is no better feeling than hearing something you love for the first time ever. It’s a high unlike any other.

Now if you’re wondering what the process I undertake to make a list like this (maybe so you can make your own next year), I simply have a spreadsheet that I keep generally open on my main computer in which I list any albums I’ve listened to from that year and put them in a general order of my liking (after having listened to each once all the way through). Eventually as time goes on, the list gets longer and longer and forces you to try to compare various albums to each other for a relative ranking of which is better and before you know it, the end of the year will be here and you’ll have your own best albums list! To be honest, it’s a really fun activivty and if you work on it early enough in the year you can honestly see how your thoughts compare to other supposed music critics (it’s hard not be a little influenced if you start working on your list in December after already having read a bunch of other lists). A couple other caveats of this are that I do consider self released material, mixtapes, and EPs (as long as they are generally three or four solidly lengthed tracks). Since it is a yearly list I will also combine multiple EP releases for artists as some genres are more suitable to releasing albums and in others getting a few EP releases a year is more the norm.

And again, these picks are all a bit subjective to my taste so don’t take me too literally, all of the albums are good and should be taken as recommendations. However, for a comprehensive post of all the various critic’s best albums lists look to none other than Metacritic for their 2012 Music Critics Top 10 Lists collection. There’s a lot of quality in there, especially since they generally link to each actual article/post which often feature more than just ten albums in their list. And what better why to find some new good music real fast? I’m like a kid in a candy store these days with critic music lists, fast internet, and some online hookups. Anyways, enough of the this and that, onto the list…

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I’ve been annually making a “Best of” albums list since my college days (thanks to KALX) in order to document the albums I personally find most interesting during the year, while also conveniently creating a future reference point for all of the moments and memories associated with that music and time of my life (and for me, those often go hand in hand). Add in the fact that I like making lists of this sort, and it’s fun to put a little competition into my favorite hobby (listening to music).

This past year I made an effort to keep track of my favorite albums starting in January by creating a spreadsheet where I inputted pretty much every new album I listened to (all the way through) in rough order of liking, which allowed me to freely move albums around as they grew on me or in some cases, got tiring and lost their pizazz.

Nonetheless, (regardless how hard I try) I’ve found that whenever I try to put this list together at the end of the year there’s always a ton of music to catch up on; and as a result, it’s hard to put in perspective the overall impact of an album upon its first few listens, and even more difficult to evaluate the lasting value of an album upon continued listens.

To be completely honest, despite my year-long spreadsheet efforts, I have still been doing a fair amount of December/January music cramming by trying to give every album that’s garnered any critical acclaim at least one solid listen through. And even though I try my best to be objective, there is no denying that personal taste plays a big factor in my album picks.

This list is by no means definitive, and proof of that is the fact that I’ve moved albums around every day I’ve opened up this list in the past two to three months. So basically, they’re all worth listening to and I’ll let you figure out the rest. With that said, if you’re interested in reading what other critics thought about 2010, go and check out Metacritic’s comprehensive summary of various end of year lists.

So after many months of deliberation, what follows are my picks for the top 50 albums of 2010 with download links this year(please note that I did not upload any of the albums, so the the links are subject to being removed or taken down). All in all, I just hope you find some new music to enjoy!