Honestly, this is the hardest year in memory for building my annual “favorite albums of the year” list. I’m not entirely sure why. I refuse to use the fogeyist “no good music came out this year” statement — I (mostly) don’t believe that to be true, even though I will admit that as I get older, I’m considerably less interested in what I hear from the indie-rock blogosphere. Instead, I’ll admit that it’s probably my fault: I didn’t invest as much time this year checking out new artists — it was a busy year. Also, I turned a lot of my music-listening attention backwards towards artists and albums I missed (primarily feeding my new-found Nilsson obsession, which then fueled a still-growing Newman obsession, which then fueled a still-growing Wainwright obsession.) And lastly, a good part of my time after September was spent listening back through the R.E.M. catalog, as the announcement of their retirement did nothing but make me want to listen continually to my first and favorite band. (I’ll try and save the R.E.M. eulogy for another post).
Still, there were a handful of new albums I really loved this year, and a bigger handful of albums I truly like and might grow to love as time goes by. Instead of the arbitrary numerical ranking I’ve done in the past – which I always question as soon as I click “Publish” — I’m going to separate this list into two clumps of records: the ones I love right now, and the ones I like right now.



