jj no. 2 The soundtrack to my summer, heard it at too many parties and in too many cars…but still not enough
Neon Indian Psychic Chasms The soundtrack to my summer, pt 2. Me and (noted Bloomingtonian) Jon Coombs jamming this in the middle of Indiana outside some greasy pizza joint, again through the corn fields [...]

Bill Callahan Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle To be honest, Callahan could probably release anything and I would love it.  He’s one of my favorite lyricists and there’s a sort of wryness to his voice that has got me since I heard “Julius Caesar” way back.  Another sort of honest statement is that [...]

Here is a top 9 in alphabetical order, then a few more records I liked, then some other things:
1. Akron/Family Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free (Dead Oceans) Music doesn’t belong in boxes. Tributaries intersect regularly to create new styles and reinvent the old. But in the ’90s, the concept of genre-bending/splicing/smashing seemed to become [...]

UGK 4 Life While far from the year’s best album and definitely not its best story, UGK’s (possible) final album is by far the most important musical anything in my world this year. Pimp C is probably the only artist for whom I consider myself a fanboy, and his death has left a major void [...]

It took me until the beginning of this year to finally get to the point where the overload of music and its attendant discourses provided by the internet made me feel like my critical sensibilities were completely shutting down, like I was unable to like, or even distinguish, anything anymore.* So I stopped reading music [...]

Bat For Lashes Two Suns (Astralwerks/Parlophone) Sounds like a modern British and/or old American western version of the best Tori Amos album that never happened.
Bear In Heaven Beast Rest Forth Mouth (Hometapes) Post-wave-psych-pop-rock-tronica?  This album is great.  And I’m quite pleased the @marathonpacks review pointed it out to me.
Beirut March of the Zapotec/Holland EP (Ba [...]

Brother Ali Truth Is Here (EP) & Us (LP) To me, Brother Ali is the best thing happening in hip-hop by a huge margin. His technical skill, his lyrical content, the production on his albums, and his live performances are all amazing. Also, I love how he releases an EP between each full length that is [...]

Tune-Yards Bird-Brains Come for the amazing syncopated percussion and jangling ukulele, stay for the double-tracked yodeling!  From the first track, I knew that not only was I going to really like and jam on this album all year, but that it was going to be a critically important piece of work to me as a [...]

nite jewel good evening (human ear) a strangely divisive album– lurved by the likes of gorilla v. bear, but kinda shunned by the likes of pitchfork. for me, this album gave a warm, human heartbeat to the neu italo-disco jams i had mostly avoided for an overall off-putting coldness. i’ve heard complaints about ramona’s voice, [...]

It would be easy for me to tell you that I loved Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone or that I think The Empyrean was one of the most overlooked albums of the year….and I just did. There is something to be said for a beautifully executed, thoughtful year-end best/worst albums list. However, I’m really not the [...]