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My personal favorites of the year.

20. Johnny Foreigner - Waited Up 'Til It Was Light
19. Lovedrug - The Sucker Punch Show
18. Tilly and the Wall - O
17. The Whispertown 2000 - Swim
16. My Brightest Diamond - A Thousand Shark's Teeth
15. One for the Team - Build It Up
14. 1997 - On the Run
13. Dear and the Headlights - Drunk Like Bible Times
12. Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward
11. The Narrative - Just Say Yes
10. Ra Ra Riot - The Rhumb Line
9. Margot & the Nuclear So and So's - Animal!/Not Animal
8. Mates of State - Re-Arrange Us
7. Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
6. Okkervil River - The Stand Ins

5. She & Him - Volume One

On a purely superficial level, Volume One can best be described as "cute". Once you dig a bit deeper, though, it's obvious that the album has so much more to offer beyond simply serving as pleasant ear candy. None of these songs can be called lyrically genius or melodically challenging, but they can be called something much more commendable, at least in my opinion, and that is classic. A song can have the most introspective, wordy lyrics imaginable or be positively drenched in sonic experimentation but if it's not instantly memorable, if it doesn't get stuck in your head and stay there for ages, if you never get the urge to hear it over and over and over again, how good is it, really? What do amazing lyrics matter if the melody is so dull that you can't remember how they go? And how impressive is it when a song is so covered with bells and whistles that its emotional core is smothered and replaced with unfeeling, robotic, and detached studio trickery? This is the reason why Volume One is so refreshing; the songs are simple and unadorned, they are allowed some breathing room, and you can just bask in the glory of Zooey Deschanel's lovely voice and penchant for all things vintage. It's just as easy to believe these songs were written in the '50s as it is to believe they were written in the twenty-first century and this is a good thing. It gives them a timeless quality and sometimes, this can be a hard feat to accomplish effectively but Zooey and musical partner M. Ward do it with seemingly little effort. The real star of the show, though, is Zooey's voice. It truly does sound like it comes straight out of a long-past decade and though it can sometimes sound a bit rough around the edges, it's always completely charming and full of attitude. Take "Change Is Hard", a stirring torch ballad that owes much of its success to Zooey's flawless, heartbreaking, and just plain gorgeous vocal delivery. And when she sings coyly on the catchy "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?", "I've got to get your presence/Let's make it known/I think you're just so pleasant/I would like you for my own," it's hard not to get caught with a huge, dumb grin spread across your face. This album is chock full of moments that are similarly adorable and charming and sweet and every other cutesy adjective you could possibly think up, but it's also full of well-written and infectious songs and, most importantly, a true passion for making music. Let's hope that Volume Two, whenever it comes, goes down just as easily and sweetly.

4. Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster.../We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

I thought for sure that I had made some extravagant claim about Hold on Now, Youngster... being my album of the year before I had even heard it but, alas, it appears I'm not as idiotic as I think I am because I can't seem to find myself saying that anywhere. The closest I could find was in my personal blog back in April when I first started keeping track of my '08 list; Los Campesinos! occupied the top spot then and I had said in regards to the top two that they were "all but set in stone" which obviously turned out to be mildly untrue. LC! have since been uprooted from their position and well, the album that was number two kind of traveled in the opposite direction, if you know what I mean (I'm trying to be vague here and failing). Anyway, if you would have asked me to make a list a couple months ago, they would probably have fallen even lower, not because I love the album any less, but because I stopped listening to it obsessively quite awhile ago and it isn't nearly as emotionally resonant as a good deal of its competitors, which is a big thing to me and a large component in deciding how this list should be ranked. But then they had to go and release We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed which, while not quite as good, re-established my adoration of them and I decided that, between the two, there was more than enough amazingness to justify a relatively high finish. Los Campesinos! won't change your life or cause you to come to some grand epiphany on its meaning but they are sure to make you dance, sing, and scream along to their songs out of pure, unadulterated joy and giddiness. They have perfected the craft of writing an excellent pop hook, they combine aspects of twee and punk in such a way that they are never overly sweet or overly angsty, and, to put it simply, they are just tons of fun. Neither Gareth nor Aleksandra have ideal singing voices but they are more than adequate for their particular sound and their lack of skill is actually rather charming; LC! is the kind of band that makes you think, "Hey, I might not be the most talented person in the world, but I can make it as long as I have fun and love what I'm doing with every cell of my being!" It also helps that they have insanely witty, pop culturally informed, often hilarious, and more than a little unabashedly pretentious lyrics. "When our eyes meet all that I can read is 'you're the b-side'"; "We kid ourselves there's future in the fucking but there is no fucking future"; "I cannot emphasize enough that my body is a badly-designed, poorly put-together vessel/Harboring these diminishing, so-called 'vital organs'/Hope my heart goes first/I hope my heart goes first!" On the surface, they are just amusing and clever but they are actually extremely multi-dimensional and layered; it's absolutely brilliant.

3. Copeland - You Are My Sunshine

Aaron Marsh's flawlessly smooth falsetto draws you in and his stunningly gorgeous compositions and simple, abstract lyrics force you to stick around. You Are My Sunshine is almost unbelievably beautiful and if the album at number one hadn't already stolen most of my soul and wrenched out my emotions nearly completely by the time this was released, it might actually have made it to the top of the list. The two are very similar in my opinion, not only in style but in the atmosphere they create and how fully they speak to the listener's emotional side. Yes, the songs are quite repetitive and don't change much in tempo and I can completely understand why some people might find them boring; I'll even admit to falling asleep halfway through my first listen of this album (though that can partly be attributed to the fact that a. I was listening to my mp3 player in bed and b. I had kind of pre-determined that I wouldn't like it much for some reason or another so wasn't trying very hard). After two or three listens, the songs still might not have sunk in completely and it's hard to distinguish one from the other, but there's something undeniably appealing about them that you can't quite put your finger on. And after maybe half a dozen listens, you're completely hooked and the repetitiveness ends up being the main selling point: it's soothing and nurturing and slightly hypnotic; it's like each song is gently cradling you and for a few minutes, you're totally unaware of the real world and are only focused on the world created by the music. It's an extremely hard feeling to describe. The best moments on You Are My Sunshine are those tiny unexpected ones that, despite their subtleness, make each song stand apart from the rest: the mesmerizing layered vocals on "Should You Return", the barely there moment of vocal distortion partway through "The Suitcase Song" that is so small but somehow elevates the song to the next level, the seamless injection of a female voice, most notably in "On the Safest Ledge". And the lyrics on their own might not seem extremely impressive - take, for example, "In the moments before time starts moving backward/I will feel her hand in the palm of mine" ("To Be Happy Now") - but they are delivered with such introspection and sadness by Marsh that they resonate a million times more than they do on paper. The entire album just flows so perfectly and is so simple yet so affecting. I wasn't expecting to be blown away by it and that I was makes the listening experience even more gratifying.

2. Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer

Who would have thought the death of Amanda Palmer would turn out to be such an enjoyable listening experience? All joking aside, maybe Who Killed Amanda Palmer is missing a lot of the rawness and vulnerability that permeates the Dresden Dolls' self-titled debut, but such intense emotional resonance is hard to duplicate multiple times over. Besides, even if it doesn't seem quite so effortless, the album has still got plenty of heart-wrenching confessionals and sarcasm-laced social commentary to go around and, technically, it is almost undoubtedly Miss Palmer's most accomplished and fully-realized work yet. This is largely due to the unrestrained, no holds barred approach that is taken to each song. They are more embellished and bombastic than any of her work with the Dolls has ever been yet it never feels like too much; the emotional core of the songs is never overshadowed by their fancy packaging. Ballads like "Ampersand", "Blake Says", "Have to Drive", and "The Point of It All" are drenched in gorgeous string arrangements and choir-esque group vocals but the stark, uncomplicatedly meaningful lyrics are what grab your attention and keep it: "Blake makes friends but only for a minute/He prefers the things he orders from the Internet/And Blake's been having trouble with his head again/He takes his pills but never takes his medicine"; "It's better to waste your day watching the scenery change at a comatose rate/Than to put yourself in it and turn into one of those cigarette ads that you hate." And the faster paced songs have their fair share of twists and turns as well but your ear is never drawn away from Amanda's perfectly-suited vocal performances, whether they be frantic and aggressive ("Runs in the Family"), sarcastic and biting ("Oasis"), or ballsy and over-the-top ("Leeds United"). There is such a vast array of styles and emotions to be found on Who Killed Amanda Palmer that it is at first a bit overwhelming. Once these songs have had a chance to settle in, though, that is when they truly shine. The quieter songs that you may have initially overlooked in favor of the more dramatic ones, in time, sneak up on you and hit you like a speeding bullet, revealing their beauty and depth suddenly and forcefully. These are the kinds of songs that truly make an artist, I think, the ones that at first don't seem extremely special until that one day when they finally allow you to glimpse their glory in full. A lot of musicians can craft something flashy and catchy and immediately gratifying but it takes someone special to create a song so subtle in its greatness that it becomes timeless rather than quickly wearing off of you. Luckily for Miss Palmer (and for us), she seems to be capable of pulling these kinds of songs out of her sleeve with little effort.

1. Lydia - Illuminate

What a year it's been for Lydia. When this album came out back in March - and I first declared it my album of the year - it's distribution was extremely limited, only available physically through the band's online store and at shows. Now, less than a year later, the band has signed to a major label, re-released the album on a much wider scale, just finished their first ever music video (to be released in the new year), and will soon embark on a well-deserved headlining tour. So let's get to the music, eh? Illuminate is that album, you know the one; it grabs hold of you and shakes you violently until all of your emotions come spilling out and not only the first time, but with every single listen. These kinds of albums are rare - at least the ones that consume you entirely - and it's hard to come up with words that describe the experience accurately. So to not do it justice at all... These songs are lush and atmospheric, full of swirling melodies that are heartbreaking in their beauty and the lyrics are simple but possess a staggering amount of emotional depth, an attribute that becomes even more obvious over time. To take examples from two of the many lyrical gems: from "One More Day", "Love is not for me, I promise," stated so matter-of-factly that it packs a staggering and unexpected punch straight to the gut; and in "Hospital", the subtle anthemic intensity of "Oh, no one is watching now/Sing like you just might drown/But always come back home." Leighton Antelman's delivery of these lines and others is so spot-on that it propels them to an even higher level; whether he's at his most whispery and hoarse or wailing at the top of his lungs, his voice is always so injected with emotion that it almost hurts to listen. Finally, factor in Mindy White's understated yet stirring background vocals (the only complaint I have about this album is that it needs more Mindy; when she takes the lead on closer "Now the One You Once Loved Is Leaving" it is so refreshing and lovely that you wish she sang more prominently on a few more songs) and you have a recipe for near-perfection. This album is insanely impressive to me, especially considering it is only their second release and they've gone through an insane amount of line-up changes since the band's inception. It's not to everyone's tastes, I know that (but that won't stop me from stubbornly believing anyone who doesn't like it must be deaf), but it definitely deserves a fair chance. Maybe it'll end up being a pleasant surprise and maybe, just maybe, it will effect you as much as it has effected me; even now, after probably hundreds of listens, I can honestly say that it is still getting better each time. I predict huge things in Lydia's future.

Honorable Mentions:

Brighten - Early Love
Cake Bake Betty - To the Dark Tower
The Dresden Dolls - No, Virginia...
The Hush Sound - Goodbye Blues
Maria Taylor with Andy LeMaster - Savannah Drive
Pretty Balanced - Conical Monocle
Sarah Slean - The Baroness/The Baroness Redecorates
Stars - Sad Robots

For thoughts on the rest of the top twenty and honorable mentions, plus downloads from all, see here.