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Well another year down... was a pretty good one I thought. Discovered a lot of new music, and some old favourites also released new stuff. Also rediscovered Eminem all over again, after almost a decade.....

Anyway, here is my Top 20 releases of 2011 (favourite song bracketed).

1. Youth Lagoon - The Year of Hibernation (Montana)
2. Patrick Wolf - Lupercalia (Time Of My Life)
3. Portugal. The Man - In the Mountain in the Cloud (All Your Light (Times Like These))
4. Bad Meets Evil - Hell: The Sequel (EP) (I'm on Everything (feat. Mike Epps))
5. Los Campesinos! - Hello Sadness (Songs About Your Girlfriend)
6. Handsome Furs - Sound Kapital (Damage)
7. Wolf Gang - Suego Faults (Suego Faults)
8. Paper Aeroplanes - We Are Ghosts (EP) (We Are Ghosts)
9. YACHT - Shangri-La (I Walked Alone)
10. We Were Promised Jetpacks - In the Pit of the Stomach (Picture of Health)
11. John Maus - We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (Quantum Leap)
12. Bright Eyes - The People's Key (Shell Games)
13. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues (Helplessness Blues)
14. Architecture in Helsinki - Moment Bends (Contact High)
15. Florence + the Machine - Ceremonials (Breaking Down)
16. Noah and the Whale - Last Night On Earth (Just Me Before We Met)
17. Okkervil River - I Am Very Far (Rider)
18. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Hysterical (Maniac)
19. The Antlers - Burst Apart (Putting The Dog To Sleep)
20. Grouplove - Never Trust A Happy Song (Chloe)

My Top 20 albums of 2010. Quite a good year...

1. Romance Is Boring - Los Campesinos!
2. The Suburbs - Arcade Fire
3. High Violet - The National
4. Halcyon Digest - Deerhunter
5. The Winter of Mixed Drinks - Frightened Rabbit
6. False Priest - of Montreal
7. Strange Weather, Isn't It? - !!!
8. Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier - Sun Airway
9. Odd Blood - Yeasayer
10. Infinite Arms - Band of Horses
11. Work - Shout Out Louds
12. LOVE - Angels & Airwaves
13. Gorilla Manor - Local Natives
14. Shockwaves - Unkle Bob
15. Expo 86 - Wolf Parade
16. ...And Then We Saw Land - Tunng
17. Forgiveness Rock Record - Broken Social Scene
18. Belle & Sebastian Write About Love - Belle and Sebastian
19. Together - The New Pornographers
20. The Five Ghosts - Stars

Due to listening to pretty much nothing but Animal Collective and Okkervil River (oh, and a fair bit of Metric too) for the first 6-7 months of the year, this was kinda hard to fill this year. Got around to listening to most stuff I acquired though (some a lot more than others, but what can you do. When you love an album, you love an album...). Anyway, Favourite 20 of 09:

1. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Fav Track: Brother Sport

2. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
Fav Track: Apollo and the Buffalo and Anna Anna Anna Oh!

3. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Fav Track: While You Wait for the Others

4. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
Fav Track: Not A Robot, But A Ghost

5. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Fav Track: Rome

6. Metric - Fantasies
Fav Track: Blindness

7. Tegan and Sara - Sainthood
Fav Track: The Cure

8. The Twilight Sad - Forget the Night Ahead
Fav Track: The Room

9. Patrick Wolf - Bachelor
Fav Track: Hard Times

10. Portugal. The Man - The Satanic Satanist
Fav Track: Lovers In Love

11. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
Fav Track: Roll Up Your Sleeves

12. Passion Pit - Manners
Fav Track: Let Your Love Grow Tall

13. Handsome Furs - Face Control
Fav Track: Nyet Spasiba

14. Grand Archives - Keep In Mind Frankenstein
Fav Track: Dig That Crazy Grave

15. Islands - Vapours
Fav Track: Tender Torture

16. Girls - Album
Fav Track: Ghost Mouth

17. A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
Fav Track: The Heartbreak Rides

18. Editors - In This Light and on This Evening
Fav Track: Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool

19. The Veils - Sun Gangs
Fav Track: Sit Down by the Fire

20. Immaculate Machine - High On Jackson Hill
Fav Track: You Got Us Into This Mess

Honorable Mention: Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Fav Track: French Navy

My top 30 albums of 2008, another enjoyable year of listening. Favourite song in brackets.

1. Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight (The Modern Leper)
2. Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer (Kissing The Beehive)
3. Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster (Knee Deep At ATP)
4. Grand Archives - The Grand Archives (Torn Blue Foam Couch)
5. Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (All Your Kayfabe Friends)
6. Hello Saferide - More Modern Short Stories From... (Traveling With Hello Saferide)
7. Feeder - Silent Cry (Heads Held High)
8. Youth Group - The Night Is Ours (All This Will Pass)
9. I'm from Barcelona - Who Killed Harry Houdini? (Mingus)
10. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (Far Away)
11. Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns (The Lightning Strike)
12. Augie March - Watch Me Disappear (Dogsday)
13. Islands - Arm's Way (Creeper)
14. Jack's Mannequin - The Glass Passenger (Orphans)
15. La Rocca - OK Okay (Ballad Of Arizona)
16. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (M79)
17. The Twilight Sad - Killed My Parents And Hit The Road (Untitled #27)
18. Coldplay - Viva la Vida (Strawberry Swing)
19. Augustana - Can't Love, Can't Hurt (I Still Ain't Over You)
20. Keane - Perfect Symmetry (Better Than This)
21. Destroyer - Trouble In Dreams (Dark Leaves From A Thread)
22. of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping (Gallery Piece)
23. Nada Surf - Lucky (I Like What You Say)
24. The Long Blondes - Couples (Guilt)
25. Travis - Ode To J. Smith (Before You Were Young)
26. Low vs Diamond - Low vs Diamond (Song We Sang Away)
27. The Kooks - Konk (Tick Of Time)
28. The Weepies - Hideaway (Antarctica)
29. She & Him- Volume One (Change Is Hard)
30. Blitzen Trapper - Furr (Furr)

EP's

1. The National - The Virginia EP (Blank Slate)
2. The Twilight Sad - Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did (Some Things Last A Long Time)
3. Jack's Mannequin - In Valleys

Other albums which missed out, that I also enjoyed throughout the year include:

Sugarplum Fairy - The Wild One
The Cure - 4:13 Dream
Sons and Daughters - The Gift
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular