1. Dead Flowers Midnight At The Wheel Club
2. Arcade Fire Reflektor
3. Arctic Monkeys AM
4. Janelle Monae Electric Lady
5. Savages Silence Yourself
6. Laura Mvula Sing To The Moon
7. Chvrches The Bones Of What You Believe
8. New Model Army Between Dog And Wolf
9. Steve Mason Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time
10. Paul Haig Kube
11. Mogwai Les Revenants
12. eagleowl This Silent Year
13. Sleepmakeswaves And So We Destroyed Everything
14. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Push The Sky Away
15. Luke Haines Rock’n’Roll Animals
16. Foals Holy Fire
17. National Trouble Will Find Me
18. Haim Days Are Gone
19. David Bowie The Next Day
20. Fall Remit
21. Fuck Buttons Slow Focus
22. John Grant Pale Green Ghosts
23. Richard Thompson Electric
24. Pictish Trail Secret Soundz Vol. 2
25. Yeah Yeah Yeahs Mosquito
26. Pastels Slow Summits
27. Low The Invisible Way
28. Daft Punk Random Access Memories
29. Frightened Rabbit Pedestrian Verse
30. By The Rivers By The Rivers
31. Midas Fall Wilderness
32. Laura Marling Once I Was An Eagle
33. Phildel Disappearance Of The Girl
34. Galleries No Miracles
35. Edwyn Collins Understated
36. Yo La Tengo Fade
37. M.I.A. Matangi
38. Prefab Sprout Crimson/Red
39. Sparrow and the Workshop Murderopolis
40. Franz Ferdinand Right Thoughts Right Words Right Actions
41. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Live From KCRW
42. Mark Lanegan Imitations
43. Anna Calvi One Breath
44. Boards Of Canada Tomorrow’s Harvest
45. RM Hubbert Breaks and Bone
46. Zoo Zero Zoo Zero
47. Glasser Interiors
48. Those Darlins Blur The Line
49. Camera Obscura Desire Lines
50. Stephen Kellogg Blunderstone Rookery
I tore my hair out over this list, I nearly decided to chicken out and then I disciplined myself to sit down and do it. I’ve heard over 300 albums this year and there may be albums I have overlooked or I’ll look at this list in a year and go what??? But for now this is it.
And yes, some people will accuse me of various things, but I think there’s a lot of Scottish stuff in there, a lot of stuff that was commercially big and some albums that were very small releases. It’s certainly not just white boys with guitars…