by osmosis

Happy end of the decade!  I know the last thing people probably need is another end of the year list, but here's another end of the year list.  I decided to abandon the "top albums" distinction and go with a broader "top releases" label.  Let's be honest, the album format is a construct that the limitless potential of digital music no longer has to abide by.  I'm a huge fan of a unified collection of music, but as Animal Collective's Fall Be Kind EP proved, a cohesive release can be as little as 5 songs.  Also, I don't have the writing staff like P-fork to whip up ten different lists for every category of music.  Scroll to the bottom to see #1 and download a zip file of 10 songs (one per artist).

10. Phaseone - White Collar Crime

Phaseone put out my favorite mixtape of the year - a collection of new material and the remixes (Burial, Radiohead, Animal Collective) that put him on the map.  You can download the entire mixtape for free here.

9.  The Antlers - Hospice

 The Antler's music is understated and at times a little slow, but every song on Hospice has an amazing undercurrent of beautiful, drony melodies.  I don't feel like enough people were talking about them this year.

8.  Wavves - Wavves

Ah, to be a bratty punk rock kid. Wavves is crunchy surf/skate/punk music for Gen Naught.

7.  Washed Out - Life of Leisure EP

The album cover says it all.  Impossible not to enjoy.

6.  Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

Spencer Krug has yet to release anything bordering on disappointing (and the guy puts out a lot of music!), and Dragonslayer keeps that winning streaking going.  At this pace Wolf Parade is becoming the side project of Sunset Rubdown, and not the other way around.

5.  Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear have proven to be the most musically adept band of recent years.  There music lives on a different level then any other indie band I can think of.  And it's no gimmick.  Chris Taylor plays clarinet, bass, flute and sax because it adds to the richness of the music, not for show.

4.  Girls - Album

Girls was the standout album of the year.  It came out of nowhere and doesn't follow the technology trends found in most recent releases.  It's closest to Wavves in ethos, but just coming from a different sonic approach.

3.  Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion / Fall Be Kind EP

From a play count point of view, Animal Collective should be #1 on this list.  They're definitely the Radiohead of the naughts.  That's been the case for a while, but 2009 was an especially good year for Avey Tare and company.

2.  Memory Tapes - Seek Magic

If I were to point to one sound as the future of music, it would be Memory Tapes.  Digital music with an analog heart.  The cold sounds of The Bloody Beetroots (and the like) had a short stay in the consciousness of music lovers.  I was blasting "Rombo" as loud as anybody, but at the end of the day music is about human connection.  Memory Tapes is that perfect balance between laptops, guitars, voice and beats.

1.  Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

 Dave Longstreth has been threatening to release a masterpiece for a few years now.  All his experimenting was going to one day culminate into a earth shattering record, and Bitte Orca is that album.  For that and a lot of other reasons, it's my favorite album of the year.

Download a sampler of all 10 artists