whoa it's long, sorry.

JARED B.'S TOP 20 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR:

20. MARNIE STERN - IN ADVANCE OF THE BROKEN ARM
it seemed like everywhere i turned this year, people were bitching about how boring indie rock has become. i suppose if you're talking about "bands that sound like pavement," then yes, those bands are very boring. not even stephen malkmus sounds like pavement anymore. but here is marnie stern. even with zach hill's calculus-equation-beats and stern's own labyrinthine melodies and unconventional guitar heroics, there's still a strong "pop" undercurrent to the whole thing, and a go-for-broke amateurism. funny - i thought that's what "indie rock" was supposed to be.

19. BORIS W/ MICHIO KURIHARA - RAINBOW
i like to call this boris' "grunge" album. i don't know why that is even, but there is a sort of "informed by 70s stadium rock, but still kinda ragged" quality to it. after 2005/2006's triumphant "Pink" boris' fans seem divided on whether the more accessible direction is a good thing or not. "Rainbow" seems to say, "yes it totally fucking is."

18. MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS - DYSTOPIA
a lot of people like Justice because they mix a little bit of ELO and Moody Blues in with their filter disco. i like Midnight Juggernauts because they mix a little filter disco in with their ELO and Moody Blues.

17. BURIAL - UNTRUE
an almost too perfect record for the heart of december. when the earth unfreezes, will i still like this record so much? who cares - it's an enveloping experience that doesn't recall raves so much as the burned-out warehouses in which they're held.

16. ROISIN MURPHY - OVERPOWERED
the frequent Matthew Herbert vocal collaborator ditches Herbert's dense, off-kilter Matmos-esque (though, to get the lineage straight, it's more accurate to Matmos are "Herbert-esque") sample constructions for full-on dance pop. it works great!

15. KATHY DIAMOND - MISS DIAMOND TO YOU
mr. too-lazy-to-google-sez: the guy who makes beats for his psychotic (sounding, anyway) japanese wife in the group Mu holds off the harsh noise and disco whistles and lays down some funky-ass slap bass over some thudding lo-fi disco and the titular Ms. Diamond slinks her way into the sexiest pop record of the year.

14. BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW - DANDELION GUM
Boards of Canada with more warped tape, more 1970s educational programming synthesizers, more sickly vocodered vocals and more sun-baked (or, just plain baked) acoustic guitar. More gum.

13. LES SAVY FAV - LET'S STAY FRIENDS
comeback album of the year? nah, the hell with that - just one of the best rock records of the year, and the band's finest yet.

12. MAMMATUS - THE COAST EXPLODES
kids from the west coast dig into their Faust and Amon Duul II records and come out with a krautrocktastically witchy, hippified heavy metal album.

11. VON SUDENFED - TROMATIC REFLEXXIONS
repetitive, bludgeoning and exhausting - this is what every Fall album of the last few years should have been. Smith's trademark ranting has been given a new lease on life thanks to Andi Toma and Jan St. Wenner's newfound appreciation for noisier, more anarchic sounds.

10. TOUGH ALLIANCE - A NEW CHANCE
this album is, in the words of Patton Oswalt, "Gayer than 8 guys blowin' 9 guys." it's like St. Etienne without a girl - and friends that's pretty gay. the Pet Shop Boys would be another apt comparison. the swedish duo has been blowing up in their homeland and thanks to the much-deserved and steady hype surrounding "A New Chance" their gospel of house music, synth pop and the spirit (if not the sound) of punk rock just may be our new national anthem.

09. TRACEY THORN - OUT OF THE WOODS
adult-contemporary. safe. these are the damning words hurled at former Everything But the Girl lead singer Tracey Thorn's new album (her first as a solo musician since the early 80s) by haters. the thing is, they're not wrong to say so. it mines the same territory as EBtG, but with more upbeat results. even including the Arthur Russell cover, this is not an album that's going to upset Mom, musically or lyrically. to me, however, the soothing sounds of early-90s boutique dance music and Tracey's buttery white soul fit like a well-worn sweater. sometimes, you need to be comfortable and no other record this year made me feel more at home than "Out of the Woods."

08. DIZZEE RASCAL - MATHS + ENGLISH
for reasons unclear to me, Dizzee is not releasing this record in america. maybe not ever. it's a damn shame, too, because just when i thought his career had revealed itself as a gimmick and petered out, he releases this end-to-end stunner. the album is almost evenly divided: dark, nihilistic tales of drugs, murder, double-crossing friends and, uh, "pussyholes" over dirty, cantankerous beats on side 1 and cheeky, playful "single material" about girls and bad behavior over beats that wouldn't sound out of place on joints produced by Timbaland or Kanye West on side 2. the transition is jarring at first, but it reveals itself as a strength as you realize that Dizzee never steps out of himself or tries to be something he isn't - it's simply two sides of a guy i may have too quickly dismissed as a flash in the pan.

07. THE FIELD - FROM HERE WE GO SUBLIME
a lot of records could be described as "dreamlike," but the debut longplayer from the Field fits that descriptor better than any record i can recall right now. repetition is its main tactic - as you might see the same scene over and over in a dream before its meaning registers, or it takes you what seems like hours to get from one end of the room to another. "Sublime" has been criticized for it's "unnt-tsss, unnt-tsss" beats, but closer listening reveals that there is a great deal of rhythmic complexity in the way he slices and dices the samples around the rudimentary drum tracks - like muscle and blood and nerves around bone. what we end up with are living, breathing compositions - almost shoegazing in the way the sounds blur and radiate against one another - endlessly shifting toward an increasingly elusive point.

06. SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO - ATTACK DECAY SUSTAIN RELEASE
i liked this album for the precise reason (i'm guessing "i touched joe in his special place is") Dave didn't - i liked that it didn't pander to the melody-loving (and, at the moment, more "in the limelight") dance music constituency, though often i'm right there with 'em. like Daft Punk's "Homework", you might get rope-a-doped by the more melodious numbers like "I Believe," but at some point you're going to have to face the rhythm of the hot dog. you're going to have to get on your knees and breakdance. you're going to have to raise your arms to the heavens and declare, "I'M A HUSTLER BABY! THAT'S WHAT MY DADDIES MADE ME!"

05. THE CLIENTELE - GOD SAVE THE CLIENTELE
another year, another flat out lovely Clientele album - ho hum right? it probably took five complete listens for it to click, but the fact that this is third fantastic album by this band in four years (plus their already-classic early singles collection "Suburban Light") is nothing to take for granted. the soundtrack to all of my rainy days, and there were way too many to count.

04. RADIOHEAD - IN RAINBOWS
this one also took some time. on this modest sneak attack, radiohead suddenly sound human, and that was a little off-putting at first. didn't we all (read: me) preach ourselves red in the face in high school about how great they were and how they were gonna change music forever? sit transfixed in the presence of true greatness when they dropped Ok Computer and actually lived up to our ridiculous expectations? nearly have a nervous breakdown defending Kid A as the masterpiece that you still, to this very day, believe it is? well, all that made you (read: me) look pretty fucking stupid. everyone hated you back then, and your radiohead fandom was a big part of it. here is a sensuous, moving, human - yes! GLORIOUSLY human! - album, thick and rich as cheesecake, from The World's Most Important Band. take it. eat it. love it. and for god's sake stop calling them The World's Most Important Band.

03. MY TEENAGE STRIDE - EARS LIKE GOLDEN BATS
Joe said it better than i could - this band is like all my favorite bands rolled into one. such a brief description almost makes my enjoyment of them sound crass - like, what dude, you can't tell the real thing from a forgery? "A bad cover version of love is not the real thing," Jarvis Cocker once crooned. i quote the great Jarvis out of context to say that this love is real. like the New Pornographers and Life Without Buildings (get my point here - i'm not saying they sound a thing like EITHER of these two groups), MTS attack their influences with such exuberance and sheer joy of playing music together that you forget how much they owe to JAMC, 14 Iced Bears, Joy Division, the Smiths, Orange Juice, and on and on and on and you simply marvel at how well the boy wears his Daddy's clothes.

02. SPOON - GA GA GA GA GA
i may need a few years to decide this for sure, but as a true believer Spoon fan since "A Series of Sneaks", i think i have determined that the ridiculously-titled "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" is the Holy Grail of Spoon albums - the one that makes the others unnecessary. of course, that's utter bullshit - i'll never let go of "The Way We Get By", "Stay Don't Go", "Me and the Bean", "the Two Sides of Monsieur Valentin" or the entirety of "A Series of Sneaks" for any of the songs on "Ga". but their last record "Gimme Fiction" just made me want to tell all the newcomers, "DUDES...it gets SO much better! half this album is DULL." now, in a post "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" world, i think "Ga"'s babytalk might make sense - it just may serve as the most logical birthing point for new fans. and if after having heard all their records, one still likes this one the best, i probably won't follow them around singing "30 Gallon Tank" at the top of my lungs. i'll just go to sleep that night saying, "thank god i was right about spoon."

01. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
the best surprise of the year was that Jens Lekman's most well-traveled niche - swooning 1960s chamber pop - spent itself on the first two songs anyone heard from this record - "The Opposite of Hallelujah" and "Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo", leaving deep cuts like the Las Vegas show-ready "Sipping on the Sweet Nectar", the College Droput-sounding "I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You" and the breezy yacht rock of "Shirin" to be discovered as the year's unrivaled "holy shit!" moments for first-time listeners. "When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog" announced Jens Lekman as one of the most refreshing discoveries in years and he has now made one of the finest records the decade may be likely to offer. even if he ends up swiss-cheesed and bleeding on the floor of the senate, today is the Triumph - he's Julius Caesar, and no one deserves the laurels more than he does.