For the first time ever I hope to do a post on the best album of the year. To be honest I’m usually so behind on my listening that I am never in a position to make a judgment on the best albums of a given year. For a long time my musical tendencies have leaned towards concert bootlegs and older albums.

For whatever reason, though, this year I’ve listened to a great deal of the new albums, or at least the more critically praised albums and feel like I can make some sort of judgment on them.

At the moment I am nowhere near being able to order the albums, but I thought I’d bring out the nominees and talk about them briefly. And so here they are:

Patty Griffin – Children Running Through

I went from not knowing who Patty Griffin was to seeing her in concert to really loving her all within this year. As such I also went from owning none of her albums to all of them. What this means is that they’ve all kind of blended together (something that isn’t helped by the fact that I tend to listen to them all together on shuffle mode.) While I am sure I love any number of the songs on her most recent release, I can’t begin to tell you which ones they are.

Shortly, I’ll give this album a true listen as it was intended and I’ll get back to you.

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant – Raising Sand

This one is getting a lot of attention by the critics, and while it continues to grow on me, I’m still not sure what all the hub-ub is about. It seems to be getting a lot of hurrahs simply because of the odd pairing of one of rock’s great god’s with the cherub of bluegrass music. It is pleasant enough, but has yet to really make me excited.

Iron and Wine – Shepherds Dog

This one gets a lot of praise from the Indie critics, and this time I can see what they are talking about. It sounds a bit like what Claire from Six Feet Under would listen to and it makes me want to put on a tight sweater and get all emo, but it has the music to back all that up. It is a very cohesive album in that it all flows and goes well together, even if no single song is really standing out to me (besides the one that sounds like “Moon River Cha-Cha.”

Bright Eyes – Cassadega

I haven’t seriously listened to this one enough to even know where I’d put it within the Bright Eyes canon much less where it fits within the rest of the years music. It does have some haunting melodies and plenty of navel gazing pseudo important lyrics. But beyond that I’m not sure what I think.

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

This made a big indie splash when it came out, but I just now got it and have yet to give it a spin.

Norah Jones – Not Too Late

This is the front-runner to take the top prize on my list. It is Norah’s best album to date, and very likely the top album of the year. It is so beautiful and lovely it makes me do nothing but lay down and allow that gorgeous voice to over take me. The songs are the strongest she’s recorded and it is an album I continue to return to even though it was released very early in the year.

Bruce Springsteen – Magic

I’ve chronicled my continued fascination with Bruce Springsteen pretty well this year. I am still not completely converted but I am convinced he is a great American songwriter, and the E-Street band can get down with the best of them. This album is pretty stinking good. It has some real good rockers, and the interplay between all the musicians is tremendous. But it also drags a little here which will probably keep it from being the best of the year.

Neil Young – Chrome Dreams II

Neil’s new album, twenty years in the making. It is said that Neil created an album entitled, Chrome Dreams way back in the 70s but it never got released for one reason or another. This is his updated version of the album complete with songs from way back then plus some new ones. The result is mixed. It has some great songs on it, but is a bit hodge-podge and dated.

Suzanne Vega – Beauty and Crime

I caught her live this year and she played a bunch from the new disk. At the time I thought they were ok, and I have yet to get the album, but I’ve seen a few good reviews so I might pick it up before the end of the year. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Paul McCartney – Memory Almost Full

I really enjoyed Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and the same people are saying this ones a keeper, but I have yet to see a copy.

Lucinda Williams – West

I’m more of a Car Wheels and before Lucinda Williams fan than anything she’s done after. No doubt there was some glorious music on the three albums post Car Wheels but so much of it has been slow and gut wrenchingly sad that I simply don’t listen to them often. West is a bit more upbeat but it still wasn’t the Lucinda I love so much and thus I haven’t given it much of a listen since it came out.

Bruce Hornsby – Camp Meeting

Hornsby does jazz. His studio albums are often pale in comparison to his live performances, but this one has got some good reviews from jazz aficionados so I’m hoping it will be great. I just got it tonight, and after one spin I can say it is a good disk. Hornsby definitely knows his jazz, but I don’t. I like jazz, but it is often a little more than I can handle. And so is this disk. Like I can dig the musicianship, but I have a hard time holding onto anything in it.

Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger

A very good album that veers on greatness. It is a return to form for Adams and it finds his songwriting pushing towards the greatness of Heartbreaker. But like so many of Adam’s albums there are two or three songs here that should have been cut and push the album just under superb.

John Fogerty – Revival
Charlie Louvin – Charlie Louvin

A couple of fogies making comebacks. I caught Louvin in concert and it was nothing short of brilliant. I got the album too, but seem to have forgotten to add it to my iTunes and thus it is somewhere back in the States.

Amy Winehouse – Back to Black

Despite her recent personal problems this is a really magical album. She hooked me with “Rehab” and its chorus of “no, no, no” but she kept me coming back with her reinvention of soulful crooning.

Wilco – Sky Blue Sky

I call this there 70’s AM radio album, even though I am too young to remember AM radio in the 70s. It seems more of the type of album they should have released after Being There and before Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, but whatever the release date it is a really great album. It is less experimental than the last two albums, but the attention to detail and songsmanship remains the same – brilliant.

White Stripes – Icky Thump

I have to admit that I’m one of the few who really prefer Get Behind Me Satan to pretty much everything the White Stripes have ever done. No doubt Jack is a killer guitarist, and Meg add her own variety of garage rock drumming into the mix, but something always leaves me a little less than satisfied when I listen. I think I’ve just gotten too old to really rock.

Eddie Vedder – Into the Wild

Billed as Eddie Vedder’s first solo album and in reality is a soundtrack to a Sean Penn movie. As such it is pretty good. Lots of cool acoustic stuff, but I’m not sure that it breaks out beyond the soundtrack spectrum.

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