Raking the Leaves

Apparently I have this thing inside me where, come years end, I feel compelled to share with the great Nowhere-of-the-Internets the music that has meant the most to me that year. I try to avoid doing this because I think it is a lame and fruitless enterprise, but can't. And this year is no different. Involuntarily I've been combing my iPod for all things 2010 and have made a list. Ugh.

Like the leaves on the tree in my front yard (here comes an analogy!), songs are deciduous. Each year gives birth to new buds, then leaves of all kinds. Eventually the autumn wind comes along and blows the leaves down. I bag most of them up and the city takes them away. Some fall artfully and dissolve into the soil to become my grass, my vegetables, my air. They continue with me. Then there are those few stubborn leaves that stay on the tree somehow, all winter long. I don't know how or why that happens, but I continue to hear them.

So in the spirit of leaf raking, in the spirit of housekeeping and this (admittedly nonsensical) business of list-making, I've got a November's worth of posts already written and scheduled to publish at the palatable rate of one per day. These are my favorite songs from 2010.

Enjoy! (or flame, as the case may be)

Here are a handful that I enjoy very much, but did not make the cut:

Gauntlet Hair: I Was Thinking (mp3)
Menomena: Queen Black Acid (mp3)
Active Child: She Was A Vision (mp3)
Clogs: Raise the Flag (mp3)
Ratatat: Drugs (mp3)