Out of curiosity, I compared my top 17 albums of 2012 with some of the other popular lists to see how much overlap there was.   The answer is not much.   For the second year in a row, there was only one overlap and both times it was the number one album from punk news.    So, if nothing else my list could be some new music for you.

• No overlaps with the 50 from Pitchfork.
• No overlaps with the 50 from Spin
• No overlaps with the 50 from Paste
• No overlaps with the 50 from NPR
• No overlaps with the 50 from Stereogum
• No overlaps with the 50 from GorillavsBear
• One overlap with the 20 from Punknews (Menzingers is #1 at Punk and #5 on GT)
• No overlaps with the 25 from MetaCritic

I bought 109 albums in 2012.

I decided to list every album that had average song rating greater than 4, since they would all be worthy of mentioning and buying.   I have 17 albums that earned that distinction.

Using my album formula, here is the ranking of my favorite 17 albums in 2012:

1.  Erica Freas’ Belly (Rumbletown) – 9.722

2.  You Blew It’s Grow Up Dude (Topshelf) – 9.652

3.  Ghost Mice’s All We Got Is Each Other (Plan It X) – 9.591

4.  Joie De Vivre’s We’re All Better Than This (Count Your Lukcy Stars) – 9.571

5.  The Menzingers’ On the Impossible Past (Epitaph) – 9.537

6.  Cheap Girls’ Giant Orange (Rise) – 9.458

7.  Downtown Struts’ Victoria (Pirates Press) – 9.447

8.  Why the Wires’ All These Dead Astronauts (Rorschach) – 9.335

9.  Meridian’s Aging Truths (Bandcamp) – 9.297

10.  Hard Girls’ Isn’t It Worse (Quote Unquote) – 9.220

11.  Luke Roberts’ The Iron Gates at Throop and Newport (Thrill Jockey) – 9.214

12.  Coping’s Nope (Bandcamp) – 9.189

13.  Joi De Vivre’s Breaking Up (Bandcamp) – 9.109

14.  Dowsing’s It’s Still Pretty Terrible (Count Your Lucky Stars) – 9.089

15.  The Smith Street Band’s Sunshine and Technology (Poison City) – 8.931

16.  Dads’ American Radass (Broken World Media) – 8.858

17.  Pedals on our Pirate Ships’ A Place to Stay (Say 10) – 8.785

The EPs of 2012 were a spectacular list.   I bought 46 EPs released in 2012 and narrowing it down to my favorites proved to be an enjoyable challenge.   I decided to set the bar at an average song rating greater than 4.  This left off 8 other notable EPs that had average song rating of 4.   In a shorter format, I felt the higher average necessary otherwise a single great song could catapult an EP into this distinguishable class.

The other interesting thing about this list is the domination of bandcamp records.  I have never seen this level of domination before with 8 of the top 11 coming from a single group.   Bandcamp is not really a label and more of a store for self released albums.   So, i guess it makes sense that bandcamp is more popular for the the shorter format.

The list below is the top 11 (using my album formula for ranking), all worth buying…

1.  Marietta & Modern Baseball’s Couples Therapy (Bandcamp) – 9.773

2.  Prawn’s Ships (Topshelf) – 9.761

3.  Tony Clark’s As Dark As A Moonless Night (Bandcamp) – 9.758

4.  Big Awesome’s Birdfeeder (Bandcamp) – 9.708

5.  Our Sunday Affairs’ City of Dogs (Bandcamp) – 9.242

6.  Eric Ayotte’s Causality (Bandcamp) – 9.241

7.  Defiance, Ohio’s The Calling (Bandcamp) – 9.137

8.  Marietta’s Demos (Bandcamp) – 8.767

9.  Options’ Come Down (Bandcamp) – 8.617

10.  Empire, Empire (I Was A Lonely Estate) / Mountain For Clouds / Two Knights / Driving on City Sidewalks Split (Count Your Lucky Stars) – 8.293

11.  Spraynard’s Exton Square (Asian Man) – 7.990

The end of the year is upon us again.   I do love this time of year.   You get a moment to step away from the routine and think.   I like to remember the great times of the year, while setting strategy and objectives for the new year.

I also love using my downtime to listen to a lot of music.    It truly is a labor of love going through all the music of a particular year – remembering and enjoying the standouts, listening and rating the ones that were forgotten, and discovering some new ones along the way.  For me there is pleasure and comfort in creating a sense of order to the massive quantity of music and memories into a single artifact that i can use as a catalyst to recall the best moments of a particular span of time.

For those not initiated, my lists are always for the period two years ago.    I believe that favorite album compilations should lag by two years for two primary time constraining reasons:  to address the staying power of the album and to acquire a suitable number of fine albums.

2012 was a great year.  I bought 109 albums and 1583 songs from 2012.    While 1583 songs is a lot, 2012 is the only year in the 5 year span of 2009 – 2013 that I did not have 2000 songs.   That said still a lot of music to review and go through and I will spend the next week finishing the rating and selecting my tops from 2012.

Let me know your thoughts on the hits and misses.