I don’t really feel qualified to do a “Best of” list for the year, because I simply haven’t listened to enough of the year’s new releases, not even enough of the new releases that I was planning to listen to.
That said, it was a pretty good year for me with regards to music, since — after a couple years of not paying all that much attention — I started to much more actively seek out new music, and found a lot of stuff that I’d been missing out on the past few years. So, here’s an incomplete list of stuff that I really got into this year:
Swinging Popsicle
Swinging Popsicle — I’ve written so much about this Japanese indie pop band on this blog, I don’t really feel there’s much point in writing anything more right now. But they’re definitely my favorite of the bands listed here. MySpace.
Asobi Seksu — Another band I’ve written a lot about on this blog. I’ve been listening to tons of shoegaze records this year, and Asobi Seksu is the best of the new wave of bands that I’ve heard. MySpace.
Club 8
Club 8 — A band I really should have checked out years ago, as their name pops up a lot in the same sentence as personal fave Saint Etienne. Melancholy Swedish pop duo, who periodically augment their lush pop with elements of electronica, bossa nova, and 60′s pop. MySpace.
Panda Riot — After stumbling on this band back in September, I finally picked up their debut album a few weeks ago, and it’s fantastic. Another really great modern shoegaze band. MySpace.
The Charade
Luminous Orange – Although I have two solid albums by this Japanese shoegaze band, Luminous Orange is really on this list because of one song, ”Sakura Swirl”, an absolutely brilliant and hypnotic track full of mysterious glitchy electronic bleeps. MySpace.
Piana — Minimalist, ethereal pop from Japan, with hints of electronica. Absolutely beautiful. MySpace.
The Charade — More Swedish guitar pop. I wrote briefly about their great song “Monday Morning” here. It’s still the best thing on the album, but the rest of the album is pretty great, too. MySpace.
— Though they’ve only been mentioned in passing on this blog, I was a huge Church fan in my late teens (they were pretty much my Beatles until I belatedly got into the Beatles in the mid-90′s), and I’ve generally kept up with them since. This 2005 release contains acoustic re-recordings of nine songs from their back catalog (ranging their entire career, from “The Unguarded Moment” to “Chromium”) and five new ones. I have a hard time believing that they could improve on the original version of “Almost With You”, but I’m willing to give it a shot.
contains three of the four tracks off this EP, so I thought I’d pick up the missing one.
– I wrote a bit about this indie shoegaze band back 
