Okay. That time of year again, I guess. Time to don the tether line and hard hat and go rooting through the maze of overburdened, tottering stacks that comprise my music collection for my picks of the year's best. Sometime next week I'll have a crack at working out a top ten songs list, but I'll start with the easy bit today - the albums.

1. The Clockwork Dolls - Dramatis Personae
You know what I like? I like finding great new music. I spend half my net-surfing time searching through clips, reviews and videos for stuff to add to my ever-expanding music collection, and there's nothing better than stumbling upon something completely new and different and brilliant. So it was earlier this year when - while innocently googling Steampunk - I happened upon a clip of the Clockwork Dolls and was immediately blown away. An hour or so later, having exhausted YouTube's collection of clippery, I headed off and bought myself the album - and it's been in heavy rotation ever since. It's ambitious, beautifully arranged, the vocals are top-notch - and it's damn good fun, which is always a bonus. :-D
Top tracks: well, all of them - but Blades In Autumn, Impartial and Clockwork Maid in particular.

2. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
An obvious pick, perhaps, but regardless of the hype and expectation surrounding both band and album this year, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that this isn't Arcade Fire at their best. To my mind, it's very close to being a perfect rock album. Can't really say more than that.
Top tracks: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains); City With No Children

3. Janelle Monae - The Archandroid
It's an oddity for me to have what is - at it's heart - an R&B album on my top 10 list, but this is exceptional in virtually every sense. R&B may be Monae's starting point, but she's managed to mix in elements from almost every musical genre, and has done so seamlessly.
Top tracks: Tightrope; Cold War

4. Maximum Balloon - Maximum Balloon
Technically speaking – and that’s actually quite a good way of putting it – Maximum Balloon is the solo project of TV On The Radio’s David Sitek. In reality it's nothing of the sort: while Sitek produces and handles the arrangements, the vocal duties are shared around a number of artists, from TVOTR’s own Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe to Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and David Byrne of Talking Heads. The only missed beat comes with Byrne’s Apartment Wrestling, but that's most likely down to my own personal taste than any failing on the artist’s part, and taken as a whole the album is an excellent blend of disco-pop, electronica and 80s retro. I love it.
Top tracks: Tiger; Communion

5. Grinderman - Grinderman 2
This album has a little more polish than its raw, raucous predecessor, but don’t be fooled – this may be a prettier animal, but it’s just as dangerous. The band’s stall is set out with opening track Mickey Mouse & The Goodbye Man, with its galloping guitar riff and Cave’s growled vocals, and the eight songs that follow it showcase some of Cave’s darkest and occasionally filthiest lyrics (as evidenced on Worm Tamer: “my baby says I’m the Loch Ness monster; two great big humps and then I’m gone”). Palaces of Montezuma is probably the high point – assuming high isn’t a misnomer when you’ve got Cave singing gleefully about giving his baby “the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee”.
I love Nick Cave. I really, really love Nick Cave. :-D
Top tracks: Palaces of Montezuma; Mickey Mouse & The Goodbye Man

6. The Black Keys - Brothers
I’ve been a fan of The Black Keys’ blues-rock tunes for a while, but up until now they haven’t been a band I’ve gone out of my way for. I’ve heard plenty of their stuff – and liked it – but I didn’t have any of their albums and hadn’t really intended buying this one…and then I heard Everlasting Light on the radio and went racing to my PC with my brain chuntering “must have, must have, must have” at me as I did so. Now I’m wondering why I’d never thought of getting their stuff before. I’m told by those in the know that this isn’t their best album, but as far as I’m concerned that just means that the others must be absolute classics because this is really, really good. Proof if proof were needed that Jack White doesn’t have a monopoly on modern blues-rock.
Top tracks: Everlasting Light; Next Girl; Never Gonna Give You Up

7. Imelda May - Mayhem
I’ve already mentioned Imelda May once or twice on the blog, so it probably comes as no great surprise that Mayhem has made it onto this list. For those who haven’t been keeping up, May is an Irish rockabilly/blues/jazz singer with a terrific voice and a talent for putting together killer hooks. Her début album, Love Tattoo, was one of my finds of last year and this follow-up is as good if not better. I don’t think there’s been another album this year that has made me smile or had me dancing about like a loon the way this has: the title track is a cracker, and Inside Out, Psycho and Let Me Out are standouts, while slower numbers like Kentish Town Waltz and Too Sad To Cry provide some very nice moments of calm amongst the whirlwind.
Top tracks: Mayhem; Too Sad To Cry

8. Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart
I have a confession to make here. I love Black Mountain, but this album isn’t actually what I was hoping it would be. I bought it having heard one track, the psych-rock heavy Old Fangs, and assumed that this would be reflective of the album as a whole. It isn’t. There’s still a good portion of psychedelic stuff in there, but it’s not as prevalent as on either of their earlier albums. In its place is a real mix of rock stylings, from Zep-esque blues-rock to prog to metal: it’s an eclectic set, but it does at times feel as if the band are simply ticking items off a list. It's a little more restrained and much more commercially accessible than anything they've done before, but while it suffers a little as a result it's still pretty damn good.
Top Tracks: Old Fangs; Wilderness Heart

9. Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can
Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I like my folk music, whether it’s classics like Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Tom Paxton, or new upstarts like Marling, Alela Diane and Lisa Hannigan. There's just something about an acoustic guitar and a beautiful voice that does it for me, and this album ticks all the relevant boxes. It’s a richer and more consistent record than Marling's début and is also more slickly produced - which is kind of a shame, because that eradicates some of the rough edges that I liked from the first album. Even so, it has a very old-fashioned sound; it's very reminiscent of both Baez and Joni in places, and the songwriting – particularly on Hope In The Air – shows a real step up from the last album.
Top Tracks: Hope In The Air; Rambling Man

10. Wolf Parade - Expo 86
Like The Black Keys, Wolf Parade are a band whose music I'd heard and liked before this year, but I hadn't gone out of my way to pick up an album. I probably wouldn't have done so this year, had it not been for dear ol' Amazon offering me a free compilation CD from WP's home label SubPop. The compilation included a track - What Did My Lover Say? - from Expo 86, and pretty much as soon as I heard that song I knew I was going to have to buy the album. It's a terrific, hooky rock track, full of great guitar riffs, and it's pretty representative of the album as a whole. Yes, occasionally it's a little over-produced and there are a couple of misses in the 11 songs, but overall it's a really good, straightforward rock album.
Top tracks: What Did My Lover Say; Pobody's Nerfect; Cave-O-Sapien