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In fact, yes, I did put this off so long that it's two weeks late. You'll have to excuse me, I have been somewhat distracted with the

In only approximate order of favoriteness, here is my year-end wrap-up. As in previous years, a few of the entries on the following list were released earlier than 2008, but that is when I discovered them, so I'm allowing a little slack (but less slack than in previous years!) In 2008, I acquired roughly the same amount of new music as I did last year, but this year a lot more of it was recently-released: roughly 230 new releases and 100ish old ones.

I think all of these bands have made appearances on the jwz mixtapes this year.

I spent a week trying to write a couple of sentences about each of these telling you why you should listen to them, like I did in each of the last seven years (!!) but you know what? That's a pain in the ass, and I'm not really very good at writing about music. I'm not convinced any of you read this crap anyway. So, instead, here's a list of roughly forty albums that were released roughly last year that you should listen to because I loved them and you trust me.

I feel a little bad about doing it this way, because I know that when I come across someone's un-annotated list of favorite music, even I am less likely to click the links, and I'm a near-pathologically compulsive seeker of new music. But, if you've been listening to my mixtapes, you know what kind of things I like, and you've already heard all of these anyway.

Here, then, is the new.