As I’m fond of telling anyone who’ll listen (over and over and over again), I graduated from Bible College. No good Bible College education is complete without a full mastery of prophecy. So why wonder what the new year is going to bring? I can tell you straight out. After the jump: I predict the [...]

A real heavyweight available in the US today: Omaha mega-indie Saddle Creek. It’s not all the titles, but just about all of the frontline names: Bright Eyes, The Faint, Cursive, Rilo Kiley, Tokyo Police Club. A quick rundown of the goods, and some nerdy reminiscing, after the jump.

It’s been up over the weekend, so I’m sure quite a few of you have already seen what came out of our member (hi Tim) poll of favorite, underrated and overrated artists and albums. The real treat? Bon Iver is apparently all three, and indeed there was a lot of crossover between all three results. [...]

I took a quick break from counting down the best albums of 2008 by putting together a holiday-themed mix this week. The show starts off with a handful of recent favorites — great tracks I have stumbled across — and then moves into an 80-minute DJ mix of pop songs and holiday songs and some [...]

In the midst of our frantic polling, I wanted to give a quick shout-out about a record I highly recommend: the second outing from Icelandic faves (and eMusic Selects alum) Sprengjuhollin. The first record was a ramrodding mod masterpiece, but this one is bigger and grander and more ambitious. There are moments of jaw-dropping beauty [...]

Ezra Koenig at age seven And then it was all over except the shouting. The Top Ten: 10. Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line 09. Santogold – Santogold 08. The Walkmen – You & Me 07. My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges 06. Deerhunter – Microcastle 05. Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight [...]

The conclusion below the cut!

For perhaps the first time in a long time, I didn’t really obsess over compiling my year-end Top 20 this year. There are a number of reasons for this — I felt like most of my choices were pretty well-represented by the eMusic list, and I felt like every other year-end albums poll was declining [...]

We want you to know the full results almost as bad as this kid wants this cake Okay, did I say we would “crack” the Top Ten today? Oops, I meant we would “APPROACH” it, “CIRCLE TANTALIZINGLY OUTSIDE ITS BORDERS,” “HOVER IN AGONIZING ANTICIPATION ON ITS BRINK.” What we have for you, instead, is #19-11: [...]

(image by foodistablog) A few notable titles in today’s New Arrivals, so let the rundown begin!

This was one of the results of a Google Image search for “Thievery Corporation” The march continues! Here are today’s albums: 39. Deerhoof – Offend Maggie 38. Cold War Kids – Loyalty to Loyalty 37. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles 36. Various Artists – Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-76 35. Plants [...]

The Users’ Poll countdown continues! First, I just wanted to say that rifling through the comments so many users included with their polls was awesome and enlightening. Picking comments like this one (about Spiritualized): “I saw them live at ACL and rocked out literally so hard I threw up my hands during their last song [...]

As a flurry of music best-of lists are slowly unveiled on eMusic throughout December, I figured I’d throw my book picks at you today in one swoop. You can find the complete list of 21 titles here. It seems that my philosophy about what makes for a good audiobook has changed over the course of [...]

Today we begin unveiling the user poll results, and here’s our first batch of records: 100 Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill 99 Port O’Brien, All We Could Do Was Sing 98 Jason Collett, Here’s to Being Here 97 The Whigs, Mission Control 96 Passion Pit, Chunk of Change EP 95 Stereolab, Chemical [...]

The countdown continues today, with more music from our list of the 88 best albums of the year. This week we get up to #35. For an MP3 of the show, right click

Earlier folks asked the process by which we decided this year’s list. Above you see the evidence of our very first session. As you can see, some things changed, but that was it!

As many of you know, eMusic’s champion designer/resident rock critic Amishi moved back to India in October. None of us were happy about this, and we miss getting our daily insight/insult from the far corner of the office. When we started putting together our list of the Best Albums of 2008, one thing was clear [...]

05 Various Artists, Miles From India: We almost forgot about this record. Earlier this year, Miles From India hit the site, and everyone got really excited. What a fun concept, and it’s done well! But then it got taken down just as quickly, and it vanished from our memory. Well, it came back, of course, [...]

I can’t start making a habit of being so tardy with these things! Sorry for the lateness, but here’s the rundown of what got played on our East Village Radio show last week. These artists should look familiar, as we’re counting down the best albums of the year by playing a track from each selection. [...]

Before we get to tomorrow’s Top Five unveiling, I wanted to share a quick run of stats in terms of what kind of records make up this list. Here’s the breakdown: 36 Indie (Indie here meaning basically stuff Pitchfork would review) 10 Electronic 9 Classical 7 Jazz 7 Rock 5 Hip-Hop 5 World Music 4 [...]