Don't Tase Me "Bros."

I can't believe it either

This is the modern equivalent of "Dewey Defeats Truman."

Other thoughts:

• Definitely the most obscure list I've seen yet (which will probably be much to Idolator's private delight, if still not immune from public snark); I had to check to see whether or not Pitchfork actually reviewed all of these albums, a distinction which used to belong to Stylus (R.I.P.).
  
• Only three dance-oriented albums, all of them predictable: The Field, Villalobos' Fabric mix, and Justice (seems a little high at 15). And no, I'm not counting Dan Deacon, who is a shit dog eating horror show with an incomprehensible Rasputin-like, no, Isiah-Thomas-on-Jim-Dolan-like hold on certain rock critics' ears.
  
• NO heavy metal albums whatsoever, not even a token Boris or Jesu record.
• Jay-Z's American Gangster is the best rap album of the year? Really? Don't get me wrong, I actually had it a spot higher on my list, but I also pegged it behind Kanye's Graduation and Lil Wayne's Da Drought 3.
• The National at 17. A lot of people had this pegged as a dark horse contender for no. 1; someone I know is shitting himself purple this morning.
• For a site that played it "cooler than thou" when it came to not including Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" - the runaway single of 2006 - on its songs list last year because it had been an ultra obscure white label in 2005, it sure was interesting that they included Sally Shapiro's 2006 singles comp this time around.
• Finally someone recognizes that Neon Bible was a middle of the pack record at best this year.
  
• Finally someone gives Of Montreal their proper due.
• If I'm going to have to choose between Patrick Wolf and Jens Lekman, I'm taking Patrick Wolf every single goddamned time.
  
• Between Panda Bear's Person Pitch shocker and Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam placing in the top ten, I would say that those guys are officially the indie rock Wu Tang Clan, especially since the real Wu Tang Clan placed much, much farther down the list.

Addenda:

• Notable new trend: the garage rock revival revival, with Black Lips' Good Bad Not Evil, King Kahn & the Shrines' What Is?!, Liars' Liars (fuck you I'm counting it), and 2007's most startling inclusion, The White Stripes' Icky Thump at no. 39 with a bullet. Sadly, the girl group revival Pitchfork has been grooming us to expect for a year or two now remains stalled with only the Pipettes (who, you ask?) and, uh, Grizzly Bear having made it past the beach.
• Notable omissions: it's always fun to see what was once "Best New Music" or "Recommended" but has since fallen by the wayside. This year Chromatics, Sunset Rubdown, Blitzen Trapper (yuck), and The Clientele all saw their stocks sag as the year wore on. More surprising exclusions are Besnard Lakes' Are the Dark Horse (8.2), Prodigy's Return of the Mac (8.5), A Sunny Day in Glasgow's Scribble Mural Comic Journal (8.0), and Gui Boratto's Chromophobia (8.3). The most telling/embarrassing snub, of course, would have to be A Place to Bury Strangers, whose self-titled debut landed 'BNM' and were being groomed in features as the site's next Clap Your Hands Say Yeah/Deerhunter indie svengali project. Yet even P'fork wised up, and seeing no one else on the train, ditched AP2BS with nary a peep; meanwhile, be on the look out for the Black Kids' debut LP sometime in 2008!
• The "Loved You in January, Forgot You By June Award" has to go to Menomena, whose Friend and Foe was declared by the site to be "the first great indie rock record of the new year"; evidently it was far from the last.
• The "Loved You in 2005, Forgot to Tip You at Starbucks in 2007" award, meanwhile, goes to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, whose self-released follow-up to their self-released debut (Radiohead...not invent...self-releasing of albums, you say?) sank with nary a trace in January: quick, see if you can name it!