Born in the Rocket State: Lifeline: Top 10

I thought about the "new traditions" topic all day - actually, I've thought about for days (as one of the organizers of Think Kit, I know all the topics in advance). And I simply could not come up with a good answer to the prompt, so I decided to go with a lifeline: "What are your top 10 favorite things from 2012?"

And I'm going to stretch that a little to be my favorite 10 new albums that came out this year, instead of just 10 "things." And to do an even worse job of following the rules, it's gonna have to be a top 20 instead. I hope this is acceptable to the ThinkKit world, but even if it isn't, I'd do it soon enough anyway... I am not including Indiana bands (many of whom made my actual favorite albums of the year), because I'm going to publish a longer list of my favorite Indiana-related releases from 2012 at MFT in a few days.

It feels like a lot of my peers have already started listing their favorites (not to mention plenty of online publications), and I don't want to wait too long to list mine so I can avoid being too influenced by all the other year-end lists. Admittedly, I haven't even heard some of the most acclaimed albums this year, because I'm constantly behind the times. So sorry if you don't see one of your faves; I probably didn't hear it! And as much as I would enjoy commenting on each one of these, I'm low on time tonight, and I think there are plenty of other music hacks like me who have expressed these albums' strengths much more effectively than I could. Still, if there's something here you haven't checked out yet, I hope I can influence you to give it a shot!

So without further ado (and with full recognition that I will probably want to edit this right after I post it - wonder if I can restrain myself?!), here are my favorite non-Indiana albums of 2012. I'm not sure if the rankings will stay accurate for long, because they fluctuate... Anyway, I really liked these:

1. Tame Impala - Lonerism