If we're being honest--provided you wanted me to, as usual, give you a frank account of where we agree and differ--I have to say that this mix is comprised almost entirely of bands that I once loved but that have, for one reason or another, fallen from the "top priority" shelf of my music listening over the past couple of years. It's actually uncannily that way, as that specific list is quite large--New Pornographers, Bright Eyes, Fountains of Wayne, Apples in Stereo, Ryan Adams, and the Thrills; as such, I haven't listened to any of their releases for this year, despite the fact that I probably have copies somewhere of most of those. On a slightly different note, I tried and tried at different points to care one way or the other about Rilo Kiley, Golden Smog, Editors, Feist and Interpol, but none of those bands ever inspired any kind of reaction from me with past work... okay, Interpol and the Editors inspired more of a negative than positive reaction...). And, in the last category, there are two bands here that I love--Wilco, the Shins and the Hold Steady--who, IMHO, all released seriously sub-par albums the last time around, and the latter, at least, are probably about to fall into the first category listed above. You did pick favorite songs of mine from both the Shins and Wilco albums, despite what I just said. The rest of the bands/songs here are unfamiliar to me, so I can't say much about them. :-)
