These 10 albums are gonna fare well on end-of-year lists.

Time for the end-of-year razzmatazz, where everyone's trying to sum up everything from the past year, the most prolific being the album-of-the-year lists, that are gonna spring from every a music media soon. I'm not gonna do one myself, as I don't have near wide enough a span on different genres to be able to make sense. I decided it would be fun however, to try and guess which albums are gonna be recurring fixtures high on these lists. So I did a bit of researching and analysis, and these are ten albums you're definitely gonna see a lot of the next month!

The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe.
Monáe's debut project, The ArchAndroid has been one of the highest scoring albums on Metacritic this year, and she's gonna be a pretty surefire fixture in most of the lists. She widens the musical spectrum slightly in terms of genres, hear cinematically oriented approach is something new, and she scores highly on a variety of different media on both sides of the pond.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West.
It's gonna be quite a feat to get a 10.0 mark in Pitchfork, and not appear right atop the benchmark magazine's end-of-year list, and near the top of loads others. Even if Kanye's new album is so great it transcends genre-preferences, some of the holier indie-media are bound to keep him off their lists, but he sure is gonna be on a lot of them. Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Kanye might be a curious match, but fact is they do hang out quite a lot together, and they probably smoke a lot of really high class grass. And they collaborated on this tune, which is mindblowing!

The Suburbs by Arcade Fire.
Alright, finally into my own territory here. The Suburbs is nothing less impressive than a third sublime album coming off two equally extraordinary ones. It really has legs, and I think it's only just starting to grow a lot of people (myself included). Arcade Fire are reviewers' darlings like few others, but the hype surrounding The Suburbs is well deserved, and it's gonna be near the very top of many, many lists.

Halcyon Digest by Deerhunter.
Deerhunter has a sound that usually doesn't fare well in British media, but when they get a Metacritic score of 80 from reviewers such as NME, The Guardian, Q and Drowned In Sound, you know they've got something going for them. On Pitchfork this is a surefire top 10 record.

Swim by Caribou.
Dan Snaith of Caribou has been here, there and everywhere this year, doing a lot of remixes, and of course releasing his followup to Polaris Prize-winning Andorra of 2008, and although Pantha du Prince, Crystal Castles and Delorean have made waves as well, Swim is probably gonna be deemed top of the crop on the independent, electronic scene this year by many.

The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens.
Sufjan Stevens sure is a wacko, but he's a pretty damn safe bet for a critic's choice in alternative music. The moniker 'Pitchfork music' is pretty fitting for Stevens' quirky but very talented antics. The NME hasn't even reviewed this, and it's definitely gonna fare much higher on American lists than on British ones.

Plastic Beach by Gorillaz.
Unless you want to be alternative and undergroundly just for the sake of it, Plastic Beach is pretty damn hard to avoid. In the year when Albarn and co. all but discarded their cartoony aliases completely, they also released their musically most interesting album to date, spanning genres far and wide. Amidst the identity crisis of British indie, Gorillaz are the sole UK act on this list.

Teen Dream by Beach House.
Bridging the gap between the indie-folk wave of 2008 and '09 and the chillwave-lo-fi craze of 2010 is Beach House, who are neither from Seattle nor from California, but from the East Coast. Less self-aware than Californian-turned-Brooklyner trends and trendsetters, Teen Dream became one of the unifying indie records of 2010.

Clinging To A Scheme by The Radio Dept..
Quietly clinging, perhaps not to a scheme, but to their own little department of hazily electro-indulged indie-pop, The Radio Dept. will be a welcome addition and counterpoint to the many big movements of some of the other artists, with whom they're presumably gonna share space on the end-of-year lists. One of my personal favorite albums of this year, I think its unambitious but melodic demeanor appeals to many a critic and listener alike.

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty by Big Boi.
Alright, so I don't know a thing about this album, but this is the debut album by Big Boi, who came within striking distance to numerous album-of-the-decade recognitions with Outkast a year ago, and reviews for this album have been strong across the board.


Other albums I considered and researched on were:
Before Today by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti.
This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem.
Treats by Sleigh Bells.
High Violet by The National.
Black Noise by Pantha du Prince.
Lisbon by The Walkmen.
The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth.
Total Life Forever by Foals.
Crazy For You by Best Coast.
Body Talk by Robyn.
Dark Night of the Soul by Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse.
Acolyte by Delphic.
Gorilla Manor by Local Natives.
Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles.
Heartland by Owen Pallett.
Love Remains by How To Dress Well.
Subiza by Delorean.
InnerSpeaker by Tame Impala.