My list is literally just Tom Waits - Bad As Me (his best album for at least a decade) and Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow (she could have released an album of farts and I would have bought it but fortunately she released am album of stunning, pure beauty).

Here's to you - Songs for Shirley Horn by Terez Montcalm is probably my absolute favourite album of the year that isn't by one of the above two artists. She's amazing, her voice is every bit as powerful and soulful as Joplin's and she's one of the best contemporary jazz musicians working today, for my money.

I think PJ Harvey's Let England Shake is a sublimely written and produced album but, I don't know, it's a little it idiosyncratic and hard to listen to unless I'm really in the mood to listen to it. It occasionally gets played on my mp3 player if I'm taking a long walk somewhere but I usually go for something I'm more used to. It certainly deserved the Mercury prize though.

There isn't much else this year that I've heard that I've found truly amazing. Jonathon Coulton's Artificial Heart was brilliant in that very specific Jonathon Coulton way, possibly not something I'd put on a best of the year list. I really enjoyed A Very She & Him Christmas and I'd go as far as saying it's the best Christmas album of the last 20 years at least but that's not saying much really. Even though it didn't thrill me I'd probably include Elbow's Build A Rocket Boys in my list just because I'm a huge fan and they still drink in my local pub now and then. Wilco's The Whole Love was very good but hardly reached the heights they've hit before with previous albums.

Also, I really do not understand the big deal about Bon Iver. For years people have been telling me I will love him, I should check out such an album or such a song and every single time it just strikes me as the most boring, empty, pseudo-artistic nonsense I've heard. Just fairly pleasant noise and nothing more.