Looking at the titles below, a few trends and commonalities emerge: the year really was one of guitar bands for me, as bland as that may sound.
While I toyed with, and indeed genuinely liked, many of the major pop, electronic, and hip-hop releases of the year (new albums from Caribou, Flying Lotus, Run the Jewels, or Aphex Twin for example), I found myself returning to the perhaps more straightforward and familiar world of guitar-driven indie.
Feeling unanchored, alone, and fragile, birthed into the years (decades?) between graduation and ''getting my life together'', I was looking to connect, trying to find something warm and real, and I found it resonating throughout all these records.
Next week, we'll turn the focus locally.
But first a disclaimer: music is an individual pleasure, therefore, all ''end of year'' and ''best of'' lists are bound to be a bit of a mess.
These are not necessarily the best records released in the year.
The list is more about me than anything else.
Of course, that isn't to say it shouldn't be taken as a recommendation: these after all, really are the best things I've heard all year.
PROTOMARTYR,
Under Color of Official Right
This album is a kind of confrontation: between vocalist Joe Casey and his bandmates, between the institution and the individual, even between good and evil.
A spacious and rhythmically driven take on post-punk, it's an oddly uplifting record given the band's dark timbre and lyrical subject matter.
Casey is a former doorman, and his monotone voice delivers bleak and worn ruminations, amid a beauty hail of chaos and fuzz.
A record as unassuming as it is powerful.
CLOUD NOTHINGS
Here and Nowhere Else
Sonically, this is one of the most cohesive albums I've ever heard.
It's as if the band set up their instruments, played the album in a single take, and then left it at that. It's an album in greyscale, pared down to the essentials of a great rock band.
Frontman Dylan Baldi is a strong songwriter, crafting hooky anthems big enough for stadiums, but open and exposed enough to still feel personal.
PARQUET COURTS
Sunbathing Animal
Following on from their break-through album, 2012's Light Up Gold, Americana punks Parquet Courts look to dodge their slacker image with a smart and sprawling classic rock record.
Lyrically utterly brilliant, and brimming with intent and nervy amphetamine energy, it's that wild mercury sound that Dylan was talking about.
The band play live at Port Chalmers Chick's Hotel in March.
SINGLE MOTHERS
Negative Qualities
To listen to Negative Qualities is to spend 24 minutes in the bitter and self-aware psyche of Drew Thompson.
Fronting a taut band of Canadian hardcore punks, Thompson shouts and screams his way across the riffs, all blasts of furious and potent bar poetry and universal kiss-offs.
Of course, most of the ''negative qualities'' in question seem to be Thompson's own, eviscerating himself at almost every opportunity.
FRANKIE COSMOS
Zentropy
Amateurish and charming, Zentropy is 10 songs in less than 20 minutes from 19-year-old Greta Kline.
Utilising the Spartan, wooden beauty of a band like Beat Happening, Kline deftly explores life, love, and death in earnest and personal detail.
She does a lot with very little, and leaves you thinking about the implications of a line like ''I'm bitter like olives, that's why you like them and I don't'', while its tuneful playfulness ensures it'll be with you for a long time to come.
SWANS
To Be Kind
Clocking in at just over two hours, noise behemoths Swans' 13th album is something of an ordeal.
The grooves and mantras drawn from psychotic funk and shamanistic blues are worn deep across its 10 pieces (the word ''song'' feels weirdly inappropriate) with a sonic lashing of fury from what, at times, sounds less like a band, and more like an army of belligerent and fragile gods.
Primordial, deranged, yet almost uncomfortably human, Swans are an experience to behold.
Burn Your Fire For No Witness
Angel Olsen's voice sounds like it's coming to you from a 78rpm, charged with an old, weathered pain: it's electric and gripping and the intensity never really lets off.
It's a slow, all-consuming burn as she wheels through blown-out cassette garage rock and arresting, acoustic folk-blues.
On Hi-Five she reaches out, giving you her heart, asking ''are you lonely too?''.
''Hi-Five'', she says.
''So am I.''
SPEEDY ORTIZ
Real Hair (EP)
The only true EP on this list, Real Hair picks up the snicker and snarl of Speedy Ortiz's debut album from 2013.
Sadie Dupuis' mouth is still a spew of toxic and poetic speech, and her distorted and sludgy guitar is still unpredictable and dexterous.
Lead single Everything's Bigger contains some of the year's most quotable couplets.
MERCHANDISE
After The End
On their first full-length for label 4AD, Tampa post-punks Merchandise shifted from noisy, kraut pop to something grander and far more romantic.
After The End is a levelling experience. It's lush, majestic and almost painfully gorgeous. Life defining.
RADIATOR HOSPITAL
Torch Song
Heartfelt and alive, Torch Song, is a record about what happened in the outside world while you were busy dreaming.
It's not an idealistic album, or a happy one; though the euphoric release of Sam Cook-Parrott's DIY punk-pop songwriting might fool you into thinking it is.
Crying to Fireworks is the new black.
