Welcome to the fifth consecutive Best Albums of the Year countdown here at Hidden Track. Hopefully, you know by now that we pride ourselves on covering music that spans any genre, any age, any geography, and any instrumental makeup. To us, good music is good music. Period.

So, you can rest assured of the one thing that will always make our list a cut above the rest: we consider everything. Our submissions include all styles of music from bluegrass to jazz, jam to indie, electronica to rap, as well as everything in between. At the end of the day, we’re a diverse open-minded music blog. Our writers work here because they have great taste in music, and thus they are encouraged simply to write about what catches their interest. We have no motives, no editorial biases, and no strings attached. We hope that comes across in our picks.

We’ve hit the mid-point of our week-long countdown of the 25 best albums of 2012, let’s check out numbers 15 through 11…

15) Norah Jones – Little Broken Hearts

Key Tracks: Take It Back, Happy Pills, Miriam

Sounds Like: A modern day film noir soundtrack, Norah Jones’ heart breaking

The Skinny: Forget what you think you know about Norah Jones. Little Broken Hearts isn’t one for the suburban Starbucks soccer moms. Teaming with IT-producer Danger Mouse, and armed with a stack of deeply personal songs about a recent break up with her longtime boyfriend, Jones walked away with an sparse, dark and moody album that is full of devastating heart break. As the old expression goes “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” These are songs that cut deep, Jones pulls no punches wondering on She’s 22 “She 22 and she’s loving you, and you’ll never know how it makes me blue/Does she make you happy?”, while on Little Broken Hearts, proclaiming “Little broken hearts of the night/Slowly picking up their knives/On the way to the fight/Tonight they want revenge.”

- Jeffrey Greenblatt

• Previously On HT: #25 – #21, #20 – #16
• Spotify Playlist: Hidden Track’s 25 Best Albums Of 2012

14) Maps & Atlases – Beware & Be Grateful

READ ON

It being Friday, and just shy of half-way through the ninth month of the year, this morning I (@andykahn) decided on a whim to tweet out my Top 9 Albums of 2012 (so far). Along with the nine I chose, I also added a handful of, “Honorable Mentions,” that didn’t quite make the cut. With a quarter of the year left, 2012 has thus far proven to be another impressive year of album releases.

#9 album of 2012 (so far) @mapsnatlases “Beware and Be Grateful” http://t.co/5HDX8ZdH

Friday, September 14, 2012 12:31 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@andykahn

andykahn

#8 album of 2012 (so far) @liannelahavas “Is Your Love Big Enough?” http://t.co/Ktz2BZqr

Friday, September 14, 2012 1:16 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@andykahn

andykahn

READ ON

Back in 2009, the Dirty Projectors made scores of Best Of lists, including our own, with the quirky experimental art rock sounds of Bitte Orca, which we’d recommend if you’re a fan of the Talking Heads. On July 10, the Brooklyn-based band will release their long awaited follow up with Swing Lo Magellan, via the venerable indie label Domino Records. The 12-track affair, which was recorded at an old house in Delaware County, New York, and is being described as having a bit of a “stripped down” sound that you can hear on the album’s lead single Gun Has No Trigger. The band has lined up a two-month long summer tour in support of the record, which kicks off on July 5 with an appearance at the Ottawa Bluesfest, and includes a hometown gig at the Prospect Park Bandshell on July 10.

If you’re not into a night with the art-rock act, then maybe you’ll be interested in hitting one of these recently announced tours…

• Glen Hansard: Solo World Tour (5/3 – 12/4)
• Deer Tick: Spring North American Tour (4/19 – 6/17)
• Fiona Apple: Summer North American Tour (6/19 – 7/29)
• The Dandy Warhols: North American Tour (5/16 – 6/17)
  
• Matthew Sweet: The Girlfriend Tour (4/12 – 6/23)
• O.A.R.: Summer Tour (7/12 – 8/11)
• Meat Loaf: Mad, Mad World Tour (6/22 – 8/4)
• Pat Benatar/Journey/Loverboy: Summer Tour (7/21 – 10/31)

This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.

To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.

Let’s check out numbers 20 through 16 and see what made the cut…

20) Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

Key Tracks: Stillness Is The Move, Useful Chamber, Two Doves

Sounds Like: Art Rock for people that like Folk Rock, Talking Heads

Skinny: Is it possible that The Dirty Projectors made an art-rock jamband album? With just nine tracks, Bitte Orca covers a lot of ground with a handful of songs that wind their way past the five minute mark – employing schizophrenic twist and turns that include sharp tempo changes, odd time signatures and everything from hand claps to harpsichords. The band has also impressed the likes of David Byrne – who recorded a song with them for the Dark Was The Night compilation – and The Roots who jammed with them at show at Bowery Ballroom shortly after they appeared on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

READ ON for the next four albums in our week long countdown…

Dirty Projectors – Stillness Is The Move

A couple of months back, we told you about roots-jam-rockers Assembly Of Dust’s new guest-laden album Some Assembly Required which includes appearances from a who’s who of the jam scene. In anticipation of the album’s July 21 release the band is offering up select tracks from the album for free through July 14. All you need to do is head here, enter your email address and the songs are yours gratis, so what are you waiting for?

• List Time: 10 Most Underrated Fictional Bands
• Cheap Trick’s new album to be released on limited edition 8-Track
• Cover Alert: St. Vincent tackles The Beatles
• HAD shares a Ryan Adams’ demo – If I Am A Stranger
• Os Mutantes to record first new album in over 35 years
• TVOTR front man Kyp Malone to release a solo record this fall

Finally, earlier this week Scotty shared a fantastic live performance from Brooklyn indie-rockers Dirty Projectors. Today, we have some unfortunate news to share as the band was involved in an accident with their van earlier this week when it flipped over traveling from Michigan to Toronto. According to a blog post on their MySpace page no one was seriously injured in the crash, but it did force the band to cancel of a couple of their Canadian tour stops. We wish the band a speedy recovery and a quick return to the stage.