another couple months have passed by, so it’s time to once again bring you two in review. i’ve talked before about how music tends to come in waves. 2012 has begun with a wave that hasn’t crested. the last couple months have produced an incredible amount of great music. the bad news is that has forced me to leave a lot of great music off this list. the potential good news (i say potential because i might not have time to do it) is that i’m considering creating a b-sides styles mix of the stuff that didn’t make this mix. so, i hope you enjoy.

here’s the lineup for the march/april edition of two in review:

i recently began a new blog series called ’10 spot’ in which i’d be crafting lists of the top 10 songs from artists of my choosing. here’s a little back story about how this began from my original post:

several weeks ago, brandi carlile announced she’d be releasing her 4th (studio) album, bear creek, on june 5. last summer, while seeing her in kansas city, i grabbed a live recording of raise hell, a track that will be included on the new release. while that was a bit of a tease of her new work, we now have something much better.

several weeks ago, my friend bryan stormed (when large men walk briskly, the term “stormed” is usually appropriate…) into my office and laid down a musical challenge: “top 10 black keys songs by the end of the day. go!”.

so, throughout the course of the day, i whittled down my original off-the-top-of-my-head list of about 32 to my final 10. at the end of the day, we compared and contrasted our lists. (bryan’s is here.)

and, of course, good times were had by all.

another couple months have passed by, so it’s time to once again bring you two in review. music tends to come in waves and the last couple months have been a big wave. this list could’ve easily been double (or more) the lengh. in other words, a lot of good music has been left off. the good part about that is that i think this mix is particularly good, with new music ranging from solo work from jack white to kid cudi’s new rock project to an amazing collaboration featuring the best half of outkast.

here’s the lineup for the first edition of 2012:

a couple months ago, just after the recording academy announced their 54th annual grammy nominees, i blogged my predictions. those are set to air tonight and i thought just prior to the ceremony, i’d repost this to serve as a guide of just how wrong i’ll likely be.

here’s what i predicted in december.

2011 was a good year for music. not necessarily a great year, but certainly a good year for music. it featured quite a few surprises and new discoveries and also had its fair share of albums that were highly anticipated. personally, i haven’t anticipated albums as much as i did elbow’s build a rocket boys and kanye/jay-z’s watch the throne (among others) in quite some time.

much the same as last year, there’s a handful of albums that i expect to be great albums. and while it’s always dangerous to inflate expectations to non-attainable levels, i’ve narrowed down a list of nearly 50 albums to 12 that i am eagerly anticipating this year.

i’ve broken down the list into 2 categories: confirmed (or as close to confirmed as possible) and i’m-not-holding-my-breath-but-this-rumor-is-worth-believing. first, the confirmed albums: