So, the end of the world year is here. On New Year’s Day, we’ll be struggling out of bed to post the wetly anticipated New Bands of The Year List, which will also be the end of this List Mentalism. So here’s the ANBAD Top Four Albums of the Year! Why Four? Because, that’s why.

Happily shrugging off fiendish attempts to be shoehorned into the mercifully brief Nu-Gaze ‘scene’, Saturdays=Youth instantly transports you back to your youthful summers when limbs were gangly, oily skin was a given and the opposite sex was so irresistible that even the most ham-fisted attempts at conversation were minor victories. Kim and Jessie is bold enough to utilise the 80’s synth-pop palette and, against the odds, create a song of soaring, simple, touching beauty. If you were ever young or shy or awkward or all three, you’ll go all doe-eyed and tongue-tied at this album.

We said: “The album where The Chip finally mutated into the acid house-rock monster that they always hinted at becoming. Their live act is in turns charming, banging and air-punchingly fabulous, and this album is where that live brilliance is equalled in the studio. Hot Chip are without pretence but are also full of humour and sincerity. They’re pretty much the New New Order, and that’s high praise.”

Frank Black only popped into the studio to record some B-sides, and yet whelped this ace mini-album. Full of the same cranky inventiveness that made the Pixies so stupidly great and also the rock anthem tricks that makes album climax When They Come To Murder Me the first song for a long time that made me go to the record shop the moment I heard it.

Because DLS V SP‘s album was greeted either bilious hatred or fawning praise – but nothing in between – it’s one of the stand out albums of the year. They must be doing something right to earn such polarity of opinions. Whatever you think of Scroobius Pip‘s voice, delivery or quasi-poetry-slam lyrics, it’s tough to argue with songs as catchy as The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Yes, sometimes it feel like we’re being preached at, but you don’t have to align your philosophy with everything that’s being said to appreciate it, do you? Or do you?