Every year, I design what ends up being a 6-cd best-of-the-previous-year mix. I have several friends who want all six, others who like to receive samplings therefrom. I design one set in February, another in the fall (giving me further time to explore). I’m told, and choose to believe, that I’m very good with track-to-track flow, so in this era of things like Spotify and Rhapsody playlists, I figured I might as well share with you the fourth through sixth tracklists for 2012 in case you want copies (if I know you) or just were curious and wanted to play with these a bit.

Discs one through three are here; they mostly focus on my 50 Favorite Albums of 2012 list. This set — aside from giving second samples of eleven particular favorite albums, and first samples of late insertions onto that list — is more a tribute to individual songs.

Noisy Up There, Where the Blind Lead the Blind

  1. Killers, Runaways
  2. Au, Solid Gold
  3. People Get Ready, Orange Grove
  4. Decomposure, Oh Brother
  5. Ned Collette + Wirewalker, il Futuro Fantastico
  6. Tic Tic Boom!, For Feeling
  7. Chairlift, I Belong in Your Arms
  8. Magnetic Fields, God Wants Us to Wait
  9. Heems, Womyn
  10. Roomful of Teeth, Quizassa
  11. Viv Albertine, Confessions of a MILF
  12. Alt-J, Fitzpleasure
  13. David Ramos, Digital Memory
  14. Agony Family, There Again
  15. Ben Folds Five, the Sound of the Life of the Mind
  16. Phedre, In Decay
  17. Darlingside, Still
  18. First Aid Kit, the Lion’s Roar
  19. Standard Fare, Kicking Puddles
  20. Gabriel and the Hounds, the World Unfolds
  21. Verlaines, What Sound is This?

Goddamned Believers

  1. Eliza Rickman, White Words
  2. iamthemorning, Monsters
  3. Aesop Rock, Crows 1
  4. Billy Woods, the Man Who Would Be King
  5. David Byrne & St. Vincent, I Should Watch TV
  6. Ab-Soul & Danny Brown, Terrorist Threats
  7. Clock Opera, a Piece of String
  8. It Bites, Meadow and the Stream
  9. Sigh, l’Excommunication a Minuit
  10. Between the Buried and Me, Bloom
  11. Future of the Left, Notes on Achieving Orbit
  12. Diablo Swing Orchestra, Mass Rapture
  13. Thumpermonkey, Wheezyboy
  14. Extra Life, First Song
  15. Serj Tankian, Forget Me Knot
  16. Cold Specks, Blank Maps
  17. Why?, For Someone
  18. Cadence Weapon, You Can’t Stop the Machine
  19. Flobots, Stop the Apocalypse

Stop Pretending Art is Hard

  1. Emilie Autumn, Fight Like a Girl
  2. Bryan Scary, You Might Be Caught in Tarantella
  3. the Fixx, Girl with No Ceiling
  4. ECID, Back from Japan
  5. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Thrift Shop
  6. Jim’s Big Ego, 404 Blues
  7. Artichoke, the Market of Farms
  8. James Rabbit, Sing Low
  9. Cosmo Jarvis, Sunshine
  10. Taylor Swift, We are Never Ever Getting Back Together
  11. Amanda Palmer, Ukelele Anthem
  12. Phoebe Kreutz, the Day the Basement Flooded
  13. BidiniBand, Big Men Go Fast on the Water
  14. Jed Davis, I Hear an Echo
  15. Metric, Clone 
  16. Busdriver, Kiss Me Back to Life
  17. Zammuto, F U C3PO
  18. Hundred Waters, Theia
  19. ChauCoco!, Nada Mas
  20. Kaipa, Vittjar
  21. Pepe Deluxe, Riders of the First Ark

– Brian Block