Making end of year lists is tough, especially for us. No, hear us out – this isn’t just some sob story. Most of the bands we write about are just starting out, so haven’t had albums out yet – should they be lower down the list or even omitted because they haven’t put out a long player? And conversely what about the bands who have released an album – surely they shouldn’t be higher in the list by default. And what about the more established bands – should we be including them at the expense of smaller bands? And how are we going to get around the fact that bands with more recent release or live dates are nearer the front of our mind than those who put records out at the start of the year? It’s a metaphorical minefield, so our list is rather arbitrary. It could easily have been twice as long, and as usual we’ve gone for bands rather than tracks or albums to get around it. Here’s numbers 25 through to 11: Continue reading →