Leave it to 
I am possibly the biggest Mark Ronson fan at CJLO, in Montreal and maybe in Quebec. I admire his production, his albums and his own radio show has been influential on me this year. His playlists are practically musical treasure maps. One night while listening to his show, he mentioned a group and played one of their tracks. Being a disciple, I paid attention to the group name and the track. Months later, the "Girls & Weather" arrived at the station and it is fitting that I get to review The Rumble Strips' debut CD.
Common Existence finds New Jersey’s Thursday at a crossroads: having been ditched by major label Island after their less-than-stellar studio album (2006’s A City By The Light Divided) and ending back up on their former home Victory Records, the band released a b-sides/rarities compilation in late 2007 entitled Kill The House Lights, and then last year dropped an EP with Japanese band Envy.
With three previous studio albums already under their belts, Australian death metal giants Psycroptic released their fourth this year on Nuclear Blast Records to a fan base that had a pretty good idea of what to expect from them: extremely high caliber musicianship and a certain captivating energy that set the band apart from many of their less dynamic contemporaries.
I learned about The Knux weeks before their debut CD Remind Me in 3 Days was to be released in October 2008. 
“Hey, let’s do our Top Ten lists and post them on the website”. You figure that would be enough to send everyone scurrying to their keyboards and add to the avalanche of year-end lists that are fail-safe crowd favourites, if not the mark of lazy writing. So what happens when we’re too lazy to even do that? Well lure them with free alcohol. 
The thing with lists, especially year-end ones, is that they undercut the obsessive passion of the music lovers. There's no true way around it, as any discussion will eventually boil down to inane nitpicking. That's why CJLO, as a whole, does not have a Top Ten list based on votes or anything remotely objective. Instead, we're throwing together individual staff picks from our motley crew of DJs, not to represent anything else but their true love for this year's music (mostly).
Once again, CJLO grew this year and if anything, it grew even more diverse judging by the staff picks below. Besides perhaps Ghostface Killah's Fishscale and Return To Cookie Mountain by TV On The Radio, there weren't many albums that found themselves repeated often among the different lists. It's a testament both to the goldmine of releases this year and to the eclectic tastes of the boys and girls that entertain you night and day on the ol' dot com.
As expected, CJLO’s third annual Staff Picks is a mixed bag of musical goodies from across the map. So much so that out of the thirty-one DJs who submitted their lists, no two #1 albums were alike. Of course, several of the year’s powerhouse releases resonated with the staff. Radiohead’s In Rainbows reigned as the most popular album, with The White Stripes’ Icky Thump, The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and High On Fire’s Death Is This Communion not too far behind.
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