Nick Hornby -esque post

In the spirit of Nick Hornby's column "Stuff I've Been Reading", I'd like to occasionally add "music I intend to listen to" to "music I'm listening to" . So here's my current intentional list:

The National
Of Montreal
The Liars
Bon Iver
Band of Horses

Though I've listened to these artists, I've never heard their albums in their entirety:

Feist
Lily Allen
Amy Winehouse

Here are albums I bought in 2007/early 2008 and my short reviews (further evidence to my claim that I've been ignoring new good music for the past few years):

Aqualung - Memory Man
British poppy goodness. "Garden of Love" makes me tear up every time.

Arcade Fire's - Neon Bible
One of my favorite road trip albums. They performed a great show at the Orpheum.

Common - Finding Forever
Nice to see Common without Kanye. Also kind of missed Kanye, considering how much I prefer "Be" to "Finding Forever". Common was great in concert, though Q-Tip, his opening act, stole the show. Q-Tip has an incredible amount of energy, and his songs never go out of style.

Dashboard Confessional - The Shade of Poison Trees
Chris Carrabba is getting soft. Ha! That assessment works both ironically and non-ironically. After multiple listenings, this album grew on me--especially the slower ephemeral stuff. He writes a hilariously pretentious song called "Matters of Blood and Connection" about trustafarians. It's so bad, I could have written it. I also saw him in concert in 2007--what a gracious and talented person. The best part was saying to people at the bar, "I am WAY too old to be at this concert." All of us over 21 agreed.

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Awesome, as expected. Surprisingly upbeat.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Listening to this album inspired me to get hipper to new music.

The Bravery - The Sun and the Moon
Ditto.

Vega 4 - You and Others
British poppy goodness. Like Aqualung and Snow Patrol.

Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams
I believe my love of the Wu has already been established.

[Editor's note: I forgot Lupe Fiasco's "The Cool". Like Common, I prefer the first album. But bonus points for Kadeem Hardison, AKA, Dwayne Wayne, playing the character of the Cool on the album. We also saw Lupe in concert (man, we saw a lot of shows this past year).]

[2nd Editor's note: I was wrong about Common. Kanye West produced both "Be" and "Finding Forever", so I can't use Kanye to explain my preference.]