by SHANE SINNOTT

The best-of-the-decade music lists, which were just starting to appear when I last wrote this column, are coming in earnest now. Rolling Stone, which isn’t really important anymore—but hey, why not?—is hyping up its list big-time over here: bit.ly/4MJQ3l. You can watch some “behind the scenes” videos of the making of the list, the editorial meetings involved etc. They do the Top 100 albums and 100 songs, and to spoil it for you, Radiohead’s Kid A is the #1 album, and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” is the best song. Both were chosen supposedly because they “represented the times.” Full album list at bit.ly/5mLL49. For a list way more oriented to Canada (and Montreal), try bit.ly/8bKxLS. Guy puts Wolf Parade’s Apologies to the Queen Mary as the best album of the decade, which at first I thought was crazy, but the idea’s grown on me, and continues to. Download the album here for a reminder: bit.ly/5A0UuY.

The inexplicably un-hassled Bolachas Grátis blog, offering full album downloads of new stuff, has moved itself over to bolachas.org. It continues to be one of the best sources for new music online—look at this posting, bit.ly/6XXRpd, for an advance listen to the much-ballyhooed Yeasayer album coming out in 2010, called Odd Blood, which lives up to the two magic words most often associated with the band, experimental and psychedelic. If you want to pay for your music instead, and support a more or less good cause, you should visit Amnesty International’s U.K. site (bit.ly/8HatLo). Portishead have recorded a brand new benefit song that you can buy (or listen to for free).

And if you find yourself suffering through the regular Christmas drivel, music-wise, remind yourself that Phil Spector’s Christmas album still exists. It’s like honey to the ears—only a barbarian would argue that Christmas music by the Ronettes or the Crystals could be bad, right? To get it, read through this guy’s awful list of Christmas albums he owns (and provides download links to) at bit.ly/76G7sT until you get to the Spector album a third of the way down. Fun fact: the record was released the day Kennedy was assassinated.