"appetites," les savy fav (listen) - i've lived in brooklyn for almost a decade now & in my time here, brooklyn's les savy fav has been one of the mainstays on the indie rock scene, consistently putting together a wildly sweaty live show. still, during that time they've only put out three albums of spazzy indie rock, including this year's root for ruin, their fifth studio album overall. the opening track, "appetites," kicks off the album with an upbeat, dirty feel, including lines like "show us your teeth & show us your tits & show us the scars from the shit that you did" & "we've no shame and we've no pride and we've got nothing left to hide, cause we’ve got nothing left inside" that encapsulate this dirty feel perfectly. in the spirit of les savy fav lead singer tim harrington, it makes me want to take off my shirt & show off my belly as i wildly dance about my apartment. that's a good thing, right?

"twin flames," klaxons (listen & watch) - if there's one thing i can say for "twin flames," off of surfing the void, klaxons' second album, the video for the song is a shoo-in for creepiest pornographic video of the year (TOTALLY NSFW) at this year's MTV video music awards. if there's another thing that i can say about the song, it's that it's rocking & slightly-dancey & slightly-spacey & it was the first time i actually fell for a song by these guys. it's got great guitar, multiple singers trading off lines & pounding drums. i saw them play a show in willyburg a few months back & went in thinking "these guys are aight." i left thinking "day-yam those guys know how to bring the rock...also the strobe lights." also, they sure know how to make an album cover.

"ready to start," arcade fire (listen & watch) - after the first two albums from montreal's arcade fire garnered a ridiculous amount of critical acclaim, this past august they released their third album, the suburbs, and it came out at #1, a rare feat for an indie album. as with their previous albums, it's based on a loose theme, one of suburbia & childhood vs adulthood & the political climate & a bunch of other stuff. the second song on the album, "ready to start," is the one that really kicks the album into gear, opening with the awesometastic line "businessmen are drinking my blood like the kids in art school said they would." when i first saw them play this song on the daily show (the above "listen" link) it blew me away & it still has the same effect every time i hear it. like with most arcade fire songs, eventually i'll overplay it & get sick of it, but for now...BAM.

"there are listed buildings," los campesinos! (listen & watch) - i love los campesinos! i love their scottish accents. i love their mopey, clever lyrics. i love the fact that every band member uses the surname "campesino!" all with an exclamation point & stuff. i caught them at music hall of williamsburg a few months back & it was by far the best concert i saw all year long, with seven campesinos! on stage playing one anthemic song after another. "there are listed buildings," the second song on the album, has a happy "ba-ba" opening & a sweet bass line & that aforementioned anthemic feel & a chorus featuring the wry line "i think i'd do it for love if it were not for the money." basically, it has everything in it that's good about los campesinos! they've been quite prolific thus far, putting out three albums over the last three years, so here's to hoping there's more to come in 2011.

"post acid," wavves (listen & watch) - san diego's wavves are one of those bands that i was totally ready to write off as a one-album fad after last year's debut album, wavvves, which featured my #4 track of 2009. by mid-year, they'd put out their second album, king of the beach, and it had become one of my top five albums & now that we're at the end of the year, the song that i suggested from the album, "post acid," is my #5 track of 2010. it's a two-minute, punky, sorta-surf rock song that comes in halfway through the album with a barrage of drums & guitar & the chorus "i'm just having fun with you." it's playful & rocking & makes me happy enough to want to jump on my skateboard & go get a big gulp & head down to the tracks to throw rocks at trains or something.

"hurricane j," the hold steady (listen) - the hold steady's been over-compared to bruce springsteen, as they both have a catalog filled with what are essentially bar band songs about people living lives with highs & lows & fits of uncertainty. over the hold steady's first few albums, i bought into the comparison. this may, when they released heaven is whenever, the comparison was still vaild, but i really didn't get into the album as a whole. the song "hurricane j" kept finding its way back to my ears all year long though. they throw you into the song with a quick paced intro & a story of a guy & a girl & feelings of uncertainty like "you know i'd never ask you to change, i'd only ask you to try." so yeah, the album as a whole is super meh, but this track is three minutes of awesomeness.

"runaway," kanye west (listen & watch) - oh kanye west...you're like an entertainer wrapped in a musician wrapped in an artist wrapped in a producer wrapped in an asshole wrapped in an enigma. after a year where you acted a fool for much of the year, you returned with an album that, with a couple snags, ruled from beginning to end. my fave track on the album is DEF "runaway." fo sho. clocking in at just over nine minutes, it's pretty much the most artsy & ambitious hip hop track i've ever heard. i mean, you made a 34-minute video for it (which i haven't watched, btw)! that's artsy. after seeing you do an abbreviated version of it on SNL back in october, where you performed with dancers behind you, all in front of a stark white background, i was blown away & from that point on got into a number of arguments with folks about how your artistic merit could be looked at separately from your oft-abrasive personality. every time, we had to agree to disagree. the way i see it, if you keep making songs like "runaway," i wouldn't care if you slapped betty white on national tv. seriously, don't do that though.

"home," lcd soundsystem (listen & watch) - ya ever seem to have one of those days where everyone's on your case from your teacher all the way down to your best girlfriend? well you know, i used to have those just about all the time, but i found a way to get out of it. let me tell ya bout..."home," the final track from this is happening, the new album from nyc's lcd soundsytem. it's the third & supposedly final album from james murphy, who constructs amazing electronic dance rock songs & then recreates them with the live lcd soundsystem band. if it is their last album & "home" is the final song on their last album, good on em. it's a rad way to go out, a song that bounces along happily while telling a story of bad times & good times in this bitter city. on many occasions this year, it was the song in my headphones that snapped me out of being all nyc sad & stuff. i could use more songs like this, to be honest.

"a more perfect union," titus andronicus (listen) - coming in at #2 is titus andronicus, a new jersey band who released their second studio album, the monitor, this past march. personally, i didn't get around to hearing it until mid-december, but when i did it friggin blew me away right from the opening track, "a more perfect union." it easily could have been my #1 song of the year, but i couldn't in good conscience give that rank to a song i've only known for a few weeks. it opens with part of abe lincoln's lyceum address & then brings the rock, tearing along for seven minutes with lyrical references to the garden state parkway, the fung wah bus, the fenway, the newark bears, "born to run," routes 17 & 84, the merritt parkway, somerville, cruel new england winters & zip code 02143, all sung by lead singer patrick stickles, who sounds like a desaparecidos-era conor oberst. it's a kickass start to a kickass album.

"my gap feels weird," superchunk (listen) - just last year, i discovered superchunk, a band that has been around for almost two decades & fell in love with them. it was perfect timing, as this year they returned with majesty shredding, their first album in nine years. it features an updated version of "learned to surf," my #3 song of 2009, but it also features an even better song, "my gap feels weird," a three-minute rocker that's the second track on the album. what do the kids call this type of music? power-punk or emo-punk or something? i have no idea because i'm part of the same "weird gap" that's sung about in the song with lines like "it's a song for the kids down on the corner with the look that tells you you don't ever know them & you never will." aging rules! so does this song! bounce to it, people!...bounce.

have you ever tried a surf clam? no?!!! OMG why not? they're SOOOO good. i discovered them about a decade back during my "move to nyc & eat lots of sushi" phase, finding that the sweetness of surf clam nigiri provided a nice buffer between spicy & sweet sushi rolls. this past february, i moved into a new apartment down in the dyker heights area of brooklyn, a few blocks away from a huge chinese grocery & found that they had boxes of frozen surf clam for sale. now, if i want to have some surf clam, i grab a handful of them from the freezer, drop them in some cold water for a few minutes, occasionally melt some butter to go with them (for a lobsteresque effect) & act all a'glutton with the stuff.

for the inaugural edition of our "flea at laff" column, the bro & i met up at the brooklyn flea on a saturday afternoon & sampled a snack & drink from asiadog, a nyc-based purveyor of gourmet hot dogs. i went with their "sidney" chicken dog, which is sort of like a thai hot dog, as it's topped with mango, cucumber, red onion, cilantro & crushed peanuts. it's a clean dog with a spicy, cool & crunchy topping that, as of right now, is my favorite hot dog in nyc. asiadog only serves their food at events like the flea & doesn't actually have a physical location though, so these days it's not easy to get my hands on one of their dogs unless i go to the winter brooklyn flea, which is only indoors & therefore, wholly blasphemous. maybe i'll just have to wait til next summer. after all, absence heart blah blah blah.

in a year where i finally lifted my personal ban on cupcakes, the one that got the most action from me was the snickers cupcake from brooklyn's snack shop. after lifting my ban, i sampled a few cupcakes from brooklyn's robicelli's & d.c.'s georgetown cupcake and baked & wired and loved all of them, but the snickers cupcake is the only one that i had a handful of times. between the cake & the frosting & the drizzles & the snickers bar piece, there's a serious overload of mostly-chocolatey flavors & textures in it. plus, it's larger than most of those "gourmet" cupcakes out there, meaning it's possible to cut it in half & get two snacking opportunities out of it.

dude, i lived on dumplings this year. the combo of my laziness & the chinese grocery right around the corner from my apartment really solidified this habit, as they always have 3 for $10 deals on my three frozen faves--the chicken, shrimp & shroom/lotus root dumplings. then around my bday, i hosted a dinner at my place where i learned to make my own fresh dumplings (with premade wraps). while it takes a little more effort to make them, it actually takes less time to cook them. basically, you just drop them in a pot of boiling water & go do something else for a few minutes. when you return to the stove...dumplings!

when i hastily declared it to be "chocolate week" back in march, it was on the occasion of me having a bunch of pepperidge farm's dark chocolate brownie captiva cookies. i guess if you're a cookie purist, you'll probably shudder at the thought of me including a mainstream, sorta-processed cookie on my list of top ten snacks, but guess what? i don't care. it's sort of a cookie, it's sort of a brownie & it sort of reminds me of childhood. sure they're made from a bunch of additives & one of those additives is probably designed to make me eat them, but they're slightly moist & awesomely chocolatey & they just plain make me happy & warm inside.

blogwise, one of the more fun things i got to do this year was start writing a column for nachosny, a column on nacho snacks cleverly titled "a queso the munchies." thus far, out of all the nacho snacks i've sampled, the ballpark nacho fritos are my fave, as their similarity to actual ballpark nachos is nothing short of bone-chillingly freaky. fritos has messed around with protons & neutrons to effectively manufacture the yellow cheese & jalapeno flavors that come with an order of nachos at you'd get at the ballpark. unfortunately, these were a limited edition flavor, so i only got to try one bag of them, but let's hope that they bring them back once baseball season starts up again. my processed cheese levels are getting seriously low.

for most of the summer, i made trip after trip to the brooklyn flea but just couldn't bring myself to fork over the $15 necessary to procure one of red hook lobster pound's lobster rolls. when i finally took the plunge, i opted for the "connecticut" style, which means lobster with butter instead of mayo. it's made with fresh maine lobster & a toasty, buttery roll & it was so good that it prepped me for the sticker shock of lobster rolls, allowing me to thoroughly enjoy celebrating the sis's bday at luke's lobster a month later. while i'm too cheap to get it on the regs, it was definitely one of my summer snacking highlights.

OBVS i'm not vegan myself, but i know some people who are & they're not douchebags about it. i mean i get it. i see the rationales behind veganism but i'm just too lazy to embrace the lifestyle, y'know? still, i'm cool with most vegan food. when it comes to vegan baked goods though, more often than not i say "no thanks. take that shizz to the compost heap!" as they're often dry or weird-tasting. i guess it's the lack of egg or something. that's why i was WICKED jazzed when i decided to get that there alternative baking co cranberry orange muffin cookie that's in the photo to the left. it's totally vegan & moist & fruity, with a pleasant, muffin aftertaste to it. eating it went a long way towards making me ok with vegan baked goods.

in 2009, my favorite snack of the year was a cheese--chevre du miel. for most of the past year, another cheese replaced it & took up permanent residence in my fridge's designated cheese drawer--the king's island roaring forties. it's an australian-made blue cheese that tastes smoky & nutty & sweet & salty all at the same time. i often spread it on crackers & pair it with a nice, hoppy beer but as the end of the year came, i found myself tossing it on burgers, salads, the neighbor's cat...anything i could find. sure its stink fumes wafted through my apartment every time i ate it, but i quickly grew to love that stink, associating it with the placating of my insatiable cheese addiction. i'm on the hunt for a new cheese for the new year & soon, the roaring forties will likely go the way of the chevre du miel. when that happens, i'll bid the roaring forties a proud adieu, knowing we've had a wild ride together.

words can't accurately describe the relationship i have with popcorn, indiana's sweet & tangy bbq kettlecorn. i guess that's why i never got around to writing about it until now. sometimes i'll sit down with a bag of the stuff & the next thing i know, it's forty-five minutes later, i've sucked down half the bag, my hair's all rustled up & i can't find my pants. it's sort of out of control. for the most part, every single kernel in the bag is covered in sweet & tangy flavor. back in september i made a typo-filled declaration on the twitter that it's "the best snack known to man" & the folks at popcorn, indiana replied, asking if they could put that on the bag. my answer: "as long as you dub me 'galactic snack expert.'" i've purchased a number of bags of the stuff since that time & have not noticed any change to the packaging. maybe they were waiting until 2011 to roll out the new bag with my rave review on it. i guess i'll just have to be patient & keep buying bags of the stuff until they do.