Look.  This isn’t my first rodeo.  And let me tell you something, I wouldn’t be here if I thought annual Top Ten Lists from Mark Rosenblatt took advantage of senior homeowners, music fans, metaphysicists, Jim Jordan wannabees, or worse, that it was some way to separate you from your second-rate taste in music.

My Top Ten List for 2022 is just a list designed for all music listeners – and it’s helped millions of them in the past, and it can help you today.  A Top Ten list isn’t some kind of trick to take away your home, your preferences, your hearing, or your limited critical reasoning skills.  Oh no, it’s far too late for that!  My Top Ten List for 2022 is a list.  Just a list.  With one big difference.  It’s a list from me, Mark Rosenblatt, a name you can trust.  Remember, I’m a Self-Certified Life Coach, a Self-Certified Afterlife Coach, and a Self-Certified Eternity Manager, and in 2022 I won the prestigious Palme d’Or de l’Académie Française des Coachs de Vie Autocertifiés in Cannes.  They love and respect me in France, and you should too, wherever you are.

You’ve probably been investing in your musical taste for years, making monthly album purchases, going to live music events, supporting music services, talking to your few remaining friends, and listening to influential radio stations, like WPKN-FM, Bridgeport, CT.  Your taste has become your heart and soul, and your family’s heart and soul.  Your family can’t stand your taste (or you, for that matter), but still.  After all, what is your life without delusion?  And now that longstanding musical investment can give you additional authority and influence in your otherwise humdrum life.  Sadly, such authority and influence can’t give you a new source of income, better looks, better health, or more loving family members, but it can give you an edge.  And if you play that edge just right, who knows what will happen?  You may find yourself with, as the French say, je ne sais quoi, which literally means “I don’t know what,” but doesn’t everything sound better in French?  Everything except ennui, that is!

Look, Top Ten lists aren’t for everyone, but I think I’ve been around long enough to know what’s what.  And who’s who, where’s where, when’s when, why’s why, and how’s how.  I’m proud to post this Top Ten list.  I trust myself.  Why not?  Trust is free.  And I think you can trust me too.  Freely.

Some background.  These are largely rock albums, ones I hear fresh while on my stationary bike or while driving long distances in my Corolla.  My principal test is the following, and yours may be different or … nonexistent.  No matter.  If I were in a bar, a friend’s home, or listening to a station like WPKN-FM, Bridgeport, CT, would I use SHAZAM to identify the song and the artist?  And if the song is by a new artist or an artist unfamiliar to me, would I immediately go to my preferred search engine to determine all I could about the artist, earlier albums, where the artist’s from, and quickly make a mental note to listen to the album in question in its entirety?  If so, I then go ahead and listen to the album associated with the track in its entirety.

My list includes longtime personal favorites (Kelley Stoltz, The Green Pajamas, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard), bands new to me (Hillsborough, The Pinheads, and The Backseat Lovers), bands I’ve paid attention to throughout their careers and to whom I have to admit I’m predisposed (Michael Head, Babe Rainbow, and Spoon), and one band I dismissed earlier because of their musical type (Goose, as jam band). 

The links are all Spotify links.  Note: a little less than half of all Spotify users pay to use the service.  I do.  BFD.

THE STYLIST by Kelley Stoltz (on Agitated Records – Stoltz is from San Francisco, California).

One line intro: Stoltz has eight great albums since 2013, and while you could argue that any one of them is a Top Ten album, this is a 2022 Top Ten List after all.

Standout Track We Grew So Far Apart

THE MIRROR by The Pinheads (on Farmer & The Owl Records – The Pinheads are Australian).

One line intro: Think Television meets Moonlight Mile-style desperation (as in The Stones’ Moonlight Mile) inside a poorly-ventilated garage.

Standout Track HEART OF DARKNESS

DEAR SCOTT by Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band (on Modern Sky – Head is British).

One line intro: Out of the blue (for me, anyway) killer album by long-standing, accomplished, and very literate songwriter.

Standout Track Gino and Rico

DRIPFIELD by Goose (on No Coincidence Records – Goose is from Norwalk, Connecticut).

Two line intro: Eschewing and transcending its beginnings as a jam band, Dripfield is perhaps the best modern rock album of 2022. Consequently, I’m replacing every new instance of onward and upward with eschew and transcend.

Standout Track Dripfield

COMIN’ BACK FOR YOU by Hillsborough (on Heartsville Music – from Australia).

One line intro: Modern countrified blues-rock with equal nods to Mark Sandman’s Treat Her Right and all that is good in harder-edged alt-country.

Standout Track Stitches

FOREVER FOR A LITTLE WHILE by The Green Pajamas (on Green Monkey Records – The band’s from Seattle, Washington). 

One line intro: If it’s possible that to consolidate all you’ve done in the past and hit your peak after 25+ albums, Forever for a Little While is a case in point.

Standout Track Six Minutes in Heaven

THE ORGANIC BAND by Babe Rainbow (on Eureka Music – from Australia)

One line intro: I once described Babe Rainbow to a friend as King Gizzard forced to create conventional psych-rock pop songs, and The Organic Band pulls all of Babe Rainbow’s charms into a single album.

Standout Track All the Power

WAITING TO SHARE by The Backseat Lovers (on UMG – The Backseat Lovers are from Provo, Utah)

One line intro: Anguish as art is not a new indie idea, but as Paul Simon wrote in Boy in the Bubble, “every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” and in the case of The Backseat Lovers, anguish and song dynamics go hand in hand.

Standout Track Know Your Name

ICE, DEATH, PLANETS, LUNGS, MUSHROOMS AND LAVA by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (on KGLW Records – King Gizzard is from Australia)

One line intro: Just keeping track of the band’s releases is a full time job, and no more so than in 2022, but this album pulls everything good about KGLW into one neat package: it’s both way way out there and eminently listenable.

Standout Track Hell’s Itch

LUCIFER ON THE SOFA by Spoon (on Matador Records – Spoon’s from Austin, Texas)

One line intro: Another high point in Spoon’s seventeen year career.

Standout Track LUCIFER ON THE SOFA