** RULE CHANGES** **VOTE FOR THREE ALBUMS**

Vote for your favourite album and also your second and third choices. Make your selections clear please as it makes tallying up the scores easier. If you list a whole bunch of albums without making your selections clear I'll take the first three mentioned as 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. Sorry to be a pedant.

Your album of the month will get three points, 2nd placed album two points and 3rd placed album one point. If you name only one album I'll give that three points. If you name two albums I'll score them with three and two points accordingly.

I've noticed that on occasions there's a Facebook post of this thread. On a few occasions in previous years I think the Facebook votes changed the AOTM compared to votes here alone. If it's acceptable I'll only give Facebook people one vote which will only get one point. It's an attempt to weight the scoring heavier in the favour of DiS users that take the time and effort to vote and discuss the albums released rather than just naming/listing artists that I've seen on the FB post. Hopefully, the end result will much more reflect the opinions of actual DiS users.

My choices:
1. Suede - Night Thoughts
2. Eleanor Friedberger - New View
3. The Anchoress - Confessions Of A Romance Novelist

Last Friday (22nd January) was a brilliant day for releases. My top two choices were from last week. Other strong album releases from last week were from Savages, Chairlift and Tindersticks. I've still yet to hear The Besnard Lakes album. I'll get to it eventually I hope.

The first major release of the year was Bowie's Blackstar album. It was great too and a brilliant farewell gift from him. We've been spoilt for choice this month.

The Suede album is stunning. I love Bloodsports and this is just as good if not better. I guess time will tell how it'll fair with me with time. It works really well as an album as opposed to a collection of great songs that I have Bloodsports down as. There was loads of hype with regards to it being another Dog Man Star. Not quite for me but I have DMS as one of the best British albums in general; I just love DMS. Current songs like Tightrope have a very similar feel to the second half of DMS and No Tomorrow is just brilliant pop rock. Anyway, Night Thoughts is my AOTM by miles. I can see myself listening to this for months and probably will be in my top 5 of the year even though it's just January. It's just that strong an album for me.

I've always loved The Fiery Furnaces and Friedberger's solo stuff. Her new album has a lovely laid back feel. Looking forward to her gig next week. I've only seen her live once as part of The Fiery Furnaces way back in 2004.

I dismissed The Anchoress album after the first listen as good but not much more. It gets better with each listen. Reminds me a bit of Cats Eyes. Looking forward to live dates from her/them.

Please forgive any shameless bumps of this thread during the week. I'll keep this thread open until Sunday 7th February and so you'll have over a week to listen to tomorrow's releases before choosing.

Vote now!! (Or later in the week) but make your choices clear please.