The past 350+ days have been a fine year for new music releases, but its also been a pretty solid year for music releases that aren't new music per se. This would be the catch-all category that includes compilations, live albums, reissues and the like. Since these sorts of releases are very plentiful each year, this list isn't believed to necessary be exhaustive, but each of these listed are pretty great.

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Its not terribly hard to imagine a collection of unreleased material originally written and mostly recorded around 1978 during Darkness on the Edge of Town being great. The opening track, an alternate version of "Racing in the Street", unfolds over 6 minutes and makes the listener completely ready for the remaining 20 tracks over two discs. Across this many songs, there are plenty of opportunities to hear Springsteen's varying styles that have revealed themselves over the years. As good as his last few studio albums with the E Street Band have been, its nice to hear that older sound return to the forefront on this release, including the interesting cover of Patti Smith's "Because the Night".

John Prine - Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows

This is undoubtedly the best tribute compilation of the year. It's John Prine songs, which are already great, performed by a range of musicians that mostly reside in the indie folk/alt-country/bluegrass realm. This includes My Morning Jacket, Josh Ritter, Justin Vernon, Conor Oberst, Avett Brothers and others. This compilation accomplishes what most compilations does not, it actually lends itself to listening start-to-finish. The Lambchop contribution, "Six O'Clock News" kinda plods and Those Darlins' "Lets Talk Dirty in Hawaiian" is almost too kitschy, but these are minor issues with an otherwise excellent release.

The Weakerthans - Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre

The Weakerthans are not the sort of band that seems to necessitate a live album and, honestly, this one might not actually be necessary. Thing is, it sounds warm and fresh, giving that feeling that you might have even been there. The on-stage banter and witty anecdotes are included sparingly and the audience noise isn't distracting or disruptive. The recording was made in Winnipeg (Manitoba, that is), the band's hometown, so there's a certain added effect of reverence and pride, even when the entire room sings aloud in agreement that "The Guess Who Sucked", "The Jets were lousy anyway" and "I hate Winnipeg". It just wouldn't have been right for these sentiments to be immortalized if it were recorded anyplace else.

Weezer - Pinkerton

Do you know where you were on Tuesday, September 24, 1996? If you were laying in the backseat of your mom's car riding home from Magic Platter record store listening to the mysterious follow-up to Weezer's debut breakthrough, you do. There's always something special about buying an album the day it is released, or at least there used to be, before the days of leaks and iTunes (face it, the idea of rushing to your laptop to download an album on Tuesday isn't quite the same as making a special trip to the record store). Tuesdays were almost like a holiday each week and some Monday nights turned into an opportunity to sit in a parking lot until midnight waiting for the next big release. This big release ultimately tanked in sales and reviews, but now, 14 years later, it has been remastered, repackaged and rereleased. Not to worry, though, it is just as brutally honest and brutally uncomfortable as ever.

Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street

This was probably the most-publicized reissue of the year. There's not a ton to say here other than its always been a great album and now its sound has been brought forward about 40 years. For a great commentary on this release, check out NPR's episode of All Songs Considered featuring Don Was.

Pavement - Quarantine the Past

In the indie rock universe, 2010 was the year of Pavement, despite the band not releasing any new music, be it an album or even a single song. They did, however, tour across the country and the globe playing songs that were all at least 10 years old to legions of fans, old and new. Twenty-three such songs were compiled on this "Best of" album that rolls the songs out in no particular order or theme. That's probably an apt sequence for the band, who somewhat unceremoniously wrapped up their reunion tour (not counting a couple of subsequent South American shows in November) at Matador 21 in Las Vegas on October 1 with sound problems and annoyance. Regardless of the inconsistencies of the record and the band, even 23 old songs were a welcome addition to 2010.

Addendum:

Nada Surf - If I Had A Hi-Fi

It's hard to decide if it is harder to believe that Nada Surf are still releasing albums in a relevant manner or that Nada Surf were once MTV darlings complete with rock-solid "one hit wonder" cred. Regardless, they have managed to navigate past the latter and put together several great albums. That said, they are entitled to put out something like an album of covers. One of the highlights is a rendition of "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode in full blown Nada Surf mode, but there's also covers of songs by Spoon, Kate Bush, The Moody Blues and a great track by Mercromina sung in Spanish. Maybe there should be an album of other bands covering "Popular" just to take it full circle?

Addendum 2:

Girl Talk - All Day

Simply put, this is good for listening to at the gym. It's interesting and makes for fun while picking out all the different songs mashed up within. That's about as far as it goes since all components of the songs are songs that have already been written, performed and released. It can't really be judged by the same standards as new music, hence its presence here.

Girls - Broken Dreams Club EP

EPs are not usually significant relative to their full-length counterparts, but this is another great effort by San Francisco band that released Album in 2009. The mood of this EP is noticeably restrained and morose, even employing a slide guitar on the title track.

As you may already know, Sporcle has to be the best time waster on the internet these days. Even their tagline, "Mentally Stimulating Diversions", indicates such. That probably does not go far enough, though. There is seriously a quiz for almost everything you can think of. Most of them are actually fairly interesting and challenging in an enjoyable way, to boot. Well, one of this week's new entries has to be one of the most interesting yet. It deals with naming countries that are the world-leader in fairly random categories on a per-capita basis.

Some of the most interesting results:

-Luxembourg has the highest per capita alcohol consumption rate in the world, 15.6 liters per person per year. That doesn't seem like an extreme amount, but bear in mind, this isn't referring to alcoholic beverages. This is the actual alcohol in those drinks itself. So if an average drink (adjusted for differences between regular beer, liquor and wine) has 10% alcohol by volume, that would be 156 liters of alcohol-containing beverages per person per year. That's over 41 gallons, or 5200 ounces. So yeah, 5200 ounces would be 433 12-ounce beers per person per year, or about 1.2 per day. It definitely adds up.

-If you only consider beer, the Czech Republic is the leader of the world with 158.6 liters per person per year. The math works out roughly similar to the calculations above, except most Czech beer does not come near to 10% ABV. It's closer to half of that, 5-6% (think pilsner, pale lager, etc). That means that an average Czech has about 2.5 beers per day. When you adjust for demographics to exclude children and those adults that don't drink (if such thing exists), the actual average is probably more like 4+ per day. That's pretty strong, especially since most people would probably assume the English, Irish or Germans to drink more beer in the first place.

-If various forms of alcohol are particularly appealing to the Luxembourgers and Czechs, coffee is particularly appealing to...the Fins. The average person in Finland consumes 12kg, or about 24.5 pounds. This is kinda hard to put into practical terms since nobody really quantifies their coffee consumption by weight, but by volume, or number of cups. According to one (of many, many, many) estimations, one pound of coffee can make 2.25 gallons. So, that would seem to indicate that Fins drink over 55 gallons of coffee a year. This number isn't vastly different than Czech Republic's beer consumption, but it stands to reason that, despite Starbucks' best efforts, a cup of coffee is typically smaller than a serving of beer. If an average cup of coffee is defined as 6 ounces, the Fins have 1,173 cups of coffee a year, or over 3 a day. Again, this number doesn't seem too extreme, but not everyone drinks coffee, so among coffee-drinkers, the number is probably at least 4 or 5. That starts to get pretty intense.

-Just for a quick comparison's sake, the leading tea drinkers are the Turks, who consume an average of 2.1 kg (4.4 lb) a year. Apparently 2.5 grams of tea makes a 6 oz. cup, so an average Turk has just shy of 800 cups per year, or about 2.2 a day.

-From a technology standpoint, there are some pretty impressive numbers. Residents of Switzerland, Malta and United Arab Emirates have an average of 0.86 computers, 0.77 televisions and 1.7 cellphones per citizen, respectively. That means an average person in UAE is more likely to have two cellphones than one and a family of 4 in Switzerland has at least 3, but more likely 4 computers among them. Does this mean a poor Swiss family only has 2 computers at home? Of course, these numbers include computers in the workplace and such, but obviously not everyone has a computer at work, so the difference has to come from somewhere. The UAE cellphone numbers seem quite bizarre, though. Based on personal experience, it seems like pretty much everyone has a cellphone and probably some kind of phone number associated with their job, even if they share it with others. However, this is talking only about cellphones, which are largely used by only one person each and not shared among groups. With the average in UAE being 1.7 and there having to be a few people without even one, that means it is not uncommon to see people there with 3 or more each. The Malta television numbers don't really jump out since even the idea of one person having 2 TVs isn't that crazy (right???) this day in age. A television almost seems like standard equipment in a house, like a sink or toilet. The necessary distinction is that Malta has 0.77 TVs per person, not per home.

For the sake of brevity (ha!), here's a quick rundown of some others:

-An average Greek smokes over 3,000 cigarettes a year, or about 8.25 a day.
-The Republic of Georgia has 16.335 library books per resident.
-One in every 690 Argentinians are psychologists.
-One is every 86.2 Norwegians are millionaires (in US dollars).

Hmmph.

So, apparently only one kind soul got the memo about writing in your picks for the best album of 2010. This either indicates that:

(a) You thought 2010 was an awful year for music
(b) Nobody actually reads this
(c) You're scared
(d) All of the above

Even after all that, its funny how things just have a way of working themselves out sometimes...