I know this is the time for debating whether My Morning Jacket, Sleater-Kinney and Coldplay warrant inclusion in everyone's top 10 list (yes, yes and not a chance in my opinion), but I'm wondering what older bands or albums people discovered in 2005.

I find that as I'm getting older it's harder to stay abreast of new bands. However, since I also purchase a lot of older CDs, I find that many of my favourite albums of the year tend to be ones I've never heard before.

So, I'm wondering what "new" albums are peoples' favourites this year.

I have a few:

The Atlantic R&B box set
My boss made a copy of this early in the year, and I've been devouring it ever since. I find a new favourite nearly every time I play it (right now it's Sam and Dave's When Something is Wrong with My Baby), although I could listen to The Drifters' Up on the Roof all night.

The Rolling Stones, Goats Head Soup
I think this is an unfairly overlooked album in the Stones' canon, with only Angie and Heartbreaker getting any recognition. There are a lot of great songs on here though. Silver Train, Winter, Coming Down Again will all be on my next Stones mix CD.

Dinosaur Jr., You're Living All Over Me
Great guitar album. I have no idea how I missed this the first time around.

Led Zeppelin, How the West Was Won
I can see how this one is among the all-time high scores on Metacritic. I pretty much stopped listening to Zeppelin in my 20s, having listened to them seemingly non-stop through my teens. However, this CD-a great used purchase for $20-reaffirmed for me what a phenomenal band they were. The version of The Ocean on this CD gives me chills.

Other "new" favourites:

-Joe Ely, Live Shots
-Suicide, Self-titled
-Black Sabbath, Symptom of the Universe

By far my favorite discovery of the year has been the White Stripes. My other favorite discovery is that Rod Stewart should retire, or at least leave songs from his last few albums to those with the vocal depth and range to pull them off. Thank God he did not attempt what he's attempting now when he was younger; oo-la-la!

I finally checked out the Drive By Truckers this year, like I've been meaning to for the longest time. So awesome. Can't wait for the '06 release.

Enjoying the hell out of Mike Doughty's Haughty Melodic....heard it for the first time a couple of days ago

It is hard not to love "I Am a Bird Now." The discovery of this lush, full, and spectral voice streaming through a group that is entirely musical was great. "Arular" was a nice surprise along with "LCD Soundsystem" and the Andrew Bird album, which is getting better each time I hear it were all more-than-neat 'discoveries.'

I recently discovered old Tweedy's bands (Golden smog + Uncle Tupelo) and now I believe in thruth country music. The byrds and some J. Cash songs seems great so far. Thanks to metacritic forums!