So the polls are closed and my second annual reader’s poll in the book. The results were completely predictable but still entertaining to tabulate. Just to recap, I solicited your top six albums of the year – ranked – and from those submissions, applied a weighted scoring system that’s probably not at all scientific. Six points were awarded to first place albums, five points to second place and so forth. Total votes regardless of ranking for each album were also collected to be used as tiebreakers if necessary.

Not that it was. The top ten shook out as you’d expect with the top album of the year, as voted on by you, taking the title by a wide margin with 28 first place votes (the #2 album got only 6) and appearing on 61 lists out of 124 submissions. I’d call that a landslide. 252 albums in all were nominated and only three of the top ten made my own personal list. Not that that means anything.

Anyways, without further ado, the top ten albums of 2007 as voted on by chromewaves readers. Total points noted beside each entry.

1. The National / Boxer (Beggars Banquet) – 284 pts
2. Radiohead / In Rainbows (independent) – 145 pts
3. Spoon / Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (Merge) – 115 pts
4. Okkervil River / The Stage Names (Jagjaguwar) – 110 pts
5. Arcade Fire / Neon Bible (Merge) – 82 pts
6. LCD Soundsystem / Sound Of Silver (DFA) – 69 pts
7. Feist / The Reminder (Arts & Crafts) – 60 pts
8. Of Montreal / Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (Polyvinyl) – 54 pts
9. Jens Lekman / Night Falls On Kortedala (Secretly Canadian) – 50 pts
10. Wilco / Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch) – 48 pts

If you want to see the whole list, you can download the Excel spreadsheet with every single entry, ranked. I can’t imagine why you would, but whatever.

And, of course, the reason most of you entered was the promo swag giveaway – so congratulations go out to Aubrey, Kevin, Eva, dB, John and Phil who will be getting something (hopefully) interesting in the mail over the next few weeks. The rest of you, thanks for playing and contributing to yet another meaningless year-end list.

Elsewhere, David Byrne interviews Radiohead’s Thom Yorke for Wired. Topics of discussion include the In Rainbows experiment (duh), the future of the album and music industry in general, the size of their carbon footprint and tea cozies. Okay, not tea cozies.

Shearwater offers up a slideshow of scenes from the recording of the follow-up to last year – and this year’s – lovely Palo Santo I see strings! And woodwinds! And a harp! And Thor cutting down tree branches! Sweet. Matthew Barnhart, engineer on the record, has also been keeping a recording diary of the sessions. The new album is entitled Rook and it will hopefully be out sometime in the Spring.

PopMatters talks to Tim Bracey about the end of The Mendoza Line.

JAM! Q&As The Weakerthans. They’re playing Nathan Phillips Square on February 2.

Chart congratulates Feist on being declared their artist of the year while Billboard finds out what she’s doing with her downtime whilst on the road. Recording. There, I ruined the piece for you. But her mention of the Red Hot + Indie compilation being curated by the brothers Dessner from The National has my interest.

Richard Hawley has released another video from the lovely Lady’s Bridge.

Video: Richard Hawley – “Valentine”

The Long Blondes’ sophomore album will be entitled Couples and is out in the UK on April 7.

Couple more show announcements as the year winds down… Plants & Animals return to Toronto for a show at the Drake on February 21, a month before their Avenue Parc hits stores five days before the Canadian release of their debut full-length Parc Avenue, and The Most Serene Republic trundles into the Mod Club on March 1.