1. Ashby, Power Ballads (Marina). What I really needed this year — from life in general, but let’s stick with local music — was something both optimistic and unexpected. This upstart duo delivered the goods, putting vintage pop warmth into spiffy electronic settings and writing thoughtful songs that outline an up-and-down love affair with this city. If you’ve never seen Ashby play, that’s because no one has.

2. Mr. Airplane Man (Sympathy for the Record Industry). A bloody racket, and the recording quality is just as grisly as the noises being dished out. Originally pegged as a blues duo, Mr. Airplane Man are more about feeling the blues than playing them by the book; and the newly added ’60s garage-punk leanings fit in perfectly. Recorded in Memphis and made to shake walls, this has the earthy wail of those old Stooges and Sonics records. And Margaret Garrett does great banshee wails.

3. The Shods, Stop Crying (Acme). Sorry, guys, but you got screwed. If this album had come out as scheduled (on the Fort Apache/MCA imprint five years ago), it really would have made you famous. At least the refurbished album sounds great after its years on the shelf. Call it the Shods’ London Calling, where their trademark fast/loud sound gets gussied up with extra players and bigger production.

4. The Countess, Shooting Star (CVB). You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Cynthia von Buhler with husband Adam and company do the live version of this rock opera, which recounts their record-label misadventures with plenty of gratuitous sex and violence. The CD version — equal parts punk, electronics, and vicious Britney takeoffs — is a satisfying, subversive act in its own right.

5. Rose Polenzani (Daemon). This is one courageous songwriter who’s already gone deep into sex, religion, and other obsessions and learned to work her lovely voice for maximum haunting effect. She made waves this year as part of the folk supergroup Voices on the Verge, but her third solo disc (the first since moving to Boston) is where she really blossomed. It starts out austere and acoustic and turns into full-throttle rock.

6. The Raging Teens, Rock ’n’ Roll Party (Rubric). "Rock ’n’ roll party" is what it says, and that’s what it is, hopped-up rockabilly played with wild abandon and recorded in glorious mono. "Let’s Drink Some Booze" answers all of life’s questions but one: where the hell did Amy Griffin learn to play guitar like that?

7. Victory at Sea, Carousel (Kimchee). This is the kind of stripped-down record where everything counts — the economical guitar lines, the big drum outbursts, and, most of all, Mona Elliott’s distinctive voice. A bit of a moody film-noir sound here, with rock-and-roll grit between the lines.

8. Paula Kelley, Nothing/Everything (Stop, Pop & Roll). Paula Kelley has pop songs written all over her heart, and she’s been questing for the perfect hook since her days with Boy Wonder and Hot Rod. With her first solo disc, she just about nails it. The sound is built less on loud guitars and more on Burt Bacharach/Brian Wilson lushness, and Kelley’s melodic gifts thrive in this setting. It’s her most personal record, bubbly on the surface but with a melancholy undertone that draws you in.

9. Asa Brebner, Best No Money Can Buy (Windjam). A fellow songwriter recently introduced Brebner as "the king of Cambridge," and it fit: he knows everybody, plays with everybody, and writes smart rock songs that anybody can get into. His fourth album in as many years has some of his nastiest tunes right alongside a few sensitive ones. You decide what category "You Stole My Woman (Now You’re Gonna Die)" goes in.

10. DMZ, Live at the Rat (Bomp!). This live disc, with two sets from ’78 and ’93, would have been disqualified as a reissue if DMZ hadn’t gotten back together for a couple of shows in the fall — and damned if they didn’t sound just as pissed-off primal as they do on these vintage tapes. Eternal force of nature Jeff "Monoman" Conolly still sounds fine with his regular band the Lyres, but a special chemistry transpires (thanks to years of friendship and grudges) when he gets together with guitarist JJ Rassler. And if we’re going to have a musical comment on the events of 2001, "Are You Gonna Be There (At the Love-In)" — not on this disc but played by both the Lyres and DMZ this year — is the one I want to hear.