Tomorrow kicks off the beginning of another highly anticipated spring/summer record release season, with new albums from Broken Social Scene, New Pornographers and The Hold Steady, just to name a few.

And though we’re barely four months into 2010, I can boldly say I already know at least five records that will undoubtedly make my Top 10 list: Beach House’s Teen Dream, The National’s High Violet, LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening, Owen Pallett’s Heartland and The Radio Dept.’s Pulling Our Weight.

Sure, there’s a lot of potentially great albums to be released in the remaining 8 months of the year, including long-awaited follow-ups from The Strokes and Arcade Fire. But if there’s anything else that comes out this year that trumps the latest albums from Beach House, The National, or LCD Soundsystem, both my iPod and my head will literally explode into a billions pieces.

Here’s how the release schedule looks for the next three months:

May 4
Broken Social Scene - Foregiveness Rock Record
New Pornographers - Together
The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever
The Flaming Lips / Stadeath and White Dwarfs - The Dark Side of the Moon
Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Minus the Bear - Omni
Blank Dogs - Quiet Years
Booka Shade - More!
Paul Weller - Wake Up the Nation

May 11
The National - High Violet
Woods - At Echo Lake
Holy Fuck - Latin
UNKLE - Where Did the Night Fall
The Dead Weather - Sea of Cowards
Adam Green - Musik for a Play
CocoRosie - Grey Oceans
Japandroids - No Singles
Thee Oh Sees - Warm Slime

May 18
LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Band of Horses - Inifite Arms
The Black Keys - Brothers
Jamie Lidell - Compass
The Depreciation Guild - Spirit Youth
Rhymefest - El Che
Holy Ghost! - Statif on the Wire EP
Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
Nas and Damian Marley - Distant Relatives

May 25
Kurt Vile - Square Shells EP
Karen Elson - The Ghost Who Walks
Twin Sister - Color Your Life
The Ponys - Deathbed + 4 EP

June 1
The Futureheads - The Chaos
Born Ruffians - Say It
Melvins - The Bride Screamed Murder

June 8 
Teenage Fanclub - Shadows
Yo La Tango - Here to Fall Remixes EP
Foals - TOtal Life Forever
Wye Oak - My Neighbor / My Creator
Ratatat - LP4
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Say No to Love b/w Lost Saint 7”
Tokyo Police Club - Champ
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (2nd Album)
Blitzen Trapper - Destroyer of the Void
Nada Surf - If I Had a Hi-Fi
Konono No 1 - Assume Crash Position
Here We Go Magic - Pigeons
Casiokids - Topp Stemning Pa Lokai Bar
Robyn - Body Talk Pt. 1
The Chemical Brothers - Further

June 15
The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
Pernice Brothers - Goodbye, Killer

June 22
Stars - The Five Ghosts
HEALTH - DISCO2
Kele - The Boxer

June 29 
M.I.A. - TBD
Scissor Sisters - Night Work

July 13
Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Present Dark Night of the Soul
School of Seven Bells - Disconnect From Desire
The Love Language - Libraries

July 20
Department of Eagles - Archives 2003-2006

July 27
Menomena - Mines

By Justin Lee

Seeing as how today is the fourth annual international record store day, a day that celebrates the nostalgic yet thriving culture of independent record stores everywhere, I thought it would be fitting to walk you through my own history with the independent record store and how it has affected the way I consume music. And of course, I couldn’t possibly talk about this without some mention of how my music buying habits have shifted over the years with the introduction of file stealing… er, sharing.

I was 10 years old in July of 1991 when I bought my first cassette tape: the original motion picture soundtrack for Tim Burton’s Batman. After seeing the movie I became obsessed with anything and everything tied to it, so I immediately visited a local record store called Top-Forty and dropped $9.99 plus tax on the collection of Prince songs. At the time I was earning a meagre allowance of $20 a month, so spending more than half of my monthly income on a cassette tape was a pretty serious investment. What’s more, at 10 years old I had no idea if I even liked Prince. Sure, I had heard songs like “Purple Rain” and “Little Red Corvette” and thought they were pretty catchy, but was I ready to commit to listening to an entire album of an eccentric Jehovah’s Witness who dressed like an effeminate magician and made more orgasmic moans than the soundtrack of a late night sex infomercial?

However, any reservations I had soon faded after listening to songs like “Partyman,” “Scandalous” and the album’s unmistakable highlight, “Batdance” (whose 12” single I converted into a clock that is now hanging in my living room). And although that experience would form the foundation of my Prince catalogue, it merely scratched the surface of what would be my many subsequent visits to that particular record store and dozens just like it. For the rest of my late adolescence my tastes wavered from top-40 pop and R&B to hip-hop and alternative rock. And as my relationship with music continued to progress, so did the technological advances in audio listening equipment.

In September of 1993 I bought a Sony Discman D121, one of the first commercially-available portable CD players, at the downtown Calgary store of the now defunct A&B Sound. The promotion at the time entitled customers to three free albums with the purchase of a Discman, so I chose what would be the first three CD’s I ever owned: The Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream, Pearl Jam’s Ten, and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, an album I would insist on hiding under my bed until I graduated from high school. I was afraid that my mother would be appalled by the sexually gratuitous artwork of canine fornication and throw it away. Recently, I looked at my friend’s copy of the album and was shocked to see how offensive it still remains after nearly 20 years.

Since I held various part-time jobs throughout high school I had a greater disposable income than ever before, so I spent the majority of my money on building my CD collection. Each week, I would visit the local record store during lunch on New Release Tuesday’s and walk out with a handful of new albums from Weezer, Liz Phair, The Stone Temple Pilots, Nas, Radiohead, Matthew Sweet, and Wilco. I recall being lost in a time warp during these visits, sampling albums at random on clammy headphones in hopes of finding the next hidden gem. For me, the record store was more than some teenage wasteland of ignorant bliss. It was probably the only place I felt like I truly belonged; it was as though I had just inherited the deed to Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

So when file sharing was introduced in the late ’90s with the advent of Napster, and later perfected through torrent sites and mp3 blogs, I, like so many others, caved into the temptation and stopped paying for music. Aside from rare Japanese imports, limited box sets and independent releases that were hard to come by at even the smallest of record shops, I would only buy the occasional CD at a show when I couldn’t be bothered to find it elsewhere.

I’ve always been impatient when it came to waiting for an album’s release date, so if a disc leaked in advance, rest assured that I was one of the first to download it. And since I had downloaded  all the music I could ever want, weeks before its official street date, there seemed to be no point in visiting record stores on New Release Tuesday’s, let alone any day. And the occasional visits I would make would mostly be spent browsing music DVD’s and posters.

Then last summer, I decided to buy a Sony turntable and get into record collecting, a decision which produced a similar outcome to building a time machine. For the first time in nearly a decade I became excited about the process of finding music again.

Today, I’m back to visiting my favourite local record stores on a weekly basis where I once again find myself lost in a time warp. All the claims that purists make about vinyl are largely true: it does sound more organic and crisp, the musty scent of an LP’s inner sleeves can be strangely comforting, and the artwork/liner notes is a thing of beauty.

But perhaps what record collecting really helped me to achieve was regain an appreciation for the independent record store within the context of music distribution and culture. When I talk to younger kids today it seems that the majority of them exclusively acquire their music by downloading it off torrent sites, straight to their computers and iPods.

Forget about the whole issue of copyright infringement and the notion of “stealing” music; that’s an entirely different topic that I don’t really care to discuss at this time. What really saddens me is that these kids will never experience the joy associated with finding that rare hidden gem after hours of digging in dusty milk crates and shelves at various record stores across town. After all, it’s pretty difficult to get your hands dirty when you’re just using Google Search.

So I urge you all to make a trip out to your local independent record shop today and take advantage of the special promotions and discounts related to Record Store Day. Search for participating stores in your city on the official website, as well as browse the many Record Store Day-only releases. Torontonians, make sure you visit the fine folks at Rotate This, Soundscapes, Criminal Records, Sonic Boom, Penguin Music, Kops, Frantic City, Slinky Music and Vortex.

Now excuse me while I go for broke (literally, I’ll be penniless after) trying to hunt down copies of Beach House’s Zebra EP, The Velvet Underground’s Live 1969 Vol 1 & 2, and Wilco’s Kicking Television 4LP Box Set.