READERS POLL! By popular demand, we’ve added an ND Readers Poll. The results are here

NEW ADDITION! See all the voters’ individual ballots here

Turns out that Barack Obama wasn’t the only runaway victor Bruce Springsteen made it his personal business to champion and support in 2008. The winner of our sixth or seventh annual critics’ poll (depending on who’s counting) – and by a margin of exactly twice as many points as the closest contender – is Alejandro Escovedo’s Real Animal.

It was on April 14 that Escovedo – who just a couple weeks earlier had signed on with Springsteen’s management team – suddenly appeared onstage during the encore of an E Street Band concert in Houston, sharing the spotlight with Bruce as they sang together on “Always A Friend”, the exuberant single from Real Animal (which would be released a month later). A live recording of the song from that night later was included on a digital-only Magic Tour Highlights EP to benefit the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund (named for the longtime Springsteen keyboardist who passed away on April 17).

That jumpstart proved momentous for Escovedo, as Real Animal became, somewhat incredulously, his first-ever record to make the Billboard album charts. The album drew broad praise in the press, including in the final print issue of No Depression magazine, where Bill Friskics-Warren remarked that the album “serves as a compendium of Alejandro’s music, reflecting on nearly every facet of his expansive body of work”; and in our year-end record-review wrap-up on NoDepression.com, with Don McLeese suggesting that the record’s personal-history theme “is less a celebration of the past than a meditation on time itself, the tension between the passage of time and the persistence of memory, between holding on and letting go.”

Of the top ten records in our poll, four are by artists who could reasonably be termed ND elder statesmen/women: Escovedo (our 1990s Artist of the Decade), Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne, and Randy Newman. Three others might be called “younger statesmen” – a generation behind those previous names, but already well entrenched in the genre: Drive-By Truckers, My Morning Jacket, Kathleen Edwards. Two are rising stars: Hayes Carll and Ben Sollee. (As for the remaining one, Nick Cave, well, he’s just weird.)

The finishes by those two “rising stars” – both in the top five – was slightly surprising, and encouraging for Americana’s future. While Texas troubadour Hayes Carll’s major-label debut (on Lost Highway) came after Carll had already firmly established himself with a couple of independent releases, it’s a fair accomplishment to edge out the likes of the Drive-By Truckers and My Morning Jacket for the #2 spot in the ND poll. And the fact that cello-playing singer-songwriter Ben Sollee finished at #5 with a self-released album speaks strongly about just how good that record is – enough so that it rose above the quite commendable self-titled disc by Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet (at #16), of which Sollee is a member.

For history’s sake, a brief recap of the #1 records in our past polls: 2007, Bettye LaVette, The Scene Of The Crime (Anti-); 2006, Bob Dylan, Modern Times (Columbia); 2005, Ry Cooder, Chavez Ravine (Nonesuch); 2004, Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose (Interscope); 2003, Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music (Lost Highway); 2002, Buddy Miller, Midnight And Lonesome (HighTone). (The last of those was a smaller-sample poll of just our senior and contributing editors used for a year-end piece on the old No Depression Radio Show; thus the slight uncertainty as to whether this year’s is our sixth or seventh poll.)

The individual ballots of each of our 36 voters are available here, for those interested in more detail (their names are listed below). For year-end reviews of many of these discs, plus quite a few others, check out our “2008: In Review” series. Meantime, without further ado, we present to you:

THE NODEPRESSION.COM TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 2008
1. Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal (Back Porch/Manhattan) — 88 — 14
2. Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind (Lost Highway) — 44 — 6
3. Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark (New West) — 43.5 — 8
4. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges (ATO) — 39 — 5
5. Ben Sollee, Learning To Bend (self) — 37.5 — 5
6. Lucinda Williams, Little Honey (Lost Highway) — 37 — 7
7. Shelby Lynne, Just A Little Lovin’ (Lost Highway) — 37 — 6
8. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (Anti-) — 37 — 6
9. Randy Newman, Harps And Angels (Nonesuch) — 36 — 6
10. Kathleen Edwards, Asking For Flowers (Zoe/Rounder) — 35 — 6
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11. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar) — 33 — 5
12. Santogold, self-titled (Downtown) — 33 — 5
13. SteelDrivers, self-titled (Rounder) — 29 — 5
14. Hold Steady, Stay Positive (Vagrant) — 28.5 — 7
15. Glen Campbell, Meet Glen Campbell (Capitol) — 28 — 5
16. Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet, self-titled (Nettwerk) — 28 — 4
17. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song (Mercury Nashville) — 27 — 4
18. Old 97′s, Blame It On Gravity (New West) — 27 — 4
19. Bob Dylan, Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (Columbia) — 26 — 3
20. Basia Bulat, Oh, My Darling (Rough Trade) — 25 — 3
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21. Fleet Foxes, self-titled (Sub Pop) — 24 — 3
22. Calexico, Carried To Dust (Quarterstick) — 23 — 3
23. Various, Como Now: The Voices Of Panola Co., Miss. (Daptone) — 22 — 3
24. R.E.M., Accelerate (Warner Bros.) — 21 — 4
25. Justin Townes Earle, The Good Life (Bloodshot) — 21 — 3
26. Tift Merritt, Another Country (Fantasy) — 20 — 3
27. Teddy Thompson, A Piece Of What You Need (Verve Forecast) — 18.5 — 3
28. Gary Louris, Vagabonds (Ryko) — 17 — 3
29. Caroline Herring, Lantana (Signature Sounds) — 16.5 — 2
30. TV On The Radio, Dear Science (DGC/Interscope) — 16 — 3
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31. Raconteurs, Consolers Of The Lonely (Warner Bros.) — 16 — 4
32. Felice Brothers, self-titled (Team Love) — 16 — 3
33. Ani DiFranco, Red Letter Year (Righteous Babe) — 16 — 2
34. Buika, Nina De Fuego (Warner International) — 15 — 2
35. B.B. King, One Kind Favor (Geffen) — 14 — 3
36. Jolie Holland, The Living And The Dead (Anti-) — 14 — 2
37. She & Him, Volume One (Merge) — 13 — 4
38. Michael Franti & Spearhead, All Rebel Rockers (Anti-) — 13 — 3
39. Giant Sand, Provisions (Yep Roc) — 13 — 2
40. Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It (Columbia) — 12 — 4

VOTERS: Grant Alden, David Baxter, Michael Berick, Peter Blackstock, Scott Brodeur, Paul Cantin, David Cantwell, Rick Cornell, Eric R. Danton, Jim Desmond, Daniel Durchholz, Mark Guarino, Russell Hall, Jewly Hight, Silas House, Edd Hurt, Roy Kasten, Rich Kienzle, John Marks, Barry Mazor, Don McLeese, David Menconi, Eli Messinger, John Milward, Andy Moore, Kevin Oliver, Steve Pick, Linda Ray, Kurt B. Reighley, Britt Robson, Kim Ruehl, Lloyd Sachs, Allison Stewart, Mike Usinger, Tom Wilk, Jerry Withrow

SCORING: On each ballot, 10 points were given for a #1 ranking, 9 for #2, and so on down to 1 point for #10. (Voters could alternatively weight all their selections equally at 5.5 points if they preferred.) The numbers listed after each title are: 1) total points; and 2) number of voters who listed the record. Ties were broken by higher number of voters who listed the record; if still tied, then by whichever record was listed highest on any individual ballot.