ELBOW rounded off a breakthrough year yesterday with their album topping an annual "poll of polls" list.
Their Nationwide Mercury Prize-winning record The Seldom Seen Kid came out top in the eighth such chart, which adds up the choices of critics.
The HMV Poll of Polls is collated each December, adding up album of the year nominations from music
writers across specialist press, national media and online sites.
HMV staff also vote, as do customers on HMV's social net-work site getcloser.com.
The top 50 list is headed by the music writers' overall choice of album of the year.
Previous winners include Daft Punk, OutKast, the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem.
The Seldom Seen Kid pulled the most nominations across 35 publications, sites and organisations polled.
Elbow's triumph followed a close run with Portishead's long-awaited comeback album Third. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Dig Lazarus, Dig was third, while debuts from Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend completed the top five.
Damian Evans, HMV's rock and pop buyer, said: "The poll reflects an excellent, eclectic year in music, with exciting new artists featuring prominently.
"Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, MGMT and Bon Iver have really made their mark with wonderful debut albums, underlining how vibrant the music scene is right now.
"Established artists such as Portishead, Nick Cave and Metallica have also returned to great acclaim, although I suspect few people would dispute that Elbow have given us the album of the year.
"They were popular winners of the Nationwide Mercury Prize, and they now deservedly top the HMV Poll of Polls as well."
This year's poll also showed big hitters like Coldplay and Oasis at 34 and 39 respectively, while the Killers were at 48.
Duffy, whose Rockferry album has been the year's runaway biggest seller, with 1.5 million copies sold according to Official Charts company data, was well down the poll at number 28.
Meanwhile, X Factor winner Alexandra Burke was named as this year's single best-seller.
Burke's version of Hallelujah flew off the shelves to become the biggest-selling single of the year, according to the Official Charts Company data.
It sold another 311,000 copies last week to register an impressive total of 888,000 singles, including downloads and CDs, in the final two weeks of the year.
