Great sounding new vinyl

Some recent vinyl that hits high by any measure is:

Shearwater: Rook
Wilco: Sky Blue Sky
Ray Davies: Workingman's Cafe
Elvis Costello: Momofuku
Gutter Twins: Saturnalia
Stephen Malkmus: Real Emotional Trash
Alejandro Escovedo: Real Animal
Zooey Deschanel/M. Ward: She & Him
Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer
Plant & Kraus: Raising Sand
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Mathew Sweet: Sunshine Lies

I forgot:

John Haitt: Same Old Man
NIN: Ghosts

The Escovedo Blue Note pressing is flat and quiet. This album is well-produced by Tony Visconti. Fairly good sense of sonic realism and excellent separation of instruments within a dense rock mix, probably from a digital source.

IMO the sleeper is Malkmus on Matador. This is by far his best & most mature solo album(also supassing Pavement.) Well-crafted tight angular arrangements surrounded by swirling, psychedelic guitar suites evocative of Doors. Sounds like an analog source.

The recently released Pretenders "Break up the Concrete" is among the year's best rock albums(two 10" 33RPM LPs with CD.) Wide ranging original material feels at turns like Dylan's Highway 61, Lucinda, Janis, Grateful Dead, and british blues like some of Clapton's better material. Some songs are multitracked; others have a great live-in-the-studio sound. Chrissie Hynde has grown considerably as a song writer but her voice is untouched by time. Sonically excellent, though one side had excessive surface noise.

The included CD allows close comparison of RBCD to vinyl. With good front ends, it's remarkable how close the two mediums sound-- with the edge going to the vinyl, of course.