Once again it is December, the best time of the year to somehow figure out how you can rank numerous pieces of subjective art into some type of quantifiable order. This year I went a little excessive on the album count and listened to approximately 135 2009 releases. Legit? Depressing? That's up to you I suppose, but I think I gained a pretty wide grasp of what the year had to offer musically. These are my favorites, hopefully you'll be inclined to check a few of them out. One note: I no longer view myself as a primary follower of Pitchfork Media in terms of selections, but ironically a decent number of these albums became championed by the website, although I was enjoying them weeks and months before their endorsement typically. That's just how things turned out.

[30] Micachu | Jewellery

Favorite Track: Golden Phone

[29] Clipse | Til the Casket Drops

Perhaps too straightforward and conventional after the brilliant Hell Hath No Fury, but Til the Casket Drops is still a well-above average album in a year with few quality offerings in the genre. No real surprise that the best tracks are those produced by The Neptunes whose bare-bones electronic funk best suits the duo (that hilariously awful "kids watching Madagascar" line does little to dampen this fact).
Favorite Track: Eyes On Me

[28] Ramona Falls | Intuit

Favorite Track: I Say Fever

[27] Mos Def | The Ecstatic

Favorite Track: Twilite Speedball

[26] Sunset Rubdown | Dragonslayer

Favorite Track: Idiot Heart

[25] Bat for Lashes | Two Suns

Favorite Track: Glass

[24] Girls | Album

Favorite Track: Morning Light

[23] The xx | xx

Favorite Track: Infinity

[22] Soap&Skin | Lovetune for Vacuum

Every adult, young or otherwise, likely experiences that moment where they realize that there are people younger than they living the dream, so to speak. So when I first heard 19 year old Anja Plaschg's gothic Björk impression, I was reminded that I certainly can't provide my own equivalent in the medium that I consume voraciously. A bit of a disenchanted reaction to a very promising artist, but a necessary step of growing up perhaps.
Favorite Track: Turbine Womb

[21] Atlas Sound | Logos

I've come to realize through the year that Bradford Cox is indeed one of the most talented prolific songwriters of this decade's latter half. Although this realization isn't much of a shock given my sudden love of the shoegaze/dream-pop aesthetic, which is the realm Cox drowns his sorrows typically. Logos is the first Cox release after my new found appreciation for the songwriter. Overall, I was disappointed that the entire album couldn't match the ethereal consistency of his Deerhunter efforts or the top tracks from the album itself ("Shelia", "Quick Canal"). While some of the compositions are intent in staying in their embryonic soup, I might be missing the whole point. A dream is pretty worthless knowing the ending all the time.
Favorite Track: Quick Canal

[20] Grizzly Bear | Veckatimest

The gulf between brilliant cuts and forgettable near filler is quite embarrasing on The Griz's behalf.
Favorite Track: Ready, Able

[19] The Pains of Being Pure at Heart | The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Favorite Track: Stay Alive

[18] A Sunny Day in Glasgow | Ashes Grammar

Favorite Track: Close Chorus

[17] Mount Eerie | Wind's Poem

Favorite Track: Stone's Ode

[16] HEALTH | Get Color

Get Color wasn't quite the game changer of noisy oblivion that I was expecting. For every tautly-wound exploration in combining seemingly every type of sonic distortion ("Die Slow", "We Are Water"), there are practically aimless sound experiments that do not benefit from the shortened track times. Nonetheless, HEALTH's intentions were obviously to pummel the senses and they achieve said goal easily.
Favorite Track: Die Slow

[15] Future of the Left | Travels With Myself and Another

Favorite Track: Lapsed Catholics

[14] The Horrors | Primary Colours

Exceedingly minor praise: Delighted that they replicated that padded drum pedal kick from David Bowie's "A New Career in a New Town" into the intro of "Mirrors' Image". Wow, wow!
Favorite Track: Sea Within a Sea

[13] The Drums | 'Summertime!'

If I wasn't tired enough already of listening to polo shirts and capris during cold, windy days.
Favorite Track: Submarine

[12] Raekwon | Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt II

Favorite Track: House of Flying Daggers

[11] The Flaming Lips | Embryonic

I had to make a decision. Do I continue my entrenched resentment of double albums, or do I embrace Coyne's vision of sprawling psychedelia, detached emotions and voodoo evil? My reaction was pretty typical: Keep the killer, cut all that filler.
Favorite Track: The Ego's Last Stand

[10] Fever Ray | Fever Ray

When Karin Dreijer Andersson decides to ascend from the murky lake where she resides in for most of her solo album, the chill produced can be quite profound. (see 2:05 of "Dry and Dusty")
Favorite Track: Now's the Only Time I Know

[09] Dirty Projectors | Bitte Orca

If I even knew what pretentious music meant in concept, I might have tagged Bitte Orca as wankery before I saw the band in a live setting. While the vocal quirks and no-wave guitars may strike some as facetious on record, I can attest that they are filled some type of primal (Rural Outfitters?) energy on stage. The personalities of the band are all lovely too, so there's a few intangibles that the objective reader won't be able to relate towards.
Favorite Track: Useful Chamber

[08] Animal Collective | Fall Be Kind

I made a mistake about a year ago. I killed an album with hype. RIP Merriweather Post Pavilion. May I listen to you with less jaded ears at some point in the future.

This dramatic reaction to one Animal Collective release serves as a nice antithesis to my enjoyment of Fall Be Kind. I was barely conscious of FBK's impending release, so on first inspection I was delighted to hear all these sonic quirks! Pan flute solos over dubby bass and backwards samples to recreate speech from speech? I thought MPP was supposed to be the innovative next thing! Fall Be Kind represents all the likable characteristics of Animal Collective before they became the next Jack Johnson for the festival-goers.
Favorite Track: Graze

[07] Cymbals Eat Guitars | Why There Are Mountains

"They told me that the classics never go out of style but, they do, they do." -a questionable individual
Way to go CEG, you transcended your awful band name and showed the world that the ramshackle, convoluted mess of 90's meat-and-potatoes indie rock can still be in vogue and inspire slackers California-wide.
Favorite Track: And the Hazy Sea

[06] The Antlers | Hospice

First Listen: This album's tragic. His lover dies of leukemia right? Tragic.

86th Listen: So was it his mother or sister? Wait...his girlfriend just broke up with him? No. An allegorical tale about relationship atrophy? Yes, maybe. And why is there so many up beat anthems and jangly bits for this cancer ward? O that really catchy tune mentions abortion? Well, yeeeano. Dammit, at least "Wake" keeps tugging at those old heartstrings.
Favorite Track: Wake

[05] Florence + The Machine | Lungs

Is there really anything quite as thrilling as ballsy pop music? I have a soft spot for ornately arranged ditties and Florence Welch luckily seems to pick up the reigns of Kate Bush in providing enigmatic structures to the pop song. Even more rousing than the sweeping orchestration, Welch's voice produces a sweeping tempest of emotion where the lyrics are cast asunder in favor of stomping marches of celebration. It's as if Treasure-era Elizabeth Fraser was given a megaphone and decided to scream from the roofs. Invigorating.
Favorite Track: Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

[04] St. Vincent | Actor

The feminists might hate me, but I was not expecting Annie Clark (who's a total sweetheart) to deliver the most intriguing guitar record of the year. Although it's mentioned in practically every review of Actor, that contrast of Annie's lilting voice and orchestral instrumentation against sudden blasts of electric distortion is paralyzing at times. That guitar tone is so unique, she gets the guitar to nearly resemble glitch electronics in some tracks (especially "Marrow"). Recruit her for Sonic Youth please.
Favorite Track: The Neighbors

[03] Mew | No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away. No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away

Definitely wins this year's award of So Anthemic/Grandiose/Heart-on-Sleeve-Overwhelmingly-Positive-That-It's-U2 (With-Self-Awareness)-For-Art-Student-Snobs.

Honestly though, this is an album chock full of gorgeous melodies and good vibes that surprisingly complement the unusual prog structures. This pairing continually brings to mind the spiritual art-pop of Talk Talk's Colour of Spring but no one has yet spoken up to confirm these suspicions. Anyone? I'm not saying that I expect Mew's next offering to be a post-rock/avant-jazz masterpiece, but "Sometimes Life Isn't Easy" includes a childrens choir, bah god!
Favorite Track: Sometimes Life Isn't Easy

[02] Wild Beasts | Two Dancers

Wild Beasts seems to be a rare band that occupies the same artistic territory of Radiohead in that they simply get the concept of art-rock. The structures, melodies, and subjects are delightfully unconventional and mature. Coupled with Hayden Thorpe's falsetto calling card (a sort of amalgam between Bowie, Byrne and Antony), Wild Beasts appears to be a band capable of routinely releasing statement after statement. Consider me hyped for their next or ten releases in the coming years.
Favorite Track: We Still Got the Taste Dancing On Our Tongues

[01] Dan Deacon | Bromst

Overall, 2009 appears to be a watershed year in electronic albums; ranging from the treacly awful (Owl City) to almost workmanlike pleasurable (Phoenix) to the near universally adulated Merriweather Post Pavilion. While the three previously mentioned artists form a convenient slope of increasing complexity in composition, compared to Baltimore's resident sonic weirdo/maestro Dan Deacon those efforts appear hilariously juvenile. While Animal Collective fans (yes I know, I'm one of them. spare me the grief.) got excited about a minute long "trance" section in "Brother Sport", Deacon goes about crafting eight minute slabs of tumultuous hypnosis and melodic deconstruction alongside other rewarding tangents. A siren-launched ultra-kinetic rave-up so fast that it DOES skid off the tracks! ("Red F") Pseudo-rap accompanied by frogcroakbirdchirps! ("Woof Woof") Psychedelic vocal shenanigans! ("Wet Wings") Sublime, minimalist beauty! ("Surprise Stefani") Both!! ("Snookered") Contrary to many, Deacon fully fleshes each of these sensational concepts into rewarding melodies. As such dedication draws the album's length to over an hour, the end result is somewhat akin to drowning in a torrent of skittles (but the rainbow just tastes soooo good!) Fortunately, Deacon saves his ultimate scream till the end with "Get Older". On first listen, the climax seems to occur a minute within so what happens two minutes later must be spontaneous combustion, so by extension what finally occurs at 4:45 has to be the equivalent of nuclear fusion. Ah, so that's what is happening in that tent on the cover! Dan Deacon! World energy problem solver! By too many skittles!
Favorite Tracks: Get Older, Snookered

A lil bit of impressionism.

The guitar in rock music is often looked as being a tool of clumsy destruction, not an instrument capable of elegance or transcendent beauty. Starting in the late 1980s however, an underground movement of musicians, known as shoegazers for their introverted stage presence, strove to craft intricate dreamscapes through their guitar pedals. The result has been a series of impressionistic masterpieces, albums shrouded in crystalline guitar tones and ethereal vocals, with the following cuts remaining the best of the genre. – TA

Cocteau Twins | Treasure (1984)

Before the open reliance of guitars producing walls of sound to achieve hazy bliss, Elizabeth Fraser set the template for atmosphere with The Voice. Fraser caterwauls between yowls and harsh consonants, and coupled with equal parts drum machines and harpsichord, Treasure evokes medieval courts and witch incantations. The first escape into a netherworld of removed tranquility. –TA

Essential Track: Lorelei

Ride | Nowhere (1990)

More so than other seminal shoegazers, Ride’s debut took standard song structures and placed them into a setting similar to Nowhere’s cover art of a lone oceanic wave: a crossroads of breathy ambiance and reverb-soaked hard rock. The songwriting teeters between stylistic extremes of the string-laced splendor of “Vapour Trail” and the drum-and-feedback earthmover “Dreams Burn Down”. The most accessible album for new converts of shoegaze. –TA

Essential Track: Vapour Trail

My Bloody Valentine | Loveless (1991)

The crowning achievement of shoegaze, Loveless has seen its mythology grow through the years. Principal songwriter/guitarist Kevin Shields bankrupted his label and disappeared from music after obsessively seeking a specific sound. That particular sound is the musical equivalent of Monet paintbrushes and bubblegum vocals unglued at the seams. The result is a masterpiece that has forced critics to resort to increasingly absurd metaphors. Are the endless blankets of sound in “To Here Knows When” a return to the womb? Exactly. –TA

Essential Track: Sometimes

Slowdive | Souvlaki (1993)

While the genre moniker invokes images of awkward teens staring downwards, no other shoegaze band were better able to achieve sky-scraping statements than Slowdive. The songs of Souvlaki are best measured in degrees of weightlessness as many replicate the drifting off during dreams. Then “Souvlaki Space Station” arrives and you are launched practically into orbit. No one said lightheartedness wouldn’t hurt. –TA

Essential Track: Souvlaki Space Station

M83 | Saturdays = Youth (2008)

Many shoegaze albums seem intent on creating an idyllic world outside the musings of reality. With Anthony Gonzalez’s inspiration for Saturdays=Youth being a fond gaze back at the 80s, notably the classic coming-of-age films such as The Breakfast Club, Gonzalez uses synthesizer and guitar to craft a cathedral of nostalgia. During the second-half daydream of “We Own the Sky” one cannot stop themselves from experiencing perfect Autumn days on repeat. –TA

Essential Track: Kim & Jessie

Note: This was written for a collaboration article for Ohio Northern's Northern Review.

A Modest Display of Argumentative Rhetoric

I decided that something needed to break this void of inactivity. This letter to the editor was written in response to a tepid EP list by one of my university's music editors.

“Top” EP list is well-intentioned but ultimately flawed

Published in the April 6th edition of the The Northern Review, Alan Ohman attempted, in the article “Quick listens: top modern EPs”, to justify that the presence of an EP in an artist’s catalogue serves as an ideal entry point into the respective discography. Unfortunately, while a benign theory on paper, Ohman’s choices are dubious at best regarding artistic relevancy. Ohman’s first controversial selection is The Mars Volta’s debut EP, “Tremulant”. While Ohman champions the EP to be a precursor of Volta’s “impeccable” output, the reader must be informed that “Tremulant” represents the initial step towards shameless over-indulgence by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. After crafting the post-hardcore classic “Relationship of Command” with At the Drive-In, Rodriguez-Lopez unwisely lets his Robert Fripp inferiority complex to take precedent over his music. Besides encouraging the reader to indulge in the conceit of, dare I say, nu-prog, Ohman double dips by promoting Rodriguez-Lopez’s collaboration with Lydia Lunch. If the curious listener would somehow enjoy this flat affair, instead of supporting Omar’s ego the listener is better suited to support Lunch’s output from her early New York no-wave band, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks.

Perhaps more disconcerting is the inclusion of Dream Theater’s “A Change of Seasons”. While “Seasons” may be an EP in name, according to my trusted sources an EP contains between “10 to 28 minutes of music” and, alas, “Seasons” includes nearly an hour of fun! The crux of this issue is that progressive rock and brevity are contradictions, so the listener expecting a concise sample may be comatose by the sixth movement of the title track. My final issue lies with the insertion of the Modest Mouse EP. An individual’s first foray with an artist should never be with a collection of B-sides, the quality being quite irrelevant. Logically if the listener should want to experience Modest Mouse, he should pack up for a road trip with “The Lonesome Crowded West” in the CD player.

If I may present my own selection, under Ohman’s criteria, I would recommend TV on the Radio’s Young Liars EP debut. Concise and elegant in its post-modern brilliance, Young Liars is a clarion call by one of the few forward thinking artists of the current decade. Besides introducing Tunde Adebimpe’s existential poetry and David Sitek’s breakthrough production techniques, Young Liars is a cohesive masterpiece that will feature in many best-of decade lists later in 2009.

Eureka Vol.1: "Scream Phoenix" - Cannibal Ox

Cannibal Ox's fully realized debut "The Cold Vein", released in 2001, set the benchmark for all alternative rappers of the Noughts. Backed by the lush, post-modern sampling of El-P, MCs Vast Aire and Vordul Mega's dense flow chronicled the streets of poverty-stricken New York, similar to their immediate predecessors, the Wu-Tang Clan. While the Wu relished in the mafia-led violence of drug deals and gang wars, Aire and Mega strived for a dignified sound or at least a more literate vocab. Originally a hidden track on their debut, "Scream Phoenix" represents the transcendent nature of their material that was nearly unmatched by their peers. Haunted by an ethereal Philip Glass sample, Aire and Mega attempt to grasp the undeniable power of spirituality, a subject rarely broached by the typical street rapper. Through the masterful allusion of a born-again soul to the phoenix, Can Ox craft a seminal track which proves that art and spirituality are merged by unlikely individuals when they are searching for a greater purpose.

Music Stream

Note: The Eureka series will highlight particular songs that are striking a chord with me at the moment, no matter the genre. Ideally this will be updated every one to two weeks.

Sonic Deluge Expected Result From Global Warming

Perhaps the most intriguing musical development in the past week (outside Lee Perry's Grammys rumor: wowza) resides in the formation of promising combo, Global Warming. The power trio consists of Trevor Lynn (the Funk), Craig Osterbrock (the Rock) and Tyler Johnston (the Bongos), but in recent statements by impomptu band spokesman Lynn, the lineup will be fluid. The diversity of certain spectacular jam sessions in the future is only outmatched by the eclectic instrumentation the group is bringing to the forefront of modern music. Harmonica, ukelele, bongos...one can imagine the tribal brilliance that will arise, and once guest musicians arrive creative chaos will be unleashed. Although there is intense anticipation of what form the first songs Global Warming will appear as, there is little one can do but quote a Funkadelic classic, "good god, hit it and quit it."

Fact Sheet

Members: Trevor Lynn - Guitar, Vocals, Ukulele
Tyler Johnston - Bongos, Vocals
Craig Osterbrock - Guitar, Harmonica

Formation (public announcement) - January 29, 2009

Homebase - Dubtown, OH

Influences - Bob Dylan, Weezy, Sufjan Stevens, Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Jack Johnson, Elliott Smith, The Roots, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Habib Koite, Fugees, Robert Johnson, Parliament, Funkadelic, The Libertines, Morodo (Lynn)

Future Releases - Summer EP (tentative)

Live Dates - Unannounced

Fan Group (w/exclusive interview)