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
