Shanimal's Top 10 of 2009

Brand New-Daisy

Brand New has always been there for me during difficult times, and this album proves the same. This album is similar to Deja Entendu and The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. Jesse Lacey & company took the same formula and built on it. Although Deja Entendu and The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me are aesthetically more pleasing, I got very much into this album. Stand out tracks include: At The Bottom, Bed, and Bought a Bride. I can’t believe no one else considered Brand New for a Top 10 position. Am I the only one that still thinks their music is amazing? Or did all you guys give up on them after Deja Entendu?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr3jP68k1-A&feature=PlayList&p=4665DF7FAD35CF2C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2

9. Japanadroids – Post Nothing

Well played gentlemen! I have nothing further to add from my predecessors. This album fucking rocks my socks off!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdX_V4h4zH4

8. Ida Maria-Fortress ‘Round My Heart

This is actually analbum I purchased and paid for on Itunes, legitimately! How bout that? This woman is very reminiscent of Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders. Very raw emotion,and an honest voice. This is an album that I can sit at home and listen to by myself or if I’m out at a bar, get wasted and take shots of Jameson to. She has a wonderful voice and this album displays that well. Favorite tracks include: Oh My God, I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked, Stella, Morning Light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdhxLEpODCA

7. Karen O. And The Kids- Where the Wild Things Are OST

So Karen O. decides to take her band, Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, Aaron Hemphill from the Liars and two guys from the Dead Weather and they make up her “kids”. I loved this movie and I thought that the music really fit with the movie. I am a big kid at heart so this album was great for me to listen to. Favorite songs included : All Is Love, Capsize, Worried Shoes, Hideaway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTtddTpl4m8

6. Animal Collective-Merriweather Post Pavilion

I really have nothing to add to this either, knew it was going to be on my Top 10, and I knew it was going to be one of the best of 2009 for me and many of my indie music loving friends. Seeing them play in May really solidified their fact that this album is awesome and they are also. Kudos to the Fall Be Kind EP as well. Well done!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zol2MJf6XNE

5. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

This album was considered for my Top 10 but I didn't know where to put it. Seeing them at Turner Hall for the first time a few weeks ago really made me love them more and reconsider this albums place on my Top 10. I am a BIG, BIG fan of the female vocalist, and Tracyanne Campbell really does it for me. That petite Scottish woman has a voice that really translates well in this album. Very relatable, emotional and honest lyrics on this album. Would gladly see them again live. Thoroughly enjoyed the show and this album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3CkfvYMCWM

4.Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – It’s Blitz

I know, it’s the second time a YYY’s affiliate have a place on my Top 10,but seriously how come more people don’t have this album on theirs? This was another band that I had the pleasure of seeing this year, although it was at the Rave. The song that really got me tuned into this album is the fourth track on it called Dull Life. “We’ve seen the nightmare of the lies that you speak/The beast that I lie beneath is coming in” Fricken catchy song! Other standouts included Soft shock, Skeletons, Heads Will Roll (which Passion Pit does a very nice remix of) Runaway, and Zero

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki0yJ5lFDy4

3. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeaus
Phoenix

This album was defiantly a summer album for me. A band that Brian Moshe got me into, I will thank him for doing so. I did find it rather odd that Nissan is using them in their car commercials, but “1901” is one pretty catchy song, and it’s one that I have the ringtone set to on my phone. Not too much to add here but this is a great album! Hopefully a band I will get to see live soon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJDNw7o6so

2. Arctic Monkeys – Humbug

Have always been a big Arctic Monkeys fan, and did have the pleasure of seeing this band for the first time ever play at the Rave in Milwaukee. Alex Turner really can show how dark he can be in this album. There honestly is not a song that I dislike on this album. I do have the bonus Japanese edition on it which has a mean cover of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “Red Right Hand”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8FWnscrnb0

1. Passion Pit - Manners

I got very interested in this album over the summer as well and it has carried over. The other night I was watching this band perform on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and got super excited to see them live. I missed them at Lollapalooza this year and I have been dying to see them. Their music just gets me up and dancing and puts me in a better mood. I can’t really stress how much I love this album and how amazing these guys are! Xoxoxo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqN4iCRSQCM

Honorable Mentions:

Girls-Album

Atlas Sound – Logos

Grizzly Bear- Veckatmist (got into this one right when it came out but couldn't find a place for it in the Top 10)

Dirty Projectors- Bitte Orca

Muse- The Resistance

Wilco-Wilco (The Album)

The Antlers – Hospice

Evan's Lisztomania/ Merriweather List Pavilion/ Veckatimlist

As usual, it's been a joy reading all the lists posted here; I've found them far more interesting and insightful than most of the major end-of-the-year lists, which are as homogenized and interchangeable as I've ever seen them this year. Here are my own picks, cross-posted from my regular music blog.

10. Telekinesis – “Telekinesis!”



Like a lot of young people with big ambitions and even bigger anxieties, Telekinesis’ Michael Benjamin Lerner can't sit still. He spends his band’s debut album darting around the globe, from America to Tokyo to London, over mountains and across seas, in search of the magic shortcut that will suddenly make the rest of his life fall into place. Lerner’s eager, kinetic power-pop riffs, engineered for maximum catchiness by producer Chris Walla, are so urgent they suggest he’s racing against some imaginary clock, as if he fears his youth were on the brink of sudden expiration. His marathon quest never yields the easy answers he wants or the love he seeks, but it pays off in hooks on one of the sweetest guitar-pop albums of the year.

9. Megafaun – “Gather, Form and Fly”



The North Carolina trio Megafaun revisits the past 50 years of American music on its sophomore album, basking in ’60s folk, ’70s country-rock and bluegrass or all eras. They do so, however, not as revivalists but revisionists, re-purposing these influence into restless new compositions. To Megafaun, American music is a puzzle that has yet to be fully cracked. “I can’t read a painted picture of life as it was in the past,” they sing on “Impressions of the Past,” a shape-shifting orchestral suite that sheds its entire skin three times over, “Impressions of the past will be moored until I find what it is I’m looking for.”

8. Method Man and Redman – “Blackout! 2”



Method Man and Redman’s belated follow-up to their 1999 team-up Blackout! improves on the original in every way, eschewing cartoonish filler in favor of ecstatic hooks, colossal funk and some welcome concessions to contemporary rap that take the duo on an overdue trip outside their comfort zone, most impressively on the southern-flavored UGK homage “City Lights.” Red and Meth’s respective hot and cold flows are fundamental complements of each other, and their chemistry is particularly potent here, with both rappers on the top of their game. Even curmudgeonly old Method Man sounds like he’s having a ball.

7. Grizzly Bear – “Veckatimest”



The compositions on Grizzly Bear’s third album seem fluid, twisting in dramatic, unexpected directions as if following a whim of their own. In reality, each harmonic surprise was meticulously scripted and most likely thoroughly researched, given how studiously Veckatimest resurrects so many forgotten and out-of-vogue forms of American music. Tin Pan Alley, barbershop, church choirs and waltzes of both the jazz and classical variety ground these arrangements, but these sounds are paired in ways they’ve never been before, creating a record that’s both antique and modern. In a year marked by consensus buzz albums, Veckatimest was the universal critical darling that most deserved its accolades.

6. The Church – “Untitled #23”



Old dogs can teach themselves new tricks. Thirty years into their career—and 20 years after their brief commercial peak—The Church have recorded one of their most striking albums yet, a genuine psychedelic masterpiece. Untitled #23 retains all The Church’s hallmarks—the warm, effusive melodies; the complex guitar interplay; the surprising tangents—but it strikes a tone distinct from anything else in their discography. The band resists playing to their usual strengths for shimmering guitar-pop or grandiose, surround-sound rock, and instead attempts something less immediate. Untitled #23 is resigned and melancholic, its guitars restrained and its hooks hidden behind a shadowy, psychedelic haze. It’s a Rorschach inkblot of an album, and each listen lends itself to a new discoveries and interpretations.

5. Antony and the Johnsons – “The Crying Light”



On Antony and the Johnson’s 2005 album, I Am A Bird Now, Antony confessed his fear “of that middle place between light and nowhere,” but The Crying Light finds Antony beginning to pine for the purgatory he once dreaded. “I need another world, a place where I can go,” he sings. The Crying Light isn’t as penetratingly sad as I Am A Bird Now, where Antony had not only to contend with issues of mortality but also of gender identity. On that album, Antony’s piano threatened to spiral into madness, but here it just basks in the quiet beauty of these simple, peaceful songs. And though two dozen musicians color The Crying Light, they make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, never attempting to upstage Antony’s nimble voice. The title track, for instance, ends not in a crashing crescendo, but rather with simple finger snaps.

4. Cursive – “Mama, I’m Swollen”



Cursive’s Tim Kasher has spent the decade battling relationship woes and Catholic guilt, troubles that return on the latest Cursive album along with an even more demoralizing scourge: societal pressure for him to give up the whole art thing and act his age, and the lingering doubts that society may be right. Mama, I’m Swollen opens with a bold fake-out: “In The Now,” the most regressive punk song in Cursive’s oeuvre, a knee-jerk response to charges Kasher behave like an adult, but that tantrum gives way to some of Kasher’s prettiest confessionals yet, horn-kissed, soulful pop tunes that beg for extended psychoanalysis.

3. Passion Pit – “Manners”

In 2009, indie-rock was dominated by slight and synthy sorta-pop records, but Passion Pit’s Manners was the real deal, a stadium-sized, lighters-up, “throw your arms around the person closest to you and let’s have a shared moment” pop album. No other electro-pop album offered anywhere near the blood rush, or for that matter nearly as many great singles.

2. Wye Oak – “The Knot”



The second album from the Baltimore dream-pop duo Wye Oak assures that they will never again be referred to as dream-pop duo. It’s a record that eviscerates its listeners with both tiny, graceful flicks of a penknife and wild slashes from a roaring chainsaw—the chainsaw being singer Jenn Wasner’s guitar, which charges through a few of these songs like a bull in a China shop. Wasner’s new-found fury does nothing to undermine the fundamental gorgeousness of these songs, though, which the band saturates in waltzing violins, mournful horns and textural flourishes. Each fluctuation from loud to soft represents another shift in the power dynamics of a relationship so tangled there’s no longer any hope of a clean escape. The more the couple pulls in different directions, the tighter the knot becomes.

1. The-Dream – “Love Vs. Money”



Contemporary R&B albums don’t usually top these sorts of best-of lists, but then again, there’s never been a contemporary R&B album like The-Dream’s 2009 headphone masterpiece. For its scale and ambition, Love Vs. Money invites comparisons to Radiohead, though it’s not nearly as esoteric as Kid A or even OK Computer. This is a piece of art crafted entirely from the fabric of modern pop radio, all regal synthesizers, dulcet vocal tics, booming, skittering drums. It’s such instant ear candy that it’s easy to overlook how much is going on under the surface, where camouflaged hooks and flowering flourishes further reveal themselves with each listen. The-Dream’s songwriting is similarly multifaceted, juxtaposing disarming humor with bruising emotion. Love Vs. Money’s breezy opening singles give way to an anxious suite charting romance from flirtation to fruition to collapse, which The-Dream narrates with the momentum of a gripping mystery novel. The smartest, most gripping album of 2009 was also the one that sounded best played loud over a pair of car speakers.

Thanks for reading. If you're looking for more recommendations, here are 10 runner-up albums that are nearly as good as the ones above. I also use my Twitter account mostly to talk about music these days, sometimes even music that isn't by Lil Wayne. I'll keep the recommendations flowing there, too.

Carl's Top Ten of '09

Hello internet. My name's Carl and I'm here to let you know about my sophomore posting of my Top 10 albums of 2009. This is a great tradition that has started and though my list will most certainly be different from those already out and those yet to come hopefully it won't repulse too many of you! I'm looking forward to the listening party and hoping to once again jump start my much delayed "indie scene" interest. So, without any further ado... my list:

10) Brother Ali - Us

A white albino guy from Minnesota who lays down some of the sickest freestyle I've heard. Collaborates with another underground hip hop icon in Ant.

Crown Jewel - Brother Ali

9) Matisyahu - Light

His 3rd studio album after much touring and the hit album "Youth". I saw him at Summerfest this year and he was quite the draw.

Struggla - Matisyahu

8) Umphrey's McGee - Mantis

Satisfying my personal jam band requirement for the list, this album is easy and fun to listen to.

Turn & Run - Umphrey's McGee

7) Hatebreed - For The Lions

The album that must go on when there is much mosh pitting to be had. That, or when you need to take out a lamp, pillow, wall, or anything else in your way after a really bad day.

Suicidal Maniac - Hatebreed

6) Lonely Island - Incredibad

Funny, funny shit. I was up in the old stomping grounds of Oshkosh and popped into Molly's (don't ask) and they were playing "On A Boat". Hilarity ensued.

Like A Boss - The Lonely Islan...

5) Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Pt 2

Ok, I did see this on someone else's list this year... and rightfully so. "The Chef" from Wu-Tang is still bringin it.

10 Bricks Featuring Cappadonna...

4) Japandroids - Post Nothing

Uh-oh... Carl heard of, listened to, and liked an entire "indie" album? Well isn't he all growns up!

The Boys Are Leaving Town - Ja...

3) 311 - Uplifter

C'mon now. Those who know me, knew this was going on. I've been listening to them since 1995 and have no intentions on stopping. Chad Sexton is my personal idol.

Daisy Cutter - 311

2) Dubstep: Various Artists - Tectonic Plates Vol 2

Sorry Matt... I know you said no compliations but it was hard enough to find anything from this genre, available on lala, and with an '09 release date! I started listening to dubstep this summer and must say ever since I've given my subwoofers more than their fair share of workouts.

Trapped In A Dark Bubble - Skr...

1) Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3

Argueably the greatest rapper out of NY since Biggie, Jay-Z once again erupted full force with the highly anticipated "Blueprint 3". The single "Empire State of Mind" with Alicia Keys is a smash hit and was performed at the World Series... works for me. My personal favorite off the album is with Pharrell called "So Ambitious".

So Ambitious (feat. Pharrell) ...

The Night Owl Presents Top Albums of 2009

Via local blog The Night Owl Presents

10. ST. VINCENT - Actor

After a so-so album debut a couple of years ago and the timid performance we witnessed as an opening act in 2007, this fine effort came out of the blue. Annie Clark a/k/a St. Vincent finds her voice on Actor, adapting a number of personalities in a varied collection of songs. And don't let the sweet voice fool you.

KEY TRACK: "Actor Out Of Work"
BONUS: "Oh Sister" (cover of Dylan song with Andrew Bird, Providence. RI, October 2009)

9. DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE - A Friend of A Friend

Previously known as the key co-writer and musician on so many fine works by Gillian Welch, out from the shadows steps Dave Rawlings and his superb band. The mix of originals and unique covers, assisted by Welch and proteges The Old Crow Medicine Show, are delivered in grand fashion.

KEY TRACK: "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High") (live at Grimey's Records, Nashville, TN, December 2009)
FURTHER READING: Alec Wilkinson's excellent New Yorker profile of Welch and Rawlings from 2004.

8. NEKO CASE - Middle Cyclone

A wonderful follow-up to Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Neko Case takes on another natural disaster and triumphs.

KEY TRACK: "People Got A Lotta Nerve"
FURTHER READING: February 2009 profile of Neko Case from The New York Times Magazine.

7. BOB DYLAN - Together Through Life

In which the Patron Saint of TNOP interprets Chess Records blues with a Tex-Mex undertone. And it works, continuing the Bard's late-career renaissance. [Side note to long time fans: it's like Desire, except David Hidalgo's accordion replaces Scarlet Rivera's fiddle.]

KEY TRACK: "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"

FURTHER READING: Bill Flanagan interviews Dylan about the record.

6. DAN AUERBACH - Keep It Hid

First solo effort from The Black Keys' front man allows him to flesh out his sound. The record gets stronger with each listen, and shows that Auerbach is now a major player on the music scene. He's in a prolific stage, as evidenced by the BlakRoc project and the expected new Keys' release in 2010.

KEY TRACK #1: "My Last Mistake"

KEY TRACK #2: "Trouble Weighs A Ton" (with James Quine)

5. THE DECEMBERISTS - The Hazards of Love

America's least-likely rock stars continue their musical ascendancy, using little known folk tales as their narrative compass. We admit it took us a little longer to warm up to this effort than previous favorites like The Crane Wife and Picaresque, but this "Folk Opera" treats the listener to bombastic shapeshifters, ghostly kids and a psychotic queen. Too adventuresome? Pretentious prog rock gone bad? Some thought so. But head man Colin Meloy clearly believes in the album concept, and dares to push back at the iPod singles mentality. And it doesn't hurt that he sure knows how to pen a melody.

KEY TRACK: "The Rake's Song"

KEY TRACK #2: "The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid" (with Shara Worden, Los Angeles, CA, May 2009)
FURTHER LISTENING: David Dye of The World Cafe interviews Colin Meloy.

4. U2 - No Line On The Horizon

After two albums of straight ahead rock cementing the familiar "U2 sound," the Dublin lads decide to step out of the box again. The result is their best studio record since Achtung Baby. Their massive stadium tour will continue into 2010, a sign of how much they believe in the new work.

KEY TRACK: "Moment of Surrender"

KEY TRACK #2: "Get On Your Boots" (live at the 2009 Grammy Awards)

FURTHER READING: Producer Brian Eno talks to The Telegraph about the recording of No Line On The Horizon.

3. WILCO - Wilco (The Album)

The top American band hits a solid groove from beginning to end in this self-titled (kind of) CD. Major fans of Wilco's experimental, atmospheric side will be disappointed to an extent, but the album brims with confidence from a line up of musicians who clearly listen to and love all shades of rock and roll - and learn from it.



KEY TRACK: "You Never Know"
KEY TRACK #2: "You And I" (with Leslie Feist on Late Night With David Letterman, July 2009)
KEY TRACK #3: "Wilco (The Song)" (The Colbert Report, October 2008)
FURTHER READING: Time talks to Jeff Tweedy about the album, the passing of Jay Bennett and a fellow Chicagoan.





2. PHOENIX - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Regular readers of TNOP know that we are suckers for the unadulterated joys of pop. After three promising tries, France's Phoenix stormed the U.S. shores this year with its sunny, percussion driven sound. We dare you not to like it.

KEY TRACK: "Lisztomania"
PERFORMANCE: "1901," "Lisztomania/One Time Too Many" and "Long Distance Call" (from La Blogotheque Take Away Show, December 2009)
FURTHER READING: "Phoenix Remains A Band Apart" from September 2009 issue of The Fader.




1. GRIZZLY BEAR - Veckatimest

The Beach Boys-like harmony and hollow bodied guitar sound - with production finished, appropriately enough, in a New York church - made this record by the Brooklyn quartet Grizzly Bear TNOP's most played record in the car and on the stereo and iPod during 2009. Although its production is sparse and tones often hushed, there is an unique and youthful exuberance about this work. It is a record that will be played for many years to come.

KEY TRACK: "Two Weeks"
KEY TRACK #2: "All We Ask" (Blue Ribbon Vision @ Pabst Theater, Milwaukee, WI, June 2009)KEY TRACK #3: "While You Wait For The Others" (KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, February 2008)
INTERVIEW AND PERFORMANCE: Chicago Public Radio's Sound Opinions, November 2009.

Feelin' Fine In Oh-Nine! (aka - Brian's Top 10 Albums of 2009)

After a couple months of debate, I've come up with the below list. Enjoy!

#10 Harlem Shakes – Technicolor Dream

If this list was made six months ago, Technicolor Dream would have easily been in my Top 3. Unfortunately, this album dropped considerably from my list after I saw them with like 20 other people at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. I'm not sure if it was just their youth, the crowd's lack of enthusiasm, or the show being one of the first on their tour, but the show really made me look differently at the album. You know how you see a band live that you kind of like and the put on a great show, which makes you fall in love with them? Yeah, well this was pretty much the complete opposite. Maybe I just had too high of expectations, as my friend saw them the next night in Minneapolis and thought the show was great. Sure this seems like a lot of negative things to say about an album that I consider my 10th favorite album of 2009, but in all honesty, before I saw them live, I played the shit out of this album.

#9 XX - XX

Going from Harlem Shakes (which was one of the first albums that I thought would make my top 10) to XX, which was the last album I identified for inclusion on my Top 10 list. I really have nothing insightful to say about this album. I just like it. A very chill, r&b influenced album. (Actually, this is the last album I wrote up for this post and I’m kind of itching to post my list, so I apologize for the half-assedness. )

#8 Drake – So Far Gone

The end of 2008 saw Kanye West and Lil Wayne straying from rapping and moving more towards singing, with help of Autotune. Drake is in a similar vein, blending r&b with hip hop, only he has voice that doesn't require Autotune and can spit punchlines with the best of them. So Far Gone is a mixtape that plays more like an album than a mixtape - many of the songs use original production and he makes eclectic choices for the songs he choses to remake - Peter Bjorn & John, Coldplay, Tears For Fears and (possibly most successfully) remixing Lykke Li's A Little Bit into a duet. But amidst all of the unorthodox remakes, Drake shows he can rap with the best of them, rapping side-by-side with Lil Wayne over Just Blaze's beat for the Jay-Z song Ignorant Shit. And its not very often that a mixtape track garners so much attention and radio play that it ends up as the #1 R&B/Hip Hop song, #1 Rap song, and #2 on the Billboard's Top 100 charts, as he accomplished with "Best I Ever Had." If So Far Gone's cross-genre commerical and critical success (hell, even Pitchfork gave it a 7.4) is any indication, once Drake's debut album - Thank Me Later - drops in 2010, he is going to be on top of the music world. Or, as he raps on "Ignant Shit" "I alway knew that I could figga/how to get these labelheads to offer 'em good figures/And me doin' them shows got everyone nervous cause/them hipsters gon have to get along with them hood n***as"

#7 Girls – Album
There’s a certain element of exuberance and authenticity that makes Girls – Album pull you in. The Elvis Costello comparisons are pretty spot-on, much of this album reminds me of “My Aim Is True” – not just Christopher Owens’ vocals, but the emotions, the instrumentation, and lyrical content. There’s a certain quality of this music makes me think that no one would raise an eyebrow if a classic rock DJ snuck a song in , but at the same time doesn’t sound like its pandering or classic rock by numbers. It sounds fresh and new, yet familiar and comforting. I dig it.

#6 Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms

Neon Indian’s Psychic Chasms is my favorite album of this whole “Glow-Fi” / ”Chillwave” movement (or whatever other clever names Pitchfork dubs it). I also am a big fan of Mystery Tapes’ Seek Magic and Washed Out’s High Times, but decided that Psychic Chasms is my favorite representation of this style of music. For those of you of you not hip to the whole Chillwave subgenre, basically its fun, lo-fi, electronic music with tons of 1980s influence. I think “Deadbeat Summer” is the perfect example of what this style is about (and by ‘perfect’ I mean, it uses Todd Rundgren sample ). The thing I like most about this stuff is its warm, summery vibe. Living in Wisconsin can be depressing during the winter, but throwing on your earbuds and listening to this album will make you forget all about the cold and make you feel like getting ready to hit the beach.

#5 Japandroids – Post-Nothing

Some albums make you fall in love with them on first listen. Other albums take some time to click with you. Post-Nothing falls in the latter category for me. After a suggestion of several enthusiastic friends I gave this album a listen, but it really did not grab me. About two months ago when I decided to get serious about this Top 10 of 2009 list (yes, I'm a nerd and it takes that long for me to figure these things out), I gave the album another listen. And another. And another. I feel a little weird/old when I hear the "1990s Revival" tag thrown about, but whatever you label this, its good stuff. It thrives off being straightforward. Post-Nothing's primordial, distortion drenched sound makes their simplistic lyrics anthemic

#4 Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Pains of Being Pure At Heart


What amazes me about Pains of Being Pure At Heart’s debut album is how consistently good this album is. While writing my top ten list, I have also been working on my mix-cd of songs from 2009 and, while most of the albums I’ve listed have 2 or 3 songs that really jump out at me for inclusion, I have slotted almost every single song on this album as my selection for this album. If that’s not a testament to the overall quality of the album, I don’t know what is. Plus what not to like about a band that reminds you of some sort of twisted love child of My Bloody Valentine, Belle and Sebastian, and The Smiths?

#3 Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about MPP that hasn’t been said before. The album is fantastic and is one of those albums that upon first listen I knew would end up as one of my favorite albums of the year.

#2 Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

I am personally shocked that no one, as of writing this, has put this album in their 2009 top ten. Maybe Phoenix isn’t cool anymore because their songs are on car commercials or something? I think that’s bullshit. Its great to see Phoenix finally get the (sorta) recognition they deserve. They made an album that is amazing from top to bottom. Some people (not me) knock Merriweather Post Pavillion because they feel its more accessible/commercial than their previous releases, but that is not something you can say about Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Phoenix stayed true to the musical vision they’ve had for their previous 3 studio albums and built off of it. There were similar high points on United and Alphabetical, but none of those albums touch the consistency of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – which is what makes this a special album. If you haven’t seen them live – this is a band you need to check out, if for no other reason than their drummer fucking rocks. They are great performers with lots of energy.

#1 Arctic Monkeys – Humbug

Ever since I heard Beneath the Boardwalk during the summer of 2005, I have felt that the Arctic Monkeys were a band with the potential to be great. Their high energy, catchy blend of post-punk Brit Rock hooked me early and its no surprise that I was greatly anticipating their 3rd album. What did surprise me was musical maturity and overall quality of Humbug. Recorded in Joshua Tree, California with Josh Homme producing, the band built on the successes of their previous two albums without retreading previously travelled ground. Its not surprising that lead singer Alex Turner cited Cream and Jimi Hendrix as two artists the band listened to while recording, as the album has a much darker, psychedelic sound (as evident on “Secret Door” and “Pretty Visitors”). Morrissey also turns up as an influence on one of the high points of the album, the ballad “Cornerstone”. These new influences do not overwhelm album, as songs like “Crying Lightning” and “Dance Little Liar” would fit seamlessly with either of their first two albums. Humbug may not make it on everyone’s top of 2009 list, but its easily the album that I’ve enjoyed and listened to the most so gets #1. Great job.

-----------------------

The Next 10 (alphabetically): Atlas Sound, Camera Obscura, Dark Night Of The Soul, Delorean, Memory Tapes, Papercuts, Passion Pit, Pete Doherty, Royksopp, White Denim

Mixtape of the year: Lil Wayne – No Ceilings

Album I'm most likely going to regret not putting on my list: Smith Westerns

Albums I admit are good, but really did nothing for me: Antlers, Grizzly Bear

Favorite Reissues/Archive Releases: The Beatles - Mono Box set, Spiritualized – Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space 3-CD Edition, Nirvana – Live At Reading

Thanks for reading! See you on the 27th!

Brian