Best music of 2009!
December 21, 2009 Leave a Comment
Wow, 2009 was an awesome year. Not just for music, but for pretty much everything. Lots of big things happened: I graduated college, moved to Brooklyn, and found out that, despite what many others have said is nearly impossible, I really can actually make a [very modest] living by doing only things I truly love to do. And I spent the year with some pretty amazing people too, most notably a really special group of girlfriends who I could not have lived without in 2009.
But it was a good year for music too. I went to some amazing shows, many of which have been documented somewhere on this page and I listened to a lot of records. I also got to interview some cool people, my favorite of whom was definitely Andrew W.K.
This is the second year I’ve actually made a year-end music list and it wasn’t easy. There’s a lot of music I didn’t listen to that I probably should have… This is just some of the stuff I really liked in the past 12 months and, just like my decade list, I could spend forever tweaking it if I had the time. It was also the first time I actually made lists for other places (Billboard, Critical Mob, and the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics’ Poll), so that was kind of cool.
Anyway, here goes (and if you’re feeling nostalgic, here’s last year’s post):
20. Discovery – LP (XL)
When I heard that dudes from Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot had a side project, I totally did not expect it to sound like this. While Discovery’s LP isn’t all that deep, it was such a fun summer record and the tracks with Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors) and Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend) are great, as is the remake of Ra Ra Riot’s “Can You Tell.” The lyrics “My bed’s too big for just me” will always make me think of my dad’s house, where I spent 10 years sleeping horizontally at the very head of a queen-sized bed.
19. Miike Snow – Miike Snow (Downtown)
This record snuck onto here very, very late in the game: One of my editors said it was her favorite of the year so I had to go back and listen to it again and wooow, I must not have been paying attention at all the first time I heard it! Dear guys in Miike Snow: Please stop writing songs for other pop musicians and keep them all for yourself.
18. Dark Was The Night compilation (4AD)
Dirty Projectors with David Byrne? Feist with Ben Gibbard? Feist with Grizzly Bear? New Yeasayer song? Epic Sufjan Stevens track? Enough said.
17. Raveonettes – In And Out Of Control (Vice)
This record is clean, catchy, and has a song called “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed).” Can you argue with that? Didn’t think so.
Raveonettes feature on Billboard.com
16. Wilco – Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch)
I typically hate when artists use their own names in their music (Lady Sovereign, I’m looking at you), but Wilco pulls it off in “Wilco (The Song)” for two reasons: 1) They’re Wilco. I will love them no matter what they do. 2) The song was meant to be funny and kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also the ultimate message was that Wilco will love me no matter what (Jeff Tweedy sings something like “I’ll be your sonic shoulder to cry on”), which is just so sweet and totally what I want to hear from my favorite band.
15. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career (4AD)
If you keep reading you’ll notice that this year I was a sucker for songs/records with some sort of Motown influence. Hello, “French Navy”!
Review of Camera Obscura’s My Maudlin Career on Billboard.com
14. Anni Rossi – Rockwell (4AD)
This record was so incredibly underrated. Anni Rossi has one of those voices that might be a little off-putting to some (think Joanna Newsom), but I love it and this girl is so talented (she’s plays violin while standing/stomping on a suitcase). Also, 4AD wins big time as far as the best set of releases for the year (they’ve got four of my top 20 spots).
13. Passion Pit – Manners (Frenchkiss)
While I do love the actual music, this is on here more than any other reason for sentimental value, as it will always remind me of the crazy and amazing summer I spent with my closest girlfriends after graduating college and before moving to New York.
Review of Passion Pit’s Manners on Billboard.com
12. Great Lake Swimmers – Lost Channels (Nettwerk)
I compare this a lot to my No. 10…I love the harmonies and Tony Dekker’s voice is sooo smooth.
Review of Great Lake Swimmers’ Lost Channels on East Village Radio
11. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
While this album isn’t as high up on my list as it is on many others, “My Girls” is still probably my favorite song of the year—and the combination of the drums and the “wooo!” is definitely my favorite sound of the year (weird, I know).
10. The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (Nonesuch)
This record switches off from being breathtaking to making me want to just stomp my feet and start clapping. And the music prompting both of those reactions is all somehow laced together flawlessly in a way that absolutely makes sense.
Review of The Low Anthem’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin on UnderTheRadarMag.com
9. Julie Doiron – I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (Jagjaguwar)
Julie Doiron was the first act in the lineup of an epic, four-hour show I saw last year with Mirah headlining and support from Doiron, No Kids and Mt. Eerie/Phil Elverum. I only caught the end of her set and she was very shy and quite self-deprecating, and I don’t even remember what happened, but it made me sad. But this album generally takes a much happier approach and the first song, “The Life Of Dreams” (also the first song on my best of ’09 mix) is so sweet and totally describes how I feel about life right now: “I’m living the live of dreams, I’m living the life of dreams, With good people all around me, I’m living the life of dreams.” The ending is pretty sweet too: “Every day, every night, I tell myself in this beautiful light that I’m glad to be alive.”
Review of Julie Doiron’s I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day on East Village Radio
8. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! (Interscope)
Maybe this album should have been called “It’s Glitz!” because it’s absolutely the glitziest YYYs affair in the band’s career so far. Karen O basically told Nick Zinner he had to cool it on the guitars, which was…interesting. But the result was amazing. No, it’s not the raw and mostly frantic sound from the band’s first two albums, but it’s still very much the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and I’m totally OK with being able to dance to their music.
Review of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ show at Clutch Cargos in Pontiac, Mich.
7. Florence and the Machine – Lungs (Universal)
Holy crap can this girl sing. I was anticipating this album months before it was out in the U.S. (October): Her publicist sent out a four-song EP a really long time ago that included the song “Dog Days Are Over,” a cover of Cold War Kids’ “Hospital Beds,” and two others, and after that I could not get her out of my head. The LP didn’t disappoint at all and I loved many of the songs even more after I saw her live in October (still waiting for the review of that show to be posted online but I’ll link when it’s up).
Florence and the Machine’s MySpace
6. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Glassnote)
Kinda like my No. 1 album, I hadn’t heard of Phoenix until I was assigned a story on them (right around when they played on SNL back in April). Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is their fourth album and by far their best—it’s clean cut and kinda shiny (Shiny? Yeah, that sounds about right), with a bunch of killer dance tracks. This is on here for equal parts number of times played, musical quality, and sentimental value.
Phoenix feature on Billboard.com
Review of Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix on CriticalMob.com
5. St. Vincent – Actor (4AD)
I adore Annie Clark. She is so charming and makes such lovely much, and I pretty much want to be her. I think her second album, Actor, is a little more enchanting than 2007’s Marry Me with more detailed orchestration (read my review of it for more…). So excited to see her in Michigan in February!
Review of St. Vincent’s Actor on Billboard.com
4. Fanfarlo – Reservoir (Canvasback)
Yes, Fanfarlo sounds a lot like the Arcade Fire and Beirut, and I’m totally OK with that. I’ve written about them on here before so I’m not going to bother going into it again.
Review of Fanfarlo’s show at Bowery Ballroom on UnderTheRadarMag.com
3. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (Warp)
The first time I saw Grizzly Bear was in summer 2007, opening for Feist at her show in Chicago. I had listened to their album Yellow House before that, but that was the first time I totally got the band. Veckatimest is even more developed than Yellow House (although I think I might still like Yellow House slightly better? It’s pretty close) and Veckatimest is just a beautiful record. Favorite songs are “Two Weeks,” “Southern Point,” and “While You Wait For The Others.”
Review of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest on Billboard.com
2. Mayer Hawthorne – A Strange Arrangement (Stones Throw)
Here’s the story of Mayer Hawthorne as I explained to a friend not too long ago: Dude from Ann Arbor who used to go by DJ Haircut decides to record a couple of Motown-sounding tracks, which ended up in the right person’s hands (Peanut Butter Wolf of Stones Throw Records). Dude said, “Whoa, these are your songs? You didn’t re-record someone else’s stuff? Will you record a whole album of this?” And then there was A Strange Arrangement. Mayer Hawthorne, aka Andrew Mayer Cohen (hell yeah, he’s Jewish), made an album of incredible soul songs about girls (“Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out”), girls (“Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’”), girls (“One Track Mind”), and sometimes about world problems (“The Ills”). If these songs don’t make you feel great, you have no soul. Also, he is so unfrickinbelievably charming. Just sayin’.
Review of Mayer Hawthorne’s show at Brooklyn Bowl on UnderTheRadarMag.com
Also, Mayer Hawthorne’s Twitter because I love it so much.
1. Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs (Matador)
I have to admit that even though Yo La Tengo has been a band longer than I’ve been alive (they’ve been playing music together for 25 years; I’m 22), I just started listening to them last summer when I was assigned a piece on them for Billboard. So a big thank-you to my editor Cortney for getting me to listen to them (that was fun when I realized “Oh crap, I have to cram close to 15 albums into a couple weeks!”). I didn’t do quite that and am still learning more of their music, but I definitely got mighty familiar with the newest album, Popular Songs, which I’ve had since about June or maybe earlier (it was released in September), and I’ve listened to it more than probably anything else this year.
What I love about the record is that the songs are so incredibly different from one another but, despite what others have said, I still think it feels like a cohesive album when you consider the stuff they’ve done in the past, and I appreciate that there are some elements that are completely new. I especially love the string arrangements on “Here to Fall” and “If It’s True,” and the latter, which is a really sweet, Motown-esque love song, is one of the catchiest I’ve ever heard—not just this year—and I never complain when it gets stuck in my head (it happens quite often). My other favorites are “Nothing to Hide” and “Avalon Or Someone Very Similar”… I also saw the band live in September, which helped me to get into more of the older music too.
Interview with Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan for Billboard.com
Review of Yo La Tengo at Roseland Ballroom in September on UnderTheRadarMag.com
