Tag Archives: Music

Top 5 Albums of 2009: The Contenders

I'm not necessarily saying Grizzly Bear's gonna win this year, but... well... infer what you will.I know I’m getting ahead of myself announcing contenders for this year’s top albums. After all, in some past years I haven’t even gotten around to this until July of the following year. There may be a few more best-of-the-year quality albums coming in the remaining two-and-a-half months of 2009, in which case I’ll post a hyphen-heavy-contenders-addendum follow-up entry.

But I was inspired to write this today as I fired up TV on the Radio’s Dear Science, an album I granted honorable mention in last year’s list since I hadn’t actually heard it at that point. I did eventually buy it this summer, and it is definitely good enough to have made the list last year.

And so, on that note, I present the year-to-date contenders for my Top 5 Albums of 2009. And once again, I’m presenting the current top four contenders (since I can’t decided on a fifth at this point) in bold. Last year, all of the preliminary contenders made the final list. Will that hold true this year as well? Time will tell.

  • Air: Love 2
  • The Bird and the Bee: Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future
  • Crystal Method: Divided by Night
  • The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love
  • Dream Theater: Black Clouds & Silver Linings
  • El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez: Cryptomnesia
  • The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
  • Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown
  • Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
  • Heartless Bastards: The Mountain
  • Hypnotic Brass Ensemble: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
  • Jet: Shaka Rock
  • Dylan Leeds: Bit by Bit
  • The Mars Volta: Octahedron
  • Phish: Joy
  • Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
  • Pomplamoose: Videosongs
  • Tortoise: Beacons of Ancestorship
  • U2: No Line on the Horizon
  • Umphrey’s McGee: Mantis
  • Various Artists: Kind of Bloop
  • Zero 7: Yeah Ghost

For the first time, there are a couple of unsigned indies in the list here: Dylan Leeds and Pomplamoose. The Dylan Leeds album is excellent, certainly worthy of consideration alongside any commercial release this year. It’s available on Joshua Wentz’s Sidedown Audio boutique label. And Pomplamoose… well, I’ve already discussed them here. Their album is available on iTunes and elsewhere.

Last year in my contenders post I also provided some fun (?) statistics about the list. Let’s do it again!

22: albums in the list (last year: 28)

14: artists I had heard of before 2009 (last year: 18)

13: artists I already owned music from before 2009 (last year: 13)

4: purchased on CD (last year: 14)

4: purchased on iTunes (last year: 3 2/3)

14: purchased on Amazon MP3 (last year: 10 1/3)

2: unsigned independent artists (last year: 0)

Update: Oops, there are three indies in here. How could I forget about Kind of Bloop?

Update #2: Just realized I also forgot to mention Wilco (the album) in this list. I had some technical difficulties a couple of weeks ago and I needed to reformat my hard drive without being able to salvage some of the music on there — specifically, CDs I had ripped within the past 3 or 4 months. This was one of the few CDs I had bought in that time. I think it says a lot that it took me 5 days after originally writing this post to even remember it existed. Don’t expect it to make the cut.

Update #3: Here’s a new one: Flight of the Conchords’ I Told You I Was Freaky.

Questlove tries to salvage something of musical value from a (the) Philip Michael Thomas album

I just started following Questlove (drummer of The Roots) on Twitter less than an hour ago, and it’s already paid off with this little gem, which I believe is how he’s spending his summer vacation (i.e. week off from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon). Nice. It’s cool to see him in action at home (a.k.a. the studio).

Since the video is so tantalizingly incomplete, he has also shared the finished product.

Top 5 Albums of 2008: The Winners

No surprises, really, after I had already highlighted the 5 strongest contenders, but here they are in order, with cover art and brief reviews. And of course, links to buy. Ka-ching!

Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears - Flight of the Knife

#5: Flight of the Knife
Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears
Buy Now from Amazon MP3

This is probably the most obscure of the five albums in this year’s list, which comes as no surprise to me. Nonetheless, I think it’s worth a listen. I discovered the album when iTunes was featuring it for $5 and I figured, why not?

Musically, it’s an odd mix of bits and pieces of Queen, David Bowie, Yes, Ben Folds and more, both old and new, and yet it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard. This concept album is as over-the-top as can be, and then some. But every moment of it is enjoyable, amusing, rocking, and a bit self-mocking. Apparently the band’s live show is equally overblown, in a good way, with elaborate costumes and theatrics.

Fujiya & Miyagi - Lightbulbs

#4: Lightbulbs
Fujiya & Miyagi
Buy Now from Amazon MP3

Probably more entitled to the name “The Mooney Suzuki” than the band that actually goes by that name, this band’s Can influence is apparent and strong, yet they forge their own unique sound in a minimalist electronica/rock style.

The lead-off track, “Knickerbocker,” sounds the most like Can, and more problematically, nearly identical to “Ankle Injuries,” the lead-off track from their previous album, 2006’s Transparent Things. but after the opener things go in a different, but equally interesting, direction.

If you’re not already into them, I recommend this album for (if nothing else) the best finger-snapping performance ever committed to record (“Pickpocket”).

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

#3: Evil Urges
My Morning Jacket
Buy Now from Amazon MP3

This one’s getting a lot of “best album of the year” hype. Well, from everyone except Pitchfork, but they’re pretentious douches anyway. (Oh snap! I went there! And I even listen to stuff like this.) Exhibit A: Their top 50 of the year features not one but two bands that have “Fuck” in their name. Oh, tee-hee, aren’t we rebellious and unconventional? We’ll bestow pointless accolades on bands that, by their very names, have declared total disinterest in such publicity. But I digress, even if it was worth it to rip on Pitchfork. Now where was I?

Oh yeah, My Morning Jacket has delivered a great album that I have enjoyed listening to in its entirety numerous times over the past few months, after I finally overcame my apprehension, based (regrettably) on Pitchfork’s review, and listened to the album my own damn self.

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

#2: Saturdays = Youth
M83
Buy Now from Amazon MP3

With a title like this, the John Hughes-esque high school archetypes on the cover, and the vintage early ’80s sound throughout, you’d think M83 had grown up in the age of Atari, but the number in the “band” name refers (as I understand it) to this solo artist’s year of birth.

“Kim and Jessie” is the breakout (get it?) hit here, and you might be inclined to expect the rest of the album to sound the same, but you’d be wrong. That was a bit disappointing to me at first, but I quickly grew to love the synth-heavy, neo-New Wave sounds throughout.

Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

#1: Narrow Stairs
Death Cab for Cutie
Buy Now from Amazon MP3

The dense, brooding 4-minute jam that opens the extended version of the hit single from this album, “I Will Possess Your Heart,” is my favorite musical moment of the year. (Even better than the hoedown jam in the opening track of Evil Urges.) But this album doesn’t get first place just for featuring a cool 8-minute jam track about a stalker (told from the stalker’s perspective). Everything about this album is great. The music’s great, the lyrics are great (especially “Your New Twin Sized Bed”), the flow from track to track is brilliant, it’s just a 100% enjoyable album from beginning to end, and like a satisfying meal at a good restaurant, you feel good about enjoying it. (As opposed to the bag of Doritos and White Castle sliders you metaphorically consume with every listening to certain albums.) I have no reservations whatsoever in hailing Narrow Stairs as my album of the year.

Honorable Mention

Best Album I Haven’t Actually Heard

TV on the Radio: Dear Science As the heading reveals, I haven’t actually heard this album, but I’ve meant to. And everyone else seems to think it’s the best album in, like, forever. Totally.

Best Mainstream Pop Album

Coldplay: Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends I don’t know why I’m always compelled to write out the full title, since no one else seems to do so (or even necessarily know it). Perhaps the full title and its usual truncation is part of the reason I can’t give this album more than honorable mention.

Best Musician’s Musician Album

Joe Satriani: Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock What was that I was saying about album titles? Oh yeah. Well aside from the fact that his greatest fame has probably come from the Coldplay lawsuit, I do think this is one of Satch’s best albums ever, which is to say that the soaring-melodies-and-shredding-guitar-to-cringe-inducing-cheez ratio is much higher than usual. And he doesn’t sing at all (well, not really). But his appeal is too narrow, his music more craft than art, for me to put him in a top 5 list.

Clever song lyric of the day

OK, this is not something I do (or plan to start doing) every day, but well, just ignore that title and read on.

I’m listening to one of my favorite songs (“Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect”) by one of my favorite bands (The Decemberists) and I had to marvel once again at one of my favorite “clever” lyrics among Colin Meloy’s vast body of clever lyrics:

But the angles and the corners
Even though my work is unparalleled
They never seemed to meet

I love the double meaning of the word “unparalleled” here. Brilliant.

BBC telecast of John Cage’s groundbreaking work, 4’33”

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a performance of 4’33”. It’s a polarizing work, to be sure. You love it or you hate it. Or maybe you get it or you don’t. Or you get it, but you still don’t really get it. Or you do really get it that, really, there’s nothing to get.

Personally, I think it has merit on multiple levels: it forces you to stop and observe your surroundings in a way few of us do these days; artistically, it’s one logical extreme of the various avant-garde movements of the 20th century; it cultivates proper concert hall decorum; and, if you choose to see it this way, it’s a brilliant piece of comic absurdism. The fact that it’s performed in three movements, with the requisite pauses (and opportunities for the audience to cough, adjust themselves in their seats, rustle programs, etc.), is the key to this last perspective. If it were just the performers sitting up there staring blankly for four-and-a-half minutes, who cares? But it’s three distinct movements of nothing, separated by more nothing (of a much different kind).

There’s something deeper to it though. As any serious student of music will tell you, the silence is just as important as the notes. To put it more simply, silence is music, just as much as sound is. So as I said earlier, this is the logical conclusion of a particular strain of 20th century music — the mirror image of the kind of free-form cacophony that was also being practiced at the time. Whether Cage intended this piece as a critique of that movement, a part of it, or otherwise, is a topic best left to the scholars who’ve studied Cage more than I have. Ultimately, I just think it’s a cool idea. Somebody had to do it eventually.