There’s nothing quite like the year-end list in music. December rolls around and everyone takes a couple minutes/hours/days/weeks thinking about the music we’ve consumed over the past year, finally pushing back from the table and digesting for a short moment. Different sites have different lists, of course, but that’s part of the fun. It’s interesting to see what music made an impact on what people in the preceding 12 months.
Having three separate writers, we are faced with an interesting challenge – compiling a list of the year’s best releases while simultaneously accounting for individual tastes. So rather than compromising on 10 albums, numbering them from 1-10, and ignoring tons of great releases, we went about it another way. Each one of us voted for our nine or ten favorite records from 2009, without worrying about rank. We then combined and compared those lists, grouping albums into three categories: Universal Appeal (for albums all 3 of us placed in the top ten), Strong Showing (2/3 of us selected the album), and Niche Market (only one person thought this was in the year’s best releases). Last year, we found lots of overlap in this process. This year, though, the lists varied widely – a testament to the strength of music in 2009.
Without further ado, here are our favorite albums of 2009. Check back in tomorrow for our up-and-comers, the young guns to keep an ear out for in 2010.
Universal Appeal:
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
I have long been a fan of Dirty Projectors – Dave Longstreth is, in my mind, one of the preeminent music geniuses of our generation. The Getty Address, one of the earlier Dirty Projectors releases, remains to this day one of my favorite albums of all time. On Bitte Orca, though, the Dirty Projectors manage to take their glitch punk, condense its sparse moments to a cohesive point, and then strap it all to a comprehensible pop framework. For the first time, the Dirty Projectors have made an album that you can sing along to, a thoroughly enjoyable masterpiece that highlights their strengths without ignoring their quirks. As Zack points out, it’s “Avant-garde made mainstream.” No matter what you call it, it’s beautiful.
The Antlers – Hospice
The Antlers’
Hospice caught me by surprise this year. It’s rare to hear an album this mature, this developed, from a new young artist. At first I thought Hospice was a lucky bystander – a dark and depressing album that caught me at a moment when I was ready for some bleak tunes. As the months have passed, however, my fancy for The Antlers has not.
Hospice is truly a great record. It is by no means light or lighthearted – you don’t want to flick this on at a party. But it is brutal, it is honest, and it is worth your time.
Strong Showing:
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
This album was, for me, the album of the year – I was surprised that it wasn’t a unanimous choice to make top 10 lists. In the end, though, I think the fact that it’s rated so highly by many but still missed the three-for-three vote is a good indication of the record itself. The buzz for
Merriweather Post Pavilion as the best album of 2009 began in late 2008, and has hardly slowed since then. It is, like
Bitte Orca for the Dirty Projectors, the culmination of a long musical journey for Animal Collective. Here they are approachable – complex but not impossibly so. “My Girls” and “Brothersport” are two of the best tracks of the year, but as
Merriweather Post Pavilion’s slot on this list shows, Animal Collective aren’t for everyone.
Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
Zack calls this album “an atmospheric trip with impeccable rhythm and New Order guitar” and he’s dead on. The latest evolution in the Memory Cassettes/Weird Tapes family is the best yet.
Seek Magic is an ethereal swirl of an album that takes the listener to another place. Fun fact: the brains behind the operation, Dayve Hawk, is the former frontman of Hail Social. I’m glad he moved on to greener pastures – his music is much better when he has room to breathe.
Volcano Choir – Unmap
Unmap, despite originally striking me as unremarkable, has continued to grow on me to the point that it is one of my favorite products of this past year. It’s a subtle little album, the byproduct of some dreamy jam sessions between Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Collections of Colonies of Bees. Marked by Vernon's ethereal vocals (which remind me so much of Dirty Projectors that I originally thought Dave Longstreth assisted on vocals), the songs on
Unmap are the perfect soundtrack to winter – it’s no coincidence that the album cover depicts a snowy scene. This album is sneaky in its brilliance, the kind of record you need to spin four or five times before it will reveal itself to you. But when it does, boy is it pretty.
Niche Market:
Freelance Whales – Weathervanes
As my last.fm profile will embarrassingly illustrate, I am more than slightly obsessed with Freelance Whales. I find all of the songs on
Weathervanes to be indie pop at its finest – catchy and approachable while simultaneously nuanced. After hearing “Generator ^ First Floor” I was hooked, and songs like “Starring,” “Ghosting,” and “Location” only reaffirmed that love. Can’t r
ecommend this album enough – the re-release on French Kiss/Mom and Pop is set for February, get your hands on a copy.
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Zack feels that this is “quite possibly the catchiest album of the year” and it’s hard to disagree. The song is packed with pop jams that are accessible on first listen. I’m not sure why this album missed both Ben and my charts – is it almost too poppy? But then, an epic like “Love Like A Sunset Part I” turns that notion on its head and makes us look silly for overlooking this gem of an album.
Flaming Lips – Embryonic
Yet another indication that this year was a great one for music – the godfathers of the indie game dropped a great album, and it barely made a splash. It’s a surprise that
Embryonic missed a lot of year-end lists (mine and Zack’s included), but perhaps that owes to the lack of publicity around the release. Under the microscope, the album is the Lips’ best work since
Yoshimi, an experimental album that explores areas untouched by Wayne Coyne and co. in many years. Says Ben, “With this album, the Flaming Lips get frightening. Gone is the epic power pop of
Yoshimi, replaced with industrial claustrophobic beats and dark lyrics of alienation. Truly a fresh musical statement from one of the most creative acts of our time.” That being said, this is the type of album that critics love but “real people” can’t stand. I dig it, but not everyone will.
Ramona Falls – Intuit
This side project (if it can be respectfully defined as such) of Menomena frontman Brent Knopf is an aural treat, a layered exploration of sonic spaces. Knopf collaborated with 30+ other musicians to make the album, and the collaborative approach shows.
Intuit has something for everyone, and more than that, it has more than one thing for each person. This album really came to life for me after seeing Ramona Falls in concert – despite its laid back feel, it’s really an album best enjoyed at high volume.
St. Vincent - Actor
This album, I must admit, is one I haven’t spent enough time with. Zack defines
Actor as “A new kind of singer-songwriter album that is beautiful, but also lets loose sometimes with synths alongside melodic vocals.” I should go back and spin this one a few more times – it seems like the type of album that doesn’t let you in on the first go ‘round.
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
If you had asked me in March of 2009 to name the top two albums of the year, I would have said
Merriweather Post Pavilion and
Veckatimest. The fact that
Veckatimest didn’t make my year end list says something, but I think it’s about me rather than about the album.
Veckatimest deserves recognition – it’s a hugely enjoyable step forward for Grizzly Bear, who are impressive across the board from songwriting to musicianship to vocals to lyrics. “Foreground” and “Two Weeks” will remain two of the most impressive tracks of the year in my book, and the album on the whole is well worth your time.
Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife decided to go it alone in 2009 under the moniker of Fever Ray. Despite leaving her brother out of the picture, Dreijer Andersson produced a dark album full of tunes that evoke the duo’s powerful Silent Shout. This is another album that took a while to grow on me. Once it had a hold of my ears, though, it wouldn’t let go. Foreboding tracks like “If I Had A Heart” mark the high points of the album, but some of the lighter fare is equally enjoyable – “When I Grow Up” shows Dreijer Andersson identifying herself a bit more as an individual. Although she still paints her face and avoids the press, Karin takes off her bird mask for a few minutes on
Fever Ray, and 2009 is the better for it.
Washed Out – High Times/Life of Leisure EPs
Zack kind of bent the rules here with this two-EP inclusion on the album list, but we’ll let that slide. In reality, perhaps no band better exemplifies the aesthetic that defined 2009 in indie rock – glo fi psychedelia. With bands like Neon Indian, Best Coast, Washed Out, Wavves, Girls, etc. etc. etc. becoming increasingly popular amongst fans of the hilariously titled gorillavsbearcore scene, the resurgence of lo-fi is undeniable. Washed Out does it, without a doubt, best of the bunch – the tunes on
High Times and
Life of Leisure don’t suffer for the medium, and you “get drawn in and transported to places unknown.” These tracks would be enjoyable in hi-fi, which makes all the difference.
Raekwon – Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II
The much awaited follow-up to
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx dropped on the same day as Jay-Z’s
The Blueprint III, and never really stood a chance. It’s a shame, because
OB4CLII is the better album – it marks the return of The Chef to a game that has sorely missed him, a family reunion of sorts for the Wu that lets them pretend that
8 Diagrams never really happened. The faves are all here – Ghostface, RZA, Method Man, Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck – and others too: Slick Rick, Cappadonna, and Beanie Siegel all make appearances. But, as it should be, it’s Raekwon’s flow that moves the album along, from hot tracks like “House of Flying Daggers” and “Cold Outside” to brilliant little snippets like “Pyrex Vision”. The album is a little bloated, yes, but I can’t begrudge Rae his time in the spotlight. We’ve missed him.
Brother Ali –Us
Brother Ali dropped
The Truth is Here EP in early 2009, and I figured that was it for him. It’s a great EP that picks up where
Undisputed Truth left off – or better yet, steps up
Undisputed Truth’s game, since the EP is better than the LP. But then, in September, Brother Ali dropped his fourth full length album, with the title
Us. It’s not his best ever (that would be
Shadows On The Sun), but it’s a bright spot in a dark year for hip hop, and an artistic evolution for Ali. He’s happier here, tour wizened but not tour embittered. And he branches out from first person narratives to tell some stories, an important shift for a rapper who has finally settled on his voice.
Micachu and the Shapes – Jewellery
Micachu and the Shapes’
Jewellery clatters and bangs its way into your heart much the way a kid banging on pots and pans might, which is to say it’s tough not to like Mica Levy and friends.
Jewellery features spastic indie rock, jarringly strummed on ukulele strings. Levy’s voice is young, as is the band, but the music is anything but underdeveloped: if anything, the album is over ambitious. Behind the “stripped down and raw rhythms,” though, Zack finds “infectious pop composition.” Should you take the time to decipher this release, you’ll be pleased with the result. Cacophony resolves to snappy off-rhythms, and Mica’s voice grows on you until it’s stuck in your head and you’re singing along.
Jay Z – The Blueprint III
I don’t think a single album this year (apologies Ms. Swift, but your album came out in 2008) launched three singles as large as
The Blueprint III. “D.O.A.,” “Run This Town,” and “Empire State Of Mind” absolutely took control of radios and iPods across the country in the second half of the year. While those three songs alone might be enough to warrant a place on this list, the album is deeper than its choicest cuts – tracks like “On To The Next One” and “Off That” show Hov in new situations, while “Reminder” and “A Star Is Born” find him the same old signifyin’ Jay. The album closes on a delicious “Forever Young” sample, and you can’t help believing that Jay-Z may have found the fountain of youth.
The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
Since dropping
The Very Best Mixtape last year, The Very Best have been busy bees. Well, that’s not entirely correct – they recorded
Warm Heart of Africa before the mixtape. They just knew that the album was good enough that they should make a name for themselves before releasing it. Good decision. This record was all over the indie radar, as well it should have been. Stuffed to the gills with afro-pop rhythms, electronic stylings, and Esau Mwamwaya’s incredible voice,
Warm Heart of Africa was summer 2009 incarnate.
Mos Def – The Ecstatic
At the beginning of 2009, I kind of figured that Mos Def had moved on from the rap game. He was busy making movies with Jack Black and being cooler than everyone else. Then he returned with
The Ecstatic, an I-hope-you-didn’t-forget-about-me album that reinforced his place among the dozen or so rappers that still deserve to sell records like made.
The Ecstatic is charmingly familiar without being trite or overplayed. Fresh beats from Madlib and Oh No anchor the album, and Mos’ flow retains the elastic vibe that has always made it special. He may be busy with other projects, but Mos Def showed that he hasn’t forgotten about his rap skills.
Antony and the Johnsons - The Crying Light
Truthfully, I have not listened to this album nearly enough. Says Ben, “If you’re not looking for emotional, dramatically rendered classical pop, then this album is not for you. But if you can appreciate the operatic vulnerability of Antony’s voice, then you will find
The Crying Light truly beautiful.” That’s enough of an endorsement for me, consider this written down on my re-visit in 2k10 list.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
Says Zack: “People say the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound more mature. Yeah, perhaps. Either way, this is a killer dance album and Karen O is ferocious as usual.” The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have never been my cup of tea, so I’ll let Zack’s word stand on this one.
Noah and the Whale – First Days of Spring
This sleepy little album is the Cinderella of this ball, making the list despite coming up against some tough opposition. Without a doubt, it’s tough to feel passionately about soft albums about heartbreak, but
First Days of Spring certainly deserves it. The record marks a step forward for Noah and the Whale (and frontman Charlie Fink) post Laura Marling. Where
Peaceful The World Lays Me Down was an honest album about young love,
First Days of Spring catches the mood on the flip side. It’s a more mature, slower side of Noah - and Fink – and they wear it well.
Thanks for reading! Check back in tomorrow for our up-and-comers, the young guns to keep an ear out for in 2010.
Phoenix - Lisztomania (
YSI)
The Antlers - Sylvia (
YSI)
Volcano Choir - Island, IS (
YSI)
