Best of 2009

It's already February 2010, so it's about time I listed my favorite things from 2009, which will probably be mainly music with some other things tossed in. I'm including anything that was downloaded on my computer in calendar 2009, and since I apparently didn't make a list last year; though I really think i did and I have a very hard time believing I didn't post anything on my blog from mid-2007 until when I moved here to London, so I'm starting to think blogger lost a few posts. If that's true, that's .. annoying. oh, and I formatted this thing at one point, but blogger insisted there were html errors, so I had to post it unformatted, rendering it essentially impossible to read. Stupid 100% completely free blogging service.

Best Albums

Category 1: albums that would have been my 2009 list, or were my list before it got lost by blogger
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
AA Bondy - American Hearts
Department of Eagles - In Ear Park ... This album is so good that it makes it hard for me to listen to the actual Grizzly Bear albums. I think Daniel Rossen is the most talented dude in that band and this album is all the evidence I need.
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
Blitzen Trapper - Furr
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Islands - Arm's Way ... did this album really come out in 2008? It feels like it was 2007. But I checked and I'm wrong.

Category 2: actual albums from 2009 that were my favorites
ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
Various - Dark was the Night ... In my lifetime, there have not been very many compilation albums I would consider to be good, let alone the best album released in their particular year, but the Dark Was the Night compilation, released by Red Hot to benefit AIDS relief work in Africa, is both star-studded and stacked to the ceiling with incredible songs and performances. Some of these were toss-offs from album sessions (like the songs by Spoon and Arcade Fire) and some were specific for this (the songs by the National, Sufjan Stevens, the Dirty Projectors), but there are almost no weak links, which is a significant comment for an album with 31 tracks. I only listed 3 of the songs in my list of favorite songs of the year, but I could have put 10 of them down there. I listened to this album, again and again, at all points of the year. I don't know if it will be timeless, and it probably won't be, but it elegantly and addictively captures the zeitgeist and sound of a very specific time in indie rock music, even without every current indie rock heavyweight on it (ahem* animal collective). And for me, personally, it captured my life in London in those early days with incredible dexterity. And that's why it was my favorite album of 2009: because similar to "Come on, Feel the Illinoise", it was released right when I moved to a new city, and captured the feel of that place and the feelings of being invigorated by a new and richly detailed life, weighed down by a reality incapable of living up to extravagant expectation, and squeezed by choosing to be far from the ones you love yet again.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion ... the Animal Collective is not a pop band. But even still, more than almost any band I know and love, I have listened to their records the same way I listen to a lot of pop and rap acts - I'll have a few tracks I love and obsess over, but the rest of the album is just a curiosity I only hear when I space out and leave my ipod running. But when I first heard "My Girls", I had an inkling the album it was from might be different, and without hearing that album, thought it might end up being the album of the year. And while "Merriweather Post Pavilion is one of the best albums of the year" is not a remotely original thought, and the backlash against this record for being TOO good started in the hipster scenes (which is completely ridiculous - if it's the best album, it just is. And if everyone thinks that, it doesn't make it LESS good - it's merely more impressive proof), these things have happened merely to validate the truth of the statement. This album didn't let me down. It was released the week after I moved to London, and if Dark was the Night hadn't been released five weeks later, this would have been my cathartic London album ... and my favorite album of the year.
Dan Deacon - Bromst ... Jen hates Dan Deacon's live show. I haven't seen it, though it seems like complete chaos led by a fat, sweaty, obnoxious pied piper, and not experiencing that has fortunately not colored my opinion of him, and that opinion is this: he is a guy who makes really schizophrenic and enjoyable albums that will either give you a seizure or make you dance, and he does it with greater gusto and measured madness than almost anyone in an increasingly crowded electronica space.
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest ... I was actually unsure about putting this up here because this was actually one of the most disappointing albums of the year for me. After the tremendous triumph of the Department of Eagles record and the vintage perfection of "Two Weeks", the album just wasn't nearly as strong as I thought it might be. The song "While You Wait for the Others" is symptomatic of this - it's probably the second or third best song on the album, but because Pitchfork inexplicably made it the first song they ever gave a 10.0 rating, I can only think of it as hopelessly over-rated. But if I wipe away all those sky-high expectations - this album is still incredible. And Solange Knowles loves it, so that must mean something.
Metric - Fantasies ... truthfully, this is the weakest record I've ever listed as a best album for any year, but maybe because it's infectious pop or maybe because it's REALLY good to work out to, I listened to this more than almost any other album this year. So there you go Emily Haines. Leslie Feist and Amy Millan are more famous, but I wrote about your band on my blog. That's a feather in your cap.
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix ... I had never been to Europe before I moved here, and I was certain I'd hate Paris. I'm American, I'm a guy, and I speak Spanish not French. But it floored me when I finally gave it a chance, and that's just like Phoenix. Before this record came out, I only really knew the song "Too Young" from their first album / Lost in Translation, which I liked, but only when in the right mood. I knew some kids in college and Japan who LOVED Phoenix, and they were all hipster and semi-hipster girls obsessed with like.. second-hand books, photography, banana and nutella crepes, and - you guessed it - Paris. Apparently I listened to their first record a LOT when I was a freshman hanging out with some of these kids, but it somehow just bled in with the blurred Yo La Tengo and Belle and Sebastian fog surrounding me. But it wasn't until this album came out that I realized, a decade later, that this band is actually like a pop-tart sledge hammer to the musical senses. Razor sharp playing, laser-guided arrangements, vocals bouncing around like a fistful of uppers dropped on a granite counter. Paris kicks ass and I've gone 5 times. Phoenix kicks ass and I own all of their albums. It makes you wonder what else those girls were right about.
Mew - No More Stories are Told ... This album is not as good as "And the Glass-Handed Kites", but this band's virtuoso playing and complex arrangements are better than almost every other band in the world. And to think - it's just a bunch of incredibly awkward guys from Denmark.
The XX - XX ... When Jen was visiting in August, I took her to Brick Lane on Sunday and we dropped in to Rough Trade East, which is almost a Sunday ritual for me now. That week, Pitchfork had named the new album by the XX, a new band of teenagers from London, Best New Music. Rough Trade had it as their album of the week. I put on the headphones at the listening station and immediately fell in love, as did Jen. Jen, who definitely has more sophisticated taste in music than me, got this band (and Pains of Being Pure of Heart, amongst others) much faster than I did - once I wasn't listening to the record on Rough Trades' mega-bass headphones, I didn't fully get the hype. But I now love this album and listen to it at least once every few days. It's a rarity - a record that immediately sinks its teeth into you but also grows in almost exponential ways upon further listening, even in spite of the minimalist, almost Spartan rationing of notes they play on this album. I used to think "Intro" was the best song, then "VCR", and now "Crystalised". "Stars" should be my favorite song by 2012.
The Antlers - Hospice ... I hate to keep bringing up Pitchfork, but until there is a better and more comprehensive music website, I will. This is yet another album they got wrong - in their Best New Music-rated review, they said it was refreshing to see a band "swing for the fences" while other bands were settling for bunts and singles, comparing this band to the Arcade Fire in the process. With a record this small and intimate, this band is not swinging for any fences in anyway. But despite that gross mischaracterization, this is still an album of incredibly moving and affecting songs, and it IS an album: one of the few true albums released this year that works better as a whole than in pieces. Sometimes the impact is immediate like on "Two" and "Bear", and sometime it's something slower, a glacier cutting a valley through you after repeated listens.
Girls - Album ... I hesitated before buying this record more-so than any other album this year. This was partially because of the hype machine around it, partially because of the crazy background story that made it seem like this was just a fucked-up fairy tale and not a record, and partially because I'm not huge on the whole lo-fi scene, and though this album isn't lo-fi, it's also not a very complex production. It's also not hype, or a fairy tale, or a genre-aping record. It's just a guy with an expressive, imperfect voice, a Rickenbacker Dakota guitar, a lot of fucked up memories, and an album of incredible songs.
Islands - Vapours ... Another album Pitchfork described completely inaccurately. They like to have an angle to review albums from, and this one was trying to say that the welcome return of drummer Jamie Thompson to the band signalled a return to the sound of "Return to the Sea" after the comparatively rococco sound of "Arm's Way". I don't know if they just haven't listened to "Return to the Sea" in awhile, or just didn't like the Chow brothers playing violin for Islands, but Return to the Sea and Arm's Way are extremely similar albums; Arm's Way may have been a logical extreme, but they are similar. This one is the departure. And it is a good departure. The songs are MUCH simpler than, say, "To a Bond", but it is filled with Nick Thorburn melodies that burrow into your brain. Switched On I work out to. Vapours I listen to when running errands. Tender Torture is a song I listen to when I'm thinking about Jen. Heartbeat is the best god-damned use of Autotune there is. Maybe the only good use of it.
The Drums - Summertime! ... this is just an EP, but every song on it is perfect. It's a California surf record by some kids in Brooklyn-by-way-of-Florida, and that makes sense. It makes sense because it's a (potentially ironic) distillation of a spirit and sound and lifestyle that doesn't actually exist anywhere in California and may never have. It's a fantasy of what California should be and always has been in some people's minds - light-hearted, carefree, sunny summer days that are nothing but surfing, killing time on the boardwalk, and falling in love until the fall.
The Clues - Clues ... This is the other album from this year that I think has to be listened to as an album, and the reason I think that is because it's almost as though none of the songs on this record stand out. Okay, "Remember Severed Head", "Perfect Fit", and "Cave Mouth" are obvious singles, but even still - they aren't THAT obvious. And that isn't a shot at Alden Penner - it's just that this album is so evenly excellent that you can listen to it from front to back and only remember the whole thing was excellent and not that - oh screw it, I'm just happy the third Unicorn is making music again. It makes me teary-eyed. Welcome back Alden.
Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains ... Everyone rightfully makes a big deal out of the fact the members of the XX are all 17-19 years old, but not that the two guys that put out this record are quietly still like 20 or 21. Yet, they made an album that is both an amazing listen and an incredibly accurate genre study for a style of music they couldn't have been more than 10 years old for when it was actually being made - 1990s indie rock.

Category 3: albums that would have been amongst my favorites if I had better taste in music and/or I had decided to listen to them more
Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Wavves - Wavves
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Micachu & The Shapes - Jewellery
Woods - Songs of Shame
The Very Best - Warm Heart of Africa


Best Songs
Song of the Year
Animal Collective - My Girls ... This song barely edged out Two Weeks as the song of the year, and I don't think it's because it captures this time massively better due to it's theme (though not needing material things or social status, and only wanting to provide for your family is a good theme for right now!). It's because it's a hair more engrossing, a hair more catchy, and a hair more astonishing. Sorry, Grizzly Bear. Everything about it is perfect - the way the electronic sounds of the music grow organically (something Pitchfork has gotten RIGHT about a band), the Beach Boys-in-a-cathedral vocal performances in the first minute, the bubblegum hopscotch rhythm of the pre-chorus, Avey Tare's other-worldly scream, the incredible tension they build out of the same sounds you've been hearing for 4.5 minutes before the final chorus explodes. This song would be the best song of almost any year.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks ... When I first heard Two Weeks, it was like hearing a classic song you'd heard your whole life. Comfortable, worn-in, memory-inducing. Like an old sweatshirt or your mom's spaghetti. You can imagine this song being a soundtrack to a night out in Williamsburg (where I'm sure it has been) just as easily as you can imagine it being coddled from the fragmented musical memories of a smoky club of decades past. The vintage piano riff, Ed Droste's soaring vocals, the rest of the band's warm back-up vocals, the deceptively complex drumming. This will be the best song this band ever writes, and that is not an insult.

Hollywood Mon Amour - Take My Breath Away
Department of Eagles - No One Does It
The National - So Far Around the Bend ... Can a song change your entire opinion of a band completely? This song did - I used to think The National were incredibly boring, but after hearing this song - and then listening to it over 100 times - I think they are one of the best bands we have.
The Decemberists - Sleepless
Sufjan Stevens - You Are the Blood ... If we never hear from Sufjan Stevens again in album form, that will be tragedy. Everything this guy touches turns to complex, cerebral gold. This cover is not so different from the Castanet's original, but it takes you from one dizzying height to another over its Baroque 10 minutes. You'd almost think Sufjan was showing off, but we all know better. He's just pouring himself out onto wax.
Handsome Furs - Radio Kaliningrad
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I Am Goodbye
Dan Deacon - Build Voice ... Player Piano. Gets me every time.
Boy Least Likely to - Every Goliath has Its David
Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
Metric - Help, I'm Alive
Phoenix - 1901 ... This song, and most of the Phoenix catalogue, is a canonical clinic in making a good song a pop masterpiece by precision arrangement and careful choices in the studio.
Phoenix - Lisztomania
Mew - New Terrain
The Gossip - Heavy Cross
The XX - Intro
The XX - Crystalised
The Antlers - Two
The Antlers - Bear
Karen O & The Kids - All is Love
Karen O & The Kids - Worried Shoes ... some people said they found Karen O's music in Where the Wild Things Are to be distracting, but I found it to be pitch perfect, and this song in particular is unbelievably moving. A cover of an early Daniel Johnston song, it gets me right down to the core of my teenage emo bones.
Girls - Lust for Life ... It's the lyrical details that make this song. As a friend of mine said, "I like this song because I also often wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine".
Dead Man's Bones - My Body's a Zombie for You
The Very Best - Wena ... Best workout song of the year, though this song was actually released in 2008.
The Drums - Down By the Water ... The best evidence that the Drums are not playing ironic on their record. This song will always make me think of Jen, forever.
The Drums - Let's Go Surfing
Islands - Heartbeat
Islands - Tender Torture
Sleigh Bells - Crown on the Ground ... I cannot wait for this band's album to come out. But even if it's a disappointment, I'll always have this song, a demo so loud, it distorted the recording equipment.
Julian Casablancas - 11th Dimension ... Given that I had a catharsis this year and realized Julian Casablancas is one of the best living songwriters there is, his album was just a little bit disappointing - weird, disjointed, plodding, not particularly listenable as a whole. But there were a few highlights, and this song is strong enough to make the entire album a worthwhile exercise. Julian Casablancas clearly wanted to explore some of the pop styles he can't easily shoehorn into a Strokes record, and this song is full of them - the keyboard riff and guitar riff themselves practically sound like samples from nameless 1980s aerobics or dance songs melted and hammered around the beat from a Wham! single. It's not lyrically perfect, but he does manage to mold this song from a silly pop song to an epic rock song to an emotional burner in an economical four minutes
Julian Casablancas - Glass
Mumford & the Sons - Winter Winds
Passion Pit - The Reeling
The Clues - Remember Severed Head
The Clues - Perfect Fit ... this song sounds like the soundtrack to something, but what? A detective movie set in 1800s London (the first 30 seconds)? A vaudeville act from the 1920s (the next 30 seconds)? The entrance theme for a dragon in a fantasy movie (the next 30 seconds)? A documentary about the Canadian indie rock scene (the next 30 seconds)? A shipwreck (the next 30 seconds)? An Eastern European wedding (the next 30 seconds)? A particularly puzzle-laden dungeon in the Legend of Zelda (any point in the song)? I don't know, but it sets my imagination on fire.
Cymbals Eat Guitars - And the Hazy Sea
Fol Chen - Winter, That's All ... I love this song, and I discovered it in simultaneously the most pure way (at the band's live show, my first exposure to their music) and least sustainable way (they were on tour and I got to go to their shows for free because Joey is friends with them from LA and he happened to be visiting at the time). Cable TV and Wedding Cake are their most popular songs, but this one is my favorite. The drums, the horns, the anthemic and apocalyptic melody. For someone who moved from one city with unbearably cold winters to another one with unbearably dark winters, I can relate to this song, even if it was written by a band from my interminably sunny home.

Best Song Not from 2009
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
In some respect, these songs are at odds with each other. One is incredibly intimate and sung to a lover; the other is a public address to one's own entire group of friends. One is a suggesting a lifetime of running with no particular direction in mind; one is yearning to get back to some sense of normalcy after a period of sprinting as fast as your heart will let you. One is completely in-line with its band's sense of sound (Wolf Like Me is almost prototypically TV on the Radio - huge bass and drums, atmospheric harmonizing, an overwhelming vocal melody); one is completely at-odds with its band's oeuvre (All My Friends is almost an anomaly in James Murphy's canon - yes, it is slow to develop and builds itself out of repetitive but slowly evolving musical shapes, but it's also extremely conventional - it has a normal melody laid down by unprocessed vocals, features essentially non-electronic instruments, and has a fairly arrow-straight development and a tangible emotional center).

But despite those differences, these songs are of the same genus in my mind. Both of these songs are by major lynch pins of the New York music scene. Both of these songs are anthemic manifestos. Both of these songs express a certain specific longing. But most importantly, both of these songs perfectly describe opposing ends of my psyche at 27. When James Murphy sings "You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan, and the next five years trying to be with your friends again", I know exactly what he's talking about because I've spent the last 10 years doing exactly that - five years running away without a second thought, and five years trying desperately to keep a life line to home. When Tunde Adebimpe uses turning into a werewolf as a metaphor for the bursting desires in his heart, I can completely sympathize - I still stand up every day with my eyes scanning the horizon, elatedly galloping toward some destination I only have a vague conception of. When James Murphy ends chanting and wondering what life would be like "If I could see all my friends tonight", he echoes a thought that I have had almost every Saturday night since I left home as an 18 year old kid. When Katrina Ford screams "we're howling forever", it's a testament to a life that I will never let slow down; it is something that I will carry with me forever as my personal policy.

These songs are opposites. And I am both of these songs.


Best Concerts
Fol Chen - at the Macbeth
Franz Ferdinand - at Brixton Academy
Mew - at Shepherd's Bush Academy
M. Flo - at a random place with random people
The Handsome Family - at O2 Academy Islington
Handsome Furs - at Relentless Garage

Favorite Stores Shopped at in 2009
Rough Trade East, Shoreditch, London
Folk, Lambs Conduit and Shoreditch, London
Paul Smith, Floral Street, London
Selfridge, Oxford Street, London
Liberty, Malborough Road, London
Diverse, Upper Street, London
Harvey Nichols' Mens Store, Cromwell Road, London
Emmett and Hackett, London
Rice Wine, Brewer Street, London
Garbstore, Kensington Park Road, London
Albam, Beak Street, London
Norton & Sons, Savile Row, London
Collette, Paris
Silverlining Opticians, Thompson Street, New York
Seize Sur Vingt, Greene Street, New York
Rag & Bone, Christopher Street, New York
Oliver Peoples, South Coast Crystal Court, Orange County, California
Amoeba Records, Los Angeles, California
Paul Smith Collection, Aoyama, Tokyo
R. Newbold, Aoyama, Tokyo

Favorite London Food
Nando's
Chilango
Yauatcha
Maroush
The Churchill Arms
Royal China
Nagomi
Hache
Byron Burger
Chor Bizarre
Automat
Mama's Jerk Chicken
Gaucho Grill
Zuma
The Oak Upstairs
Tendido Cero
Saf
Bacchus