I just got a new computer and this is my first blog entry using it, so it feels weird. The editor looks more like a word document now. It also screwed up my whole process of playlist creation/use, since on this computer all of my music suddenly has 0 plays. And I can no longer use my "date added" field, a perk that lasted from 2006 to 2009. It's fine, it just took a long time to get that playlist count cleared up on the old computer. Oh well.
So I don't have record and don't remember what album started 2009 here. But it shouldn't matter. 2009 had some very good music. I also can't find any posts I made here summarizing the best of the year of 2009 (or 2010 for that matter), which is weird. I must have only made my declarations on Facebook or something.
It seemed like a sort of high watermark for the "indie rock" music I listened to in those days. Kind of the peak of an era. So I'll start with said indie rock.
The who's who of indie rock generally contributed to the phenomenal compilation called Dark Was The Night. That compilation is what had me realize that there were a lot of good-to-great bands active in the indie scene. In reverse alphabetical order...Yo La Tengo*, Sufjan Stevens, Stuart Murdoch**, Spoon***, Sharon Jones, The New Pornographers****, The National, Iron & Wine*****, Grizzly Bear (with Feist!)******, Feist (with Ben Gibbard!), Dirty Projectors (with David Byrne!)*******, The Decemberists********, Dave Sitek*********, Conor Oberst (with Gillian Welch!), Cat Power, Bon Iver**********, Blonde Redhead, Arcade Fire, Antony (with Bryce Dessner!)***********, and many more came together and put out some of their best material. It's the most solid front-to-back two disc long compilation I may have ever heard.
*Yo La Tengo also put out Popular Songs, which does what all of my favorite YLT albums do. Starts with some amazing pop songs and ends with some super long guitar jams that you wish were even super longer.
**Stuart Murdoch's project God Help the Girl put out their self-titled album and it was quite lovely. Some alternate versions of Belle & Sebastian hits and other originals that are just amazing because Murdoch is a pop songwriting genius, I can't believe I missed the actual film when it was in theaters! I assumed it would be on demand somewhere by now...
***Spoon also put out an EP called Got Nuffin. They are always great.
****Some New Pornographers members put out solo albums. A.C. Newman's Get Guilty is classic power pop, and Neko Case is discussed lower down.
*****Iron & Wine put out a collection of B-sides and rarities, which was quite nice and minimalist compared to his recent output.
******Grizzly Bear put out Veckatimest, which is a lovely album but got way too hyped up in my opinion.
*******Dirty Projectors had their breakthrough album Bitte Orca come out, which is very much a contender for album of the year. Just ridiculous harmonizing and beautiful melodies. The songs do seem very carefully constructed but still passionate and pretty, similar to Brian Wilson's work. This song is a bit on the long side, but its different parts demonstrate all of my favorite aspects of the album as a whole.
Dirty Projectors "Useful Chamber"
********The Decemberists put out Hazards of Love, which I got on vinyl and didn't have a download card, so I didn't listen to it very much. I later got the digital stuff because it was $5 or something. But I still haven't listened to it enough to fairly judge it.
*********Dave Sitek didn't put anything out that I know of, but his TV On The Radio compatriot Kyp Malone put out a couple albums with his side projects. Dissolver by Iran was one of those projects, and it just has a great full sound with a poppier topside (if that makes any sense), a more "typical indie rock" album backed by some patented TVOTR guitars. He also had a project called Rain Machine, and some of the songs could be TVOTR all over, since he sang on it as well. "Smiling Black Faces" and "Give Blood" really call to mind his work in his "major" project.
**********Bon Iver put out an EP called Blood Bank which was very autotuned and processed and weird. But still quite soulful. He also put out an album with his side project Volcano Choir, mentioned in the "Etc" section.
***********Antony and his The Johnsons put out The Crying Light, one of my favorite Antony albums probably.
Another compilation that seemed like kind of a big deal was called War Child Presents Heroes, featuring modern artists covering old songs, where the cover artists were chosen by the original writers/performers. So it's kind of hit-or-miss (Lily Allen does no justice to The Clash, I'm sorry to say! But Rufus Wainwright tackling Brian Wilson is quite nice...) but it was quite poignant to have TV On The Radio covering "Heroes" by David Bowie. I was already a big TVOTR fan obviously, and already had a five star rating on this cover, and I know Bowie had worked with them before so it was no surprise that he chose them, but it's just such a powerful moment.
Speaking of covers, the amazing Neko Case put out one of her better albums Middle Cyclone and in addition to great cover art, she covered a somewhat obscure Harry Nilsson song "Don't Forget Me." I remember when she was on Elvis Costello's TV show discussing Nilsson's songwriting and how he could make you laugh and cry within the same line.
Neko Case "Don't Forget Me"
Don't get me wrong; the whole album is great and Case's songwriting is top notch. I'm just a sucker for one great artist showing appreciation for another great artist.
The Antlers also came out in 2009. Hospice is about as devastatingly sad as the title may suggest. So beautiful, so sad, so personable...I don't know what else to say about it right now. But listen to it if you are in the mood.
Charlotte Gainsbourg had an amazing album called IRM which was produced by Beck. The French abbreviation for MRI, the album is amazingly personal while also being supremely catchy. I know this was high on my list for the year. Her voice is so versatile, sometimes calling to mind her mother Jane Birkin's whisper singing and sometimes with much more power behind it. I think Beck's production was a huge asset as well to make the songs so catchy.
Charlotte Gainsbourg "Heaven Can Wait"
Sonic Youth. I don't know if The Eternal was expected to be their final album, but here we are. Farewell to the eternal sonic youth. It does feel like a good throwback SY album after developing some semblance of "maturity" on Rather Ripped, The Eternal ended up sounding quite youthful even for Sonic Youth. Sort of poppy, completely fearless, and completely ripping. This is a band that has played together for decades and can make a masterpiece out of something that feels like they're just messing around. Did that come across right?
My "official" declared favorite album of 2009 was xx by the xx. Even at the time I remember it being more of a protest vote than anything though. With (what I viewed at the time as) the overdone nature of the big popular indie rock albums of the year by bands like Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, and Grizzly Bear, I wanted to go with something minimalist, and this album suited that desire just fine. I just loved all the stripped down empty spaces, how you can say so much with the notes you don't play and all that. The world feels big when you listen to this album, and the vocals feel so small but so significant. Does that make sense?
the xx, "Heart Skipped a Beat" (Live)
On another hand, Japandroids played something I may call maximalist indie rock with only two people in the band. Post-Nothing just has such a huge sound to it that it makes it all that much more impressive. One of my favorites of the year for sure. Those cymbals!
Let's talk about some of the more out-there indie music that wouldn't fit as well on those compilations though.
Tyondai Braxton released his first post-Battles album Central Market and I dug it. I remember at the time I compared it to a Danny Elfman Tim Burton score, but there is much more to it than that. There's a lot of Battles-esque rhythm here, it's almost as if Atlas-era Battles worked extensively with an orchestra to create a score for a Beetlejuice-era Burton film taking place in a circus or haunted house or something. I'm posting a lot of videos in this entry. Credit the new computer that allows me to do so without pulling my hair out!
Tyondai Braxton, "Central Market"
Beloved Jim O'Rourke had his album The Visitor, which was just one long somewhat minimalist track. I prefer albums to be broken up into songs for the sake of having stopping points when necessary, but listening to this is really worth finding the time to sit down and take 38 minutes to let it wash over me.
After the breakup of Black Eyes, the more shrill/noisy/off-putting (in the BEST way!) singer started a new band Mi Ami. I think I wanted to call them post post hardcore or something. I just remember tracking down their first album Watersports at Wax Trax and being impressed that an older guy (maybe 60s?) told me how much he liked the album. And I remember hoping I'm like that when I'm that age, open minded enough to listen to something as out there as Mi Ami, something most of my friends would never ever want to listen to even when we were all so forward thinking in our 20s.
I'm sure I wrote it somewhere, but if it's not here I don't know: YACHT did their best to fill the LCD Soundsystem hole the year had in new music. See Mystery Lights was a lot of fun. And James Murphy must have been impressed enough himself, since it was on his DFA Records. Not that it's particularly similar, it just hit some of the same beats in my mind. I wasn't really dancing any more in 2009, but if I was, I would hope to hear this song at all the clubs and I would go nuts over it. (Disclosure: I have no idea if they played this at the indie club nights)
Yacht, "Psychic City (Voodoo City)"
Another band that probably stormed the indie dance floor was Phoenix. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was quite the sensation, I recall, with the inescapable "Lisztomania" and "1901" (my personal favorite). Oddly, I don't really care for the other albums of theirs I've heard but once they went full on pop, they became infectious and I could not resist their jams.
Peter Bjorn & John took a move for the more dancey and beat oriented with Living Thing. Amusingly profane, immensely charming, and somehow a big hit with rappers? Wale rapped over a PB&J song on his Back to the Feature mixtape, and then a full mixtape entitled Re-Living Thing came out with the likes of Talib Kweli, Bun B, Rhymefest, Big Sean, GZA, and many many more rapping over PB&J songs.
It really was a big year for combining indie rock and hip hop. There was a mashup album of Sufjan Stevens songs with artists like Aesop Rock, Outkast, and Blackalicious. The Black Keys worked with a bunch of hip hop artists on Blakroc. And N.A.S.A. came out with their only album The Spirit of Apollo. I remember the Pitchfork review of that album was overly snarky and negative, while the album itself is just positivity and unity and everything that is good in this world. They brought together artists from different worlds on tracks that are surprisingly coherent. David Byrne singing the chorus for Chali 2na, Karen O going toe-to-toe with Ol' Dirty Bastard & Fatlip, Tom Waits and Kool Keith trying to out-eccentric each other...the album is just a big funky party where you don't care about genre. It's just fun.
Raekwon released a long awaited sequel album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II. I feel like I am supposed to like Wu-Tang projects more than I often turn out to, so I end up getting most of the solo material from Raekwon and Ghostface in particular and then don't always fully enjoy what I'm listening to. But the reason I keep coming back to these guys is albums like this. Gritty stories of the streets, songs that recall the classic full-group Wu-Tang albums like "House of Flying Daggers" (featuring pretty much the whole crew), heartfelt soul hip hop ballads, and just a fully immersive album make some of it (maybe 30% of the material these still very prolific gentlemen release) must-hear music.
Born Like This by Doom is a highlight of his catalog and his first since dropping the MF from his name. I don't know what else to put here, I just know it's good enough to bring up here. I just like it? And I remember listening to it at the old apartment while walking my dog. And the one kind of homophobic song but his explanation was that he was a character that's a villain so what do you expect? That song still makes me a bit uncomfortable.
And that made me appreciate Us by Brother Ali that much more, which includes a verse about the struggles of a gay character, something that even as recently as 2009 was somewhat unheard of in hip hop.
I was quite blown away by Aceyalone & The Lonely Ones, an album that is pretty much classic soul/jazz but also hip hop. It's weird how well it works.
I should have just made my #1 album The Ecstatic by Mos Def. I think I put it at #2 when I made said list, but in retrospect it is probably my favorite. It just doesn't let up. Very few features, it's mostly just one of the greatest rappers over some amazing beats. But very progressive. Very felt and awake and just entertaining.
Mos Def "Quiet Dog Bite Hard"
And now he doesn't even go by Mos Def anymore. And may be retiring from music after his next album. If it's anything near The Ecstatic, he will certainly be ending on a high note.
Etc. (note: this will be in a weird order because of the aforementioned inability to use last play times for half of the 2009 stuff. so that's why it will be in reverse alphabetical order for a while)
- Wilco went pretty poppy with Wilco (the album). It's pretty good to revisit, but I'd still prefer to listen to the classic albums. That song with Feist is pretty enjoyable though.
- Eskimo Snow by Why? kind of continued down the path of their previous album but it was less novel at the time so I didn't give it as much attention. But if you have time check out the song "The Blackest Purse" because it's quite good.
- White Rabbits! I remember them! I liked It's Frightening. They always kind of sounded like Spoon Jr (they did have Britt Daniel produce the album), but the two drummers had an interesting impact on the beat.
- I need to spend some more time with that Volcano Choir album because it is quite lovely.
- tUnE-yArDs came out in 2009 even though back then it was pretty much Merrill Garbus and her looping machine. BiRd-BrAiNs had some very awesome moments, but it was mostly just a hint at things to com.
- Sun O))) was my introduction to whatever you call that droney type of metal. Monoliths & Dimensions was such a huge album...
- I didn't get into St. Vincent until a couple years later even though I'd heard Actor was a great album. I'm happy to have finally discovered her for myself though!
- I didn't actually discover Shabazz Palaces until they released a "major" album, but they put out a couple EPs in 2009 that are pretty tight.
- That silly band Rock Plaza Central from a couple years back returned with ...At the Moment of Our Most Needing, which continued their path of goofiness in a very heartfelt way. Apparently they have been on hiatus since then.
- Marissa Nadler. Little Hells. Maybe the first album of hers that I heard? She is awesome.
- Magnolia Electric Co. Josephine is a lovely lovely album.
- Incredibad by The Lonely Island turned out to be a pretty good album to run to while training for my marathon. Kept my mind off running, that's for sure.
- I do enjoy Jarvis Cocker's album Further Complications. Some moments that recall some of my favorite Pulp songs, particularly lyrically.
- Speaking of side gigs, Black Francis/Frank Black had a band with his wife Violet Clark called Grand Duchy, and it is one of my favorite of his recent exploits.
- One great irony of that Mos Def album is that one of the best songs is him rapping over a Georgia Anne Muldrow song called "Roses." Because of it, I checked out her album Umsindo, and I ended up liking the original version of that song more.
- I really thought I'd like Elvis Costello's album Secret, Profane and Sugarcane more than I did. I love a couple of the songs but thought it would be the next King of America because it had the same puzzle pieces as that legendary album. I probably just need to give it more listens without such ridiculous expectations.
- Dinosaur Jr. keeps putting out amazing albums and it's just not fair for them to be that consistent.
- The Dead Weather are great.
- David Bowie's VH1 Storytellers album is from 2009, so that was quite nice to listen to.
- Breeders EP!
- Remember The Big Pink? A Brief History of Love was a sensation.
- Flight of the Conchords! I'm seeing them on Tuesday!
- It was weird that The Mountain Goats put out an album based on bible verses, but it ended up working quite well.
- Jesca Hoop = great
- Sour Boy Bitter Girl = great, I feel like Songs About the Landscape or Songs About the Wolf Army was the start of a higher level of songwriting than the previous splits.
- Annie = great. Don't Stop just upped the sass factor by a bunch and really owned everything she's best at.
- The Lawrence Arms put out their last music in a while in their Buttsweat and Tears EP. But damn, they have some great songs on that EP that are live show staples.
- People Under The Stairs are great!
- So is Kermit Ruffins!
- I like There Is No Enemy by Built to Spill but I haven't listened to it enough to say much more. It's just yet another great album by that great band.
It Was 2009 Playlist:
1. Obits "Back and Forth"
2. The Dead Weather "Hang You From the Heavens"
3. Japandroids "Crazy/Forever"
4. Rain Machine "New Last Name"
5. YACHT "Psychic City (Voodoo City)"
6. Wale featuring K'Naan "TV In The Radio"
7. Mos Def "Quiet Dog Bite Hard"
8. Dirty Projectors + David Byrne "Knotty Pine"
9. Antony and the Johnsons "Aeon"
10. James Husband "Greyscale"
11. The Antlers "Bear"
12. N.A.S.A. featuring Karen O, Ol' Dirty Bastard & Fatlip "Strange Enough"
13. Tyondai Braxton "Uffe's Woodshop"
14. Mi Ami "New Guitar"
15. The Flaming Lips "Silver Trembling Hands"
16. Sonic Youth "Sacred Trickster"
17. Grand Duchy "The Long Song"
18. The xx "Heart Skipped a Beat"
19. Iran "Airport '79"
Next Time:
2010 was another huge year in music in my opinion. I just remember a big handful of albums that could easily have been #1 in any other year. Stuff like Sufjan Stevens, Big Boi, Titus Andronicus, LCD Soundsystem, Robyn, Kanye West, and lots of other great stuff.
