Like every year there was a tremendous amount of music that I listened to for the first time this year that wasn’t actually released this year. On prior years I’ve just figured that since I missed giving them year end attention the first time around, I shouldn’t bother listing them now. This year I figured in addition to my “Best of 2009″ I’d also do a “Favorites of 2009″ and hope that the word ‘favorites’ makes it obvious that these releases aren’t from 2009 but other years that have passed.

To be totally honest… I like a most of the stuff on this list a lot more than most of the stuff released in 2009.

1. The War on Drugs – Wagonwheel Blues

If this had been released in ‘09 instead of the middle of ‘08, or had I discovered it back in ‘08, I am pretty sure this would be #1 on some Best of in my collection. My love for this album is impossible to properly articulate. It’s easy to explain what it sounds like to people: imagine Bob Dylan singing Bruce Springsteen songs (with incomprehensible Bob Dylan lyrics) backed by Sonic Youth doing their own version of shoegaze. If that doesn’t sound inherently good to you, then maybe you won’t like it, but damn if this isn’t the best album I listened to this year.

2. Archie Bronson Outfit – Derdang Derdang

Derdang Derdang is consistency perfected. There is never a moment on this album that doesn’t feel pensive. I don’t even know how to describe the mood… it’s like the whole world is heartbroken but that’s the only way it could ever be, so it’s not like we’re not resigned to it, but we’re still going to soak an album in it… or something. I don’t know. I had this album on my computer for years (two is enough to pluralize), and I probably listened to it sometime once back when it came out and didn’t like it and forgot about it. I discovered it this year when I went through my collection looking for stuff I didn’t recognize. This was one of them. From the very first minute of Cherry Lips I was absolutely in love.

3. Parts & Labor – Receivers

Sometimes when making these lists I feel bad for the albums that end up with albums in front of them; Receivers is one of these albums. There is so much joy in this album (and my #1 listened to song this year was off this album) that it seems unfair that both The War on Drugs and Archie Bronson Outfit come out ahead of it (and by joy I don’t really mean joy but noise, lots and lots of noise that sounds really pretty and powerful and epic and all that good shit). Receivers accomplishes so many things well, like Mount Misery’s broken robot lament which actually sounds like a broken robot lament, like something out of some sinister art house take on Wall-E in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where Marvin the Paranoid Android is Marvin the Schizophrenic and Perpetually Lonely Robot, wandering through the wastelands wondering if he’ll ever be useful again. (Most of the time I have no idea what they’re singing but that’s OK.) This shit is epic and I love it.

4. Andrew Jackson Jihad

Andrew Jackson Jihad get the “Band I am pretty happy to have discovered” award this year, though when I think of assigning that sort of award a bunch of other bands spring to mind, but none other had such a wealth of material for me to dive into, and all of it so consistently enjoyable. Andrew Jackson Jihad is a “folk punk” band, meaning mostly acoustic instruments (a guitar and a stand up bass if I know correctly) played with punk enthusiasm over morbid, macabre, ironic lyrics. Sean Bonnette sings about smoking crystal meth, killing people, and how unfortunate life is but he never does it bitterly, or too frighteningly. I’d compare them to Eels, in that they write happy songs about sad things, though sometimes AJJ just writes angry songs about sad things, or sad songs about guilty things, or… I don’t know. I love ‘em!

5. Tulsa – I Was Submerged

It’s like they know that their album sounds like you’re floating around underwater in a tranquil ocean, so they named it that. Genius, really. Tulsa plays really emotive and beautiful guitar riffs over a usually gentle somewhat folky shoegazey backdrop of sound. It’s easy to drift off into this album and give yourself over to warm fuzzies if you really want to, or if you have enough drugs in your system. Either way, sober or stoned, Tulsa is my kind of chill music.

6. Holy Fuck – LP

HOLY FUCK!!! Seriously, I want this to be the future of dance music. It’s like someone took the Crystal Method, gave them a really awesome drummer or two, and… made them really awesome. I mean, I don’t know, I just don’t know why Holy Fuck is so awesome, maybe they just know what the fuck they’re doing and god bless them for that. If they release a second LP, I can’t imagine they could screw it up. The first time I really listened to this album, me and my buddy listened to it on a loop for five hours while we drove around Southern California just exploring. It was epic and this was the best thing to listen to while doing it.

7. Dr. Dog – Fate

I would have liked for Dr. Dog’s Fate to be really high on this list, but it isn’t because the songwriting is so consistently terrible across the record that sometimes I can’t even listen to it. For about a week I listened to Fate over and over again and I managed to keep myself blissfully ignorant of how awful the lyrics are pretty well, because I really dig how solidly they remind me of The Beatles and other such rock music (sometimes playing riffs that sound so much like George Harrison I want to crap myself) that I want to love them. I really really want to love them. Unfortunately the only song I really like anymore is My Friend, which I like so much I would go and see Dr. Dog live just to hear that song. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that they’ll play it when I see them so I probably won’t ever go to one of their shows.

It’s taken me a long time to write up this top of 2009 list because I’ve already written about most of these artists. I spent about a month staring at this list, rearranging it, wondering what I could write about each album and then it dawned on me: There isn’t really much I can say about any of these albums that matches the hyperbole-laden superlatives I used to describe them when I originally posted a song off them, so for the most part this is just a list, with links to my original posts.

Here’s links to prior years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 (in which I insult Wolf Parade and betray that 4 years ago I had NO FUCKING IDEA what I was talking about), and 2004. Be warned, up until this year my music listening habits sucked so these prior lists mostly suck but if you’re looking for good stuff from years ago that you might have missed, they might be useful.

On to the list…

01. Marnie Stern – This Is It and I Am It and…

This wasn’t number one for the first month this list was in existence (Passion Pit was) but then I realized something: Marnie Stern’s album will stick with me for far longer than Passion Pits will. Marnie Stern absolutely floors me, her songs are so melodic and powerful and her lyrics, while relatively simple (even repeating search motifs across the album) describe the noise that goes on inside my head pretty well. This album, if it isn’t already, will become a security blanket for me as time goes on, I can already feel it. For that, I must thank you Marnie Stern.

02. Passion Pit – Manners

I don’t have much to say about Passion Pit except that I am glad they taught me that music that makes me want to shake my ass isn’t always retarded bullshit and for that they are awesome.

Live Note: I saw Passion Pit live and never did a write up for them. Here it is in short: Passion Pit is a great band that is obviously destined for bigger venues. They play their music professionally and without many blemishes, and the audience loves them unlike anything I seen (seriously, the mass of people up against the stage was scary looking, surging and undulating like you’d imagine hordes of sinners being tortured in hell to look like—like that stupid ass rave in that one Matrix movie). However, I don’t think I’d go see them live again unless I felt like doing drugs and dancing my head off, because there’s nothing at one of their shows that I can’t experience on the record. I suppose that is just a measure of my true “fandom” of Passion Pit (meaning that a lot of my appreciation is based on the fact that they’re GOOD and not that they’re a unique love of mine).

03. Ha Ha Tonka – Novel Sounds of the Nouveau North

This album makes me really happy I started this website, because I can’t imagine I would have discovered it otherwise. Recommended to me by a reader who’s friends with one of the band members, I didn’t have high expectations—I mean, how can you trust a friend of the band to be objective? But from beginning to end Ha Ha Tonka had me transfixed, which then spread to my girlfriend. When we saw them life they were amazing performers, clean playing, very professional, but most of all they looked like they were having a lot of fun even though they were playing in front of a very small crowd of people in a tiny little venue, which is more important than anything else. I went to too many shows this year where the bands didn’t seem to be having a good time (Vampire Weekend, everyone in Passion Pit except the singer). Ha Ha Tonka is one of those bands that I feel like it should be my personal goal in life to make sure as many people as possible listen to them.

04. Stellastarr* – Civilized

Stellastarr* is one of the biggest surprises for me this year, as when I listen to it I can’t help but think, “Damn, I would have loved this back in middle school,” but there’s no denying that Stellastarr*, who I’d never even heard of before I impulse-bought this album on LaLa, crafts songs that are exciting, interesting, and full of lush layers of guitars and melody. Their songwriting is pretty much completely retarded, but it doesn’t matter, because every song on this album is 100% enjoyable beginning to end. This is definitely not my “style” but it makes me feel pretty good when I listen to it.

05. Bear in Heaven – Beast Rest Forth Mouth
06. YACHT – See Mystery Lights (Live review)
07. Viva Voce – Rose City
08. The xx – xx
09. Handsome Furs – Face Control
10. Saint Motel – ForPlay

If Saint Motel isn’t one of those “artists you should watch” then I don’t know who is. If they don’t make it real big I will be shocked, because their music is good clean dirty fun. Even after four of their shows in one month I wasn’t tired of their songs, and that says a lot.

***

Here’s the rest of this year that was worth ranking…

11. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
12. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
13. Sea Wolf – White Water, White Bloom

Sea Wolf’s latest cuts out a lot of the “emo” from their first album and replaces it with what I can only describe as “Renaissance Faire Chic”.

14. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
15. Dan Deacon – Bromst (Live review)
16. Dead Man’s Bones – Dead Man’s Bones
17. The Builders and the Butchers – Salvation is a Deep Dark Well
18. Eels – Hombre Lobo
19. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
20. Red Wire Black Wire – Robots and Roses
21. Akron/Family – Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free (Another song)
22. Blue Giant – Target Heart EP

I recently got to see Blue Giant live, opening for The Builders of the Butchers, and they were pretty much excellent. They’ll be releasing an album sometime this year and I’ll preemptively promise you that it’ll be something you want to check out.

23. Circulatory System – Signal Morning (Another song)
24. Beirut – March of the Zapotec
25. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

Best Live Show of 2009 goes to A Hawk and a Hacksaw for a very intimate show at Spaceland, which was only intimate because over half the audience left while they played because hipsters are fucking retarded, but we benefited: the crowd became so small that the entire band came out into the audience and played, unmic’d, in a circle while we watched. This is a group of INCREDIBLY talented musicians and I hope they keep making music for years upon years to come, because their music is beautiful and the skill and passion with which they play their instruments is beautiful and inspiring to boot.

Edit: I promise in the future to better proof read things I publish because these 1100 words are so chock full’o typos that I feel a little embarrassed.

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It’s been nearly a month since I’ve posted a song and for that, I apologize. I’ve been “working” on my “Best of 2009″ and “Best of the 2000’s” lists, and by “working” I mean that I formed the lists, fiddled with them, wrote a couple paragraphs for them, and then found the whole situation so daunting that I became paralyzed with fear and I’d say something like, “But this week I’ll crank them out and get them up,” but I probably won’t and I don’t want to lie to you. They’ll turn up eventually, with at least one really awesome downloadable playlist for you to listen to.

Another reason I haven’t posted anything is that with the exception of one song, that I haven’t posted because I’m a lousy music blogger, this last month nothing has really stuck out to me. Luckily the new year brings new releases, and one of them is Spoon’s Transference, which is officially the first release of 2010 that I am genuinely floored by.

I am a big fan of Gimme Fiction and practically nothing else by Spoon. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga never did it for me, it seemed to be a grab at the mainstream of sorts, which was weird from a band who’s only point of reference for me their prior very literary, dark, and cinematic album. I’ve since fallen in love with Don’t You Evah, but for the most part I’d never consider myself a fan of Spoon. Transference might change that, because it betrays Spoon as one of the most skillful bands I listen to.

Transference takes Spoon back into Gimme Fiction’s more foreboding moments, where the mood of the music is full of apprehension and dread. Unlike Gimme Fiction, Transference isn’t literary at all, there’s no Two Sides, no story telling, no sinister parks in the night, just confusion, longing, and worry that it’ll never end. It’s almost jarring, how similar yet entirely different this is from Gimme Fiction, the moods are alike but… not, you know?

It’s just impressive, how they change sides, and keep so consistent. Last years Eels‘ album was a mishmash of different periods, different sounds and styles, but Transference is nothing like that. Most Spoon albums aren’t, they nail down a mood and they stick to it. Gimme Fiction never wavers, Transference never wavers…

I’m mostly rambling at this point. I’m on my fourth or fifth listen, and I’m running out of things to say. I like how the album cuts songs off in the middle of words, the subtle and not-so-subtle vocal effects… the fact that unlike Vampire Weekend’s ridiculously disappointing Contra, these songs have hooks and they make me want to sing or dance or fuck, even if they’re not really pop songs at all, and even though the mood isn’t really the kind that makes me want to sing or dance (definitely fuck, though) they still make me feel good, and there’s nothing more important than that.

In short: Thanks Spoon!

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Merry Christmas.

I don’t like holidays. I’m celebrating this year by locking myself in a hotel room for two days with my girlfriend about 100 miles away from anyone I know. It’s been OK so far. My girlfriend can be pretty stinky though.

Now she’s biting me. How great.

Oh well…

Happy Jesus Day!

Eventually* there will be a “Best of 2009″ and a “Best of the Decade” and a couple playlists and shit you can download. I’m very very very slowly working on them. Sorry there hasn’t been an update in a while but it is the end of the year and nothing good comes out during this time. I’ve been busy unicycling and touching myself.

*meaning sometime within the next month

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I listened to album for the first time almost completely through on Lala for free, and by the time I hit this track, Pardon Me, I just had to buy the album. It’s got a nice funky vibe to it, and the lyrics had a pretty awesome bite that I really liked. Letting me listen to an album for free, totally uninterrupted, works when you’re trying to sell me music. Good job, Lala.

I stumbled onto The Blow because YACHT’s Jona [last name omitted because I don't have internet access and can't look it up] did (probably) all of the music/production on it and I like the sound of his stuff. He doesn’t disappoint here—if anything he kind of one ups his future work in YACHT because there’s a lot of detail and nuance in Paper Television’s songs that you can’t really find in YACHT. No offense, Jona, different groups, etc, and my love for YACHT is undiminished.

The chick’s singing and songwriting, and I won’t even try to pretend that I have any idea what her name is, is uniformly pretty rad across the whole thing. The most popular song, True Affection, has a cute little lyric: “I was out of your league / and you were 20,000 underneath the sea / waving affections” (which reminds me of a Red Wire Black Wire lyric that goes: “I wave my tentacles at the moon / screaming why must you leave so soon”).

I recommend! Obviously.

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I discovered this thanks to Pitchfork tagging it lovingly with their “Best New Music” icon. I only mention this because Bear in Heaven’s Last.FM page is laden with people making a wide variety of disparaging comments, from the usual “This band sucks now that other people listen to it” to equating Pitchfork’s positive review as something of a scarlet letter—which I suppose are basically the same thing.

I’ll make this really, really short: anyone who spends time actively, vindicitively hating a website on the internet—not even a real person they know, mind you, but an ambiguous non-entity of alledged unforgivable pretension—is a goddamn moron whose opinion means (or should mean) absolutely nothing to anyone.

Now, Bear in Heaven is some interesting shit. The obvious standout track initially is Lovesick Teenagers which you could listen to on Hype Machine I’m probably sure, so go do that. After that you end up with a whole album of really puzzlingly catchy music that seems really simple.

A lot of the simplicity I percieve I think has to do with my recent forays into trying to make music of my own (I feel a little like that I listen to so much music that I should just inherently know something about making music—but it turns out that I don’t) has exposed me to the synthesizer arpeggiator. For those unfamiliar (because I was, which puts me at 24 years without ever touching a synthesizer) an arpeggiator allows you to hold down a key or several on the keyboard and the synthesizer automatically repeats those notes over and over again on at a tempo you set. Various effects make it sound all cool and shit but for the most part it’s just notes ascending/descending over and over, usually in 16ths.

The thing is that Bear in Heaven uses arpeggios made this way all across the album. In nearly every song it actually seems that the arpeggio spit out by the synthesizer is the foundation on which the song was built. It’s kind of cool, how rich and alive the arpeggioes sound across the whole album—they’re obviously synthesizers but when layered with guitar, drums, and the singer’s reverb laden vocal, you get such a fantastic wall of sound built out of such a simple formula.

This is good stuff. Pitchfork is right, this is definitely some of the “Best New Music”.

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There’s this site on the internet called YTMND (named after “You’re the man now, dog!”, a line Sean Connery shouts in one of his films that suddenly became an overnight internet sensation, looping continuously over a picture of Sean Connery, which you can view here) on which people can make simple sites in the vein of the original YTMND—you loop an animated gif, put some audio to it, and BAM! you have a YTMND. Even I made one back in 2007 (set to The Pirate Ship Quintet, who I’ve unfortunately not covered here).

Years ago on YTMND some asshole posted images taken from a video of a cat being set on fire and set it to a song from the videogame Doom. Users who rated this YTMND five stars found their own YTMND pages under attack (being “down-voted”) because people who were outraged over the animal cruelty saw fit to punish such assholes. One of these assholes suggested that he only five-rated the cat-burning YTMND because of the ‘ironic’ usage of Doom music. In response one of the users said something to the effect of: “Not even DOOM music justifies burning a cat.”

Shortly thereafter several people created YTMND pages with the abbreviation “NEDM” on it and one used a loop from Coburn’s We Interrupt This Program (JCA Remix) (which isn’t the version I’m playing here, nor is it on the two-track EP I link to above) as a good example of “not doom music”, I suppose. (You can read a more detailed account of the NEDM origins on the YTMND wiki, and see a YTMND explaining how this song came to be involved in the NEDM fad right here.)

I, myself, have enjoyed the NEDM fad—it manifested itself in funny ways across YTMND, with seemingly completely unrelated YTMNDs suddenly ending with a giant cat head and the recognizable loop from this song blasting at you (very Rick Roll indeed). On the upside, I’ve always thought the loop kicked ass and only now, years later, have I added it to my regular collection. I think this is one of the coolest dance/rave riffs I’ve ever heard, so I’m sharing it with you.

There’s your internet history lesson for the day.