“I can’t give it up to someone else’s touch, because I care too much”
“Infinity”
The sparse cover art for the debut album from The xx speaks volumes for the 11 songs contained within. It’s simple, to the point, and says no more than what is needed, which appropriately captures what this South London quartet have been able accomplish on this year’s best debut album. Released with loads of hype from the blogosphere as well as the British media, xx has captivated and intrigued listeners with its sexy melodies while employing minimal instrumentation to create an atmosphere so stunning it’s hard to believe this is a group made up of four 20 year olds. Alternating guy/girl vocals rise to forefront on these tunes which are essentially love songs, eerie as they may be, and while the lyrics aren’t as accomplished as the music and can come across as cheezy, the vocals somehow hide that and make it seem real. Riding on the strength of their own confidence, there’s no telling what comes next from this group considering most bands might take multiple releases trying to master the sound that The xx seems to do almost effortlessly.
[“Crystalised” – xx]
#7) Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career[4AD; released 4/20/2009]
“This maudlin career has come to an end, I don’t want to be sad again.”
“My Maudlin Career”
Overflowing with sentimentality and emotion, My Maudlin Career is perhaps the most appropriately titled album of the year. Tracyanne Campbell’s vocals are as melancholy as ever and pack a vulnerability to go along with her ballads of lost love. However, paired with some of the most lush songs the group has ever produced and complete with their usual sweet catchy melodies, My Maudlin Career is Camera Obscura’s most endearing work to date. Camera Obscura’s existence to this point has always been tied to fellow indie-pop Scotsmen Belle & Sebastian, but Camera Obscura’s 2006 masterpiece Let’s Get Out of the Country helped the group escape from B&S’s shadow and My Maudlin Career only further sets them apart. String arrangements absolutely dominate this album, and the songs are better for it. Openers “French Navy” and “The Sweetest Thing” each show off the strings in exploding choruses, while a song like “Careless Love” is complimented throughout by the orchestration before a final beautiful climax to close out the song. But when it comes down to it, My Maudlin Career succeeds by conveying sadness without being overly gloomy. It’s both a heartbreaking and uplifting listen and Camera Obscura pulls it off seamlessly.
So here we are. Today kicks off my look back at the music of 2009 featuring a countdown of my Top 10 Albums of the year which will span a few days and then be capped off by my annual Mixtape. This will be the first year I do the countdown on the blog so I’ve mixed things up a little bit, but it’s still pretty much the same thing I’ve always done. Over on the right you can see the schedule for the next few days as it relates to my Albums of 2009 postings. You’ll notice that this year, I am starting off with #11-#25 before heading into my top 10 countdown. Now, I always do a top 25, but usually I just post a link to my Amazon.com list after I’ve completed my top 10 countdown. I’ve never really thought enough of my complete top 25 to go into too much detail, but this year I had as much trouble figuring out my top 25 than I usually do with my top 10. That is clearly due to the amount of albums I got this year as compared with year’s past, but also can be attributed to the amount of very solid releases that I didn’t want to omit here on the blog. As you can see, today is when I offer a little introduction and also provide a list of all the albums I got in 2009. So…
As a whole, I thought 2009 was a very solid year. It maybe wasn’t as spectacular as I had hoped, but it was certainly better than 2008. Trying to summarize the year by coming up with a common theme between all the music released is an absurd task because there are so many different kinds of releases from so many genres. I guess if there’s something that sticks out to me, it’s the continuing infiltration of indie rock into the mainstream. I think 2009 has to be considered a landmark year for that movement, if you want to call it that. More and more indie songs are showing up in commercials, television promos, or just the general mainstream media. You had bands like Phoenix, Fleet Foxes, and TV on the Radio performing on SNL, not to mention all the late night talk shows that featured acts like Andrew Bird, Animal Collective, St Vincent, White Rabbits, Antony and the Johnsons, Dinosaur Jr, and Grizzly Bear just to name a few. Heck, Grizzly Bear’s album debuted at #8 on the Billboard charts! Accessibility was a major theme to many of the successful albums of ’09, so it’s probably no coincidence that we see those bands being accepted more in a mainstream fashion like they were in 2009. As the countdown goes on, you will see some of these themes come to light as well as the major impact the Brooklyn music scene had on the year in music. Like it or not, it was a banner year for the hipsters.
This year, I got a total of 94 albums, 86 of which are eligible to be included in my list. As usual, only full-length studio albums released in 2009 that I own are eligible. That means EPs, compilations/soundtracks, live albums, or b-side/rarities type releases can not be considered for the purposes of my list. Of course, there are a good bit of albums I never got around to getting, so I will most likely have a post-2009 album post like I did last year. For the complete list of all albums I got this year in order of their release date, you can click here or “Continue Reading” link below and the list will show after the jump. Tomorrow, I will start things off by unveiling my Honorable and Dis-Honorable mentions.
I haven’t had much time to post lately, and I don’t envision being able to get an album review up anytime soon, so I’m going to use this post as a summary of albums released from July through September that I haven’t already mentioned here on AROS. I did a first quarter wrap-up as well as my mid-year awards, so I guess it only makes sense that I take some time to mention the highlights of the third quarter of 2009. Hooray!
We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
This is the debut album from the Scottish quartet whose sound is in the vain of fellow Scotts Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad (more on them later). Those three are actually on an American tour right now, I guess doing a sort of Scottish “emo” tour as people have been branding it. Anyway, this really is a solid and very enjoyable release with great energy, and I just love the thick Scottish accents.
The xx is a quartet out of London that have been a fairly hyped UK band consisting of four 20 year olds. xx is their debut album and is getting rave reviews from everywhere. I like it alright, although the hype may be a little much. There is something about it though…it’s a very intriguing listen.
[“Crystalised” – xx]
Choir of Young Believers – This Is For The White In Your Eyes
Yet another debut album from a European band, this one coming from Denmark’s Choir of Young Believers. This Is For The White In Your Eyes is full of some great orchestra pop tunes led by band frontman Jannis Makrigiannis. The music is super ambitious at times, which I guess is to be expected from an 8 piece band, but when they get it right, the songs can be breathtaking.
[“Hollow Talk” – This Is For The White In Your Eyes]
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
I’m struggling finding a way to describe the tunes of UK’s Wild Beasts, but theatrical is certainly an adjective that has been used before and seems to fit. Two Dancers is the second album for the quartet and continues the ridiculously good year Domino Records is having.
[“All The King’s Men” – Two Dancers]
The Big Pink – A Brief History of Love
A Brief History of Love just might be my favorite album from the last 3 months. It’s the debut album from, you guessed it, the British duo. I’m in love with the electro-rock pop mix and industrial sound of the tunes. It’s a very strong album from start to finish and as the BBC predicted, it looks like The Big Pink is one of 2009’s breakout acts.
[“Dominos” – A Brief History of Love]
Volcano Choir – Unmap
Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) teams up with fellow Wisconsiners Collections of Colonies of Bees to release this weird little 9 song album full of eerie and at times beautiful songs. It’s an interesting release that may end up being an afterthought in the Justin Vernon catalog, but I do think it atleast validates what a great artist he is and ensures that For Emma, Forever Ago was no one hit wonder.
[“Island, IS” – Unmap]
The Twilight Sad – Forget The Night Ahead
This album was one of my most anticipated releases in the latter half of 2009 as The Twilight Sad released one of my favorite albums from 2007, Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters, and led this recent Scottish invasion. The lyrics of this group have always been so dark and nothing really changes with this release. It’s probably not as good as their debut, but it’s still the thick emotional ballads that I came to expect.
Earlier this week, I’m checking my e-mail when I see this little nugget pop up in my inbox:
Hello out There,
My name is Alec Ounsworth. I have completed a project called FLASHY PYTHON: SKIN AND BONES. You can listen to the album (and buy it if you feel so inclined)here.
As you may or may not know, and I suppose the reason I’m writing you directly, another project that I have been working on for several years now is called CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH. This is not that and that is this nor is it the other (the other often tragically confused with him or her) . . .
FLASHY PYTHONwas conjured up and brought forth absolutely independently. It was completed recently and released even more recently to no acclaim nor discredit as no “news sources” were informed of its completion.
The idea is to present the project purely (while we still can) and let the individual make up his or her own mind which, as it seems to me, is perhaps the primary benefit in the otherwise alienating age of modern technology and communication.
I also have another album coming out on October 20th on Anti Records called Mo Beauty. You can hear a track from it over atstereogum. That is not this either.
That made me feel special. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I got this e-mail since I have never signed up for a CYHSY e-mail list or anything like that. I have both the self-titled release as well as the underratedSome Loud Thunder, but didn’t buy them directly from the band or anything. My guess is that I had to give my e-mail address a while back when I downloaded a demo of a new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah song that they played on Jimmy Fallon, but I really can’t remember…we’ll go with that. Whatever the case, this was a pretty cool way to announce the release of an album. You can click all the links provided in the e-mail above if you want to go stream the album. I’ll go ahead and say, if you haven’t heard any Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, you might want to prepare yourself for Alec’s very unique voice…it isn’t for everybody. I’ve listed to the stream a couple times and while I guess it’s nice to hear something new from Ounsworth, Skin and Bones certainly isn’t up to CYHSY par, but then again I doubt Alec will ever return to the level of the CYHSY debut.
A little bit of polish can oftentimes be a good thing, but it can also rob a band of the raw energy that allows it to stand out, sacrificing what made previous efforts so intriguing; such is the case with Time to Die. That’s not to say that Time to Die is a bad album, but after last year’s critically acclaimed release Visiter, it can only be considered a disappointment. With Visiter, The Dodos brought a unique sound to the table full of percussion based, complex acoustic guitar tracks probably best exemplified in album standout “Fools” (the folks at Miller took notice and featured the song in a Miller Chill commercial). The refreshing African inspired drum beats created an urgency to the music that really put a whole new spin on this whole indie-folk genre popping up all over the place. Unfortunately for Time to Die, the percussion seems to be an afterthought, never really being featured, and the songs suffer for it. The former duo has added a third member since Visiter, bringing in a full time vibraphone player who adds to the sound creating more lush tunes, but for the most part the songs on Time to Die just seem to lose their edge.
There is something to be said for maturation, which I do think Time to Die certainly can attest to. The first three songs, including lead single “Fables” indeed show how the group has grown as songwriters, but overproduction and a loss of enthusiasm just seems to plague the disc. The group brought on Phil Ek (The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Built to Spill) to produce Time to Die, but it just doesn’t seem to be the right fit for the San Francisco trio. The group had already perfected their sound to create a uniqueness that really could have been exploited, but Ek seems to have missed out on that and fired a rare miss. When it comes down to it, Time to Die is the results of a lo-fi band evolving into the next stage of their careers, which ultimately might be a fine thing. But after releasing one brilliant album in Visiter, I guess I was just hoping a little more gradual shift, if a shift at all.
I want to throw out a quick recommendation for an album that’s been tearing up my ipod since it’s recent release, and that’s Up From Below by LA’s Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Edward Sharpe is the alter ego of frontman Alex Ebert and his Magnetic Zeros are the rest of the 11 or 12 musicians comprising a band that could easily be mistaken as a 60’s hippy group touring around in their converted school bus (they actually do that). I first heard of the group when All Songs Considered discovered them at SXSW back in March, but I kind of forgot about them until a recent (rare) opportunity I had to listen to satellite radio and heard one of their songs which reminded me to check them out. Up From Below, the debut album from the group, was recently released and I got a hold of it off of eMusic and have enjoyed it a great deal. As you can imagine from their KCRW performance (seriously, go watch this now), their live show is supposedly incredible making their studio recordings a bit of a let down. So the album may not do them justice but since I haven’t seen them live, it sounds just fine to me. It’s certainly a throwback to the psych-folk rock of the 60’s and along with The Phenomenal Handclap Band, I’m enjoying this little retro feel the summer of ’09 has going for it to this point.
I’m often asked how I come across all the new music that I love listening to oh so much. And while I don’t really find it too difficult, you just have to be willing to do some searching, a recent example is maybe the best answer I can give. About a month ago, Paste Magazine released their Best Music of 2009 (So Far) which featured the favorite albums and songs from 7 of the magazine’s staff members. Well, on one of those lists a single commenter made this small observation:
“I’m surprised no one has chosen ‘Paper Cities’ by Other Lives for one of the Best Songs of the Year. It’s absolutely beautiful”
I was intrigued. So after doing some research and checking eMusic for it’s availability…bada bing, bada boom, new music discovered. The internet is an amazing tool. An obscure comment by some guy on an albums of the year post led me to discover a release that I somehow missed out on. It’s as simple as that.
Other Lives is a 5-piece band from Stillwater, Oklahoma but was formerly known as Kunek and released an instrumental album under that name back in 2004. As Other Lives, they released their self-titled debut album a few months ago on TBD Records to little fanfare. There seems to be some Radiohead comparisons which I find pretty lazy. So the lead singer every now and then sounds a bit Thom Yorke-ish, thats about it. Piano and strings play a large role in the music and fit nicely with the melancholy tone of most of the tunes and lyrics. I would tend to compare the group more to Elvis Perkins (Ash Wednesday version more so than Dearland) off the top of my head and they have toured with Perkins earlier this year (as well as The Decemberists) so that comparison seems apt. You can stop by their myspace page to pick up the two songs below as free downloads. “Black Tables” was (apparently) featured on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy last season and “Paper Cities” lives up to the above commenter’s suggestion of it being one of the most beautiful songs of the year.
A little something I like to do every year is dole out some awards for the music up to the halfway point of the year. Nothing too detailed, just a little summary. As usual for all my lists, the only albums I’m including are albums that I own and are currently in my itunes library. And of course all this can change as I listen to albums more, but this is what I’m feeling so far for 2009. Enjoy!
Animal Collective
Best, let’s say, 7 Albums (in order of release date):
Antony & the Johnsons – The Crying Light
It’s a beautiful and affecting listen, which was to be expected from Antony Hegarty. It was the first great release of the year and has stuck around to now. I already mentioned in my 1st quarter of ’09 wrap-up…nothing more to add to that really.
Once again, check my 1Q of ’09 post that mentions this release as well. People are starting to pick up on its brilliance but it will surely gain even more of a following once Frenchkiss reissiues it this August.
The only album of these 7 that I haven’t mentioned on the blog yet. The first 6 songs are hard to top. Longstreth tones down the weird just a bit, and it gets album of the year hype…go figure.
One of my most listened to albums so far this year. It doesn’t deserve any album of the year or even top 10 talk, but I think it deserves more attention than it’s getting.
They left behind their melodic pop hooks that made Peregrine so good, and went back to their post-rock instrumental days with bland results. Best description I’ve heard was that it’s like Explosions in the Sky tried to make an Appleseed Cast album…not what I was hoping for.
I just haven’t put enough time into this one to get a reading on it. Some of it has some early Built to Spill indie feel to it, which deserves my attention.
“Do you remember when 21 years was old?” sings Thomas Mars on “Countdown”, one of the many great tracks from the fourth (and best) album from French pop-rockers Phoenix. It’s in this simple lyric that he maybe provides the best example of the sense of nostalgia that seems to carry Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix from just a fun danceable indie rock album, to a career defining work of art. You have to love a French band who writes and records all their music in English (thanks guys!), but what’s more impressive is that this is band who has not only mastered an American genre such as the NYC garage-band revival made popular by The Strokes, but also taken it to a level that similar American bands (like…The Strokes) have stalled to get to. Joining “Countdown” as album standouts is the best 1-2 punch of the year in “Lisztomania” and “1901” which open the album with two of the best tracks released in 2009 and are a great introduction to the rest of the tightly-constructed tunes that make up the disc. And while Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix may not be as in-your-face nostalgic as say, M83’s Saturday’s=Youth or The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s self titled release from earlier this year, it’s still hard to listen to the album and not get some sense of sentimentality for times gone by. It’s in the ambient electronics heard throughout, it’s in the lyrics, but nostalgic or not, Phoenix have created a great album that should appeal to all fans from those of indie-dance to NYC garage-rock, and really just anyone who wants to listen to catchy pop-rock by a band who has subtly put itself in rarefied air.
It’s safe to say that I’m not the only one who loves all things “phenomenal”. I also have a strong place in my heart for handclaps in music, as well as (some) bands. So it stands to reason that I would love a band called The Phenomenal Handclap Band. And while, I’m not ready to make that kind of lasting commitment, I am pretty smitten over this NYC supergroup set to release their eponymous debut album next week. I got a hold of the advance release digital version and it’s certainly living up to the expectations garnered by the band ever since the group made their first appearance last summer and became one of the talks of this past year’s SXSW. The Phenomenal Handclap Band is a fusion of soooo many genres but what stands out the most is easily the discofunk throwback sounds of the music. It’s a psychedelic listening experience and I can’t imagine how fun their live show would be. I’m not even going to try to go into further details with reviewing the disc as this genre(s) is nothing I’m familiar with at all. Their breakout track “15 to 20” is already making its rounds as a summer classic (although there are better tracks), one of the many reasons it’s hard not to classify the album as the quintessential summer jam record.
[“You’ll Disappear” – The Phenomenal Handclap Band]
Posted by Hawkins 
A Round of Sound 