
Happy listening :)
10) Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Phoenix
Lasso
There isn't a single supernumerary second on this album, these guys are so tight and so damn skilled. Just nine short tracks bursting with good energy and good feeling. Also most definitely the best album title of 2009.
9) The First Days of Spring - Noah and The Whale
I Have Nothing
I spoke previously about what a complete
heartbreaker this one is and how many buttons it can push almost instantaneously. This is for anyone who's ever had everything fall to pieces and lived to tell the tale.
8) Middle Cyclone - Neko Case
Middle Cyclone
Another amazing effort from my darling Neko Case. The whole album is glorious but this title track is especially moving. The most delicately beautiful piece of melancholy I've heard in ages. Don't tell me you can hear this and not love her instantly.
Baby, why am I worried now?
Did someone make a fool of me
before I could show them how it's done?
I can't give up acting tough.
It's all that I'm made of.
Can't scrape together quite enough
to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love.
7) It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Hysteric
This is the album I always thought the YYYs could make. No, wait - it is that and SO much more.
It's Blitz! has gotten better with every listen and is something anyone and everyone would love. I bow before the genius that is Karen O.
6) Bromst - Dan Deacon
Slow with Horns / Run for Your Life
If someone had told me at the beginning of the year that a Dan Deacon album would be on my top ten list, and so high on it at that, I would have slapped their mama. But this album isdensely layered, marvelously full of life, and absolutely irresistible. It's as if you set Sagas of Icelanders to electronica music. Damn. Also, whoever is playing the piano in the last three minutes of this song deserves a freaking blue ribbon. Brilliant.
5) Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear
Foreground
This album is like a dream where anything can happen, and sometimes will, if only you can let go of the past and the future. I believe their sound right now is inimitable, and inscrutable and nebulous has never sounded so good. This album closer is a perfect example of
Veckatimest's spellbinding elegance.
4) Manners - Passion Pit
Moth's Wings
You know, there is a certain power in an album that just makes you feel good the whole time it's on, that makes you want to sing and dance and forget everything else that's happening.
Manners has that power in droves. It's all handclaps and high notes and g.d. great times. This album
colored in my whole summer and defined a big part of the year for me. xoxo
3) Aim and Ignite - fun.
Benson Hedges
fun. have a message and it is to be as real and honest as you possibly can be, and to tell a fucking good story and set it to great music at the same time. I am a firm believer in this message and I'm on my knees, singing their praises, newly and truly converted. This album is dazzling listened to in order from beginning to end. I highly recommend the experience.
2) Two Suns - Bat For Lashes
Glass
I have such an intense girl crush on Natasha Khan it's almost embarrassing. She is just a complete force of nature and this album swept me up entirely, flooded me with feeling. There is an almost earthy world music sound about
Two Suns and when you combine it with her voice (oh god,
that voice!) the results are intoxicating. This album has been such an inspiration, reminding me to be as I choose, right here and now.
1) Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective
Summertime Clothes
Love, love, complete love. That's what I feel for this album. It wasn't immediate and it wasn't always easy, but something in it kept me listening and one day I turned it on and realized that I'd fallen for it heart and soul. There's just something about this sound that reverberates with me on endless levels, beyond what most music is capable of. Animal Collective have managed to capture a feeling of infinity.
After dozens and dozens of listens I feel like I've only begun to tap the ray of light that is Merriweather Post Pavilion. Each song on this album is layer upon layer of artful, luminous goodness. And I swear each song is as strong as the next. There are very few albums that can give this much and I can't wait to keep learning its secrets.