Lists!

Hey, it’s only 6 … no 7 days into the new year.  2009 is long gone.  But the mediocre year in music will live with us forever.  Seriously.  Forever.  I compiled my list of my favorite 30 records of 2009.  30 because 30 is what I listened to.  I c0uld have gotten to 50 or so if I counted albums I listened to like one time on Lala.  Didn’t count the one-free-listen joints.  Here they are:

1. The Horrors – Primary Colours

In what I would calla down year, the Horrors hit all the spots that make me feel good: shoegazey like My Bloody Valentine; psychy like Spacemen 3; cool as shit like the Jesus and Mary Chain; and nervy like Joy Division.  I’m a simple man with simple pleasures.  Pretty hooked form the first listen of “Sea within a Sea.”

2. Japandroids – Post Nothing

Two cheeky bastards from Vancouver pining about when all they worried about were the sunshine girls and French kissing French girls with we hair.  Now they’re worried about dyin,’ but they don’t give a fuck, ’cause your style is such a mess. So rockin’; so unpretentious; so pointed.  Hooked from the first listen.

I just summarized the whole record.

3. Metric – Fantasies

Almost a perfect re-Wave record.  Every song is close to perfect.  It’s pretty perfect.
4. Band of Skulls – Baby Darling Dollface Honey

I think other than Anna, I’m the only person who really loved this one.  Winner of the 2010 Black Mountain Award, for giving back that throwback to the 70s feeling.  A lot of people had a problem with the total lack of identity the band brings to the blues-rock thing.  All the songs sound different.  But they are held together with tight play and a great range between the co-singers: a guy and a gal.  Come on; they’re  a band with “skulls” in their name.
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!

I’m very biased.  YYY could sing along to the phone book and I’d praise them.  Total electro-punk-wavey record with plenty of childish snarl.  It’s YYY but they’re doing rock stuff with non-rock devices.

6. Surf City – s/t EP

So cool.  Surf punk in black leather jackets and heroin hangovers.  From New Zealand.  Looking forward to their full-length in 2010.

7. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – s/t

These guys sound so much like Ride and Teenage Fanclub.  Really great piece of nostalgia here, but I wonder if they can keep it up without getting tediously throw-backy.  There’s not a lot of room to grow with the 90s sound they glommed on to.  Hell, Ride and Teenage Fanclub each had one or two good records, and then even they gave up that sound.

8. Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why there are Mountains

A roadtrip with Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, and Pavement.  But without having to listen to Malkmus bitch about all the shitty bands he hates.
9. Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Not a fan of Doves.  This record is a bit too long, and with Doves, that’s not a good thing right off the bat.  However, they really embiggened their sound and focused on diversifying their songs.  Yeah it’s about three songs too long, but I never skip any of them and always listen to it loud.  It’s good, yo.
10. Dinosaur Jr. – Farm

Yeah.  Shut up, that’s why.

11. The Joy Formidable – A Balloon Called Moaning

Would have made my top ten but I figured that if I never bought the record, it wasn’t fair to skip over any of the others.  I would have bought it but you can’t find the fucker anywhere.  All I could get were five or six songs from Myspace.  Really big guitar rock with a female singer and Metric-y pop styles.  They end most of their songs with big rocking messes.  I like that.
12. Bear in Heaven – Beast Rest Forth Mouth

A bizarre and pensive proggy thing that I would normally never go for in a million years.  But this one got me and I really can’t tell you why.  Well, it sounds great in the car, which is huge.  And it is sometimes druggy and psychy, but not alot.  I don’t know.  I just turn it up.
13. Girls – Album

Wow.  Left field.  A record about a dude being bummed out about losing his girl.  Like really bummed out.  And affecting this Elvis Costello thing.  Really bad news as far as I’m generally concerned.  But after repeated listens, one song after the other grew on me, until I became a fan.  If it had come out earlier in the year and I had gotten more listens, it would have been higher.  Same with Bear in Heaven.  Two total surprises in a year with not many of them.
14. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls

Scotts.  Really driving, straight forward wall-of-sound rock with a pounding beat.
15. White Denim – Fits

Such a strange sound.  Almost jazzy.  Stongly rhythmic.  But with that psych rock thing that keeps it all together.
16. A Place to Bury Strangers – Exploding Head

Another initial disappointment, but a total grower after repeated listens.  Jesus and Mary Chain – check.  They’ve got that thing down no doubt.  Still, they can do better and should do better next time.

17. The xx – s/t

Animal Collective is so pissed that these guys stole the “it” status this fall.  Folky, poppy, hooky, goovy, and sparse as hell.  Turn it up and you’ll feel it, but not hear much of it.  That’s the way they like it of course.
18. Raveonettes – In and Out of Control

Again.  Shut up, that’s why.
19. Cold Cave – Love Comes Close

Another interesting one.  If you squint you might make them out to be Joy Division.  Or New Order if New Order weren’t wankers.
20. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Whatever.  Couldn’t be ignored.
21. French Miami – s/t

There was never a shortage of Wire around when these fellas were getting in to music.  We’ll see where they take the one minute, 30 second post-punk thing.
22. White Rabbits – It’s Frightening

Hi, the guy from Spoon produced our second record.  Do you like Spoon?  Cool, ’cause that’s what were going for.
23. Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love

See, another one I never bought.  Should have.  But didn’t.  Steven McBean’s best work outside of the first Black Mountain joint.  Sounds like it should: a folkly version of Black Mountain without any of the nerdy flutes or references to wizards and shit.  Still pretty nerdy though.
24. Silversun Pickups – Swoon

Whatever.
25. YACHT – See Mystery Lights

Not LCD Soundsystem.

26. Tom Waits – Glitter and Doom Live

I listened maybe twice.  Maybe three times.  It’s Waits.  Like giving Al Pacino the Oscar for Scent of a Woman.
27. The Soft Pack – The Muslims

Probably should have been higher, now that I think about it.  They’re releasing a proper record that hopefully would sound like it was recorded in a pillow case.
28. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Yeah.  28th.  Suck it.  Three awesome songs.  That’s it.
29. Glasvegas – s/t

I don’t even remember.
30. Wavves – Wavvves

I liked this no-fi thing.  Except when I hated it.  I don’t know; it stuck with me and I stuck with it.  “Songs” about vampires and zombies and pot smoking skate kids on the beach have some appeal.  No what I’m saying?  Don’t worry about it.