My 13 Favorite Albums of 2009 13-6

Well, here we are in 2010, the year we make contact. For those of you who don’t know, a new federal law went into effect at midnight on New Year’s Day: if you hear any of your fellow citizens call this year “oh-ten”, it is legal to punch them in the face exactly one time.

Having safely seen 2009 out the door, I think it’s time to start talking shit about it. Everyone loves a list, especially one that doesn’t include Animal Collective or Phoenix, so I compiled a list of my 13 favorite albums of 2009. I don’t know if they’re the best albums of the year or not and I don’t care. They’re the ones I like the best and, honestly, I think that’s all anyone can say. Also, my list contains 14 albums (well, technically, 13 albums and an EP) because there was a tie. Anyway, feast yer eyes on this here list (helpfully rendered in a distinctly non-slide-show format):

13. Lord Cut-Glass, Lord Cut-Glass. I’ll just assume everyone knows that Lord Cut-Glass is really former Delgado Alun Woodward. And I know that my review of this record spent a good deal of time bitching about how the Delgados ought to just reunite, come to the U.S. and play shows in the courtyard of my apartment complex. But the fact remains that Lord Cut-Glass is a really beautiful record; Woodward lilts over plucked acoustic guitars and low brass, quietly issuing some of the best melodies of his career. Highlights include “Picasso,” “Even Jesus Couldn’t Love You,” “Holy Fuck,” “A Pulse” and “Big Time Teddy.”

12. Mike Doughty, Sad Man Happy Man. Last year, Doughty put out an album called Golden Delicious that I liked well enough at first. And then it kinda grew off of me with a stunning quickness. Just wasn’t feeling it, I guess. However, because I love Mike Doughty, I’m always willing to listen to his stuff. This year, he put out the superb Sad Man Happy Man, which I nabbed from Amazon’s digital store for five freaking bucks (gargle my balls, I-Tunes). SMHM is driven by Doughty’s chunky guitar strumming and absurd humor, and it’s my favorite album of his since Skittish (which has to be one of the most underrated albums I’ve ever heard). It opens with one of its best moments, “Nectarine (Part Two)” and also includes the coolest prayer ever (“Lord Lord Help Me Just to Rock Rock On”) and “Year of the Dog,” which might be Doughty’s best tune since “Sweet Lord in Heaven.”

11. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz. 2009 was a great year for some of my favorite female vocalists, not least of whom is Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Not only did I get to delight in an affordable deluxe edition of It’s Blitz! (Amazon’s mp3 store has not yet let me down in the cheap goodies department), but I got to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs play a kickass set at Coachella (one of the best sets I saw at that festival). The album is filled with awesome turbo-pop (starting with a pair of aces in “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll”) and a few pretty ballads (“Hysteric” splits the difference between the two types of song and is, in two words, fucking awesome). It’s Blitz! firmly established the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as one of the best bands in America and their live shows will back that claim up for the doubters.

10. Brother Ali, Us. I could make a joke about how Brother Ali is the king of white rap (ha ha, because he’s an albino, ha ha), but, taking Us as exhibit A for the prosecution, it’s more accurate to place Ali near the top of the hip-hop heap, regardless of skin pigment. Jay-Z has never, in my estimation, done anything to rival  “Tightrope” or “The Travelers.” To my knowledge, he’s never even tried. With Us, Ali threw down a gauntlet of new rules for the hip-hop community, chief among them: no skits and fewer songs about how badass you are (Us has ‘em, but they’re matched pound for pound by songs of real substance and at least one tune wherein Ali shows gratitude for his good fortune, saying, “I’m the luckiest sonofabitch that ever lived”). Us is a truly refreshing album, and it stays fresh with every listen.

9. Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career. Speaking of refreshing, Camera Obscura released one hell of an orchestral pop album last year. My Maudlin Career, despite its potentially emo-sounding name, starts and ends with a bang (“French Navy” and “Honey in the Sun”, respectively) – in between, Tracyanne Campbell drops lines like “when you’re lucid, you’re the sweetest thing” and “drinking has never been the same again”, the latter from the stellar, mournful ballad “Other Towns and Cities”. My Maudlin Career is so good that I think almost anyone who likes music will like it. But some people who like music like Wavves, so I could be wrong.

8. The Minus 5, Killingsworth. Killingsworth is the album that elevated Scott McCaughey from Person of Interest to Folk Hero in my estimation. It’s basically a dark country rock album, but it’s so fully realized and wittily rendered (“your wedding day was so well-planned/ like a German occupation”) that it cannot be denied. Backed by an excellent chorus of women, McCaughey sings of lurking barristers, broken love, and crowded urban apartment life (“Big Beat Up Moon”) with a drunken weariness that is deeply appealing to young curmudgeons like myself. He also takes the time to satirize fundamentalist Christianity on “I Would Rather Sacrifice You”, a song that never fails to but a big smile on my face.

7. The Future of the Left, Travels with Myself and Another. I have said many times that, all appearances to the contrary, I like more music than I dislike. A small subsection of music that I like is nasty, noisy stuff that almost no one else I know likes. Titus Andronicus comes to mind here, as does the Future of the Left, whose Travels with Myself and Another beat its way into my skull and won my heart last year with its pounding drums and Andy Falkous’s snarling vocals. Subjects range from girls who get off on hitting people (“Chin Music” will only be appropriate at a very small number of weddings:  “I only hit him ’cause he made me crazy/ I only hit him ’cause he made me mad/ she only hit him ’cause it gets her wet/ yeah, she’s one of a kind/ she’s got chin music”) to the practical concerns of Satanism (“You Need Satan More than He Needs You”). Travels with Myself and Another pretty much kicks ass, though it’s not for the faint of heart or the humorless.

6. Andrew Bird, Noble Beast. I guess #7 and #6 on my list are a study in contrast. Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast is an understated, mellow, and completely lovely work – his finest to date, if I may be so bold. It blends Bird’s myriad musical talents (no one on earth – no one – can whistle like this motherfucker) into quirky pop (“Fitz and the Dizzyspells”), old school folk (“Effigy,” which is nothing short of stunning), and whatever you’d classify “Not a Robot, But a Ghost” as. Some of the songs have unique movements, but they never seem to wander, even on the seven minute “Souverian.” Bird is a musician’s musician, a guy you can study as well as enjoy, and Noble Beast is the textbook for aspiring musical ninjas.

I know. It’s taken me four days into the new year to even start counting down my favorite albums of the old year and now I’m doing it in two parts. Pitchfork took a week to do their list and they still fucked it up, so maybe it’s better that I’m taking my time. I, for one, wholeheartedly endorse every choice I’ve made so far. Tune in tomorrow or Wednesday for albums 5 through 1, which are bound to include demure rodents, plenty of references to whiskey, a rant about shitty record labels, the best pop album of the year, the word vagina, and plenty of weather.

Never Turn Your Back on Neko Case

Take a moment and look at that album art again. Go ahead.

That’s Neko Case, perched on the hood of a car (is it a GTO? I have no clue), carrying a fucking sword! Ladies and gentlemen, I know it’s early, but let’s go ahead and give Ms. Case the Album Cover of the Year award. “But,” you say, “you’re not here to review her album art. What about the music?”

I’m getting to that.

I’m going to start with the bad stuff first, and you’ll see why in a minute. The last “song” on Middle Cyclone is “Marais la Nuit”, 30 minutes of farm noises, recorded by Neko on an actual farm. Her farm. Again, that’s 30 minutes of nothing but frogs croaking and crickets chirping. This is pretentious and highly unnecessary. It’s really, really annoying.

So what would it take to forgive “Marais la Nuit”? I tell you exactly: it would take the fourteen tracks that precede it. The entire rest of Middle Cyclone is an unparalleled acheivement, a work of stunning beauty that showcases perfectly Neko Case’s myriad talents. Middle Cyclone is so good apart from Track 15 that I have fallen into the habit of listening to it straight through, skipping the final track, and going right back to “This Tornado Loves You.”  My Imaginary Secretary has fled the office today, fearing a repeat of the TV on the Radio incident of last year.

Case’s music is parked (like a car carrying a chick and a big fucking sword) at the intersection of folk, country, pop, and Byrds-style classic rock, and Middle Cyclone, like Fox Confessor Brings the Flood before it, blends those genres into something that is entirely Neko’s. And true to it’s title, Middle Cyclone is all about forces of nature: Neko as a romantic force of nature (she sings “I carved your name across three counties,” on “This Tornado Loves You”) and songs about actual nature, like her cover of Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth,” one of the highlights on an album of highlights.  Some songs blend both concepts, as on the advanced single, “People Got A Lotta Nerve,” where Neko not only reminds us that killer whales are called that for a reason but also uses the metaphor to embrace a common perjorative for heartbreaking women: “I’m a man-man-man/ man-man-man-eater/ but still you’re surprised-prised-prised/ when I eat ya.” In other words, if you tangle with a woman who car surfs GTOs (we’ll just pretend it’s a GTO, okay?) with a sword in her hand, you shouldn’t be shocked when you get your head chopped off.

Neko’s ferociousness isn’t all turned outward on Middle Cyclone either. The title track is a simple and gorgeous acoustic ditty with nuggets like “did someone make a fool of me?/ For I could show ‘em how it’s done” and “can’t scrape together enough/ to ride the bus to the outskirts/ of the Fact that I Need Love”. Case takes the whipped-raw feeling that one sometimes get from romantic entanglements and makes them elemental – a tornado, messy and seemingly undirected, is following you through three counties, destroying everything in its path trying to work its way back to your arms. It’s a metaphorical trick that seems ingrained in Neko Case’s soul, as many of the songs on Fox Confessor follow a similar pattern.

The album is driven by Neko’s voice, one of the strongest and most beautiful in music. She soars on “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth,” weeps on “Vengeance is Sleeping,” smirks on “People Got A Lot a Nerve,” and does all of the above on “The Pharoahs,” where she sings, “I want the Pharoahs/ but there’s only men.” Neko’s longtime guitarist Paul Rigby handles most of the arranging, building the music perfectly around the mood of her lyrics. This is carried off to devastating efffect on “Prison Girls,” where Neko sings, “I love your long shadows/ and your gunpowder eyes,” adding that the prison girls have “traded more for cigarettes/ than I’ve managed to express.”

If I seem a bit gushy re: Neko Case, let me tell you why: first off, she deserves it. Nobody sings like Neko Case, and her albums are consistently lovely, substantive works. Secondly, look at the women who get attention in music – you’ve got your Miley Cyruses, your JessicAshlee Simpsons, a smattering of first-name-only R&B girls, your Britney Spearses, and so on and so on. It’s not that there aren’t far superior performers out there; if you dig deeper, you’ll find your Kathleen Edwardses, Anis DiFranco, Regina Spektors, and Neko Cases. Neko Case, for my money, is the best of this underrated crop of women, and Middle Cyclone is strong enough on its own to back up my claim.

If you have a friend who is all about Neko Case and you’re thinking you might check her out, get Middle Cyclone and get it now. If this album is not in my top three at year’s end, I’ll eat a pound of steamed brussel sprouts and chase ‘em with a bottle of Boone’s Strawberry Whatthefuck. If you wanna try before you buy, come to my place and we’ll open up a bottle of red wine and make my girlfriend sick of Middle Cyclone (it’ll be a nice break from being sick of The Hold Steady and The National). We can let the beauty of the thing wash over us. But we’ll skip the last track, if it’s all the same to you.