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.

Chinese Democracy: The Bollocks! Review Part II (This Time It’s Personal)

One beer down, three to go. We’re getting heavier now, not musically, but I’m pouring a nice glass of Stone IPA right now and it’s a lot hoppier than the polite, mild mannered Morimoto. Stone IPA is one of my favorite IPAs, and 22 ounces of it might lead us to more typographical mishaps later in the evening. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya. I did a palate cleanse with some water to make way for the Stone IPA, so how about a musical cleansing as well? I’m dipping into Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair” (seemed appropriate) for a second before picking up the Chinese Democracy again.

9:07PM: Back to the Grind: “There Was a Time” has Axl at his most martyred: “I was the one who gave you everything,” he sings. Way to toot your own horn there, Axl. Chicks dig confidence. As a guitar player (a decent enough one, I’m told), I can confidently say that, despite most of these songs having five guitarists on them, the guitars are uniformly annoying. Where the tone doesn’t suck outright, whichever guy is playing is just squirreling away a million notes a minute that mean exactly fuckall. On “There Was a Time,” there’s a little interlude that sounds like a Kenny G lick. Kid you not. Axl seems to lament, “There was a time/ I would do anything for you” as if now, after all you’ve put him through, Axl just can’t do anything for you anymore. So you’ve fucked that up for yourself, whoever you are. The song could be about Slash or some chick or… who really cares? All you need to know is that it’s Axl Vs. The World and gosh, he’s just tried so hard to be nice and give you so much and this is how you repay him? For shame!

I mentioned to a friend today that I could forgive how far up his own ass Axl is on this album if the music was halfway decent. The odds are looking better for Mousavi to win the election in Iran at this point (big ups to the protesters there; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an Islamic Sarah Palin and the good folks of that country deserve better). “There Was a Time” is overlong, features finger-tapping (hey, guitar players: you wanna piss me off? Engage in finger-tapping), and is, so far, the low point on an album I would be complimenting by calling a shit sandwich.

9:14PM: Why JD Salinger Doesn’t Talk to Us Anymore: Ooooooooh… a literary reference from a guy whose grasp of English is worse than my dog’s, and she’s got a pretty good excuse. “The Catcher in the Rye” must have been inspired by J.D. Salinger’s book, right? Axl sings, “If I thought that I was crazy/ guess I’d have more fun” and there’s really nothing in the song that indicates to me that Axl read the book. There’s little on this album to convince me that Rose can read. Salinger is currently suing someone who wrote a sort of sequel to Catcher in the Rye. Maybe he should sue Axl over this instead. This song also has a guitar solo that sounds almost like it was patched in from an entirely different recording session. This song takes the taco for infuriating lyrics (the Taco of Lyrical Fury): “Cause what used to be’s/ Not there for me/ and ought to for someone/ That belongs/Insane/ Like I do.” Despite my drinking, kids, I didn’t mistype a single word there. What…the fuck… does it mean?

And that’s the problem: you get the feeling that Axl doesn’t know either. He’s just singing shit and playing around in a studio and the result is this  jam-packed mess. Rolling Stone, proving they’ve lost touch with reality, called Chinese Democracy “a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.” Audacious, yes. Great? Hardly. Not even good. Kinda outside the ballpark of listenable.

“Scraped” follows “Catcher in the Rye” and it’s Axl getting back to what he does best: talking about how fucking great he is, shrieking in his whiniest voice, “Nothing’s impossible/ I am inconquerable.” Again, Axl, you’re not “inconquerable.” Nobody is “inconquerable.” It’s not a word. Dick. “Scraped” does throw a bone to any fans gullible – er, “faithful” – enough to have made this journey with Axl through these long years. He tells his listener(s?), “You know you’re stronger/ than the lies they tell you.” But I’m confused. Because he also says, “Don’t you try to stop us now”. Is he talking to the same “you”? That would seem kinda inconsistent, but since the song seems to be about how Axl is a word he made up that he thinks means “unstoppable”, I guess it doesn’t matter.

9:24PM: Ah. There’s that New Low. “Riad N’ the Bedouins” is the worst song on the album so far. Apparently, Axl is referring to someone named Riad (although, as it’s spelled, the word is derived from, I believe, the Arabic “Ryad”, meaning “garden.” ) and his or her semi-nomadic followers. He opens the song with this turdworthy verbiage: “Riad N’ the Bedouins/ Had a plan and thought they’d win/ But I don’t give a fuck ’bout them/ Cause I am crazy.” I’m pretty sure if you gave my niece dog meth, she could write better lyrics than that.  “Garden and the Bedouins” is the most egregious offender in the Holy Shit, This Song is Fucking Meaningless category. Is Axl really enemies with some semi-nomadic folks and a dude (a chick? I don’t know) who was named for Moroccan gardens? He sings about not bending his will to “nomads and barbarians”, the sort of thing you’d write about a far off land (say, the Middle East) if you’ve never fucking seen the region on a map.  Will more beer help this? Maybe, but the effects-driven guitars at the end are giving me a headache. Another palate-cleanse coming soon, though I’m still on my Stone IPA.

“Sorry” is, so far, the most unintentionally hilarious (and that’s saying something) song on Chinese Dumb-0cracy so far. “You like to hurt me/ you know that you do,” sings Axl in his “tender” tenor. I would like to hurt you, Axl. A lot. The song is a slow-burner that seethes with disdain for… well, somebody. Maybe this song is about ex-bandmates or gilfriends or… Christ. I’m not drunk enough to consider that a megalomanical, dipshit white boy with corn rows gets laid.

The hilarity continues: Axl just sang, “I’ll kick your ass like I said that I would.” Does he mean physically or musically? Either way, I have my doubts. “Sorry” continues Axl’s trend of knowing more than everyone else about how to behave and how to treat people. When, oh when, will we stop hurting poor Axl?

Part III coming up next. I think we’ll finish this thing up then: I’m going full Belgian on this bitch in a minute.