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.

Dark Night of the Soul: The Album EMI Doesn’t Want You to Hear

I may have mentioned once or twice that I am not fond of EMI’s recent business strategies, which seem to be calculated to irritate the music-buying public. You know, the very people they should be trying with all their might to win back in this age of the digital downloading and whatnot. Certainly, EMI is making a more compelling case that stupidity (as opposed to piracy) is what’s really killing the music industry. And while we’re on that cheery subject, you know what I’ve never heard? I’ve never heard a single musician that I care about or respect say that they’ll stop making music if the kids don’t knock off all the downloading. Billy Corgan can testify to Congress all he wants about needing to get paid, but let’s face it: if I thought downloading Billy Corgan’s shit would make him stop producing music and go get a job at  Arby’s, I’d be pirating that shit on a 24/7 basis.

One of the things I was bitching about (and will continue to bitch about at every opportunity. If I could get a meeting with the assholes in charge at EMI, I’d say all this & more to their doughy fucking faces) was EMI’s refusal to release Dark Night of the Soul, an album-length collaboration between Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous) and Danger Mouse (you know, the guy who is half of Gnarls Barkley; the guy who did the fucking Grey Album; the guy who breathed new life into the Black Keys last year… that guy) meant to accompany a book of visual goodies from none other than David Lynch. I should mention that Dark Night of the Soul features guest performances from such indie luminaries as Wayne Coyne, Julian Casablancas, Jason Lytle, Frank Black, and Iggy Fucking Pop. In other words, this album is full on, mind-blowing indie bait. This thing should’ve sold a billion copies for its list of contributors alone. But it was not to be; Danger Mouse let the good folks at NPR stream the album as an exclusive “First Listen” and the babies at EMI pissed their wrinkle-free khakis, despite the fact that what NPR and Danger Mouse were doing was essentially getting the indie kids (myself included) to respond to the album in a way that can only be described as Pavlovian. As of this writing, Dark Night of the Soul still does not have a release date, and it looks like EMI has no intention of releasing it.

Which is too bad, because it turns out that Dark Night of the Soul is worth every bit of the hype it has received and then some. It’s a moody, funky, grumpy, gorgeous record. I mean, this album is so awesome that it strikes me as statistically impossible that Tom Waits didn’t have some hand in it. Wayne Coyne is the first guest to appear, opening the album with “Revenge”, a song that admittedly sounds like it could be a Flaming Lips tune, but if that’s the worst thing someone can say about your song, what they’re really saying is, “Goddamn, that song is really awesome.”

The album has a freaky, psychedelic, middle-of-the-night feel to it that fans of Sparklehorse will recognize from 2006′s Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, which also featured some production from Danger Mouse, a guy I can’t stop praising for his ability to hear exactly how a song needs to sound and making it sound that way. So Dark Night of the Soul would have been musically worthwhile even without the high-profile collaborations, but having Iggy Pop shout, “et cetera, I quit,” on your album (as he does on the awesome “Pain” – if this is what Iggy’s new record sounds like, sign me up) is certainly an entertaining bonus.

I could go on and on about each track’s individual loveliness, but that’s hardly the issue anymore. It’s a great album, and I’d tell you to run right out and get it, but you can’t because EMI is dumb. The book is still for sale and it comes with a blank CD. So maybe you should go download the sucker and burn it to disc and then, if you ever meet Mark Linkous and/or Danger Mouse, buy them a round of their favorite beverage as a way of saying thanks. Although it’s not like EMI has put the lid on every opportunity you have to hear Dark Night of the Soul; search any torrent engine and you’ll find it (EMI is probably too busy keeping their music out of independent record stores to sue you anyway. Hell, given all the ways they’re finding to not sell music, they’ll probably be handing out pink slips to their legal department in a matter of days). Or, if you want to hear it completely legally and for free, the damn thing is still available here at the NPR website. That’s right – EMI put the brakes on the only way they have to make money off of Dark Night of the Soul without ever stopping NPR from basically giving it away. So either EMI has been infiltrated by anti-industry moles who are tearing it apart from the inside or it is entirely staffed by people who are so stupid that any just society would prohibit them from breeding.

In any case, Dark Night of the Soul is a pretty great album and, since there are so many ways to hear it without giving EMI a dime, you really can’t afford not to listen to it.