A Selection Of Albums, 2009

If it interests the reader, I have catalogued the statistics accumulated on my Last.fm profile here. It gives an idea of what I actually listened to this year on my computer. It will be a bit skewed.

It's with sort of a morbid curiosity that I read end of year best-of lists. It's a stupid thing to do, in fairness. If it wasn't fun, and basically harmless to boot, it would be poison. I don't really understand The Wire's obligatory annual inclusion of a couple of albums from spheres of music they don't even cover during the year (see: Vampire Weekend, Dirty Projectors). Pitchfork have their ridiculous 25 “Honorable Mentions,” which they say “are not simply records #51-75 in our poll; rather, they're albums that we think deserve a bit more praise and notice.” I'm confused right there, and I want to meet the person that makes sense to. Last year Plan B stated something like “we don't believe in ranking music, so we haven't put our list of top albums of 2008 in any particular order.” Fine. But. YOU MADE A FUCKING LIST ALREADY.

Lastly, an inescapable point: The Wire, Plan B, Pitchfork, BBC Radio 3, NPR, Tim Westwood, Steve Lamacq, Walter Schreiffels and Steve Davis could all get together and name The XX's effort Album of 2009, for all I care. My relation to it will remain roughly the same as the Pope's to gays.

Everything about making music lists is petty, painful, unsatisfying, incorrect, nonsense, and ultimately FUN. A good reason not to give your list an order is because it's difficult, takes time, and you're not being paid for this, so you want it to only take an hour. Last year I had tremendous difficulty narrowing it down to two 10-album tiers and 6 “honorable mentions” (haha). This year, I thought I'd barely listened to a thing from 2009, until I picked up a pen and paper. It turns out that I did. Now, I'm reasonably certain I could list 50 decent albums. But that is not the point either. So here goes with 25 that make most sense to me.

I will also list some of the glaring omissions that spring to mind that make it obvious how meaningless proceedings here have been, and a handful of disappointments. Everything that follows is alphabetically ordered for sake of maximum fairness.

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A top 10:

Califone – All My Friends Are Funeral Singers (Polished, perfect, top-form Califone album.)

Harlem Shakes – Technicolour Health (Irresistible and unashamed indie-pop in the vein of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.)

Japandroids – Post-Nothing (Crash, crash, singalong, shout, smile, wallop.)

John Frusciante – The Empyrean (Thoroughly immersive and exhaustive concept album.)

Les Etoiles – To Leave A Mark (Heartfelt songs bear a heavy load of family history.)

The Blue Angel Lounge – The Blue Angel Lounge (Debut from superb Velvet Underground-inspired German psychedeliacs.)

The Love Language – The Love Language (Debut album of gorgeous romantic songs flies by)

These Are Powers – All Aboard Future (Confrontational, strangely alive avant/noise-pop.)

The Thermals – Now We Can See (Rattles through 11 great pop-punk songs. Fun.)

Shapes – The Pasture, The Oil (22-minute dose of jagged shout-along, some carnage.)

A further 10:

All The Empires Of The World – Blessings (Biased? Maybe a little. But enjoying the hell out of this thoroughly OTT doom/ambient album is no stretch.)

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (Consider: MPP actually met the hype.)

Bat For Lashes – Two Suns (Consistently crafting lush pop with measured magic.)

Busdriver – Jhelli Beam (Inimitable lightning vocals and great production.)

Dalek – Gutter Tactics (Hip-hop sunk deep into industrial noise territory. Mesmerising menace.)

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (Haha, 10-word summary, funny. Fun. Jawdropping. Hard to grasp.)

Micachu & The Shapes – Jewellery (Couldn't stuff more genius or annoyance into these pop fragments.)

Nosaj Thing – Drift (Stunning glitch, bliss and crunch on this debut album.)

The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation – Succubus (Whoa. Roving jazz instrumentals and impenetrable dark ambient.)

Wavves – Wavves (Teen goth beach party. The record that launched a thousand (shitty) mimics.)

“Honorable Mentions:”

A City Safe From Sea – Throw Me Through Walls

Amen Dunes – Dia

Peaking Lights – Imaginary Falcons

Teeth Of The Sea – Orphaned By The Ocean

The London Apartments – Signals & Cities Are Forever

Disappointments:

Themselves – Crownsdown (I just really hate the production, and it sounds awfully forced.)

Silversun Pickups – Swoon (I don't know if it's my fault or theirs, but this seemed flat.)

Condo Fucks (aka Yo La Tengo) – Fuckbook (This is just not an interesting kind of music for me.)

Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (Dreary. I'm not even all that easily bored.)

Yet to hear (and actually do want to track these down this time):

Alasdair Roberts (Have had a very strong recommendation. Soon!)

Broadcast & The Focus Group (The Wire's AOTY has got to be worth a shout, surely!)

Do Make Say Think

epic45 (Only just found out they had a new one, thanks Dave!)

Flaming Lips

Fuck Buttons

Girls

Grizzly Bear (!!! Honestly, when it came out, I just wasn't in the mood. I will rectify this soon.)

Holopaw

Jim O'Rourke

Phoenix

Six Organs of Admittance

Sonic Youth (And I was actually psyched for this, but it came out in a hellish month of stress)

Sunn o))) (Have in fact bought this, but it hasn't arrived yet.)

Vic Chestnutt

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Wow, that's a lot of names and stuff dropped by a serial and heinous namedropper. It only remains to say that I bet I didn't even hear a lot of the good stuff last year and boy do I sink in fear and nausea when I think about all the music that will be released in 2010. When I realise how much talent and effort there is out there and how much I have not yet heard, and how in every moment more and more is piled onto the backlog. Like a character in a book who pleads, No! Don't add to the levels of existence that are already in being presently. Don't make the world more real and its grip upon us more fierce. That is where the nausea comes from in the first place. Of course, I do not really want for these people to stop making music, not at all. But it does scare me.

(Oh, and to say that you should go to the Records On Ribs website and download the albums released last year by Les Etoiles, All The Empires Of The World, Sweet Potato, Talk Less Say More and Blue Ducks which are either listed above or were very good nonetheless.)