In terms of my picks from 2009, no surprise that EJ and DC captured a lot of what I've really like this year. I'm not going to list Black Moth Super Rainbow or Tobacco, or Kurt Vile, but I gotta include Mountains. I don't think the following list is any particular order, just some observations on my favorite albums this year or artists I discovered this year.
Mountains, "Choral": Great album, captured a lot about how I feel about music right now, the title track is a kind of perfection, by the end of it if you close your eyes it sounds like God breathing. Heavy, and beautiful.
Jim O'Rourke, "The Visitor": So hard to pin down what this album is, just one 38 minute long track, it's elusive and amorphous, and I don't get tired of listening to it. He recorded it in his apartment in Tokyo.
Juana Molina: I got hip to her music this year and listened to her non-stop basically all through August, massive crush on her, love her story about how she was a huge comedian in Argentina and then started playing original, inventive music, she's a true artist.
Tortoise, "Beacons of Ancestorship": These guys just get better and better. One of my favorite bands, I hope they stay together and make music for years to come.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, "Master and Everyone": I like most of his albums, but this one is my favorite, dark, anti-social and mysterious.
Dirty Projectors, "Bitte Orca": A totally original, wild indie-rock album, you can hate on them if you want but this is a great record.
Grizzly Bear, "Veckatimest": Another great record, I liked their first few albums but they have really grown as a band this is a great listen all the way through.
3 comments:
good picks, man. i feel you. i don't think you can overstate the importance of captain crawl and the blog/downloading revolution. like it or not, it's the direction that things are headed for music distribution. i'm not going to comment on if it's wrong or right, good or evil, ethical, moral, etc. it's just a fact.
i still don't really like Dirty Projectors, though. looks like the unanimous pick for 2009 so far is Mountains...
Totally. What the fuck was I thinking? The game changer of 2009 was the blog scene, hands down. When I found that first blog with every Strata East record? Yo, that was like the most legitimately mind blown i'd been in some time. I've been turned on to SO MUCH killer shit this year from blog/captain crawl scores. Whatever, love it or hate it, legal or illegal, say what you want but blog download scene fucked my shit up in 2009. DC OUT!!!! Monastics coming at you in 2010!
First time I've ever gotten totally foiled trying to find a new album that the record companies have so far successfully kept off the blogs. I'm trying to get Broken Bells, the collaboration between the guy from the Shins and DangerMouse, tons of links off captaincrawl but they all have the letter from the record company posted there about taking it down. Damn. Same thing at Radiobutt. Speaking of Radiobutt, checking out his best of 2009 list and the bands I don't know I'm checking youtube and I'm struck by how much they all really really suck actually.
But huge scores the last few days in the last few days including St. Vincent, Micachu and the Shapes, and Neon Indian. And, perhaps I need to post separately about this, the new Doom record.
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