Fittingly, a great decade of music ended with a great year of music. I’ve selected only nine albums here, not because “Top Nine of 09″ has a pleasant ring to it, but because picking a tenth just became too hard (and a twelve-way tie for tenth seemed silly). Besides, I always regret my final choices because I don’t hear about some albums until it’s too late—for instance, I just bought Animal Collective’s highly-touted Merriweather Post Pavilion and gave Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM to my wife for Christmas and though I like what I’ve heard, it’s too early to put either of them on this list. So this way I’m leaving a spot open.
Here are my favourite albums of 2009:
• xx, The xx
Feel free to make all the jokes you want about this band having just one song—and doing it eleven times on this album—but this is a fabulous debut. I listened to it a lot
• The Life of the World to Come, The Mountain Goats
I’ll admit it: I was skeptical when I heard John Darnielle was using biblical passages for song titles, but as the year ended, it was probably the album I was listening to the most
• Wilco (The Album), Wilco
Oh, sure, the music critics whined that Wilco didn’t break any new ground with this album, but I figure that was the only way they could avoid raving about another brilliant offering from this brilliant band—oh, and seeing Feist sing “You and I” with Jeff Tweedy at the second Massey Hall show was such a treat
• Infinite Light, Lightning Dust
Put me in a mood
• Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear
I found this album annoyingly hard-to-spell, but surprisingly fun and fascinating to listen to
• Beware, Bonny Prince Billy
I listened to this a lot in the spring before I went to see him and then forgot about it, but toward the end of the year, I listened to it again and realized just how good it really is
• Hospice, The Antlers
Took me a while to get into this one, but once I did, I really did
• Middle Cyclone, Neko Case
Okay, so it’s not Furnace Room Lullaby, but it’s still lovely (so was her Trinity Church gig)
• Noble Beast, Andrew Bird
Another impressive album from this impressively talented guy
Oh, and one other thing, one that made me feel like both a middle-aged man and a teenager: after reading so many raves about Tarot Sport by the Fuck Buttons, I went to eMusic and downloaded it. But when I tried to listen to it, I really felt middle-aged. And then I felt like a teenager for believing all the hype. No wonder my wife says I am highly susceptible to peer pressure.
I welcome your own lists (of whatever length) as well as your comments, complaints and condescension.