zero vu

I am 100% an album guy, love the statement of a full-length release that is wholly conceived.  DIY recordings and downloaded singles have become more than ubiquitous.  Their sheer numbers are dizzying, just overwhelming.  For those and other reasons, I find special pleasure in an album that is written, recorded, and produced as a single musical idea.  That doesn’t mean a concept album or manufactured conceit, just wholeness.

And by the way I think 2009 was a fantastic year for the album.

So, maybe more than most people, an album’s internal consistency is among my qualifications for a Best Of list; also some sense of durability; and of course songs I can honestly say I like.  It is not so hard to get caught up in a release heralded as Important.  For instance Bradford Cox does some writing with Deerhunter and Atlas Sound that is clearly in a different place than most musicians.  But not too many songs on this year’s Logos would I ever care to hear again.  Also, strictly chronologically, I include anything that came to my attention in 2009, whether it was released previously as import or not; I just can’t keep up.  Lastly, I think it is critical to work the word, “dystopian” into any meaningful record review. 

We bought and moved our family into a new house on New Year’s Eve or (I swear) I think I could have posted this the first week of the year.  That said, I have only read a couple of friends’ Top 10 lists out of familial curiosity.  Beyond that, I can only assume I missed many releases last year and can only vouch that these are great albums, if not the greatest.

1.  Papercuts

“You Can Have
What You Want”

Warm California dream pop with rousing punches of cadence to surprise the mid-tempo, You Can Have What You Want is equally the soundtrack to a rainy night or the first sunny day of spring.  From the opening bars of organ in “Once We Walked in the Sunlight” to the hymn-like closer “The Wolf,” Jason Quever’s voice floats perfectly in a buoyant, unbroken atmosphere.  “Jet Plane” and “The Void” are subtle highlights, frail and mesmerizing.  Thank goodness for second chances, since I never quite took to Papercuts’ prior release, but You Can Have What You Want is a lovely work that welcomes like a good friend.
 

2.  The Horrors

Primary Colours

What else could The Horrors have deftly incorporated into Primary Colours?  The album is a stirring brew of three decades: 70’s glam, 80’s goth, and 90’s shoegaze.  For someone who cut his teeth in college radio on the shoegaze sounds of Ride and Swervedriver in the early 90’s, I love the many unexpected ways it has been resurrected in the last few years.  Archetypal single “Sea Within a Sea” turns into a crashing, triumphant anthem that punctuates a remarkable sophomore album.

3.  Blank Dogs

Under and Under

If The Horrors are a tour de force of 80’s pop and goth, Mike Sniper’s Blank Dogs conjures a dystopian dream of those same years.  Each song on Under and Under begins simply enough with a recognizable synthesized melody that could easily be mistaken for New Order or REM, but quickly warps into their miscreant step children.  But these songs, both awful and beautiful, are pop gold:  Danceable, addicting, insistent.
     

4.  BOAT

Setting the Paces

BOAT, always strangely CAPITALIZED, is another band that crossed my radar with their previous release, Songs That You May Not Like, but whom I fell in love with in 2009.  Setting the Paces is at times whimsical but never silly or juvenile.  Like Pavement, BOAT writes hooks on songs like “Lately,” “Prince of Tacoma,” and “God Save the Man” that are very of-the-moment, almost extemporaneous.  You wish all bands could write songs like this without overthinking the Irony Of It All. 

6. The Antlers

7. Here We Go Magic  

8. Erik Blood

The Way We Live

I would now like to coin a phrase.  You’ll find Seattle’s Erik Blood variously described as “soulgaze” and “shoegazing crooner.”  To me the perfect discriptor, the extension of singer-songwriter, is singer-shoegazer™.  From the opening bars of “The Way We Live” it’s clear that Blood fills every produced space with layered guitars and vocals.  But alongside the wall of sound come soft edges and soulful vocals in songs like “Saved You” and “Odds for Sods.”  Blood pairs two genres that by all accounts shouldn’t coexist.  It is a tragedy that The Way We Live is available by download only.  Props to my friend Toby who bird-dogged this amazing performer all year long.

9. The Pains of Being
     Pure at Heart

The Pains of Being
Pure at Heart

Gauzy pop about 20-something angst and sex in the library.  Yes, I am too old for these themes but the hooks from POBPAH have been irresistible since the band formed in 2007.  Frequently a bit ribald, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart follows in the footsteps of the Pale Sants and JAMC, with enough percussive energy to drive the melodies.  If you aren’t offended by, “This love is fucking right,” you’ll enjoy the entire debut.  

10. The Dutchess 
       and the Duke

Sunrise/Sunset

In addition to one of the year’s great CD layouts, Sunrise/Sunset sports a gritty combination of folk and punk.  Sunrise/Sunset was a late entry for me, but the more I listened, the more I was drawn to the non-nonsense Western ballads.  Songs like “Never Had a Chance” and “New Shadow” are accessible and universal.  Thankfully, The Dutchess and the Duke return to Salt Lake in March, as I missed a couple of their performances last year.

Some other favorites this year:

A.C. Newman – Get Guilty
Dawes – North Hills
Delorean – Ayrton Senna EP
Fanfarlo – Reservoir
Franz Ferdinand – Tonight
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimist
Loney Dear – Dear John
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Summer Cats – Songs for Tuesdays
Symfoniorkestern – Set Fire to Yourself (For What You Believe In)
The Hidden Cameras – Origin: Orphan
The Postmarks – Memoirs at the End of the World

A few releases I partially downloaded and liked but still haven’t bought because I was out of money:

Afternoon Naps – Parade
Bishop Allen – Grrr…
And You Will Know Us by the Trail of  Dead – Century of Self
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Au Revoir Simone – Still Night, Still Light
Cats on Fire – Our Temperance Movement
Cornershop – Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast
Dan Deacon – Bromst
Hayden – The Place Where We Lived
Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard – ‘Em Are I
Solillaquists of Sound – No More Heroes
Tap Tap – On My Way
Tim Cohen – The Two Sides of Tim Cohen
Viva Voce  – Rose City

Disappointments:

Elvis Perkins – In Dearland.  For instruction on how to pen a New Orleans tribute, see Alec Ounsworth’s Mo Beauty

The Soundtrack of Our Lives – Communion.  Yet another testament to the fact that the double-album is unsustainable

Best Live Show:

A Place to Bury Strangers – Urban Lounge, October 22