So we're... blah blah blah... of the way through 2009; what records are worth listening to so far?

2009 is kinda weak so far.
correct me if i'm wrong.

new Royksopp and new Lily Allen, NOT the new Super Furry Animals

Woods "Songs of Shame"

Twenty albums I've thoroughly enjoyed so far...

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light
Black Lips – 200 Million Thousand
Cannibal Corpse – Evisceration Plague
Cobalt – Gin
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
The-Dream – Love vs. Money
Frank Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
Glasvegas – Glasvegas*
Handsome Furs – Face Control
K’naan - Troubadour
Kylesa – Static Tensions
Mastodon – Crack the Skye
Morrissey – Years of Refusal
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
Obscura - Cosmogenesis
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
P.O.S. – Never Better
Satyricon – The Age of Nero*
Tombs – Winter Hours

* - I know these came out last year in other countries, but they both came out in 2009 here and I didn't hear them until this year.

except, uh, FranZ obvs

Stuff that won't leave the rotation:

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 - Goodnight Oslo
Willie Nelson & Asleep At The Wheel - Willie and the Wheel
Wardruna - Runaljod - Gap Var Ginnunga
Zu - Carboniferous

The Antlers - Hospice (like more atmospheric/bit experimental Shearwater)
Zu - carboniferus - (john zorn meets metal)

A-Trak, Fabriclive.45
Boredoms, Super Roots 10
Camp Lo, Stone & Rob: Caught on Tape
DJ Koze, Reincarnations
DOOM, Born Like This
Freeway, Month of Madness
Gorilla Zoe, Don't Feed da Animals
Heavy, First Sessions
The Juan Maclean, The Future Will Come
Platinum Pied Pipers, Abundance
Royksopp, Junior
Ryan Leslie
Telefon Tel Aviv, Immolate Yourself
The-Dream, Love vs Money
Young Dro & Young L.A., Black Boy Swag, White Boy Tags

NOT the new Super Furry Animals

otm, complete head fake by those claiming it is some sort of return to form.

candy claws 'in the dream of the sea life'
giorgio tuma 'my vocalese fun fair'
last days 'safety of the north'
soap & Skin 'lovetune for vacuum'
hauschka 'snowflakes and car wrecks'
la bien querida 'romancero'
the projects 'words of love broadcast in code'
sin fang bous 'clangour'
hildur gudnadottir 'without sinking'

Atoi, Youth Machine
Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, II
Lily Allen, It's Not Me, It's You
Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion
Henok Achido, Almaz Charming Child
Richard Swift, The Atlantic Ocean
Bonnie Prince Billy, Beware
Golden Silvers, Golden Silvers (← this is on the bubble, because I'm not sure I like the re-recordings of the previous singles.)

there's nothing i'd be falling over myself to recommend, but as far as worth listening to:

phantom band - checkmate savage
de rosa - prevention
outrageous cherry - universal malcontents
joy formidable - balloon called moaning
fanfarlo - reservoir
burning hearts - aboa sleeping
asobi seksu - hush
still flyin - never gonna touch the ground

oh and the hatcham social album sounded pretty good on first listen

I'll cosign on the Joy Formidable.

Maybe Fanfarlo too. Was a fan of all the singles over the past couple years leading up to the album, but haven't fully embraced the album itself yet.

fever ray

jon, our lists have some surprising crossover.

Alela Diane - To Be Still
Beirut - Realpeople Holland
DOOM - Born Like This
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Golem! - Citizen Boris
Jamie Saft - Black Shabbis
K'naan - Troubadour
Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You (though not really holding up to repeated listens)
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone (best of the year so far)
Noisettes - Wild Young Hearts EP
P.O.S. - Never Better
Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself
Thursday - Common Existence
Two Tongues - Two Tongues
Useless ID - The Lost Broken Bones (actually 2008 release)

Not mentioned yet:

Ida Maria - Fortress Round My Heart (out in US last week)
Intrusion - the Seduction of Silence
Keri Hilson - ...In a Perfect World
Omar-S - Fabric 45
Stimming - Reflections
These Are Powers - All Aboard Future
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz

1 the-dream - love vs money
2 yeah yeah yeahs- its blitz
3 ryan leslie- ryan leslie
4 junior boys- begone dull care
5 phoenix- wolfgang amadeus phoenix
6 the juan maclean- the future will come
7 jeremy jay- slow dance
8 keri hilson- in a perfect world...
9 gorilla zoe- dont feed da animals
10 nodzzz- nodzzz

the handsome furs album is really good too

still gotta hear the koze and a trak things too

has been a week first three months tho yeah

how the time has passed

i like mountains
and lots of singles but not many full-lengths

what are Jeremy Jay; Nodzzz?

circlesquare, 'songs about dancing and drugs'

Mordy - Yes! We do have some surprising crossover. That Lily Allen, minus a few standouts, soured on me over time.

J0rdan - glad to see more Handsome Furs love, that album is really great.

Has anyone else heard this Bachelorette album (on Drag City, out in May)? Need to listen a little more, but it might be kind of amazing ... Otherwise, new records this year ummmm, Neko Case ... Robyn Hitchcock ... errrr. Condo Fucks.

jeremy jay albums sound like original wes anderson soundtracks to me, except this one has some songs with disco synths

nodzzz album is 10 song 16 min pop-punk

I'll give a shout-out to that Mountains album. So good.
New Brethren of the Free Spirit is really good. haven't listened to any of the other new stuff on Important this year though, which kinda bums me out. Zola Jesus just put out a great mini-LP out on Troubleman, if you like the Sacred Bones type stuff, I'd recommend that as well.

I haven't heard that new Jeremy Jay album, but I plan on listening to it tomorrow! I hope it is good.

Thank you month of March for the following:
DOOM - Born Like This
Morrissey - Years of Refusal
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

jordan and i share our top three, which i'm not too surprised by since we've discussed the shit out of them already

1. the-dream - love vs money
2. yeah yeah yeahs - it's blitz!
3. ryan leslie - ryan leslie
4. antony and the johnsons - the crying light
5. neko case - middle cyclone
6. lily allen - it's not me, it's you
7. PPP - abundance
8. animal cololective - merriweather post pavilion
9. keri hilson - ...in a perfect world
t10. ida maria - fortress round my heart
t10. the juan mclean - the future will come

when ciara's new one finally gets an agreed-upon tracklist it'll be somewhere top 5

like that condo fucks record a lot too, "this is where i belong" might be better than the original

haha, kevin, sometime not so long after you appeared I got into a convo w/ someone here where I said something to the effect of, "kevin's cool, but one jordan s. is enough"

aw

unexpectedly strong start to 2009.. Handsome Furs, Phoenix, Silversun Pickups, Doom (no longer MF), Junior Boys (most of it), Animal Collective, there's a new good superdrag song I keep hearing.. I like a lot of the songs on Dark Was The Night also, especially that Sigur Ros side project thing.. enjoying a few of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs..

Some good mainstream music would be nice.

plenty of it imo

I need to add II by Lindstrom & Prins Thomas to my list post-haste, because o_O.

SFA, Grizzly Bear, PJ Harvey. The Mountains album is nice but pretty inconsequential. Animal Collective album is horrific.

2009 is kinda weak so far.

fuck's sake, must we deal with this every year

1. the-dream, love vs money
2. taylor swift, fearless
3. yeah yeah yeahs, it's blitz
4. ce'cile, worth it
5. omar-s, fabric 45
6. the juan maclean, the future will come
7. durrty goodz, ultrasound
8. agf/delay, symptoms
9. lindstrøm & prins thomas, ii
10. federation presents tnt, 3 the hard way

(taylor swift and ce'cile only had uk releases this year)

yeah i finally head fearless this past week and am basically in love with it

Rebotini - Music Components
Circlesquare - Music ..
Spektre - Live @ Glade
Scaramanga Six - Songs of Prey
Lily Allen - Its not ..
Ben Klock - One

really looking forward to : The Black Dog and Flykkiller

is that the hyphy Federation?

I know it's only the end of March now, but that's a lot of Lily Allen LP love so far. Think it will hold over til next January?

It barely held on till March for me, so I doubt it.

The RTFO Bandwagon record sounds promising.

As usual still catching up with last year and the couple of decades before that :) , but I have heard and enjoyed:

Telepathe, Dance Mother
Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion
T.I.T.S, Second Base

Neko Case
The Boss
The Pains

are all very good.

which probably makes this my best pop year in ages.

Lots of good things just around the pipeline. Laurent Garnier's got a humdinger and there's a new band called My Toys Like Me who don't sound quite like anything else I've ever heard.

k3vin i recommend the ty segall/black time split for the punkier end of things, and also the mantles album for the charming, classic songwriting end of things.

Nearing the end of the year I'm realizing that I still really like that Hatcham Social album a whole lot, and that it's not going to make any best-of-the-year polls because it's completely impossible to remember the band's name! Just found it by slogging through every single artist I've played on Rhapsody.

really? i find their name quite memorable, i think it's a very appealing name.. but yeah i fear it will be ignored. i love FP but they don't have a great track record of breaking bands

mayyors - deads ep = another top-of-the-list favorite that i forgot to include earlier. so great for jumping around and pretending that you are the kind of person who might break things while doing it.

Wow, very fond of God Help The Girl (mentioned above). Had completely avoided it because I've been so sick of B&S lately, and then forgot about it, so I heard it with surprisingly fresh ears when I downloaded it after reading this thread. My only regret is that it's by all the people who it sounds like (Divine Comedy et al) rather than a bunch of unknowns...and that's a stupid thing to regret.

So is The-Dream's Love Vs. Money the consensus number one around here? It has my vote.

I predict (envelope to forehead) Fever Ray will win the year-end poll, The-Dream #2, with Primary Colours, Two Suns, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Embryonic, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, It's Blitz! close behind.

animal collective will win, dream may be top 5

killah priest - elizabeth. monochrome, monotone sounds rrrrrright. runteldat

Just checking out the Horrors album right now. Not sure how I missed that one, must be my general bias against British bands after being let down so, so, so many times by manufactured NME hype. The album sounds great, though—very Chameleons-esque, which is always welcome. I had no idea the album had such a broad following though.

apparently a shitload of people like bitte orca, too:

Bitte Orca vs. Veckatimest

Definitely my pick for album of the year: Un Nuevo Día. Very fresh salsa from a new band led by Puerto Ricans out of Philadelphia. The vocals are probably the heart of the matter here: they are generally very inventive, and many of the tracks have multiple layers of different types of vocals, including rapped vocals (with a guest appearance by Voltio on one track). The instrumentation is also atypical of mainstream salsa with its emphasis on cuatro and acoustic guitar. There is not a bad track on this album. This is a new band, but percussion is handled primarily by veteran Luisito Quintero.

Also the new Tokyo Jihen single is shaping up to be good, especially the B side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqUbRo5quUM

(I think the next Tokyo Jihen album should definitely be better than the solo Shiina Ringo album that came out this past summer, which has already not held up real well for me.)

(And that's not the B-side. I can't find a copy at the moment. The B-side is more of a quasi-chaotic art rock sort of thing.)

here are my 20 favorite releases by artists that haven't been mentioned on this thread yet:

Jarvis Cocker - Further Complications
Playboy Tre - Liquor Store Mascot
Birds and Arrows - Starmaker
Say Anything - Say Anything
8Ball - Memphis All-Stars: Cars, Clubs & Strip Clubs
The Deleted Scenes - Birdseed Shirt
The Alchemist - Chemical Warfare
They Might Be Giants - Here Comes Science
The Entrance Band - The Entrance Band
Brendan Benson - My Old, Familiar Friend
Young Jeezy - Trappin' Ain't Dead
Superchunk - Leaves In The Gutter EP
The Mean - Meet Us Here
The Disciplines - Smoking Kills
Daniel Francis Doyle - We Bet Our Money On You
Rhymefest & Scram Jones - The Manual
Alex Cline - Continuous
The Bird And The Bee - Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future
OOIOO - Armonico Hewa
Camp Lo - Stone And Rob Caught On Tape

jarvis is in my top 25 and i really dig alchemist and that superchunk ep too. playboy tre is a very good rapper who i find to be kind of annoying personally

yeah he's kind of tasteful but corny, some good stuff but every time i listen to it i bump it down a couple spots

i really liked blue collar but haven't listened to it since it came out-how's that new rhymefest?

the 8ball and alchemist records made my album list

Helado Negro's "Awe Owe" was a surprising favorite album of the year for me. Hypnotic surreal electronic folk with Spanish language vocals. The only review of this I've seen has been in The Wire.

I'd add Sunn0))) and -- maaaaaybe -- Isis to my picks.

I have like 40 more records to review for twitter. Here's a lost of stuff that's been recommended to me by friends and various critic/mag/blog year end lists... Can you guys tell me if any of this is worth my time?

Obscura - Cosmogenesis
Vulture Whale, Vulture Whale
Emmy the Great, First Love
Shilpa Ray, A Fish Hook an Open Eye
Peaches"I Feel Cream";
Lissy Trullie "Self-Taught Learner";
Band of Skulls "Baby Darling Doll Face Honey";
Del Marquis “Runaround”
Kate Miller-Heidke “Curioser”
Erin McCarley “Love, Save The Empty”
The Arch Cupcake “Box of Bees”
The Leisure Society - The Sleeper and Product
Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
Sharon Van Etten - Because I Was In Love
The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
Bloody Mary, Black Pearl (Contexterrior)
The Glimmers Present Disko Drunkards (Glimmer Twins)
Italoboyz, Bla Bla Bla (Mothership)
10-20, 10-20 (Highpoint Lowlife)
The Sandwitches - ambient sadcake
Susan Boyle
British Sea Power - Man Of Aran
Soap & Skin - Lovetune For Vacuum
Dinky - Anemik
Dr. Dunks - How We Do In NYC
Brock Van Wey - White Clouds Drift On And On
Louderbach - Autumn
Prins Thomas - Live at Robert Johnson
Martyn - Great Lengths
Master Musicians of Bukkake -– Totem One
Black Sun - Twilight of the Gods
Dÿse - Lieder Sind Brüder Der Revolution
Dokaka – Human Interface
Vom –– Primitive Arts
Steve Earle - Townes
Sarah Jarosz - Song Up In Her Head
Iron And Wine - something
Mt. St. Helens - Vietnam
The Legends - Over And Over
Brandi Carlile - Give Up The Ghost
Joe Bonamassa - Ballad Of Joe Henrey
Willie Nelson - Lost Highway
Jack Rose & the Black Twigs - 
s/t

don't know most of those but you definitely must tweet susan boyle

a friend of mine has been saying really great things about rural alberta advantage lately. i haven't checked them out yet but he's generally got good taste wrt things in that vein.

Vulture Whale record is a fun record.

i didn't make it through all of 'how to make ambient sadcake' but the first song is lots of fun.

these are all ace, to varying degrees (and grouped together in your list, handily):

Master Musicians of Bukkake -– Totem One
Black Sun - Twilight of the Gods
Dÿse - Lieder Sind Brüder Der Revolution
Dokaka – Human Interface
Vom – Primitive Arts

well, i got those 5 from YOUR year end list actually, m to the g, since you like a lot of the same avant-metal stuff--but haven't had time to explore which are cool art-fuck stuff i'd like and which are boring noodley prog crap I'd hate.

I checked out Umlaut on your recommendation and was like *barf*, so i'm erring on the side of caution

that explains it.

well, those are all very different from umlaut - and from each other, for that matter. the dokaka is the weakest of the bunch, tbh, but is fun nonetheless.

ay have you done the meshell ndegeocello? one of my top albums

I have not, rev!

Two records I can't seem to steal from the ANYWHERE on the internet because their labels are obv good at crushing leaks:

Bob Dylan Christmas and BlakRoc

Kate Miller-Heidke “Curioser”

i recommend you snap this one over your knee

if u listen to blackroc before big krit im gonna ... i dont know. troll u or something.

blackcroc

http://www.shoes.com/ProductImages/Shoes_iAEC1021410.jpg

lmao

apropos

"Soap & Skin - Lovetune For Vacuum"

This is a wonderful record.

somedude otm about OOIOO

i'm gonna do a top 100 on BSCReview.com for 2009 but I think everyone needs to hear Ike Reilly's "Hard Luck Stories," it's download-only but damn, I love that guy. great due with shooter jennings called "the war on the terror and the drugs".

No love for David Bazan here?

at first listen the ooioo didn't grab me like the last few did, but maybe i should listen more.

it's no Gold & Green but it does quite nicely, I think, especially on the short-song-heavy 2nd side.

oops Green & Gold, that is.

http://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-top-40/

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=227653904406

Just my personal year's end list on Facebook, not too exciting really.

holy shit that's really extensive. i wrote this in a fb note at 5 am when i got home friday morning.

albums 2009Share
Yesterday at 5:37am | Edit Note | Delete

i wasted a lot of time listening to music this year, these are some albums that made it worth my while.
i didn't take the ordering too seriously: #1 is the absolute best and #2 is second best, but after that it's really just give or take. also there's still a lot of stuff i haven't gotten around to listening to yet that i'm sure i'll love deeply, like the new boredoms, and sunn o))) too.

1) the-dream - love vs money
2) think about life - family
3) lil boosie - superbad: the return of boosie bad azz
4) destroyer - bay of pigs
5) ty segall/black time - split
6) nadja - the bungled and the botched
7) dj quik & kurupt - blaqkout
8) electrik red - how to be a lady vol. 1
9) ultrathin - endless summer ii
10) dirty projectors - bitte orca
11) drunkdriver & mattin - list of profound insecurities
12) gucci mane - the state vs radric davis
13) the luyas - tiny head/spherical matress 7"

honorable mentions:

crazy cousinz - this is uk funky vol. 1
davila 666 - s/t
the get em mamis - terawesome... See More
mayyors - deads 12"

i listened to super roots 10 last night, actually. it's not good.

last week I caught some of Here We Go Magic's set at End of the Road and they were really good so I grabbed their 2009 album and I really like it a lot and this thread is one that comes up when you search for their horrible, awful, why would you call yourself that name, so here we are

they are awesome anyway pity about the name!

lol indie