Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 2009 poll

definitely the xx album for me.

Yeah, Electrik Red, DJ Sprinkles and The-Dream would be my Top 3 for this year but Fever Ray is close behind so I'll vote for that. Lots of other good stuff missing:

Oneohtrix Point Never - Zones Without People
Baroness - Blue Record
Wolves in the Throne Room - Black Cascade
Gucci Mane - Burrprint
Paramore - Brand New Eyes
The Jacka - Tear Gas
Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas - II

Rifts is from 2009! That's surely also an album that will make it unto the list in time.

Omg I forgot that Fall Out Boy was this year. And Maxwell.

But I think of DJ Sprinkles as 2008.

I don't think anyone was claiming they were career peaks for any of them

I would claim that's Lily Allen's best album, at least.

I was going to vote for Two Suns, but then I noticed that Gaga was on the Acclaimed list and I voted for that.

Prob St. Vincent or Bat for Lashes or Phoenix.

That xx album is such a boring nothing for being a widely-hailed album.

Between Two Dancers and It's Blitz.

Where is Blaqkout?????

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix still holds up

Embryonic was pretty thrilling on first listen, but I haven't returned to it much since

Toeachizown is a pretty glaring omission, how do you ignore 5 LPs of pristine funk like that

oh yeah dam-funk and blaqkout are each in my top 5 from this year i think

2009 was probably the year i listened to the most music and i remember it fondly

Fever Ray is probably most deserving here, but the Mastodon album is the one I come back to the most

Fever Ray is alright but I'd much sooner listen to Silent Shout or Shaking The Habitual. There've been a hell of a lot of other records before and since that share the same sonic qualities as that album.

From my very subjective perspective, 2009 was the year I took my first babysteps in music writing, doing capsule reviews for Clash magazine. I started getting sent a LOT of promo CDs, not all of which were particularly good. I think my favourite album of that year was Pere Ubu's 'Long Live Pere Ubu!', which honestly sounds like nothing else at all.

It felt like a transitionary year with the freakfolk/Amerindie craze from a few years ago spilling over into the hipster mainstream thanks (sic) to the popularity of Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the rise of Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, magazines like Kinfolk etc..

Dance music was at a weird crossroads. I got sent a lot of post-dubsteppy CDs of acts like Darkstar, Joy Orbison etc; while people like Skream and Rusko were getting hugely popular here and in the States. That LeRoux remix stands out particularly.

Name them please. (xpost)

2 304 The xx - xx
5 626 Fever Ray - Fever Ray
7 801 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
17 1620 Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

one of these, prob not Bat for Lashes ;_; although I love that album

bill callahan

throw the rest of these albums in the trash tbh

Name them please. (xpost)

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, September 1, 2016 2:46 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feel_It_Break for a start. I dunno, I need to listen to FR again to figure out what makes it unique from the rest of the Scandi-electro-pop brigade but it's a well-established genre in itself with plenty of great stuff out there.

That Austra album is great but its mood is not nearly as claustrophobic or foreboding as what's happening on the Fever Ray album, particularly with respect to vocal treatment/pitch-shifting.

Neko

xp I'm probably not one to get into the debate because I only found Fever Ray so-so. I never felt as though I truly appreciated it as much as a lot of other people on here.

this was my first year on ilx! i remember making myself a mix of the top 40 tracks list and losing my mind over electrik red

from this list i'd probably vote it's blitz! or bill callahan (his best work). crack the skye is also great but way harder to listen to

It's Blitz! is good. I don't listen to it any more but it's fun. Is the Bill Callahan the one with 'Eid Ma Clack Shaw' on it? I like that song.

lol if the year were re-polled FOB would do many times better

I'm glad to remember that Future of the Left placed so high, still their peak.

stuff not listed that i still listen to:
DJ Burn-One & Pill - 4180: The Prescription
Beak> - Beak>
Black Dice - Repo
Ringo Deathstarr - Sparkler
Ovlov - Crazy Motorcycle Jump

stuff not listed that i listened to a lot at the time:
Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
Tyler The Creator - Bastard
Gucci Mane - The State vs. Radric Davis
Rick Ross - Deeper Than Rap
Merchandise - Merchandise EP
Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Drake - So Far Gone
Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms
Pearl Jam - Backspacer

Hard choice because I really loved Bitte Orca, but Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is just a perfect record and deserves respeck.

A good year imo.

I still think the previous Phoenix album was a lot better and the one here was disappointing.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/3d/76/ed/3d76edd341969ccbace6baea98b5e04e.jpg

lol, challops is back, in pog form

1 184 Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
2 304 The xx - xx
3 434 Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
5 626 Fever Ray - Fever Ray
6 627 Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
9 872 Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
11 1034 Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
13 1040 Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
18 1711 St. Vincent - Actor
25 2059 Japandroids - Post-Nothing
30 2387 Richard Hawley - Truelove's Gutter

I have enjoyed all of these at some point, and some of them - St Vincent, Wild Beasts, Grizzly Bear, Fever Ray, Fuck Buttons - I would even say I loved and still really, really like (Wild Beasts and Fever Ray are all-time classic for me). Fuck the haterz.

Previous Phoenix record was a horrific mess, in terms of mastering. As was the one that followed. Unlistenable. WAP is great pop fun for driving around in summer to.

It's great for 3 songs and then there's that buzzkill 10-minute long track 4 thing right in the middle of the album that goes nowhere.

Actor is still a really good album.

I dunno, Fuck Buttons felt edgy, energetic, spiky and interesting at the time. Now it sounds like slowed down techno played strictly in the mid-range. 2009 felt like a big year in general for long crescending music that builds but ends up nowhere.

GY!BE's heyday was late 90s

Ha, 2009 was a big postrock year for me as well. Worriedaboutsatan and Her Name is Calla. Land of Kush.

otm about Fuck Buttons, though I never really dug them... so much stuff from the late aughts is already so dated... remember EAR PWR and High Places?

so much stuff from the late aughts is already so dated

I thought a lot of it was horrendous at the time, to be fair. It started to pick up again circa 2011 for me.

Yeesh these choices are not very attractive. Going on what's here I'd probably go with Wilco. But hoo boy, what a smelly list.

Sunn O))) pretty much the only one for me.

I haven't listened to High Places in years. But relistening now, 03/07-09/07 is still awesome.

Voted for Actor. Easily my favourite St Vincent record. Two Dancers, It's Blitz, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Embryonic, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt II and Fever Ray all stand up too.

I still really rate the Royksopp album mentioned earlier. It's their only essential record.

Fuck Buttons sounded dated to me when it came out. It's just not very good.

obviously bill callahan

The Juan MacLean's The Future Will Come was the only good record released this year.

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle

Horrible '00s album title

Yeah, this list is pretty junky.

Other things that I would have voted for over anything listed:

The Appleseed Cast — Sagarmatha
Bad Lieutenant — Never Cry Another Tear
Beach House — Teen Dream
Andrew Bird — Noble Beast
Andrew Bird — Useless Creatures
Death Cab for Cutie — The Open Door EP
Doves — Kingdom of Rust
The Durutti Column — Love in the Time of Recession
For Against — Never Been
John Parish and PJ Harvey — A Woman A Man Walked By
Jon Hassell — Last the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions — Through the Devil Softly
Glenn Jones — Barbecue Bob in Fishtown
Maxwell — BLACKsummers'night
Carla Morrison — Aprendiendo A Aprender
Mount Kimbie — Maybes
Mount Kimbie — Sketch on Glass
Sonic Youth — The Eternal
David Sylvian — Manafon

Voted Wilco.

Voting for the lush sounds on the brilliant Veckatimest.

i mean, For Emma, Forever Ago is great, but it's like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, so hard to separate it from all the cultural detritus caused by it. the weird new america/last great generation of noise rock bands were still active and relevant i feel (the Lightning Bolt LP from 2009 is great, and Black Dice put out their best work REPO in 2009. same goes for Eric Copeland). that lasted until 2010/2011. i don't think vest rock/cabincore became omnipresent until 2011.

boring 80s/90s indie/college rock revivalists like... Modern Baseball

uh

Emo bullshit, whatever. They're still boring as fuck & doing absolutely nothing new. Can't wait for them to fade away

one thing i miss about this era is the sense of experimentation and somewhat avant garde stuff that permeated indie music.

The problem was, a lot of the acts that were doing it really shouldn't have been doing it. A lot of them were fucking awful at it and the music has aged horrendously.

Metz fucking rule.

Seriously, 2007-2010 is probably one of the worst times in... *groans* ... "indie music" I can ever remember. Just endless amounts of utter, utter shit.

the reason for my Dirty Projectors vote is this story: i was working for a rental car company and they asked if i wanted to go to Las Vegas to pick up a Camaro, the one that is in all those Transformers movies. left the night before and actually won some money, paid for my trip and then some. anyways, i put on Bitte Orca and started to rock out. before i knew it i was up to 95 MPH and didn't i get pulled over. if i was going any faster i would have went to jail, nonetheless it still cost me a pretty penny. i played the album twice as this was going to be a memory of my Vegas trip in 2009.

the real answer is probably Fever Ray but not going to get my vote here.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Thank you, Fever Ray!

Close enough :)

another strong showing for Neko :)

I knew it wouldn't get very many votes - and even I wouldntve voted for it - but I still think Hospice is a great sadsack indie rock record along the lines of In the Aeroplane over the Sea or The Meadowlands

Hospice is beyond sadsack melancholy though, I think I'd rather have cancer that listen to it again

Missed this one.

Would have voted Phoenix