The 2009 Magazine Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion.

I'm from St Helens which kind of innoculates me from ever being cool.

Just ask Johnny Vegas, Jacqui Abbott from The Beautiful South or Bernie Clifton.

XP: To Matt DC. Well, I voted for it and so did two of the other people in my office who string for the NME . . .

how many of the bbc sound of 2010 are in it?

I have no business complaining about the results of the tracks given that I could have voted but didn't (being a luddite who listens to actual albums or singles)... but it's not too inspiring to cast your eye over, is it, given that it's almost entirely made up of songs off the top 50 albums?

nme album list fairly listenable

new ilm mantra:

I really don't think you understand other people's taste at all

Odd thing looking at the NME lists - have any of their album top 10, excepting the Horrors, made their cover in the past year? Possibly YYYs, but other than that...

I really don't think you understand other people's taste at all

fixed

Yeah, most of them. Jay Z was a joint cover with Ian Brown. La Roux was top of their future 50 (or one of those things).

maybe they're looking towards 2010 covers
xp

no famous/hip friends

there's still a few days of christmas post to go you know john.
kanye may yet surprise you.

Ha ha. Fuck that chump.

Despite the NME's recent "lol 1999, lol Travis, what were we thinking of, look how everything's snowballed since" editorial, judging by these lists they'll eventually be considering 2009 to be another fallow year.

There's a lot of Old Man Indie in there (The XX, Grizzly Bear, Wild Beasts, Animal Collective) that suggests that the NME and The Kids are miles apart at the moment. Probably further than at any time since the days when they put Shack and Godspeed You Black Emperor on the cover. Can't really see their target audience going wild for much of this stuff, if that audience even exists in reasonable numbers any more.

i was just attempting to point out the irony of someone derriding people that rate, say, the xx as "hipsters" and then turning around and raving about sunn0))) - but then again, it's entirely possible that i have misunderstood herman g neuname's comments?

Q: for the stats fans, how many albums on the NME 2009 list are also on:

A: Uncut 2009 list
B: Mojo 2009 list

Get to it, stats fans!

http://img.thisismoney.co.uk/i/pix/2008/02/AngusLoughran1_203x150.jpg

how can The XX be Old Man Indie when they're all teenagers themselves? i think you're under-estimating "the kids" Matt. or over-estimating them. not sure which anymore.

Karen my comments about the xx are a private running joke with a couple of ilxors (mostly done over on last.fm)

a bit confused at xx and wild beasts being 'old man indie' - not-quite-hip-anymore indie, yeah

i do wonder about the nme audience tho - the expansion of the too-informed-to-read-the-nme indie kid subculture presumably wears it out a little

the covers thing is a bit of a false lead i think - it's like they're trying to put people on the cover that will sell the magazine or something

It just amuses me to be called a hipster when I'm 38

We've both been writing about Sunn for about seven years each now

xxposts Other than maybe (maybe) Grizzly Bear, I wouldn't really call any of those bands "old man indie" - unless I misunderstand what you mean? I think it's good the NME have finally started to get out of their pub-rock hole slightly and start embracing slightly more leftfield (and also non-Brit) stuff than they have done for the last decade or so.

FYI, if you're posting on a rock-writer-centric message board about the XX, you're definitely a hipster to SOMEBODY.

Karen my comments about the xx are a private running joke with a couple of ilxors (mostly done over on last.fm)

whats the joke? The XX aren't really for hipsters so its funny to say that they are?

and start embracing (and also non-Brit) stuff than they have done for the last decade or so.

thats kinda what was thinking upthread when i asked if it had gone pitchfork-y

oh but hipsters do love them.

thought we'd established grizzly bear are dad rock not old man indie

BTW I am *really* loving the Quietus list, and there is a lot to check out. Aside from all the cool avant-garde stuff, who knew that British Sea Power had released another album, with THREE eleven-minute songs?

the NME of 2009 reminds me of Select magazine circa 2000, a mixed bag with no distinctive direction

select magazine - best albums of 2000
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/select.html

1. Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour Of Bewilderbeast
2. Primal Scream – Xtrmntr
3. Granddaddy – The Sophtware Slump
4. Godspeed You Black Emperor
5. Coldplay – Parachutes
6. Radiohead – Kid A
7. Lambchop – Nixon
8. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP
9. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – Madonna
10. Doves – Lost Souls
11. Queens Of The Stone Age – Rated R
12. Black Box Recorder – The Facts Of Life
13. Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs
14. David Holmes – Bow Down To The Exit Sign
15. At The Drive In – Relationship Of Command
16. Kellies – Kaleidoscope
17. Bent – Programmed To Love
18. JJ72 – JJ72
19. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
20. Shellac – 1000 Hurts
21. Deltron 3030 – Deltron 3030
22. The Delgados – The Great Eastern
23. Add N To (X) – Add Insult To Injury
24. Chris Morris – Blue Jam
25. Fatboy Slim – Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars
26. Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjun
27. Kathryn Williams – Little Black Numbers
28. Various – Sound Of The Pirates [Mixes By Zed Bias]
29. Belle And Sebastian – Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
30. The RZA – Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai OST

ayo, Quietus, i like and respect and visit your site, but i don't know at which point you guys thought you were People magazine and thought it would be a good idea to wrestle maximum hit counts by making your year end list a one-entry-a-click listicle. No fuckin way I'm clickin through 40 entries to find out how high you ranked a Flaming Lips album, duders.

Yeah 'old man indie' was a bit of a lazy zing, that's a fair cop, but a lot of these acts aren't the sort of thing I'd have expected NME to vote so high in previous years. They're mostly a bit slow and quiet for one thing.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that the (pretty rigidly defined) target readership that they've been gunning for since the first Strokes album doesn't really exist any more, and the NME doesn't know how to fill that void. (xpost, lol, I agree with DJ Martian)

xposts to hermann

not quite pitchfork-y but a vast improvement on the Connor Mac-school of Libertines clones from before. At least NME readers have probably heard of Animal Collective (albeit 9 years too late but w/e).

oh god jj72, i had forgotten all about them
xxxp

I like about - at a push - 5 albums on that NME list. That must be the lowest ever for me. Plus I just cannot understand how Jamie T can be so popular.

thought we'd established grizzly bear are dad rock not old man indie

They are 'dad indie'

'drummer for gay dad indie'?

matt dc - right. i see this as positive. NME might be a bit aimless these days, but at least it's finally stopped ploughing that dead furrow.

They are 'dad indie' = Radcliffe / Maconie Radio 2 Evening Slot Approved

NME was buried by the rubbish of landfill indie and it's crawling out of the wreckage feeling lost, not knowing which way to turn, in comes a new editor in September who has played it very safe / establishment with the front cover selections.

It just amuses me to be called a hipster when I'm 38

We've both been writing about Sunn for about seven years each now

Sorry, I don't know what this means.

And, as for the click through thing. I earn about enough off the Quietus per month to pay my rent, so am not beyond doing the odd thing just for the clicks if it keeps my measly wages on the level.

I'll print the countdown here later when I've time to type it out.

Since conor mac was in charge NME seemed to want to be the magazine that first championed the biggest bands around before anyone else rather than championing the best(oasis/coldplay syndrome?). Will that change?

It's interesting to see Fuck Buttons so high on NME list. I actually liked the idea of the Horrors album, with the Krautrock and other fun influences. The execution just doesn't work for me. Wild Beasts are great. I kind of liked the second Arctic Monkeys album, but nothing on the new one grabbed me. Jamie T must be one of those had-to-be-there artists?

I can't help but feel a bit disappointed after years of railing against the NME for being blinkered/condescending/full of indentikit Libertines knockoffs they are now championing the same bands as 30-something dudes off the internet. Even The Horrors are more or less respectable now. It feels like the 00s died today.

Ah well, at least Kasabian are still bafflingly high, that's some small comfort.

I thought people generally enjoyed the horrors single but were disappointed that it hadn't carried through to the album.

i like the sound and the production on the horrors album but the songs, i don't actually remember the songs.

NME is lying in the gutter... wrong thread, sorry

NME and Uncut = 19
NME and Mojo = 18
NME and Q = 23
Uncut and Mojo = 25
Uncut and Q = 12
Mojo and Q = 22
NME, Mojo and Uncut = 14
Q, Mojo and Uncut = 19
NME, Q and Mojo = 15
NME, Uncut and Q = 15
All four = 13

The 13 are;

Animal Collective
Grizzly Bear
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Horrors, The
Wild Beasts
Florence + The Machine
Fever Ray
Dirty Projectors
Fuck Buttons
Manic Street Preachers
Arctic Monkeys
Richard Hawley
Sonic Youth

people were saying that in the 80s weren't they?
xp

Doran, I'm just saying in the grand scheme of things, writing about SunnO))) on an indie rock website is a hipstery thing to do. You gotta own that, homie!

I know it's not going out in Shutter Shades to see Kid Sister, but don't play innocent! :)

burt stanton out

So Doran's the wizard behind Quietus? Nice site! I meant whacky in a good way, in that I was amazed at how many albums in the top 20 I hadn't even heard of. I've got some more listening to do.

I'm from St Helens which kind of innoculates me from ever being cool.

Just ask Johnny Vegas, Jacqui Abbott from The Beautiful South or Bernie Clifton.

sorry doran, you can have the others but I'm claiming bernie clifton for chesterfield. he may be from st helens originally, but he's lived round the corner from my grandparents for pretty much as long as I've been alive. he's MINE.

sunn o))) are deserving winners of the quietus poll, btw. that album is stunning, far beyond what I would have expected from that band. (though I would argue all the really, really great stuff on it is eyvind kang's doing...)

The Horrors album is pretty good! I think, anyway. It has four or five solid-gold tracks (ok, four) (being Do You Remember, New Ice Age, I Only Think Of You and Sea Within A Sea) but that's enough for me to generally be quite pally with an album

and yeah, I really gots to get me some of those Quietus albums