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Upcoming Shows
Birds on a Wire
FRIDAY & SATURDAY, March 26 & 27
PULLMAN
$35 Adv./$45 Door
$25 Group Rate of 10
Shearwater
w/the Hospital Ships & Wye Oak
FRIDAY, Apr. 30 8PM
@ The BellTower
PULLMAN
$12 Adv./$15 Door
Roadside Graves
w/TBD
THURSDAY, Aug. 5
@ TBA -
Stereopathic on Hypem
Dec
18
Favorite Albums 2009
Filed Under Updates
And, last but not least, here is our final installment of year-end lists: favorite albums. Enjoy.
Brendan
1. The Roadside Graves My Son’s Home
Listen to how, in the third verse of “Black Wind”, the fiddle harmonizes with singer John Gleason. It supports his voice, provides a counterpoint, and echoes and develops a melody that, up to that point, was submerged in the song.
I’ve spent a lot of time with The Roadside Graves’ My Son’s Home the past several months. There were the songs that grabbed me immediately: the swing in the middle of “Take a Train”, the novelistic detail of the title track, the majestic, Born to Run-worthy last half of “God Touched Me”. This is a record of visceral, widescreen rock and roll songs.
But then that fiddle drops in the third verse of “Black Wind”, and the details emerge—and keep emerging the deeper you dig and the more familiar you get. The accordion that picks up where the fiddle trails off in “Work Itself Out”. The watery mandolin in “To the Sea”. The tempo shifts in “Ruby” and “My Father Sat Me Down”. Every song finds the instruments knocking back another bourbon and having another laugh together, in simple enjoyment of one another, nothing calling attention to itself, but everything worthy of attention. This record of visceral rock songs is equally a record of subtle and intimate folk, completely comfortable in both skins.
John Gleason writes a fine song, though I could wish he were elsewhere spiritually. Irish guys from North Jersey playing rock songs are required by some canon of rock n’ roll law to be lapsed Catholics, and Gleason’s credentials are impeccable on that point. But it takes that kind of background to write the guilty, raging ”God Touched Me” or to get at the fragility and violence of family and community relationships in songs like “My Father Sat Me Down”, “Ruby”, and “My Son’s Home”.
A sprawling and raucous record of crisply detailed, nuanced songs played with ferocity and levity and love, My Son’s Home sums up everything great about American music.
2. Justin Townes Earle Midnight at the Movies
The man formerly known as Steve Earle’s son cut a great debut record with 2008’s The Good Life, and this year’s Midnight at the Movies exceeds it by every measure. Save for the rather mawkish “Someday I’ll Be Forgiven For This”, Earle absolutely kills everything he tries. His deft arrangements and remarkable taste drop one stunner after another, regardless of style—melancholy country (“Midnight at the Movies”, “Mama’s Eyes”), old-timey folk (“They Killed John Henry”), Western swing (“Poor Fool”), and even a mandolin-driven Mats cover (“Can’t Hardly Wait”). With his deep, knowing reverence and affection for his sources, Earle holds great promise… then again, that’s disingenuous given a record as fine as Midnight at the Movies. Earle’s already stepped out from under that other guy’s shadow.
3. Laura Gibson Beasts of Seasons
A record as flat-out beautiful as Beasts of Seasons confounds attempts to make sense of it by writing. I tried back in February, and so I refer you there for my thoughts on it. My heart has remained steadfast in my opinion of the record, which has soundtracked mysterious and wonderful parts of my year—from planting my first garden to seeing my son born. Her performance at Mikey’s last March overshadowed all the other shows we put on, to say it in so many words. Her graciousness onstage and the richness of her sound kept her audience both rapt and wrapped right around her finger—how’d that quiet, unassuming woman get us all singing along with her the way she did? Now’d be as good a time as any to stop and exhort you to forty minutes with your headphones and nothing to distract you from Beasts of Seasons.
4. Deep Dark Woods Winter Hours
Were the rest of the record the soundtrack to a Canadian dental hygiene filmstrip, song of the year “All the Money I Had is Gone” alone would still merit Winter Hours’ spot in 2009’s Top 5. Fortunately, the 50-minute platter delivers 12 great country-rock songs thick with pedal steel, finger-picking, and tight, sweet harmonies. The songs range enough to evoke the overwhelming Canadian prairies the Woods call home, but they end when they ought to—only record closer “The Sun Never Shines” jams past six minutes. Winter Hours is populated with the ne’er-do-wells that make us listen to folk music in the first place—murderers, jilted lovers, prodigal sons, innocent outlaws—all are sketched with empathy and fully inhabited by singer Ryan Boldt’s windswept baritone.
One further accolade for Winter Hours: my favorite record cover of ’09 graces it—a splotchy watercolor of what I can only assume is the Canadian plains beneath a winter dusk.
5. M. Ward Hold Time & Neko Case Middle Cyclone
Two quite different facets of American music. M. Ward’s Hold Time exhumes old instruments and 40-year-old songwriting styles to create a mature and comforting record. His songs walk that line that Bono, in his finer moments, can walk—is he singing to the woman who stabilized him or to God who saved him? Sometimes it’s clear (“To Save Me”), sometimes it isn’t (“Never Had Nobody Like You”). On the other hand, while Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone might have been recorded in an old barn with ancient, rickety pianos, her Americana isn’t played for nostalgia. The humor in her songs—lovelorn, emotional tornadoes (”This Tornado Loves You”), the man-man-man-eater hook of “Some People Got a Lotta Nerve”—can’t wholly obscure the noir-ish undercurrent in songs like “Red Tide” and “Prison Girls”. Being required by law to mention Case’s force-of-nature voice, let me just say this: that voice.
Both records feature some sticky, irrepressible tunes, but also could have benefited from some editing. Nonetheless, their strength as records that you can play from one end to the other more than compensates for the weaknesses in certain cuts and makes the pair of them two of the year’s finest.
Molly
1. Cemetery Lips EP. Black Kids. BEST OF THE WORST.
I have a penchant for Black Kids and a penchant for seriously annoying music. I realized, through the reactions of those around me, that my passions combine in this very album. It vies with Mika’s gift of The Boy Who Knew Too Much and Weezer’s Raditude for the best worst deliciously obnoxious of ’09, but the Black Kid falsetto and Cemetery Lips remixes deserve the glossy blue ribbon.
2. All Rebel Rockers Michael Franti and & Spearhead. BEST OF 106.5.
So this was the year of the Top 40 Revelation. My Jeep’s cd player backfired: I listened to the Top 40, and I loved them. Most of them. “Say Hey” was a great one. And All the Rebel Rockers, this album, is a great album. It pops and it surprises, and it remains a consistently good listen.
3. Ocean Eyes Owl City. BEST MOB FAV.
Charming. Sometimes, the lyrics are poetic and maybe even a bit on the side of the wild Welsh descripts of Dylan Thomas. How’s that?
4. 500 Days of Summer Soundtrack. Various Artists. BEST MIX/ BEST CRITIC’S CHOICE.
A smooth mix of classics and indie rock fit for all your nostalgic solitary afternoon and cocktail party needs. Tight. Sugary but not saccharine. It totally beats New Moon. 500 Days of Summer The Movie, also, was a ringer and actually delivered the critics’ manifold promises of the next great touching Sundancing classic (keyword) INDIE (keyword) film with beautiful indie peeps and awesome indie retro wardrobes.
5. The Resistance. MUSE. BEST SNOB FAV.
You’ve all heard that our beloved Bea’les mastered album comp in Abbey Road – to the point that Abbey Road remains our prime example of a well-composed album. MUSE ups the Road a notch via The Resistance, a rock opera with sophisticated arrangements of Romantic symphonies and glam rock arias that soar to compelling heights previously but dreamt of in the dark hallucinations of prog nights while tracing a stirring tale of true love set in the turmoil of the history of civilization. The Resistance is an interlude – it delivers on the thrilling promises of earlier earlier albums, but it’s doubtlessly a prelude to a future cosmic finale musically – and as for the affair, it isn’t quite knotted by a Shakespearean death or marriage, but we have rays of hope that the peace of the closing movements will last. I recommend it for souls who appreciate Beethoven’s godlike and somewhat OCD precision of passion twined into a cathartic spree of glam rock drama.
Will
As last week’s installment proved, I spent most of my time mining the vaults for new music. I don’t feel intense connections to any of the albums from this year, simply because my time was spent elsewhere. That being said, I still really like all these albums and am waiting to get bored by this year’s finds to spend some time with these records.
1. Flaming Lips Embryonic. Few opening lines grab like those of “Convinced of the Hex”: “She submits as she dominates”. Call me a sucker for a paradox, but the Lips pack this album full of dark psychedelic touches that stretch far beyond the bounds of their pop core. Makes me wish Pink Floyd hadn’t taken themselves so seriously and that my uncle hadn’t thrown away his blacklight.
2. Animal Collective Merriwether Post Pavillion. Not much else to say here. They write real pretty music. And the album art takes me back to the mid-90s, where I spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to see dinosaurs and rocket ships “pop” out of those magic eye picture.
3. Built to Spill There Is No Enemy. There’s more than just something to be said for consistency. While it’s likely that Doug Martsch has already made the artistic marks he will be remembered for, he continues to please a legion of dedicated fans through mixing what he already does well, along with a few well-placed strides. May they reign as elder statesmen for years to come.
4. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros Up from Below. Perhaps I’m too young to know the difference, but there’s something about this album that makes it seem like it could have come out 40 years ago; a forgotten jem from a band that once opened for the Allmans or The Band.
5. The Dead Weather Horehound. Sleazy, mid-tempo blues from Jack White. No complaints here. I won’t soon forget the stellar video for “Treat Me Like Your Mother”, as it was my six year old male fantasy.
Comments
6 Responses to “Favorite Albums 2009”
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Molly, we seem to have similar tastes. I am a big fan of both “All Rebel Rockers” and “Ocean Eyes.”
Nice, Tim, I highly approve. Pass on any suggestions!
great list guys. i probably agree with will’s the most but the other ones showed me some great stuff i haven’t heard.
feel free to check out my top 50: http://obscuresound.com/?p=3917
My Son’s Home is soooooo gooooood. I listen to Far and Wide any time I drive anywhere awesome enough to merit the song. And M. Ward is still rad… sometimes I get bored listening to his albums all in one go but that didn’t happen with Hold Time.
I can’t believe I just now saw this post for top albums. I really love this Black Wind song, thanks for directing me to it.
[...] Lift Up The Gate from the best record of 2009, hands-down, My Son’s Home. [...]