Tag Archives: neko case

Best music of 2009

live photo of Part Chimp courtesy of Last.FM

Well 2009 was another stellar year for music if you ask me, and as usual, my yearly ‘top’ list is going on a month late. I always have these grand designs of writting a short paragragh about each selection, why I picked it, how I first heard it, etc, but you know how that goes.  I will say that this year, while I’ve gotten into many bands the way I have in years past (trolling record stores, randomly listening to anything I can find online), I’ve also found things I wouldn’t have found thanks to my Twitter account.  While those who don’t get  Twitter think it’s just folks updating what they had for breakfast, if you stick around, dig deeper and find the right people to follow, it’s amazing wealth of information.  Not requiring the effort of say a blog post allows rapid, unvarnished opinions, spouted out between people’s day to day tasks, which I always prefer since I feel I’m more lucid after a few cups of coffee while something is blaring in my ears. New this year is the reissues section, what with things like OK Computer and Young Team being reissued, I can’t help but highlight them.

As always I want to give a hat tip to the fabulous folks at my neighborhood record store, Euclid Records, where I bought almost all of these discs over the past year.  I also want to recognize people like Ryan, Anthony, Mary, @fcervantes, @plasmatron, @koppper @crankin and Yvonne for a continued stream of what has their attention at any particular time – grabbing stuff and listening to it later when I have more time always reveals new sounds to me, so thanks for that. Also, as always, this list will be added to my ever expanding Noise page here, listing my favs from 2001 to the present.

Ok enough of this babble, hell, I already have a couple of possible contenders for next years list!

Neko Case on NPR

The New Pornographers liveDamn, it seems that NPR has a continuous thing for Nico Neco (uggg, I still spell her name wrong), I mean Neko Case, as they have gone out of their way to showcase her most recent album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Her continued recording and touring work with The New Pornographers and now even boasts a full concert of her playing the Disney Hall in LA from November 16th (props to scooter b for the original tip).  Hosted by Alex Cohen, the show is a available on NRP’s music site for download or podcast.  While The New Pornographers style is straight up, fun, power-pop, Neko’s solo work is steeped more in bittersweet country and gospel, however she seems to combine both on her solo shows, which I have not experienced in person.  Her prior release to ‘Flood’, was the strong live effort, The Tigers Have Spoken.  TNP are a different story, I’ve seen them twice and they’re even more fun in person than they releases hint at; highly recommended. Give her a listen.