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! With that in mind, here’s my….
Best music of 2009
Andrew Bird “Noble Beast”
Neko Case “Tornado”
DOOM “Born Like This”
Morrissey “Years of Refusal”
The Clues “Remember Severed Head”
Disfear “Live The Storm”
Imogen Heap “Elipse”
Part Chimp “Thiller”
The Thermals “Now We Can See”
Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, David Lynch “Dark Night of the Soul”
Jay Reatard “Watch Me Fall”
Mountain Goats “The Life of the World to Come”
Lightning Bolt “Earthly Delights”
Phoenix “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”
Rufus Wainwright “Milwaukee At Last!!!”
Reissues
Okkervil River “Black Sheep Boy”
Mogwai “Young Team”
Nirvana “Bleach”
Radiohead “OK Computer”
So what do you think? Did I miss something that you think is essential? Sound off, and feel free to follow what I’m listening to (in real time no less!) by adding me as a ‘friend’ at Last.FM - I’m always looking for new ways to music. Who knows, maybe what you recommend to me will make my Best of 2010 list.