My ten favorites of 2009
This blog is now over one year old! Writing it has been a wonderful experience, and has changed the way that I interact with music—mostly for the better, I think, though not entirely. I intend to keep it up in the near future, at least. And I’m really happy you’re reading it!
I feel not at all qualified to write a list of the best albums or even the best songs of 2009, because despite the increased effort I’ve put into listening to music, I haven’t come close to listening to all of even the most hyped albums that have come out this year. But it’s an interesting exercise to reflect back over the year in music, and I’ll be bold enough at least to make a list of my ten favorite songs that have come out this year.
Writing this blog has been a crash course in new music for me, and I’ve been introduced to a ton of music that’s “new” to me even if it didn’t come out in 2009. I decided to leave these songs—for instance, Blitzen Trapper’s “Furr”—off the list, to keep the scope reasonably narrow. It’s also possible that some of the songs I include were released on the internet or as singles in 2008, but I’m going by the release date of the albums.
I noticed, when putting this list together, that most of the songs were released in the first half, or even the first quarter of the year. I think there are a few reasons for this. One is that I discovered many of them while listening through all the mp3s posted by SXSW, which was by far my most intensive period of music discovery. Second, it takes a while for me to be able to tell how much “staying power” a song has—many of the songs I’ve posted to this blog pretty much fell out of the rotation for a week or two, but some have remained regulars for me. So there are certainly songs from later in the year that I liked, but I can’t tell yet how much they’ll stick with me.
I was lucky enough to see five of these ten artists perform this year: Elvis Perkins, Heartless Bastards, Micachu, Sister Suvi, and Tune-Yards. I hope I can see the rest of them, as well as many wonderful new artists, in 2010!
The following are alphabetical by artist. I don’t think I could come up with an ordering, really.
“Crabapples” - Bruce Peninsula - One of the first really creative songs I discovered while doing this.
“Woo Hoo” - Cam’ron - I barely wrote anything about it at the time, but since then, largely due to a friend’s obsession with it, this has oddly become a sort of theme song for the year (“My accountant’s like [Sharon!]”).
“Twenty Nine” - Christmas Island - The most recent of all these songs. It has its imperfections, but it’s also amazing.
“Digital Haircut” - DD/MM/YYYY - Of all these songs, this is the highest on my iTunes “Most Played” list. It is both experimental and eminently listenable.
“Shampoo” - Elvis Perkins in Dearland - Elvis put out a lot of great stuff this year, including the more recent Doomsday EP, but this was the first song I heard by him and it has really stuck with me.
“The Mountain” - Heartless Bastards - Probably the most traditional rock and roll song on here, but beautifully composed and performed.
“Golden Phone” - Micachu & The Shapes - I knew Micachu had to be represented on this list, but it was tough to choose a single song off her record to include. In many ways, this is one of her least characteristic songs—much of her stuff is more experimental sounding. But as with “Shampoo”, this was the first song of hers I heard, so it made the strongest impression.
“Golden” - Sister Suvi - Merrill Garbus, who performs as Tune-Yards and was a member of the now-defunct Sister Suvi, is definitely my favorite musical discovery of the year. I thought both bands deserved representation on my list, since the music of each is quite distinct. This is an epic song that, for some reason, reminds me of Led Zeppelin.
“Hive Burner” - Sun Araw - I am amazed and delighted that this song has stuck with me and remained in regular play rotation. It is by far the most experimental of these songs, and I think it’s a testament to the quality of the composition that I regularly find myself wanting to listen to it.
“Sunlight” - Tune-Yards - As with Micachu, it was a tough call which Tune-Yards song to include on this list. And similarly, in many ways “Sunlight” is a pretty uncharacteristic song, but it’s the first one that I heard and it stuck with me. When I saw her live, she didn’t perform it. “Hatari” was a close runner-up and is much more characteristic of her live sound, but I think as such it doesn’t translate quite as well to a recording.
