My favorite albums of 2009 (with streaming songs!)

Yes, I’m well aware that it’s February. This list of albums has been sitting in my drafts since January 8th and I’m just now doing something with it. It seems I took a break from ye olde blogge for much of January in favor of trying out Tumblr. (I can’t decide if I like it or not. It seems to steal my longer-form writing thunder).

My varying tastes in music from day to day would make it pointless to put these albums in any best-to-worst order. So I went with the time-tested alphabetical order method, which is completely arbitrary if you think about it, but that’s a thought for another day.

Read on for my favorite albums that came out in 2009 (or thereabouts; I fudged a little). If you’ve been checking out my monthly playlists (you’re forgiven if you haven’t), most of this will not be a surprise.

And if you’re patient and make it all the way to the bottom, there’s a prize for you, in the form of a few select songs from these albums that I particularly enjoyed.

WARNING: This gets a bit lengthy, so get comfy.

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

A lot of people think this album — and the band as a whole — get too much hype. But before the hype I got to hear an advance stream of “My Girls” and saw what we were in for. Granted, I was already a big fan of Feels, but that was an entirely different monster. This is post-modern, anti-club dance pop, which Feels was not. At all. In a way it was proof they could lay off the drugs and write more accessible music, but I would venture to guess a lot of drugs were still involved. They just traded acid for ecstacy. I probably listened to this one more than anything else this year.

Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

The video for the “French Navy” sold me on this Scottish twee pop group’s fourth album. It wasn’t so much the video treatment as the way it sounded and how the band looked while playing it. They sing happy songs in a serious way. And serious songs in a happy way. The music feels old and new all at once. It’s poppy and fun, in a sunny-afternoon-in-the-park sort of way, and reminds me of what I wish Belle and Sebastian could sound like sometimes.

David Bazan – Curse Your Branches

David Bazan has always wrestled with faith and life in his lyrics (see his previous work in Pedro the Lion and Headphones). He’s still doing that, but has shifted away from Christianity toward agnosticism. That, plus a few years of struggle with alcohol make for a folk rock album that is not only insanely catchy but also addresses some pretty heavy issues. The lyrical content is the kicker. Some call Curse Your Branches Bazan’s “breakup album with God,” but it only seems a half-truth, because it’s more freeing than depressing.

Dead Man’s Bones – Dead Man’s Bones

Ryan Gosling has a band. We all laughed. Then he started posting songs and we shut up right quick. It’s like Arcade Fire singing Halloween songs with a children’s choir, in all the right ways. Gosling’s got quite the crooner’s voice, too. You don’t even see it coming. It’s not that I never took him seriously as an actor, because he’s good. I guess I figured he was a one-trick pony. I guessed wrong.

The Dead Weather – Horehound

Jack White on drums with the girl from The Kills singing dirty, bluesy, balls-out rock and roll? Plus two other guys, one each from The Raconteurs (one of the non-Jack White members) and Queens of the Stone Age? Count me in. And special props to my girlfriend, who made sure I gave this album all the attention it deserved during my weekly jaunt through all the new releases.

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

I hated the Dirty Projectors before Bitte Orca. Not with a passion, but I couldn’t digest what they were doing. It was jerky, disharmonic and heady. Then they, just like Animal Collective, decided to prove to the world that they could, indeed, write a pop song. And not just one, but several. Enough to make a quirky, finger-snapping, head-bobbing album that is not like any other pop you will ever hear.

Floating Action – Floating Action

It sounds like a bunch of post-college, east coast indie geeks who smoke weed and listen to a lot of old dub reggae records, then decided to make their own. Kind of like 311, but without all that 90s mainstream alternative business going on. It’s laid back and fun, a little bit goofy, but not so much that it can’t be taken seriously.

Glasvegas – Glasvegas

This one technically came out in late 2008, but didn’t come across my radar til early 2009. Imagine Social Distortion doing their old school rock and roll punk thing, but instead of punk they decided to make shoegaze albums a la My Bloody Valentine. They have a sheen of static guitar sound that never ceases, with ballads and sad love songs sung over it in a thick Scottish brogue. Well produced, well written, perfectly executed.

Jónsi & Alex – Riceboy Sleeps

Anything someone from Sigur Rós touches is probably going to be fine by me. This is their singer Jónsi and his boyfriend Alex (from Parachutes, who I saw open for Sigur Rós a couple years ago) making droning, blissful ambient instrumental music. I’m a sucker for background music, and the fine people of Iceland always seem to strike those long, drawn-out, structure-free chords perfectly.

Joshua James – Build Me This

I loved James’s 2008 album The Sun Is Always Brighter a whole lot. Sad, quirky folk songs about heartbreak and politics. Kind of like a mix of Bright Eyes and Ray LaMontagne, but with a cooler voice. Then I saw him play here in SLO last summer, right before Build Me This released, and had to pick it up at the merch table. It took a while, but it’s nearly caught up with his last release.

mewithoutYou – it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright

You’d have to be living in a cave to not realize that I’m a big fan of mewithoutYou. This album was a major stylistic turn for the band, away from the old Fugazi punk/emo sound and shout-spoken poetry, toward the Neutral Milk Hotel folk pop. Aaron Weiss is still stringing together some stellar lyrics, telling more stories and fables than deep, dark insights, but it’s all worth a listen or ten.

Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Folky alt. country with Patsy Cline vocals drenched in reverb. Yum. I was already a Neko Case fan going into this record. There weren’t many surprises, but that’s quite alright with me.

P.O.S. – Never Better

P.O.S. is one of my favorite underground hip hop emcees. He has a history on the midwest hardcore/metal scene, so he takes a pretty intense, fast-paced approach on his newfound love of hip hop. Thoughtful, abrasive lyrics that don’t beat around the bush, over wicked fast beats, and somehow it all seems to twist and turn toward a positive outlook on life. Kinda sounds like my brain.

Silversun Pickups – Swoon

I’d heard their name thrown around for a while but hadn’t given them a listen until Swoon came out. A lot of people call them a Smashing Pumpkins ripoff, but that seems like a superficial judgment to me after spending some time with this and their last album, Carnavas. There’s something different about it, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just good.

The Veils – Sun Gangs

I mostly like this for the opening track, “Sit Down By the Fire,” but in all honesty, it’s a solid album front to back. It’s baroque-ish in an Arcade Fire sort of way, but with darker, more disparate vocals that remind me of 16 Horsepower/Woven Hand at times. It’s… countrified goth? I dunno.

Various Artists – Dark Was the Night

A two-disc charity compilation that has pretty much all the current artists worth listening to: Bon Iver, Dirty Projectors, My Brightest Diamond, Iron & Wine, Spoon… you get what I’m saying. But it’s all original material, and there are a few tracks that will blow your mind. The first that comes to me is “You Are the Blood” by Sufjan Stevens. He gets back to the electronic roots that most of his hipster-folk friends didn’t know he had (check out Enjoy Your Rabbit) and creates an intense, 10-minute blippy opus with all the crescendo of a classical masterpiece.

Honorable Mention (aka albums you should probably check out; some you’ll love, but no guarantees)

• Akron/Family – Set Em Wild, Set Em Free
• The Antlers – Hospice
• Antony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light
• The Big Pink – A Brief History of Love
• Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us
• Fever Ray – Fever Ray
• Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
• Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
• HEALTH – Get Color
• Iron & Wine – Around the Well
• Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall
• Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3
• Passion Pit – Manners
• Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses – Roadhouse Sun
• Wheat – White Ink, Black Ink

And now, as promised, here’s your playlist. Enjoy!