A few years ago a friend of mine and I started making a playlist for every month, in a sense to act as a piece of nostalgia, as something of a musical fingerprint of a moment in time.

February. A pretty dang good month. Aside from some fun health problems and getting my wisdom teeth pulled, that is. So it must have been pretty awesome otherwise to make up for that.

Most of these tracks are random perusals back through my library, a couple new releases (Beach House and Magnetic Fields, mostly) and a step back into exploring dubstep a bit more.

And then there’s that 30 Seconds to Mars track. Can someone explain to me why it’s not cool to like them? Listen to the song in the attached playlist (and all the others, of course) and tell me it’s not a solid pop song.

1. The Gaslight Anthem – “The ‘59 Sound” (The ‘59 Sound)
2. Wilco – “Theologians” (A Ghost is Born)
3. The Gaslight Anthem – “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” (The ‘59 Sound)
4. Ryan Bingham – “Change Is” (Roadhouse Sun)
5. Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp” (Odd Blood)
6. Beach House – “Zebra” (Teen Dream)
7. Beach House – “Walk In the Park” (Teen Dream)
8. Magnetic Fields – “You Must Be Out of Your Mind” (Realism)
9. Wu-Tang Clan – “Deep Space (Jay Da Flex & Yoof remix)” (Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture Vol. 2: Enter the Dubstep)
10. Wu-Tang Clan – “New Year Banga (Rogue Star remix)” (Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture Vol. 2: Enter the Dubstep)
11. DJ Hidden – “Death at a Distance” (Death at a Distance)
12. 30 Seconds to Mars – “Kings and Queens” (This is War)

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.

Read on for my album picks for 2009!