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.
In case you haven’t been reading these for long (or at all) and you’re wondering why the heck I post a list of songs at the end of every month, perhaps I should explain: 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. It takes very little effort and is one of my favorite ongoing musical projects.
That said, here’s January’s list, which chronicles the new Vampire Weekend album release, hitting 100,000 listens on Last.fm (the song was “Last Dance” by the Raveonettes), listening to albums from people’s year-end best-of lists, mourning the loss of Jay Reatard and the end of These Arms Are Snakes, seeing Cross Canadian Ragweed live and remembering that I like Jimmy Eat World a hell of a lot. And bands with swear words in their name.
And, to start the year off right (hey, we’re only one twelfth of the way in), I’m going to be posting the songs from one of the many handy streaming music services that let you embed playlists. Check out the player below or go here to listen.
The Dead Texan – “A Chronicle of Early Failures, Part 2″ (The Dead Texan)
The Low Anthem – “Charlie Darwin” (Oh My God, Charlie Darwin)
The Big Pink – “Velvet” (A Brief History of Love)
Vampire Weekend – “White Sky” (Contra)
Vampire Weekend – “California English” (Contra)
The Raveonettes – “Last Dance” (In and Out of Control)
Mastodon – “Crack the Skye” (Crack the Skye)
Metric – “Sick Muse” (Fantasies)
Jay Reatard – “Faking It” (Watch Me Fall)
Cross Canadian Ragweed – “17″ (Cross Canadian Ragweed)
The Antlers – “Sylvia” (Hospice)
The Decemberists – “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid” (Hazards of Love)
These Arms Are Snakes – “The Shit Sisters” (Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home)
The Very Best – “Julia” (Warm Heart of Africa)
Infinite Body – “Dive” (Carve Out the Face of My God)
Native – “Backseat Crew” (Wrestling Moves)
Jimmy Eat World – “Big Casino” (Chase This Light)
Jimmy Eat World – “Chase This Light” (Chase This Light)
