So, this was going to be the year when I finally got my act together and published a nice bunch of reviews of my favorite albums of the year by the end of the year. Turns out it’s not going to happen, as I got dumped on this December with snow, work, family stuff, and, most recently, preparing to move.  So, no plethora of album reviews for you, but I will try to do better next year. I figured the least I could do is put together some lists of favorites, even if I can’t provide much of any context, description, or justification for my choices.  Here are my favorite albums of 2009, arranged in an arbitrary manner most convenient to my purposes.

Fifteen Favorites:

1. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
2. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
3. Holiday Shores: Columbus’d the Whim
4. M. Ward: Hold Time
5. Andrew Bird: Noble Beast
6. Woods: Songs of Shame
7. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca
8. The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
9. Passion Pit: Manners
10. Caetano Veloso: Zii e Zie
11. Mormon Tabernacle Choir: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
12. Kurt Vile: Childish Prodigy
13. Girls: Album
14. Atlas Sound: Logos
15. Ganglians: Monster Head Room

Five EPs:

1. Neon Indian: Psychic Chasms
2. Abe Vigoda: Reviver
3. Deerhunter: Rainwater Cassette Exchange
4. Animal Collective: Fall Be Kind
5. Bon Iver: Blood Bank

A Trio of Great Rock Albums:

1. The Dead Weather: Horehound
2. Dinosaur Jr.: Farm
3. Sonic Youth: The Eternal

Two Magic Albums:

1. Here We Go Magic: Here We Go Magic
2. Memory Tapes: Seek Magic

A few other albums I feel are worth mentioning:
(alphabetical by artist)

• Crystal Antlers: Tentacles
• Dan Deacon: Bromst
• Bob Dylan: Together Through Life
• Harlem Shakes: Technicolor Health
• Heartless Bastards: The Mountain
• Little Dragon: Machine Dreams
• Mos Def: The Ecstatic
• Small Black: Small Black
• Wavves: Wavves
• Wilco: Wilco (the album)

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Of course, these lists are only a frozen instance of my musical taste at this moment in time.  I reserve the right to add to or take away from them at any moment in the future, as I discover new music that came out in the past year, or discover upon repeated listens that an album is much better than I thought it was, or much inferior to what it initially sounded to me.

Tip: A great place to listen to virtually any album for free (completely legal, too) is lala.com.  They will let you stream a song or an entire album all the way through one time to try it.  I’m not bothering to link all these up there, and there are of course many other ways to check out new music, but I just suggest it as a great way to test out music.  You can buy perpetual streaming rights there for super cheap, as well ($ 0.10 a song, or $ 0.80-1.00 an album).  I don’t receive any compensation from lala.com, I just think it’s a great web site.  I hope that Apple/iTunes doesn’t ruin the things I like about them.

An Album Review

Finally, that Alvin and the Chipmunks / Manheim Steamroller collaboration we’ve all been waiting for! Basically sounding the same as a walk past the entrance of a Kay Bee Toys, try this album if you enjoy xylophones, talking robots, the demo button on that old synthesizer at Grandpa’s house, motion-activated cackling witches, xylophones, Max Headroom, battery-powered monkeys banging cymbals together, a dog barking “Jingle Bells,” video game soundtracks of the early 90s, and xylophones. This is crazed carnival clown music taken to a new sample-laden, frenetic frenzy. Full of blooping, looping, endless repetition, two-year-olds may really get into this. Unfortunately we may never know, since I don’t have children yet and I don’t feel good about subjecting my nieces and nephews to this, nor their parents, nor random children at a school playground, because that would just be creepy. Two stars; unless you are in the mood for something really obnoxious (I get that mood myself from time to time) or you want to send a stressed-out person into an actual nervous breakdown, in which case it goes up to four stars. Merry Christmas!

Dan Deacon: Bromst
Carpark Records
Released March 24, 2009

Try “Woof Woof” ( Track 8 ) right here right now for some fun, free, immediate gratification. It’s just as easy as pushing that button your parents really don’t want you to push. Go ahead, push the button. PUSH THE BUTTON!

A Book Review

Cameron is an aimless, sarcastic stoner who is alienated from his family and has no real friends of which to speak. When he starts having hallucinations and loses control of his body a couple of times, everyone assumes he must be using hallucinogenic drugs. Not true: after getting fired from Buddha Burger, getting suspended from school, being forced into therapy by his parents, and having a run-in with a flaming toaster oven, he is finally diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob (a.k.a. “Mad Cow”) disease. It will deteriorate his brain and kill him.

It is at this point when things get interesting. A pink-haired punker angel, complete with combat boots, torn fishnets, and actual feather wings spray-painted with graffiti, appears to Cameron in his hospital room. She urges Cameron to escape the hospital and undertake a quest to find the mysterious Dr. X, a traveler through dimensions who has inadvertently brought dark energy back with him to our universe. It is this dark energy that is attacking Cameron’s brain, not Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and if he can find Dr. X and get him to close up the wormhole, he will not only find a cure for himself but save the universe!

What follows is a kaleidoscopic adventure full of quirky characters and a million plot twists and details. The book is stuffed with a mess of references, touching on everything from Norse mythology to Star Wars, quantum mechanics to MTV Spring Break. Best of all, some of the hippest “references,” such as the legendary mystical free jazz trumpet player Junior Webster, are actually entirely made up by the author. While the book at times reads like both a Percy Jackson title for the 17+ crowd and Paper Towns on acid, Don Quixote looms large in the background and the idea of living out one’s life in a week’s time hearkens back to Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hilarious, weird, life affirming, surreal and ironic, above all Going Bovine is just a whole lot of wacky fun. (four stars)

[Flags: this book depicts drug use, pervasive profanity, and an irresponsible and somewhat ridiculous teenage fantasy sex scene. I hate sex scenes in books in general, and this one specifically knocks a half-point off my rating and makes it a definite “high school only” title. But really, if a dying teenage boy actually is dreaming his way through the end of his life, among other things of course he is going to dream himself up some sex, so maybe it can be forgiven?]

Going Bovine
Written by Libba Bray
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
496 pages
ISBN: 978-0385733977
Release Date: 22 September 2009
GoingBovine.com
Libba Bray – Official Website

A Book Review

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you’re gone and there’s no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It’s all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

(When You Reach Me, page 2)

Miranda is finding notes addressed to her in the most obscure of places, asking her to write a letter. The note writer says he is coming to save the life of Miranda’s friend, and her letter will help him do it. Stranger still, the cryptic predictions included in the notes are starting to come true. Meanwhile, Miranda is just trying to get through life as a latchkey sixth grader in New York City. Sal, her lifelong best friend and neighbor, gets beat up randomly by a kid neither of them know, and afterward tells her he doesn’t want to be friends with her anymore. Now Miranda must focus on troubles such as trying to make new friends and avoiding the crazy homeless man that hangs out at the mailbox around the corner from her house. Placing the mysterious in the midst of the mundane, Rebecca Stead gives us a down-to-earth story of the home and school life of a twelve-year-old girl, interwoven with intriguing science fiction and mystery elements.

Young readers will immediately identify with the believable voice of Miranda, particularly as she navigates the tough social world of sixth grade. In fact, all of the characters are engaging and fully-realized. The storyline is extremely enveloping. Smart, shifting narrative that jumps forward and back in time keeps the clues and ideas coming without revealing too much. However, what puts this book into the running for greatness is that the day-to-day interactions of Miranda with her friends and her mother are just as captivating as the bizarre happenings with the notes, and often the notes totally escape your mind, just as they do Miranda’s. The realistic and the speculative are on entirely equal terms.

It could be easy to take for granted just how perfectly When You Reach Me fulfills the dictates of a great children’s novel. The book is clever and intricate, but not confusing. It introduces many big ideas and morals, but in small and subtle ways. It’s a relatively high interest read, and yet it also could hold up to the scrutiny of any elementary upper grade language arts curriculum. For the quality of this book and its likely ability to please young people, educators, and parents all at the same time, it seems like a serious contender for the Newbery. Indeed, search the Internet and you will find many people saying so. Unfortunately, it’s possible that such a little book could be smothered by the hype that has preceded it and that this review further promulgates, as new readers may come to it with unreal expectations. Remember, it’s not a book unlike anything you’ve ever read, it’s not a grandiose fantasy, and it’s probably never going to sell five million copies and give rise to a series of blockbuster movies. It’s just a little novel done extremely well, which turns out to be a rare thing. (Five Stars)

When You Reach Me
Written by Rebecca Stead
Wendy Lamb Books / Random House
200 pages
ISBN: 978-0-385-90664-7
Release Date: 14 Jul 2009
www.rebeccasteadbooks.com

A Book Review

Marcelo is looking forward to his coming summer job as caretaker of the therapy ponies at Paterson, a special school for children with disabilities which he himself has attended for years.  He is an intelligent but sheltered teenager with a condition that places him on the Autism spectrum.   However, Marcelo’s father, wanting him to gain experience in the “real world,” pushes him into a job in the mail room of his Boston corporate law firm.  If he isn’t successful at the mailroom job and at following what his father terms “the rules of the real world,” he will be required to go to a regular high school for his senior year rather than his beloved Paterson.  And so the reader is thrust with Marcelo into the competitive, confusing and relativistic world of the law firm, viewing it all through his fresh eyes.

It is absolutely riveting to follow Marcelo’s thoughts as he confronts the politics, deceptions, and evils that surround him in the law firm and begins to wrestle with what is right and wrong and how he should conduct his life.  His observations and occasional misapprehensions of the words and actions of those who surround him are by turns humorous and startlingly insightful.  At times the reader is almost embarrassed at Marcelo’s naivety, only to be dumbfounded seconds later by his deft and logical breakdown of a common perplexity of human behavior.  The reader should not have any problem identifying with this character; his autistic-based obsessions and limitations come to seem not so different from those of anyone else in the story or in real life.  His social shortcomings are countered by great perception and moral aptitude.  A lot of credit should be given to the author for creating such a breathing character.

In a day when many young adult books deal with sex in an extremely casual manner, this book is refreshing and courageous for intelligently suggesting that such casual sex may actually be emotionally and spiritually destructive, and making cogent arguments for sexual morality and high ethics in general.  The book is also courageous for bringing religion to bear in these moral arguments in a sophisticated and respectful way; Marcelo is extremely interested in religion and God, and both leans upon and questions his religious knowledge as he is confronted with moral quandaries at the law firm.

Filled with believable characters, realistic situations, beautiful metaphors and stunning ideas, this is a brave, masterful, coming-of-age novel that is a likely contender for the major young adult awards of the coming year.

Marcelo in the Real World
Written by Francisco X. Stork
Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic
315 pages
ISBN: 978-0-545-05474-4
Release Date: Mar 2009
franciscostork.com

A Book Review

Mary lives in a place simply known as the village. It is surrounded by protective fences which must constantly be patrolled and repaired to keep the village safe from the forest beyond and its threat of the Unconsecrated – shuffling, moaning, infected undead that, for all the villagers know, may have overrun the entire earth, save this last sanctuary of normal human life. All her life Mary has heard the folklore passed down through her family telling of the ocean and a world that existed beyond the village and the forest. As much as the fences keep death out, Mary begins to feel that they are keeping her in as well. Her childhood friendships have matured into a troublesome love triangle which puts her at odds with the will of the Sisterhood who control the village, and breaches soon break out everywhere, not only in the fences, but in her family life, friendships,and what she thought she knew of her village and the world outside.

To a certain extent, Carrie Ryan has done with a post-zombie apocalypse world what Stephenie Meyer did with vampirelore, eschewing some of the horror elements in favor of romance and soap-opera-style melodrama. As a main character, Mary causes quite a bit of consternation. She is often selfish, lustful, whiny, fickle, rash, and illogical. On numerous occasions throughout the book I found myself arguing with her or telling her to shut up. It is not entirely clear whether it was the intention of the author to paint Mary in such a disagreeable, morally ambiguous light, or if it is partly due to a lack of details and characterization. For example, what Mary speaks of incessantly as her “love” for Travis we interpret mostly as lust, simply because for much of the book we are given few details about him beyond his good looks and her physical desire for him. My irritation with Mary is actually what kept me going on this book, as I was hoping to finish it just so I could give it a terrible review. However, she did grow on me as the book progressed. She eventually does come to question some of her own actions, asking herself the same questions the reader has wanted to ask her throughout the first part of the book. At one point even she becomes cognizant of the fact that, much like the Unconsecrated that surround her, she is on an inexorable path, ever hungry but never filled. Her selfish flaws and inconsistencies make her a frustrating, but nonetheless real and complex character.

Key questions never answered, too much “telling” of melodramatic feelings and thoughts, and a lazy lack of details keep this from being the book it could have been, but the events are so compelling and Mary’s erratic, destructive behaviors become so fun to follow that it is still an entertaining read. And of course a sequel, The Dead-Tossed Waves, is coming out next year. For the quality of the book itself I would generously give three stars, but for a teen audience four stars because it is a high interest read that may pull in reluctant readers. Thus, 3.5 stars all around.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Written by Carrie Ryan
Delacorte / Random House
310 pages
ISBN: 978-0-385-90631-9
Release Date: March 2009
carrieryan.com

Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino, 2009)

It should be good to share our favorite things
I’ll keep an open mind if you let me in
Don’t let your temper rise, don’t get a bitter face
Try not to judge me on my kind of taste
And don’t go changing clothes when they don’t like yours

This invitation and counsel comes from the closing verse of the song “Taste,” a squelching Beach Boys-meets-Main Street Electrical Light Parade stomp from Animal Collective’s latest opus, Merriweather Post Pavilion. If ever there was one album worth leaving your musical comfort zone for, an album worth spending some time getting acquainted with, allowing it to grow and reveal its many delights and rewards to you (even, and maybe especially, if you didn’t like it at first), this is the one.

Throughout their career as a band, Animal Collective has tapped into the joyful, scary sounds of childhood sonic exploration. By this I refer to the fun, meandering, genius songs that some four-year-olds make up on the spot, or the wild sounds you might hear an untrained five year old who has free reign at a piano pound out. In other words, these are the musical activities children feel free to do before they learn to do them the proper way, before they become self-conscious and embarrassed about such behavior, or before the keyboard cover is slammed down and they are dragged out of grandma’s living room to timeout. The members of Animal Collective either never moved past this stage or they found some magical way to revert to it. They are “playing” music, and as play it is imaginative, primal, experimental, fun, obnoxious, and, perhaps above all, mysterious.

I emphasize the mystery of their music because It is often nearly impossible to figure out what instruments, sounds, or playing methods you are hearing at any particular moment in an Animal Collective song.  In past efforts their lyrics were sometimes difficult to correctly decipher and included words placed together as much or more for their sound as for their meaning.  Again, this mystery and abstraction points back to that childlike propensity to “play,” their ignorance of many of the conventions of musicianship or their belligerent refusal to adhere to them. Over the course of their career they have developed their own idiosyncratic methods of creating music using their instruments, their computers and their voices, and this has made for several albums worthy of the listening ear of an open-minded music fan. However, with the songs on Merriweather they have clearly become masters of their self-made musical methods; this is their most accomplished and accessible album to date, in both songwriting and arrangement. Each song is fully formed, inhabiting its own lush and unique world.

Their instrumental mystery/mastery is in full play from the outset of the album with the song “In the Flowers.” Various abstract noises soon resolve themselves into a waltz rhythm featuring a triplet figure played on an instrument that, with each morphing note, sounds like it could be something different: Is it a harp? a harpsichord? a guitar? a treated piano? a synthesizer? After the second verse the song explodes into a beautiful cacophony of abstract sounds that give the effect of a full-on symphony orchestra: strings, brass, woodwinds, the whole package. I say “give the effect” because this “orchestration” is likewise of indeterminate instrumental origins. This wonderful noise blasts out over a thick electro-timpani beat and orchestral percussion. It simultaneously evokes a Tchaikovsky ballet movement and contemporary electronic dance music. Such musical references to dance make the lyrics and music entirely symbiotic, as the singer imagines dancing with the one he loves, from whom he is currently far removed.

Unabashed playfulness and lyrical mastery also abound in “Summertime Clothes,” which is at once a hugely weird summer jam, a perfectly written pop song, and a sort of “Good Vibrations” or “Singin’ in the Rain” for 2009. Sizzling, gurgling soda pop sounds and ambient street noise accompany euphoric singing that describes a hot summer nighttime walk through city streets:

It doesn’t really matter, I’ll go where you feel
Hunt for the breeze, get a midnight meal
I point in the windows, you point out the parks
Rip off your sleeves and I’ll ditch my socks
We’ll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass
Weave through the cardboard, smell that trash
Walking around in our summertime clothes,
Nowhere to go while our bodies glow
And we’ll greet the dawn in its morning blues
With purple yawn, you’ll be sleeping soon
And I want to walk around with you
And I want to walk around with you

To me, one of the most winning aspects of <em>Merriweather</em> is the fact that so much sonic playfulness and weirdness is coupled with lyrics firmly grounded in domestic life. These are not songs about random sex, drugs, violence, and rock n’ roll excess, nor are they political rants, trite love songs, or absurd fantasies, but rather songs about wanting to provide a decent home for your family (“My Girls”), songs about missing your spouse when traveling (“In the Flowers,” “Guys Eyes,”), songs about waking up early and getting your child ready for the day (‘Daily Routine”), and songs giving advice to a little brother (“Brother Sport”).  In these songs the mundane becomes magical and the banal goes wild.

A fine example is “Daily Routine,” which, with its cut-up organ flourishes, vocal harmonies, and fat hip-hop beats sounds like a Timbaland remix of Yes’ “Close to the Edge.” However, in contrast to the mysticism of Yes songs and the vulgarity of much of hip-hop, “Daily Routine” lyrically depicts the pedestrian events the title implies, “Make sure my kid’s got a jacket / And coat and shoes and hat. / Strap a stroller to my back / Bouncing along every crack.” The true genius comes in the second part of the song, all slow, echoing, reverb-drenched drone over which the lines “Just a sec more…in my bed / Hope my machine’s working right” are sung repeatedly, musically re-creating the feeling of wanting to hit the snooze button in the morning.

Despite the many details and colors of the music, it is the simple exuberance of many of these songs that keeps me listening to them over and over again. I love the counter-intuitive brilliance of closing the album with a song as enthusiastic, infectious, and stadium-ready as “Brother Sport.” I smile and marvel at the audacity of filling the hand-clapping pop anthem chorus of “My Girls” with the so not rock-n-roll lines, “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things / (like a social stance) / I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls / (Woooooooh!)” Taken together, the songs of this album set forth a refreshing view of life in which the hottest party is at home with the family, and nothing is more exciting than spending time with the ones you love. In my opinion it’s a mature perspective to express with such wild and childish sounds. Due to this album’s sonic inventiveness, its musical hyperactivity, its total lack of cynicism and negativity, and it’s all-around positive energy and joyousness, I can’t really imagine an album coming out any time this year that I will like more than this one. Ultimately this is why I feel this is the one album among so many that is worth the time of the not-usually-patient listener: the more you listen to it, the more it may make you happy.

I don’t know how they were able to intuit my music listening desires so well, but it turns out that NPR is streaming new albums in their entirety before they are even released, and they just so happen to be the exact albums I’ve been wanting to hear.  I guess it could just be that my tastes fall in with a key market demographic for public radio, but I’d rather not spoil the magic too much with those sorts of thoughts.

I just listened to the beautiful new album by singer/songwriter/violinist/guitarist/whistler Andrew Bird, entitled Noble Beast.  I think it will take a few more listens for me to truly digest it and describe it fully, but I’m definitely picking this one up when it comes out next week.

Now I’m listening to M. Ward’s album Hold Time, which doesn’t come out until Feb. 17.  Ward continues to write songs that sound like classic folk/country/rock n’ roll sides, all performed in his easy, seemingly effortless style and recorded with his signature old-timey, atmospheric production.  This album adds some occasional strings and keyboards to his usual mix of acoustic guitar and reverb, as well as some classic T. Rex-styled stomp on a few tracks.  All in all, it’s a bit of a Jack White meets Jack Johnson kind of album, and another one I’ll be looking for in February.

As of Monday (1/19), these good folks will also be streaming Animal Collective’s latest noise celebration masterpiece Merriweather Post Pavilion (which I’ve been listening to repeatedly since I purchased the early release vinyl version last week), and Bruce Springsteen’s soon to be released Working on a Dream.

If I were a good conventional blogger, about two or three weeks ago I would have written a summary of the past year, filled with pictures, descriptions of wonderful happenings, and lots of exclamation points! I may have even sent this out as an email or even paper letter to my family and friends!

If I were a good and true nerd, I would have posted all sorts of best of 2008 lists on my blog.

If I were totally awesome (please don’t think of Dell Schanze when I say that.     Oh, crap.), I would have listed all of my goals for 2009 in this place for inspirational and accountability purposes.

Indeed, I intended to do all of these things, and many more! (except maybe the exclamation points). I may even still do these things, albeit in a several-weeks-belated attempt.  Maybe I could cover myself by claiming that I am observing the Chinese, or “Lunar,” New Year this year; I guess I should find out when that is. For your information, the Chinese New Year, which shall be known as the Year of the Ox,  begins on January 26, 2009 of the Gregorian calendar.

If you’re at all like me you may be wondering,  “Why didn’t I compile all these lists and write all these summaries and post all these wonderful ideas over my extensive twelve day break from work?”  I honestly can’t find a good answer to that question.  During this same period of time  I did manage to beat Gin three times at Metropolys.  So that’s at least something.

I will offer this, though.  Lately, I’ve been extremely self-conscious about writing reviews. I’ve tried and failed miserably on a couple of music reviews intended for this blog that I never completed and never posted. I’ve forced my way through some book reviews for work, but have felt extremely self-conscious about them.  I want to become better at reviewing. So, among other things, I am going to start posting many reviews on this blog as a practice.  Start to look for my book and music and other reviews, if I ever get around to writing things on a regular basis again. Perhaps I will highlight my favorite albums of 2008 by posting a brief review for each one, with a sample track. If I get really ambitious I may give voice to the wanna-be foodie part of me and start posting restaurant reviews of some sort. And, on a different front, I’ve been meaning to post some of my thoughts from my all-too-infrequent gospel/scripture studies. At any rate, these are type of things that readers of this blog can look forward to in The Year of the Ox, if I will properly yoke myself and push my way into writing things again, like a proper draft animal. The bad jokes will keep coming, folks.  Thanks for watching and have a nice day!