Today I inaugurate a new feature here at the Froz-T-Freez: the Froztmix.  As we commence the beautiful hot month of July, this particular froztmix has been made with pure summer listening in mind.

What is a Froztmix?  It is no more and no less than a virtual mixtape.  This particular mix has been calculated to fit on two sides of a 90 minute cassette tape.  Of course, you can also listen to it using the mp3 player of your choice, or burn it onto a CD.

I suggest this mix as ideal for automobile listening while traveling, or for a small but good sounding portable stereo in an echoey basement or bathroom while doing laundry or other chores.

Well, on with it.  Right click on each side and choose “Save as…” to get the goods.

Froztmix 1

Side A

1. Animal Collective: Summertime Clothes
2. Sleigh Bells: Crown on the Ground
3. Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks
4. Vampire Weekend: California English
5. Atlas Sound: Walkabout (feat. Noah Lennox)
6. Neon Indian: Deadbeat Summer
7. Nite Jewel: Want You Back
8. The Cool Kids: Strawberry Girl
9. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti:  ’Round and ‘Round
10. Laura Veirs: July Flame
11. Ganglians: To June

Side B

1. Deerhunter: Strange Lights
2. The Carter Family: Keep on the Sunny Side
3. Best Coast: Sun Was High (So Was I)
4. No Age: Here Should Be My Home
5. Girls: Morning Light
6. Yes: And You and I
7. T. Rex: Mambo Sun
8. Vampire Weekend: Cousins
9. White Denim: Shake Shake Shake
10. Holiday Shores: Errand of Tongue
11. Girls: Summertime

If you find that you like any of the songs on this mix, please explore the artists’ work further and purchase the music.  Any questions or comments are, as always, welcome.

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.