Froz-T-Freez Favorite Albums of 2009

Josh W. — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:36:35 +0000

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:

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

Five EPs:

Neon Indian: Psychic Chasms
Abe Vigoda: Reviver
Deerhunter: Rainwater Cassette Exchange
Animal Collective: Fall Be Kind
Bon Iver: Blood Bank

A Trio of Great Rock Albums:

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

Two Magic Albums:

Here We Go Magic: Here We Go Magic
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.

Woods

Josh W. — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:39:04 +0000

It sounds like a hand-labeled cassette given to you by a friend, or found in an attic or an old drawer.

We have had a lot of rainy days lately around these parts.

It feels like it was recorded in a cabin in the mountains, a homespun recording with the tape hiss in the background to prove it.

It is filled with both simple folk songs and swirling psychedelic jams.

I pretty much live in a cabin in the mountains.

It is as likely to have been recorded four decades ago as four days ago.

With the exception of the giant eyeball UFO.

The songs of this album are full of pattering drums, dripping guitars, and falsetto harmonies. They make me think of the rain when I listen to them.

The cover art might as well be my own home canyon it looks so similar, all green-hued and overcast.

One of the best songs on the album is called “Rain on You,” and features the chorus, “Oh, how the days will rain on you.”

Um, Neil Young.

This is a great rainy day album.